michael_in_adelaide,

You say that a more useful form of advocacy is "making feasible preparations for a low-energy future". Yet this is a completely useless approach if we are to avoid dangerous climate change. World energy demand is on the rise (particularly in developing economies) and that will not change any time soon. There are still plenty of fossil fuels, and even more of them are now economically extractable thanks to the development of non-conventional extraction techniques (e.g. hydrofracking, coal-seam gas). http://theconversation.edu.au/how-to-sell-green-energy-in-an-era-of-abundant-gas-and-oil-7668 . If we simply prepare for the day that fossil fuels become scarce, we're toast. The trillion tonnes of cumulative emissions we need to limit ourselves to will be overshot by a mile.

You also say that "Just because something seems like a really neat idea does not mean it will happen." Well, yes, obviously. Ben and I will be the first people to acknowledge that, despite nuclear energy being a no-brainer for fixing the bulk of the energy and climate crises, it suffers from a lack of public support. Not everywhere, but certainly in Australia. There are no guarantees here. But precisely the point of writing an article like this is to counteract some of the misinformation out there, and try to turn that lack of support around. And I agree with Ben that public resistance in Australia is not "extreme".

I see no major technological reasons to prevent a large-scale roll out of IFRs in the future. Sodium-cooled fast-breeding has already been soundly demonstrated with the EBR-II. Pyroprocessing is a ubiquitous material processing technology used in a wide variety of industrial applications. I don't see a major expansion of this technology commercially in the shorter-term, but there are plenty of existing nuclear technologies (Generation III/III+) which can easily fill this gap. And ultimately, we won't have a choice but to close the nuclear fuel cycle through full fuel recycling in the longer-term.

You can argue all you like about how unlikely a coal-to-nuclear transition is. But advocating a global-scale, voluntary reduction of energy demand to solve the climate problem is a guaranteed path to failure.

Tom

Shadow/Ben/Tom - you don't appear to appreciate (or you just ignore) that we are at energy limits NOW. Why do you think the world economy is in its current state? Even China's growth is now faltering. Much of the media hype about unconventional oil etc. is just that. Energy limits are non-negotiable. You cannot take them or leave them. Accepting reality and making the best of a bad deal is not failure and it is not pessimism for pessimism's sake.

@michael in adelaide there is a 400 year supply of brown coal in the La Trobe Valley if we choose to burn it. Coal in general remains essentially plentiful. Oil is clearly in trouble and, from what I know of you, we have one big point of agreement: our capacity to have ignored this incredible issue is breathtaking. Gas could well have more life than we thought a few years ago, but as the price follows oil basically and gas is far too greenhouse intensive, dependence here is another trouble spot.

We have energy pressures, for sure, but they are hardly the sole explanation of the global economic downturn.

Full scale rollout of IFR can put them to bed, forever. There may be a squeeze while it happens, but if we want energy we can have it; clean, GHG free, inexhaustible, free of mining. There is simply so much usable material sitting around right now doing nothing. All that while, technologies using solar, wind and other renewables sources will continue to improve in the contribution they can make.

If we ignore nuclear power, I think we are thoroughly effed, through climate change, through impending oil scarcity, and through idiotic determination to keep exploiting ever lower grades of hydrocarbons.

michael_in_adelaide,

We are only at "energy limits" if your definition of energy is the energy that comes from fossil fuel combustion. With implementation of the IFR (and other Generation IV nuclear technologies), nuclear fission fuel is practically inexhaustible. http://www.mcgill.ca/files/gec3/NuclearFissionFuelisInexhaustibleIEEE.pdf . Saying "Energy limits are non-negotiable" is simply wrong.

Of course, at the moment everything is built from oil. So as oil becomes scarcer and more expensive, it will make new energy infrastructure (as well as all other infrastructure) more expensive. This really only increases the urgency to replace fossil fuel energy systems and electrify the transport system/develop and use synfuels.

On the contrary, I think you are ignoring the fact that even if we are on the downward slope of oil production (and I think we are), if we continue to burn the stuff, as well as all the coal, tar sands, and gas we still have access to, we are toast.

Re "making feasible preparations for a low-energy future"

I spend about six weeks a year in a country with a "low energy present" – India. In reality, it's an unattractive option - low energy use tends to track with levels of poverty (e.g. low transport energy use implies people staying put where they grow up, limiting opportunities for education and employment, restricting access to technology and so on. Indians are understandably desperate to break out of their "low energy" paradigm - I wish that those who think it's a good move would spend some time in the reality of low energy economies.

And yes, there are constraints on energy use - carbon output (although just how severe those are depends on assumptions about climate sensitivity), and fuel availability.

it's true that oil production is at or close to peak, albeit the decline curve can be very much slower than expected (Brits have seen that demonstrated in spades, with the amazing longevity of large parts of the North Sea province - many fields that are still in production should have been exhausted as far back as the middle 1990s, Forties being a prime example).

Coal supplies are a long way from hitting viable extraction rates, but are obviously constrained by high carbon content. CCS may make that constraint more relaxed, but at the moment that's looking far from viable - our own flagship project in the UK has bitten the dust - that involved retrofitting CCS to 300MW of a 2000MW coal station - and when probable cost rose beyond £2Bn.

The wild card is gas. No-one yet really knows the potential of the various forms of tight gas production, although the IEA is estimating 100-150 years supply at current extraction rates - and they're not notably an organisation prone to optimism. I'm surprised to see anyone characterising gas as "high carbon" - with CCGT technology, it produces about half the CO2/MWh of coal, even burning coal in a supercritical station. Further, fitment of precombustion CCS to gas is relatively unchallenging, albeit it’ll probably double unit costs

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< cont> Also, don’t underestimate just how much gas is being produced nowadays – in total, current production is about half the energy value of oil production.

There are certain areas where (short of miraculous developments in energy storage/batteries etc.) hydrocarbons are likely to remain dominant because of their combination of easy portability and high energy density. For example, in aviation, liquid hydrocarbons will be with us for many years either as “natural” production, “gas-to-liquids” processes or potentially biofuels; in shipping it ought to be viable to substitute gas for oil (LNG tankers already fuel themselves by using the “boil-off” to power their engines). CNG/LPG works rather well in road transport, albeit is at least partially substitutable by foreseeable battery technology and electrification, especially with “range extender” hybrids pretty much demonstrably viable.

Outside of that space, pretty much all things are substitutable either through electrification or through “unconventional” process heat production.

So, the argument about a “low energy future” is ultimately about how much electricity can be produced from low-carbon sources, and if nuclear can viably take up that load.

You'll excuse me talking from a UK perspective, but I doubt the Australian or even US situation is conceptually different, other than in scale.

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