Nuclear does not have the answers we need
Blog Post | Blog of Scott Ludlam
Wednesday 10th March 2010, 12:57pm
by RachelPemberton in
Published in The Age 10 March 2010
Nuclear advocates frequently proclaim the need for a public debate about building nuclear power reactors in Australia. Well, last Thursday they got one, staged in front of 1200 people at the Melbourne Town Hall - and they were trounced.
A poll before the debate found an 8 per cent margin in favour of nuclear power. A further poll taken immediately after the debate revealed a margin of 24 per cent against nuclear power - 34 per cent in favour, 58 per cent against.
This 32 per cent turn-around was all the more surprising given that the pro-nuclear debating team included heavy-hitters Dr Ziggy Switkowski and Dr James Hansen, the "godfather" of climate change science and head of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies.
Dr Hansen argues that energy efficiency and renewable energy sources are our first-line weapons in the battle against climate change. No arguments there. In the Australian context, we have a growing body of scientific research mapping out sustainable energy scenarios that would allow us to keep the lights on while also sharply reducing greenhouse emissions.
For example, a 2008 report by McKinsey, a firm specialising in global greenhouse policy analysis, finds that with cost-saving energy efficiency measures and a number of other low-cost abatement measures, we could reduce Australia's greenhouse emissions by 35 per cent below 1990 levels by 2030 at no net cost (with further measures identified to reduce emissions by another 25 per cent).
The 35 per cent reduction equates to a reduction of 191 million tonnes of emissions each year. For comparison, if we relied on nuclear power to do the same job, 32 power reactors would be required and the capital cost alone would be $128-192 billion.
Where I differ with Dr Hansen is in his advocacy of nuclear power. Dr Hansen primarily sees nuclear power as a back-up in case renewables and energy efficiency can't deliver the greenhouse emissions reductions that are required. He is primarily interested in supporting research into "fourth generation" nuclear power concepts.
One obvious objection is that fourth generation nuclear power is still decades away. Yet we urgently need to reduce greenhouse emissions.
Another key question is whether the fourth-generation nuclear concepts go some way to resolving the greatest problem with nuclear power - its connection to the proliferation of nuclear weapons.
Sadly, claims made about the "proliferation resistance" of novel nuclear power concepts do not stand up to scrutiny. Dr Hansen is keen on the "integral fast reactor" concept. However, Dr George Stanford, who worked on an IFR research program in the United States, notes that proliferators "could do [with IFRs] what they could do with any other reactor - operate it on a special cycle to produce good quality weapons material".
The second nuclear power concept being promoted by Dr Hansen involves using thorium as the nuclear fuel instead of uranium. But thorium doesn't solve the weapons proliferation problem. Irradiation of thorium in a reactor produces uranium-233, a fissile material that can be used in nuclear weapons - indeed, the US has successfully tested several uranium-233 weapons.
As the only country to have seriously pursued thorium power, India provides one of the few real-world glimpses into the brave new world of fourth generation nuclear technology. India intends to use fast reactors to produce weapons-grade plutonium that will be used to co-fuel thorium reactors. That system is at odds with the rhetoric of "proliferation resistant" fourth-generation technology, and the production and transport of weapon-grade plutonium also makes it much more dangerous than conventional nuclear power. Anyone who has bought into the rhetoric about "proliferation resistant" fourth generation nuclear power might want to see if they can get their money back.
Dr Mark Diesendorf, an academic at the University of NSW and one of the participants in the Melbourne Town Hall debate, notes that: "On top of the perennial challenges of global poverty and injustice, the two biggest threats facing human civilisation in the 21st century are climate change and nuclear war. It would be absurd to respond to one by increasing the risks of the other. Yet that is what nuclear power does."
Increasing the risk of nuclear war brings us back to climate change. Recent scientific research details the climatic impacts of nuclear warfare. The use of 100 weapons in nuclear warfare - just 0.03 per cent of the explosive power of the world's nuclear arsenal - would result directly in catastrophic climate change with many millions of tonnes of black, sooty smoke lofted high into the stratosphere. Needless to say the social and environmental impacts would be horrendous.
Nuclear power reminds me of the old woman who swallowed a fly - a "solution" that only worsens the problems. We need safe, sustainable energy solutions - much can be done with existing technology, and we also need further research and development to extend the capabilities of sustainable energy sources and to bring down costs. Nuclear power would at best be a distraction and a delay on the path to a sustainable future.
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IQ^2 Debate
I was at the debate and what was interesting - suspicious, almost - was the large number of undecideds before the debate, about half the audience. By the end, all but 2% had broken for the negative side.
Overall I was unimpressed by Dr Hanson's presentation, which was a shame as I have enormous respect for his leadership in the climate change debate.
Proliferation concerns are valid, though in my opinion the safety concerns are generally overblown - comparisons to the coal mining industry are often made, and they are legitimate. The temptation to bring up Chernobyl is strong for anti-nuclear campaigners. Personally, I think a more valid argument is that Australia has such an abundance of renewable energy potential, and could become a world leader in renewable energy. Instead, nuclear proponents want us to kick-start a nuclear industry from scratch, which would involve giving billions of dollars to foreign engineering firms and ramping up the training of nuclear engineers. This would take 15 or 20 years and would still not be a sustainable, renewable source of energy. Climate change demands we act faster, and why not put the focus on renewable sources now, while we still can?
nuclear energy
The Greens are as bad as Labour governement. Nuclear energy is at the forefront of creating cheap energy. Considering you are still burning 2000kgs of coal whilst they come up with green solutions....which are just a hypicrypsy because with climate change they are never reliable with fires, winds, storms increasing that whallop these things.
France shows that nuclear energy is safe, we have lots of it, we even have one of the biggiest deserted areas in the world where we can put the stuff.
wake up AUstralia, you are just not committing to the climate change policy at all....instead like labour you talk rot and nuclear really is the most reliable energy choice. we cant put windmills everwhere, we wouldn't have many birds. we cant stick turbines in the sea or we won't have any fish, solar panels are the most expensive and and the battery they power has to be changed over every 8 years.....its useless!
Unless you plan on camping the rest of of your life and sucking in coal fumes, uranium nuclear plants stick out a mile.
drrrrrrrrrrrrr who really writes this rubbish......looks like I will have to vote libraal,,,,,,there the closiest to getting nuclear going.
anyhow gotta go water my vegies with the rain water!!
eat some grass
Questions ...1) Where exactly
Questions ...1) Where exactly does France store all of it's nuclear waste?
2) How many tonnes of waste do they have to store?
3) How many years will they have to "guard it"?
4) How much per annum are storage costs?
And many many more ......
1) Where exactly does France
1) Where exactly does France store all of it's nuclear waste?
They store it in a big room in La Hague. http://lonestartimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/la-hague-nuclear-sto....
2) How many tonnes of waste do they have to store?
I don't know exactly, but I do know all the spent fuel France has ever generated is stored in one large warehouse sized room in La Hague. So, not a great deal really.
3) How many years will they have to "guard it"?
Well, if we are smart and get behind Gen IV nuclear power (eg IFR, LFTR) then in about 5-10 years they'll begin selling it (or recycling it for their own use) as fuel for Gen IV reactors. After which all the long term radioactive 'waste' will have been fissioned away and the short term waste, with a half life of about 25 years, will be back to background levels within 300 years. That's a good deal less than the 800 odd years we've managed to guard the crown jewels.
If, however, we do not push for the roll out of Gen IV nuclear power we will be storing it for a bloody long time as you very well know. Gen IV are the ONLY know way to rid our world of nuclear waste. If nuclear waste is your concern then it is insupportable to reject the only technology capable of solving the perceived problem. I say 'perceived problem' because it's not really a problem, putting it back where it came from ie deep geological deposits, is a perfectly safe option, it's just not as good as getting rid of it altogether. Go IFR!
4) How much per annum are storage costs?
Not as much as the price you'd get for selling the stuff.
“The Greens are as bad as
“The Greens are as bad as Labour governement ...looks like I will have to vote libraal,,,,,,there the closiest to getting nuclear going.”
I agree that there is a frustrating lack of choice, but there is no way I'm voting Liberal.
The problem is, all our political parties are anti-science on one front or another. I've considered a null vote, but whether one votes mickey mouse or not, someone is going to get up, and we all have to live with who ever it will be. The Libs may accept the science on nuclear power but are clearly anti-science on climate change. They will squeeze every last lump of coal out the ground before they take on any serious nuclear power build out.
Labor is even worse. They ignore the scientific consensus on both nuclear power (safe, clean, abundant energy) and climate change. Despite the rhetoric their climate policy to date has revealed nothing but a deep contempt for climate science. I was watching Q&A the other night and Cristine Milne (who was fantastic BTW) was explaining why The Greens rejected Labor's ETS, when Penny Wong quipped “So you'd prefer to have nothing over something?”. This statement perfectly illustrates Labor's anti-science, vote winning agenda. You see, doing 'something' which will in no way provide the substantial CO2 cuts necessary to avoid dangerous climate change is the equivalent of doing nothing at all.
The Rudd/Abbott 'climate' policies are simply an excuse to burn more coal.
The Greens are the only party that wholly accepts the climate science and they are the only party that favour 'something else' over coal. Where The Greens are anti-science is over renewable energy and nuclear power.
However, with a swing to the Greens, both Libs/Labor will have to face up to the fact that Australia doesn't want their tokenistic concessions to climate change, while The Greens, and more importantly, the Australian public, will have to face up to the economic realities of the renewables only dream. That their choice replacement isn't closing down fossil fueled power plants and therefore isn't reducing CO2 in any meaningful way, must soon become evident. And I reiterate - doing 'something' which will in no way provide the substantial CO2 cuts necessary to avoid dangerous climate change is the equivalent of doing nothing at all.
I just hope to god The Greens cotton on to NP a little faster than the renewable champions of Europe have. After spending a whole lot of dosh on a system that hasn't made one jot of difference they're beginning to realise they NEED nuclear power.
"they keep on knockin"
Thanks for taking this issue for a run Tim and for taking it seriously.
Theres a very real chance that given the wieght of influence that can be brought to bear by the pro nuke lobby, if informed and considered responces to their tomfoolery are not maintained we will end up saddled with the dead weight of an expensive and accursed infrastructure which levels all diversity before it.
The sheer lunacy of stupidity of evolving the Australian sphere of influence into a direct capability for defence stratedgy based on the Nuclear tactical applications and all that implies for a longer term regional future (do we coexist with mutual fear or with mutual respect) aside, the ecenomics of Nuclear infrastructure development just do not stack up.
I am determined to take some time out in the next few days (perhaps midnight til dawn) and compose a letter of protest and disgust at the proposition for a waste dump to be foisted on our indiginous folk, what a great big colonial politic hypocracy that is! I am so cranky I cant think straight to respond with logic at the moment.
Please dont quit on this, if we do nothing it will be done to us like a dog rutting festival.
Where to Store Low Level Nuke Waste
A quick question shyt.
You do not mention where the Gov should store low level nuke waste. At the moment it is stored throughout all city suburbs and country towns. As far as I am aware all low level nuke waste from medical usage, and industrial usage, is basically stored in the hospitals, clinics and businesses where it is utilised, so we are progressively building up larger and larger low level nuke waste dumps throughout our cities and country towns.
What do you suggest we do with the waste, leave it where it is, or build low level waste dumps (probably not very low level when thousands of tons of the stuff is stock piled), or set up a dump/s in low population areas, like central Australia ?
I suppose there is an alternative, and that is to ban any equipment, medical or industrial, that generates ultimately, nuke waste.
Eventually there will possibly be a major leak from one of the existing storage areas in a city, and all hell will break loose, and the Fed Gov will have to make a very quick decision where to establish a dump.
IFR Nuclear Power
I think it is a great pity that the Greens have not given more serious consideration to the potential for using Integrated Fast Breeder Reactors to replace fossil fuels and to dispose of fuel for nuclear weapons. If nations cooperated together to provide the developing world with nuclear power there would be much less reason for war. The case for renewable energy being able to replace fossil fuels is unconvincing and unrealistic. The thought of enough area to produce significant amounts of solar energy is horrific. There is no biodiversity in areas used for solar collection. Use of agricultural land will lead to further destruction of areas remnant vegetation. The biodiversity of our deserts is too precious to sacrifice for solar energy when nuclear is a real option. Please visit BraveNewClimate.com to read more.
Thinking strategically about nuclear
Scott I fear you aren't thinking strategically about nuclear.
Australia is a uranium exporter. We have no control over the material once it leaves our shores. You will have no chance of shutting the mines, the industrial lobby will be invincible and the economic arguments that the resource must be exploited will overwhelm you.
The obvious alternative is to set out to consume 100% of our mine output domestically. That will reduce the global weapons risk since we can control the material until such time as it is no longer able to be weaponised.
The length of time the material is toxic is reducing from tens of thousands of years down to a much more feasible few hundreds of years. See here for information:
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20527505.900-hybrid-fusion-the-thi...
We all know that the collective world uranium orebody is entirely insufficient to meet world demand for power. So consuming our orebody will hasten the end of the problem and get the world to move past nuclear.
In simple terms leaving our orebody untapped leaves an open ended nuclear weapons risk because we can't know the mindset or politics of those who will be in power in future generations, particularly if the world becomes more dangerous due to resource constraints biting hard. (i.e. water wars, population disruption due to climate change).
So we should be doing what we can to take nuclear off the table for good by using it an environment where the risk can be controlled.
Proliferation
Even in the days before my nuclear turn around, I never found the proliferation argument particularly convincing.
Firstly the connection between nuclear power and nuclear weapons is a tenuous one:
* Nuclear weapons were developed before nuclear power, evidently nations do not need nuclear power in order to develop nuclear weapons.
* All the weapons that currently exist will not disappear with a dismantling of our nuclear power fleet.
* There are nations (Japan, for example) who have nuclear power, yet do not have nuclear weapons.
* Nuclear power can replace coal in all nations who currently have nuclear reactors, nuclear power or nuclear weapons without increasing any imagined proliferation risk, and that would take care of about 90% of our stationary energy emissions world wide.
Secondly WMD including chemical weapons and biological weapons can be made from many of our every-day processes, products and byproducts. Take hydrochloric acid (or hydrochloride), it is a listed chemical weapons precursor (eg, it's a component of mustard gas), which can be used to produce weapons capable of killing or maiming populations en mass. It's also a common product and byproduct of several important manufacturing processes. Should we stop manufacturing products that use or produce hydrochloric acid because there are chemical weapons proliferation concerns? If we did, then solar panel manufacture would have to cease, since hydrochloric acid is one of its' potentially deadly byproducts. What this “connection” between hazardous byproducts and weapons materials means is, we have to manage the byproducts of industry responsibly, ensuring the necessary safe-guards are identified and met.
The connection between nuclear power and nuclear weapons is no more salient than the connection between solar power and chemical weapons or disease control and biological weapons or life saving morphine and street cooked heroin. Just as it would be ludicrous to ban morphine, disease control research or solar panels for such tenuous connections, it is similarly ludicrous to ban nuclear power.
As for the rest of the debate, I thought it was interesting to note: no-one on the pro-nuclear side was anti-anything. They argued climate change is a monumental challenge requiring all our technological and social resources, bar none. The pro-nuclear side were the pro-climate-action side. They supported energy efficiency, conservation and a level playing field for all low carbon energy solutions - nuclear power and renewable energy included. I agree.
Life in the fact-free zone
Ludlum writes: One obvious objection is that fourth generation nuclear power is still decades away.
As someone who is at the forefront of getting this technology deployed, I can assure you that this is a lie pulled out of thin air. We could have a commercial Integral Fast Reactor (IFR) up and running in five years, and likely will have. After that, they'll be easy to mass produce because, among other things, they don't have the manufacturing bottleneck of building pressure vessels like lightwater reactors do, since they operate at near-atmospheric pressure.
Ludlum writes: India intends to use fast reactors to produce weapons-grade plutonium that will be used to co-fuel thorium reactors.
Clearly Ludlum is ignorant of the isotopic quality of plutonium that comes out of power reactors, be they fast or slow (LWRs). There's an excellent article on the subject here. And why would India put all the money into building breeder power reactors to make plutonium when they already have their arsenal in place? I personally know the people in charge of the project, and there is no intention whatsoever to use their breeder power reactors for weapons manufacture. Another lie from thin air.
Assertions do not equal truth, even with repetition.
Living in the fact free zone #2
The real issue, Tom, is "do we need nuclear energy at all", and the answer is a resounding .....no. Renewables are fully ready to supply all of our energy needs entirely using the only truely endless energy source, the sun. For every variation of reality that you can point to in the anti nuclear debate there are twenty in the anti renewables debate, simply because the nuclear lobby is industry funded.
Australia has a very special status being the only nuclear free continent (Lucas Heights aside), and being a continent with premium solar energy availability. Nuclear energy has no place here. More to the point if Nuclear Power plants were built here they would seriouly run the risk of becoming a failed economic experiment. The recent, and even not so recent, advances in photo voltaic conversion efficiencies promise to seriously permanently alter the economic structure of the electricity industry. At the very time when most energy infrastructure investors will be having wet dreams imagining the unprecedented profits starting to flow as our electricity prices soar in expectation of a CPRS, there is now certainty that a distributed electricity system will provide most of the electricity needed by all residents and small business. The grid system of the future will have a very different role, and a role for which nuclear output is entire unsuitable.
Dwellings that are connected to the grid only for the convenience of distributing their net energy output are a new reality that will start to appear in the next few years. And their industry impact will be resounding.
Another nuclear power debate
I think it's interesting to note, there have been quite a few Nuclear power debates happening round the country lately. Not all of them mirror the result of the debate mentioned here. Have a listen to this one, recorded recently by the environment institute, Adelaide:
http://www.adelaide.edu.au/environment/event/2010/nucleardebate.html
Nuclear power is no longer the preserve of the “market is God” conservative. Lay people, environmentalists and climate scientists alike, are beginning to take a critical look at nuclear power in the context of climate change. Many of them are changing their long held anti-nuclear positions. Here is a list of just a few you may have heard of.
Stephen Tindale, Director of Greenpeace UK to 2005
Chris Goodall, Green Party activist, UK
Mark Lynas, Environment editor New Statesman and active in Green Party, UK
George Monbiot, columnist The Guardian, UK
Dr Patrick Moore, co-founder of Greenpeace, now co-chair Clean & Safe Energy Coalition, USA
Stewart Brand, editor of the Whole Earth Catalog, USA
James Hansen, Grandfather of climate science, Head of NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies
Barry Brook, Sir Hubert Wilkins Chair of Climate Change, University of Adelaide, AUS
Tim Flannery, acclaimed zoologist, conservationist and author of The Weathermakers, AUS
Do yourself a favour, the next time you hear a renewables only advocate suggest a fossil fuel, such as gas, as back-up, ask yourself, why. Thats what these people did. The answer lead them to nuclear power.
Nuclear power is an
Nuclear power is an alternative for Australia just as alternative and renewables are. We do need to consider all the aspects of all the different methods being offered and discussed. The big issue with nuclear has to be the long term storage of the waste product. This stuff is really dangerous to the very environment we are trying to save and has a half life longer than the recorded history of modern man. Our real lack of understanding of major environmental and geological events in this county over long time periods makes storage unpredictable and not safe. These issues can be translated into the whole geo-sequestation of co2 from coal plants. We really need to see our unique and strong position in the market place to be the world leaders in renewables and build ourselves a powerful market position.
Storage
“We do need to consider all the aspects of all the different methods being offered and discussed.”
You're right about that B Tredinnick. Strangely enough one of the big issues with renewables is also storage. How do we effectively and economically store the energy they produce when operating at full capacity to use later when they are offline or under performing? How do we make supply answer demand?
At present there is no commercially deployable solution to this problem. This leaves us with two options. We can build renewable power plants in readiness for the new storage tech breakthrough and meanwhile have them backed up with fossil fuels. That is, most fossil fuel plants will have to remain in operation until our storage tech is improved, proven and deployed. Or, we can build current Gen II/III nuclear power plants in readiness for Gen IV (which use nuclear waste as their fuel, thus mitigating your storage concerns) and shut down one fossil fuel plant for every nuclear plant we build. That is, all fossil fuel plants can be replaced, even while we wait for the commercial deployment of IFR and other Gen IV's.
Storage for renewables is easy
I've never bought these renewable energy can't provide base load power arguments. They are rubbish. Electricity can be stored with ease, but it involves losses.
As an example, you can have a photovoltaic array generating electricity, to power a pump, to lift water, from one storage dam to another. The electricity storage capacity is determined by the size of the dam (and availability of water, need not be fresh), and the peak generation capacity is determined by the hydro electric generator attached. The energy source (photovoltaic array) and the storage device (dam with pump and hydro generator) need not even be located close together. This composite power plant is fully capable of providing base load power, or peaking power, or both.
There are many other examples you can make with renewable energy, so I won't attempt to list them all, but I would like to point out that wind and wave energy sources are well suited to pumping.
Pumped hydro
Pumped hydro makes sense when combined with a reliable, predictable power producer such as a nuclear power plant (NPP). Very basically, the NPP provides the baseload. When electricity demand falls below base load (eg. in the middle of the night), the excess power produced by the NPP is used to pump water to the top reservoir. Then when demand rises above base load the water from the upper reservoir is released to generate the extra electricity needed to supply peak demand.
This is easy to do when your base load power supply is constant. Wind and solar are not constant.
What happens when we get a still night and are unable to pump water? What happens if the following day, or string of days are also still. It's not uncommon for wind to drop off over huge areas of the country at one time. What if it's winter when the days are short and often cloudy? How many days storage would we need? With base load NP you need storage measuring in hours, with wind and solar you'll need it measured in days or even weeks if you want to meet all possible yearly fluctuations. Lastly, how much habitat are you prepared to drown to meet these storage needs? It's neither environmentally desirable nor economically feasible.
Renewables storage is not a
Renewables storage is not a problem. For wind, storage is achieved with geographic selection and field size. CSP provides 24 hour performance using concrete block heat storage and or eutectic salt heat storage (CSP stores surplus heat from mid day for use powering boilers at night). Geothermal is naturally 24 hour performance and can be used for load levelling. Hydro and pumped hydro (Australia has this capability in the Snowey system) already performs for load levelling with our current coal system. Bio mass is also a natural load leveller as combustion rate is selectable. Renewable load balancing (storage) is only a problem in a geographically isolated small system such as King Island where system management and vanadium redox storage are deployed.
The truth is that storage and load levelling is far easier in a renewables system than it is with a coal powered or nuclear system. South Australia is shaping up as Australia's leading CO2 emissions compliance state by a huge margin with its current 20% wind powered status and the world's first CSP for power, water desalination, and commercial salt production facility to be built at Point Paterson .
BilB For a real world example
BilB
For a real world example of wind powers inability to replace fossil fuels check out Denmark. They've been valiantly pursuing renewables, mostly wind, for the last 20 odd years. Finally they've reached the point where 20% of the power they produce comes from wind. France completely replaced coal with nuclear power in ten years so... not that impressive really.
Even worse than this though is only about half of their wind power is produced when Denmark can use it. The rest, quite simply, has to be dumped. Denmark does this by divvying it out to their neighbours. Norway, in particular has plenty of hydro to help balance the Danish grid – BTW 'plenty of hydro' is a luxury Australia does not have. Another problem with their excess power coming at inconvenient times is it usually isn't needed by their neighbours either. Denmark has recently been forced to pay their neighbours to take this power off their hands.
So while wind may make up 20% of the power Denmark produces, it does not make up 20% of the power they use. I believe the figure is more like 5%-10%. It therefore does not replace 20% of their coal power. Despite a determined drive for efficiency and energy conservation and one of the biggest roll outs of renewable power generators world wide, the Danes are amongst the highest per capita CO2 emitters in the EU. They also have the highest cost electricity in the EU. They are the polar opposite, in fact, of nuclear powered France.
CSP only provides 7 hrs storage, one cloudy day is enough to knock them off line. Geothermal would be great. I look forward to it. Hydro is seriously constrained in Australia both geographically and because of low precipitation. My comments above on pumped hydro still stand. Biomass? I don't know much about this, but I believe it requires arable land, it tends to replace food crops... or forests.
On SA wind, have a look a
On SA wind, have a look a this chart recording both demand and wind over the SA heat wave. It looks very similar to the Denmark scenario. When demand was high wind was low and when demand was low wind was high...ish.
http://windfarmperformance.info/documents/analysis/windpower_sa_200911_h...
Nuclear is Green
The Greens need to put the planet first and reconsider their position on nuclear power and leave behind outdated anti-nuclear sentiment.
Sure - Support wind, solar, tidal and other forms of clean power in parallel, but really we need to be looking at nuclear as the primary source of clean power.
Please support nuclear power now. It's what's right for Australia.
Radioactive tritium leaking from 27 out of 65 US nuclear sites.
Danial, have a little read of this, you will have to concentrate extremely hard on green thinking while you read it if you want nuclear to stll be green when you have finished
http://www.chernobylee.com/blog/2010/03/radioactive-tritium-leaking-fr.php
How much tritium was that again?
BilB, have a little read of that yourself. The article refers to measurement of tritium in sampling wells at a Vermont power plant of about 2 million picocurie per liter.
Here's a picture of an exit light, a glow in the dark safety sign in common usage. This light has 1.2 trillion picocuries of tritium. Break this harmless lightbulb into a million litres of water, and thats the scale of the tritium concentration measured. No one, anywhere, was at any risk from this.
And yet this plant is being closed, and 620 MW of clean electricity will be replaced by burning fossil fuels. Thats more electricity than produced by all Australia's wind and solar power plants. This is criminal disregard for our climate, fueled by scare campaigns, riding on ignorance. Well done BilB for being part of the problem.
History
The following quotes are taken from the Quarterly Essay 27 - "Reaction Time: Climate Change and the Nuclear Option" by Ian Lowe (2007): (see also this summary: http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2007/09/14/2032596.htm)
"On best estimates, high grade uranium ores could supply present demand for about fifty years. If we expanded the nuclear contribution to global electricity supply from the present level - about 15 per cent - to replace all coal fired power stations, the high-grade resources would only last about a decade."
"The scale of uranium use envisaged by nuclear optimists would require literally hundreds of mines of similar size (to Roxby Downs) - all using fossil-fuel energy and all producing mountains of low-level waste in the form of radioactive tailings."
"The fact that quite intelligent people embrace nonsense of this kind reveals a deep seated myth, based on an underlying set of values that constitute the real problem for human civilisation. If you believe that our material well-being is related to our heavy resource use, and realise that there are literally billions of people in the world living with much less, you are drawn to the case for a huge increase in resource use to allow them to live as we do. If you then do the sums and calculate the resources needed for that expansion, using present technology, you conclude that it is not possible. So you must either decide that we have to live more simply so that others may simply live, or postulate some sort of technical fix."
"Australia could do much more to help the global atmosphere by cutting our coal exports than we could by the most fanciful estimates of the benefits of uranium. Of course, many of those urging uranium exports are also in the vanguard of calls to export more coal...This shows that they are actually more interested in the short-term economic benefits of mineral exports than in any effect on the global environment."
"Exports of both coal and uranium from Australia are dominated by the same two giant mining companies, Rio Tinto and BHP Billiton. Neither shows much interest in scaling back their operations for the good of the global environment."
"As far back as 1976, the Fox Report warned that exporting uranium would inevitably increase the risk of nuclear weapons being developed. Since then, the situation has steadily worsened, with nuclear weapons having been developed by a range of countries."
"The high-cost, high-risk option of nuclear reactors is a dangerous distraction...The 1970s slogan remains true today: if nuclear power is the answer, it must have been a pretty stupid question!"
Gregor, I originally intended
Gregor,
I originally intended to read the whole article, but I just haven't found the time. My reply then is in response to the quotes alone.
"On best estimates, high grade uranium ores could supply present demand for about fifty years. If we expanded the nuclear contribution to global electricity supply from the present level - about 15 per cent - to replace all coal fired power stations, the high-grade resources would only last about a decade."
This is simply not true.
Firstly, Generation IV NP such as IFR (Integral Fast Reactor) do not require any uranium mining. They use the waste from previous generation NPP's as their fuel, thus ending the need for mining (be it coal, uranium or gas) and addressing long lived nuclear waste concerns at once.
Secondly, Uranium is not the only possible fuel source for nuclear power, as the main post pointed out, India is currently building thorium fueled reactors.
Lastly, what Ian Lowe is talking about here are the known uranium reserves, and since we can only know about that for which we have gone looking and only go looking for as much as we need, this says nothing about future reserves.
"The scale of uranium use envisaged by nuclear optimists would require literally hundreds of mines of similar size (to Roxby Downs)..."
This is a grossly misleading statement. Mining would be massively reduced were nuclear power to replace coal.
A 1000 MWe coal power station currently requires 2.5 million tons of coal per year or about 2 long freight train loads per day.
Compare this to a 1000 MWe Gen II nuclear power station which requires only 20 tons of uranium, about one cubic meter of the stuff per year!
Thats about 0.00005% of the fuel requirements our current system demands.
(Remember, uranium mining would not be necessary at all if we pursued Gen IV).
"...all using fossil-fuel energy"
Fossil fuels would be necessary at first, which ever fossil fuel alternatives we choose; wind, solar, nuclear...
"...and all producing mountains of low-level waste in the form of radioactive tailings."
Once the uranium has been extracted from the rock, the tailings are less radioactive than the natural rock before it was mined. BTW, radiation is everywhere. You and I emit radiation, as do rocks, water, plants, animals and the sun in varying degrees. Calling a hole full of of crushed rock (any rock) radioactive is akin to calling water wet.
What's important here is obviously not that the tailings are radioactive but the level of radiation they emit. That Lowe refrains from providing any figures leaves me to suspect he knows their emissions are within the safe natural background range.
"The fact that quite intelligent people embrace nonsense of this kind reveals a deep seated myth, based on an underlying set of values that constitute the real problem for human civilisation. If you believe that our material well-being is related to our heavy resource use, and realise that there are literally billions of people in the world living with much less, you are drawn to the case for a huge increase in resource use to allow them to live as we do. If you then do the sums and calculate the resources needed for that expansion, using present technology, you conclude that it is not possible. So you must either decide that we have to live more simply so that others may simply live, or postulate some sort of technical fix."
This isn't really an argument against NP but an argument against serious climate action. I'm trying to take a rather more pragmatic approach.
Calls for the simple life have rung out since the sixties. And the sixties, I'm afraid, were this ideals zenith. The succeeding generations have shown little inclination towards running with it; it remains, at best, a marginal ideal. The vast majority of people in our society show no intention of scaling back their lifestyles beyond the token gesture.
To rely on this kind of societal transformation alone, is to fiddle while Rome burns. The techno fix is going to be a crucial element. However, I do not believe our mitigation choices need to be framed by the kind of either/or polemic presented by Lowe. If we were to strive for energy efficiency and conservation while backing that up with some solid technological solutions, wouldn't we get where we need to be that much faster?
"Australia could do much more to help the global atmosphere by cutting our coal exports than we could by the most fanciful estimates of the benefits of uranium."
Again, why the polemic? Cut coal exports and pursue nuclear power. Indeed, more world wide nuclear power production will result in a declining demand for coal.
"Of course, many of those urging uranium exports are also in the vanguard of calls to export more coal...This shows that they are actually more interested in the short-term economic benefits of mineral exports than in any effect on the global environment."
This kind of half baked conspiracy theory doesn't really push my buttons - too easy to construct from simplistic, often glib associations - but if you subscribe to this position you must also find it deeply suspicious that the gas industry is so eagerly supporting wind.
“Of course, many of those urging [wind expansion] are also in the vanguard of calls to [build more gas] This shows that they are actually more interested in the short-term economic benefits of [gas exploitation] than in any effect on the global environment."
See? Easy...
"Exports of both coal and uranium from Australia are dominated by the same two giant mining companies, Rio Tinto and BHP Billiton. Neither shows much interest in scaling back their operations for the good of the global environment."
No they don't, and that's a lucky thing for renewables too, since they are reliant on the extraction of copper, quartz/silicon, iron ore, bauxite, gypsum, gravel, sand etc.
"As far back as 1976, the Fox Report warned that exporting uranium would inevitably increase the risk of nuclear weapons being developed. Since then, the situation has steadily worsened, with nuclear weapons having been developed by a range of countries."
See my comment above regarding the use of potentially life-saving/planet-saving resources and their “possible” diversion to the manufacture of WMD.
Australia monitors and can account for every ton of uranium it exports and it only exports to signatories of the Non-Proliferation Treaty.
"The high-cost, high-risk option of nuclear reactors is a dangerous distraction...The 1970s slogan remains true today: if nuclear power is the answer, it must have been a pretty stupid question!"
This is the situation as I see it. One third of the world is seemingly so blind to it's own demise, it's prepared to burn it's self into oblivion before substantially curtailing it's energy consumption. The other two thirds are so determined to pull themselves out of poverty, disease and squalor that, for obvious reasons, building and developing their nations with the aid of cheapest (first consideration) and cleanest (second consideration) energy they can get hold of is their foremost concern; not climate change.
So the question is, how do we convert this energy hungry world into a world where the CO2 emissions from all that energy consumption are reduced to zero, a world, in short, with a future.
I'll leave it to you to decide whether that's a stupid question.
People ask me, "Where does
People ask me, "Where does all that nuclear subsidy money go? I've never seen any of it." Well, some of it goes to research that may or may not have an impact on the real world. But more of it goes for activities that nobody but a nuclear advocate would think up. No other community, with such a commendable record for safety and reliability, would keep thinking up ways to make themselves look bad. Nukies themselves started it with the Price-Anderson Act, which assumes that only nuclear power could suffer an accident so horrendous that it would overwhelm all the resources of the world's insurance companies and require the government to cover the losses. Then, they set up a program that involved several nations in a coordinated, billion-dollar research effort over several decades, to determine the consequences of the worst realistic accident or terrorist act. That program proved that the worst we could expect would result in "few if any deaths off-site." In other words, there is no substantive basis for the Price-Anderson Act.
"You don't understand," I'm told. "We need that law so that, in case of an accident, people don't sue the supplier of every little widget in the plant." Well, we shouldn't have to create an apocalyptic myth to accomplish that simple task. What I do understand is, that the tougher and more mysterious a task is a web host, the more grant money you get.
But the topper is this one: When Bill Richardson was Secretary of Energy, a council of economists was set up (yes, economists!) that studied "some previously discredited reports" (their words) by people like Ernest Sternglass, Steven Wing, and Alice Stewart. Despite valid evidence to the contrary, they decided that radiation was killing workers in DOE facilities and persons living as far as several hundred miles downwind of A-Bomb tests. Richardson made great publicity from this, stating that although his predecessors had covered up this information, he was going to compensate these "cold war heroes" for their involuntary suffering. He then sent out teams of eager investigators to visit retirement communities and old age homes, and ask former nuclear employees there if they were suffering from any health symptoms. If any of the symptoms could possibly be attributed to the radiation they were exposed to fifty years previous, they were urged to apply for the new program, where they would get a minimum of $150,000.
I don't know whether these bounty-hunters had a quota, or were rewarded for bringing in large numbers of "victims," but there were several consequences from this program. The congresspeople who voted to hand out this largess gained support from this new special interest group, but the "victims" themselves were generally turned down when the facts were examined, because the radiation levels in question were not significantly above the natural background and other radiation sources we all encounter in daily living. Despite this, the taxpayers were still tapped for over a billion dollars so far, with more to come. And the nuclear enterprise was labeled by Congress an "ultra-hazardous activity" despite insurance statistics to the contrary. I presume that the money spent in this program is included in "subsidies to nuclear" to compare with subsidies to wind, solar, and other energy sources.
Now, I learn that there is a move by some senators to lower the eligibility barrier still further, to admit greater numbers of "victims."
And this is just ONE example. There's the case of a critic asking about terrorist-driven aircraft, right after 9/11. The nuclear spokesman replied that we had never previously considered such a problem. When a number of us pointed out that, in fact, the issue of aircraft collisions has been specifically dealt with, our spokesman replied, yes, but we had not thought about terrorist-driven aircraft.
Do you know any other industry that pays so much to shoot itself in the foot?
Green Shame
For a party supposedly devoted to green issues to remain so wilfully ignorant on such an important issue is shameful. To then prey on the fears of the ignorant in our society to shore up votes is abhorent. If we are to act NOW there is no feasible alternative to coal for baseload power other than nuclear. The risks are far less than the greens make out, and I find their disemination of misinformation morally deplorable at this time of desperate need.
You have effectively destroyed any hope that this country will be able to do anything remotely significant in reducing its carbon footprint. The major parties are a complete joke on the climate change issue, and the only alternative party that it makes any sense to vote for has taken this ideological stand against the only feasible solution to climate change that we have. I so desperately want to send a message to the major parties by voting green, yet I know that any leverage you get in the senate will be used to oppose nuclear power and thus ensure that we fail to do anything practical to prevent climate change.
An ETS is needed and has been for some time, but will do little other than to make the banks richer. More funding for research into renewables is needed but will do absolutely nothing to bring about the switching off of any coal-fired power plants we currently have - let alone stop future ones from being built. It seems to me a tad ironic that the party which will have the most influence upon ensuring our ecological destruction is called "the Greens".
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hello to all What's important here is obviously not that the tailings are radioactive but the level of radiation they emit dedicated hosting. That Lowe refrains from providing any figures leaves me to suspect he knows their emissions are within the safe natural background range. I don't know whether these bounty-hunters had a quota, or were rewarded for bringing in large numbers of "victims," but there were several consequences from this programfree web host. The congresspeople who voted to hand out this largess gained support from this new special interest group, but the "victims" themselves were generally turned down when the facts were examined, because the radiation levels in question were not significantly above the natural background and other radiation sources we all encounter in daily living virtual private server. Despite this, the taxpayers were still tapped for over a billion dollars so far, with more to come. And the nuclear enterprise was labeled by Congress an "ultra-hazardous activity" despite insurance statistics to the contrary best shared hosting
. I presume that the money spent in this program is included in "subsidies to nuclear" to compare with subsidies to wind, solar, and other energy sources.
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we wouldn't have many birds. we cant stick turbines in the sea or we won't have any fish, solar panels are the most expensive and and the battery they power has to be changed over every 8 years.....its useless!my comment above regarding the use of potentially life-saving/planet-saving resources and their “possible” diversion to the manufacture of WMD.dedicated hostingAustralia monitors and can account for every ton of uranium it exports and it only exports to signatories of the Non-Proliferation Treaty.The fact that quite intelligent people embrace nonsense of this kind reveals a deep seated myth, based on an underlying set of values that constitute the real problem for human civilisationfree web host. If you believe that our material well-being is related to our heavy resource use, and realise that there are literally billions of people in the world living with much less, you are drawn to the case for a huge increase in resource use to allow them to live as we do virtual private server. If you then do the sums and calculate the resources needed for that expansion, using present technology, you conclude that it is not possible. So you must either decide that we have to live more simply so that others may simply live best shared hosting, or postulate some sort of technical fix
Thorium Future
It takes quite a bit of courage and open mindedness to look into this area. Most people have an agenda on this topic.
We can not just look at CO2 in isolation we must also take into consideration energy independence (ie. oil supplies).
After my own research on the topic I and many in the Green movement have changed our opinions on the ability of alternate energies such as Wind, Wave, Solar and Geothermal as a real alternative for Base Load. These technologies are fine for Peak Load Electric Generation but they are not mature enough and will not be mature enough for decades if at all to generate adequate electricity for large cities such as Sydney.
The conclusion that I have come to is that the only solution to displace carbon emitting fossil fuel burning for Base Load is Nuclear Energy.
Now having come to this conclusion let me add that I have researched several Nuclear Technologies and have concluded that for Australia’s needs the best direction is actually not Uranium but Thorium based 4th generation nuclear power plants and that is what I believe we should be planning for.
The main reason I have concluded that Thorium Furnaces are the way to go are:
1) Thorium reactors are subcritical ie. can not have a melt down.
2) 75% less nuclear waste than conventional reactors
3) The waste that is produced is only radioactive for approx. 500 years as opposed to 250,000 years as is the case with conventional reactors.
4) Thorium reactors can incinerate the nuclear waste from conventional reactors, hence dealing with our current issue there.
5) Thorium reactors do not produce weapons grade nuclear by-products.
6) There is 4 times more easily mined Thorium available than Uranium
7) Thorium does not require enrichment; 100% of the Thorium is used as opposed to 3% of the Uranium in a conventional reactor.
8) It is estimated that there is only enough easily mineable Uranium for the next 150 years, but there is enough Thorium to run Australia for at least 5,000 years on today’s consumption levels.
9) No CO2 emissions.
10) Australia not only has the largest deposit of Uranium in the world but also has the one of the largest Thorium deposits.
11) Bob Hawke once proposed that Australia has a moral obligation to dispose of the nuclear waste from the countries we sell our Uranium to. By using Thorium Furnaces we can do so safely and at the same time power Australia.
12) John Howard said Australia should have 20 Nuclear Power Plants. I think he is correct it just depends which type.
Now the coal & natural gas industries are both valuable industries and should be used also. My conclusion here is that major works be undertaken to convert the coal & natural gas electric plants into Coal To Liquid fuel plants (CTL) & Gas To Liquid (GTL) but should go hand in hand with the nuclear industry. The reason for this is that traditional CTL/GTL plants (such as the CTL/GTL plants in South Africa) generate too much CO2 because they burn coal in the conversion process. By using Nuclear generated electricity for the heating there is minimal CO2 emissions in the conversion process hence we become energy independent without the CO2 issues and the coal & natural gas industry are redirected into another needy area which other alternatives are not as adept at providing solutions for ie. producing ethanol from potential food supplies, also biofuels can not produce petroleum based by-products’ eg. plastics but CTL’s can.
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