On 11/3/05, Ramola Yardi wrote:

 I've just enrolled in a part-time research Masters looking at "technical and policy options for stewardship of Australia's uranium resources for a sustainable future". I'm hoping to contribute   dispassionate, science-based research and do not have a position on the outcome. I'm looking at the research from within a sustainable development framework, and will probably test the research against two or three 2030 scenarios:   no uranium mining in Australia, status quo with growth margin, and Australia's full participation in the nuclear fuel cycle.

 My starting point has been reading the 72 submissions to the Standing Committee on Industry and Resources Inquiry into The Strategic Importance of Australia's Uranium (link: http://www.aph.gov.au/house/committee/isr/uranium/subs.htm )

 From these submissions, what strikes me is the use of science to support different ideologies and/or definitions of acceptable risk.   What also strikes me is the common language around "stewardship" and  "responsibility", though the technical and policy options around this vary significantly.

 So two questions to the group:

  1. I'm reluctant to believe anything I read. How do I discover the truth?

  2. Any information, contacts, links to help with the research?

David Maddern replied:

The answer on 1. is that truth always depends on qualifiers, or  background conditions.

For instance:

 The truth for Jack is that cheaper petrol will help him maintain his lifestyle, the truth for the maintenance of the environment is that cheaper petrol means more use which is bad the truth for an environmental activist is that cheaper petrol will delay the development of new cleaner technology

  I think you will find truth to be about as plastic as common sense. To Jack and the Environmental Activist common sense is markedly different.

 So stay reluctant to believe what you read and stay mindful that people write things from their point of view, or the point of view of their employer. If I was a student in the area I would see the right (as opposed to The Right) as a conservative and clean future, with an absolute brief against increasing the ambient background. But that's me.

 Balance to me is also a bit wobbly, as society led by Government has rather lurched to the right, and balance between far right and middle left is a bit skewed. My own view has a large environmental component.

 As for 2 there is an AINSTO walla (no disrespect meant :))on this list.

 Garry Dalrymple added:

Or perhaps an essential starting point would be to develop a Jesuitical sense towards the topic so as to be able to determine the difference between Nuclear 'Theology' (or demonology) and Nuclear Technology.

 There are sides to every issue, in matters Nuclear the conclusions drawn by different sides from common data are just more divergent than for less faith based issues.

 You might also care to contrast religion denominated cohorts for their opinions on the Nuclear Issue / Future i.e. what do Japanese, Hindu, Moslem and Hebrew folk think of Atomic power, I suspect their opinions differ greatly from 'Post-Christian' Europe and Born Again America.

 And, as an afterthought, you could sieve through Science Fiction looking for outbreaks of philosophizing about things that read like Atomic power, starting with Jules Verne (power source of Nemo's submarine) and HG Wells ('Dirty Bomb' like dusting of Cities) through to Tilley's 'The Amtrak Wars' and beyond.

Kevin Phyland responded:

Peter Macinnis answered:

Two partial reactions:

A.  In what discipline is the Master's?  That would influence our answers -- is this an M Sc, or perhaps an MA in communications?

B.  As to truth, that is the real Philosopher's Stone.  If we had a reliable gauge of Truth, we would not have to bother with research -- or with the IDiots either!  As David Maddern has just noted, truth is in the eye of the beholder (or the stakeholder).

Adam Smith pointed out that slavery was inefficient, yet the sugar growers wanted a work force which would have to do what it was told, and
when they were not using slaves, used "indentured labourers" to carry out the manual work that was needed in sugar harvesting and treatment. To me, it is a self-evident truth that manual sugar harvesting will soon become feasible once again in Australia.  To others, that is mere hyperbole, because they are vultures who see it as their role to descend, like so many vultures, on the carcases of Australian workers.

The thought that truth would be touted as relevant in policy planning would strike many as a pre-eminently risible notion.  Unless truth is defined as that slanted set of data, favourable to the most powerful interested party, it is unlikely to be a decisive factor -- ask anybody who has ever been involved in policy formulation.

Romola Yardi replied:

Steve Van Zed posted:

The 'Nuclear Solution' is rearing it's ugly head again. I agree that climate change is really very serious and in my opinion  out of  control. But to make a sufficient dent in the CO2 problem thousands of nuclear reactors would have to be built (shudder!). But: From the moment the decision is taken to build one, it takes 6 to 10 years before production of electricity can begin.

All that time it is a net producer of CO2:
.
1: A lot of running and flying around, but not extremely serious
2: Steel and concrete produce enormous amounts during production  and so does trucking the stuff around, not to mention every other    item that has to be fabricated and trucked
3: Uranium has to be dug up (mined) with big machines, purified and  transported, all producing CO2 in a big way
4: Decommissioning will certainly produce CO2 again  Even during the running it will produce CO2, like every human activity

Last, but not least: It produces only electricity, imagine running trucks or even airplanes on electricity!! Of course you could use it to make other fuels, but every conversion comes with big energy losses.

There are some other "minor" problems as: Not enough uranium in the whole world for all those reactors and the nuclear waste problem
(the solution of it being 'just round the corner', 60 years in the making and still not solved!)

I'm sure I have forgotten a few more arguments against, may be a few in favour, but I can not come up with any. In my eyes it is a certainty that by the time 10-15 years hence, we will have produced so much more CO2 by building those reactors, that it will not matter anymore


Angus commented:


I have heard this objection to nuclear bought up a lot recently, but I am skeptical about its accuracy. Like the concept of "running out of oil" - the statement depends on current known reserves, which for uranium, I suspect, are poorly known in comparison.
Can anyone elucidate on this?

Anthony Morton replied:

Then I assume, Steve, you have another much better solution for production of energy, especially for transport fuels.  I would like to hear some details of it.

Well, there's all the renewable sources that are struggling to be developed because funding for the research has been strangled for 10 years while the big dollars get funnelled into the coal industry.  'Hot dry rocks' geothermal energy has made a start, at least.  There are continuing efforts to reduce the life cycle cost of photovoltaics.  One day we might see a scaled-down trial version of the Sunraysia solar thermal tower.

Wind technology is viable now and could supply about 20-30 per cent of our electricity at a cost comparable to that of building nuclear reactors.  If we get a handle on the variability issues with wind, it's conceivable we could get a higher percentage.

Demand management probably also figures in it - it would need to - so some details of projections into the future and what they mean at the household level would be nice, and how it will be necessary to go about promoting demand management, since at the energy level, there has not been a great success so far.

Demand management is exceedingly important, but you have to ask *why* it hasn't been successful.  In the very early 1990s, the SECV in Victoria was saving the equivalent of about 1 per cent of consumption per year through its demand management programme.  The programme was axed when the SECV was privatised and since then the market logic has been all about how to get people to use more electricity, not less.  Again, governments have made policy decisions that effectively ensure we go backwards.

There has been a systematic attempt at this very exercise  by the British sustainable development commission, chaired by Jonathan Porritt.  What it says is that unless you do everything possible to conserve, and install all energy production systems possible, then the place is stuffed.  It falls short of saying that wide-spread nuclear power generation is inevitable, instead it says it has to be part of the mix.

The British SDC is a quango, and we all know how they work - there's a tacit understanding that they 'balance' the interests of all their 'stakeholders', which in the UK includes a large and powerful nuclear lobby.  In the UK context, saying you want a complete phase-out of nuclear energy puts you at the extreme hippy end of the spectrum, because you're mounting a challenge to an established industry.  We have the luxury in Australia of not having an established nuclear industry (yet) which means that even official bodies can pretty much say what they like on the question.

Porritt and his commission are not alone.  James Lovelock, an interesting man to be apparently championing nuclear energy, has published what he says is an open and shut case for nuclear energy in The Revenge of Gaia (ISBN0713999268) - it does not help that Dymocks has this in the geography section along with books on landform, but I digress.

Lovelock is of course an ecologist, so his opinions on energy production shouldn't carry more weight than those of any other ordinary citizen.  There are plenty of other experts with detailed knowledge of alternative energy technologies that take the opposite view.  In fact, in the Science Show interview Jon Porritt seems to be closer to Lovelock's
opponents than to his supporters in the nuclear industry.

Toby Fiander commented:

Tony said:

Wind technology is viable now and could supply about 20-30 per cent of our electricity at a cost comparable to that of building nuclear reactors.  If we get a handle on the variability issues with wind, it's conceivable we could get a higher percentage.

So the next increment of base load electricity in NSW about which a decision made within about 5years should be for windmills presumably at some coastal location?  I am not against them, but there will be some explaining to do when there insufficient electricity because there is no wind.

We could, of course, pump and store water to meet peak demand, but that will require that two storages be built, and since it is almost impossible to build a farm dam any more, let alone a storage of any size, that seems out of the question.  If the Basslink project ever gets up, perhaps we could pump and store in Tasmania, although the whole of the Tasmanian grid seems rather small compared to the NSW problem.

Hot dry rocks?  Great idea... the last estimate of the scaled up version that might eventuate at Innamincka was 300MW, which is not really a flea bite, but still small.  May be it will rise... but it needs to happen soon. The investigation of the Hunter Valley resource is still stopped as far as I can tell.  I notice Queensland material on the principle, but no actual site mentioned.

Demand management is a great idea and it is being addressed at about as rapid a rate as politics will allow using the BASIX certificate system to induce investment in new developments in the major load centres.  Putting PV cells on the roof has some problems, but at least it is a known technology - protecting from hail is another matter, and it is still costly.

As far as demand management is concerned, the idea of differential tariffs is good, but it is going to take all of the five years to have even a minor effect.  The fact that it is impossible to get an electric hotwater system to comply with the BASIX requirements is probably a step in the right direction.  The next problem is to tackle airconditioning, but I think, sitting in mine, that the demand will not be easily shifted.

Perhaps demand management will extend the sufficiency of the generating plant by a few years.

I think all these things are required, and they are happening to some extent, but the choice in the next five years in NSW will probably ultimately come down to something like what fuel to use in a large generating plant:  fossil fuel or nuclear energy.  We could of course put up with rolling blackouts, but probably only for one term of the Government who opted for that option.  If the ALP takes the decision, the conservatives will do what I heard on the radio this morning in relation to the Cross-City Tunnel, forget any strategy of any kind, other than the one to get re-elected.  No doubt the reverse would be true in the Conservative parties are in government at the time, as Bob Carr proved with the toll on the M4.

As far as I can see none of this addresses the transport fuel problem. Sweden has taken the policy decision to free itself from oil imports within the next few decades.  It proposes to do this with a range of policies, but principally by growing its transport fuels or converting from hydro and nuclear energy.  This would be possible in Australia too, I think.  My back-of-envelope calculations indicate that there could be enough oil seed crops and sugar cane grown to do it, if we dammed the larger northern rivers of Australia and diverted the water to somewhere useful... which is about as likely as getting a nuclear power station up for pumping the water.

I think your assessment of the value of Lovelock's view is rather unkind.  I hesitate to suggest that it is because you don't agree with him.

and:

There was one more thing to mention... I was recently involved in a project to install a small private power wind generation scheme outside a Certain Place in the State's north.  The DA is still stalled in Council some three years later.

So the next increment of base load electricity in NSW about which a decision made within about 5years should be for windmills presumably at some coastal location?  I am not against them, but there will be some explaining to do when there insufficient electricity because there is no wind.

Hot dry rocks?  Great idea... the last estimate of the scaled up version that might eventuate at Innamincka was 300MW, which is not really a flea bite, but still small.  May be it will rise... but it needs to happen soon.

The next problem is to tackle airconditioning, but I think, sitting in mine, that the demand will not be easily shifted.

I think your assessment of the value of Lovelock's view is rather unkind.  I hesitate to suggest that it is because you don't agree with him.

Gerald Cairnes commented:

I don't think the hot rocks will get up in Qld the government hasn't the guts to fund technology even when it is going to save them huge amounts and pay for itself in other ways. Always happy to subsidise foreign imports instead. We lose the excellent Molectra System for recycling tyres to NSW, I hope he has the legals stitched up very tightly or they'll do him in too. In my experience government innovation departments exist to feed innovations into the hands of the JV apitalists who insist on complete control and an early exit for the innovator but nice party donations. Been there done all that.

I agree with you on wind but still believe that tidal and hot rocks is the way to go. Having said that we have the ever present problem of transporting the power with the inevitable costs and losses.

What I had always hoped for was a quantum leap in the development of the Peltier effect electronics so that low heat can be turned into useful quantities of electricity but that hasn't happened and it still suffers all the downside of electronic manufacture etc. For those who do not know what the Peltier Effect is, it is simply a silicon chip that will reversibly heat or convert heat to electricity or cool. The chips are used in the portable car coolers for example. In the early day they were used to power microwave transmitters by using gas to heat one side of the chips. Don't know what they use know - probably solar.

and to Romola:

Thanks for the reference. All useful information but truly, some brief abstracts would be a great help.


Toby Fiander replied:

It is possible to site wind turbines so that bird-strike is less common. Besides, unless the species is rare and this is its favourite migratory path, the impact on bird numbers is likely to be miniscule.  There are also design strategies to make the blades more visible to birds.

My experience with the objectors is that they do not "get it".  In the case of the private scheme still pending in the north of NSW, the neighbours objected principally due to noise and the interference with their view.

The noise is non-issue as it will add less than 5dB at their houses and most of that is a kind of gentle swish (rather than, say, a jackhammer)... and this is in a rural environment where the night time 90%ile noise values vary considerably, but are never less than 35dB.  It is not like the main road or even the road to the local tip - is going to go past the front door.

As to the view... the principal view is over farmland to towards an iconic country town - to see the wind turbine one has to look downwards on to the farm land immediately below.  What would you expect to see on farmland if not a windmill? [rhetorical]

There is a good series of articles from the Danish Wind Industry Association had an interesting course on line, which I cannot seem to find in the 30second available this morning.  I will post the reference later, if I can find it.  I am off to the salt mine....


and to Anthony:

I think we might be talking at cross-purposes here.  Let me try and explain...

The real problem with air conditioning is not its overall energy consumption, but rather that it pushes up peak demand on hot summer days when supply is constrained.  Even in Australia, we expend stacks more energy heating our homes in winter than we do cooling them in summer.

Peak demand in NSW is in summer due to air-conditioning.  Overall energy consumption might have some relevance for greenhouse gas production but because there is very little scope for storing electricity, system planning requires that there be enough generating capacity available at the time the demand requires it.

Of course, we should still be making more of an effort to build houses that don't have to be artificially heated and cooled - or at least to avoid those trendy neo-Georgian design features that ensure the indoor temperature will be perpetually out of control.

Not only should we be doing this, but we are in NSW.  It is not possible to get the conventional McMansion to pass the BASIX energy requirements any more, without some extra-ordinary features to compensate for the stupid concept.  Most of the designs now available have suddenly sprouted verandahs, a few small windows high up under eaves (yes, eaves - remember them?) on one wall or indeed no windows on one wall, one or two have double glazing and so on.  The hotwater systems are all gas or better.  There is air-conditioning, but on a smaller scale than before and they all have insulation probably R3.5 or better in the roof and R2.5 or better in the walls.  There has to be cross-ventilation, which is tricky if you opted for little windows to keep the radiation component under control, the lights and appliances have to have high efficiency and be built into the house and so on.  That is just for energy.  There are a range of other measures required for water.  The system will have higher targets as time goes on, and it will eventually not be possible to build something like a Georgian- style McMansion.  It is hoped that people will start to look at the design of houses in energy terms and get an energy audit done, like a pest inspection, as part of the routine prior to purchase.

You always start small - the first brown coal generator in Victoria was just a few MW in the 1920s.

That was when the demand was that size, too.  The hot dry rocks scheme is a good idea, and it may be one whose time has come, but it will need to happen soon to be useful for meeting the next increment of capacity in NSW, the gas-fired generators proposed as stop-gap measures are great, because they have good response times and they are reliable, but they are also relatively small and something will need to happen on a larger scale soon.

The system is already built to tolerate the instantaneous loss of a 400MW thermal generator.  The loss of an equivalent amount of wind power due to wind lull generally takes an hour or two, based on observations in countries with a lot of wind generation.

If that is running reserve, it is supposed to be the size of the largest single generating unit in the system, which is 640MW in NSW.... in case it is suddenly unavailable.  But the capacity of a wind system depends on the wind, which is more often than anyone would like absent.  That makes wind turbines less reliable than competing systems, which means there has to be another way of generating electricity as well as a wind turbine... once again, OK for meeting a greenhouse target but not for meeting commitments to reliable electricity.

I have not heard the idea that one might impinge on running reserve because wind turbines had no wind.  I think there would be a small percentage of load that could be met by such a system - it would be better to provide a pump-and-store back-up, perhaps, if you can ever get another dam approved... I suppose if you can get a wind turbine approved you can get a dam approved - I digress.

All I said was that Lovelock is outside his area of expertise when he talks about energy policy.  It's as if Ian Thorpe were to start spruiking for wind farms.

I think perhaps the book needs a careful read before proceeding further with this argument.



Toby Fiander retorted:

May be, but it seems unlikely.  Someone said recently, something like this.

There are two alternatives.  One is that all the appliances in your house that you have bought at great expense are turned off and remain off, or there is nuclear energy production in your backyard.  But which politician is going to tell you that?

The first part of any serious demand management scheme is give the consumer a price signal that the commodity is scarce.  Then you tell them how to minimise their demand for it.

But, there are a couple of problems using this strategy with electricity:
*  the infrastructure is aimed at making it as cheap as possible,
*  the real costs of electricity generation are in carbon emissions, and there is currently no mechanism for including that in the cost to the consumer,
*  the mechanism of changing the charging scheme that was available to water (ie.  making charges all volumetric, and getting the consequent reduction in consumption) is not available with electricity - it is already charged per unit delivered.

One of the few advantages of carbon sequestration is that there will be an identifiable cost of carbon emission, which can then be charged to the consumer.

So the alternative strategy is to provide increased efficiency.  Since heating and cooling and heating of water are the big ticket items, most efforts seem to concentrate on these.

There is something slowly happening with new house designs, and eventually with new industrial designs and house extensions, but it is slow and not likely to dent demand or increase efficiency much for a decade or two.  The BASIX approach will start to happen nationally soon, according to the lecturer at my NatHERS house energy rating course, but other States are waiting to see if NSW falls over first, he thought.  I am waiting to see - at least there is SOMETHING happening, even if it is slow.  I notice Queensland has announced new initiatives in water and energy efficiency this week.


Anthony Morton posted:

Peak demand in NSW is in summer due to air-conditioning.  Overall energy consumption might have some relevance for greenhouse gas production but because there is very little scope for storing electricity, system planning requires that there be enough generating capacity available at the time the demand requires it.

That's right.  And I've got no problem with running a few gas plants for a few hot days in summer in order to provide this peaking capacity, until a cheap and non-variable renewable source becomes available sometime in the next half-century.  Point being, the root cause of our high greenhouse emissions is big coal generators that run every day of the year, not gas generators that run at peak periods only.

If that is running reserve, it is supposed to be the size of the largest single generating unit in the system, which is 640MW in NSW.... in case it is suddenly unavailable.  But the capacity of a wind system depends on the wind, which is more often than anyone would like absent.

Power systems generally have both running reserve and standby reserve, with availability of the latter ranging from 15 minutes to a few hours.  Both can be used to cover a temporary shortfall between actual and forecast output of wind turbines.

The Danes can now predict wind farm output four hours ahead with around 15-20% standard error, and one hour ahead with 5% error.  This of course greatly reduces the extent to which you have to rely on short-term reserves to back up wind generation.  But in any case the short-term reserve is already built in to our existing power systems and can be used to cover any unforeseen shortfall in generation, whether from wind or otherwise.

I have not heard the idea that one might impinge on running reserve because wind turbines had no wind.

No - now and then you'll have a low-wind day and you'll need to fire up a gas generator, which is still better than having no wind generation and relying on the gas plant all the time.  The running reserve is there in case the wind drops suddenly and you're not prepared for it.

  I think there would be a small percentage of load that could be met by such a system - it would be better to provide a pump-and-store back-up, perhaps, if you can ever get another dam approved... I suppose if you can get a wind turbine approved you can get a dam approved - I digress.

There are plenty of dams around already that lack pumped storage and could have pumps installed.  There's a cost of course, just as there is with anything.


Anthony Morton replied to Romola:

But there's no reason to expect our uranium exports to remain at current levels - there's a rising trend brought about by the dropoff in the 'secondary supply' you mentioned.

The IAEA statement Toby pointed to estimates that current world reserves are equivalent to 65 years of current demand, and they claim this could be boosted to 300 years when taking into account uranium we haven't discovered yet - though like Toby I'm skeptical.  It's hard to see how you can put a figure on resources you haven't actually found.  Maybe it's an estimate based on how much of the Earth's surface has been explored for uranium, but I wouldn't put too much faith in such an estimate given how localised the resource tends to be.

The real killer is that the duration of reserves is based on current consumption levels - that is, on the assumption of no change in either global electricity demand or uranium's share of the generation mix.  Currently, nuclear power supplies one-sixth of the world's electricity - if that were to increase to one-half, with no increase in overall electricity consumption, then current world reserves will last only a little over 20 years and even the IAEA's optimistic estimate gives us only a century of nuclear power.

Of course, you can build fast breeder reactors that use the fuel vastly more efficiently, but fast breeders aren't yet a bankable technology - the Superphénix in France proved that.  I'd sooner invest research funds in the more promising renewables.

Of course, you can build fast breeder reactors that use the fuel vastly more efficiently, but fast breeders aren't yet a bankable technology - the Superphénix in France proved that.  I'd sooner invest research funds in the more promising renewables.

Angus wrote:

Thanks for the links ­ 65 years plus a possible 300 sounds reasonable although scaling up the number of nuclear plants would test both limits. Disarmanent would allow this resource to be extended if short term demand got too high.  I agree with Tony that the deposits are isolated, although recent exploration for other resources has shown 'old' deposits to contain significant 'new' ore ­ e.g. Bendigo and Broken Hill. I anticipate learningthe finer details of Uranium ores in the near future, however I currently understand that they are sub­economic unless found with something else, e.g. Cu. Apparently Olympic Dam had to remove trace U from the Cu process to make the Cu tradable, thus U became a commodity also. On its own, the U is too finely disseminated to be viable, even though present in large quantities.

and:

Can you show some documentation critical of the principle of fast  breeder reactors?  Nothing I have read about it says that the  principle of a fast-breeder reactor was the reason for the shut down  of the French reactor, and I notice you are saying they are not  bankable, which seems like carefully chosen wording.

All I mean is the technology isn't at a stage where it can be developed  on a commercial or semi-commercial basis, as can fossil-fuel plants or  wind farms.  It's a good example of straightforward physics confounded  by difficult engineering.

At least some of the problems with Superphénix stemmed from the liquid  sodium coolant being used.  Sodium and lithium are the preferred  coolants in fast breeder reactors.

Superphénix was the successor to Phénix, a smaller demonstration plant  from the 1970s.  This was subject to a number of emergency shutdowns  around 1990 when the core reactivity underwent a series of sudden  unexplained drops.  After a mid-90s renovation it's been used  essentially as a research reactor.

<http://www.francenuc.org/en_sites/rhone_crey_e.htm>
<http://www.francenuc.org/en_sites/langue_cea_e.htm>
<http://www.wise-paris.org/index.html?/english/ournewsletter/1/ page6.html&/english/frame/menu.html&/english/frame/band.html>

Also, I am not sure if it is fair to say that because uranium has not  been found it won't be.  There has been a lot of uranium compared to  demand and the price has been low - uranium has been out of fashion.

That's true, and doubtless more uranium will be found as the price goes  up.  I'm just dubious about IAEA's postulation of a specific amount.   But even the amount they postulate doesn't really give us a sustainable  energy source.


Steve van Zed commented:

I'll try to answer this point by point

Toby Fiander wrote:

Steve said:

I'm sure I have forgotten a few more arguments against, may be a few
in favour, but I can not come up with any.

Then I assume, Steve, you have another much better solution for production of energy, especially for transport fuels.  I would like to hear some details of it.

All the alternative energy solutions have one flaw in it: They all produce electricity, in itself a good thing, but hardly suitable to, say, fly a plane or drive a truck. I know there have been flywheel buses, but that does not seem to be a solution for heavy haulage by trucks. I know the Germans in WWII produced synthetic fuel for their tanks etc. Not being an expert I wonder how they did it and how (un)economical this process would be nowadays. I agree, transport fuels are the bottle neck, but nuclear reactors are useless, unless you convert their energy and every conversion causes losses  Demand management probably also figures in it

- it would need to - so some details of projections into the future and what they mean at the household level would be nice, and how it will be necessary to go about promoting demand management, since at the energy level, there has not been a great success so far.

Also, it might be nice to have some calculations to justify the assertions you have made about the carbon consequences of installing nuclear energy.

I don't have the technical knowledge to exactly calculate how much CO2 is produced during the installation, but no one can deny that, until the construction of the facility is finished, the whole thing is an energy 'sink' and a net producer of CO2. More knowledgeable heads can calculate when all the embedded energy (and CO2) is surpassed by the net production once the plant starts producing, but the de-commissioning of the plant should not be forgotten. Nor should the problem  and costs of nuclear waste. If we mortgage our children's and grand children's future by saddling them up with an intractable waste problem, we have done them a great disservice and will not be smiled upon by future generations. Sentimental? I have 8 grand children, I wish them a happy future

There has been a systematic attempt at this very exercise  by the British sustainable development commission, chaired by Jonathan Porritt.  What it says is that unless you do everything possible to conserve, and install all energy production systems possible, then the place is stuffed.  It falls short of saying that wide-spread nuclear power generation is inevitable, instead it says it has to be part of the mix.  What is more, Porritt is counting on putting energy generation systems into every factory and set of units, something we have some (so far more or less disastrous) experience with in Sydney in connection with the BASIX certification system.

I wholeheartedly agree with this. Any 'prinzipien reiter' who declares that the only - their - solution is the only one, should be shoved. We need to apply every avenue, every possibility, even (shudder) some nuclear, to avert the coming catastrophe.

But one thing is lacking in the whole conversation: The demand factor "Without curbing population growth, every effort to save the planet
(human race) is doomed". Cousteau The human race is strangling the planet in plague proportions. If we do not limit ourselves, the forces of nature will do it for us and not in a gentle way


Ivan Sayer wrote:

 This is a dilemma ?  Maybe we just have to learn to live with less energy consumption.

May be, but it seems unlikely.  Someone said recently, something like this.  There are two alternatives.  One is that all the appliances in your house that you have bought
at great expense are turned off and remain off, or there is nuclear energy production in your backyard.  But which politician is going to tell you that?

Well, a green might - which explains why they aren't going into office any time soon.  (My position on the greens is cautious support - I think they've got some of the right questions, but I don't *know* enough to judge their answers - does anyone ?).   I just look at all the things on which our kind of living - which is not enjoyed world-wide - is hopelessly dependent and recall that most of them were unknown in my great
grandfather's time.  Nobody wants to go back there - but a combination of political stupidity and ecological pressure might force us even further than that.

I know fanny adams about the technical side of the debate, but even if we had that down pat we would still have to face the political side which is very unpretty.  (Consider the fact that one of the basic reasons for the gulf wars is the ingrained habit of all those people who aren't
interested in cars. They just see them as a means of getting from point A to point B. But they find that trip necessary at least five times a week.)

Either we will 'manage demand' or the global ecosystem will do it for us.  The latter possibility seems not in the least unlikely.  (And, global demand mangement means managing the people who want what we have as well as those who have it.)

The first part of any serious demand management scheme is
give the consumer a price signal that the commodity is scarce.  Then you tell them how to minimise their demand for it.  But, there are a couple of problems using this strategy with electricity:
*  the infrastructure is aimed at making it as cheap as possible,
*  the real costs of electricity generation are in carbon emissions, and there is currently no mechanism for including that in the cost to the consumer,
*  the mechanism of changing the charging scheme that was available to water (ie. making charges all volumetric, and getting the consequent reduction in consumption) is not available with electricity - it is already charged per unit
delivered.

So, we have invested heavily in electricity without knowing enough about the real cost ?  Does anybody have the faintest idea what kind of process we have to go through to avoid making such destructive errors in the future.  Effectively, current consumers are going to be paying for the mistakes of past investors, and for some time to come.  Does that fact ever figure in the market fundamentalist's discourse ?  And
what pray guarantees that future investors will make no mistakes. In the end the ultimate dispenser of 'price signals' is the environment - and if we don't read them right a thing called natural selection will take over won't it ?

One of the few advantages of carbon sequestration is that
there will be an identifiable cost of carbon emission, which
can then be charged to the consumer.
So the alternative strategy is to provide increased efficiency.

Or to claim you can provide increased efficiency - wasn't that one of the claims made by those who urged us to invest in current means of heating and cooling in the first place ? Some of them must have known that their pricing was pretty arbitrary.

I suppose what I really want in this argument is two separate things:  The technical information and arguments about the most sensible policy - and then political arguments about how to get that policy implemented.  The two strands have to be joined. At the moment, I only have the vaguest ideas about both, and not much idea of how to put them together.  One absolutely necessary element of the technical argument is
population forecast.  So far we can't agree about that. There are those who see any growth in Australia as dangerous and those who think we can't really survive unless we double the current population.

Briefly, we have no right to assume that the deceptions, and self-deceptions that got us to our present predicament are going to just vanish and leave us with a technically neater and more sustainable society.  I wouldn't mind betting a small sum that Bobby Hawke got behind the nuclear argument because somebody offered him a piece of the action.  And, even if I'm wrong there, there are still plenty of liars and self-deceivers around.  Just remember that he was the guy who was going to ensure that no Australian child would be born in poverty.  a)He was well wide of the mark there and b) He couldn't give a continental about that.


Gerald Cairns replied:

I think the present surge in the nuclear sales effort is related to the USA India deals and the fears that Australia may miss out if it does not go along with the Americans. It is a bit like the AWB scandal you don't give commissions you don't get the sales. I know little enough of the uranium reserves and I think others who have researched this will probably answer this more competently.

I have heard this objection to nuclear bought up a lot recently, but I am skeptical about its accuracy. Like the concept of "running out of oil" - the statement depends on current known reserves, which for uranium, I suspect, are poorly known in comparison.  Can anyone elucidate on this?

Here is my contribution, if breeder reactors are used, they will produce plutonium as a large proportion of their nuclear waste, therefore providing a mechanism for both minimising the amount of dangerous waste produced and providing a positive feedback loop for fuelling the reactor into the future. This would provide a means for efficient use of raw materials.

Ray Stephens commented:

There is a state of delusion extant in all who believe that nuclear energy can adequately substitute for the energy output of fossil carbon.

This could occur only by means of substantial reduction in current energy usage, which probably implies higher fees for less wattage.

And yellow cake uranium oxide won't do a thing to maintain the petrochemical supply required by plastics, pharmaceutical and horticultural industries.

> There is a state of delusion extent in all who believe that nuclear
> energy can adequately substitute for the energy output of fossil carbon.

> This could occur only by means of substantial reduction in current
> energy usage, which probably implies higher fees for less wattage.

> And yellow cake uranium oxide won't do a thing to maintain the
> petrochemical supply required by plastics, pharmaceutical and
> horticultural industries.

Ray Stephens replied:

The last report upon the comparative energy output of nuclear energy against burning coal was about 20:1.  That is, 20 average nuclear power plants equals one coal or gas driven turbine.

All I can say is, I wish you lots of luck.
I plan to be dead before it matters.

In short, not my problem.

and:

Then we will be forced to use "natural" polymers instead.

Back to cellulose then Gerald?
At least sugar is better as that than cellulite.  :)


On 19/4/2006, Jim Edwards posted:

 Recently there was some comment on the article in The Australian's Higher Education Supplement by Helen Caldicott, "Nuclear power is a problem, not a solution", which was in response to an earlier one by Lesley Kemeny in the same publication favouring nuclear power.

The subject came up again on Sunday in the ABC's "In The National Interest":

Nuclear power and climate change
Sunday 17 April  2005

Topic Two competing views about whether we can significanlty reduce
greenhouses gas emissions by replacing coal with uranium.

Guests on this program: Dr Alan Roberts Physicist and Honourary Research
Associate in the Graduate School of Environmental Science at Monash
University Terry Krieg Former senior secondary school teacher and nuclear
power enthusiast

Publications: The phantom solution: climate change and nuclear power
Author: Alan Roberts Publisher: Arena Journal
(http://www.arena.org.au/index.html)

Nobody referred to Helen Caldicott's article but Terry Lane picked up on Terry Krieg's assertion that disposal of nuclear waste in the US was not a problem because they had decided on a site under Yucca Mountain.  Apparently Krieg had not heard that this site was no longer a goer, but seemed to think it did not matter.  I did not hear what subject Krieg used to teach but I doubt if it was physics; his arguments for having nuclear power stations were on the level of, "I have walked over the top of one" and "people living in the vicinity of power stations do not seem worried about them".

Krieg disagreed with Roberts' claim that there was not enough uranium to permit the replacement of all fossil fuel powered generators, saying that that problem could be solved by building more breeder reactors, and anyway, coal fired power stations emit enough uranium as waste to power a nuclear reactor.  Caldicott's argument that "the mining and milling of uranium, the construction of the nuclear reactor and cooling towers, robotic decommissioning of the intensely radioactive reactor at the end of its 20 to 40-year operating lifetime, and transportation and long-term storage of massive quantities of radioactive waste" would utilise enormous quantities of fossil fuel, was not considered by either speaker.  However, Roberts did point out that electricity generation by fossil fuel only contributed about 20% of the greenhouse gases and, while that was not an inconsiderable amount, the remaining 80% could not be solved by building nuclear reactors.

Krieg was right on one thing, the problem is not a scientific one but a political one.  He, of course, thinks that all the science has been done and the politicians should get out of the way and let the big corporations go ahead and build their reactors everywhere.  With Dubya in the White House again they might just do that, but the way I see it, the corporations, backed by their financially dependent pollies, intend to ignore the science and make lots of money building reactors at taxpayers expense knowing that these same taxpayers or their descendants will have to pick up the tab to dispose of the waste and the used up reactors.  They know, but don't care, that nuclear power is not a solution to global warming, and could exacerbate it by reducing the global dimming resulting from SO2 emitted by fossil fueled power stations.

There is method in their madness, however, in that by claiming that nuclear power offers a clean, green environment they divert attention away from their real motive for building more fast breeder reactors, which is to maintain supplies of plutonium for the military nuclear weapons programme. Anyone who doubts this should read Helen Caldicott's book, "The New Nuclear Danger - George W. Bush's Military-Industrial Complex", (Scribe Publications, Melbourne, 2002).  She might not know the chemistry of tritium but she is very well informed on the politics of nuclear power.


David Maddern wrote:

I just sent this to the National Interest, adding to the deluge they are getting

G'Day,

That talk about installing nuclear power plants, is way overboard as we ALREADY have 2 natural nuclear reactors going. ( I hope Australians can be smarter than that.)

1 the sun (fusion reactor, uncontrolled but far enough to give life-giving radiation)
2 natural uranium fission under the ground that is controlled by in situ dilution

CLEARLY the second "Hot Rocks" situation (drilling, introducing water to make steam) is far far preferable to building a dangerous monolith above ground into which water is heated to steam.

Keep up the good work, and provide sanity and grounding in relation to that bozo show "Counterpoint". Good thing they didn't call it the "Amateur hour" as that would have defamed amateurs.


Toby Fiander  answered:

Well, it's a book opinion, as you suggested. So, "wrong" probably means something different. I don't own it. I put it quietly back on the shelf, because the last book of Caldicott that I owned was not intended to be a fair debate. And in the circumstances, where there is a debate about whether global warming can be avoided or not and what that might mean, this sort of stuff is probably not very helpful.


Robin commented:

We took a walk around Warringah Mall on monday and stopped off at Dick Smith Powerhouse. In a shop the size of a large barn, chock full of electrical appliances, there was one small wall display containing solar panels and cells. When I pointed out to the kids that we could run one of their Gameboys off a solar cell, they looked at me like I had two heads.

So even for a small easy thing to do, it's going to take a big shift in attitudes to effect a change.


Kevin Phyland wrote:

This might seem like an odd question...but the mention of solar cells got me musing (always dangerous...)

• What is the life-span of a solar cell?

i.e. do they last long enough to pay back the energy debt required to manufacture them?

The whole green-energy thing has been hijacked a bit imo by the more radical green organisations. I doubt a source of energy can be truly green if it relies on conventional power usage to manufacture...unless it lasts long enough to overcome the initial non-green energy required?

Zero Sum answered:

Not that long ago they did not. Not sure about now.




John Winckle added:

I am not meaning to imply that there is a chain reaction below ground, but if the uranium underground was all together then I presume there would be a chain reaction, and at over the critical mass this would be an explosive fission chain reaction. Am I wong. Is naturally occurring uranium fissile material?

So the only difference between that and the existing situation is distance between the decaying uranium atoms, aka natural dilution. The same manipulatory function supplied by 'rods' in reactors I understand.

So no, I dont mean to imply there is a sinister reaction going down there, but fission that has over eons, heated the rock volume..

On 1/5/2006, Kevin Phyland posted:

Having Just read Revenge of Gaia its clear to me that "sustainable energy" is a great solution, if the world's population was 2 billion. Fission has enormous potential as a power source and thorium and breeders and improved extraction technologies will revive nuclear power. Its not for everyone, Indonesia probably isn't the place for nuclear power, they should stick tohot rocks.... Nuclear power is the only way out of the greenhouse dilemma.

If you look at the direct and indirect costs of conventional power, nukes look better all the time. This article is a bit of a meander, but it should demonstrate how cheap nuclear power is these days.

http://www.financialsense.com/fsu/editorials/2006/0403b.html


Gerald Cairnes noted:

Re: Indonesia being unsuitable for nuclear power I share your thought. The possibility of another Krakatoa or larger is still a real risk and if it happens under some nuclear power stations Chernobyl is going to look like a Sunday School Picnic. Actually I had been thinking along the lines that we may have to accept large numbers of Indonesian refugees in such situations.


I wonder will they be locked up too?