As Mark Wakeham from Environment Victoria puts it:

The fact is, because brown coal is more polluting than other fuels, exporting it to developing countries will increase their emissions and lock them (and the world) into a dangerous emissions trajectory, thereby destroying attempts to negotiate a safe climate deal globally.”

So why is the Victorian government so anxious to have coal leaving the Port of Hastings? Ross Gittins’ recent column hints as to one reason – the Australian dollar seems to be on the up-and-up for a good while:

But whether or not we do, the likelihood is that over the coming decade and more it (RM: the Aussie dollar) will exceed parity (RM: with the US dollar). The days of the Pacific Peso look long gone.

Is that good news? Yes if you like overseas travel and buying things on the internet. Yes if you’re in mining, industries associated with mining or even just live in Western Australia, Queensland and South Australia.

But no if you’re in farming, manufacturing or local tourism. Just as the Chinese and Indians are in the process of transforming their economies over the coming quarter century, so our part in that process will involve significant change to the industrial and geographic structure of our economy.

In a nutshell, the manufacturing sector, particularly the car industry – and arguably more important to Victoria, the education sector, which is Australia’s third-biggest export earner – are likely to find it increasingly difficult in a world where high commodity prices pushes the Australian dollar higher. So it’s unsurprising that the Victorian government is dead keen for Victorians to get into the carboniferous mud exporting racket. The long-term global emissions trajectory? Not John Brumby’s problem.

I think that nuclear power is a sufficiently sustainable source of power to provide all of the growth in our energy demands that are going to come in the next million years or so. (Emphasis added)

Yes, I checked the audio to make sure the ABC transcribers got it right and that’s exactly what he said. That was Barry Brook talking on Counterpoint last week.

In a recent post Steve Kirsch describes Brook’s conversion to nuclear:

Prominent Australian climate scientist Barry Brook admitted that he spent months educating himself on fourth generation nuclear before he came to the same conclusion Hansen did. In fact, before Brook heard about fourth generation nuclear, he thought the global warming problem was intractable because his own calculations confirmed the observations of many others (including Energy Secretary Steven Chu, MIT President Susan Hockfield and US Senator Lamar Alexander) regarding the necessity of nuclear power due to the problems with renewables being able to scale to meet our energy needs. (Emphasis added)

The so-called fourth generation nuclear is the Integrated Fast Reactor (IFR) which Kirsch tells us was invented in 1974 and worked on thereafter, but was cancelled in the early Clinton years by people who used to work in the oil and natural gas industry. Brook has now written copiously on the merits nuclear energy. In a recent article in the Oz which addresses the myths surrounding the nuclear power industry Brook says:

Worldwide, nuclear power is undergoing a renaissance. There are 45 so-called generation III reactors under construction, including 12 in China, and another 388 are planned or proposed.

The IFR plants will burn all of the uranium 235, plus the uranium 238, known as depleted uranium, yielding potentially 100 to 300 times the energy we currently get, with the waste residue returning to background levels of radiation within 300 years. Brook says the new reactors would have to violate the laws of physics to melt down or explode.

One issue not addressed by Brook and Kirsch as far as I know (I haven’t read all their stuff) is the safety of mining uranium. For 4G nuclear power, however, it shouldn’t be necessary for a few centuries.

According to Kirsch at current rates of power usage we could get 700 years out of the existing nuclear waste.

When I looked at Germany’s nuclear dilemma I said:

…if we want our grandchildren to live in a half decent world, I think we need to de-carbonise electricity grids by about 2030 and then go negative on emissions growth from 2030 to 2050, that is, reduce atmospheric CO2 from 450 ppm plus, or whatever it is then, and head for 280.

Brook suggests that to electrify everything, including our transport system, we’ll have to treble our stationary power production. I’d like to see the advanced economies phase out coal-fired power by 2020, with the developing countries doing likewise in the following decade. In Brokk’s vision in a portfolio of energy sources nuclear may well turn out to be the staple.

Brook says:

In terms of costs and build times, standardised, modular, passive-safety designs, which can be factory built and shipped to site, are game changers for the industry.

Brook sees this happening right now in India and China. So Brook thinks we could have nuclear in Australia within 10 years with more that half of that time being taken in getting our heads into gear and making the plans.

It’s worth emphasising that this industrialiastion of the production of nuclear power plants has advantages for safety which are built in to the specification. Previously, says Brook, each nuclear power station was a one-off project with a unique design.

In our case the Rudd Government is only aspiring to a 20% Renewable Energy Target (note the “mandatory” has been dropped) by 2020 and has proposed a CPRS that is an ETS on training wheels for some years. It’s hard to see us making a significant dent on emissions with energy savings, roof-top installations, a rising population and an increased demnd for stationary power if Brook is right. Unless the Queensland graziers give over half their properties to growing trees (not a joke, post forthcoming).

Meanwhile Hansen points out that Waxman-Markey, which he calls a “monstrous 1400-page absurdity … hatched in Washington after energetic insemination by special interests” builds in approval of new coal-fired power plants. He pointed out to the Germans that if they went ahead with new coal-fired power stations they’d have to persuade the Russians to leave some of their oil in the ground.

Not to mention the Canadians and their tar sands and someone said the other day that the Victorian Government had approved a project to turn brown coal into oil. Just 60,000 barrels for now but potentially more oil than all the Middle East!

Victoria is sitting on 25% of the world’s brown coal reserves. This glossy informs (warns) us what they intend to do with it. That includes liquefaction and gasification as well as drying it out to compete directly with blck coal exports.

I don’t know about you, but somtimes life get’s tee-jus, don’t it?

Meanwhile in Britain where the Government has given the green light to nukes we have an activist Government driving hard on renewables especially wind power. I suspect that when they want to go beyond 50% renewables nukes will come back to a more central focus.

So what should we do? I don’t know, but in Australia we have unrivalled potential for solar, geothermal and probably (I don’t know much about it) wave power, the last two of which could supply our base-load requirement. The viability of large-scale geothermal should be settled in a half a decade or so. If we did large-scale conversions from coal to methane we could buy time.

But for the rest of the world with 388 nuclear plants planned or proposed (and I assume these are all 3G) the genie is well and truly out of the bottle. As a major supplier of ore we need to think well as to how we mine the stuff.

An article from February in Der Spiegel includes this image showing where nukes are and where they will be:

It is now presumed out of date, but the action appears to be in China, India, the rest of Asia, Russia, the USA and to a lesser extent Latin America and Eastern Europe. Western Europe may well be turning which leaves Africa.

Necessary or not, there is little doubt that nukes will be part of our future and that may not be as bad as many now perceive.

[Manager Richard Wrightson] said despite uncertainty about the scheme, Loy Yang wanted to support the development of a liquid secondary market for the trading of carbon so the coal-fired power station operator could effectively manage its carbon risk.

Caught on the wrong side of history much?

Elsewhere: John Quiggin reports on his Senate Committee testimony.

nb. Richard Wrightson’s talk to the UNSW Centre for Energy and Environment Markets annual conference is available here. Note especially his response to the question: ‘should we just impose a carbon tax instead’
Update: Just to clarify in response to comments below – the context of the question of whether we should impose a carbon tax was huge uncertainty about whether Loy Yang’s Stations would still be viable in the coming decade. The establishment of long term derivative markets in carbon would, of course, be one way of clarifying this would be one way of providing this certainty. Another way would be for politicians and regulators to make the decisions for them.

Update: Looks like that high leverage in the energy sector is starting to bite:

April 28 (Bloomberg) — AGL Energy Ltd., Australia’s biggest electricity and gas retailer, faces risks on the refinancing of debt held by the partly owned Loy Yang A power plant, Bank of America Corp.’s Merrill Lynch & Co. unit said.

The Sydney-based company may have to inject equity into the unit or “walk away” from it, Merrill said in an April 27 report. The refinancing will be hampered by a drop in the unit’s interest cover ratio, the exit of foreign banks from Australia’s debt market and the planned carbon trading system, it said.