Julia's Reign

[DPK]

...government with a spine...

What an interesting concept!

 

[Moses]

But that is close to where I am living next year.
Could be a good thing actually. Rent could go down.

Good stuff, will have to have you and your Mrs round for a beer when you get here.

 

[sevenpointdropgoal]

My personal opinion is that Australia will get the most long term economic gain by aggressively pushing renewable, whilst maintaining, or even increasing uranium mining. The introduction of wide spread renewable energy sources, particularly solar and wind is a once in a lifetime opportunity for industry development in manufacturing. For a well costed example of how it might work I refer you here; http://www.beyondzeroemissions.org/.

My feeling with nuclear is it represents a back hole that we will never see a return on. We could still conceivably establish a profitable industry in solar technology particularly, whereas the nuclear horse has well and truly bolted. We should, however, acknowledge that many other countries do not have the capacity to generate clean power by means other than nuclear, and so accept that a level of uranium mining is inevitable.

 

[Jnor]

Suck it up and invest in some actual renewables. Nuclear's never gonna be more than a stop-gap anyway, so why bother when overall emissions are about the same as an LNG plant anyway? We can keep making a bajillion dollars sending our uranium around the world and set ourselves up with enough traditional fossil fuels to get us by to the point at which we have enough capacity in solar, wind and maybe even geothermal that we have no energy security worries whatsoever.

PS you beat me to it spdg!

 

[The_Brown_Hornet]

Many people in Australia are in favour of nuclear power generation until the question of a specific location comes up. They all want it in someones elses backyard.
The same thing about road and especially rail infrastructure in Sydney. Everyone will tell you they are desperate for this rail or that freeway, but none want to be next to it. Thats always for someone else to bear.

Yep, Nimbyism at its finest.

Other people take it even further: BANA (Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere)

 

[The_Brown_Hornet]

My personal opinion is that Australia will get the most long term economic gain by aggressively pushing renewable, whilst maintaining, or even increasing uranium mining. The introduction of wide spread renewable energy sources, particularly solar and wind is a once in a lifetime opportunity for industry development in manufacturing. For a well costed example of how it might work I refer you here; http://www.beyondzeroemissions.org/.

My feeling with nuclear is it represents a back hole that we will never see a return on. We could still conceivably establish a profitable industry in solar technology particularly, whereas the nuclear horse has well and truly bolted. We should, however, acknowledge that many other countries do not have the capacity to generate clean power by means other than nuclear, and so accept that a level of uranium mining is inevitable.

It's all about costs guys. Renewables are hugely expensive compared to fossil fules (and I say this as a shareholder of a renewables company). I agree with investing in R&D, but I don't believe we could switch to renewables any time soon, because the economic cost in aggregate to Australian households would be too great.

 

[Scotty]

Am I missing something in this discussion. A little thing called 'baseload'? The renewables that can provide baseload would be geothermal and wave. I don't believe any other option can cut that mustard? Wave is a long long way off, and geothermal is also going to take some way to get up to scratch especially with the cost benefit equation (and I also recently owned geothermal shares). The fact is that we need a mix of renewables and proven baseload options. Nuclear will be going for 100+ years in this world, so I see no reason why we can get a few up and running in the next 10-20 years. Add a few gas power stations and then build renewables up to as high a level as possible around these.

 

[sevenpointdropgoal]

Am I missing something in this discussion. A little thing called 'baseload'? The renewables that can provide baseload would be geothermal and wave. I don't believe any other option can cut that mustard? Wave is a long long way off, and geothermal is also going to take some way to get up to scratch especially with the cost benefit equation (and I also recently owned geothermal shares). The fact is that we need a mix of renewables and proven baseload options. Nuclear will be going for 100+ years in this world, so I see no reason why we can get a few up and running in the next 10-20 years. Add a few gas power stations and then build renewables up to as high a level as possible around these.

The beyond zero emissions model uses solar thermal as it's primary generation mode, so base load is less of an issue - hot oil, or molten salts, or even aquifers can be used to store heat, so power can be generated around the clock.

 

[The_Brown_Hornet]

Am I missing something in this discussion. A little thing called 'baseload'? The renewables that can provide baseload would be geothermal and wave. I don't believe any other option can cut that mustard? Wave is a long long way off, and geothermal is also going to take some way to get up to scratch especially with the cost benefit equation (and I also recently owned geothermal shares). The fact is that we need a mix of renewables and proven baseload options. Nuclear will be going for 100+ years in this world, so I see no reason why we can get a few up and running in the next 10-20 years. Add a few gas power stations and then build renewables up to as high a level as possible around these.

Absolutely. For any kind of alternative generation technology to work, baseload must be taken care of. I saw an article about a year ago where prominent economist John Quiggin tried to tell us all that base load is unimportant! What rubbish. I feel we are going to need a bunch of transitional technologies and one day we'll be able to generate power primarily through renewable means. The history of human technological development suggests that this is inevitable.

 

[Jnor]

We already have baseload capacity that will last for more than long enough to change onto an actually 'green' form of power generation, why bother changing to a very expensive stop-gap? We know whatever we choose it'll be painful and costly so why not make it a long-term cost for long-term benefit?

Had Ziggy Switkowski (currently head of ANSTO) come and talk at my internship a few weeks back and while he is a very convincing advocate of nuclear power for Aus (the best I've heard), he basically argued that all the renewables were unproven so we should go with nuclear, but when the issue of waste storage was raised all he said was "well, it's gonna be around forever, so I'm sure us humans will figure out a way to manage it in the future".

If Australia's premier advocate of nuclear power doesn't have much idea what we're gonna do with the waste then I can't say I have much faith in compromise politics figuring out a great solution.

 

[Cutter]

People are shit scared of nukes in this country. Perhaps we should ask the people of France and Sweden what they think, given that 80% of their power (from memory) is generated that way.

France, but not Sweden. Their power is predominantly hydro.

Until there is a safe way of disposing of nuclear waste, and the cost of disposal is included in the price of the power, I'd rather sit in the dark.

 

[The_Brown_Hornet]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_Sweden

According to the above, it's pretty much equal parts nuke and hydro. They reportedly sell some of it to their hypocrite neighbours in Denmark, who hate nuclear power, but are happy to buy it from Sweden and also burn coal.

http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf99.html

I can understand the antipathy towards nukes. They scare most people. But I can tell you that I lived about 90mi away from a nuclear plant in Texas, which supplied a lot of Houston's power. Never worried me.

 

[Cutter]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_Sweden

According to the above, it's pretty much equal parts nuke and hydro. They reportedly sell some of it to their hypocrite neighbours in Denmark, who hate nuclear power, but are happy to buy it from Sweden and also burn coal.

http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf99.html

45% is less than 80% but it makes little difference. As I said above, until someone works out how to dispose of the waste, I'm not keen on nuclear.

I can understand the antipathy towards nukes. They scare most people. But I can tell you that I lived about 90mi away from a nuclear plant in Texas, which supplied a lot of Houston's power. Never worried me.

Which makes you in the 0.000051106098341% of the population who is an IHIIMBY (what you call those people who say "I'll Have It In My Back Yard").

 

[The_Brown_Hornet]

But there are ways to dispose of it or even better, re-process the waste like the French do. Now that has its issues, like being able to produce weapons, but no solution is perfect.

The bottom line for me is that I cannot understand the people who are hot on reducing our burning of coal (fair enough) but dismiss nuclear energy out of hand. Nukes are not some blue sky technology, humanity has been using it to generate power for over fifty years now. It's real and not some theoretical process. There are risks, yes, but there are with every generation methodology. Nuclear power has a comparatively good safety record and the newer generation of reactors are safer than ever. Added to that, if we were to seriously look at thorium as a fuel, then it could be safer again.

All I'm saying is that the option should be on the table.

 

[kambah mick]

I wouldnt completely rule out nuclear power, but the huge problem is waste and accident. The exclusion zone around Chernoble is still huge, and serious health problems are still manifesting themselves in areas outside the zone. Politics in Ukraine and Russia are different to here and these problems are not dealt with in a "political"fashion there. In Australia,if there is ever a problem with nuclear waste or eventual nuclear powerplants, the political party involved will face a lifetime or more out of power. You have only to think about the fuss made about the batts installation where companies at several levels of seperation from the government did the wrong thing, but the govt copped all the blame for the deaths, deaths which were even more frequent in that industry prior to the govt program, to get some of the flavour of what a govt would face in the event of a nuke accident. We hold our govts to account more than any polity in the world. No sensible govt would take such a risk,especially when the risk is probably unnecessary. Just consider the ramifications if an exclusion zone of several hundreds of square kilometers had to be declared in Australia somewhere in the hinterland of a major city. Imagine that zone still existing after thirty years as at Chernoble, with no end in sight.

 

[The_Brown_Hornet]

All of that is fair enough, but with the costs of "clean" power and our steadfast refusal to consider nukes, we can't really have it both ways can we?

We are happy to sell our uranium to every other country in the world, but somehow not happy to use it as fuel. The saving grace of course is that we have so much coal and natural gas that we'll never need to use nuclear power so long as we decide that cheap electricity is more important than adherence to international CO2 emissions treaties. The minute we properly sign ourselves up to that action we will be paying a *lot* more for our power, either in the form of carbon taxes or large scale investment in renewables.

If we aren't prepared to have a good look at nukes in Australia then I say we burn as much coal and CNG as we can and let the rest of the world get poorer in the process.

 

[kambah mick]

I sort of agree with you about what we SHOULD do, but I am commenting on the politics of it all. Politically I don't think there is any chance of any change for many years to come, whatever the changes overseas. Two things happened last year that changed the game in Australia, probably irreversibly in a realpolitic sense. The first was the sacking of Turnbull by the climate sceptics/indefinate delayers in the Liberals and his replacement by Abbott. The second was the Greens voting with Abbott against the ALP policy which showed that there was going to be no negotiation or give-and-take on the subject by the Greens, it was their way or the highway and no incremental changes would be considered. With the many groups within the ALP who are leery about upsetting the mining industry preventing any thought of the ALP submitting a plasn that would be approved by the Greens, and the Abbott faction quite happy to agree to do nothing on the matter, even the arrival of a Greens balance of power in the Senate is quite unlikely bring anhy change to the status quo. There is absolutely no chance of the Garnaut Plan ever being implemented.
As an aside, it is remarkable how many people have decided that climate change is no longer an issue in Australia now that the drought in the eastern states has broken. That willmake it even more difficult to implement any changes in regard to climate or the Murray Darling Basin, particularly any changes that can be made to look like they will cost real money. Australians love a quick, cheap fix which is what got us into trouble with overallocation of water in the first place.

 

[The_Brown_Hornet]

You are quite right about the realpolitik of all this. It's unsaleable in this country, but then again so were the sales of CBA and Telstra for the longest time.

For my own part, I'm a mild skeptic, so I'm in no hurry to move away from the setup we have now. I do recognise, however, that a move to cleaner power is a necessary goal.

 

[Scotty]

Spend spend spend, tax tax tax.

It just keeps getting worse:

http://www.businessspectator.com.au...-report-pd20110201-DNRPG?OpenDocument&src=hp5

The Federal Treasury is examining a plan to tax bumper profits by Australian banks, according to a report by The Daily Telegraph, as part of its push to restore the nation's budget surplus.

According to a Treasury paper seen by the paper, the department says a "possible rationale" for taxing banks in Australia is they are "perceived as making excessive profits." The big four made a combined profit of $20.7 billion in the 2011 financial year.

 

[The_Brown_Hornet]

I do believe I called that early.