Ah, Martin, your espousal of nuclear makes such eminent sense…

except for one small detail...

Fukushima.

After Chernobyl and Three Mile Island, you would have expected everyone to have become critically careful about safeguards against the enormous downsides of nuclear power. And we would have expected the Japanese to have done this as well as any country in the world could have.

And then…. the most enormous disaster happens.

FORGET NUCLEAR!

So I wonder if this 100 percent renewables study is based on the project population size by 2050 with the current growth trends. I presume it is.

Well it shouldn’t be. Surely one of the most fundamental aspects of the development of a renewable energy regime is to STOP the demand from forever rapidly increasing.

We need to stabilise our population.

And we need to work on reducing per-capita consumption.

We absolutely need to work on the demand side as well as the supply capability.

I note that in the list of assumptions at the start of this long report, the last-listed items are these little gems:

• The demand assumptions used in this report are based on AEMO’s 2012 National Electricity Forecasting Report (NEFR) with revisions to fit with the 100 per cent renewables scenarios and extended to 2030 and 2050 using a regression model

• The costs of developing the demand side participation (DSP), energy efficiency measures, and electric vehicle (EV) infrastructure assumed in the modelling have not been taken into account.

Oh dear. So the whole thing is only looking at supply. Sorry but that is a horribly one-side study, which is just hopeless. This sort of study absolutely needs to be holistic, and consider the demand side as fully as it does the supply side.

What they are essentially doing is pandering to an ever-rapidly-increasing demand…. which is sits in absolute conflict with the baseline notion of reducing greenhouse gas emissions and developing a totally renewable (sustainable) energy regime!

I wonder how the overall costs would shape up if as much effort was put into addressing the demand side as for the supply side of the equation…. and how this would then compare to nuclear.

$91 Billion?

This does not include govt contributions like underwriting insurance and other subsidies. And it obviously does not include whole of life costs including horrendously expensive dismantling costs?
Then there are the safety issues and waste disposal.
All of these are completely ignored in this puff piece on behalf of the nuclear industry.

Thank you, Martin Nicholson, for another excellent article. As is your way, it is cautious, conservative, with no overstatements.

I'll make a few quick points:

We have no idea what the cost of such a scheme would be other than it would be at least double the costs stated in the AEMO draft report. Some features of the AEMO analysis:

- Cost projections to 2030 and 2050 for technologies that have never been built at the scale required, let alone proven fit for purpose and economic.

- Ridiculously low fuel cost for biofuels - to provide reliable supply of biogas for occasional use (the CSIRO study excludes logistic constraints). (Some of the issues are mentioned here in questions to Dr. Diesendorf http://bravenewclimate.com/2012/02/27/100-renewable-electricity-for-australia-response-to-lang/#comment-152532).) So forget biofuels, it's contribution will be insignificant

- most or all of the technologies have never been built at the scale assumed (e.g. solar thermal, EGS geothermal, wave)

- The transmission costs will be far higher than estimated when all the costs of the items excluded in the AEMO report are included

- far more capacity (over build) will be required for the whole system to achieve the reliability requirements

I haven't looked at the draft report carefully yet, but if the assumptions for the existing pumped hydro are anything like what Elliston et al assumed, then we can forget the pumped hydro contribution. In other words exclude the existing pumped hydo with a renewable energy system, it is for storing excess energy from baseload power stations at night for use the next day.

Much more on the issues were covered here http://bravenewclimate.com/2012/02/09/100-renewable-electricity-for-australia-the-cost/ and are not addressed in the AEMO report.

I could say much more, but for now, an reasonable engineering judgement is that you can reasonably assume the cost estimates will be double those quoted.

WE should consider nuclear energy.
And that model ought to be, cheaper than coal, Thorium.
Oxide reactors consume less than 5% of their fuel material; meaning, the rest is waste, and highly toxic waste at that!
Whereas, Thorium reactors consume over 95% of their fuel, with such waste as is produced, far less toxic, and eminently suitable for very long life space batteries.
We are blessed with copious NG and piping gas directly to the home, would enable that gas to be consumed in ceramic fuel cells.
A chemical reaction, that produces a 72% energy coefficient, and the world's cheapest power; and, produces mainly water vapour, rather than the Co2, we'ed create, burning it in a gas turbine.
Moreover, we virtually double the carbon created, and the consumer cost component, just by pushing power down transmission lines, which all have to be maintained at greater and greater cost to the community.
Further, Private suppliers wax lyrical about free markets and market forces; and competition driving down prices, all while maintaining captive market monopolies!
The real impact of privatisation is to effectively quadruple prices?
At least that is the only real outcome one can see in all of the published comparative modelling!
Also routinely ignored by privatisation protagonists, is virtually free biogas!
Almost every family home or high rise, produces enough biological waste, to power their premises 24/7.
With free hot water as a bonus.
We could build an electric car here today, that the whole world would want.
We lead the world in moulded carbon fibre technology.
Instead of recharging electric cars with domestic power, put a super silent CNG powered ceramic cell inside a carbon fibre body.
The energy coefficient of 72%, would massively increase the electric car's range, well beyond most petrol powered variants.
And the exhaust, mostly water vapour!
We know how to make cars, we just don't know how to innovate, and capture a world wide market; and, quite massive economies of scale in the process!
Maybe that's down to foreign owners, with their own head office agendas, priorities and myopic focus?
Rhrosty.

Ludwig: If the reactor at Fukushima, had of been a pebble reactor!
It would still be pumping out carbon free power today!
Pebble reactors are designed not to melt down even where the coolant, helium, is stopped. If you understand how the thermonuclear reaction is obtained inside an oxide reactor, then you will understand that placing a grapefruit sized ball of carbon around a marble of fuel, keeps and maintains enough essential space around all of the fuel material, to prevent the very meltdown, the anti nuclear brigade rely on, to support their no nuke campaign?
This design also enables small pebble reactors to be mass produced as modules and trucked onsite, bolted together to be producing power within days.
Decommissioning simply a reverse of that process.
Sure, the waste is a bit of a problem.
Currently the waste is combined with silica and other inorganic materials. To make an entirely inert solid substance.
That material is then stored in a very robust ceramic container, which is in turn interred inside a stainless steel drum, which is then incarcerated inside a caste iron cask.
Not all that long a go, a locomotive, remotely controlled, was accelerated to over ninety miles per hour, 145 Klms PH, and smashed at full speed into one of those cast iron casks.
The 70-80 ton loco was derailed and totalled, while the cask remained undamaged.
Buried in dry desert mountain ranges, in relatively remote locations, the waste presents no more danger than naturally occurring Uranium ore bodies, or rich in thorium, radioactive granite! Which many buildings use as cut blocks, in their construction!
If you and your ilk, would just stop with the fear-mongering and misinformation roll-out?
Maybe we could have a sensible grown up discussion pertaining to nuclear power?
Personally, I believe winning the anti-nuclear argument, is as simple as providing hip pocket cost comparisons, between it and say, NG powered home based, carbon free, ceramic fuel cells!
Rhrosty.