Christina
I live off the grid, drive a car fuelled by home made diesel and grow much of my own food. Do you?

I might think like King Midas but I'm no hyprocrite; I know these options are simply unavailable on a large scale. You might try being more polite if you want to win converts.

This is the first objective view of both the opportunities and pitfalls of nuclear-power-for-energy that I have seen for many, many years. Not only that, but quite a lot of it was comprehensible to this layman.

And if I understand it correctly (and there's always a good chance that I haven't), the slogans of the anti-nuclear industry will need to be updated fairly soon.

Christina McPherson kindly summarizes them for us as:

>>- uranium mining and milling is bad for the workers’ health, the community’s health, and the environment
- the total uranium to nuclear waste cycle causes greenhouse gases
- nuclear power increases weapons proliferation, and terrorism risks
- there is no safe way to dispose of nuclear wastes
- the nuclear industry is surrounded with secrecy, suspicion and the erosion of civil liberties
- the whole thing is so bloody expensive that it’s a joke (France’s much-touted nuclear power has huge debt and is propped up, indeed run, by the tax-payer)<<

From my reading of the piece, it would appear that the "front-line nuclear “grunts” at the Centre on the Grove, in Boise, Idaho" are not only aware of these issues, but have included them in their assessment of where the industry can and will go.

Some of the anti-nukes existing complaints are already borderline, even outright contentious. What will they do when they completely run out of valid arguments, I wonder?

I much prefer the assessment of Nuclear Power given by Ian Lowe in the new Quarterly Essay available in newsagents.
Ian was also recently interviewed by Philip Adams on Late Night Live.
Altogether quite persuasive in his dismissal of the nuclear option.

Nearly every other industrial country in the world is ramping up their neuclear generation with plans to increase the percentage of generation 3 fold in the next 20 years. All these governments seem somehow not to have noticed that neuclear is more expensive and obsolete.

The research going into the technologies means that the new plants being built are going to be vastly different from the plants of today.

The only thing that would appear to be still borne would be Australia's climate change policy, especially in the light of the new coal and gas generation coming on line.

Australia is the highest per capita emitter of CO2 and all the carbon trading schemes in the world are not going to help unless a viable base load alternative to coal or gas is found.

A windless evening at 7 o'clock when everone is cooking (peak load) is still going to need generation that present green technologies can never meet.

The greens will simply have to choose between the lesser of two evils. (lead, follow or get out of the way)

Thankyou Peter for your detailed and realistic article.

You've changed your tune since your Big Issue piece last year! There you said Australia was obliged to control the nuclear fuel cycle and leap on the fourth-generation-reactor bandwagon or remain a third-world quarry. Now Generation IV research is concentrated in India and there will be no power (nor money) in it until 2040. That doesn't bode well for seriously addressing any CO2 emissions before that date.

I'm fascinated to read that numerous small reactors are the poison of choice for new adopters. Nuclear goes micropower? Small generators are likely more economically viable (they're small enough to prefabricate, deliver on demand, integrate gradually as demand grows), but they're a poor proposition for *reducing* CO2 emissions; they'd hardly slow emissions growth even if they were inherently carbon-neutral, which they aren't.

Big bad gigawatt-scale power stations are scary enough, but you predict *thousands* of dirty little 50MW "turnkey" reactors all over India, China and other countries with dubious industrial safety records. What are the *real* security and toxicology implications?

Pericles, how have the Idaho grunts incorporated the concern that "the nuclear industry is surrounded with secrecy, suspicion and the erosion of civil liberties" into their predictions? Or other pollution concerns? "Clean" fifth-generation fission reactors aren't even on the radar; it might be 2050 before even an experimental one works and 2070 before they make a dent on stockpiles of toxic waste. That leaves time for a lot of little leaks from dirty little uranium reactors.

anti-green, Taswegian and Shadow Minister, your concerns that the alternatives to nuclear power are worse or more expensive are unfounded. I've written elsewhere on the "base load" furphy, as has the far-better-qualified Mark Diesendorf.

If intermittent generators are numerous, diverse and geographically widespread then their aggregate energy supply is predictable. Very-large-scale integration of variable renewable generation does require some backup from half-decent "peaking" generation (hydro or IGCCGT), but the associated integration costs and potential carbon emissions are often misrepresented.

Moreover, baseload-capable geothermal and solar thermal power are under development, their economics improving much faster than nuclear. Don't underestimate renewables.

xoddam,

I would be interested if you could kindly supply more details regarding your advocacy of wind turbines?
Specifically can you supply the following data?

• The height of the towers you envisage?
• The size and weight of the turbine housing mounted on the towers?
• The amount of concrete required to anchor the tower, including the area and depth of the foundation of the individual towers?
• The diameter of the blades.
• The lower and upper cut off wind speeds?
• Do you agree that the average wind farm operates at about 20% of its nominated capacity?
• Given that wind velocity and direction is not constant but varies from moment to moment. Could you give some indication of the turning forces this has on the tower, since presumable there has to be a resultant changing vector between the wind velocity and angular momentum of the rotating blades?
• The behaviour of the electric grid to variations in output and possible even frequency when coupled to multiple small generators with erratic characteristics.
• I am also interested in the distance between towers, for if adjacent towers are too close they must interact and thus lower their individual out-put? I have heard it said that a turbine located immediately downwind of another by as much as 5 km may suffer output loss. Is this correct?
• Could you comment on noise pollution immediately near the tower and say at 1 km distance?
• Could you comment on loss of bird life and bats etc due to there flight into the path of the rotating blades? Do counts of dead animals make allowance for scavengers removing the dead animals prior to the count?
• The following website [http://www.caithnesswindfarms.co.uk/] provides up to date information on accidents, human injury and loss of life due to wind farms? Do you agree that wind turbines are not entirely blameless from a health and safety point of view?
• Can you supply information on the cost per kw_h of wind compared to coal or nuclear?