Sylvia, In response to your

“What I try to do, …… is to discover the facts, apply appropriate (and I hope transparent) analysis, and there by reach conclusions.”

Coming after your
“Last I heard, cold fusion had been debunked, and belongs in the same category as spoon bending”

Have a look at the following site. One of a few about this subject.
http://www.lenr-canr.org/Collections/USNavy.htm

Hardly iron clad proof but certainly not in the spoon bending category …..yet.

And your attitude is partly what I am frustrated about in these discussions. People do not consider the out of the box thinking that might just be the next big thing. Now although fusion has been promised for years, several countries, USA, France, Japan, Germany, Russia etc are putting in 10 billion dollars into a facility in France to try and prove its potential, with strikingly France putting in a large portion of that. (Funny, France, who has the best nuclear power industry, do they know something?). This is based on pilot program that did generate excess power beyond input. See Pollie message below mine.

And Australia must get involved in this and other areas including wind power, solar etc. There could be big returns. Let’s not close our minds to just economic constraints because can anyone reliably predict all the effects/benefits/problems of a yet to be discovery or breakthrough. Engineers and scientists can provide innovative solutions eg SynRoc. So as a Chemical engineer to a software engineer. Careful about the conclusions one makes, we might miss out on something.

The Big Fish, I think you're confusing two very different areas.

Things that might exist in the future are all very well, but we cannot build them now. Our problem with CO2 coupled with an ever increasing power demand mean that things have to be built now, and the only things that we can build are things for which we already possess the technology.

Out of the box thinking leads to future technologies, but it cannot guarantee to deliver on any particular timescale, so we cannot use it in our planning.

In ten or twenty years time, it might be shown that some of the things we build now were a waste of money, because other technologies have been proved that could have done the job better.

But that's a better situation than finding ourselves up a creek without a paddle because the new technologies didn't deliver, and we didn't build anything else.

Sylvia.

Martin, you dismiss the 20% windfarm figure as being "from single windfarms". The point that you appear to miss is that, at its very best (and assuming that your dispersal and wind conditions mean that "you can average it out", which clearly you can't) you are still only going to have that 20% average (some turbines will be at 100% rated capacity, others at 0%). Sorry, but there is simply no way of getting around that, no matter how much your agenda might wish that it was not the case.

In essence, for all of our current baseload, you would need around 120 000 wind turbines, costing over $200 billion. For some perspective, depending on who you believe, the capital costs for Australia to go completely nuclear (at current baseload) would be aound $50b to $100b. All costs, including decommissioning, would be less than the figure needed for capital costs of wind generators to meet current needs.

Dispersal helps with being able to get power from somewhere so that there is some evening out of periodicity (even though the averaging out would still result in quite a lot of variability), but that 20-odd% is something you somply cannot get away from.

Dennis

Dennis, your “20% of rated capacity” figure is a ‘talking point’ put about by anti wind farm lobby, as is the “120,000 wind turbines” line. They can’t be verified. I understand the capacity factors for Australia’s wind farms varybetween 20% and 50%.

Far from trying to ‘get away’ from this fact, I suggest that despite the amazing factwe don’t have ‘24 hour a day, 365 days a year, very strong winds’, large wind networks can deliver 24/7 at a competitive price. Isn’t the valueof deliverable wind energy the real issue?

What a ‘network’ of wind farms ‘gets around’ though is the fact that, unlike the wnid in one spot, a wind network can always deliver. This is an important point.

I am suggesting that the prospects of wnid farm networks and thermal solar generators tobe viable sources of bulk electricity are excellent. I think thier limitations are greatly exaggerated by competitors, their lobbyists and those they’ve captured.

I think renewable industries deserve political support, if only to provide R&D to enable smart development. The wayto support them si to highlight a few facts and debunk the spin put out by their competitors.

I have one question for you Dennis. Do you think that emitting carbon into the atmosphere has a cost?

I say it does. I think climate change is a paradigm shift that our old ways are unable to cope with. I say it’ll push up the price of coal power thereby making noncarbon alternatives yet more competitive. I also reckon thatrenewable power has better prospects than nuclear power. I say we wean ourselves off coal in the nextfew decades until renewables, in whatever form, can take the entire load.

Do you think that emitting carbon into the atmosphere has a cost?

Where do you stand?

Also see the Howard Government’s Energy White Paperpresentation.
http://www.auswea.com.au/auswea/downloads/Tradewinds/TW2_Sarea_Coates_AGO.pps

Martin these sort of debates never get anywhere. Like Sylvia i'd like to see the gov get the CSIRO to do a wide ranging cost benefit analysis that included all the options. Then we can discuss it with Dennis.

So Dennis when will we get that? Not just on nuclear.
Also when will the government be start a intensive energy effeciency drive for business and domestic users?

BTW just found two new options for desalination plants that use less energy. Tried to pass pass that onto Sydney water but I won't hold my breath that they will get back to me.

Dennis
The reasoned debate seems to be about the wrong subject.

When are we going to have a reasoned debate about how long we can expect to consume the earth's natural resources at an ever increasing rate?

When are we going to have a reasoned debate about what we are going to do when we have exhausted the earth's resources?

When are we going to have some leaders who have a vision which extends beyond the next election?