Mike Pope states:

"Nuclear power stations can produce electricity at a similar price to geothermal"

Where do you get this drivel? There has not been a viable geothermal station built (of the form they are proposing for Australia) in the world, yet every green loony is proclaiming it as the future of renewable power.

There are many test sites in the world, and no one has yet pulled the rabbit out of the hat.

Nuclear works Now. The question is what is worse global warming or nuclear, you can have one or the other.

I predict dry rock geothermal will go nowhere. The reasons are firstly the low working temperature 250C vs 500C for most boilers though allegedly the use of an ammonia-water mixture will overcome this. Secondly there is little control over the way deep underground granite will provide optimum passage for the water. Third is the energy debt from drilling and the need to drill fresh holes not too far from the generator. This will be needed as the granite cools. So don't rely on dry rock geothermal for anything resembling baseload power.

Another problem with CO2 capture apart from cost and energy penalty is there is simply not enough underground space in Australia to safely bury half a million cubic metres every day for decades. Rudd is either gullible or complicit in delaying tactics by talking it up. Studies suggest that overbuilding wind farms with extra transmission could cost over twice as much as nuclear for comparable output. Solar thermal with molten salt storage will need frequent backup from gas fired generators. Other ideas like storing irregular renewable power in electric cars may never happen on a relevant scale. I think the choice is nukes or CO2 spewing coal power. I prefer the former.

Shadow Minister: "Nuclear works Now."

It depends on how your define "works". Yes we have nuclear technology that produces power now. But this current technology uses so much Uranium that there is only in the ground about to produce a few decades (20-30 years?) worth of the world electricity consumption. Worse, it produces waste that costs enormous amounts to dispose of. When Sweden, the only country I am aware of that hiked its electricity price to account for this added 18c per kW hour - which is more than we pay now for coal base electricity.

This may fit your definition of "works" Shadow, but it sure as hell doesn't fit mine.

Now there are solutions for nuclear powers problems the wings. Fast Breeder reactors change that 20-30 years to centuries or millennium, and they produce short lived waste that only takes a few decades to become relatively safe. Fast Breeder reactors would be a wonderful solution for our future power needs.

However, just like hot rocks - they don't exist. No one has ever built a commercial Fast Breeder reactor. Sure there are experimental ones, but then there is experimental hot rock stuff out there now. And hot rocks, if they worked, would be even more wonderful than nuclear.

The bottom line is no one has working replacement for coal fired power plants. No one. The noise from hot rocks, wind, nuclear is all just sales hype from lobbyists trying to garner a bigger share of the government renewable energy tit. It is amusing to watch people like you Shadow be seduced by the marketing of one side over the other.

"In Australia, geothermal energy is either volcanic in origin or produced from decay of radio-active materials such as uranium, thorium and potassium contained in hot granite rocks 3.5-5km beneath the surface..."
Tell me. why is the safe diposing of waste from nuclear power plants such an apparently insurmountable problem (used as argument against its use) if our Earth has an abundance of such radio active stuff already at an accessible depth beneath the surface?
Nucler Base Load Electricity does appear to be the only sensible, sustainable solution for the foreseable future. To alleviate public concern (no one wants one in their neighbouhood) such plants may have to be built in the outback, with overland powerlines as suggested for the geothermal installations in Australia.

"Australia has the highest per-capita CO2 emissions in the world"

This statement is repeated, variously as per-capita CO2 or Greenhouse Gas emissions, ad-nauseam by the global warming lobby. I'm not sure how this bullsh!t has become conventional wisdom, except perhaps as an exercise in self-flagellation*, but if anyone bothers to do something as simple as a Google, it's easy enough to fact-check that it just ain't so.

Depending on which indicator you use, Australia is ranked variously as 2nd or 3rd to about 11. And that's just on a per-capita basis. In terms of total emissions, Australia barely counts at all.

And can we, for once, have a discussion of climate change that doesn't indulge in ridiculous alarmist statements about flooded cities, ruined economies and millions of lives lost? One can acknowledge the veracity of climate change without resorting to that sort of nonsense.

*Actually, I think I smell the rat here: this notion appears to have been promulgated by Clive Hamilton's Australia Institute, and like so many dubious "reports" ("Australia world's fattest nation!", "Immunisation causes autism!"), picked up unquestioningly by the media, and thus passed into conventional wisdom (I use the term in Galbraith's original, unflattering, context).

Other posts notes that the author is optimistic about geothermal. He is also very optimistic about wind energy. Amasingly he gives a cost per metgawatt for wind that is similar to that of coal. Nonsense! A report produced by the UK’s Royal Academy of Engineering last year entitled The Cost of Generating Electricity gives quite different figures, and that is before they were adjusted for the cost of shadow generation. Wind energy is so variable that the genrators have to back it up by keeping conventional plants operating ready to step in at a moment's notice.. Typically that shadow generating output is kept at 70-80 per cent of a wind farm's output.. (the standard ratio overseas). In other words, wind farms are an expensive and nearly useless way not to offset emissions.
As geothermal is totally unproven anywhere - the costs per MWh quoted are simply fantasy - about the only realistic way to reduce emissions in the short term, assuming that's what we want to do, is to build gas powered plants. Nuclear would be better, I agree, but probably is not politically possible in Australia - not yet, anyway.

There is molten salt technology currently being used in the USA and Spain (commercially I believe) that stores energy from solar thermal power stations and provides baseload electricity. This is cheaper than building nuclear power plants and dealing with the spent fuel rods. If we can't make this work in Australia with all our hours of sun, then we have a serious problem with our thinking.

Phil Matimein

.... and furthermore we will have a surplus of salt from desalination plants. Not that I am entirely happy with desal-plants when we are not doing enough initial catchment of water, but since governments are going ahead with them anyway, at least the by-product could be put to good use.

Of course, I am displaying common-sense here to an issue that is frequently devoid of such thinking.

Rstuart,

http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf75.html
It is commonly asserted that because "the resources of the earth are finite", therefore we must face some day of reckoning, and will need to plan for "negative growth". All this, it is pointed out, is because these resources are being consumed at an increasing rate to support our western lifestyle and to cater for the increasing demands of developing nations. The assertion that we are likely to run out of resources is a re-run of the "Limits to Growth" argument (Club of Rome 1972 popularised by Meadows et al in Limits of Growth at that time. (A useful counter to it is W Berckerman, In Defence of Economic Growth, also Singer, M, Passage to a Human World, Hudson Inst. 1987). In the decade following its publication world bauxite reserves increased 35%, copper 25%, nickel 25%, uranium and coal doubled, gas increased 70% and even oil increased 6%.) fashionable in the early 1970s, which was substantially disowned by its originators, the Club of Rome, and shown up as nonsense with the passing of time. It also echoes similar concerns raised by economists in the 1930s, and by Malthus at the end of the 18th Century.

Don't make the same mistakes that everyone has in the past.

No one says that nuclear is the only solution, but it is the best alternative to coal we have now.

Shadow Minister: "Don't make the same mistakes that everyone has in the past."

I wasn't aware I had made a mistake, or that the Club or Rome had made one. Perhaps you could point it out?

When you do try to avoid statements like one in the link you gave: "But this is the Limits to Growth fallacy, a major intellectual blunder recycled from the 1970s". Saying something like that makes them look like idiots. It also makes them look like industry spin doctors - but I repeat myself.

The Hubert Peak, and the Club of Rome all made their predictions in the 1970's. These predictions proved depressing accurate. In particular The Club of Rome predicted a business as usual approach meant would be hitting resource limits around 2030..2050. Since business did continue how accurate that was. They were a little out as it appears we will start hitting limits in the next decade. But it was an impressive effort nonetheless.

Shadow Minister: "No one says that nuclear is the only solution"

Eh? Did anyone claim otherwise? What I did say is nuclear in its current commercial form isn't a solution at all. But then since we don't have a solution right now I am not holding that against it. Well, no more than I would hold it against hot rocks, solar, wind or any other technology.

You seem think the nuclear technology we use now is a long term solution. It simply isn't. Here, I'll do the figures for you. According to your link, there is 10.5 M tonne of Uranium in the ground. World Energy production is 20 T watts per year. It takes 200 tonnes of U to produce 1 GW year of electricity. So we have (10.5 M / 200) / (20 T / 1G) = 26.6 years of Uranium reserves if we swapped over to pure nuclear now.

Electricity use: http://www.indexmundi.com/world/electricity_production.html
Uranium used: http://enochthered.wordpress.com/2008/03/27/expansion-at-olympic-dam-means-increased-energy-inputs-of-course/

Fractelle: "surplus of salt from desalination plants"

Desalination plants don't produce salt. They produce sea water slightly more salty than normal.

The only reason there are no HDR Geothermal plants successfully operating in the world is COMPETITION for DRILLING RIGS.

In a bun fight between the oil companies and HDR startups the OIL companies win every time & no holds are barred.

Geothermal is Australia's best answer for clean future energy and if Australians have the right stuff they will stick it up the oil companies and get the rigs and get cracking.

The Flinders ranges area in Sth Australia has the thinnest crust on the continent and is an important area to begin. In Sydney, Machin's crater at Glenbrook in the Blue Mnts and the ancient Caldera at Engadine in Sydney's South are excellent sites that could power Sydney for generations to come.

Meanwhile, the Russians are making squillions selling ship based nuclear reactors and this is where Australia should enter the nuclear market. At least, all our naval vessels and coastal merchantmen should be nuclear powered. As time passes and oil fades nuclear power will proliferate across the planet with or without us. Better that we are a guiding hand in safe Pebble Bed reactors, starting with small units and working our way up to the big stuff as expertise grows over decades

GET EM' REX!

Rstuart

<< Desalination plants don't produce salt. They produce sea water slightly more salty than normal.>>

"SLIGHTLY MORE SALTY THAN NORMAL"?

For your edification:

"Desalination is a separation process used to reduce the dissolved salt content of saline water to a usable level. All desalination processes involve three liquid streams: the saline feedwater (brackish water or seawater), low-salinity product water, and very saline concentrate (brine or reject water).

The saline feedwater is drawn from oceanic or underground sources. It is separated by the desalination process into the two output streams: the low-salinity product water and very saline concentrate streams. The use of desalination overcomes the paradox faced by many coastal communities, that of having access to a practically inexhaustible supply of saline water but having no way to use it. Although some substances dissolved in water, such as calcium carbonate, can be removed by chemical treatment, other common constituents, like sodium chloride, require more technically sophisticated methods, collectively known as desalination. In the past, the difficulty and expense of removing various dissolved salts from water made saline waters an impractical source of potable water. However, starting in the 1950s, desalination began to appear to be economically practical for ordinary use, under certain circumstances.

The product water of the desalination process is generally water with less than 500 mg/1 dissolved solids, which is suitable for most domestic, industrial, and agricultural uses.

A by-product of desalination is brine. Brine is a concentrated salt solution (with more than 35 000 mg/1 dissolved solids) that must be disposed of, generally by discharge into deep saline aquifers or surface waters with a higher salt content. Brine can also be diluted with treated effluent and disposed of by spraying on golf courses and/or other open space areas."

Brine - just maybe be a significant ingredient in molten salt for thermal energy storage.

I might as well add my two pennies worth. Not only is "rock power" not yet commercial technology - hence the serious questions over the final cost per MWh - but it can also be argued that it isn't sustainable energy.

You can't pull the heat out of the ground faster than the earth can replace it without the well eventually going cold. The earth cannot replace it as fast as we need to extract it to generate commercial quantities of elecricity so at some time you will need to decommission a well and wait (perhaps a 100 years or more) until it heats up again.

Geothermal energy is really more like mining fossil fuels without the CO2. Eventually the heat resource will run out at a particular site and we will need to look for new mines.

To blame the problems with geothermal energy on the lack of drilling rigs is just wrong.. the problem with tapping the energy in Australia is that the rocks concerned are kilometres under ground. As I understand it they are right at the limit, if not beyond, of anything that's been done before. And they have to get usable heat out of it, if they manage to drill to that depth.
Several posts have mentioned molten salt or oil used in a solar furnace arrangement. These systems have been around for years and are better at storing energy than wind, so they may reduce the problem of shadow generation, but only at considerably more expense, and does not eliminate it. One post asserts that such systems have been used for base load power. Sorry don't believe it. If there is a link or a reference then let's have it and I'll check it out.
The heating medium used in such systems has to be carefully tailored so that it is unlikely anything produced by a desalination plant would be usable.. thats a tangential issue anyway..

To blame the problems with geothermal energy on the lack of drilling rigs is absolutely correct ..

Oil & big Peabody-coal will NOT tolerate ENERGY competition.

As for HDR installations running-out-of-heat. Such assertions are hypothetical. Only plant running time will sort out those issues not moronic ego-babble. Blanket statements of HDR performance without experiment is UNSCIENTIFIC.

The more likely hypothesis is HDR sites will yield peak performance for a year, then go fallow for several months. Other HDR installations will take-up domestic loads. Then the installations will swap over as heat returns to the fallow site.
This rotation of sites will go on as long as the interior of the earth is molten. That is likely to be about...oh...2to3 billion years.

If you look at a map of global crustal thicknesses, the thinnest spots almost always coincide with curent oil strikes as well as the best HDR sites. Just look at the inordinate crustal thickness around the Saudi oil fields! Old oil wells are prime candidates for new HDR installations. Further, Sth Australia's Flinders Range area at 20Km is significant in this regard both for oil finds and for HDR Geothermal.

All anyone is intelligently capable of saying at this time is that the oil&coal giants have to be dealt with before we can proceed to find out. All the EGO-Babble in the world cannot detract from the potential of HDR Geothermal based on the sheer size of the Earth and its almost limitless Molten core stored energy.

Find out we MUST before the advent of 'forever economic growth' based on the inane notion of 'unrestricted women's Lady Macbeth rights' breeds humanity into THERMODYNAMIC oblivion!

>>Though Peabody Wood be come to Flinders Range
And thou opposed by no woman born
Else Big oil&coal will unendst rule the World.

>>What is a traitor?

One who swears and lies about big coal&oil.

And must all be hanged that swear and lie so?

Every one, especially HDR.

Who must hang them?

Why the honest-rich.

Then the liars and swearers are fools for there are enow' to beat the honest-rich and hang-up-them!

rstuart: "The Hubert Peak, and the Club of Rome all made their predictions in the 1970's. These predictions proved depressing accurate. In particular The Club of Rome predicted a business as usual approach meant would be hitting resource limits around 2030..2050. Since business did continue how accurate that was. They were a little out as it appears we will start hitting limits in the next decade."

Wow, in la-la land the accuracy of predictions can now be verified prior to the event. Do the bookies let you get away with that one, rstuart?

KAEP, considering that there are only test plants in a few of the comparatively easy geothermal sites overseas and nothing at all tappng into the deep hot rock sites they are trying in Australia I don't see how anyone can be confident about geothermal's future. Nor is it possible to blame the failure to date on supposed shortage of drilling rigs given the immense technical difficulties. In essence, geothermal, if it ever works on any significant scale, is yet another very expensive way to generate power. Not really very threatening to the big energy interests is it?

If we don't find new and cost effective ways of producing energy, we'll just keep making the same mistakes as in the past. Every new idea will have it's critics I guess, but that's human nature. Everyone will be protecting their own areas of interest or pieces of turf, and again that human nature. Ha, I just thought of something, maybe this is too important an issue for humans to negotiate, yes sometimes I wish Aliens existed.

Rstuart,

Obviously you didn’t read the article or didn’t understand it.

At present Uranium prices the cost of uranium per kWhr is about 0.18c which at present consumption, there is enough supply for more than 200 years. There is no incentive at present to prospect for further supplies, or use the more efficient reactors and / or alternatives such as thorium.

Most of these “new” technologies have been tested and can be implemented reasonably quickly, however with the relative cost /kWhr of uranium being so low that the cost of fuel is almost irrelevant, they have all been mothballed.

If the cost of uranium per kWhr escalates to 0.5c then

• the estimated available uranium increases tenfold,
• Alternative reactor technologies become viable which:
o Increase efficiency 60 fold,
o Enable the use of thorium which is 3x as plentiful, and produces up to 40x as much energy per kg.

This simple calculation gives us at 20TW a supply for about 300 000 years. While you can niggle about some of the calculations it is certainly far longer than 27 years and long enough to tide us past peak oil and global warming.

The viability of nuclear power is more about political will and naïve perceptions than science or economics.

Fractelle: "For your edification" ...

Reverse osmosis of sea water has a recovery rate typically less than 50%, the discharged water is about twice as salty as normal, meaning it is 93% water.

Recovery Rates: http://www.wwdmag.com/Seawater-Desalination-With-Reverse-Osmosis-article2207
Seawater salinity: http://www.seafriends.org.nz/oceano/seawater.htm

Fractelle: "Brine - just maybe be a significant ingredient in molten salt."

No. The salt used in storage systems is NaNO3/KNO3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_energy_storage#Molten_salt_technology The salt in seawater is mostly NaCl.

Shadow Minister: "there is enough supply for more than 200 years"

If used at current rates. If we scale up nuclear energy from 16% of electricity production to 100%, which is what are are talking about here, then the 200 years drops to 32 years (200*16/100 = 32).

You are a lawyer aren't you, tertiary educated? If so you must be capable of doing this sort of basic back-of-the-envelope calculation. Why don't you treat this self-serving industry drivel with the scepticism it deserves. You seem to have no trouble doing with the hype from other alternate energy evangelists.

Shadow Minister: "Most of these new technologies have been tested and can be implemented reasonably quickly"

The same thing is being claimed for hot rocks here. It is also definitely true for wind and solar + molten salt. "If only were given the money so we can get the process kick started ...", they all cry plaintively. Yeah, right..

Shadow Minister: "If the cost of uranium per kWhr escalates to 0.5c then: the estimated available uranium increases tenfold"

A remarkable claim. Citation?

Shadow Minister: "Enable the use of thorium which is 3x as plentiful, and produces up to 40x as much energy per kg."

No one has built large scale a thorium reactor - experimental or otherwise. Hot rocks have copped a battering here as being speculative - but at least there are cities (eg Auckland) that get most of their power from geothermal right now. No one have every got their power from a thorium reactor Shadow, no one. If you think thorium reactors are anything but wild speculation you are allowing yourself to be duped by industry propaganda.

Perhaps a bigger problem than generating electricity is that we waste more than three quarters of it by using inefficient appliances, long distribution networks and hopelessly inadequate building designs. Of the problems facing Australia and the rest of the world, climate change is just one small factor. Over population and depletion of natural resources to almost zero in some cases is going to bite a lot harder than electricity prices. Our ability to produce enough food is going to drive change far quicker than energy hungry markets.

To make other energy sources viable in any form is going to occur quickly as prices which reflect the real cost of producing electricity rise. It's already happening. In fact this is the best tool of all to drive efforts in increasing energy efficiency. Just like oil, as the price goes up people change their behaviour.

For those who would like to watch a copyright free movie on our headlong race to use all of the worlds resources as quickly as possible look here. As Yann Arthus Bertrand says in the movie HOME, we don't want to believe what we know.

http://www.youtube.com/homeproject

Rstuart,

Obviously you didn’t read the article or my post.

The existing CANDU reactors that are being rolled out are already capable of using thorium enriched uranium, and much lower grade uranium. There is very little development required. The down side is that with the present abundance of uranium there is little incentive to build these more expensive plants.

The first thorium reactor was built in 1976, but was shut down due to lack of funding (as uranium was not a resource issue then)

India's Kakrapar-1 reactor is the world's first reactor which utilizes thorium rather than depleted uranium to achieve power flattening across the reactor core. India, which has about 25% of the world's thorium reserves, is developing a 300 MW prototype of a thorium-based Advanced Heavy Water Reactor (AHWR). The prototype is expected to be fully operational by 2011, following which five more reactors will be constructed. India currently envisages to meet 30% of its electricity demand through thorium-based reactors by 2030.

The fact that thorium produces only tiny fraction of the waste is another huge bonus.

As far as the citation you requested on the 10 fold increase of uranium at the higher price, I already gave it, and you simply failed to read it. For your benefit:

http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf75.html
and
http://www.nuclearfaq.ca/brat_fuel.htm

If the entire world electricity was generated using these reactors there would be sufficient fuel for 1000s of years. Re quoting 200/6 = 32 years is exceedingly dense and simply shows that you are not prepared to actually read my post or the links I provided.

Hot rocks technology has yet to provide a single viable plant world wide. The geothermal plants you quote are not the same. To equate the state of development of Hot rocks with thorium or Gen IV reactors is out by decades.

Shadow Minister: "The citation you requested on the 10 fold increase of uranium at the higher price, I already gave it, and you simply failed to read it."

You said: "cost of uranium per kWhr escalates to 0.5c then the estimated available uranium increases tenfold". After a hard at the article look I find: "a doubling of price from present levels ... about a tenfold increase in measured resources". Two different statements, but I see you might think they are the same.

Regarding Thorium reactors, I've made the mistake of quoting something from memory. On looking for the source of the quote, I found this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium_fuel_cycle

Obviously prototype Thorium reactors do exist. My apologies.

Shadow Minister: "you are not prepared to actually read my post or the links I provided."

No. I read your post, and your link. You are asking me to blindly accept information on a web site set up to promote the nuclear option. I trust it only to give the most rosy spin possible, cherry picking the best numbers available. The problem wasn't me reading it. The problem one of being able to trust the information you provide. Your poor quoting didn't help.

Shadow Minister: "India currently envisages to meet 30% of its electricity demand through thorium-based reactors by 2030."

They've invested $100M's in a prototype, and are now saying they will be producing 30% of India's demand by 2030. Well I guess I would be saying that too, if I were them. But if you read this, you will see it is not quite the done deal you seem to think it is: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FBTR

Shadow Minister: "To equate the state of development of Hot rocks with thorium or Gen IV reactors is out by decades."

Neither side has something that works now. Granted hot rocks are highly speculative, but it doesn't cost billions and decades on each attempt to get it right. So who will win - the powerful but lumbering elephant, or the nibble but unpredictable hare? The difference between you and me Shadow, is I don't claim to know the answer.

Rstuart,

My point was that the slow and powerful elephant has already crossed the line. Nuclear works NOW, and the uranium shortage argument does not stand up to scrutiny.

The 27 / 32 year supply is based on older style reactors that need highly refined uranium, and only use about 0.7% of the total.

The CANDU reactors are in operation, and more are being built. They use lower grade and up to 50% of the mined uranium, and can supplement this with thorium.

The move to thorium with provide reactors that are more stable less fuel hungry, provide a tiny fraction of the waste, and don’t produce weapons grade by products.

The swift and nimble rabbit has not even left the starting blocks.

Nuclear may not be the whole solution, but it is the only non green house gas base load technology presently available.

Geothermal power stations are operated in France and Germany using hot rocks to provide heat (150C) which is used to generate electricity. Why then should this technology not be used in Australia to meet its base load needs?

Over 30 companies are currently mining for hot rocks in Australia and spending millions in doing so. Many of them are backed by major companies such as Woodside, Santos, Origin Energy, Sunsuper, etc.

These companies are having to deal with rock temperatures of up to 300C and high pressures which makes their task more difficult than that experienced in Europe. However they – and their backers – are confident they will be able to meet most of the base load power needs of Australia.

The MD of the leading and largest hot rocks miner, Geodynamics, recently stated on ABC radio that his company expected to be able to generate 15% of Australia’s base load electricity needs from its tenements in the north of South Australia.

If only half the companies engaged in hot rock mining are successful, the potential to supply all of Australia’s electricity from this source seems to exist and, according to Geodynamics, do so at about the same cost as nuclear power stations – see page 13 of Geodynamics 2009 half year report and other publications at http://www.geodynamics.com.au/

Nuclear power stations have several advantages. They can be located close to customers, built to size needed to supply an industry, a town or a city. The new Generation IV reactors burn 90% of their fuel and produce very little waste.

Nuclear also has the disadvantages that they can only be built near a large water supply needed for cooling, produce radio-active waste which must be stored for thousands of years and apparently take 15 years to design, build and commission.

In other words, if we start the ball rolling now (we wont) we could have a nuclear power station by 2025. By that date, geothermal may be well established and supplying 20% of base load needs.

So why wouldn’t we fast track its development and reduce our greenhouse gas emissions?

The West Australia government's Environmental Protection Authority has concluded that the significance of impacts to the marine environment from the discharge of brine by the Perth Metropolitan desalination plant is still uncertain and that the marine environment of Cockburn Sound continues to be under stress.

Desalinating seawater results in two different liquids: drinking water and brine in roughly equal measure. Brine is hypersaline water roughly twice as salty as the sea. Dumped back into a still marine environment, the heavy brine can sink to the sea floor and smother the life there under high levels of salt.

One alternative is to take this brine and harvest it on land into commercial grade salt by allowing it to evaporate in large ponds and then scraping up the resulting salt. That’s rather ironic considering the creeping white death is one of the largest threats to Australia's economy and ecology.

http://www.gulfnews.com/nation/environment/10322908.html

"Australia has the highest per-capita CO2 emissions in the world. This statement is repeated, variously as per-capita CO2 or Greenhouse Gas emissions, ad-nauseam by the global warming lobby. I'm not sure how this bullsh!t has become conventional wisdom."

Clownfish – perhaps it’s because others do the research while you propagate spin on Australia’s pathetic CCPI - ranked number 55 out of 60 nations – number 1 being the best performer.

‘Australia’s per capita greenhouse gas emissions are the highest of any OECD country and are among the highest in the world. In 2006 our per capita emissions (including emissions from land use, land-use change and forestry) were 28.1 tonnes carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2-e)per person.

'Only five countries in the world rank higher—Bahrain, Bolivia, Brunei, Kuwait and Qatar. Australia’s per capita emissions are nearly twice the OECD average and more than four times the world average.’

Currently, in the Kyoto Annex 1 countries, Australia is coming dead last and is ranked by all global climate institutes as a "poor" performer:

http://globalis.gvu.unu.edu/?2275

http://www.garnautreview.org.au/chp7.htm#7_1

http://www.germanwatch.org/ccpi

http://www.cana.net.au/kyoto/template.php?id=4

25 nuclear reactors to give an 8-18% reduction in Australia's greenhouse gas emissions by 2050? (Switkowski)

25 reactors? By 2050? Only in La La Land my fellow posters.

So, Protagoras, you are, in your usual circular and evasive way, acknowledging that I was correct in saying that Australia is not the world's highest per capita greenhouse gas emitter?

Thank you.

Shadow Minister,

I have spent some time looking on the net to try and verify if fuel and the other issues associated with nuclear are "solved problems". They don't look solved to me. However I did manage to convince myself it looks likely they all will be solved in a few generations of reactor design. In particular you are probably right about fuel - it too will be solved before it becomes a major concern.

As for whether they will be solved - I think JonJay summed it up nicely, except where he implied there are working GEN IV reactors. There aren't any.

I heard one nuclear proponent talk on radio about what a future nuclear reactor might look like. He envisaged a mass produced fast breeder reactor. Building it and decommissioning together cost less than twice what a coal fired plant costs now, and the pre-manufactured unit could be a drop in replacement for the existing coal fired boiler. The waste from fast breeders is not the huge issue it is for existing reactors (including CANDU and GEN IV) as there isn't much of it and it only lasts 300 years. And of course there would be no fuel supply problems. It all sounded achievable and it truly was a workable solution.

But it is not a solution that exists now. We have been designing nuclear reactors for about 60 years. The pace of engineering advances in nuclear power plants has been frankly glacial compared to just about any other technology you care to name. They probably have 20 years, at most 40, to deliver on the vision painted above. After that they will be overrun by other technologies. Going on past history I still say the odds don't look good.

Hot Rocks On A Roll..

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25899350-30417,00.html

Or Are Oil companies still doing a SNOW job on HDR?

The $40million 'straight-up-&down' drill rig from Dubai is a far cry from the $2.5billion directional drill rig off the Louisiana-Texas region. This landbased drill can worm its way 'up-down&sideways' for at least 7Km to seek out oil deposits.
Yet here are the Hot Rocks using bastard-tech solutions down to the great depths of what? One Kilometre? And WOW! That's ON A ROLL?
A Roll with sesame seeds no doubt!

Get real we're all being snowed on from great CHEVRON heights.

The oil & coal conglomerates will see the planet descend into war before they will release their grip on their ENERGY and economic monopolies.

Debate all you like but nothing will change till people think for themselves and OBVIATE our Sodom&Gomorrhic dependence on petrol/oil/gasoline diesel & coal.

Rstuart,

The CANDU reactors are being built now, (they have a fraction of the waste that standard reactors have and can consume some of the waste from standard reactors) and there are 6 presently under construction.

The reason that reactor design has been so glacial over the past few decades is that the public reaction to nuclear power has been such that very few reactors have been built, and no one is going to spend money where there is no payback.

With global warming, the EU, china and India are looking at massive investment in nuclear, with the intense focus on thorium and Gen IV. The future progress cannot be predicted based on the past few decades. The first prototypes are to be rolled out in the next few years, and can easily be producing up to 30% of the worlds power in 20 - 25 years.

In stark contrast, renewable energy and storage has had huge funding for decades, and it is not looking at producing reliable base load for decades.

The target of a 50% emmission reduction can be met by nuclear by 2050 if the greens are prepared to focus on clean nuclear rather than a nuclear ban.

For base load the choice will be coal and CO2 or nuclear.

Shadow Minister

‘For base load the choice will be coal or nuclear’.

If that decision were left to a Coalition or ALP government, we would be stuck with coal for at least the next 50 years.

Both would prefer to ‘live with’ the worst effects of global warming rather than seriously curb greenhouse gas emissions if that involved job losses in the coal industry or emitting companies.

The ALP have an ideological hang-up when it comes to nuclear power stations and ignore the advances made in their design and efficiency. The Coalition has never had the guts, sorry, political will, to even seriously consider nuclear electricity.

The least threatening options to coal seem to be hot rock (HR) and other renewables, since ALP and Coalition regard them as being unable to pose a serious threat to coal/oil, though the coal industry seems far less certain on this score.

If we are to believe the Managing Director of Geodynamics, HR will threaten coal and, because no other country has such vast and accessible hot rock deposits, use of this heat source will give Australia a competitive advantage in manufacturing, particularly of exports.

Both HR and nuclear can and should make a valuable contribution to replacing fossil fuels. My bet is that governments of both persuasions will not permit this to occur.

Shadow Minister: "they have a fraction of the waste that standard reactors have and can consume some of the waste from standard reactors"

In a brief search (you did realise I would try to verify the statement, didn't you?) I could not find anything to quantify what "a fraction of the waste" was. About the only thing I can say with some confidence it CANDU is about 30%-40% more efficient than GEN III designs. Maybe that means they produce 30%-40% less waste. To have a hope of getting up, it has to produce no waste that doesn't reduce to background levels within a couple of centuries. From what I can make out CANDU doesn't come close. CANDU is an expensive reactor, BTW. If it wasn't, it would have taken over the world by now.

As for JonJay's rather dismal assessment of what when we finally reduce out CO2 footprint - sadly that is my view too. We will change only when disaster strikes, or when scarcity of coal means it makes economic sense to do so. The section titled "What can we learn?" in this page makes a great example:

http://thinkcarbon.wordpress.com/2009/06/22/drought-in-australia-%e2%80%93-the-lessons-we-can-learn-for-tackling-climate-change/

Further evidence is where investment in nuclear is taking place. It seems to be in those places that have already hit peak coal - the UK, US, Europe, China, Japan and so on. Australia is nowhere near peak coal. We are the place countries that have hit peak coal import their coal from. Hence it is not surprising we don't investigate nuclear. If we even do take on nuclear, it will be using the designs of one of the countries that are trying to develop a viable fast breeder. If you look at the link below, you will see there is no lack countries / companies trying, which is yet more evidence that nuclear reactor design isn't there yet.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fast_breeder_reactor#Future_plants

JJ,

If you had read the earlier posts you would realise that the hot rocks technology is significantly different from other geothermal generation. It has been under development for many years, but has yet to produce a single economically viable power source anywhere in the world (even with heavy subsidy). In addition it requires vast quantities of clean water in remote areas.

While the owners are obviously upbeat the lack of investment is mostly due to the scepticism as to its viability. I am not anticipating any break through soon.

For Aus there is no other renewable base load to replace coal. I see 2020 coming with a small increase in CO2 emmission for Aus.

KAEP, it appears that oil and coal companies are the supreme bad guys in your worldview, but surely you don't imagine that they're utterly stupid?

Surely, as businessmen, if there was a prospect that geothermal was such a sure-fire winning technology, they would be all over it like fleas on a dog?

If it's so readily apparent that oil is sputtering along on its last legs, why on earth would the oil companies *not* be investing in the Next Big Thing?

Shadow Minister: "It has been under development for many years, but has yet to produce a single economically viable power source anywhere in the world"

Yet another statement given without citation. You are fond of these Shadow. I went looking and found this document:

http://iga.igg.cnr.it/documenti/IGA/Fridleifsson_et_al_IPCC_Geothermal_paper_2008.pdf

It appears the article uses the European term to describe the technology ("hot dry rock geothermal energy"), whereas the above document uses US terminology ("Enhanced Geothermal Systems" or EGS). Here are some points that stood out to me:

"a large scientific and industrial community has been involved for more than 20 years in promoting Enhanced Geothermal Systems,"

So the idea has been around for a while, as Shadow says, but ...

"In Landau Germany, the first EGS-plant with 2.5 to 2.9 MWe went into operation in fall 2007"

This looks like the first one actually built. I am not sure it could be said to be "under development" for too long before that. I have no idea whether it is economically viable, but it looks like we are going to find out:

"Australia can claim a large-scale activity, through several stock market-registered enterprises (e.g. Geodynamics, Petratherm, Green Rock Energy, Geothermal Resources, Torrens Energy, and Eden Energy). A real boom can be observed: with 19 companies active in 140 leases (a total of 67,000 km2 in four states), with an investment volume of 650 million USD."

If that USD$650 is even 1/2 right, there are a fair few well healed people who disagree with Shadow about its potential. Which is I guess just confirms what JonJay said.

Shadow Minister

You claim that Geothermal ‘requires vast quantities of clean water in remote areas’.

My understanding is that geothermal hot rock projects being developed in Australia use closed systems.

Existing subterranean water passing over hot granites produces steam which is brought to the surface, passes through a heat exchanger, condenses and is reinjected to once more be superheated and brought to the surface as steam and so on. No additional water is needed.

Steam entering the heat exchanger heats a fluid in a separate closed system which drives a turbine and is then returned to the heat exchanger where it is re-heated.

According to Geodynamics, the leader in the field, no additional fluids are required for either closed system.

http://www.geodynamics.com.au is a useful source of information on the technology and progress being made on its application in Australia.

Rstuart,

If you want a citation, you can simply look at the link you provided. Everyone talks about potential, but no one has claimed commercial viability.

Presently the biggest operating plant in the world for the hot rock technology is the Landau plant. Considering that it generates 20GWhr p.a. at the subsidised rate this covers the operating costs of the plant not any of the capital investment.

After 30 years of development, there is little to show for it. The logistics of supplying water for cooling and for losses in the rock fissures, and power lines out would require substantial investment on top of any plant.

JJ,

Only parts of the system are closed.

Considering that they are pumping high pressure water into the rock fissures, there are losses. (about 7 to 15% of water injected) and considering the volume of water, this is considerable, making it the most water hungry power generation technology available.

http://www.science.org.au/nova/116/116key.html
http://geoheat.oit.edu/bulletin/bull23-4/art4.pdf

I would suggest more than skim reading the promotional information before posting.