Another thread for lengthy debates, off-topic exchanges, long posts on regular hobby-horses etc.
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Another thread for lengthy debates, off-topic exchanges, long posts on regular hobby-horses etc.
John Quiggin 
@BilB
Well BilB, as I said before, let us know how that demonstration goes. After all, if their claims are verified it will be very interesting.
In the article “Low-carbon electricity future: the big picture” John Quiggin wrote in his opening paragraph.
“The latest renewables v nuclear sandpit thread has racked up 300 comments and counting. Rather than attempting to arbitrate, I’m going to assume that both sides are right in their most pessimistic estimates of the other technology. That is, I’m going to look at the implications of assuming that a low-carbon electricity generation (mainly carbon-free with some gas) will imply average costs of $200/MWh.”
However, this is misleading. John has not used the “most pessimistic estimates”
A high end wholesale cost of electricity for nuclear (all costs included) is about $100/MWh. The cost for renewables to provide our electricity supply cannot be estimated because the technology does not exist.
The “Zero Carbon Australia by 2020” plan is based on non-existent technologies. The US Department of Energy has as one of its goals to try to get solar thermal to generate power 24/7 by 2030 (i.e. on demand, when scheduled to do so, night and day, no matter what the weather, throughout the year).
The “Zero Carbon Australia – Stationary Energy Plan – Critique” estimates a high end wholesale cost of electricity from solar thermal and wind power with wheat pellets for back-up at $1200/MWh. That is twelve times the cost of nuclear.
Some may argue that the cost of electricity from nuclear could be even higher. However, the solar and wind with wheat pellets for back up could be far higher. The technology does not exist. It assumes electric trains will be run from the wheat pelletising plants in our wheat areas to the solar thermal power stations, and store the wheat pellets for years to ensure generators can continue to provide power through the 1 in 10 year worst conditions. Just conceive for one moment how ludicrous these schemes are that the renewables energy advocates are trying to push on Australia.
I urge our academics and economists to properly critique these schemes an not endorse and propagate such nonsense.
Although they have been asked, our pro-nuke pundits have not provided data on the isotopes and longevity of nuclear spent fuel when it leaves a reactor.
Here are the facts:
When 1 GW’s worth of spent fuel comes out of a reactor it emits just under:
10, million, million, million decays per second.
In 10 years it emits:
1 million, million, million decays per second.
in 100 years it emits:
100,000 million, million decays per second.
in 1,000 years it emits:
1,000 million, million decays per second.
At this stage the composition has changed, so there is now relatively little fall in radiation although when you get to around a million years, it emits:
10 million, million decays per second,
and after 10 million years, todays spent fuel waste is still radiating at:
1 million, million decays per second.
The canisters that this waste is stored in will fail, on average, in around 1,000 years.
The borosilicate glass matrix will fail in another 5,000 years.
My feeling is that our pro-nuclear pundits know all this, but are deliberately not mentioning it. Instead we get vague dissimulation and misdirection, as exampled by Morgan, Barlow, and Lang previously.
Of course I am quite happy to list the isotopes that comprise the above. But why does Barlow, Lang, Morgan or Finrod?
But it is a good test for our nucoholics to show that they, at the very least, have some knowledge of these.
All totally irrelevant. So what. What are you comparing with?
The point is that nuclear is 10 to 100 times safer than coal and safer than just about all other electricity generating technologies (all health effects included, life cycle analysis).
(Google “ExternE NewExt”)
How would you know if you do not know the types of isotopes?
In the absence of this, your statement is just lobbyist dogma.
@Peter Lang
you write: “As John Morgan pointed out in an earlier discussion with Ernestine Gross, we should evaluate the quality of the analysis rather than make presumptions that it is wrong simply by where it is published.”
You are inventing things, Peter Lang.
In reply to John Morgan’s promotion of the BraveNewClimate website on the ground of it being ‘data driven’, I wrote that I am sure the BNC is ‘data driven’ – the longer the blog, including comments, the more data. In between there may even be some ‘good data’. I am not a nuclear scientist. Therefore I cannot form an independent opinion. Time is a scarce resource for me as it is for all humans. It get my advice on all matters ‘nuclear’ from people in my circle of friends who have appropriate qualifications.
I can tell you now that any web-site that is promoted by Fran Barlow, John Morgan, Peter Lang, Finrod, and quakka is a web-site that I shall ignore because I have made up my own mind about the credibility of the promoters on the basis of subject matter where I can form an independent opinion.
All you have to offer, Peter Lang, is the proposition that anybody who doesn’t join your nuclear promotion club (whether you know what it is you are promoting, is another question), suffers from ‘irrational fear’.
Now, Peter Lang, demonstrate that you don’t suffer from ‘irrational fear’ by volunteering to clean up the nuclear contaminated sites in Hunters Hill (suburb of Sydney).
Fran Barlow can go to a department of physics at any University and ‘teach’ them her new concept of ‘clean energy’. (I’d like to be a fly on the wall on this ocasion).
Tim Machnay may wish to take up a conversation with geologists on the year when the term climate change was ‘officially’ adopted.
And so forth.
@Chris Warren
The precise isotopic mix from 1 tonne of spent fuel will vary, depending on the type of reactor and the fuel mix, time of fuel burn, etc.
Most of the really dangerous stuff has decayed to background level in about 300 years. The rest is mostly fuel useable in breeder reactors.
advanced breeder reactors will have a waste stream consisting almost entirely of highly radioactive fission products which will degay to backgtound levels in about 300 years.
If we end up with a 10 billion person, 100 TW civilisation powered by breeders we will produce 100,000 tonnes of fission products each year. This means that in the long term, we will need to store 30 million tonnes of fission products at any one time (most of which will be far less radioactive than when it first emerged from the reactor).
Compare that to the 30 billion or so tonnes of CO2 currently emitted into the atmosphere each year at present. The fission products will be locked in a solid matrix and stored at a continually maintained repository. Doubtless there will be many uses found for the valuable material contained therein.
In short, you are scaremongering. There’s no insurmountable technical problem to handling radwaste.
Raving on about isotopes and radioactive decays is irrelevant because there is no context for what you are talking about. What are the isotops of hydrogen and oxygen in water? What about in chocolate? What about or bananas? Who cares ? It is just silly scaremongering nonsense. It is just totally irrelevant. Anti-nuclear dogma.
Why don’t you read the authoritative reference I gave you which shows that taking everything into account, nuclear is about the safest of all electricity generation technologies?
Scaremongering is pulling one isolated statistic out of context and then trying to scare the public with irrelevancies. This is what Greenpeace does all the time and you fall for it.
Did you hear about the risk of blades flying off wind turbines and killing people? Scary isn’t it? Windmills could kill everyone on the planet. Have you heard about the toxic chemical released by burning fossil fuels and in making solar panels? How do the risks compare on a properly comparable basis, such as per MWh of energy generated? You’ll find the answers in the link I gave you. You’d actually learn something too. But I suspect you really don’t want to risk that. You’d prefer to shut down discussion before more people find out that this anti nuclear stuff is basically nonsense.
Ernestine Gross,
I get it. For you the beliefs of your friends and associates is what counts, not evidence.
There really is nothing for us to discuss in that case. I’d have to explain to your friends so they could interpret it for you and tell you what you should think.
Can anyone help our blow-hard?
What are:
What are the isotopes of hydrogen
and oxygen in water?
What are the isotopes in chocolate?
What are the isotopes in bananas?
What is the context of spent nuclear fuel radiation, to spent nuclear fuel storage? Peter land cannot see any link.
Can anyone help him out?
@Chris Warren
Chris, if you vist this site:
http://energyfromthorium.com/
and go down the links on the left, you’ll see a heading for java programs. The fourth link is titles ‘Spent nuclear fuel”. You will find plenty of information there.
Peter Lang, you say that power companies own both gas and wind capacity because of money, but that’s what I don’t understand. How do they make money from having both gas and wind capacity? If a company can sell x amount of electricity total, how do they benefit from producing some of that from wind rather than all from gas? Wind turbines currently cost about $7,500 per average kilowatt of output and then, according to you, the power company has to burn gas equal to or almost equal to the amount that would have to be burned to generate the same amount of electricity from gas. The current approximately three and a half cents subsidy per kilowatt-hour for wind isn’t enough to pay for the gas, nor is it enough to pay for the capital costs of the wind turbines, so I just don’t see how it makes sense.
@Peter Lang
I’m not saying you should give it no credibility, I’m just saying that it makes it far more difficult to use it as reference material when it is published on the website that it is on. If it could be published in something neutral then people could be more confident that it is unbiassed. However, looking at Le Pair’s publication list, I think you might find it impossible to avoid the accusation that he is biassed. He is plainly a climate science denialist. I hope you remember the boy who cried wolf whenever you tell us to accept something he says.
A photo of the 16 storage canisters that contain all the once-used nuclear fuel (some call it waste) from a now decommissionedf nuclear electricity generation plant that operated for 32 years and produced 44TWh of electricity:
http://www.nukeworker.com/pictures/displayimage-5205-fullsize.html
Approiximately 1% of the available energy in the nuclear fuel has been used sdo far. The fuel will eventually be reused in more advanced reactors when we get to the point where new fuel cycles are lower cost than the once through cycles.
The main points to take from this photo are:
1. the once used nuclear fuel is safely stored in canisters after a reactor is decommissioned.
2. The quantities of waste and decommissioned materials resulting from nuclear power are miniscule compared with quantities from fossil fuels and from renewables.
For example, the same amount of electricity generated by coal would have created some 44 million tonnes of CO2, plus roughly the same amount of mining waste and fly ash, plus large amounts of SOx, NOx, heavy metals, benzenes, long chain hydrocarbons an particulates. None of these are contained.
If you consider the big picture, nuclear is about the safest, cleanest, requires the least amount of mining and least environmental footprint of all electricity generation technologies. So the details of amounts of toxic materials released, their relative toxicity, the path through to health effects, etc are irrelevant in the big picture. When everything is taken inot account for all technologies nuclear is about the safest.
@Finrod
I’ve said in the past that CO2 is the Plutonium of the atmosphere because they have similar half-lives. For some reason people are happier to let the CO2 loose in the atmosphere where we have no hope of controlling its effect rather than to have a Plutonium storage issue where we can control its distribution if we want to. And this is ignoring the fact that Plutonium is a valuable fuel that shouldn’t be wasted anyway. A bad choice is being made here.
@Peter Lang
No, Peter Lang, you don’t get it because you leave out the crucial part in my sentence, namely, those people among my friends who have appropriate qualifications regarding ‘nuclear’. You substitute the word ‘associates’. I call this spin.
Chris O’Neil,
I do accept your point. But there is nothing I can do to change where the calculator is published. I had not previously looked at what else was on the site, and frankly I don’t care. But I do agree it would be much better if it was posted on one of the highly regarded electricity industry engineering web sites.
@Finrod
Excellent little program. I am not sure about the units, and how you get to decay per seconds, per volume or mass, which is what you need for a risk analysis or to assess toxicity.
But you can do a trend analysis over time.
Just to lighten-up the party, good afternoon gentlemen.
Blimey all that storage for just an average of 1.3TWhr per year.
This is just around 150 KW, and we have to store half a canister a year.
So if we produce 1.5 MW we need 5 canisters a year,
if we produce 15 megawatts we need 50 canisters a year.
If we produce 1500 megawatts – we need 5,000 canisters a year.
So in 10 years we need 50,000 canisters
And we will bequeath to our grandchildren the task of maintaining
500,000 canisters – provided we restrict nuclear plants to 1,5 GW only.
I suppose we could fill Lake George with canisters, but Lake Eyre might be better.
@Chris Warren
I’d suggest you recheck your calculations. You’re off by a factor of a thousand. A TW is a terawatt, 1 trillion watts. You’ve calculated for gigawatts (1 billion watts) instead.
In other words, that’s 50 canisters in ten years, not 50,000.
Im just waiting for the Prof to can this sandpit so it can be used for what it was intended for – that is general discussion. However it has been totally taken over by pro nuclear fanatics – which is rather annoying. The Prof has now had to can discussion on nuclear use a number of times because of this very fact – they keep linking and posting to propaganda websites and have no respect for views that differ from their pro nuclear views.
Give it a rest.
@Alice
Yes, those inconvenient facts certainly are a nuisance. Why can’t we all just go away and shut up?
I am just waiting for Chris Warren to admit he doesn’t have a clue about energy matters. He doen’t even understand SI units. (he demonstrated his lack of understanding of the subject long ago).
I’m not entirely clear on how us pro-nukes have suppressed discussion on other matters. How have we managed that?
I’m with Alice on this one, Quiggin should leave the sandpit for general discussion on a range of issues and not just for those in the pay of big nuke.
Humorless lot of hair splitting over something of no consequence.
Fresh sand please, Professor.
@el gordo
I wouldn’t say that the discussion has been entirely humourless.
And the subject certainly isn’t ‘of no consequence’. No-one would be passionate about it if that were the case.
Nor do I believe that anyone on the pro-nuclear side is “in the pay of big nuke”. I’m certainly not.
But I’m still at a loss as to how the nuclear discussion has suppressed other discussions.
el gordo,
That would be fine if the professor didn’t start threads on nuclear then close them down because he doesn’t like the direction they are going. Or sne dthe bad anti-nukes to the sand pit, but allow the pro-nukes to continue spreading their propoganda.
The fact is that this is a web site dominated by anti-nukes, not pro nukes. The anti-nukes are feeling threatened by exposure to the fact their belief is a phobia, an irrational hatred of nuclear. Their arguments are totally baseless. But never do any of them concede any points. So it is purely ideological. These discussions have really exposed the irrational basis for the Left’s beliefs in ant-nuclear, pro-renewable, and their willingness to distort costs and economics to fit their beliefs. A real eye opener.
Untruths flourish in darkness. If the truth is on your side you don’t fear the light.
@Finrod
I just fear irradiated light…and flourescent lights…and dark lights…I only like daylight Finrod but even you must admit the thread has got immenseley boring…
too tedious to bear and lets face it ..even el gordo…who I dont normally agree with, agrees with me.
@Peter Lang
Close them down Peter Lang..he has let you bastards go on for pages and pages of threads. The nuclear debate has been amongst the top scoring posts
BUT can you blame the Prof and everyone else for getting sick of it when it goes on too long?
Thats not shutting it down. Its being incredibly accommodating to all views. Bravenewclimate ( the pro nuke site) shuts down dissent with its views a damn sight faster than here. Professor Barry Brook clearly isnt as accommodating to people who disagree with him. We who dont like the idea of nuke proliferation in Prof Quiggins blog wouldnt get the airplay at bravenewclimate, that you as a pro nuker are getting here (and thats all down to the Prof who keeps an open mind and an open discussion blog).
So quit your whinging.
@Alice
“Close them down Peter Lang..”
in my post at 32 should say ” Peter Lang is insinuating the Prof ” starts threads on nuclear then closes them down because he doesn’t like the direction they are going.” Liar Liar – pants on fire Peter Lang.
@Alice
You fear fluorescent lights?
You fear the truth, and the effort you would have to undertake within yourself to align with it.
Anyway…
Consider, all you who have been following this thread without commenting, a vision of the world remade.
Consider a power system able to uphold a wealthy and just civilisation of ten billion people for hundreds of millions of years, without mountains of mineral and chemical waste, without altering the very composition of the atmosphere, with an ongoing global waste stockpile that would fit into a cube seventy meters on each side. Imagine a world with plentiful food and water produced using a fraction of the planet’s land surface and with the majority of the land and sea returned to managed wilderness.
Such a world is within our power to create. We just need the will to combat the lies fostering the fear and ignorance which have kept this vision a vision only, and not a glorious reality. To everyone who has not completely closed themselves off from the willingness to examine these issues honestly, I implore you, for the sake of yourselves, your friends, colleagues, families and descendents to do so, and to join us in this most critical of political battles.
The future of the human race depends on our victory.
Since the anti-nukes are now calling for an end to any further debate on nuclear on the John Quiggin web site, let’s summarise what has been established:
1. Nuclear is by far the least cost, low emissions electricity generation technology.
2. If we want to make major cuts (say 60% to 90%) to CO2 emissions as quickly as possible, and phase out most fossil fuel electricity generation by say 2040 or 2050, nuclear power will have to be the major player (probably the dominant technology).
3. If we want clean electricity to displace gas for heating and oil for land transport, as fast as possible, then we’ll need to make electricity as low cost as we can.
4. If we want the developing countries to adopt low emissions electricity and avoid, to the extent possible, going through the fossil fuel stage, then the developed countries will need to make clean electricity lower cost than coal. (we can do so; we just need to remove the irrational impediments that are preventing nuclear being lower cost than coal)
5. Nuclear power is about the safest of all the electricity generation technologies; it is some 10 to 100 times safer than coal generation
6. Nuclear power has by far the lowest environmental footprint: area required, mining area and volumes, shipping volumes, fresh water requirements compared with coal, fresh water for construction compared with solar (for concrete), materials mined, processed, manufactured, fabricated, constructed, decomissioned, disposed of and transported between all stages.
7. Once used nuclear fuel (or so called ‘nuclear waste’), is a trivial quantity and a trivial technical issue in comparison with the management of waste from fossil fuel power stations. Once used nuclear fuel should be stored for later use in Gen IV reactors when they are adopted some time in the future). We all recognise it is a highly emotive issue, thanks to the effective propoganda of the anti-nukes over the past 40 odd years.
more, but that will do for now.
Nonsense. Anti-nukes are free to comment there to their heart’s content. They just don’t usually want to do so for very long once they realise that they’re completely out of their league, and haven’t a leg to stand on.
Anyone who doubts this can easily check this for themselves.
Personally, I think Barry is a bit too accommodating at times, but that’s just me.
@Peter Lang
Is your summary done now Peter? Good. Can we get on to more general discussion in the sandpit again? I dont feel a need to go to bravenewclimate because they dont run general sandpit discussion or discussions on anything else but nuclear – so it would bore me to tears.
Wrong again. Barry always has an Open Thread current on the main page for people to air their views on whatever climate-related matter they wish to discuss.
Alice,
I believe you are wrong on BNC shutting down debate. I don’t know of any examples (their may be some, such as for abusive language or some such behaviour, that I don’t know about). Barry encourages intelligent discussion. He admittedly would not allow a continuous string of silly comments with no substance like what you post all the time.
You say: “We who dont like the idea of nuke proliferation in Prof Quiggins blog wouldnt get the airplay at bravenewclimate, that you as a pro nuker are getting here.”
That is an unsubstantiated statement. But why don’t you and other anti-nukes participate in the discussion on BNC. Of course you would need to abide by Barry’s rules of courtesy, and constructive discussion. Give it a try and find out for yourself.
Alice, what I don’t get is why do you keep reading the sandpit and posting in it if the discussion is not what interests you? If it is upsetting you, why don’t you read and particpate in the other threads and ignore the discussion in the sandpit? It certainly seems to me that you want to shut this discussion down because you don’t like the direction it is heading. You can see that your beliefs have been built on propoganda and misinformation you have been hearing from organisations like Greenpeace – whose funding is dependent on continuing the anti-nuclear argumuments, right or wrong. That is what I think.
How come my quotes of people are ending up as links? That isn’t what I wanted to do. I’m making some kind of mistake with that, but I’m not sure what.
Alice,
I haven’t seen one constructive or informative comment from you in all your posts. If anyone should be shut down it is you for disrupting discussion and contributing nothing.
But I expect it will be me that is told to contribute elsewhere.
@Peter Lang
Im trying to disrupt the nuclear hijack Peter. Ive said it before and Ill say it again. Its just gotten plain boring because its gone on too long. Way too long again – and yet you complain the Prof shuts it down? He doesnt at all. How many posts do you want?.
Why dont you ask Prof to open a “nuclear sandpit”. That wasnt the original intention of this sandpit and I dont think you would get many going there apart from a few of you who can chat amongst yourselves (but surely you can do that on bravenewclinmate cant you)??
@Alice
Boring = alarming.
Prof. Quiggin opened a thread on nuclear power, then closed it and sent all the pro-nukes here. You don’t have to read it. You could easily start parallel discussions on this thread. Instead you just want to halt all discussion on nuclear issues. What did you imagine people were going to think when you called for the discussion to be shut down?
@Finrod
says “Prof. Quiggin opened a thread on nuclear power, then closed it and sent all the pro-nukes here.”
Rubbish Finrod.
@Alice
No, that’s what in fact happened.
Alice,
Finrod is correct.
This was the nuclear thread that was closed because of your personal attack on Barry Brook and your refusal to retract it.
https://johnquiggin.com/index.php/archives/2010/10/07/nuclear-again/
John opened a new sandpit and, as I recall, said to contine the discussion there. (that comment may have been deleted, but you can see by the times that that is what happened.
@Finrod
Yea, wrong prefix, but the trend still applies.
I blame Quiggin for this debacle.
@Chris Warren
At one thousandth the rate. Kind of a major error there.
Evidence?
Evidence?
Evidence?
Evidence?
Evidence?
So where is there data on these breeders, to base such claims on?
Bit hard to say, in the light of no evidence.