Sir Sivor,

Your numbers are meaningless without context.

You’ve selected some numbers and say “massive social dislocation and suffering caused by the Chernobyl and Fukushima catastrophes.”

But you’ve provided no context for your numbers so they are meaningless. Examples of context you should provide are:
• How many fatalities and what is the total damage costs of nuclear accidents to date
• Divide this by the amount of electricity generated by nuclear to date to get fatalities and a damage cost per TWh
• Compare these figures with equivalent figures from other sources of electricity generation (hint: fatalities per TWh: nuclear 0.09, coal 60 world average)
Then provide context by telling us:
• How many fatalities has nuclear avoided world wide so far (hint: around 2.5 million - rough estimate in my head)
• What’s the value of that (hint: about $1 trillion – in my head)
• How much CO2 has been avoided (hint: about 50 Gt CO2)
• Value: at $10/t CO2 = $500 billion
• Value of cheaper electricity: around $500 billion
• Benefits: Higher GDP growth, better health systems, education, infrastructure, reduced population growth rate.

What is the value of all that? >$3.5 trillion?

How do your damage costs stack up when put in context of the benefits, eh?

The “social dislocation and suffering you refer to is due to the evacuation, not to health effect of radioactive contamination. Therefore, a rational person might consider the response, massive and permanent evacuation, is irrational. It may be better to give people the option and the facts on the risks and allow them to make their own choice.

>“Personally, I think it's important to distinguish fact from opinion. Otherwise, one risks being the captive of superstitions, which are in the end analysis, just wierd opinions.”

Exactly. You might want to consider your advice. And tie facts with rational arguments. Just because you source figures somewhere doesn’t mean you understand how they were derived. So what you call ‘facts’ and how you apply them to argument is actually just your interpretation, your opinion..

Baz,

Thank you for telling us about your real world experiences with the extended power outage. It should be an eye opener for many. It raises the question: what would happen if we had a systemic electricity systems failure. No power means: no water supply in cities, no petrol pumps working so you can’t escape from the city, no access to money, no ATM’s, no transactions system so no shops, no food. Majority of city dwellers would be dead within a week. That is how vital a reliable electricity system is.

Regarding nuclear replacing coal in Australia:

20 GW of nuclear, about 15 GW of gas and 7 GW of hydro generating capacity would provide all the NEM’s electricity demand. It would meet peak demand with about 20% spare capacity. The nuclear would meet all the baseload plus some intermediate load with capacity to spare for unplanned and planned maintenance outages.

Construction could begin in about 2023 and be complete by about 2040 by replacing coal fired power plants when they reach the end of their economic lives.

At current costs for nuclear compared with new coal capacity, the subsidy required to make this happen might be in the order of $20 billion over about the first 10 years. It will be self sustaining and cheaper, requiring no further subsidy, after the first few plants. That is less than we’ve already committed for renewable energy which will achieve next to nothing.

Construction time in China, Korea, Japan is around 3.5 to 4 years. 5 years in USA for new plants. But several plants are normally under construction on one site at once. We can build in NSW, Victoria and Qld at the same time. So, the potential build rate is not the constraint. The constraint is the rate the coal fired plants reach the end of their economic lives (i.e. when it becomes cheaper to replace the coal with a new nuclear plant than keep the coal plant operating). That partly depends on the rate that nuclear power costs comes down.

What Peter Lang said...

And said again... several more times, always supported by facts.

Sure beats unsupported, emotionally argued opinion.

Regarding the lead article, I'd much prefer to heed a retired academic, even a right wing one with foibles, than to swallow the blatant and foul character assasination attempt from this author, whose obvious personal bias is derived, at least in part, from the source of his income.

Peter Lang said;
Thank you for telling us about your real world experiences with the extended power outage

err it wasn't me that had the power fail problem, it was Hasbeen.
The amount of energy used to provide us with food is ten times the
energy we get from our food. At present most of this comes from oil
products such as diesel and bunker fuel, gas & coal.
To add all that onto the electrical system will mean we might have to
generate twice the amount of electricity that we now produce.

As far as I know no one has done any calculations on that nightmare.
If we don't have as much energy as we have now we will have many less
people in the world and a lower standard of living.
Somewhere I have the figures that might enable a rough calculation on
how much electricity we will need to do what we now do with oil, gas
coal and electricity.
Hmmm what have I said !

Mr Lang, your facts do not address the low-probability high-risk nature of nuclear electricity generation.

The demonstrated catastrophes at Chernobyl and Fukushima are enough evidence to suggest to me that perhaps their probability is not so low as the theoreticians would like to have you believe.

If I were you, I would put my effort into arguing for technology that is not so pernicious in its failure.

It makes far more sense to me to phase out of coal generator electricity and into technologies that are nuclear proliferation-proof and more environmentally sustainable than one that produces nuclear waste (which still wants a proper storage technology)and a risk of uninsurable catastrophe. Wind generation solar generation, smart electricity grid networks, all of these are developing and being deployed while the boffins scratch their heads about what to do with the radioactive waste generated to date.

I can understand how someone might have a diagnosable condition called radiation phobia, and I can understand how mass panic would result from unknown but dire consequences, such as might be anticipated from the the explosions at Fukushima Daiichi, especially given the failure of TEPCO executives to speak honestly with the evacuees.

What I can't understand is why anyone would persevere in defending an obsolete 20th century technology, in the 21st century.

Sir Vivor,

Sorry for misspelling your name in my previous comment.

In you previous comment you said:

>“Personally, I think it's important to distinguish fact from opinion. Otherwise, one risks being the captive of superstitions, which are in the end analysis, just wierd opinions.”

Your emotional and fact free arguments, opinions and beliefs show you are not applying your own advice? Here are some examples:

>”Mr Lang, your facts do not address the low-probability high-risk nature of nuclear electricity generation. “

I said nothing about the low-probability of accidents. You raised issues about the consequences of the only two serious accidents that have occurred in 56 years and15,000 reactor-years of nuclear operations. I showed that what you think are “massive social dislocation and suffering”, are in fact small compared with the overwhelming benefits of nuclear power. Furthermore, the consequences (social disruption) would be far less if not for the effect of 50 years of anti-nuclear scaremongering.

>” If I were you, I would put my effort into arguing for technology that is not so pernicious in its failure.”

That is exactly what I am doing, as the facts I’ve provided clearly demonstrate. But your comment demonstrates you prefer emotive scare-mongering and have a closed mind to facts. You prefer the nonsense spread by that anti-nuclear activists/doom-sayers.

Your beliefs about renewables are baseless. They are not based on facts; see Figures 5 and 6 here: http://oznucforum.customer.netspace.net.au/TP4PLang.pdf .

What a pile of emotional drivel your comment is; some of your words and phrases::
• Catastrophes
• pernicious in its failure
• uninsurable catastrophe
• mass panic
• unknown but dire consequence
• explosions

>” What I can't understand is why anyone would persevere in defending an obsolete 20th century technology, in the 21st century.”

A silly, emotional comment. All technologies improve. Hydro, Wind, solar thermal engines and coal are all hundreds of years old. Hydro is the oldest electricity generation technology. Are you suggesting it should be discarded. Solar PV has been around for the same length of time as nuclear electricity generation. Should we ban it.
Your comment is nonsense.