More carbon emissions = bad. What part of that don’t they understand? Oh, the CFMEU, industry interests and Labor marginal seats in Gippsland. Ah, so there is method to their madness.

Trouble is, we are all toast if this lunatic behaviour continues.

As far as waste disposal and decommissioning goes, that’s not counted in the construction cost. What happens is that a levy is collected by law (somewhere between 0.1 and 0.5 US cents per kilowatt hour) to sit in a bank account, accumulate interest, and fund disposal after the plant shuts down. The temporary fuel storage pools are included in the cost. At the higher level, the plant is collecting around 50 million dollars a year, and does that for 40 years (and probably nearly 60).

The thing to keep in mind when the British example is used with their decommissioning costs is that a) they didn’t collect a levy, b) it also includes their military nuclear program, c) they used a unique nuclear plant design which was designed for making bombs easy, not for making decommissioning easy.

Huh, for the second time, Twitter has been useful. I got those links off the Greenpeace Oz twitter feed.

We are particularly blessed with access to potential renewable power in our wide brown land girt by sea. Perhaps we could even export it via hydrogen fuel cells or something.

There is a company doing a trial off Gracetown in southwest WA at the moment for a wave power/desalination plant known as CETO.
Check out http://www.ceto.com.au/home.php for some information on this very interesting technology.

This solves the problem of dwindling water supplies and increased energy demand (with very low emissions) in suitable coastal areas… which happens to include nearly all of the major population centres in Australia. Seems like a no-brainer to me.

the planned plant will use newish Aussie technology developed by HRL Technology, a company based in Morwell and Melbourne; grew out of the old SEC “Herman Research Labs” as a privatised R&D company. Had a big shareholding by media magnate Kerry Stokes some years ago. The process planned is “Integrated Drying Gasification Combined Cycle” IDGCC. They had a test plant operating near Morwell for about a year, a few years back.

Peter Batchelor said “…(it) can reduce emissions of CO2 from brown coal-fired power generation by 30% and reduce water consumption by 50%, compared to current best practice for brown coal… in the Latrobe Valley. HRL figures suggest the technology could almost halve emissions from the Latrobe Valley if substituted for all existing (power plants)…”

“Latrobe Valley Express”, 3rd July, p.5

This suggests there are some bad emitters amongst the power stations, see the difference between “best practice” and “subsituting for all”. So I’m with Robert Merkel: phase out Hazelwood if that’s the worst. The carbon price and Hazelwood-power-too-expensive may do it.

cheerio

Yet another senior moment!

I change a bit from time to time on nuclear. Generally, I’ve thought that we don’t need to do it in Australia. I do wish the Germans would rescind their nuclear phase-out policy. They have fewer options than we do, especially with concentrated solar, which required direct sunlight as distinct from PV which doesn’t.

I’m less keen on the developing countries going nuclear, simply because I have less confidence in their technical competence and quality control in avoiding accidents and disposing of waste.

I think we are in big enough trouble that we can’t just let the market work things out. Picking winners is justified.

I’d like to see concentrated solar supported actively in Australia. Go inland 150km anywhere in Oz and we have what is classed premium solar territory. We are better placed than most places in the world to use this technology.

I’ve read about storing solar energy with a big pot of molten salt, which adds to the cost, but helps to overcome the base-load power problem. Then we could look at a network of stations east-west and north-south to provide for greater continuity. Built-in reserve capacity also costs, but maybe we should have gas backup at each solar station in case, praise the Lord, we get extended cloud cover over a wide area.

Then there is geothermal (”hot rocks”) which shows good prospects of providing commercial quantities into the grid from 2015. Geodynmics (I’ve got a few shares) reckon they can do it competitively with what the price of carbon will be by then. The technology is not quite proven yet, but it’s looking good. We have so much of it and it entirely solves the base-load problem, so I think it’s worth a few taxpayer dollars to kick it along.

I reckon we should aim at entirely decarbonising the grid and becoming emissions neutral by 2030. If that means going nuclear, then so be it. In any case we shouldn’t be building coal-fired power stations. It’s a crime against the planet.

wizofaus, the coal-fired plants in Victoria are all privately owned - the Government money is only a small proportion of the total, and is capped, and is there to make the plant cleaner. Had it been bog standard thermal lignite power generation, it wouldn’t have received a cent (though of course it would have, since they’re all rentiers).

As protesters locked themselves onto a conveyor belt at Loy Yang power station in protest…

Long have I dreamed of a protester-fired power station. Obviously we need more research into teflon conveyor belts.

Brian disagrees, but I think he’ll concede that it’s better than coal. Jeez, even Ian Lowe was prepared to concede that
Officially, however, it’s not counted as renewable energy (and nor is coal with CCS). So it’s not eligible for the same incentives as solar, wind, and geothermal in most countries.

Brown coal is the classic dilemma: available in huge cheap quantities, but among the worst carbon emitters. I’d have thought algae from the carbon exhausts (and the subsequent creation of bio-diesel from algae) would offer more prospects for saving the Latrobe Valley jobs in the long term. Anyone have any technical information on that possibility?