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 
@Fran Barlow
“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.” [FB @34, page 6]
Fran, what are you trying to say?
@Fran Barlow
“I very much doubt that people around 50-60 years ago thought at all seriously about prospective IFRs in substantial numbers”
O.k. Fran, you don’t know But why are you telling me your speculations?
@Fran Barlow
“Even today, the terms “IFR or “fast spectrum” produce blank looks amongst educated folk.”
Quantitative evidence, please, including concise description of research method.
@Fran Barlow
“Many have heard the term “breeder” reactors but associate it with the “bad” ones that lead to nuclear weapons.”
Quantitative evidence please, including concise description of research method.
@Fran Barlow
“Few can explain how a breeder reactor works or distinguish it from your bog standard LWR”
Quantification, please. Please take care in uniquly identifying the term ‘bog standard’ in your socio-mathematical theory.
All absolute nonsense in that none of it makes any sense except the judicious dropping of terms like “ignorant nimbeyism” which in themselves dont constitute any scientific or economic argument, or make sense, having failed miserbaly to be defined anywhere…
Im absolutely amazed that Fran claims that “its not clear how (nuclear) waste is composed. Would you want people who dont know how nuclear waste is composed deciding that we need nuclear power….
I mean blindy Freddy knows how long this stuff is dangerous to human life for. (longer than our own life times)..but we apparently can sanction and push for nuclear use without understanding the composition of nuclear waste (still emitting dangerous rays…??)
Something very wrong in this line of thinking.
@Fran Barlow
“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.”
1. Please define ‘basic technology’
2. What exactly did Clinton do and when?
3. How do you measure ‘liberal’ such that ‘more’ or ‘less’ become quantifiable?
4. Are you saying it is political interference if politicians’ actions reflect the wishes of their constituency?
5. Who belongs to your “we” who would have a couple of reactors of “this type”?
6. Who, in your “we” is interested in what the Russians are planning to do?
7. What is the method of proof you are using in your socio-mathematical theory to establish that what you say makes any sense?
Fran – if I was you Id push over your King in this game of chess over nuclear right now and garciously concede defeat…
Really your arguments not only dont make sense. You use ideological terms (ignorant nimbeyism) and freely admit lack of knowledge on the composition of nuclear waste (and by default lack of understanding of the behaviour of nuclear waste) yet you still want to claim it as the worlds energy saviour and solution to global warming.
Not exactly credible.
@Fran Barlow
This is just bizarre
There has been NO assertion at all. How on earth was the information, such as Michael Mobbs book, presented earlier “assertion”?
If you want to look for assertion, then surely it was assertion to ‘assert’ without evidence that the German study had some problem concerning proximity to other industrial plants.
This was pure, blatant assertion.
Michael Mobbs has demonstrated as a long-term reality the possibility of renewable energy in a Sydney suburban context, with all the necessary data and evidence. No assertion.
You have also been shown several other references – not one of which contains assertion.
But then you only have to look at your own posts to find precisely the assertion you tried to impute to others.
This is a very basic, typical Freudian slip.
It also shows that you have not been listening to what other people have been saying.
@Fran Barlow
“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.”
Is the foregoing an example of a socio-mathematical theorist’s output? Wouldn’t story telling be a sufficient descriptor?
@quokka
While I am in the clean-up mode, I have a further point to make.
You wrote: “In any case, it is common courtesy to make an attempt to accurately represent other’s positions. Just because you not agree with them, that is no justification for misrepresenting them. I made this point previously in the context of ridiculous claims that most NPPs are shut down within 10 years for safety reasons.”
Yes I agree it is common courtesy to make an ttempt to accuately represent other’s positions. Hence I am asking you now who is (are) the “you” in your second sentence.
Further, would you please acknowledge that it was not I who claimed that most NPPS are shut down within 10 years for safety reasons.
PS: The article you referenced is useful. Its content corresponds to much of what BILB posted over time, taking into account that in contrast to the USA, Australia does not have nuclear power plants. The article was useful for me (economics) because it raised a question in my mind on network pricing.
@Ernestine Gross
Its far worse than that. Its blatant jargonistic ideological nonsense backed up by no facts whatsoever.
Fran – your comments (for one could not call them sensible or scientific or reasonable assertions) have been annihilated.
The fact that “existing stakeholders” (not named by Fran) have compelling reasons to stick with business as usual (business as usual not made clear) because they “know” that promoting renewables is “never going to threaten their grip on the market”..whereas nuclear supposedly will (rubbish it will re-inforce the grip of existing energy stakeholders to exploit a dangerous fuel for profit at their whim without proper regard to safety).
Why I am less worried about the threat of nuclear to existing stakeholders, than the threat of nuclear to mankind? I must be mad according to Fran…..I should be more concerned about “existing stakeholders in the energy wars” than about my fellow man??
Fran, nuclear is not a proposition simply for a markets consideration. Its a proposition to be considered by governments for its effects on humankind. Kindly divorce yourself from “market consderations” and you may have an argument for mankind.
I suppose its too much to ask.
Fran argues,
You do so with the best available evidence, as I’ve presented. And you reject theories of limits that don’t fit the evidence hence accept that previous though limits may be entirely wrong.
@Chris Warren
at enormous cost compared with nuclear.
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.
@Ernestine Gross
See your comment @27 p6 …
@jakerman
Proividing that evidence is at least adequate. Correlation is a good basis for a clinical study, but if you aren’t going to bother with one, you can’t draw clinical conclusions.
Why?
@Ernestine Gross
That would be connotatively misleading, unless it is the kind of moral tale in which the nakedness of the emperor is revealed. It’s a speaking truth to power kind of thing.
.
@Alice
I missed this one: “The fact that “existing stakeholders” (not named by Fran) have compelling reasons to stick with business as usual (business …”
I suggest you ask Fran for clarification.
What is the foregoing?
@Alice
Perhaps so, but that reflects the fact that you say what feels right rather than what turns out to be right after careful analysis. Like BilB, you say what is intuitively reasonable without bothering to check that it is reasonable in practice. No matter how many times someone offered you that “Greek gift” in one of the lines of a Nimzo-Indian or Ruy Lopez, you’d keep biting and losing.
Also, I don’t get the sense that you are someone with a lot of patience.
@Fran Barlow
@Ernestine Gross
Well I thought I was ..or at least Fran would pick up on it…who exactly are the existing stakeholders in the energy wars Fran? …and who are the existing stakeholders you describe in whether we should move to idespread use of nuclear?.
I would have thought the general public and what they want…an existing stakeholder…yet it appears they are not..apparently the “existing stakeholders are not threatened by renewables”. Well neither is the general public threatened by renewables whereas they are clearly threatnened by nuclear use.
This is no argument for adoption of nuclear at all.
All the more reason why at least one much larger stakeholder (the general public) would welcome the use of renewables.
I was just wondering who Fran classifies as stakeholders for the simple reason that existing stakeholders (inclding the public consumers) dont all have the same view as Fran suggests (states) they share.
@Fran Barlow
I prefer to trust my instinctual reaction (which is not all instinct but also the result of history and experience and observation – and as it happens global obervations concerning nuclear) as so many good businessmen do Fran than to adopt patently false statistics and argue on their results.
You are so very right. I dont have a lot of patience and Im losing what little I started with.
I also have a very finely tuned BS detector and I have a moral compass (which must mean I have some belief in a higher ethical level towards my fellow man – otherwise why on earth would I bother – it doesnt bring me a cent).
I may have little patience left Fran but I have increasingly less time and frankly the issue of nuclear is important for the future, and our childrens future (why do I suspect you have none?) and dangerous arguments like yours and Professor Brooks need to be exposed for the garbage that they are.
@Ernestine Gross
quid pro quo; the Golden Rule — Based on the antecedent observation by you, for which there was not merely no evidence but anachronistic, you seem to like them.
You won on the trade because my speculation was a lot more plausible.
I said:
You asked:
8 people, three of them Greens, one my husband (a university lecturer), another one of hubby’s colleagues, the rest teachers at my school. None of them showed any sign of awareness of the technology, despite contextualisation of the terms.
Methodology: Informal survey a.ka. straw poll
Reliability: Low as the sample size was small
Foundation for the claim: Even today, the terms “IFR or “fast spectrum” produce blank looks amongst educated folk Compelling. Clearly, the sample was more than one, warranting the use of the plural; the persons would have been highly motivated to demonstrate conversance as at least six of them oppose resort to nuclear power.
@Fran Barlow
Hardly quantitative evidence Fran – you state in reply to Ernestine request for quantitative evidence… you offered this evidence of the grand total of… (drum roll and dim the lights – literally)
“8 people, three of them Greens, one my husband (a university lecturer), another one of hubby’s colleagues, the rest teachers at my school.”
No wonder my BS detector is on high alert.
Im simply blown away by the huge scale of your kitchen study Fran.
“No wonder my BS detector is on high alert.”
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
@Alice
Good grief, what a muddle. You sound like one of my husband’s first year students. There’s so much wrong here I’ll just move on.
And you are claiming that I use spin? Your “BS” detector obviously doesn’t filter your own commentary. Really, this is just the intuition I referred to rebadged.
How can one have “increasingly less”? Why didn’t your BS detector pick that up and badge it as an oxymoron? Perhaps it needs more tuning.
Presumably because your “instinct” or your intuition or perhaps your “compass”, is on the fritz. I have two children.
You also say @5 above on this page
Again you BS detector fails to pick up your own BS. This referreed to my remark @34 P6
That’s simply dishonest.
I suggest you go back and read what I have said. Just to recap for the slow-learners:
Renewables cost more than nuclear in the short-run, but not in the long run.
Your reference is irrelevant. No one is saying that renewables are cheaper.
All these points have been covered at great length previously.
“That’s simply dishonest.”
Par for the course from Alice.
“Renewables cost more than nuclear in the short-run, but not in the long run.”
How do you know?
@Alice
That’s exactly what it is. Quantitative evidence doesn’t have to be large enough to achieve low MOE. It just has to quantify some data. Given the original claim was of a general nature, the quantity of data and its quality was adequate. It would be unreliable as a generalisation of knowledge of the populace as a whole, but that was not my claim.
Jakerman’s reference (previous post) is worth reading ….
It covers the issues in a reasonable manner.
http://energy.unimelb.edu.au/ozsebtn/
@Fran Barlow
“Quantitative evidence doesn’t have to be large enough to achieve low MOE. ”
MOE, as in :http://www.google.com.au/imgres?imgurl=http://www.absurdintellectual.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/MoeSzyslak1.gif&imgrefurl=http://www.absurdintellectual.com/2009/09/25/moe-a-real-person/&h=620&w=500&sz=27&tbnid=zByHDr09qFZfeM:&tbnh=136&tbnw=110&prev=/images%3Fq%3DMOE&zoom=1&q=MOE&hl=en&usg=__v6DMOdVHROeqYfRIwCZNeRkmnCI=&sa=X&ei=zp7jTPr1OIW2vQP-lJG6Dg&ved=0CFkQ9QEwCA
Not adequate, Fran.
@Fran Barlow
In reply to Fran B. @23, p 7.
Please start replying in sequence, ie start on page 6.
Garbage. Someone has yet to teach you what “net present value” means.
I thought you just said renewables do not cost more in the long run.
By people who don’t even understand basic concepts like net present value.
@Fran Barlow
1. “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.” [FB @34, page 6]
2. “Right now, it’s not clear how the waste {i.e. the waste at Hunters Hill}is composed, but if there were dedicated nuclear waste repositories in Australia
That’s simply dishonest.” [FB@27, p7]
You said it, Fran.
Can’t bother is a entirely inappropriate description of the situation. And in this context of strong prima facie evidence of harm it would be fallacious to appeal to ignorance in an attempt to argue there is no reason to object to building a NPP in regions close to children and pregnant women.
Quotes containing lots of links go into moderation. So without the quote click:
@Chris Warren
Garbage. Someone has yet to teach you what “net present value” means.
I thought you just said renewables do not cost more in the long run.
By people who don’t even understand basic concepts like net present value.
@Chris O’Neill
You tried to make three points, but with consummate skill you got each one wrong.
Once you take out the arrogant assertions, all that is left is thin air.
Unluckily for Chris O’Neil most people are aware of net present value, so what?
Maybe Chris O’Neill might like to work out the net present value of today’s nuclear energy proposal given the cost of one additional Yucca mountain sized depository every 30 years where each depository has increased costs compared to the previous, plus relatively higher decommissioning costs and frequency (compared to renewables).
Most people stay well away from net present value aspects of nuclear energy vs renewables because the issue is driven by social and moral values as much as dollars and cents. 1 dollar a year with 10 units of happiness is worth more than 1 dollar a year with fears and stress from nuclear waste.
Only fools rush in……therefore enter – Chris O’Neill.
How apt.
@Chris O’Neill
You refer to ‘net present value’. Please provide a representative reference which contains your understanding of ‘net present value’.
“Renewables cost more than nuclear in the short-run, but not in the long run.”
I repeat, how do you know? Ernestine was saying we won’t know the full cost of nuclear for thousands of years. Though I don’t think he knows what NPV means either.
@Jarrah
I suppose you have in mind my (supplementary) answer in reply to your question on the ‘full life cycle cost’ of all energy sources’. My answer was supplementary to Fran Barlow’s in the sense that Fran left out nuclear energy.
@Ernestine Gross
I did indeed say it. Alice, and now you, are dishonestly representing what I said, despite the fact that this is a text-based medium and people can go back to @34 on P6 and see for themselves the words in context.
It ought to be astonishing that having attempted to troll wirth your demand for “quantitative” data you would debase yourselves in this way to pursue your cultural opposition not merely to nuclear power, but to an honest examination of the comparative value of various energy options. Sadly, it’s not.
Push hard enough, and as often as not, culture trumps reason. You want renewables to be the answer so badly that you will smear any person and tell any lie — even those that can be exposed as plain lies by skipping back a page.
You “two” may indeed be two but “both” of you are simply too emotionally invested in this matter to post sense
Again here you “two” did something similar last time there was an extended exchange and this is clearly your MO. You probably feel very upright carrying on like this, but to anyone with a modicum of detachment from the angst about this issue, you radically subvert your standing and the force of the claims you make.
This is easy, provided you accept the reality of renewables costs as based on Mobbs’ book and jakerman’s reference posted earlier.
But over time it is even clearer. According to fig 3.2, pg 26 of “Cost development – An analysis based on experience curves” – development costs for nuclear (in France) increase as installed capacity increases, but the development costs of renewables decrease. See,
Energy costs by time
Also with nuclear, the first geological depositories, will be cheaper than subsequent depositories, but the waste dumps for renewables will have relatively constant costs.
If you have read the German paper referenced earlier, then there is a increased risk of cancer and if you Google “nuclear leaks” you will see that extra costs are incurred through nuclear plants that are not incurred with renewables.
IN the short-run the future disease rates and cost increases do not factor-in. However they do on a long-run basis.
So the cost comparison is radically different on a short=term basis compared to a long-run basis.
@jakerman
You are clearly misusing the legal term prima facie here. A prima facie case is one where, if the evidence were accepted a person could safely be found guilty of a crime. What we have here is clearly not a prima facie case. Sticking with legal metalanguage, it’s a circumstantial case — i.e. one requiring closer investigation to establish a prima facie case or to conclude that no such case could be established.
The fact of the matter is that at the moment, in Germany, if nuclear plants close then coal plants will take up the lost load or Germany will import power from somewhere else on the grid including nuclear or coal. Presumably, there will be children and pregnant women near them. So we really do have to work out whether this study or mone capable of being undertaken with greater rigour telles us enything useful about the epidemiological footprint of nuclear power or of all the most probable alternatives.
oops, it must be getting late
So we really do have to work out whether this study or
mone capable of being undertaken with greater rigour telles useanything useful about the epidemiological footprint of nuclear power or of all the most probable alternatives.“So the cost comparison is radically different on a short=term basis compared to a long-run basis.”
No doubt. But the claim I’m questioning is the comparative one between renewables and nuclear, not between timescales.
An interesting feature I’ve noticed in this argument is the oscillation (not necessarily on your part, but in evidence on this thread and previous ones) between the general and the specific, as best suits the anti-nuclear position. I see broad-brush attacks using emotive phrasing, and when pressed it sometimes resolves to specifics like the temperature of rivers, but when further pressed to compare to alternatives it transforms back into generalisms like “the threat of nuclear to mankind”.
There’s also often a strong discordance in anti-nuclear approaches. People sometimes bring up a future shortage of uranium, for example, but never consider a shortage of silicon. Hazmat leakage is a terror, but the more diffuse (and arguably higher by an order of magnitude) costs of renewables are acceptable.
A challenge for anti-nuclear people reading this – what do you think the death toll per megawatt for each major energy source is? You might be surprised.
Fran,
“in Germany, if nuclear plants close then coal plants will take up the lost load”
Unlike pretty well everyone else Germany has a comprehensive plan aimed at eliminating nuclear energy and coal. It is not an “if” or a “what ever will they do”, they know what they will do and are working to a schedule. And that schedule is public.
This whole “we gotta have Nuclear” thing is like the situation with my daughter who wants to get a puppy. Oh she’ll feed it and take it for walks and scoop its poop and it’ll be no problem and please please please. But I know based on how she performed with the rabbit and the cat and the fish that with the puppy I end up with a 14 year hangover from her intense conviction that a puppy is the best thing ever. Same thing with Nuclear Energy. Sure it’ll light the lights for a while, but we end up with a 10,000 year hangover looking after the leftovers and living around the mess that is left. Someone has to be parental here to step in and say NO, not with this one. Based on how mankind handled all of the previous industries with a contamination handling responsibility, this one is just too big to rollover on and say “oh well ok then as long as you promise to do all of the things that you said you would do…”.
Jarrah,
“a shortage of silicon”??
Silicon is sand, there will be no shortage of it. There can only be a momentary shortage of processed silicon where demand outstrips supply. And perhaps you might be a little more specific on which “costs of renewables” you have in mind.
@Fran Barlow
says “And you are claiming that I use spin?”
repeatedly