John Bennets, you're being dishonest. I told you in an earlier post that I would need to contact the speakers of the seminar in question and I have taken steps to do so.

I also provided a link to the Engineers Australia web page listing the speakers and the topic. If I'm not being prompt enough to suit you, perhaps you might like to contact them yourself.

I am not personally attacking Mr Lang, I am criticising his approach to the discussion and to the topic generally. As I said in an earlier comment, I am not interested in this sort of quasi-religious debate. It suits noone but zealots of either stripe.

I do not insist the discussion proceed in any direction at all. As I said earlier, my only interest is in seeking a solution which is maximally sustainable on as many vectors as possible.

You are only interested in trying to "win" a limited argument, not to hold a wide-ranging discussion. To that extent you and Mr Lang are peas in a pod - proselytes, not inquirers.

That, after all, is the nature of zealotry.

Peter Lang, I suggest you have another read of the intellectual honesty link you supplied, paying particularly attention to the first five.

You said solar power has a much higher cost than nuclear. That statement is correct in some situations and incorrect in others. In both cases the total cost depends on many variables.

The operating cost being cheaper for solar PV is a major factor in the cost, and is a big part of the reason that under certain conditions, solar PV can work out cheaper than nuclear. And it's far more relevant than EROEI. And again I emphasise the intellectual dishonesty of your double standard here.

Regarding EROEI, I have already explained what I believe is wrong with the analysis!
As I posted on Friday, 6 March 2015 10:33:03 AM:
"...Except when it's VERY low, EROEI is never itself the limiting factor for what can be done. Human effort is a far bigger constraint, and although the "underlying authoritative paper" attempts to do this in section 6, it fails dismally! Two fundamental errors it makes are treating labour costs as a constant rather than a variable (ignoring scope for increased mechanization) and assuming the current situation to be the minimum threshold required. And while it notes that cost structures differ considerably, it does not attempt to quantify this difference even though it's more likely than EROEI to be the deciding factor."

With costs so highly dependent on many variables, comparing costs without reasons is almost as useless as comparing projections without assumptions.

Till there are effective batteries solar and wind are mere Green mumbo-jumbo. Stateigicly a mixture wit a core of high capacity generation with major secondary sources (eg solar and wind) offers resilience plus strength through diversity but the green dreams are still technically bankrupt.

A volcano could cloud out solar, a super typhoon blot out wind and terrorists take out a core station but any one effect is unlikely to do all.

Sure, storage is important and so are backup generation sources. Redundancy is a basic engineering concept.

Aidan,

Arguing that solar PV is sometimes cheaper than nuclear is a diversionary tactic – i.e.avoiding dealing with the important issue and instead attempting to divdert discussion diverting to looking at irrelevant exceptions. That’s not honest, and not good faith.

I did not imply solar is never cheaper than nuclear (clearly it is for off grid). But at the scale required to address global emissions, solar can play only a negligible role. So, we should not spend so much time talking about the exceptions, and instead focus our energies on technologies that can make a significant difference – e.g. 75% of electricity generation near emissions free.

The principal justification given for the massive subsidies for renewables is to reduce global GHG emissions. Solar can have negligible effect at cutting global GHG emissions and only at very high cost – e.g. $200-$600/t CO2-e avoided. That’s up to 100 times the international price for carbon credits.

Remember that PV has virtually no capacity value. So, all it's doing is replacing fuel.
Ref. Graham Palmer, 2013, 'Household Solar Photovoltaics: Supplier of Marginal Abatement, or Primary Source of Low-Emission Power?' http://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/5/4/1406

Nuclear has been supplying 75% to 85% of electricity in an industrial economy (France) for over 30 years - at nearly the lowest cost electricity in EU and with emissions intensity of about 10% of Australia’s.

Furthermore, solar is not sustainable as explained in the links I provided earlier. So, it cannot supply a sufficient proportion of global energy to have a significant impact on reducing global emissions.

Your belief about ERoEI is not supported by the evidence. But you can always raise it on the sites or with the journals where the scientific and engineering debate is carried on.

The zealots and deniers are those who deny the relevant facts and continue to try to argue for renewable energy when the facst show so clearly it is a very high cost way to reduce emissions and can't have much effect (compared with what is required. On the contrary, nuclear can.

Peter Lang,

I guess it could in some circumstances be used as a diversionary tactic, but that's not what I'm doing here. The exceptions are highly relevant, particularly in sunny countries like Australia.

Your conjecture that "at the scale required to address global emissions, solar can play only a negligible role" is absolute rubbish! There's no good reason why solar can't play a huge role.

As I have said, I am opposed to the way renewables are currently subsidised. I think they should be funded with concessional loans instead; this has the advantage of ultimately being self financing.

PV has significant capacity value in the situations where demand has traditionally been highest. But even where it is replacing fuel, that's a very important role. Even in France there is still some electricity generated from fossil fuels.

Your claim about solar not being sustainable relies on incorrect assumptions and logical fallacies. YOUR belief about EROEI is not supported by the evidence – I have explained why.

What the anti nuclear zealots and deniers do is irrelevant to this discussion. Your pro nuclear zealotry, assuming it to be the best solution practically everywhere just because it's the best solution in some circumstances, is equally deplorable.