Coal produces "800 elephants" worth of waste to power a 70 year human lifespan, so that's bad. But it gets worse.

Even 'clean' power like solar PV uses 15 times more building material and 5000 times more land than nuclear. http://tinyurl.com/y2n45cz9

It also quite worryingly produces 300 times the waste per unit of energy than nuclear! http://tinyurl.com/ybpwgrsc By 2050 Australia could have 1.5 MILLION tons of solar e-waste to try and recycle, and we currently don't include that cost in the price of solar installations. http://tinyurl.com/y6clgxa8

Indeed, renewables expert Matthew Stocks (rightly) demanded someone show the cost to decommission nuclear power plants and store the waste. But when asked, he admitted he hadn't done the same for solar! Why does solar 'cost modelling' not include the *huge* task of cleaning up and recycling 300 times the waste? http://tinyurl.com/y8vwdgp4 "Clean" solar is not so clean.

But the real worry is EROEI - Energy Returned over Energy Invested - which measures the energy profit of a power plant after all the energy it cost to build it in the first place. Renewables have an OK EROEI on their own. But what about a 100% renewable grid? What about the energy to build all those pumped-hydro dams as 'batteries' for when the sun goes down and wind goes quiet? The figures on this paper might be a little old, but show that renewables + storage may not even be a high enough energy source to run our world. http://tinyurl.com/ya3c3esp Dr James Hansen — the climatologist that diagnosed our climate problem — says believing in 100% renewables is like believing in the Easter Bunny or Tooth Fairy. http://tinyurl.com/yclaf2sn

ttbn. Your coverage of Chernobyl is mostly correct. A friend of mine
Keith Alder who when he retired was boss at the nuclear reactor in
Sydney. He had worked at nuclear stations in the uk and was involved
with the British nuclear weapon tests at Monte Bello.
He designed the never built Jervis Bay nuclear power station.
I mention all this to give you the source of my information.

In 1956 he was at the Vienna HQ of the Atomic Energy Commission for
a conference on Nuclear Energy. The Russians gave a talk on their
Magnavox power reactor design. They gave a detailed description.
After their presentation a number of attendees rose to speak to draw
attention to what they believed was a design fault.
They pointed out that energy stored in the carbon moderators could in
some circumstances caused instant boiling of the cooling water.

This happened in the test of procedures that ttbn mentioned.
The Russians rejected the warnings of those present.
How much better off we would be if they had taken notice.

An excellent article and what a wonderful comparison with the article by the Greenpeace campaigner a week ago. This article had an engineering and technology focus. The Greenpeace article was marketing driven.

"Recent polling from Greenpeace shows that nearly 70% of people think big businesses should set a target of 100% renewable energy, while 67% of people would prefer to work for a company that uses renewable energy." That's great. Maybe Greenpeace polling will show that 67% of men would like their wives to be as beautiful as a supermodel and 84% of women would like their husbands to bring home a million dollars a week.

This article shows the difficulty of getting to 100% renewables and does it with checkable quantities from good references, not some wish list of hopes and dreams.

I hope we can start planning nuclear power plants soon rather than waiting until coal fired plants are closing down and we don't have any plan for getting the electricity we need. Getting nuclear rolling won't be easy. It will take a long time and needs to be well thought out to address the rational and irrational fears from the general public.

I wonder if the coal industry likes the idea that everyone is afraid of nuclear power? Of course they do. Less competition means more profits.

Another well done to Dr Tom Biegler for not implying that nuclear was a silver bullet that would solve all problems. He is actively in favour of more wind, solar and hydro. He just makes it clear that our energy demands are huge and far too huge for wind, solar and hydro alone.

Combatting global warming will require a group of strategies including population stabilisation, nuclear and negotiations with our neighbours. None of it will be easy, but the sooner we start trying to address it, the better the results will be.

Hi ateday

Very true. Solar cells are receivers of the solar energy created by nuclear FUSION reactions on/in the Sun. http://energyinformative.org/what-is-solar-energy/

Solar cells are a far cheaper and less dangerous means of tapping nuclear energy than any type of nuclear reactor on Earth.

Cheers

Pete

Pete, you really should go back and read the article.
David

I'd love solar to be cheaper than coal but it's only half true. If you *only* look at the cost of solar on a per kilowatt hour to the grid basis, YES, it's cheaper than coal. But when you include real storage to back up our modern cities an industries for cloudy weeks and winter having less sunlight? It's much more expensive. Let alone if you actually cost cleaning it up!