Surfing by the big cooling towers

[snakes]

Even allowing for any bias, the "cost" of environmental impacts for Nuclear are an order of magnitude less than coal - and this was undertaken in 1991 - so you would imagine the difference is even greater now with the prospect of global warming.

I don't want to get into the whole debate either to be honest, because there is enough information out there to support nuclear or not.

Gee that wouldn't be because your argument was completely flawed now would it?

The whole point of the post is that the idea of hazardous nuclear waste being processed in my backyard is very unsettling. And it's not just Chernobyl either, America had the same problem with three mile island too.

Again, basing your argument on things that happened a long time ago & doesn't reflect the current level of technology or the different safety standards that would be inplace.

Rather than appease the mining giants and global market demands we should be focussing on wind, solar and hydro energy.

Are you a communist?

Compared to other renewable energy sources nuclear power produces 4-5 times more carbon dioxide anyway so we should be looking at wind farms for a start which are very efficient.

Wind farms are also highly unreliable, incase you hadn't noticed

Also when you consider current estimates predict there is only enough uranium in the ground to last 50 years (think of that in terms of the time it takes to dispose of the waste generated) then usuage of nuclear power in Australia is short sighted and driven by profit, not environmental concerns.

So, whilst we are stuck in a time of needing to find new & reliable forms of energy that are cheap & easy to implement, shouldn't we use the resources that we own to produce energy, rather than sell them off to China, France, etc.

snakes

[Grooter]

Seriously do you understand the difference between communism and socialism at all???

You should really be asking, am I not a capitalist.

[munch]

....some have even said that there is only about 20 years worth of uranium left in Australia.

that reminds me of the doco outfoxed "some people have said" .... WHO DID oh that doesn't matter cause, they said it ...

anyway:
http://www.neimagazine.com/story.asp?storyCode=2031821

but kids don't believe everything you read (especially if "give a dog a bone" wrote it ) and what some ficticous person has apparently "said"

[oldman]

You had all better hope for some serious technological resolution to the problem of energy production, because nuclear isn't an answer, although it will buy time, politically, for the great new technology to be found.

Nuclear plants in Australia won't be in production for 15 to 20 years, if everything runs smoothly. IF carbon dioxide emissions are the cause of global warming, then whatever benefits that would come Australia's way by going nuclear would be a bit too late to help the situation. In any case, it is all academic unless every country reduces emissions, regardless of what Australia does.

The unfortunate reality is that selling uranium to China will actually help reduce the production of CO2 in the short term. There is an ethical dilemma, assuming you are opposed to nuclear, because China needs the power, and they are going to get it somehow. If global warming is indeed caused by carbon dioxide build-up then this is a greater threat to mankind then nuclear waste. Either way, it is a precipitous place to find yourself.

Hope for a breakthrough on nuclear fusion. Although highly unlikely, this one would answer all our needs, safely with no toxic by-products, forever.

The best hopes for Australia, in which we are uniquely suited to take advantage, are solar and geothermal. Wind is useful as an unreliable but clean back-up source but cannot take the load. It is good for 20% of energy production at the most.

Australia has oodles of hot rocks in geologically stable earth, and the science is comparatively simple, while the engineering is difficult. Australia has some of the leading solar researchers in the world, but they aren't exactly having money thrown at them.

Generally speaking we are doing what we always do, taking the easiest next available option rather than working out the long term solution. This is called western democratic politics.

Guess where that ends!

[murrum]

Renewables are important - but the problem with wind, tidal and to some extent solar is the inability to produce base load on demand.
Our current behaviours require a constant base load that can be turned on and off on demand - hydro, coal, nuclear. (apologies for repeating oldman!!)

Probably the most cost effective way to help the environment is similar to the water issue - use electricity more efficiently. There are huge opportunities to reduce our demand - through purchase choice and behavior - but it is much easier to focus on the supply side, that convince people to change their behaviour - in a liberal democracy like ours anyway.....

I like the "idea" of decentralised electricity to provide that top up to the base load - local, community owned wind and solar would provide the dual benefits of contributing to sustainable living - whilst also (hopefully) making the community more "aware" of how they use energy...Has got a whiff of hippie about it though I will admit

[Grooter]

Hope for a breakthrough on nuclear fusion. Although highly unlikely, this one would answer all our needs, safely with no toxic by-products, forever.

Yep nuclear fusion is the way to go. It's been in the news a bit lately, very interesting stuff as there is now a big global consortium including America, UK, China, South Korea (other countries too but I can't remember) to build a fusion plant in the south of France.

They reckon they have solved about 95% of all the possible problems too, pretty impressive as I'm sure one of them mentioned that it produces more heat than the core of the sun!

Generally speaking we are doing what we always do, taking the easiest next available option rather than working out the long term solution. This is called western democratic politics.

Guess where that ends!

Snakes take note, a lesson in politics!

[Hawkeye]

Compared to other renewable energy sources nuclear power produces 4-5 times more carbon dioxide anyway so we should be looking at wind farms for a start which are very efficient.

The reason windfarms have not been taken up in large scale despite their cheap production cost and outstanding green credentials is the problem they generate for load balancing.

Power transmission networks have absolutely no buffering or storage capacity. Spikes and troughs in demand have to be matched almost instantly by boosting or scaling back production. Coal-fired, hydro, and nuclear all have this ability, Wind does not.

Wind produces power when the wind blows. Not only that, it is "lumpy" and unreliable, with peaks and troughs of its own as the wind gusts and billows through the farms.

So not only do the coal/hydro/nuclear plants have to match demand, they now have to manage around the spikes and troughs in supply introduced by wind.

I don't like coal, I like nuclear less, but wind is not capable of fully replacing either and hydro has limited scope in Oz.

I'd like to see solar given more attention, especially considering we're one of the most sundrenched places on the planet. It would at least reduce the spikes on the supply side during daylight hours.

Not an easy problem to solve.

The comments above re: oil politics driving the nuclear push make a lot of sense to me.

[Hawkeye]

Load balancing: Ah, I see oldie and murrum beat me to it!

[munch]

Hope for a breakthrough on nuclear fusion. Although highly unlikely, this one would answer all our needs, safely with no toxic by-products, forever.

Yep nuclear fusion is the way to go. It's been in the news a bit lately, very interesting stuff as there is now a big global consortium including America, UK, China, South Korea (other countries too but I can't remember) to build a fusion plant in the south of France.


They reckon they have solved about 95% of all the possible problems too, pretty impressive as I'm sure one of them mentioned that it produces more heat than the core of the sun!

not heat but temperature heats a measure of energy like watts we'd turn to a crisp pretty quickly if they did that

and we can only hope ... but:

The sceptics now joke: fusion is 50 years away – it’s always 50 years away.

and

Work started on ITER in Caderache France early in 2006. For all its ambition it’s still an experiment. ITER won’t actually produce electricity – that step is at least decades away.

both from:
http://www.abc.net.au/catalyst/stories/s1625306.htm

anyway no time soon eh

Load balancing: Ah, I see oldie and murrum beat me to it!

call me simple but I'd like to see a wind farm up the snowy like use it to pump water back up the top and only use the hydro to produce electricity ...
bye bye fluctuations, eh
shite loads of wind down the snowy to .... but wait a second they are ugly fark there are some whingers out there (yes I'm being sarcastic)

[Grooter]

I often wondered if it would be feasible to situate one offshore.

Plenty of wind gets blown across the oceans (pretty consistently too) and there may be less issues with impacts to birds as well if it is out far enough and away from migratory paths....

Power could come back to land via an underground cable, we already use plenty of cables across the ocean floors now anyway.

Just a thought..

[bookster]

I often wondered if it would be feasible to situate one offshore.

Plenty of wind gets blown across the oceans (pretty consistently too) and there may be less issues with impacts to birds as well if it is out far enough and away from migratory paths....

Power could come back to land via an underground cable, we already use plenty of cables across the ocean floors now anyway.

Just a thought..

Denmark has already done so:


http://www.windpower.org/en/pictures/offshore.htm

[panaitan]

Great to see the standard of debate and knowledge of the issues in this thread - if only the media was up to that standard.

After studying this stuff for the past 3 years my evaluation of this issue goes like this:

When you weigh up the risk of global warming (we're now looking at almost certainly 3-5 degree celcius increase by 2100 according to the lastest heavyweight reports issued in the last fortnight - thats catastrophic!) compared to the risk posed by another couple of chernobyls - its just a no brainer - you would take nuclear if it was cost effective

BUT the key here is evaluating the TRUE cost that reflects all the costs borne by society. Ignoring the TRUE cost is what got us into this mess in the first place.

In the case of nuclear its the cost of mining, processing, building the plant, PLUS remediation of the mine site when you have finished, processing the nuclear waste into Synroc so that it is relatively safe, and then the biggy is decommisioning the plant after its 40-50 year useful life.

Most nuclear facilities have been given heavy government subsidies - with the UK government facing an estimated 180 billion pounds bill for decommisioning their old plants.

When you add all these costs against the cost of energy efficiency measures, natural gas generation with geosequestration, up to 20% wind, and solar hot water (solar for anything else is way too expensive) - then its really doubtful whether nuclear can compete.
:?
Then there's this issue about how much greenhouse is produced in the construction of the nuclear plant (which I think is overstated, but its still worth considering)




PS The best sources I've found for this stuff are:
1. reports byAGL and Frontier Economics "Options for moving towards a lower emission future" at:

http://www.agl.com.au/AGLNew/About+AGL/ ... efault.htm

2. A number of academics wrote "A clean energy future for Australia" at:
http://wwf.org.au/ourwork/climatechange/publications/

3. Or there's the really detailed stuff at:
http://www.ceem.unsw.edu.au/Pubs.cfm