with in a while we should be able to build thorium nuclear power .then old king coal,will be out of soul

ben

Yep this bloke must have a doctorate in cherry picking.

Mr. Green is horrified the "UK government is guaranteeing French utility EDF a staggering 16 cents for every kilowatt-hour generated by the Hinkley Point reactors". 16C for some real power, always on tap. Please do tell us Jim, how much we are paying for the miserable trickle, that occasionally comes from those subsidised solar cells on peoples roofs.

Where would you suggest we get our power on those cold windless nights, we experience so often in winter.

Hydro could be good, if you lot & your idiot mates had not managed to get a huge percentage of or expensively stored water rushing uselessly back down the Snowy, because it looks nice to the few tourists who may see it.

That wouldn't be so bad, if the same stupidity had not been applied to waste even more of it to fill an artificial waterski lake in South Australia. How that becomes conservation only someone with a doctorate in cherry picking could even attempt to explain.

Jim, you quote a whole list of countries who have made crazy decisions on power generation, most of them in terminal decline from such decisions, & expect that to convince any but the fools. Why did you not quote China & India, where we see the policies that are "generating" success with their power policies.

Don't count your Chrissie propellers and solar cells before they're unwrapped Jim.

As spindoc indicates coal is being used in place of any drops in electricity generation by nuclear

http://www.iea.org/aboutus/faqs/coal/ indicates:

Since the start of the 21st century, coal production has been the fastest-growing global energy source. It is the second source of primary energy in the world after oil, and the first source of electricity generation.

Coal consumption increased by nearly 60% from 4,600 million tonnes (mt) in 2000 to an estimated 7,200mt in 2010.

The surge in global coal consumption is driven primarily by developing economies, such as China and India. Coal is the key fuel in both countries’ energy mix and since economic growth and energy use are highly correlated, coal demand prospects for both countries are bullish to 2016.

Meanwhile the US is burning cheap fracked oil.

Pete

Goodness Jim. Every comment so far seems to pour scorn on your assessment of the nuclear power industry. I guess this will give you something to reflect on over Christmas.

In particular, I hope you reflect that if the nuclear power industry were to shut down completely (fortunately, extremely unlikely) the recent evidence, as expressed in many of the comments, is that our ability to stay climate change will be seriously affected.

The evidence that the only practical alternative to nuclear is large scale coal or gas is extremely strong, as we have seen in the US, Germany and Japan. These countries would all be doing it with wind and solar of they could. But they know they can’t. So, for the sake of the environment, I dearly hope you are proved wrong.

Wow! Nuclear energy has some loyal fans.

Let's see if we can get a couple things on the table.

Germany is not building new coal generation because they are closing nuclear plants. The new coal plants being built were begun before the decision to close nuclear and will result in older, less efficient coal plants closing. Germany will end up burning less coal for more electricity.

Germany had a small increase in CO2 last year due to it being a cold winter. Japan and California saw CO2 increases because their reactors went off line abruptly. There was no opportunity to get clean generation in place before the shutdowns. Things are getting cleaned up.

Wind and solar are already competitive in parts of the world. The average price for wind purchase agreements in 2011 and 2012 was 4 cents per kWh. About 5.3 cents with the subsidy added back in.

Solar is now selling for 5 cents per kWh in the Southwest. 6.3 cents with the subsidy included.

Both are less than half the cost of new nuclear. Or new coal.

"There has not been a fatal accident in the western developed world from the nuclear reactor section of nuclear generation."

No wind farm workers have been killed by the wind nor have any solar farm workers been killed by sunshine.
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The cost of fueling a uranium reactor in the US is only $0.0075/kWh. Moving to thorium would hardly lower the cost of electricity. Nuclear energy already has very low fuel costs. It's the capital and financing costs that make the cost of electricity from a new reactor so expensive.

And some US reactors are expensive to run, aside from fuel costs. The Kewaunee reactor which was paid off and working fine closed this year because it couldn't compete with wind and NG. Four other reactors needed repairs and that made them noncompetitive and they have closed/are closing. Another dozen and a half of paid off reactors are in danger of closing over the next few years.

If a paid off reactor can't compete it's very clear that a newly built reactor has no chance. Reactors are only being built with government (taxpayer) money. The free market won't touch them.