Neither the costly RET nor Direct Action have caused Australia's emissions to decline. The promises made at the Paris climate conference mean emissions should be going down over 1% a year instead they are going up 1.3%. On the other hand 15 GW of nuclear baseload power could reduce Australia's emissions by 30%. It will however cost about double the price of coal fired electricity suggesting an implicit carbon price of around $50 per tCO2.

Mini nukes or SMRs when they arrive in the mid 2020s should be as versatile as gas which is likely to be in short supply on the east coast. Globally oil that other fossil fuel will go into steady decline. Nuclear power is ideal for overnight charging of electric cars. Think of 10m EVs each needing an overnight top-up of 10 kwh or so when solar has gone to bed. In practical terms Australia will never achieve low carbon status without nuclear.

Kieran Lark’s sentiments might be right (indeed, I think they are) but the pathway he travels is a bit off-beam. We don’t know what the current public and political consensuses on nuclear energy are. The numbers in favour have been rising, were recently around 50%, and might now be higher. Many reject nuclear because they believe in a 100% renewable future. That’s an unlikely proposition that needs much more debate. Australia is no better or worse a site for nuclear power stations than the 30 or so countries that do host them. Anyway, uninhabited geological stable land is not where a reactor should be sited. Proximity to users and grids is more important than isolation. Our uranium and thorium resources are completely irrelevant – fuel fabricators just buy them at prevailing global prices no matter where they originate. Most radiation fears are indeed irrational – but so are most humans. And while Kieran may be right about future nuclear technologies (I concede to not knowing) he’s a lawyer, not a nuclear engineer and should avoid picking winners. It’s a really tough gig.

These are quibbles in the face of the real challenge, which is to understand and shift the weirdly Aussie aversion to nuclear power. Officially the reason used to be that ‘we don’t need it, we’ve got lots of coal’. Obviously that no longer holds water.

If nuclear progress had not been disrupted in the late 1960s and since, the position now (if learning rates demonstrated up to about 1970 had continued) would be (approximately):

• The overnight capital cost of new nuclear plants would be around 1/10th of what it is now

• Nuclear power would have replaced just about all baseload fossil fuel electricity generation

• This would have avoided around 5 million fatalities since 1980 and about 300,000 in year 2015 alone

• Avoided an additional 85 Gt CO2 since 1980

High learning rates were achieved in the past and could be achieved again with appropriate policies.

more … ‘Nuclear power learning rates – policy implications’ https://judithcurry.com/2016/03/13/nuclear-power-learning-rates-policy-implications/

Home solar with new super-efficient Batteries promises 24/7 energy independence from Engineer run, capital intensive, State grids.

1. What's the non-advertised cost to the taxpayer, of decommissioning reactors in Britain?

2. What are the state security costs for protecting nuclear waste shipments and mini-reactor deliveries from protest groups.

3. I hear the terrorists in Belgium were planning to occupy one of the local reactors there. Might terrorists be able to break into one of those small reactors the authors are planning for Wup Wup? Hopefully the local coppa at Wup Wup can avert disaster.

4. See the report "Nuclear Power Plant Security and Vulnerabilities", US Congressional Research Service, 2014, https://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/homesec/RL34331.pdf

plantagenet,

Instead of cherry picking bits of information and asking questions based on the standard anti-nuke talking points, can I urge you to consider the big picture. If decarbonisation of electricity is what people want, then nuclear is the cheapest way to do it. It's also the safest and cleanest. The fuel is effectively unlimited. It can potentially provide all the world's energy including producing unlimited transport fuels (e.g petrol, diesel, jet fuels). And much cheaper than any other technology. Read the link in my previous comment.

To understand the big picture, please read "Is nuclear the cheapest way to decarbonise electriicty?"
https://judithcurry.com/2016/01/19/is-nuclear-the-cheapest-way-to-decarbonize-electricity/

In short the results presented in the ERP analysis http://erpuk.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/ERP-Flex-Man-Full-Report.pdf show all or mostly new nuclear capacity (an no more weather dependent renewables) is likely to be the cheapest way to decarbonise the GB electricity system to meet the recommended 50 g CO2/kWh target. The ERP analysis used the central estimates from the DECC commissioned Parsons and Brinkerhoff reports (17 July, 2013) here: https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/energy-generation-cost-projections.

31 GW of new nuclear would achieve the 50 g/kWh recommended target for GB electricity system.
32 GW of new nuclear would achieve the same emissions intensity as France's electricity system, i.e. 44 g/kWh.

For comparison, Germany's emissions intensity of electricity is 475 g/kWh, i.e. 10 times higher than France. And it is increasing not decreasing - so much for weather dependent renewables, eh!

A friend of mine was the head of the reactor establishment at Menai in
Sydney. He worked in nuclear power stations in the UK and was pre eminent in the nuclear field in Australia.
His name was Keith Alder OA, deceased SK. He was present in Vienna in
1956 when the Russians described their Chernobyl design.
Other engineers at the conference pointed out a design flaw in that
if the carbon moderators for any reason released the energy stored in
them it would boil the containment vessel.

This is exactly what happened at Chernobyl.

As far as Australia is concerned the first afternoon that the power
goes off as mum is cooking dinner the next morning there will be a demand for nuclear power.

As far as Japan is concerned with hindsight it was foolish to build
power stations on the east coast adjacent to the plate boundaries.
A country with tsunami experience should never have made that mistake.

We also should be careful where we build stations, or anything else for that matter.
Large boulders have been found on cliff tops on the Pacific coast that
could only have got there by a tsunami. There is already one risk
for the east coast in that a large mountain slip into the ocean in Hawii will happen some time in the future.

Ambition to introduce nuclear energy are part of the driving force behind the hysterical war against CO2.

The nuclear industry's whale in the bay is its failure to provide for public risk insurance. The massive damage suffered at Fukushima is being paid for not by the companies benefiting from nuclear energy production but by the surrounding residents and by the taxpayers of the whole nation.

Home insurance companies in Australia long ago varied their policies to include specific exclusion of any damage caused by nuclear processes.

Ask the nuke claque to spell out their proposals for insurance coverage of the population for the supposedly unlikely damage from the mining and storage and processing and transport of fissile material and its use in energy generation.

I agree with most of the article and we have options that may well include factory manufactured, mass produced pebble reactors, which given helium is the preferred coolant, can be sited almost anywhere and brought into production with in days of being trucked in, as wide loads, almost anywhere?

To among a host of other things, support high tech manufacture, our only immediate term future.

We have yet to explore the full potential of thorium, which given the way it consumes its nearly all its fuel, (just a few tons every 25 years) may well be cheaper than coal, which requires millions of tons of carbon creating (mined, transported and washed at considerable cost) coal to be burnt/consumed every year.

Decommissioning? Well even hydro schemes need to be decommissioned and given something can be trucked in, it can have the mounting bolts cut, lifted and be trucked out just as easily, when it's time to decommission?

The large cast iron casks currently used to store nuclear waste, are routinely trucked to storage, as train cargo and somewhere near the middle of a train to avoid giving the driver an overdose of rads.

A piloted road train refueled on route, with regular driver changes, (from pre positioned motorhomes) winding its way through the night to a secret location could be used almost nonstop to truck out an entire obsolete trucked in reactor.

With nobody exposed to more rads anywhere along the way, than they'd be likely to be exposed to, via a single international plane trip?

And given a suitable decent sized and dry tunnel system, say deep in the macpherson ranges, the whole lot just backed in and buried miles inside the deep underground as is?

We have enough thorium it is said, to power the word for as many as 7 centuries, or ourselves for considerably longer if sensibly kept and used here for all the cheap power advantages that would confer on us as we compete with China, which has been experiencing a 30 wages inflation, (the product of massive economic success) for manufactured product market share?
Rhrosty.

Peter, I used to be rather dismissive of ‘learning rates’ when engineers quoted them to offer assurances that some pricey process or other they were developing would automatically become cheaper once it gained traction. But I am no expert and certainly haven’t read the authorities you quote on the subject. Never mind, because it’s not really relevant here. As your graphs show, the nuclear engineering/constructors don’t really need to ‘learn’ anything more than they knew when the overnight costs hit around $1,000/kW, when global cumulative capacity reached 32 GW or so, apparently sometime during the 1970s. In other words further cost reductions due to learning might be nice but are not really needed to make nuclear competitive. Costs simply have to go back to where they were 40 or so years ago. $1,000/kW would make lots of folk happy.

But I do have one more serious issue. You say that nuclear energy “can potentially provide all the world's energy including producing unlimited transport fuels (e.g petrol, diesel, jet fuels)”. That’s a claim of great interest to me because I keep saying that nuclear energy, nice as it might be for replacing all the electricity generated from fossil fuels, still fails to offer substitutes for the other 60% of global fossil fuel applications. Some of that gap is in liquid fuels for transportation and could be filled by electrifying transport. But some aspects of transportation seem intractable to electrification and there are other big gaps left in industrial energy and chemical reductant requirements. You imply that no such gaps exist. Perhaps you mean that they could readily be filled once the potential for abundant cheap nuclear heat and electricity was fully harnessed? Even so, I suspect some major technical problems will remain and substitution by nuclear energy will fall short of 100%.

Tom

Naturally new fangled reactors, with no extended operational record, will have no faults and problems - just as countries from the 1950s thought Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima would be 1 in 1,000 problem free and cheap.

Australia, with its deep experience of reactors, should be the bold new innovator in reactors. No companies can afford the risk - so taxpayer's money will be risked instead.

AUSTRALIAN NEWS

South Australia, with its new waste dump to be, may be the first State to experience new cheap reactors, and pay for them from the State Budget.

INTERNATIONAL TERRORISM

As the fallout from the Belgian explosions settled the plans of terrorists for Belgium's nuclear reactors came to light http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/26/world/europe/belgium-fears-nuclear-plants-are-vulnerable.html?_r=0

"On Friday, the authorities stripped security badges from several workers at one of two plants where all nonessential employees had been sent home hours after the attacks at the Brussels airport and one of the city’s busiest subway stations three days earlier. Video footage of a top official at another Belgian nuclear facility was discovered last year in the apartment of a suspected militant linked to the extremists who unleashed the horror in Paris in November."

Tombee,

Thank you for your question and thank you for asking it in a way that is genuinely seeking information, not simply a rhetorical question or loaded with undertones of advocacy. In answer, there are a few links you might find interesting;

'Zero emissions jet fuel from sea water' http://bravenewclimate.com/2013/01/16/zero-emission-synfuel-from-seawater/

US Navy Research, 'Converting sea water to Navy jset fuel': http://www.defensetech.org/2012/10/02/converting-sea-water-to-navy-jet-fuel/

"Is Audi's carbon neutral diesel a game changer" http://www.energytrendsinsider.com/2015/04/30/is-audis-carbon-neutral-diesel-a-game-changer/
This last link is to an independent cost estimate. However, the estimated cost of $3-$6/gallon using current technology would be roughly halved if the hydrogen is produced by high temp nuclear reactors instead of by electroloysis.

Meanwhile some interesting reading on the dirty little secrets of the nuclear industry. The first one only covers the USA. The situation would be much worse by many degrees in Russia and the former Soviet Union, and of course China too.
Check out these essays:
The Dirty Deadly Front End of Nuclear Power: 15,000 abandoned Uranium Mines
Nuclear Waste Creates Casualties of War In Missouri
Nuclear Power: Dead in the Water it Poisoned

Also keep in mind that the humanly created world-mummery is becoming more and more (psychotically) chaotic every day. And it is NOT going to get any better if the current patterns and momentum continue.

Another essay on the toxic legacy of the nuclear industry: keeping in mind that it is almost impossible to separate the use of nuclear energy and its association with nuclear weapons.

Indigenous World Under a Nuclear Cloud by Ryser,Sherwood and Lafferty.

So if we propose to have solar and battery systems let us do an exerise.
Define the number of overcast days to maintain service. X = 4.

Then the size of the system for one days generation = Y
Therefore the system size is Y x (X+1+Z) where Z = battery losses.

Can you afford it ?

Peter, Daffy, Tombee, there is a solution to all the points raised:

We should import a guy called Kirk Soronsen from the US.

Kirk has the expertise to begin developing the use of what is known as the LFTR (lifter for short) which is a Liquid Floride Thorium Reactor, which when operational provides a reactor which cannot melt down, does not use high pressure coolant, can consume existing nuclear waste, provides electricity, much needed medical isotopes and coupled with additional infrastructure, can produce liquid and gas fuels in abundance to solve the transportation issues mentioned by others.

Additionally, the silly security issues raised by Plantagenet are irrelevant in this case due to the design implications of a LFTR. The link below is to a YouTube video well worth watching. It's not a short video but very important and highly informative.

Traditional high pressure nuclear reactor power remains dangerous, waste will always be a problem, the LFTR removes all this, Australia should get on the front foot of this technology, before someone else does and we end up paying a lot more for energy in the near future.

See http://youtu.be/P9M__yYbsZ4

You will be enlightened

Sadly humans cannot be trusted with such risky things as nuclear power.
Especially greedy, selfish, right wing humans.

Yes certainly you beaut new reactors that have no sustained record of real-world industry operation can only live up to the cheapness and safety claims of their spruikers imaginations'...

Meanwhile in the known, real world of TERRORISM euronews reported, 23 March 2016 http://www.euronews.com/2016/03/23/belgium-ups-security-at-nuclear-plants-following-brussels-bombings/

BELGIUM UPS SECURITY AT NUCLEAR PLANTS FOLLOWING BRUSSELS BOMBINGS

Security has been stepped up at NUCLEAR plants around Belgium amid fears they could be the next target after the Brussels attacks.
The alert follows the discovery of secret footage of a senior Belgian NUCLEAR official, in the Belgian flat of one of the suspects linked to the Paris terror attacks.

It’s understood to have contained dozens of hours of covert footage of an unnamed director of the Belgian NUCLEAR research and developement programme.

Increased security measures include more surveillance and the checking of vehicles by police and the army.

Non-essential staff at the Doel and Tihange [NUCLEAR] plants have been sent home although key staff will remain in order to ensure the plants continue to operate. This is because there are concerns that vetting procedures of staff may not be sufficiently rigorous.

It is understood that one of the accused in the Sharia4Belgium trial in Antwerp who is currently fighting in Syria had been a [NUCLEAR] technician at the Doel plant for three years."

________________________________________________________________

So workers for those little NUCLEAR reactors, which may be technically ideal sited in Port Phillip Bay, Jervis Bay and Byron Bay, will need high level security measures because of the known high security risks of NUCLEAR plants.

With increasing attention from Islamist Terrorists.

This is also noting the high sensitivity of the SMALL nuclear reactor at Lucas Heights.

Yeah Planta we all believe that, not. Anything to keep the sheeple scared and in line, what a joke.

I was not referring to cur current nuclear technology.

Learn about LFTR technology and you can then comment toward what I was talking about.

This is a good debate that Australia needs - keep it going!

why don't people discuss the health issues?
millions die every year because of the burning of fossil fuels!
?

Get Real,

You and other readers might find this interesting:
"Nuclear power learning rates: policy implications"
https://judithcurry.com/2016/03/13/nuclear-power-learning-rates-policy-implications/

Some of the key results:

"If nuclear progress had not been disrupted in the late 1960s and since, the position now (if learning rates demonstrated up to about 1970 had continued) would be (approximately):

• The overnight capital cost of new nuclear plants would be around 1/10th of what it is now

• Nuclear power would have replaced just about all baseload fossil fuel electricity generation

• This would have avoided around 5 million fatalities since 1980 and about 300,000 in year 2015 alone

"The latest story on “green energy” here at the German online FOCUS magazine actually shocked me. Europe’s energy policy is, under the bottom line, costing the lives of tens of thousands of citizens – all at the holy altar of “climate protection”. FOCUS reports: In 2014 in Europe there were about 40,000 winter deaths because millions of people were unable to pay for their electric bills – the so-called energy poverty currently impacts about ten percent of all Europeans. In the past 8 years the price of electricity in Europe has climbed by an average of 42 percent. The consequences of energy poverty are profound: tens of thousands of deaths every year, millions losing their power. --Pierre Gosselin, No Tricks Zone, 29 March 2016"
http://notrickszone.com/2016/03/29/europe-lets-its-citizens-to-freeze-to-death-40000-dead-in-winter-2014-as-energy-poverty-explodes/#sthash.VLVnKbST.4EREnmuQ.dpbs

"The fact that Germany is a world leader in green power is by now familiar. Much less familiar is the price the country is paying for it, not just in cold hard cash, but in growing losses and dislocations across the entire economy. The losers include once-stalwart utility giants like E.ON and RWE that are struggling with rising debt and falling shares. Manufacturing companies, from chemicals maker BASF to carbon fiber producer SGL Carbon, have shifted investments abroad, where energy costs are often a fraction of Germany’s. Losers include laid-off workers in these industries, but also millions of ordinary consumers. Their utility bills have skyrocketed, largely driven by subsidies for eco-friendly fuels. Germany’s “green” revolution has a dark shadow. --Gilbert Kreijger, Stefan Theil and Allison Williams, Handelsblatt, 24 March 2016"

"ENERGY TRANSITION - How to Kill an Industry"
https://global.handelsblatt.com/edition/396/ressort/companies-markets/article/how-to-kill-an-industry

"3) How The Poor Bear The Brunt Of Europe’s Obsession With Global Warming"http://dailycaller.com/2016/03/25/how-the-poor-bear-the-brunt-of-europes-obsession-with-global-warming

Without nuclear global warming is impossible to avoid.

There is no rational justification for excluding the world's safest and cheapest zero carbon emission technology.

Yes indeedy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_fluoride_thorium_reactor#Disadvantages

LFTA would be a great challenge that Australia's deep experience in operating power reactors should manfully lead. Australia, after all, has deep pockets. We should disregard the hesitation of nuclear reactor experienced countries.

While companies shy away from the technical and financial risks the reactor spruikers are perfectly ready to outlay $Billions in taxpayers' money to:

- privatize the profits

- and publicize the losses

Reactors never fail and are cheap to build, decommission and clean up.

"SECURITY IS FOR FREE"

However 1,000s of extra nuclear security officers (extra ASIO, AFP, State Police, Special Forces and assault rifle armed private security) would be needed around Australia:

- some undercover in protest groups

- many more involved in electronic monitoring of protest groups and Terrorism cells

- some in nuclear convoy (truck and train) protection and

- some minding the long razor wire perimeter fences around even SMALL reactors

But nuclear spruikers know all about security?

Don't you.

As Plantagenet notes with sarcasm: "Nuclear spruikers know all about security."

To add to this they also know all about public risk insurance.

They're just too coy to talk about it.

Happy to let the mug public pick up that tab.

EmperorJulian,

You display your ignorance - probably a result of reading only anti-nuke propaganda.

Read about the US Price-Anderson Act here: http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/fact-sheets/nuclear-insurance.html

The fact is only nuclear would be economically viable if all technologies had to insure for the fatalities they cause. To understand this let’s estimate how much would society need to subsidise nuclear, or penalize other electricity generators, to equalize the compensation costs so all technologies pay for the fatalities they cause? Viewed another way, how much would we need to subsidise nuclear to reward the comparatively higher safety of nuclear power?

A rough calculation shows we should subsidise nuclear by $140/MWh to substitute for coal-fired generation and $37/MWh to substitute for gas fired generation in the USA (it’s different in each country). In that case, consumers should be paid around $50/MWh to consume nuclear generated electricity.

See here for the basis of estimate: https://judithcurry.com/2016/01/19/is-nuclear-the-cheapest-way-to-decarbonize-electricity/#comment-759092

Inputs used for the estimate:

1. Value of a Statistical Life (VSL) in USA = $9.4 million (2015, https://www.transportation.gov/sites/dot.gov/files/docs/VSL2015_0.pdf )

2. Fatalities per TWh (Source Forbes http://nextbigfuture.com/2012/06/deaths-by-energy-source-in-forbes.html )

Coal electricity, world avg. = 60 (50% of electricity)
Coal electricity, China = 90
Coal, U.S. = 15 (44% U.S. electricity)
Natural Gas = 4 (20% global electricity)
Solar (rooftop) = 0.44 (0.2% global electricity)
Wind = 0.15 (1.6% global electricity)
Hydro, world avg. = 1.4 (15% global electricity)
Nuclear, world avg. = 0.09 (12% global electricity w/Chern&Fukush)

Results:

If each technology was required to pay insurance or compensation for the annual cost of fatalities caused by that technology, the amounts they would have to pay per MWh are:

Technology $/MWh
Coal 141
Nat gas 38
Hydro 13
Solar 4
Nuclear 1

Or, if each technology is not penalized for the fatalities it causes, society should subsidise nuclear $140/MWh to substitute for coal and $37/MWh to substitute for natural gas generation.

Thanks EJ

Nuclear spruikers indeed minimize the huge problem of nuclear public risk insurance.

Despite its private enterprise facade, when huge bills need paying nuclear power becomes a government (taxpayer funded) business.

New reactors (even you beaut "cheap and safe" technologies) can't be built without government financial and sales guarantees.

New reactors need a shield from liabilities in case of accident. Normal business concepts don’t work here. And the insurance can't get priced into the nuclear cost-benefit analysis.

If a nuclear clean up insurance bill was paid by private industry, it would rapidly bankrupt the reactor operating company.

So the residents of Adelaide, Melbourne, North Sydney or Byron Bay will pay for those "act of God" nuclear events or insider mistakes.

Islamic terrorists are also beginning to notice vulnerabilities. Even remote threats worry if "nuclear" is in the headline. Maybe "nuclear" attracts bad associations - who knows.

In that regard see March 22, 2016 news “BREAKING: Belgian nuclear power plants evacuated” after terror attacks — Multiple reactor sites cleared “amid heightened fears of another attack”

http://enenews.com/breaking-belgian-nuclear-power-plants-evacuated-after-terror-attacks-multiple-reactor-sites-cleared-amid-heightened-fears-another-attack-military-armed-police-scene-capital-city-lockdown-afte which includes:

Reuters, Mar 22, 2016: Belgium’s Tihange nuclear power plant evacuated-VTM — Belgium’s Tihange nuclear power plant has been evacuated, public broadcaster VTM said without giving further details. Tihange could not immediately be reached for comment. “The police have evacuated the Tihange nuclear station,” VTM said, citing police sources.

Plantagenet,

You forgot the anti aircraft gun at the power stations and the camps at Nauru for demonstrators.

You can always count on Greenies for baseless fear mongering.

Giday Shadow Minny

If I'm a Greenie I'd think Sarah Hanson-Young (girl with kaleidoscope eyes) http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/image/4355814-3x4-700x933.jpg

would use her real biceps to chuck me out of The Party.

A recent exhibit of my craft:

http://gentleseas.blogspot.com.au/2016/03/the-future-french-ssn-and-ssbn-programs.html

Cheers

Pete

plantagenet,

The fact you are so irrational, emotional, have a closed mind and intellectually dishonest
https://judithcurry.com/2013/04/20/10-signs-of-intellectual-honesty/
when discussing nuclear power, suggests you could not be trusted on anything. Your comments come across to me as an example of a real denier. If you want to change the impression you give, you might want to consider this:
"A flowchart to help you determine if you’re having a rational discussion"
http://twentytwowords.com/a-flowchart-to-help-you-determine-if-youre-having-a-rational-discussion/

A lot of flannel from the nuke claque but still not a word about who pays for the public insurance for mining, ore processing, transport, storage of fissile materials and their use in energy generation.

If their latest propaganda attack on the safety of the public becomes a national conversation, adequate public risk insurance for events which they insist won't happen will feature centrally in trashing their case.

In Japan, those who own the Fukishima plant from which nothing could go wrong haven't paid a brass cent to compensate the people. Guess who's paying to insure the Europeans against any attack on nuclear facilities by Moslem terrorists. Guess who's paying for the heightened security around the plants. Y'got it - the mug public.

By the way, anyone know what French householders compared with German householders pay per unit for electricity?

Spot on EmperorJulian

Further on the nuclear spruikers denial of responsibility for Fukushima's nuclear cleanup.

According to the UK Financial Times, the Fukushima nuclear disaster has cost Japan US$118 BILLION to date and Tokyo Electric Power (TEPCO's) shareholders have picked up only 20 per-cent of the tab.
The Japanese government and consumers paid the rest.

Nuclear operators are not required to have the capital to cover the costs of a giant disaster and they do not have the insurance coverage either. That means that the government, taxpayers and specific utility customers have to pay.

This discussion may well be redundant. I doubt we have the money to
build a fleet of nuclear power stations.
To complicate matters we may for economic reasons abandon coal as an energy source.
Australia is better off than most, but it will become uneconomic eventually.
Some coal fields cannot be developed without destroying our food and water supplies.
We are already in the process of abandoning oil.

Some of Rhosties suggestion would seem viable but they just never seem
to get taken up. Are the costs when multiplied up more than can be afforded ?

Solar & batteries already seem to be flogging a dead horse.
We might already be seeing the start of a civilisation reset !

plantagenet,

Apologies, it appears that not only greenies resort to baseless fear mongering. Thousands of security personnel required, what BS.

All the hysteria over the taxpayer being hurt by nuclear applies 10 fold to renewable power, where subsidies paid to renewables have contributed significantly to push the price of electricity through the roof. Where Aus a few decades ago had one of the lowest costs of power in the world, it now has one of the highest.

Nuclear power could be built on the sites of existing brown coal stations such as Hazelwood, where the land is already a moonscape, and there is already a strong connection to the network and a source of cooling water and ponds. Reprocessing plants could enable Aus not only to accept and process waste, but use it to produce fuel rods to burn in Candu reactors etc to reduce the risk of proliferation without the need for expensive enrichment facilities.

What we have instead is greenies that are generally technological pygmies whose sole function in life is to stop anything wanting to block nuclear, CSG, and even wind farms. These pinheads try to claim that base load is a myth and are oblivious to the dangers to the network of unreliable wind and solar plants to the network.

Until such time as reliable and cost effective renewable base load is available the choices are nuclear or climate change.

There is currently on the Resiliance.org web site an article about
the closing of coal fired power stations being closed but that world
wide there is an increase in new coal fired power stations.

I suspect that this comes about because grid operators are realising
that wind and solar cannot do the job.
If enough solar stations and wind was built we could power everything.
However no one takes into account a series of overcast days and
windless nights.
You have to generate and store in one sunny day enough power for all
those overcast days plus that day and have enough to start up the next
sunny day.
The cost of such a system increases dramatically by the number of
overcast days you decide to cover.
The difficulty is for how many overcast days do you cater ?
Would it ever be possible to build batteries big enough to supply
say NSW for five days plus one ?
Are there locations anywhere that dams could store enough for 6 days ?

What happens when there are six overcast days ?
Are these the reasons that grid operators and governments are building
more coal fired stations ?

The catch is worldwide coal is leaving us anyway.
What system is ready to build now at maximum base load scale ?
If the only answer is nuclear then how do we overcome the insurance problem ?

Lots of ideas about but nothing at proven base load scale.
I do not see any politician or industry tackling the problem with
a strong dose of realism.

Hi Shadow Mini

I had a decko at the dirty brown coal Hazelwood Power Station - see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hazelwood_Power_Station which is past its economic/wear and tear Use By date.

As Hazelwood is a 1,600 MW power station it would probably need 2 x standard 1000 MW reactors to replace it. Its not clear however whether there is sufficient economic water flow to keep such reactors cool.

The 1,000 MW reactors should ideally be of a well tested, economically proven type - probably meaning https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light-water_reactor

The beauty of large reactors is also that provision of security is more concentrated hence economic than protecting small reactors in Wup Wups all over the countryside.

Also - use of already proven and costed large reactors would be easier to politically and economically sell than immature small un-business proven LFTR small reactors projects all over Australia.

Victoria is as NIMBY as South Australia but at least Victoria has the money and the right economic size and user distribution profile to better utilise large reactors.

Perhaps more politically robust NSW will need to lead the way with one or two large reactors in the Hunter Valley to make the idea palatable.

All longish term, 40 to 50 years until the reactors are working - mind you.

So the above may be viable - especially if the price of hydrocarbons (coal/gas/oil) goes up (as it will) making proven Uranium reactors more competitive.

Pete

Plant,

There is no water shortage at Hazelwood, and the water cooling ponds designed for 8x 300MW condensing turbines of 1970s vintage would easily cope with 3 x 1000MW or 2x 1500MW nukes.

Given the several large brown coal plants in close proximity, these could easily be replaced with Nukes dramatically reducing the CO2 produced.

These could be built in a decade, any longer would be due to Greenie whining.

plantagenet,

Do you understand what rational discussion means? In case you don't here is a flow chart to allow you to determine if you are having a rational discussion: http://twentytwowords.com/a-flowchart-to-help-you-determine-if-youre-having-a-rational-discussion/

You commented above:

"Further on the nuclear spruikers denial of responsibility for Fukushima's nuclear cleanup."

Could you remind Online Opinion readers how many people died as a result of radiation leakage from Fukushima
[Hint: Answer = 0, and likely there will never be any fatalities resulting from the nuclear accident. All the fatalities were due to the tsunami and the evacuation forced by government as a result of the irrational fear caused by the anti-nukes "Who Killed Hamako Watanabe?" http://euanmearns.com/who-killed-hamako-watanabe/ ].

Given that there were no fatalities and never likely to be any from the nuclear accident, was there a rational justification for the evacuation?

What is the cost of the response and clean up per fatality (including long term)?

How does that cost per fatality compare with the cost of responses to fatalities from other energy chains?

How does the cost compare with the Value of a Statistical Life?

Given you are capable of determining these numbers, on what objective and rational basis do you continue to hold your fears and how do you think your doomsday preaching is benefiting humanity?

BTW, since you are interested in submarines, can you tell me how many fatalities have been caused by radiation related causes in nuclear powered submarines over the past 60 years?

Hi Shadow Minister

Thanks for the water source for Hazelwood's reactors info.

I also thought that Victoria could build a 1,000 MW reactor on the coast southeast of Melbourne. As well as servicing Melbourne some of its capacity could be set aside for the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victorian_Desalination_Plant .

The desalination plant is apparently in standby mode due to current higher rainfull but sooner or later drought will return and it will at last be needed.

I understand the always on nature of nuclear reactors is well suited to being networked to desalinators.
____________________________________________________________

Hi Peter Lang

Thanks for all those questions - maybe you haven't read my Friday, 1 April 2016 12:09:13 PM post on this thread.

Cheers

Pete

Plant,

Your comment is not relevant to your question I answered. It seems your approach to dealing with facts that show how baseless your beliefs are and to questions you don't like is to avoid addressing them. That is #4 of the '10 signs of intellectual dishonesty'. You practice most or perhaps all of the '10 signs of intellectually dishonesty' in comments on Online Opinion. That is a fair indication of what the quality and intellectual integrity of your work and your web site would be like - i.e. rubbish.

'10 signs of intellectual dishonesty'
https://judithcurry.com/2013/04/20/10-signs-of-intellectual-honesty/

Hi P L

There's a whole neclear world out there beyond your hangups http://gentleseas.blogspot.com.au/2016/04/trumps-nuclear-triad-amazing-knowledge.html

I'm with Geoff of Perth. While there are thousands of ways to do nuclear power, and dozens of new nuclear waste-eating breeder reactor designs to choose from, my favourite is the LFTR.

LFTR's *cannot* melt down as they are already a liquid.

LFTR's require power to hold the liquid fuel up in the reactor (the only place it can fission and maintain heat). If there’s a power failure all the liquid drains down into a safe drain tank that leaks decay heat passively. No backup generators required. No power required. No humans required. Power failure = gravity takes over.

Also, the hot liquid salt that carries the nuclear fuel dries into a solid at 450 degrees C! So even if someone shot a missile into it, the liquid salt dries almost instantly and would fall to earth in that locality, preventing radiation spreading across the continent.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_fluoride_thorium_reactor#Safety

Banning modern nuclear power plants because of Chernobyl or Fukushima is worse than banning modern aviation because of the Hindenburg. There are so many new passive safety systems that it is hard to list them.

What has scared the nuke industry into this recent concerted propaganda attack on the people's safety?

I think I've guessed it: renewable energy is getting cheaper in comparison with carbon-based energy which is itself falling in price, and now household energy storage prices have plummeted. "Now-or-never" is breathing down the nuke-heads' necks.

If their last weapon, the AGW scam, loses its appeal that's the end of the uranium dream. Thorium won't replace it as it doesn't have a lucrative weapons potential.

EJ,
The people advocating for nuclear power are not connected to nuclear generation, just people technically competent enough to grasp the concepts.

The reality is that for all the promise of green pinheads, while the cost of generating renewable power per has dropped, it is still more expensive than fossil fuels or nuclear, and the problem of continuous reliable supply from renewables is all but a fantasy. The % of electrical power generated from renewables hasn't changed in 3 decades, and it is clear that the green groups are more interested in ideology than actually saving the planet.

For the foreseeable future, the choice for the bulk of energy generation will be either fossil or nuclear.

The nuke heads duck and weave by conflating thorium power with uranium power (thorium power is safe therefore uranium power is safe), and by conflating death statistics with total damage (fewer deaths than e.g. road fatalities, coalmine poisoning etc etc – therefore no need to insure against total damage). Meanwhile they're in an all-fired hurry to advance uranium energy production before anything else like Chernobyl and Fukushima happens to turn global opinion even further against their ambitions.

What makes deaths due to the uranium process (from ore in the ground to working energy plants to radioactive waste) easy for the nuke heads to weasel out of confronting is their statistical nature, the same statistical nature that allowed the tobacco and asbestos industries to survive for so long (how is this or that individual's death proved to be from smoking, or from asbestos?) Some years ago Dr Helen Caldicott published a map showing the geographical distribution of leukaemia in relation to location of nuclear plants. Subsequently a great deal has been published showing the distribution of uranium hot spots. See for example the devastating information at
https://climateviewer.com/2013/11/24/10-most-radioactive-places-on-earth/ .

Meanwhile a new wave of hostility to nuclear energy threatens in the massive stockpile of rusting drums of deadly waste dumped in the English Channel and lurking like an aneurysm ready to rupture without warning. See http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/legacy-danger-old-nuclear-waste-found-in-english-channel-a-893991.html .

No wonder the nuke heads are in such a desperate hurry to rush irreversible changes in our pattern of energy generation in Australia.

The Japanese example of reprocessing shows how simple and inexpensive the nuclear industry is.

Its a snap people - trust me:)

The Diplomat, April 18, 2016 reports http://thediplomat.com/2016/04/why-japans-rokkasho-nuclear-reprocessing-plant-lives-on/

Why Japan's Rokkasho Nuclear Reprocessing Plant Lives On
By Todd Crowell

The central and local governments are too invested in Rokkasho to give up on the project.

Despite the national crisis of confidence in nuclear power following the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi disaster, the example by other countries that have abandoned reprocessing, and proliferation concerns engendered by the growing Japanese stockpile of plutonium, the Rokkasho Reprocessing Plant (RRP) in northern Aomori prefecture lives on.

One reason is Rokkasho enjoys strong support from prefectural and local governments (some, like Rokkasho village, are highly dependent on grants to keep their communities viable), and, more importantly, unwavering support from an entrenched national government, which believes that recycling nuclear fuel is an essential element of Japan’s energy mix.

The reprocessing plant in northern Honshu has a poor reputation for technical glitches and other problems. However there is growing confidence that the technical problems that plagued Rokkasho before the Fukushima accident and which caused an embarrassingly large number of commissioning delays are a thing of the past.

Japan’s utilities, which are counting on Rokkasho’s operation to alleviate their having to hold on to and properly store spent fuel, are committed to Japan’s long-standing program of using mixed uranium and plutonium fuel known as MOX. This was underscored by the two dozen mixed-oxide (MOX) fuel assemblies loaded into the Takahama-3 plant late last year.

Utilities have massive sunk costs, not only in the Rokkasho plant but in the nearly half a dozen other elements of nuclear infrastructure in Aomori prefecture, including a MOX fabrication plant, uranium enrichment plant, and Mutsu Interim (spent fuel) Storage Facility. They are not likely to recover these costs if the centerpiece, Rokkasho, is abandoned.

MORE TO FOLLOW

FROM ABOVE

The utilities are also aware that if Rokkasho is abandoned, Aomori prefecture will insist that they take back the spent fuel currently stored in Rokkasho’s nearly full spent fuel storage pool, adding to their backlog of spent fuel sitting in utility pools.

Aomori prefecture’s Energy Policy Bureau says it is confident that the national government will stick by its promise to complete the RRP, as well as other associated plants such as the MOX fabrication plant, because closing the fuel cycle is an important part of the national energy strategy. The various nuclear activities in the prefecture have over the years brought in approximately 2.8 trillion yen ($25.8 billion) in grants and subsidies, money that has literally kept some of the host communities viable. About 5,000 of Rokkasho village’s 11,000 residents work on Rokkasho and related projects.

The key, of course, is the viability of the Rokkasho plant. It has a long history of delays stretching back to the beginning of construction. The projected operating date has been shoved back about 20 times since construction began in 1997; the latest delay extends the opening to 2018.

However, all of the earlier delays were tied directly to technical difficulties in running the reprocessing equipment, especially the tricky vitrification (glassification) technology. There were problems in running the melting furnaces, an accumulation of platinum group elements, falling bricks and clogging of the lower nozzles, among other problems. These operational problems stemmed from Japan’s stubborn determination to scale up the more primitive reprocessing operations at the Tokai development site rather than buy a tried-and-true system from France.

There is good reason to believe that most of these lengthy teething problems are behind Rokkasho. The latest operational trial run in May 2013 was considered a success even by normally critical groups such as the Citizens Nuclear Information Center, which in the past has published problems at Rokkasho in exhaustive detail. Although the final commissioning test will not be run until the plant gets the Nuclear Regulatory Authority’s (NRA) green light, operators are confident it will work as designed.

MORE TO FOLLOW

FROM ABOVE

“We consider that the technology [is] established,” said a company spokesperson. The prefectural government says it was in general agreement, although it believed that the test had some glitches: “We understand that the problems were overcome – we think.”

That leaves the safety evaluation by the NRA, which faces the time-consuming difficulties of identifying safety standards and then inspecting them on this singular, one-of-a kind technology. As per its latest announcement, the process will take about two years, although some think it might stretch to four years, considering that the NRA is directing its limited resources to confirming the safety of some 20-odd nuclear plants in Japan, whose utility owners are eager to get them back on line producing electricity.

Another indicator of Rokkasho’s centrality to energy policy in Japan is the revival of the MOX program with the insertion of 24 used and new MOX fuel assemblies at the Takahama-3 reactor, the first use of MOX since the Fukushima disaster. Before Fukushima it was expected that 16-18 reactors would use MOX.

Takahama’s owner, the Kansai Electric Power Co., is bringing Takahama 3-4 back on line, pending the lifting of an injunction preventing the reactor from powering up. It was the second station to clear the NRA safety inspection regime, since it was set up in 2012. So far only two reactors, Sendai 1-2 in Kyushu, are in actual operation.

Two other reactors in the Kyushu-Shikoku region are prime candidates for using MOX fuel once they get the regulatory green light to commence operations. The Ikata-3 plant on Shikoku Island, which has also received preliminary approval from the NRA, had earmarked MOX for the Ikata-3 unit. Likely to get approval this year is Kyushu’s Genkai plant complex. Opponents had sought a court injunction to prevent the use of MOX in Genkai-3 once it cleared the NRA inspection. The court dismissed the injunction, saying, “any danger [from using MOX fuel] has not been proven.”

MORE TO FOLLOW

FROM ABOVE - see http://thediplomat.com/2016/04/why-japans-rokkasho-nuclear-reprocessing-plant-lives-on/

The Aomori Energy Policy Board declined to speculate for the record as to what would happen if the Rokkasho plant and its associated facilities, such as the MOX manufacturing plant, should be closed down. It is understood, however, that the prefecture would demand that spent fuel sitting in the Rokkasho spent fuel pool and any dry casks sent to the Mutsu Interim Storage Facility be returned to the owners. They are willing to support a closed fuel cycle, but are not interested in turning Aomori prefecture into a permanent waste repository.

Todd Crowell is Japan correspondent for Anadolu, the Turkish news agency, and previously served as a Senior Writer for Asiaweek. He has contributed to the Christian Science Monitor; Asian Wall Street Journal and other publications.

ENDS

There you have it people. Enrichment and the Uranium/Plutonium REPROCESSING process depicted here is simple.

It only takes thirty years to establish and is as cheap, easy and apolitical as an Eastern Seaboard Very Fast Train Project.

Yes Australia doesn't have the money but we engineers need the jobs and the high incomes a centralised, capital intensive, nuclear industry will yield.

And we need to get our grand nuclear programs in fast due to the:

- threat of relatively cheap, efficient gas/oil/coal power station replacement programs

- the realisation that Greenhouse Gases are either unstoppable or a Greenie con, and

- incoming solar + battery technology may prove too cheap, logical and efficient

This threatens the centralised nuclear electricity model which originated from 1950s-1960s thinking but was becoming discredited by the 1970s.

Thanks for the 10s of Billions of your money - suckers ;-)

Signed

Deep-voiced blokey
Engineer or Physicist

Geez, plantagenet, what's wrong with just giving us the link instead of your daily quota?

Whatever, your obscure point is harpooned by "These operational problems stemmed from Japan’s stubborn determination to scale up the more primitive reprocessing operations at the Tokai development site rather than buy a tried-and-true system from France."

The French experience of 50 years, and of nuclear powered shipping, is safe, cheap, continuous, clean energy. The waste issue is completely over-blown, and South Australia has something to offer on that front, if it's smart.

The solar/battery dream is a non-solution to AGW. The EROEI issue necessitating preposterously massive installation to meet societal needs (assuming EROEI is even greater than 1), residual intermittency issues (i.e. even with battery backup), and the need for almost equivalent capacity fossil-fuel backup, make the solution completely untenable.

I believed in carbon pricing for awhile, but as the money raised would be poured into subsidizing more pointless renewables, while nuclear would continue to be nobbled by the scare-mongering of your ilk, I now reject it.

I won't vote for any party that has a deep, illogical commitment to renewables.

PS Greens latest policy against offshore/onshore detention just shows how divorced from logic the party is. So we ship/fly in those who get as far as indonesia, say, and pass muster as true refugees. If that's not all of them, won't the rest get in boats, and what do we do then? If they're all refugees and we limit our total refugee intake to a figure, what do we do then, and what about those waiting elsewhere in the processing queue? The party runs entirely on hormones and emotion.

The Greens are as coy about stating their bottom line on asylum/immigration as the Pilgerites are about stating their bottom line on Aboriginal relations. What do the Greens propose we actually DO about immigration and asylum seekers? How many do we take? What do we do about importing a Moslem Fifth Column [1]? Concrete policies.

As for the nuke heads, they are utterly dependent on the AGW scam. If it unravels so do they. If there's a disaster like a major leak from the 20 thousand-odd drums of nuclear waste dumped in the English Channel or anywhere else, or the unstoppable trend towards renewable base load power sources continues unabated, and bang goes the head of steam they are working up to support their campaign to endanger the people of Australia with a uranium/plutonium cycle to support GE and a career stream.

[1] http://www.citizenwarrior.com/2015/04/mike-dobbins-gives-public-apology-to.html

Plant and EJ,

I find it somewhat disingenuous to throw around the large numbers involved with nuclear enrichment and reprocessing without comparison to the industry in total.

True Rokkasho has cost $27bn, but it has been operational for more than a decade and not only supplies fuel to 54 reactors (in 2011) refining roughly 8000t p.a. of raw uranium, but in reprocessing the waste product 800t p.a. of spent fuel rods (and producing MOX fuel drastically reduces the total waste by about 95%, produces isotopes for medicine and industry, and enables the consumption of the plutonium by product.

The value of the nuclear power Japan generates in the order of $15bn p.a. worth of power (not incl distribution costs) at a cost lower than the fossil fuel power stations that have to import coal.
Notably France which generates 80% of its power by nuclear and reprocesses the waste also has one of the lowest electricity costs in the EU and relatively little waste.

As for "unstoppable trend towards renewable base load power sources" Dream on. The closest they got after decades of research is the molten salt storage which stores a few additional hours of generation capacity at nearly 10x the cost of coal generation, and more than double the cost of nuclear.

Hi Shadow Minister

Yes. Well. There is that.

Also the prospect of a Trump Presidency* removing the nuclear umbrella protecting Japan has reignited thinking about a nuclear armed Japan.

If one reads up about the Wonderful World of Weapons Grade Plutonium one will notice that a reprocessing plant is an important production preliminary. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weapons-grade#Weapons-grade_plutonium The Japanese may insist that there is heap of reason why Rokkasho could not produce weapons grade but the plant can be modified.

* "Donald Trump has said he is open to the idea of both Japan and South Korea developing their own nuclear weapons" This "would reduce pressure in the United States to come to their defense against North Korea and China."
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2016/03/27/world/politics-diplomacy-world/trump-details-america-first-foreign-policy-views-threatening-withdraw-troops-japan-south-korea/

A Trump Presidency could usher in a most interesting regional nuclear arms race. Australia becoming involved in U enrichment and Pu reprocessing could give us a head start in this race.

Pete

Shaddow Minister,

Excellent comment. But it provides a good of how the anti-nukes (and intellectually dishonest people) behave? When confronted by relevant facts they do not consider them and debate them. Instead they bring up irrelevancies in an attempt to switch discussion away from the relevant facts. This is #4 of the '10 signs of intellectual dishonesty' - in short: "Hey, look over there" https://judithcurry.com/2013/04/20/10-signs-of-intellectual-honesty/

Their repugnant moral values should be pointed out. The anti-nukes are responsible for millions of fatalities worldwide and for electricity prices being around an order of magnitude higher than they would have been if not for their 50 years of dishonest, scaremongering, propaganda campaigns. These people seem to be devoid of emparthy or reasonably moral values.

Had nuclear power continued costs continued to decline as they had been up to about 1970, the people of the world would have been far better off now. They would have had higher GDP per capita, higher living standards, most of the 3 billion people with no or unreliable electricity supply would now have reliable electricity. The world would now be a far better place than it is. Thank the anti-nukes for blocking progress.

Plantagenet is an example of those with the most repugnant moral values.

Shaddow Minister, did you see this link when I posted it previously? https://judithcurry.com/2016/03/13/nuclear-power-learning-rates-policy-implications/

Just for Peter

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=snTaSJk0n_Y

Plant,

Firstly, I would recommend not taking Trumps "open to the idea" being a done deal.

Secondly, reprocessing used fuel rods from commercial reactors is a relatively simple chemical process to separate out the different elements, the plutonium from this process is considered not to be weapons grade, but could be fashioned into a low yield weapon that is dangerous to handle and difficult to store.

Converting reactor grade plutonium or natural uranium to weapons grade requires huge numbers of very expensive high speed centrifuges and dangerous chemicals, which are also used to produce fuel rods, and pretty much any country in the world that is prepared to stump up $20bn or so can do so as well, as has North Korea, India, Pakistan, Israel, Iran, China etc. However, without the centrifuges, the plutonium left from reprocessing is less of a risk than anti nuke activists would make out, and certainly reprocessing reduces the amount of raw uraniam required, drastically reduces the high level waste that needs to be desposed of and enables the plutonium to be burnt up, it can be argued that this reprocessing is actually reducing the risk of proliferation, as well as reducing the cost of nuclear fuel.

America's military hegemony has given the world its longest period of peace, and economic development, however, given China's vast expenditure on its military, and its clear intention to use its new muscle to take what it wants, Korea and Japan need to expand their own capabilities rather than rely on an ally that is an ocean away.

Here's another concern about the safety of nuclear reactors: https://intelnews.org/2016/04/29/01-1894/

TITLE "German nuclear power plant found to be infected with computer viruses"
APRIL 29, 2016 BY JOSEPH FITSANAKIS

The computers of a nuclear power plant in southern Germany have been found to be infected with computer viruses that are designed to steal files and provide attackers with remote control of the system. The power plant, known as Gundremmingen, is located in Germany’s southern district of Günzburg, about 75 miles northwest of the city of Munich. The facility is owned and operated by RWE AG, Germany’s second-largest electricity producer, which is based in Essen, North Rhine-Westphalia. The company provides energy to over 30 million customers throughout Europe.

On Tuesday, a RWE AG spokesperson said cybersecurity experts had discovered a number of computer viruses in a part of the operating system that determines the position of nuclear rods in the power plant. The software on the system was installed in 2008 and has been designed specifically for this task, said the company. The viruses found on it include two programs known as “Conficker” and “W32.Ramnit”. Both are responsible for infecting millions of computers around the world, which run on the Microsoft Windows operating system. The malware seem to be specifically designed to target Microsoft Windows and tend to infect computer systems through the use of memory sticks. Once they infect a computer, they siphon stored files and give attackers remote access to the system when the latter is connected to the Internet. According to RWE AG, viruses were also found on nearly 20 removable data drives, including memory sticks, which were in use by employees at the power plant. However, these data drives were allegedly not connected to the plant’s main operating system.

MORE TO FOLLOW

FROM ABOVE

RWE AG spokespersons insisted this week that “Conficker”, “W32.Ramnit”, and other such malware, did not pose a threat to the nuclear power plant’s computer systems, because the facility is not connected to the Internet. Consequently, it would be impossible for an attacker associated with the viruses to acquire remote access to Gundremmingen’s computer systems. The company did not clarify whether it believed that the viruses had specifically targeted at the power plant. But they insisted that cyber security measures had been strengthened following the discovery of the malware, and said that they had notified Germany’s Federal Office for Information Security (BSI), which is now looking into the incident." ENDS

COMMENT

Beware ex-nuclear technicians who are computer savvy, who then go rogue.

Plant,

You need to take press reports with a pinch of salt. I have been working with industrial control systems for years, and no large plant does control on a windows based PC. The controllers are usually Unix or Linux based. Windows PCs sometimes act as an interface but not a controller.

An as the article said, the computer was not connected to the internet, and so could not be externally controlled. Again, no large industrial plant allows external access to its control network.

It was probably some operator using a dirty USB stick.

Hi Shadow Minister

Yes it did say the plant was separated from the Internet.

Still, the fear of nuclear reactors and other nuclear items is about perceptions that are often out of sync with facts.

Then there is the unlikelihood of nuclear events occurring.

But when they do, even with old plants like Fukushima and Chernobyl, the results are disasters costing societies 10s of $Billions. In Australia it may bring down a Government, like South Australia, if held responsible.

Plant,

Essentially what you are saying is that we should abide by the latest scare campaign. Similar ones are against GM food and CSG gas.

A read of
http://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/society/energy-rethink_nuclear-power-s-economic-meltdown-30-years-after-chernobyl/42109822
will give an idea why the nuke-heads are so urgently seeking that Australia go nuclear before it's too late.

A glance at the map of Europe and Britain at http://www.mapsofworld.com/europe/power-stations.html
will show what Australia would be like if the nuke-heads got their way. Each dot on the map shows a potential hotbed of contamination and source of profits for uninsured providers and careers for nuclear engineers.

Dark suggestions are often made that people who reject the AGW scam are funded by the fossil fuel industry. One wonders who funds the push for countries like Australia to take a punt on nuclear power.

"Scare campaigns" against genetically mangled foods and against CSG?

A bit like the "scare campaigns" against tobacco and asbestos.

I guess "scare campaigns" would cover demands that shoppers should have the right to labels that show what they buy contains and where it came from, and farmers' and other residents' demand for a say in what is mined under their land.

The term "scare campaign" is intended to imply (without the guts to spell it out) that people who insist on these rights are somehow cowardly.

Hi Shadow and EJ

Because of the understandable connection with nuclear bombs, nuclear accidents, and the Nuclear Energy industry's reliance on compulsory funding by taxpayers nuclear energy is unviable in Australia. It will continue to draw huge opposition decades before nuclear energy is produced.

There's is no quick easy type of energy reactor particularly if a new reactor type needs to be developed in Australia - again with compulsory taxpayer money.

As a litmus test of nuclear energy's chances we'll see if any of the current low level and especially intermediate (or higher?) level nuclear waste proposals go anywhere.

If the price of hydrocarbons returns to high levels for a decade or so many swinging voter/citizens and Prime Ministers might begin to look at the comparative cost of nuclear more favourably.

Regards

Pete