Nuclear power

Sometimes it is best to reference a quote in full so that there is context.

It’s heartening to bring humour to others, although in this instance I’d decline the accolade and recognise the Australian Parliament as the true source of the jest!

For context, click the upward-pointing arrow.

Will Nuclear power generation remain a political option?
It may do so for as long as our Parliament fails to achieve real and significant reductions in greenhouse emissions by other means.

For some of us this may be seen as an unacceptable solution. For others it may be a great option.

The challenges of making nuclear less hazardous and solving waste disposal parallel the challenges of making carbon fuels low emissions and these parallel the challenges of finding a low cost long lasting and practicable energy storage system to support renewables.

The best outcome is a win for electrical energy storage as it ensures the end of nuclear or carbon fuel choices.

This alone will only go part way to changing the future. The planet is short carbon sinks. Unless you consider acidification of the oceans acceptable. Agriculture, transport and industry in general are not committed to change or significantly reduce their greenhouse gases.

Nuclear has the benfit of being a known solution that is a low greenhouse gas contributor. Yes it has unacceptable environmental risks by its very nature.

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That depends on how the numbers are run:
“Far from coming in at 6 grams of CO2 per unit of electricity for Hinkley Point, as the Climate Change Committee believes, the true figure is probably well above 50 grams – breaching the Committee on Climate Change’s recommended limit for new sources of power generation beyond 2030.”
http://www.jonathonporritt.com/blog/whats-more-nuclear-power-not-source-low-carbon-electricity
referencing

“… half of the most rigorous published analyses have a carbon footprint for nuclear power above the limit recommended by the UK government’s official climate change advisor, the Committee on Climate Change (CCC).

Lots more there that I haven’t yet had a chance to read.

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All very informative. Both sources have an absolute position on the future of nuclear power. It’s possible there is bias or cherry picking on both sides. The EU is considering a project in GB with lifetime CO2 of 6gm/kWh as an outcome of a new nuclear plant.

This may be reliable, it may not. It may not matter what the figure actually is. It may be more than the GB target of less than 50gm/kWh. There are plenty of sources including PV manufacturers who suggest their life cycle outcomes are also greater than 50gm/kWh. Battery production is currently also not low carbon by this standard.

If the alternatives of better and more planet friendly energy sources, mining, industrial and agricultural production are not developed fast enough what are the foreseeable political realities?
Faced with a nuclear future or carbon driven Armageddon which way will we jump?
The possibility of a nuclear powered future can be presented as a real solution or as an incentive to do something else very soon.

For that reason does it not deserve a place in any debate about future energy sources if only to keep us focussed on the need to act?

My personal doubts are that we have insufficient global resources using current thinking and technology to transition fast enough or far enough without other options including nuclear becoming necessary. A ban on Uber’s and all forms of personal transport with 100% work by NBN future is just as scary.

In this context understanding the nuclear deliverables better remains very relevant.

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Are those our alternatives? That’s what Brave New Climate and the like would have us believe.

That, I guess, is where we differ. I wonder how anybody can still take nuclear power seriously.

Again, we differ. We need only get on with it.
Edit 2:
Just noticed that the (then new) CEO of AEMO used the same words:

We just need to keep building the orchestra.

End edit 2

Edit 1:

You’ll need to link to your sources.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.enpol.2008.04.017

https://www.oxfordresearchgroup.org.uk/secure-energy-civil-nuclear-power-security-and-global-warming
End edit 1

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Irrespective of how anyone views the risks or advantages of nuclear power generation, John’s prior comments remain relevant.

The longer the delays in more substantive actions towards reducing greenhouse emissions the fewer the options. It should be noted John stated his concerns were motivated by the cost of electricity, a very different but now intertwined debate.

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If your issue is global warming then, to quote from one of the links above:
This report asks two questions: how dangerous is nuclear power? And can it help reduce CO2 emissions? … For the second question the answer is ‘not enough and not in time’.

If cost is the issue then is the technology whose costs keep rising (not to mention build times) a rational choice?

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I think the more progressive states will continue to move in a carbon reduced direction.
This is evidenced by SA which previously has move strongly this way and now Victoria will massively increase solar rooftop density. Eventually most states will do similar actions and the federal coalition government’s inability to resolve a energy policy that is acceptable to most Australians and also their ‘coal loving’ right wing of the party will be actually redundant in the lower carbon economy of the future.

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It isn’t quite that easy. Yes, SA has one of the highest rates of renewable generation in the world, but currently relies on flows from and though Victoria, predominately from non-renewable sources. The significant whole of state network outage a few years ago was not because of the renewable generation capacity of SA, but the loss of support from the interconnector (the interconnector had a forced outage to protect the remainder of the national network - to prevent a domino effect).

This is also the same for many European countries and US states like California which also have high renewable generation. These countries and states are connected to their neighbours and relay on generation support from their neighbours and this generation support is non-renewable and comes principally from coal, gas or nuclear.

Solar on ones roof may feel good, but is is one of the least efficient ways of generating electricity. The existing distribution and transmission networks have traditionally been designed as a one one flow system…the voltage is transformed down the lower down in the network one gets. It has not been designed for reverse transformation.

States doing their own thing without regard to the operation of the whole of the network is a recipe for problems, which already have started to emerge and have made the system less reliable and able to meet forecast future demands (this is evidenced by the SA government placing diesel gensets in high demand areas to support the capacity on that part of the network). These are bandaid solutions to an underlying problem.

The above is particularly why a national (well, east coast states of Qld - NSW-VIC-SA-Tas) which are interconnected and rely on support from time to time (or more than that in the case of SA).

The resolution is far beyond any information or views of one, and needs a holistic approach if we wish to continue to have a cost effective, reliable supply moving forward, while potentially reducing reliance on non-renewable generation sources.

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Is there a new topic out of this, or an an alternate one that ties the cost of electricity, discussion of the neg, small scale household solar etc into one that tries to unravel the alternatives for future power, low environmental cost and the impacts of each option on the consumer?

It’s possible to build new coal, or upgrade existing coal generation, build nuclear or convert existing coal to glow in the dark fuel, even convert coal generation quite rapidly to gas fired boilers (halves carbon) as well as power from lower carbon solutions.

Do the options and costs of large scale or small scale energy storage need to be considered? More pumped storage capacity for Australia may need to put agriculture on a diet of a very low water future as we will need the storage volumes for power. Do we understand how disruptive changes may be to the status quo and grid designs?

Given our State Govts and the Federal Govt can’t even get into the starting blocks how can Choice seek to influence progress?

Given the current governement is blindly telling all consumers that we are asking for lower power costs is that correct? Perhaps there is a Choice campaign in using a membership survey to send a different response?

The discussion might also need to consider what percentage of our total Australian energy usage (carbon footprint) goes to domestic electrical power usage. It appears to be approx 11% of the total, which leaves 89% still to address.

The alternative is that we just leave it to Canberra to fix? And we really just want cheaper power from any solution.

Resticting gas exports, and using our genuinely low cost lower carbon gas as fuel across the board is a great way to get quick low cost improvements to our carbon footprint? Saves importing expensive diesel and petrol if we convert transport usage!

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There has been a seemingly-unending stream of reports. The latest that I know of is the Integrated System Plan:


The problem seems to be that the government never got the results that it wanted, so it kept calling for more reports hoping for a more ideologically-agreeable outcome.

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The conservatives can cry and rant and commit electoral suicide with their internal civil war over the NEG but the reality is the market will move on and as I have already stated the progressive states will lead the charge because they are not ideological bound to coal fired power stations.

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Some will still be bound to the self interest of the Minerals Council and its influence.

A few years ago it was all Nikki Williams and clean coal. I wonder what happened to that? Tell me it wasn’t just misdirection. And she seemed so nice.

Now it’s just Stephen Galilee and how coal burning will keep the lights on when all else is dark and jobs of course, jobs, jobs and more jobs.

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It is also interesting to see what the rest of the world is doing in relation to building/planning or retiring different electricity generation types, as Australia is not alone on the planet and any contribution it makes in relation to changing its generation types will not be significant when compared to larger economies/consumptions. These maps/diagrams show who is doing what on the world scene.

Mapped World’s Coal Power Plants (slide the bar to the future to see what coal fired power station are planned)

Mapped World’s Nuclear Power Plants

Carbon Brief also has a number of interesting maps such as these:

Data Dashboard: Energy

Data Dashboard: Climate

The above is on the Carbon Brief website, Carbon Brief is a UK-based website covering the latest developments in climate science, climate policy and energy policy. We specialise in clear, data-driven articles and graphics to help improve the understanding of climate change, both in terms of the science and the policy response. We publish a wide range of content, including science explainers, interviews, analysis and factchecks, as well as daily and weekly email summaries of newspaper and online coverage.

In 2018, Carbon Brief was “highly commended” for its investigative journalism by the Royal Statistical Society. In 2017, Carbon Brief won the “Best Specialist Site for Journalism” category at the prestigious Online Media Awards.

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Forecasts are limited by what’s known at the time they’re made. I’m only familiar with India. There, the forecast seems to include coal projects that have been cancelled or have not been approved.
http://www.atimes.com/india-is-bringing-the-coal-era-to-an-end/
As for nuclear, a surprising proportion have been “under construction” for a remarkably long time. As the economic case degrades, who knows how many will actually be commissioned? We might end up with a glut of nuclear-themed tourist attractions, like Bataan (yes, I know that’s a unique case).

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It suspect it would be difficult to ever get accurate and timely information considering the project times, sometimes secrecy, and politics involved that obscure what is happening or not happening on the ground, all filtered by the 24 x 7 news cycle.

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Except they’re cancelling plans for those as well. Guess where the growth is.

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Countries have banned the use of glyphosate and genetic engineering in agriculture, too. Just becasue a country does something, it doesn’t mean that something is backed by evidence or the right thing to do.

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It is worth reading the overview report from the Indian government about mix of generation. One will see what the real picture is in India.

It is little like saying that the 2017 nuclear, coal fired energy and hydo in Australia growth was zero compared to near exponential growth of renewables. This is correct and sounds like nuclear, coal and hydro are dead in the water, but when one realises there wasn’t any nuclear, coal or hydro generation commissioning in 2017, the statement really means nothing, and is manipuoation of data for ideological/political reasons.

I saw the same information months ago in a media release from those how are hostile towards Adani, but the use of such is spin and falls into possibly not understanding the Indian government information. It was used to try and support an argument that Adani coal is not needed by the Indians.

Some renewables, such as PV solar, from planning to commissioning is very short duration, while coal, nuclear, hydro can take many years for planning to commissioning. These sort of generation also don’t run at full capacity when commissioned, and the excess capacity is taken up when demand increases. So capacity may remain stagnant for a period, but total generarions can increase.

If one wants to see trends, one needs to at least look over a 5-10 year period as well as look at the total changes in generation types compared to current generation totals and capacities.

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