John Busby
Frankly, I don’t understand your reference to MacDonalds paper.
As I posted it before, please read the following (I have underlined the relevant statement which demolishes your argument about energy inputs completely):
“Life cycle analysis for Vattenfall's Environmental Product Declaration for its 3090 MWe Forsmark power plant for 2002 has yielded some energy data, which is up to date and certified. It shows energy inputs over 40 years to be 1.35% of the output.
If very low-grade ore of 0.01% U is envisaged - as has been said to make mining uneconomic - the input figure rises to 2.9% of output.”
According to Wikipedia, using life cycle analysis, it takes 4-5 months of energy production from the nuclear plant to fully pay back the initial energy investment. The EROEI is very positive.
I have looked again at Sutherland’s article; even if we discount thorium, we still have resources to last 100,000 years, using breeder reactors, which, contrary to your posting, are proven technologies.
I presume from your postings that you are disconnected from the grid, and run your life only on energy you generate yourself. Also you should not use a motorcar, unless you are running it on bio-fuels that you grow yourself (but lets not forget about the embedded energy in the vehicle) and I’m even wondering whether you should use a computer, to be consistent with your beliefs. As for flying anywhere- well!!
If you are still using the public energy sources now, perhaps you should consider disconnecting and generating all your own energy. The Alchemist (elsewhere in this forum) has some good ideas! Have a look at his solution.
BTW your figures about nuclear power current role in the world are wrong, the correct figures are:
The 445 large commercial reactors contribute about 8% of the world's total energy requirements, and about 17% of its electricity.

Froggie

We will all soon have to adjust to an energy-lean lifestyle something like the one you describe. If we waste precious capital on inappropriate projects like nuclear power we will bring the onset of depletion a little nearer and we will not have the money for the survival technology we will soon all need.

Your figure of 8% for the contribution of nuclear power to the world’s energy is overstated.

From the BP Statistical Review, in 2004 nuclear power provided primary (i.e., thermal) energy equivalent to 634.4 million tonnes of oil from a world total of 10224.4 mtoe, which is 6.1%. Total world electrical generation in 2004 was 17452 TWh, so that 17% of it from nuclear is 2967 TWh, which is equivalent to 2967/12 = 247.2 mtoe, which over 10224.4 is 2.4%.

According to BP the increase in primary energy consumption over 2003 was 10224.4/9800.8, which works out at 4.3%. To provide this annual increment in the world’s primary energy consumption by nuclear power, we would have to build 580 nuclear power stations and mine an extra 116,000 tonnes of uranium every successive year.

Nuclear power cannot replace declining reserves of fossil fuel to any worthwhile extent, so we should be considering the options for our children’s and grandchildren’s lifestyle without it

Author’s reponse to some of the comments.
1. Are the clean, green alternatives pipe-dreams? Studies such as the Australia Institute briefing paper and the Clean Energy Future Report, both referenced in my article, limit themselves to consideration of immediately available technologies. For references to a number of these ‘deep cuts’ studies, see Appendix 1 in the ‘Nuclear Power: No Solution To Climate Change’ report
at <www.melbourne.foe.org.au/documents.htm>.
2. Modest growth of nuclear power in China seems likely, but a large, rapid growth is unlikely.
3. For a short critique of some of the Uranium Information Centre’s misinformation, contact me at <jim.green@foe.org.au>.
4. Someone asks what percentage of plutonium produced in power reactors can be used in weapons. The answer is all or almost all of it, though it may be more difficult and dangerous to use this ‘reactor-grade’ plutonium than weapon grade plutonium, and there may be further limitations such as decreased yield. See Appendix 1 in the ‘Nuclear Power: No Solution To Climate Change’ report.
5. On so-called 3rd and 4th generation reactors, well worth reading recent report at:
<www.greenpeace.org/international/press/reports/nuclearreactorhazards>
6. The comments on solar power do not mention the most immediate large-scale option for the use of solar energy, namely heating water. Water heating typically accounts for one quarter to one third of energy consumption and greenhouse emissions from the residential sector. Solar water heating is quite cheap and simple and efficient.
7. And just to finish, I have done some work advising people on methods to reduce their household energy consumption and to improve comfort and save money. The best house I’ve seen had a quarterly electricity bill of just $7! Remarkably simple - solar water heating and solar electricity, efficient space heating and cooling, and various simple strategies such as insulation and the rest. Capital costs of these investments recovered fairly quickly with huge long-term savings.

Please do not destroy Australia with these ghastly useless wind turbines. They are industrial machines, not natural habitat.

We have them over here in Europe and they are now becoming a global menace. There will be extirpation of eagles. 7,500 birds were killed, heads decapitated, wings sliced off and that was only in one year at one wind farm which had over 350 wind turbines in what was once a remote, beautiful area. The landscape has been desecrated. Unfortunately and reluctantly, nuclear is the only way at present, that is, until we can look at much better forms of renewable energy. Windfarms are not the way to go! They produce a trickle of electricity.

Save your lovely country from the proposed proliferation of wind farms. It is big business for the energy companies, often with grants subsidised by blissfully unaware tax payers.

Do you think wind farms have become a global menace? They are whipping up a gale of fury in Europe.

Beware of any advert enticing you with the 'green dream' marketing hype. Lots of 'save the planet' Not for profit organisations have jumped onto the bandwagon peddling anything green whilst making vast sums of money. Meanwhile they are no longer protecting landscape or bird habitat.
It is rife over here in Europe and the money men march on relentlessly.

One charitable organisation in the UK, whose remit by members is to preserve bird habitat has received a six figured sum of money via an energy company because people switched from their main supplier to renewable energy. Once this initial sum is paid over for every switch to renewables, a percentage of the bill is then paid each year to the charitable or not for profit organisation. There is a huge conflict of interest. Why? Because such organisations are purporting to save our countryside and yet they are being paid by the very companies relentlessly marching on without a care for the environment or landscape.

With such conflict of interest and 'sweetening up' of pressure groups this has resulted in 'free roaming energy companies' choosing where they want to lay the foundations for their industrial machines, with little or no objections from the bodies meant to protect habitat and landscape.

Please beware a lot of money is being made. All is not what it seems.

Global warming is a natural process well deployed by well paid to spread threats and baby-talks of human-made affect. Rejecting a nuke power can factually propose nothing.