Since I’ve been incautious enough to mention the N-word in the previous post, I’ll open another sandpit specifically devoted to discussions of the merits, and otherwise, of nuclear power. Any mention of this topic on other threads will be deleted and will risk bans or restrictions on the offender
Update Since it’s still going, I’ve moved it up, which should reopen comments
John Quiggin 
Quokka,
“Demand is not just for energy but importantly for reliable energy”
is a fair point, and it is better business. Your energy expert however points out some interesting things to do with capacity and load. Capacity is supply that can be relied upon. Equally baseload is load that can be relied upon to balance capacity. Solar PV is not capacity it is straight energy because it does not meet the defintion of reliable supply. However, where energy is matched against load it is capacity of a different form, soft capacity (my terminology). This is the way that GenIIPV will be marketed. Soft capacity balanced against managed loads, grid neutral, in an entirely seperate market. That has got to be interesting and an opportunity for a whole new clutch of energy millionaires.
Fran writes:
“If by renewables one means intermittents, then my view would be that they are not feasible in economic, environmental or schedule terms at all, most of the time.”
I’m not sure how Fran distiguishes between renewables and intermittent, but Australia has an large capacity for renewables:
Peter Seligman (2010) Australian Sustainable Energy – by the numbers. Melbourne Energy Institute, University of Melbourne. http://energy.unimelb.edu.au/uploads/Australian_Sustainable_Energy-by_the_numbers3.pdf
Good link Jakerman,
I want Perter Seligman’s doc to be useful but the author does not start out all that well. He has electricity consumption per person per day at 84 Kwh. Other sources have our total electricity consumption at 260 billion Kwhr per year. So 260 billion / 22 million / 365 equals 32.4 Kwhrs per day. Is there something that I am missing?
@jakerman
Just briefly skimming over the document I noticed that the grand plan includes 10GWe of geothermal for Australia. I really wouldn’t bet the future on engineered geothermal. Correct me if I am wrong, but as far as I am aware, there are no commercial EGS plants running anywhere. Geodynamics was supposed to be a (the?) leader, but there have been a succession of delays and they still haven’t made a decision to go ahead with a 25MWe “commercial size” demonstration plant. The chances of the original goal of 500MW by 2020 look slim.
This is indicative of many if not all of these grand renewables plans – a plethora of optimistic assumptions including but not limited to technology without commercial scale demonstration, optimistic projections of declining cost, optimistic projections of improvements in energy efficiency, optimistic projections of demand management. Too much risk for my taste.
Quokka the geothermal projects have been grossly underfunded. That is the core reason for their failure so far. Eventually the government will realise that it is “in the national interest” and carry these projects past the high risk phase. And why would they do that? for the same reason that the NSW government bought up all of the coal reserves in the state in the 80’s and built the original coal fired power stations, actions that have worked very well for Australia’s energy stability.
Bilb
I believe Seligman’s is using “primary energy”
http://www.google.com.au/search?q=define%3A+primary+energy+&rls=com.microsoft:en-au&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&startIndex=&startPage=1&redir_esc=&ei=nSDiTMSlHo-KvQOZy9yoDg
which counts the energy contained in raw fuels and lost as heat.
See page pg 104 of MacKay’s book for details.
http://www.withouthotair.com/
Thanks Jakerman,
Straight up I have to wonder why. I’m goin to have to read Seligman in detail I guess. I hope his work is not as flawed as Mackay’s book is. It only takes a few seconds every time holes I am forced to refer to Mackay to find fundamental holes in his knowledge which make me exit with speed. For instance I went to find page 104 on the way I glanced over page 103 where Mackay is sowing that “renewables just don’t cut the mustard”. In his explanation he says
“our photovoltaic panels and hot-water panels would clash with each other on roofs”
…makes me shake my head. Why? cooling solar panels with water from midday 90C to 55C makes them far more efficient, you need less of them, and you get a lot of hot water. Mackays misunderstandings and false conclusions go on and on. Lets hope Seligman is more intuitive.
@BilB
The geothermal projects have received federal government assistance. There are no commercial EGS generators either here or anywhere else in the world. The idea is hardly new, and you have to ask the question – just why is this? On every count, EGS *seems* better than solar or wind, so why isn’t it being implemented?
EGS may or may not prove useful at some time in the future, but cannot be relied on for energy planning – we simply do not know how viable it may be. The climate is not going to sit around and wait for every energy startup company that talks a good game.
Quokka they have received small amounts of assistance, the kind of assistance that guarantees failure. It takes serious funding to drill to depth into extreme material. Not just barely enough and certainly not enough when somthing goes wrong (as indeed it did).
This is an ongoing expression of how disinterested the government is about our fundamental security. For Howard it was all about having a big budget surplus to do nothing with, with Labour it is all about doing yet another rehash of the education system, or hospitals, or whatever.
@BilB
So what? Nobody knows whether EGS is going to deliver the goods – no matter how much money is spent on it. It cannot be relied on. It is irresponsible to imply that it can be. At the moment, it’s just fluff padding out contorted renewables grand plans.
@jakerman
So when, pray tell, is someone going to start getting the low hanging fruit instead of wasting vast amounts of money on high hanging fruit?
quakka,
Indonesia already have more than 1GW installed capacity, the Phillipines have 2GW (18%) of capacity. Its a proven provider.
Chris, what happens next after we get the low hanging fruit?
http://www.exposolar.org/2011/eng/center/contents.asp?idx=94&page=2&search=&searchstring=&exposolar=C
Click to access PV_Breakeven.pdf
Bilb
I think because convention for many national comparisons to date express energy consumption in primary energy. Makes it easy for CO2 accounting also.
Re. the Clash of PV and Solar hotwater pannels- MacKay was pointing out the limits of area to provide sufficient solar energy in Britain. As they get less than half our irradiance and have less than 10th our area, I think the UK do run out of usable land for PV and solar thermal.
Quokka,
Talking about EGS is everybit as meaningful as talking about Nuclear energy in Australia. Nuclear Energy is not here, it never will be here, so why go on endlessly about it. And expanding that day dream out to fast breeder reactors is just fluff padding out contorted nuclear grand plans. However one of them is more real than the other. Had Howard spent as much on EGS as was spent on the Switkowski Report then EGS would be a running reality today.
@Chris O’Neill
The higher the fruit – the more sunlight it catches.
i.e. it’s politically correct. And as we all know, that’s what global temperature cares about.
@BilB
You really don’t get it do you? Nobody is proposing fast breeders as part of a low carbon energy plan for Australia. But they are proposing EGS as a significant portion of what might be termed an aspirational energy plan for Australia – it does not exist as a viable commercial proposition and nobody can say when it might. I want to seriously address the emissions problem in electricity generation – not just dream about it. What do you want?
Having said that there are examples of fast reactors reliably producing significant amounts of electricity over many years. The Russian BN-600 (600MWe) is one. Appropriate for Australia at this time – of course not – but at least they have been built and operated on a commercial size, which is more than you can can say for EGS.
Well, actually EGS is not looking that bad. And it seems that they do have adequate funding for the moment.
http://www.geodynamics.com.au/IRM/Company/ShowPage.aspx?CPID=2265&EID=90559772&PageName=RBS Morgans research report
What do I want? Well I think that I have spelt that out over and over again. The GenIIPV system, every component of which is operating commercially successfully in Australia today, will in due course reduce Australia’s CO2 emissions by 25% at least, while significantly increasing the standard of living for all of those who deploy it. Just one technology package can achieve that. I also want to see BEV’s with a minimum 300klm range readily available in Australia within the next 3 years.
Beyond that I want to see initiatives such as
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1193169/Human-waste-heat-thousands-homes-4m-plan-recycle-gas.html
rolled out across Australia. And I want to see how far we can go with that by reintroducing “insinkairators” (after investigation for benefit) to extend the amount of digestable material available to the system. This sort of initiative starts to aggressively attack the “other 50% of CO2 emissions”.
The only place where I see Nuclear energy playing an essential role for Australia is with container shipping, which I believe will be unavoidable in the face of declining oil availability. And I say that without knowing the full implications, so there might be compelling reasons against such a use.
Footnote: “Nobody is proposing fast breeders”….. That is not the way that I have read nearly every post from the BNC. The entire zero waste argument is built on the faster breeder platform and is agued for regularly by everyone from Fran Barlow to Robert Merkel. But everytime from now on when zero nuclear waste comes up I am going to quote you as saying it is not proposed for Australia therefore is not a valid argument. Meanwhile (reality check) EGS IS proposed and IS being built.
PooGas Works
http://www.gizmag.com/human-waste-to-gas-project-goes-live/16572/
Gee that was quick.
Is it premature to conclude that the sandpit has been finally cleaned of verbal radioactive waste?
@BilB
Why do feel the need to dishonestly misrepresenting others’ positions? If you don’t know that Prof Brook and others are advocating the urgent deployment of advanced light water reactors transitioning to uranium and/or thorium breeder reactors, then you should make the effort to find out before ascribing to them positions that they do not hold.
@BilB
It depends what timeline you are talking about. In the next 5-10 years, we obviously aren’t advocating IFRs. We want a settled down technology that can be mass reproduced in something like a modular format. There’s no reason at all not to use LWRs in the short run as they are cheaper, and the procedures for maintaining them efficiently are well-established.
The “problem” of radioactive hazmat (really, once-used nuclear fuel) arises in the longer term (40+ years way) and by that time, IFRs may well be well-settled technology and cost-competitive with LWRs.
@quokka
Who is misrepresenting others’ position?
You write to BILB:
“Why do feel the need to dishonestly misrepresenting others’ positions? If you don’t know that Prof Brook and others are advocating the urgent deployment of advanced light water reactors transitioning to uranium and/or thorium breeder reactors, then you should make the effort to find out before ascribing to them positions that they do not hold.”
I am absolutely certain that Professor Brook has not posted what you say is his position on this or previous nuclear threads on the web-site we are on.
Apparently, the conclusion that this sandpit has been cleared of verbal nuclear waste is premature.
Fran Barlow writes
Yes there is:
http://www.ehjournal.net/content/8/1/43
@Ernestine Gross
writes
“Apparently, the conclusion that this sandpit has been cleared of verbal nuclear waste is premature.”
Couldnt agree more.
@Fran Barlow
Fran, you write: The “problem” [sic] of radioactive hazmat (really, once-used nuclear fuel) arises in the longer term (40+ years way) and by that time, IFRs may well be well-settled technology and cost-competitive with LWRs.
You are back into generating verbal nuclear waste; recycled verbal nuclear waste so to speak.
Radioactive hazmat is radioactive hazzardous material (including the stuff which has to be removed from Hunters Hill, a residential suburb of Sydney; the location where it is to be put is still undetermined).
This “ratioactive hazmat” is a problem right now in many countries where people in the past (about 50 to 60 years ago) believed that in 40+years “IFRs” may well be “well-settled” technology and cost-competitive with “LWRs”.
It is a problem and not a challenge*; it is a challenging problem for the pro-nuke advocates.
*One of my earlier great teachers of promotional writing told me that “we” don’t use the word problem, Ernestine, we talk about challenges. The interested reader can search Fran’s posts for examples of how this semantic dance is applied.
@quokka
You referred to Professor Brook.
Here is some really good news, for Londoners.
http://www.gizmag.com/source-london-ev-charging-program-to-launch/16960/?utm_source=Gizmag+Subscribers&utm_campaign=80746e1e28-UA-2235360-4&utm_medium=email
Fran @ 22,
Proceeding to produce long lived toxic Radioactive Material is a very risky proposition when the Fast Breeder Reactor solution to dispose of this material may or may not turn up
“IFRs may well be well-settled technology”
The alternative is storing spent fuel rods which will need to be managed for hundreds of years.
And there is every possibility that Nuclear Fusion may well overtake fast breeder development. It seems that the Fusion people have been achieving some gamechanging breakthroughs
http://www.gizmag.com/break-even-nuclear-fusion-reactions-possible-within-three-years/16944/?utm_source=Gizmag+Subscribers&utm_campaign=0c1d4fc141-UA-2235360-4&utm_medium=email
@jakerman
Why was this relevant. Correlation is not causation. If one is to assert teratogenesis, one would need to show evidence in at least some of the leukaemia victims of exposure to radiation above those in communities not near nuclear power plants. One would also need to explude other causes — e.g proximity to other industrial plants, including especially coal plants (which do emit radiation) so as not to contaminate the study.
In Australia’s case, the aim would be to replace existing coal plants, and accordingly (unless one could show that this goal were achievable by means other than nuclear) one would need to look at the comparative health impacts of coal plants and set these against the performance of nuclear plants.
I’d be interested if the German study had looked at the blood mercury of children in the footprint of German coal plants. What is their respiratory condition like? How much PM5 is lodged in their lungs? How do they comapre with those near the nuclear plants?
@BilB
Since when are you troubled by uncertainty? After all, you add in this same post:
Given that the impediments to IFR are about cost — the technology is well established — it’s telling that you appeal to small uncertainty when it suits you to rubbish nuclear fission, but rely on massive uncertainty when such reliance allows you to rubbish nuclear fission.
Oh … that’s right … rubbishing nuclear fission is the common thing rather than the underlying calculus.
Interestingly, you like Seligman, but his view on nuclear fusion is utterly orthodox — he says it always seems to be 30 years away.
Ask the families who are live near a NPP.
And proof is not possible in science. This is sound evidence.
“For all leukemias combined, the study showed a statistically significant trend for proximity to nuclear power stations with a positive regression coefficient of 1.75 [lower 90% confidence limit: 0.65]. That is, the leukemic children lived closer to nuclear power plants than randomly selected controls.”
“The overall conclusion is that proximity of residence to German nuclear power stations is the most likely explanation for the increased cancer risks.”
“Most of the Bradford Hill tests when applied to the KiKK study support the inference of causation between increased cancers and proximity to nuclear power stations.”
“The overall conclusion is that proximity of residence to German nuclear power stations is the most likely explanation for the increased cancer risks.”
See http://energy.unimelb.edu.au/ozsebtn/
@Ernestine Gross
While I can understand how keen the anti-nuclear crowd is to somehow conflate uranium smelting at “Radium Hill” between 1916 and 1970 and nuclear power in the the 21st Century, there’s really no connection between the two. Contemporary nuclear plants would not be dumping radioactive waste as was done in 1916.
Right now, it’s not clear how the waste is composed, but if there were dedicated nuclear waste repositories in Australia — as I believe there should be — then this matter could also be easily resolved without ignorant nimbyism creeping into the discussion.
Your implication that this is pertinent and to your cause’s credit is the real toxic waste here.
I very much doubt that people around 50-60 years ago thought at all seriously about prospective IFRs in substantial numbers. Even today, the terms “IFR or “fast spectrum” produce blank looks amongst educated folk. Many have heard the term “breeder” reactors but associate it with the “bad” ones that lead to nuclear weapons. Few can explain how a breeder reactor works or distinguish it from your bog standard LWR. Nevertheless, the basic technology for IFRs was developed in the 1980s at Argonne before Clinton suppressed the program in a political trade off withe more liberal constituencies in the mid-1990s. But for this political interference we’d have already had a couple of working reactors of this type. The Russians plan to deliver their first by 2015. We will see.
And yes, cleaning up our energy production system is a challenge. Existing privileged and very well-connected stakeholders have compelling reasons to stick with business-as-usual. They know that promoting renewables or “green power” at a cost 10-40 times coal, gas and oil plays very well and at the cost involved, it is never going to threaten their grip on the market. Nuclear is the real threat to them, because nuclear could over time get down to about the same cost as common hydrocarbon fuels, especially if coal begins to rise in price and a carbon cost is included in the price.
Indeed
” it always seems to be 30 years away”
That is how Nuclear fusion has been since the seventies when it was kicked off by Jimmy Carter,……until that article. Suddenly it seems considerably more certain.
@jakerman
It is true that science cannot produce absolute certainty, particularly in cases where epidemiology is involved, but it is worth comparing the standard of proof here with that of smoking and cancer, or asbestosis and asbestos. Here the correlations on both sides are not only very strong but experimental proofs exist when one examines the relevant tissue samples. We actually have excellent data on the tissues of people who have genuinely been the victims of exposure to serious levels of ionising radiation. It is also the case that those persistently exposed through occupation to radiation (cabin crew in long haul flights for example) offer an excellent control group with which one could compare ostnsible candidates for teratogenesis.
It would be far more impressive if those undertaking such studies could show that a statistically significant sample of the victims of leukaemia did in fact show evidence in their tissues of increased exposure to radiation of the kind associated with the relevant plants. Did the researchers look at soil samples? Examine local fauna for elevated radioactive exposure? Did they in fact show any? Did they positively rule out the other possible explanators of leukaemia?
You’ve pointed me to the Seligman paper. I re-read that yesterday and plan a detailed response.
Fran
Why are we still getting all this repetitous stuff….
As it has been shown that coal can be replaced by other than nuclear (in many previous posts), it looks like you have not been digesting words placed in front of you.
Playing the same record again, and again, and again marks one a zealot.
If you thought about things a bit more you would realise, in the German study, that you do NOT have to exclude proximity to other industrial plants. You only have to control for this effect ie correct if other plants near the survey area are greater than in non-survey areas.
Why did you raise this anyway – is there evidence that this is a concern or is it just a jump into irrelevancy you decided to make instead of digesting the evidence?
I haven’t read the German study, but most refereed studies these days comply with basic survey and research principles. So where in the German study is there any cause for your comment?
We have data on what we thought was damaging levels of ionising radiation, however
“official dose and risk estimates may be incorrect as discussed by Crouch [36] and Sumner et al [37]”.
http://www.ehjournal.net/content/8/1/43
@BilB
I’d say it’s time to announce a new socio-mathematical theorem, which I will provisionally name “The BilB Theorem”.
skepticism about an energy claim is inversely proportional to its capacity to engender confidence in the proposition that renewables can do it
In orthodox delivery, the skepticism or credulity arising from the theorem should be accompanied by appeals to the value of being “intuitive” and renewables having passed one’s own “reality check”. In the BilB view, the rest of the world’s energy stakeholders have simply lost touch with “reality”. This explains why the UAE, which is heavily insolated is building nuclear power plants at many times the capacity of solar thermal. With a little more reality from BilB, they could get those solar thermal plants on hold back into service.
@jakerman
<blockquoteI’m not sure how Fran distiguishes between renewables and intermittent,
The same way everyone else does. Can you schedule the delivery of power a day a week or a month in advance? If not, the source is intermittent. If so, its fully dispatchable. Geothermal is fully dispatchable, though having re-read Seligman, it is doubtfully included as renewable. It’s certainly low carbon, but it’s not a source which is always going to be on tap. As Seligman points out, depending how fast we tap Australian geothermal resources, it could be exhausted for commercial purposes somewhere between 80 & 400 years.
Waste biomass would be renewable and not intermittent (i.e dispatchable), but its potential is quite limited.
In theory yes, according to Seligman, but not if the basic measures of utility are considered. If one considers what he describes as efficiency*, effectiveness** and potential***, then the picture is far more modest.
* the cost of abatement expressed as a function of the CO2 abatement and the dollar cost including any incidental cost advantages of the solution
** The capacity of the solution to deliver abatement expressed as a function of the capital expenditure required to establish the solution
*** The scope of abatement possible by generalising the solution.
@jakerman
No matter. Whatever the precise threshhold, it is a baseline for establish causality that the subject exhibits evidence of having been exposed to measurable quantities of ionising radiation.
oops:
Whatever the precise threshhold, it is a baseline for establishing] causality …
Give us some numbers Fran.
http://energy.unimelb.edu.au/ozsebtn/
@Chris Warren
It has been asserted, not shown.
Other studies in the US which suggested this epidemiology had not controlled for otther possible sources of leukaemia.
How ironic that you should make this claim, right after the one above.
I’d accept that as a reasonable interpretation of my assertion.
Not much of baseline if we misunderstand the threashold cause and limit for childhood cancer.
And the first prize in verbal ping-pong goes to the self identified “socio-mathematical” theorist, Fran Barlow.
@Ernestine Gross
Brainwashed new climate Ernestine? What can you do? They have a new Guru in Professor Brooks who cant keep his (few avid) disciples from running all over town taking over other blogs…must have something (but then so did plenty of other charismatic speakers and just as dangerous ideas).
@jakerman
Oh but it’s essential. If you wish to argue, for example, that childhood discombobulation is caused by exposure to unobtanium trioxide while one might argue about threshhold limits, one will need to show the presence of the substance in some tissue and ideally, a chain of provenance leading to the contact with the said UnO3. If you can’t show that, then it’s hard to argue causality.
@Ernestine Gross
You may as well ask Fran to step up for the “user pays twice” principle as well – after all as I recall Fran would prefer the poor off the roads and on public transport. However, given the unwilligness of certain tribes to countenance government spending and public provision, perhaps its best the poor pay for their own walking machines to develop their knee and calf muscles sufficiently to crawl or walk to work.
so much nonsense everywhere these days……so many non thinkers. Im starting to suspect the food chain or the water supply…
@Fran Barlow
“While I can understand how keen the anti-nuclear crowd is to somehow conflate uranium smelting at “Radium Hill” between 1916 and 1970 and nuclear power in the the 21st Century, there’s really no connection between the two. Contemporary nuclear plants would not be dumping radioactive waste as was done in 1916.”
Why are you telling me this @34, page 6?