Aidan,

You are offering nothing other than restating your beliefs, but with nothing to back them up. You can’t show that solar can provide a sufficiently large proportion of electricity to make any significant impact on global GHG emissions. You’ve provided nothing. I’ve provided links to authoritative sources. You haven’t shown any flaws in them, for example in the CSIRO calculators.

If you want to support your points, you need to 1) define the requirements of the electricity system, 2) describe the system you advocate, 3) state the time period for implementation and 4) estimate the costs of it compared with the cost of a largely nuclear system to meet the same requirements.

You’re repeating yourself with your assertions “I believe … EROEI … ). Clearly you haven’t followed the debate, the critiques, etc. and don’t understand what you are talking about.

Furthermore, you are clearly the denier and zealot. Because you hang onto your dogmatic beliefs without being able to present any rational argument to support them. Just beliefs. Just dogma.

>“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.”

Strawman, intellectually dishonest! What’s deplorable is that you seem to be obstinately innumerate. You don’t seem to understand scale. Nuclear has been supplying over 75% of a large industrial economy’s electricity for over 30 years (France). That can be repeated across the countries that contribute 80% of the world’s GHG emissions from electricity (over 5 decades or so). The costs of nuclear can come down enormously for many reasons, including by raising the radiation limits and reducing the cost and time required for licensing designs. All this is blocked by irrational zealots like yourself. You’d prefer to talk endlessly about technologies that can make only a trivial effect on GHG emissions and want to avoid talking about those that can make a huge difference. You’re comments suggest you are irrational and a denier of the relevant facts.

Nuclear is Already the least cost way to make large reductions to global GHG emissions - around 1/3 the abatement cost of renewables. It could, and inevitably will, become much cheaper.

The USA has the capacity to enable large GHG emissions reductions globally over the next four or five decades. USA could reduce the cost of nuclear power massively for the whole world. Regulatory ratcheting raised the cost of nuclear generated electricity by a factor of four up to 1990 and at least doubled that since – to a factor of eight increase in cost of nuclear power. There are some 50 small modular (factory) build nuclear power plant designs. But it costs about $1 billion and 10 years delay to get licencing approval. This causes huge risks for potential investors. It is irrational that the safest way of generating electricity by far is prevented from being rolled out to the world. The USA is best placed to lead this. But Obama has done next to nothing other than blame others (like India, and Australia) for not doing enough. The first step should be to get IAEA started on raising the allowable radiation limits for the public. This would lead to major cost reductions (of accidents and insurance) and also be a catalyst to get the public rethinking the nuclear power option. Once the public realises how much safer nuclear is than any other form of electricity generation, the culture change could progress quite rapidly. Then the costs can come down. The USA is by far the most influential and could lead the way to make it a reality.

Once nuclear is cheaper than fossil fuels, including for medium sized electricity grids, and people realise it is the safest way to generate electricity, there will be no need for centrally controlled, top down UN agreements. Low emissions will be rolled out across the world, just as happened in France starting in the 1970’s.

Peter Lang,

Pinting out logical errors is not merely restating my beliefs. And the reason I'm having to restate what I posted before is that you previously ignored it and falsely accused me of having nothing to offer. I suspect the reason for that was because you overlooked it the first time and subsequently chose to dismiss it in order to cover up that error.

Alternatively, perhaps you could provide an explanation of why you think an EROEI of about 7 would be the minimum needed for sustainability... taking into account scope for increased mechanisation and without just assuming the current situation to be the minimum threshold required?

I don't think that lowering nuclear safety standards is a good way of increasing public acceptance of nuclear power, and I resent pseudorational zealots like yourself telling me this makes me an irrational zealot!

You're correct in saying "The costs of nuclear can come down enormously for many reasons". But you seem to have missed the fact that this is also true of renewables, and the cost of solar PV has been falling much faster than that of nuclear. And for thin film PV technology, an EROEI of up to 60 has been estimated – see...
http://www.clca.columbia.edu/7B_SolarToday%20June12_c.pdf
...so even with the use of batteries and accepting the specious minimum of 7, your claims of unsustainability look pretty far fetched.

Titanate solar cells seem to show the most promise, though the first generation of them weren't as durable as expected. We can expect to see far more of them around once those problems are overcome.

You've correctly identified being cheaper than fossil fuels as being the greatest driver of widespread implementation, but you seem to have failed to understand that this is true of renewables as well as nuclear. The same arguments apply, albeit with different figures. And while, obviously, there's a greater need for storage where renewables reach a high market share, storage technology's also something that's rapidly improving.

So with renewable power generation cheaper than fossil fuel, why do you think renewables could make only a trivial effect on GHG emissions?

Responses to your assertions:

1. You haven’t pointed out any logical fallacies. The logical falsies have been yours. You don’t understand that 75% emissions free electricity reduces emissions much more than 2% to 10% emissions free electricity. 75% nuclear is proven to be feasible; renewables cannot achieve that for many reasons: e.g. ERoEI, 10 times more material per MWh produced through life, 10 times more mining, processing, fabricating, manufacturing and transport between all stages of the process, low energy density, high cost transmission or storage.

2. “why is EROEI of about 7 needed for sustainability?” - shows you didn’t read the link. Furthermore, that’s now; the figure increases with time – human’s per capita energy consumption will continue to increase forever, as we’ve been doing since we first learnt to control fire (Primitive Man 8 MJ per day, Technological Man 900 MJ/d.

3. You believe raising the allowable radiation limits is harmful. Raising the limits from As Low As Reasonably Achievable (ALARA) to As High As Relatively Safe (AHARS) would lead to cost reductions and roll out of nuclear over the decades ahead http://home.comcast.net/~robert.hargraves/public_html/RadiationSafety26SixPage.pdf . If nuclear replaced coal electricity generation it would save over a million lives per year now, and over 2 million per year by 2050.

4. “the cost of solar PV has been falling much faster than that of nuclear.”. 1) The cost of nuclear is blocked by the irrational, dishonest scaremongering of the ‘Progressives’ blocking progress. 2) Renewables are many times higher cost than nuclear and not sustainable. So, they cannot increase their proportion of electricity by much, whereas, nuclear can provide all our power and transport fuels as well.

5. Renewables cannot get to be a cheap source of power when supplying a large proportion of the grid. Study the CSIRO eFuture and MyPower calculators. They use optimistic learning curves for renewables and none for nuclear, and still nuclear is far cheaper all the way 2050. And these calculators do not include the $20-$35/MWh higher network costs for renewables.

6. There is negligible chance of renewables becoming cheaper than nuclear or fossil fuels.

Nineteen countries contributed 80% of global emission in 2013. Of these, only four don’t have nuclear power, and three of them are getting it. Guess which country is the laggard. And guess which ideological group is blocking progress … that’s right, those who think they are ‘Progressives’.

Country and cumulative proportion of total global GHG emissions in 2013:
China 29%
USA 45%
India 52%
Russian Federation 57%
Japan 61%
Germany 63%
South Korea 65%
Iran 66%
Saudi Arabia 68%
Canada 69%
Indonesia 71%
Brazil 72%
Mexico 74%
UK 75%
South Africa 76%
Italy 77%
France 78%
Australia 79%
Thailand 80%

Source: Global Carbon Atlas: http://www.globalcarbonatlas.org/?q=en/emissions

The countries that contribute 80% of the world’s emissions are all (except Australia) nuclear capable already or planning to build plants. So nuclear’s proportion of electricity can be ramped up, over time, if it costs less than fossil fuels. If nuclear’s proportion of electricity ramps up to the equivalent of France (i.e. 75%-80%) over the next 5 decades, emissions intensity of electricity could be cut by around the same as France (i.e. 10% of Australia’s). Furthermore, more emissions will be saved as cheap electricity will displace some gas for heating and some petroleum for transport (both as electric vehicles and by producing low emissions liquid fuels http://bravenewclimate.com/2013/01/16/zero-emission-synfuel-from-seawater/ ).

Aidan,

If you re interested to learn about nuclear power, and especially the cost comparisons with renewables and fossil fuels, you may find these sources of interest:

Renewable Limits http://bravenewclimate.com/renewable-limits/

Sustainable Nuclear http://bravenewclimate.com/integral-fast-reactor-ifr-nuclear-power/

Unlimited transport fuels from sea water: http://bravenewclimate.com/2013/01/16/zero-emission-synfuel-from-seawater/

Why renewables are not sustainable:
John Morgan, ‘Catch 22 of Energy Storage’: http://bravenewclimate.com/renewable-limits/

John Morgan’s response to serious critiques: http://bravenewclimate.com/2014/08/22/catch-22-of-energy-storage/#comment-350520

David Mackay, ‘Sustainable Energy without the hot air’: http://www.withouthotair.com/

BREE, AETA reports and models: http://industry.gov.au/industry/Office-of-the-Chief-Economist/Publications/Pages/Australian-energy-technology-assessments.aspx

CSIRO eFuture: http://efuture.csiro.au/#scenarios

CSIRO MyPower: http://www.csiro.au/Outcomes/Energy/MyPower.aspx

‘Zero Carbon Australia – Stationary Energy Plan – critique’: http://bravenewclimate.com/2010/08/12/zca2020-critique/

‘100% renewables for Australia – the cost’ (see summary in Figure 6, and download the spreadsheet to run your own scenarios and sensitivity analyses): http://bravenewclimate.com/2012/02/09/100-renewable-electricity-for-australia-the-cost/

‘Renewables of Nuclear Electricity for Australia – the costs’ (See summary in Figure 6): http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.363.7838&rep=rep1&type=pdf

‘Solar power realities – supply-demand, storage and costs’: http://bravenewclimate.com/2009/08/16/solar-power-realities-supply-demand-storage-and-costs/

‘Solar realities and transmission costs – addendum’: http://bravenewclimate.com/2010/01/09/emission-cuts-realities/

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

System costs for renewables v nuclear:
OECD/NEA ‘System Effects in Low-carbon Electricity Systems’ http://www.oecd-nea.org/ndd/reports/2012/system-effects-exec-sum.pdf

Martin Nicholson and Barry Brook, 2013, ‘Counting the hidden costs of energy’ http://www.energyinachangingclimate.info/Counting%20the%20hidden%20costs%20of%20energy.pdf

Nuclear is the safest way to generate electricity (10 times safer than rooftop PV, 4 times safer than wind):

Forbes: ‘Deaths by energy source’: http://nextbigfuture.com/2012/06/deaths-by-energy-source-in-forbes.html

Allowable radiation levels are set too low:
http://home.comcast.net/~robert.hargraves/public_html/RadiationSafety26SixPage.pdf

Video by Wade Allison, Oxford Uni Professor: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YZ6aL3wv4v0

Wade Allison, OLO, ‘Nuclear Radiation is Relatively Harmless’: http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=15900&page=0

Regulatory Ratcheting increased the cost of nuclear power by a factor of four by 1990: Bernard Cohen, 1991, ‘Costs of nuclear power plants – what went wrong’: http://www.phyast.pitt.edu/~blc/book/chapter9.html

Slide 10 compares the price of electricity versus the CO2 emissions intensity of electricity for selected countries with high proportions of nuclear or high proportions of renewable energy. The numbers in the circles are the emissions intensity of each country/state. Also notice the irony in Slide 14:
http://canadianenergyissues.com/2014/01/29/how-much-does-it-cost-to-reduce-carbon-emissions-a-primer-on-electricity-infrastructure-planning-in-the-age-of-climate-change/

I’ve posted these links so you and other readers can read them and follow the references to original sources if you want to.