The National Forum   Donate   Your Account   On Line Opinion   Forum   Blogs   Polling   About   
The Forum - On Line Opinion's article discussion area



Syndicate
RSS/XML


RSS 2.0

Main Articles General

Sign In      Register

The Forum > Article Comments > ACCC bells the cat on electricity > Comments

ACCC bells the cat on electricity : Comments

By Graham Young, published 16/7/2018

The ACCC Electricity supply and prices inquiry final report is a tacit acknowledgement that current strategies for CO2 abatement will not work at an affordable price.

  1. Pages:
  2. 1
  3. 2
  4. 3
  5. All
Electricity sector emissions were 184 Mt in both 2001 when the RET began and 2017 when Hazelwood closed. I'm fairly sure spruikers were predicting a steady decline that would handle population growth, air conditioning, electric transport and so on. They keep saying how cheap wind and solar are getting yet power bills go up and subsidies get extended. Time to call b.s. on the renewables fantasy.

According to an SA state govt blurb uranium from Olympic Dam and Four Mile powers 22 gigawatt years of overseas nuclear. Times 8.76 that is 193 Twh. Australia uses about 257 Twh according to the last Energy Update. That nuclear is light water reactors using enriched uranium. Australia should cut a deal for enrichment but reprocess the fuel here and bury the leftovers in the outback.

Meanwhile serious minded people tell us we can do it all with batteries and pumped hydro despite the current insignificance of those technologies. We must start asking if we're being led up the garden path.
Posted by Taswegian, Monday, 16 July 2018 8:59:47 AM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
Thanks for that, Graham. Read it in The Spectator yesterday.
Posted by ttbn, Monday, 16 July 2018 9:44:57 AM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
does not take endless reviews and more wasted money to see that the fraudulent gw industry has pushed electicity prices to ridiculous levels. Do away with handouts to 'renewables' and bring some sanity back to this country. How we need a Trump!
Posted by runner, Monday, 16 July 2018 10:17:45 AM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
Educated, erudite, cogent article Graham. Look, if we compare same with same, with the only difference being the fuel and MSR and a traditional light water reactor. The latter will need years to build and at enormous expense due to the fact these things operate at around 150 atmospheres.

Whereas an MSR is entirely unpressurised. Second of all is the amount of fuel needed. A solid fuelled light water 350MW reactor will need around2551 tons of fuel during a thirty-year operational life. burning less than 1%, with the rest 2550 nuclear waste.

The thorium-powered MSR will burn around one ton during the same period leaving around 1% as far less toxic waste eminently suitable for long life space batteries. These things can be mass produced and factory built and trucked virtually anywhere to operate in far less costly microgrids.

And where the build savings, transmission and reclaimed distribution losses; and massively cheaper fuel.

Could mean power costs per KwH as low a cents.

And use that to massively turbocharge or faltering manufacturing with the cleanest, safest cheapest electricity in the world. and just let the subsequent economic growth take care of revenue shortfalls and the deficit.

And where coal can then be tasked utilising waste heat to provide import replacing liquid transport fuel and gas for the next 700 years! Why ask for a scientific opinion if it's going o be ignored!?

Finally, Bismuth 213 a cancer miracle cure is the product of U233 and that my friend only comes from thorium. And proved in European trials 2006 too be efficacious against stage four ovarian cancer. We've had this stuff for half a century and known for nearly as long that it could cure some cancer if attached to an appropriate cancer antibody.

Yet the death toll for ovarian and or brain cancer remains stubbornly higher than our annual death toll.

Why?

So some of the richest folk can get a few pennies richer!?

All while our economy and others go to hell in a handbasket, killed by energy prices few can afford!
Alan B.
Posted by Alan B., Monday, 16 July 2018 11:48:55 AM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
//Yet the death toll for ovarian and or brain cancer remains stubbornly higher than our annual death toll.//

O... kay.

Maths. Why don't they teach maths at these schools?
Posted by Toni Lavis, Monday, 16 July 2018 11:57:00 AM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
Footnote. Where SAFE nuclear waste burning is included, MSR's can't be underestimated! Is their role as unpressurised and safest in the world, walk away safe, cleanest carbon-free and cheapest electricity in the world. (ivy league professor and economist, Robert Hargreaves) In fact, given the annual billions, we could earn doing this, we might even have to pay some folk to use it?

Like, say, Hospitals and schools?

Further savings and for all time, are available if these things were rolled out as government facilitated and financed, free market, private enterprise co-ops.

Without question, that finance could come from the sale of self-terminating thirty-year government-guaranteed infrastructure bonds.

The only thing preventing any of this, is government intransigence and a few die in a ditch first, recalcitrants? With, I believe, a completely overpowering, personal power first, agenda?
Alan B.
Posted by Alan B., Monday, 16 July 2018 12:15:42 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
Apologies and correction: My first post, should be read as, less than 2 cents per Kwh. Rather than cents per KwH.
Alan B
Posted by Alan B., Monday, 16 July 2018 12:21:32 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
"While developing a nuclear program we need holding and bridging strategies to limit emissions. Efficiency is probably the lowest cost strategy, and an increased use of gas, which emits half as much CO2 as coal, another."

Efficiency and conversion to gas would do nothing towards reducing emissions to a level significantly mitigating AGW (i.e. even if the whole world did it). Also, gas is the bridging path towards the green fantasy of 100% renewables plus storage, so should be discouraged on this basis alone.

The current coal-generation of electricity should be maintained until nuclear reactors (eg, SMRs are imminent)directly supplant coal burning. Finkel meekly accepted the nuclear moratorium without leading the community towards questioning it, and/or, he's a green fantasist. He has severely failed us as Chief-Scientist.
Posted by Luciferase, Monday, 16 July 2018 1:41:34 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
It is amazing that some people are still promoting solar and wind as
being the cheapest energy.
As Graham mentioned the backup costs are denied by these strange people.
There is a study that blows away the prospect of batteries.

http://euanmearns.com/grid-scale-storage-of-renewable-energy-the-impossible-dream/

That article shows the scale of the problem. The UK of course has
nuclear power as part of its backup yet it still would need 14,000
batteries the size of Sth Australia's.

The other brainless possibility offered by the dreamers is to spread
the solar and wind around the whole nation and link it with a high
capacity grid that goes everywhere.
As has been demonstrated Sth Aus is too small to enable such a weather
differential system to be workable.
Some researchers have theorised about how big a country would have to
be to be viable. No one has modeled such a project yet.
The data, weather and power consumption is all available.
The article I read thought that large countries might need 12 times
the maximum demand in generating capacity plus the high capacity grid.
The article thought that might be an educated guess.
I wish I could remember where I read it.
One point my limited maths indicates that the capacity needed would
vary in inverse proportion to the country size, probably exponentially.

I reckon that would make a good PHD project
Posted by Bazz, Monday, 16 July 2018 4:20:45 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
Extracting pure methane from coal with flameless waste nuclear heat, then running it through a water bath then activated carbon, enables energy to be pushed where it's needed and used at the premises, without being exposed to the elements, create a visual eyesore as transmission lines, or lose much in transmission or distribution.

Or create attendant electromagnetic fields that could create health risks. Plus reduce the CO2 produced by as much as 40%. Wherever this pure gas is used in transport or elsewhere as CNG.

Few if any internal combustion engines including diesel can't be re-tuned to run on it. And for diesel, minus particulates or smoke?

And or, turned into jet fuel or a diesel alternative, with the help of an old catalytic conversion process.

Given we did that, pocket the 26+ annual billions we currently spend on fully imported transport fuels.

The carbon retained in the process could be used as the basis of a super lucrative, manmade graphene industry?

Or used with recycled plastic/glass etc to bituminize roads, plus 101 other potential uses?

Currently foregone by just turning this valuable carbon into ash. When we could be creating thousands of new jobs, incomes and new tax flow, as we embrace the 21st century.

One of which would be medical tourism cancer sufferers came here in their new thousands to get their bismuth 213!

Locating the treatment centres where there's current high unemployment would create prospects for depressed regions and attendant service industries. And don't get me started on deionisation dialysis desalination and its promise!

Time to get off the fence, stop prevaricating and or put Australians and the NATIONAL interest first.

Cryovaced and irradiated fresh SAFE halal meat/food, that'll massively extend the shelf life! Whole new chapter!
Alan B.
Posted by Alan B., Monday, 16 July 2018 4:33:29 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
Yet again Graham displays his ignorance. This time his main shortcoming seems to be his failure to recognise the cost of renewables is very location dependent. Some locations are much sunnier than others; some locations are much windier than others. And sites are limited, so it's much easier to serve a low demand with renewables than a high demand. Thus you wouldn't be able to reliably tell from what China does how viable renewables are in Australia even if the hadn't (for political reasons) built more coal fired power stations than they needed.

Despite this, and despite the parts of China with high demand being a lot less sunny than Australia, China is investing heavily in solar panels. Initially they concentrated on solar water heaters as PV was expensive, but now they're installing a lot of PV too.

Graham does make a good point on the technological development of batteries, but rather spoils it with a ridiculous claim about the second law of thermodynamics which seems to indicate a complete lack of understanding of their operation.
Posted by Aidan, Monday, 16 July 2018 4:52:40 PM
Find out more about this user Visit this user's webpage Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
//Extracting pure methane from coal with flameless waste nuclear heat, then running it through a water bath then activated carbon, enables energy to be pushed where it's needed and used at the premises, without being exposed to the elements, create a visual eyesore as transmission lines, or lose much in transmission or distribution.//

Well, electrification was called "the most important engineering achievement of the 20th century" by the National Academy of Engineering. But yeah, sure, let's wind the clock back to the days of the gas lamp. Things were better back in the old days before that punk Westinghouse fouled it all up. [sarcasm]

I do admire the way you keep coming up with these crackpot ideas that, while perhaps technically possible, are invariably impractical, inefficient, uneconomic, prohibitively expensive and/or just plain ludicrous. That's a real skill you've got there, although I can't imagine in what situation it might ever prove useful. Here's a video I think you'll like:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TEdsQmjLMKs

That Sörgel fella wasn't a relative of yours by any chance?
Posted by Toni Lavis, Monday, 16 July 2018 5:07:29 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
Further to my last post, I went looking for the article I mentioned.
No luck, but I did find this 2014 article on working out the amount
of storage needed in a physically large continent wide grid.

http://tinyurl.com/yaoalz4s

Their calculations take into account seasonal sun intensity complete
with all the formulae for varying latitudes etc.
Very well thought out, but nowhere did I see any consideration of
what happens when sequential overcast days occur.
They took a lot of account of seasonal wind speeds etc.
They did not discuss how much additional generation would be needed
to recharge the storage system and when it would be used.
All in all it would be a good starter article for anyone wanting to
get into the subject.
Posted by Bazz, Monday, 16 July 2018 7:05:45 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
"This research shows it’s important to connect climate science with economic science. Too often, social scientists and economists with very little climate science understanding have tried to tell us that climate change is not a problem. Whenever you hear an economist or a social scientist give you a rosy future prediction, take it with a grain of salt. Their opinion is worthless without being backed by physical understanding. And the loudest economists and social scientists often have very little of this physical understanding."

The last paragraph of an article written by Professor John Abraham, he has a specialty in thermal sciences. Dr Abraham uses very conservative degrees of sea level rise to reach the cost levels he writes about.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2018/jul/12/rising-ocean-waters-from-global-warming-could-cost-trillions-of-dollars

It is very unfair to suggest Dr Finkel was inadequate with his Report; he had to provide a Report in a mad house political environment. On one side was the extreme Abbott clique, and on the other the Labor Party with a far better policy on climate.

Science tells us clearly what has happened in the past, present, and what can be expected in the future.

The issue is that climate science has neatly been subsumed by discussion about energy. South Australia keeps getting knocked in relation to blackouts, they happen also in Queensland, NSW
and Tasmania. ACCC Chairman Rod Sims also spoke about price gouging in relation to Corporations ... a major problem when service industries are privatised.

Nations generally are not meeting promises made at Paris, there is conflicting information in relation to India and China; where there is no conflict of data is with climate, eg rain bombs. Oceans warming, ice being lost, and permafrost thawing are being objectively displayed. Take a business as usual approach and ultimately we steal the future from young people. Nature does not lie.
Posted by ant, Tuesday, 17 July 2018 1:58:38 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
Luciferase gave me some articles to read and so it was encouraging to
see that some people are seriously studying a nation wide grid.

After reading the articles I can suggest a way to model the whole
country and know whether their ideas are realistic.
The model would be a computer connected to AEMO's machine which would
track demand in the system, measure wind in areas of Australia via
the wx bureau or simple wx stations located in suitable areas.
So having real figures on wind & solar performance and wx condx then
the model could simulate the switching of current through the grid
and satisfy demand. They could move wind farms with the click of a
mouse to try different locations.
After collecting a year or two's data they could calculate how many
wind farms and solar farms would be needed and how much capacity the
grid would need and the cost.
Storage using ocean cliff tops for Turkey nest ponds hydro would be
reasonable and has been suggested for St Vincent's Gulf.
Posted by Bazz, Friday, 20 July 2018 4:38:39 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
  1. Pages:
  2. 1
  3. 2
  4. 3
  5. All

About Us :: Search :: Discuss :: Feedback :: Legals :: Privacy