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.