NIMBY Reality...

Great ideas - and the author's home, Byron Bay (or anywhere else in Oz) will accept with glee construction of the first Australian power reactor.

Pete

Good point Plantagenet.
How about giving us the lifetime costs not just construction?

and storage?

oh and FUKUSHIMA.

Never mind. just sit back with your rose coloured glasses and imagine a nuclear fuelled nirvana.

We should go to where we all know we are going to be eventually.

Fukushima is a bad example do you really believe we would build a Nuke Generator at Botany Bay ?

Wasting Billions on Carbon Credits is for the Fairies , lets grow up and not behave like Pusseys .

Wouldn’t a veritable forest of wind turbines all across Aus be a beauty?. We could prop about 25 on top of Ayres rock and a whole bunch more around and through all the capital city ‘burbs. About 250 in Rose Bay would look very nice with another 75 around Blues Point.

And then what happens when we get a real doozy of a windstorm like Scotland a couple weeks ago where pictures showed a wind turbine self destructing and raining fiery embers across the landscape. Should make the bush and mountain dwellers very happy.

Please replace my local stinking coal burner with a nuke as soon as possible and stop all the acid rain that must be neutralized in my fish pond after each rain storm.

Martin's plan is still a bit wild, calling as it does for 40% renewable generation. It is highly unlikely that we, or anyone else, will have a grid that could handle that percentage of renewables, other than hydro with its steady flow, any time soon. Certainly not in his time frame at least.

The really good thing about all of this is that by 2020 we will be well aware that CO2 is not a "pollutant", & is if anything an advantage in producing our food.

Surely once we have proof that CO2 is not causing any catastrophic global warming, we will override our greenies ratbags aversion to coal fired power generation, & we can get back to using our natural advantages for the populations benefit.

With our coal & bauxite, we should be supplying the world with aluminum, nor alumina, & doing it very profitably, as well as enjoying all the jobs that would create.

I really can't think of anything much more stupid than sending our coal, & our alumina to china, having them produce aluminum with our resources, then us pay through the nose for that aluminum. What the hell does it matter where the coal is burnt?

Oh dear.....no mention of peak uranium. With current and existing projected nuclear projects known and estimated uranium reserves factored in, viable short-term nuclear energy production will only last approximately another 25 years.

Stage IV reactors (Thorium) may be viable if the boffins can get them to work effectively.

Fukushima is out of the news, never mind the 600 tonne blob of molten material that is currently boring (burning) it's way through the earth toward the water table (it's radioactivity is so high it has yet to be fully calculated). Once it reaches this I can't wait for the advocates of nuclear power to duck and weave.

Clean Coal is a pipe dream, uneconomic and will never happen.

If you fully understand the true life-cycle cost of producing power you will discover that the energy returned on energy invested is actually negative. No nuclear plant on the planet has a full life cycle (including decommissioning and storage of waste) that is economically positive. Do some in-depth research and you will find the truth.

Til Hasbeen's post I didn't realise China was a big importer of bauxite and alumina http://www.capealumina.com.au/bauxite_aluminium-market-demand.htm
In Russia they make aluminium from nepheline, a hard rock, since they have cheap nuclear power.

We send Australian iron ore and bauxite to Asia so it can be processed with coke or electricity made from Australian coal. Then we buy back the vastly value added metal and conveniently escape paying carbon tax on our own coal. It's bizarre. We could certainly smelt all our aluminium with nuclear electricity while using coal for steel making if we didn't also use coal in power stations. That would keep CO2 way down.

Even if you don't think CO2 is a problem it is underhanded the way we get Asia to do our dirty work for us, dirty deeds done dirt cheap as the song says. Trouble is we're denying ourselves jobs and profit while still emitting vast amounts of CO2 by proxy. Bring it back home and use nuclear power as much as possible.

Oh my God Taswegion WHERE do you live ?

Cultural changes around energy usage and sustainability will be easier to sell than endless taxes and surcharges to pay for exotic generation technology. Nobody likes to shell out their hard earned but they love to show their neighbours how much money they can save.
The obvious answer to all these problems is self sufficiency and a culture of frugality.
When the government operatives talk about "sustainability" they're only talking about sustaining economic growth, as in how can we keep the plebs on side while still maximising profits.
A sustainable society is one which eschews luxury and encourages people to be frugal and live within their means.

Martin, a rational, sensible and pragmatic approach when accepting the notion that we will be spending Billions purchasing overseas carbon credits (currently valued at 6.3 Euros - and falling), but I have to agree with Hasbeen....

"The really good thing about all of this is that by 2020 we will be well aware that CO2 is not a "pollutant", & is if anything an advantage in producing our food."

Lets hope we can minimise the economic damage proposed and propounded by those poor misguided zeolots in the meantime!

With you there Hasbeen, and of course you too Taswegian.

I feel like I'm in a time warp. My electricity meter reading hasn't changed for weeks. I leave in the morning and the last 3 digits are 365 but when I get home it's 360. No battery banks on my solar system. It just feeds into the grid when the wheels of industry grind into action and I make my personal sacrifice for greater national glory make magnificent GDP. I don't know what we could do with base load solar ...something ...perhaps. Oh solar, it's a pipe dream! Like wave and tidal energy. Just ask any Aussie, we know about this stuff, we're ingenious don't you know? We export intellectual capital. Why capitalise on intellectual capital when you can export it as a raw material and pay factors more for it when you import the value added product? What a mugs game! We import people and industrialise our economy around population growth. What could possibly go wrong with that?

Putting aside 3 Mile Island, Chernobyl, Fukushima etc. etc., I think this nuke biz has a future. I like the sound of them throium rectors too. I'd invest and put it in with my portfolio of perpetual motion machines.

One thing about nukes though, who is going to guard the waste from A-Rab terrorists for the next 250,000 years? How much will that cost? And when the waste containment materials become contaminated and that waste needs to be repackaged and contained (thereby adding exponentially to the waste), who pays for that?

Dump it on the kids like everything else we do?

Oh no we wouldn't do that, we'll pay these costs up front because we're economically literate and morally virtuous right? If you think a carbon tax will increase the price of electricity, try about a million per cent increase to cover the true cost of nukes.

What I don't get is Why we will have to buy overseas carbon permits (credits) in the first place; and Who we are going to buy them from anyway?

As things stand at the moment, I understand that with our forests and agriculture Aus is virtually carbon dioxide Neutral! And greenhouse Neutral. So, what's our problem?

How many other countries have a smaller carbon footprint? Africa, South America and maybe a few parts of Asia? So, which countries will have greatest need to buy carbon permits? USA, China, India, Europe, Japan? Will there be enough credits available to go round? And, at what price, and with how much verification? And, are the big polluters going to participate fully in the first place?

The major polluters will have no option but to either go (increasingly) nuclear or invest enormously in renewables. (Or, to purchase increasingly scarce offset permits, or just opt out.) We, on the other hand, have an opportunity to invest modestly in renewables, matching increases in our further industialisation, and still remain virtually carbon neutral. No need for Aus to go nuclear at all, as long as we don't try to get too big - and population management will be key, as well as avoidance of increasing industrialisation too rapidly or extensively.

I think we have been sold a pig in a poke, making ourselves big guys in the international climate arena, and setting unnecessary carbon reduction targets for ourselves while the big polluters laugh behind our backs.

We need greater honesty and transparency in the whole climate and carbon debate, and I hold our current government at fault in selling us down the river on an absolute fiction.

Geoff,

"If you fully understand the true life-cycle cost of producing power you will discover that the energy returned on energy invested is actually negative. No nuclear plant on the planet has a full life cycle (including decommissioning and storage of waste) that is economically positive. Do some in-depth research and you will find the truth."

The Second Law Of Thermodynamics is a bitch ain't it?

Australian politicians have the brains to make themselves richer than their fellow Australians while making their fellows PAY and WORSHIP them in sundry order. Yet the same politicians cannot grasp the Second law of Thermodynamics(2LT).

I term this selective blindness. And with the blind leading the gullible we are all surely lost unless the inevitable PHYSICS solution is understood!

Given the 2LT and OIL running dry, in terms of future energy and indeed the peaceful future of the human race:

* There can be only ONE *

HOT ROCK GEOTHERMAL