The question is not whether we need any particular power generation technology or not. The question is whether allowing nuclear can lower the cost of reducing emissions, and whether the downsides outweigh that lower cost.

I refer to ‘concentrating solar power’ (CSP), the technique of concentrating sunlight using mirrors to create heat, and then using the heat to raise steam and drive turbines and generators, just like a conventional power station. It is possible to store solar heat in melted salt or other substance so that electricity generation may continue through the night or on cloudy days. This technology has been generating electricity successfully in California since 1985 and half a million Californians currently get their electricity from this source. CSP plants are now being planned or built in many parts of the world.

CSP works best in hot deserts and, of course, these are not always nearby! But with transmission losses at only about 3% per 1000 km, it is entirely feasible and economic to transmit solar electricity throughout Australia from the Australian desert using highly-efficient ‘HVDC’ transmission lines. A small portion of the Australian desert would be sufficient to meet all of the country’s needs for electricity.

Waste heat from electricity generation in a CSP plant can be used to create fresh water by desalination of sea water: a very useful by-product in arid regions.

In the ‘TRANS-CSP’ report commissioned by the German government, it is estimated that CSP electricity, imported from North Africa and the Middle East, could become one of the cheapest sources of electricity in Europe, including the cost of transmission. A large-scale HVDC transmission grid has also been proposed by Airtricity as a means of optimising the use of wind power throughout Europe.

Further information about CSP may be found at http://www.trec.net.au , http://www.trec-uk.org.uk and http://www.trecers.net . Copies of the TRANS-CSP report may be downloaded from http://www.trec-uk.org.uk/reports.htm . The many problems associated with nuclear power are summarised at http://www.mng.org.uk/green_house/no_nukes.htm .

Well perhaps we do. If we all clown around and don’t look at the big picture we deserve a Nuke Power Plant right in our front yards(not the backyards like the alternatives) and that is what we will get because the best place to build them is near the city and by the sea or river. Sounds like the most expensive real estate in Australia to me, and how long will it be there? Well for ever because you can never live where a decommissioned Nuke Power Stations was which is sad considering that Nuclear Fuel will only last two hundred years.

Well that is just a by the way thing the real problem with Nuclear Power Stations is this.
Have you ever noticed what the first target of war is? Ask Israel when they bombed Lebanon or America when they bomber Iraq and Yugoslavia. Ask the Germans or British in WW1 and WW2. They will tell you it is the power stations.

If you cripple power stations with conventional bombs you shut down most of the industries immediately, hence target number one.

Now if there have always been wars, well there may always be wars and if the first target is power stations For God Sake don’t build a nuclear one. Why develop nuclear weapons when all you have to do is bomb a Nuclear Power Station with a conventional bomb to create a Chernobyl and if we have 12 well we could have 12 Chernobyl’s.

So you ask me, does anyone need nuclear power stations?
Is there a county on Earth that is immune to war or terrorism?
If you find one then we may consider the pros and cons.

I completely agree with you. My take is that Howard has not moved on climate change for 3 reasons:

1. As the Ace to wedge Labor when the time came. That time is now. And the “n” word is a good wedge for Labor. Though I think Howard over-estimated the political goals he could kick on this.

2. Coal is our biggest exporter, so challenging/threatening that has uncertain and potentially explosive political implications. Best to keep away as long as it is feasibly possible. Never forget that Howard is reactionary.

3. No political upside in joining the EU’s cynical economic jihad against the US.

Australia has naturally high and potentially life-threatening radioactivity in various places, for example Paralana Springs in South Australia http://www.science.uts.edu.au/news/2004/paralana.html

If the radioactive contamination at Paralana Springs was man-made, hairy-headed hippies and old-maids would march in their thousands if the Government failed to clean up the mess, yet Paralana Springs is a tourist attraction. Go figure!

Australia shouldn’t have nuclear power for economic reasons rather than environmental and health reasons.

I don’t believe the Liberals are sincere in their nuclear interest. Considering the statements being made by the Howard government in light of only a few governmental reports – it’s difficult to interpret it as anything other than a political wedge. At the same time, when viewed from a demonstrated technical capabilities perspective, Labour’s claims to implement massive emissions reductions appear similarly impossible without nuclear.

Furthermore, who are we to point to emissions from China and India using country to country comparisons with Australia? This makes absolutely no sense. Why should their combined 2.2 billion or so people not be entitled to the same prosperity, the same consumption, the same emissions as Australia, the USA or Europe on a per-capita basis? Do we really believe a ‘do as I say, not as I do’ approach is going to be taken seriously? Is this international leadership at its best? I certainly hope not. In fact I believe Australia can do better.

But if my take is correct and hypocrisy wins over logic, hard decisions and tangible action, we’ll have no nuclear and no significant per-capita emissions reductions; which brings me to the irony – Australia seems to be first in the queue of developed countries headed for some serious blows from climate change – many of which are believed to be in progress already.

With Rio Tinto discovering Kryptonite http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jadarite it’s all starting to make sense….(But is K-Rudd - Clark Kent?)

Philosophically, the idea of having distributed power generation like solar panels on everyone’s roof feeding back into the grid, is a total anathema to someone like John Howard.

Much more preferable to have Montgomery Burns or Energy Australia controlling the power generation network – & how exactly can you gouge profits when all your customers are also your suppliers… I suspect alot of customers will also just leave the grid completely when self sufficient, all in all, not a business model most moguls would want to take home to mother.

The alternative for this waste is?

Seriously, what else are we to do with it? Wish it away?

As for the capitalist system of supply and demand, it’s been around a very very long time and I suspect it’s got a lot of life left in it.

You’re not seriously taking up that silly old bugger Bob Hawke’s suggestion that we become a commercial dumping ground for global nuclear energy waste? Look there are very good reasons why that idea was immediately scotched and one of them is to my mind is what a terrible legacy to bequeath to our descendants. They would have to take up the responsibility of looking after the nuclear waste for the next 25,000 years plus. We haven’t even had a civilisation for a even a quarter of that time. How socially irresponsible can you get?

Short of sending the stuff into outer space (which could pose problems if even one of the ships exploded on launching), why don’t we just make things much simpler for ourselves and develop renewable energy industries? Bugger the capitalist system of supply and demand.

The only possible issue would be a change in groundwater due to seismic activity, and the groundwater taking the nasty stuff somewhere. I fail to see how this remote eventuality is worse than leaving the crap out in the open in rusting steel containers all around the world however.

If Greens really cared about thinking globally, they’d agree that the least risky and safest spot that existing waste (much of which was sold by Australi) could be put was in our dead heart.

The rocks might be sound, but what about the containers? Can you imagine any manufacturers guaranteeing that the security of containers holding nuclear waste is guaranteed for at least 25,000 years? I’m saying no thanks to nuclear waste dumping, thank you, period!

Does anyone know anyone like that?

Yes, that’s me. I don’t think renewables are likely to make up more than 20% of the mix anytime soon, and they will cost a bit more. I also think the actual risk of power stations and waste dumps are, compared to other risks we manage every day of our lives, trivially small.

But nukes are going to cost more than renewables, and a lot more than energy conservation measures. That’s why I think they’re totally crazy.

Just put a carbon price in, be rational, that’ll sort it all out.

Oh but I was never ever voting for the Libs anyway.

Garnaut is to report by mid-2008.

So Rudd again is showng himself who will act as though he was in government. The states are to provide “data, expertise and funding”. Anna Bligh points out that the state treasurers asked Costello to do it and he refused.

I heard Rudd saying that the baseline was going to be the cost of doing nothing.

All sounds good to me.

Unfortunately, several people I have spoken to in casual conversion seem to have formed a view (from Government propaganda over the last 12 months) that nuclear energy is clean and is a good option to address climate change. I really didn’t expect this reaction

Really?!?

How would you characterise these people? Conservatives that would have voted for Howard anyway? Swinging voters? Educated professionals who have concluded renewables won’t be able to replace fossil fuels and/or will be too expensive?

PS: There is no such thing as “clean coal�. The term is an oxymoron.

Oooh goody, another opportunity to post my CCS is completely nutty rant…

To give you an idea of the scale of the “clean coal” problem: the world emits 16 cubic kilometres of CO2 per day* from burning coal.

You reckon we’re gonna capture that, compress it, liquefy it, pipe it to some hole in the ground hundreds of kilometres away hope its stays there for eternity? Clean coal makes nuclear waste disposal look easy.

* 10,500,000,000 tonnes of CO2 * 556m3 = 5,838,000,000,000m3 = 5,838km3 per year or 15.99km3 per day

Global CO2 emissions from the consumption of coal (2004) = ~10.5 GT
Volume of one ton CO2 at 25C and one atmosphere pressure = 556m3

Could anyone, anywhere identify me a voter who is more likely to vote for the coalition because it supports domestic nuclear energy

I’m fascinated by the politics of Howard’s nukes everywhere strategy. It seems to me he is only going to win votes from people who are educated about the cost and baseload issues with renewables, and are sufficiently concerned about global warming that they’d be happy to risk nuclear power stations and nuclear waste dumps in Australia.

Does anyone know anyone like that?

I reckon the political centre (the people I assume Howard is trying to appeal to) are concerned enough about global warming that they’d like to see the government do “something” about it, but I doubt that something is nukes in their backyard. I suspect most people have pretty superficial understanding of power generation issues, and in their minds why would we build nukes when would could use solar, wind and geothermal.

George Megalogenis got it right (again) on Insiders when he said it will be “open slatherâ€? on a scare campaign now. IMO, this is a political gift for the ALP that a drovers dog couldn’t get wrong.

Nukes actually are very very safe, having caused far less direct deaths than coal-fired stations.

But the waste stays dangerous for how long? I wonder if we’re leaving a toxic time bomb for our descendants. I also wonder just how viable renewables are. It seems to me that the government (and the opposition) have just decided to go nuclear despite the fact that so many of don’t wanna.
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Did someone say bedtime for politicians and mining concerns? Did someone say free market, what’s that?

That doesn’t mean that it will get fixed immediately as we don’t have an administrator 24/7.

It’s normally the case that the software recognises your comment as spam or flings it into moderation. This can happen because you used a particular word that might seem innocent, OR the comment has three or more links, OR for unknown reasons. It’s pretty stupid, unfortunately.

In practice what happens is that one of us will fish it out. The software ‘learns’ from this, so hopefully it will in your case too.

This would have been a better wedge for Howard. “Why does Labor want to export unenriched uranium, when we can value-add/create jobs by doing a spot of enriching here.

Nuclear power generation may not be economical or socially accepted in Australia, but that isn’t to say that enrichment isn’t.

BTW, the worlds largest uranium mine (in canada), was subject to severe flooding last year. It is out of production and many sugest it may never come back into production. Hence the uranium price has doubled and will continue to rise. My point is, Europe is reliant on nuclear to meet its Kyoto targets, if nuclear becomes too expensive due to high uranium prices, more fossil fuels will be burnt. Hence Australia needs to come to the party.