Peter Lang,

I have answered your 12 questions using true facts.

You have refused to answer any of my 15 points on nuclear issues, supported with 8 reputable references from which you could have learned quite a lot.

You only debate on your own terms and refuse to hear anything that may refute your case. Some debater!

And you call me, yet again "zealot, ideologue, intellectually dishonest, not a genuine scientist, unprofessional, lack personal professional and intellectual integrity."

All I can say is all of the above apply to you; I couldn't put it better except to add 'one eyed, wooden denier of truths'.

As Plantagenet and others have said, engineering and LCOE are not the only factors involved in sustainable alternative energies. Most Australians understand this and they know we have better energy alternatives for this country - renewables - even if you don't.

You'd do better to study a few more disciplines - try politics and history to start with.

PS Thus far I haven't even mentioned the P word - Plutonium - maybe the biggest of all the nuclear 'elephants in the room.'

' Plutonium created in nuclear power reactors is another source of bomb material. It takes as little as three to five kilograms of plutonium to create a nuclear weapon. There are now some 500,000 kilograms of separated plutonium in global stockpiles. Plutonium stocks continue to increase due to civilian ‘spent’ fuel reprocessing"
The various isotopes have half lives of 90 - 24,000 years.
http://www.epa.gov/radiation/radionuclides/plutonium.html
http://www.laandc.org/images/facts_myths.pdf

But plutonium poses no security or storage problems for future generations........... anyway all these facts are lies or irrelevant aren't they?

Hear no evil see no evil....selective blindness......

I'm done with this 'debate'.

Ben Rose,

“I have answered your 12 questions using true facts”

No you haven’t. You’ve posted piles of irrelevant statements and numbers. They are not relevant because you haven’t shown what difference they make to LCOE. You ignored that part of the question. Until you do you will not understand or accept that they are irrelevant.

You refuse to read the references I’ve posted. Until you provide alternative LCOE estimates and can justify them based on reputable, authoritative sources, all your postings of irrelevant, cherry picked numbers are meaningless.

“You have refused to answer any of my 15 points on nuclear issues, supported with 8 reputable references from which you could have learned quite a lot.”

We’ve been around the mulberry bush on all this over and over again. We never reached closure on any of the key points. So I suggested we focus on one issue first, debate that to closure, then get onto the next one. I posted this to try to reach closure on this one first:

1. The LCOE of a mostly nuclear powered electricity system is substantially less than the LCOE of a mostly renewable powered system.

You have neither accepted it is a true statement nor shown it is wrong. I’ve demonstrated it is correct. You raised lots of irrelevancies. So I posted the 12 questions to try to get you to focus on the point and to try to get you to understand. You’ve not answered those questions with a clear ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ and if ‘No' you need to provide the alternative LCOE values and support it. Once we reach closure we can move onto your key point.

“You only debate on your own terms and refuse to hear anything that may refute your case. Some debater!”

I began on the assumption you were a scientist and honest. However, you’ve dodged and weaved and won’t address the issues. Prove I’ve misjudged you. Let’s reach closure on this one first then move onto yours.

Point under debate:

"The LCOE of a mostly nuclear powered electricity system is substantially less than the LCOE of a mostly renewable powered system. "

Could you please answer ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ to the questions below. Where you answer ‘No’, please provide your alternative figure and the authoritative source for your figure):

1. eFuture http://efuture.csiro.au/#scenarios LCOE for default values with and without nuclear are: $85/MWh and $130/MWh respectively (i.e. LCOE of renewables 1.6 times higher than nuclear)

2. Waste disposal and decommissioning costs are relatively trivial

3. Waste disposal and decommissioning LCOE; (nuclear $1/MWh, renewables $0.15/MWh)

4. Nuclear power is about the safest way to generate electricity (LCA basis, all risks included)

5. Nuclear accident insurance is relatively trivial compared with LCOE

6. Nuclear accident insurance is around $0.11/MWh

7. Transmission cost is not included in the AETA LCOE figures

8. Transmission costs are much higher for renewables than for nuclear (at high penetration for both).

9. Nuclear has demonstrated it can supply over 75% of the electricity to a large, industrial economy (e.g. France for 30 years)

10. Non-hydro renewables have not demonstrated they can supply a large proportion of the electricity to a grid in a large industrial economy

11. There is a significant risk that renewables will not be able to do the job (meet requirements at economically viable cost)

12. The ‘expected value’ of this risk, when added to the LCOE, would inflate the LCOE of the mostly-renewables grid by a very significant amount.

LCOE totals:

1. eFuture (excluding accident insurance, decommissioning, waste disposal, transmission, risk of technology being not able to meet requirements): $85 and $130

2. Include accident insurance, decommissioning and waste disposal: $86, $130

3. Include transmission: $88, $155

4. Include risk the technologies will not be available: $88, $200+ (depending on method of estimating consequences and probabilities).

Where you disagree, what are your alternative figures and the authoritative sources for them?

Peter Lang,

I agreed early in this 'debate' that nuclear is cheaper on an LCOE basis - up to $30 MWh assuming CSIRO'S calculator is close to the mark.

But now you are coming up with tripe figures out of your head - like you reckon transmission would add $25 to renewables but not nuclear. And then pull another $45 (!) out of the air for some amorphous 'risk' you perceive of non delivery, which you say apples only to renewables!

Meanwhile you ignore the risk of accidents like Fukushima - which ACTUALLY HAPPENED - and cost more than a 100% renewable electricity system for the whole of Western Australia. And you call yourself an engineer with integrity?

Peter, this is embarrassing. Next you'll be banging on about your theory that the cost of Fukushima was due to greenie gremlins and that's even more embarrassing.

Do yourself a favor and avoid digging yourself further into a hole of your own creation. Its not doing your reputation any good.

This thread is done - done - done. You can keep ranting on to yourself but I'm done.

Ben Rose,

You can run away and avoid admitting you are wrong - dead wrong. But that's one of the 10 signs of intellectual dishonesty.

Fukushima is one accident in 60 years of nuclear power. It has not caused a single radiation induced fatality and unlikely to be any. I've already explained the costs of accidents are included in the insurance cost. I’ve already explained how risks should be managed by those best able to manage them, so the public purse is responsible for part of the cost. Reread it. The insurance cost covers the total risk. Furthermore it is a trivial cost. You can do a reality check. Nuclear is about the safest of all electricity generation technologies. So insurance - on a level playing field - should be lowest for nuclear. This is the reason I've been urging you to come up with alternative LCOE figures if you believe mine are wrong. If you made the effort to do that you'd realise that with all costs included, nuclear is the least cost way to massively reduce GHG emissions from electricity. Without distortions, there'd be virtually no role for non-hydro renewables. That's the fact that's staring you in the face!

“But now you are coming up with tripe figures out of your head”

Why haven’t you provided your alternative LCOE estimates and the basis for it? Until you do that, we can’t debate rationally. I provide estimates from mostly authoritative sources (some are my own with links). But you don’t provide anything except cherry-picked irrelevant numbers. You have not provided them as LCOE so they can’t be compared. What is frustrating me is that you make unsupported, dismissive remarks about the numbers I’ve provided but you provide nothing relevant.

Your comparison of the cost of an accident and the cost of an RE system for WA is so silly it’s beyond belief that an educated person could be so befuddled.

You’re the one who should feel embarrassed, certainly not me – other than for pointing out the characteristics you’ve displayed so obviously throughout.

Ben Rose,

Until you can provide alternative LCOE figures where you disagree with mine and substantiate them with authoritative sources you cannot be taken seriously.

Just plucking irrelevant numbers that are not properly converted to LCOE, so all numbers are on a consistent basis, is meaningless.

You still haven’t read the references and made a serious attempt to engage and understand.

As for all your anti-nuke nonsense, it’s mostly irrelevant and has been refuted repeatedly in the credible literature. It demonstrates your ignorance about the subject. But you wouldn’t know because you read only that nonsense and won’t read what doesn’t support your ideological beliefs.

As I said, until you provide alternative values to the ones I summarised in points 1 to 12, you have no valid argument and no credibility. You’re just sprouting anti-nuke rhetoric. You’ve been wrong on all the main points relevant to the point under discussion. You haven’t been able to present relevant evidence to support your beliefs. You lost the argument.

Nuclear is the least cost way to reduce GHG emission from electricity.

You can run away and avoid admitting you are wrong - dead wrong. But that's one of the 10 signs of intellectual dishonesty.