Roses1,

Let’s get this straight from the start. You've demonstrated in previous threads your opinions are defined by your ideological beliefs. You are not prepared to conduct a rational debate despite claiming you are a scientist and stating you want a rational debate. You have little understanding of the electricity system, engineering, economics, or policy analysis. Your comments and responses demonstrate intellectually dishonesty. (see ‘10 signs of intellectual dishonesty’ here: http://judithcurry.com/2013/04/20/10-signs-of-intellectual-honesty/ ). You dodged, weaved and snow-jobbed throughout the debate here: http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=16809 . You said you wanted a rational debate but haven’t refuted my statements, references or figures and have refused to admit when the facts demonstrated clearly you are wrong http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=16809&page=0 - see my comments on Nov . 9 and 10 on that thread; they sum up the case against your beliefs in RE. You dodged and weaved and avoided addressing the substance of the points raised. The evidence against your beliefs is clear. You were unable to refute it. It shows clearly that renewables are very high cost and therefore unlikely to succeed. In fact you avoided even reading the references cited.

For those interested there are two excellent recent posts by 'Planning Engineer' here:

"Myths and realities of renewable energy"
http://judithcurry.com/2014/10/22/myths-and-realities-of-renewable-energy/

"More renewables? Watch out for the Duck Curve"
http://judithcurry.com/2014/11/05/more-renewables-watch-out-for-the-duck-curve/

There are a large proportion of excellent comments among the over 1200 comments on these two threads.

And here is another excellent and highly relevant recent post:
'Cognitive bias – how petroleum scientists deal with it'
http://judithcurry.com/2014/11/03/cognitive-bias-how-petroleum-scientists-deal-with-it

Technological optimism, it will be the death of many :)

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/nov/11/interstellar-insane-fantasy-abandoning-earth-political-defeatism

Ben Rose,

Let’s see if we can establish what we agree and disagree on. 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 LCOE for default values with and without nuclear are: $85/MWh and $130/MWh respectively

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. Transmissions costs for renewables are much higher 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.

G'day Peter Lang

Nice comparitive cost calculations, but...

Too bad nuclear remains a political impossibility in Australia.

The recent reminder "we don't want a nuclear waste dump on our land" proves it.

When you get down to the question "where do you want the Reactor built"? No-one wants it near their town, city, nature reserve, native title land, desert or coastal resort.

The effect on house-property prices? Real Estate agents changed the suburban name of Lucas Heights because of the bad reputation of nuclear pushing down house prices.

Even Liberal Prime Ministers and Premiers know not to raise nuclear proposals because local Liberal-National MP's tell them its a vote-loser electorally.

And then there's the taxpayer cost of nuclear subsidies, tax breaks - very much on the scale of Very Fast Trains projects.

Even engineers need to work with the politically possible.

Pete

One area that fascinates me is artificial photosynthesis - doing what plants do only better.

Imagine getting fuel from sunlight, water and CO2.

One researcher working along these lines is Douglas MacFarlane at Monash.

See:

http://monash.edu/news/show/creating-fuel-from-sunlight

And also

http://monash.edu/science-stories/story/harvesting-sunshine/

BTW the cost of photovoltaics fell 99% over the past 30 years. Half the fall occurred during the past six years.

In many parts of California builders are adding solar cells to the rooftops of new houses as a matter of course. The builder retains ownership of the owner and sells the electricity to the occupants at a discount of 20% to the grid.

This year Texas of all places is set to get 10% of its electricity from wind. Last year it was 8.3% but a lot of new capacity is coming on line.

So it goes.

Plantagenet and Steven - I agree; good comments. If you want to read my responses to Peter Lang go to:

http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=16809&page=15