The government is going to prop up the coal industry even further.  It was bad enough when Howard pledged $400 million to them a year or so ago - now Rudd's throwing another $100 million at this lucrative  industry.  Climate change critics should be pleased that our PM is putting big business before decent investment in clean alternative energy.

According to critics there is no such thing as clean coal - all they can do is convert it to gas and store it - who knows where.


Quote:

KEVIN Rudd has split green groups by placing new emphasis on clean coal technology to combat climate change, telling the UN its development has to be at the "forefront of the agenda" to cut global carbon pollution from power stations and not destroy the coal industry. In a move that will avoid strife with the powerful Construction Forestry Mining and Energy Union, but stir growing divisions in the environmental movement, the Prime Minister has joined former US president Bill Clinton to refocus attention on how best to capture and store carbon emissions to reduce global greenhouse gases. Mr Rudd has also moved to reassure Australian industry he wants to protect exports and development at a time of international financial crisis. "If you look at global electricty generation into the future, it follows that after about 2050, we can still see the global economy dependent 40 per cent-plus on coal-fired electricity generation," Mr Rudd said in New York. Mr Clinton has agreed through the William J.Clinton Foundation to collaborate to "deploy carbon capture and storage technology to large-scale projects", encourage large-scale solar power generation in Australia and improve energy efficiency in large cities. http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24404241-601,00.html

Governments know that coal will never be clean but are beholden to big business at any cost.


Quote:

There is no such thing as clean coal," says James Hansen, NASA's expert on global warming, who says all coal plants, even TECO's, still emit millions of tons of carbon dioxide - the most threatening greenhouse gas. "There is no coal plant that captures the carbon dioxide and that's the major long-term pollutant," says Hansen. But if carbon dioxide pollution is the problem with clean coal, many scientists believe there is a solution. They believe it's possible to recover most of the carbon dioxide and store it underground. The idea is called "capture and sequester," and a global race is on to learn how it should be done. One Norwegian firm is storing tons of carbon dioxide in rock caves beneath the North Sea. America's efforts to sequester carbon have stalled. The Department of Energy planned to fund a plant, but pulled all funding when the price grew too high. "They took seven years just to decide where they were going to make a pilot plant - and then they decided to cancel it," says Hansen. And now, the failure to solve the carbon dioxide problem is a threat to coal itself. In the last five years, at least 63 coal-fired power plants have been scrapped or defeated by public opposition. Florida Governor Charlie Crist helped pull the plug on the two clean coal plants because he says without a carbon solution, clean coal is not an option. "Until that time comes, we want to develop more solar, more nuclear, more wind," says Crist. Which is why the industry needs an ad campaign. Until the federal government funds the research on carbon dioxide, America's reliance on coal is in long-term trouble. http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/06/20/eveningnews/main4199506.shtml

Yea, I;ve never really got the "clean " coal bit,
Does it look like coal?
Does it smell like coal?
Does it burn like coal?

ITS COAL.
So in the last year our govs on both sides of politics have put 500 million into a product that has proved to be dirty power,I wonder how much "clean"power 500 million would buy?

athiest - I'm completely with you on that one.

Clean coal ?? it is black to begin with !!
It is a concentrated store of carbon from the atmosphere.

Burn it and release the carbon within.

wrote on Sep 26^th, 2008 at 9:27am:

Yea, I;ve never really got the "clean " coal bit, Does it look like coal? Does it smell like coal? Does it burn like coal? ITS COAL. So in the last year our govs on both sides of politics have put 500 million into a product that has proved to be dirty power,I wonder how much "clean"power 500 million would buy?

http://www.dorkinglitho.co.uk/Imgs/PinWheel1.jpg

But seriously, there's absolutely no reason (other than the irrational bitching of uniformed environmentalists) why Australia hasn't gone nuclear yet. Why the bugger are we bothering with all these lame solutions when we're sitting on the largest reserves of uranium on the planet?

JC Denton wrote on Sep 26^th, 2008 at 3:08pm:

wrote on Sep 26th, 2008 at 9:27am: Yea, I;ve never really got the "clean " coal bit, Does it look like coal? Does it smell like coal? Does it burn like coal? ITS COAL. So in the last year our govs on both sides of politics have put 500 million into a product that has proved to be dirty power,I wonder how much "clean"power 500 million would buy? http://www.dorkinglitho.co.uk/Imgs/PinWheel1.jpg But seriously, there's absolutely no reason (other than the irrational bitching of uniformed environmentalists) why Australia hasn't gone nuclear yet. Why the bugger are we bothering with all these lame solutions when we're sitting on the largest reserves of uranium on the planet?

How do we pay for it?
How much would that cost?
How long would it take to build?
Where would YOU put them?
What do we do in the mean time?
Dont we have better options available now?
There, I havn't even mentioned the enviroment.

[quote author=EmpNap link=1222382664/0#3 date=1222405711
But seriously, there's absolutely no reason (other than the irrational bitching of uniformed environmentalists) why Australia hasn't gone nuclear yet. Why the bugger are we bothering with all these lame solutions when we're sitting on the largest reserves of uranium on the planet?[/quote]

But that won't do sufficient damage to capitalism to make the lefty-greens happy.  

Some of you proponents of nuclear power have no idea how dangerous and expensive creating a NP station is - from the mining, developing, processing, building and establishing power stations which always run over budget by billions of dollars.  There is the most important matter of disposing of the radioactive waste where no safe repository has yet been designed and who's going to be around to look after this waste in 100, 200 or 50,000 years time.

The lifespan of a NP plant is 40 years and once it's packed up - it costs billions to deconstruct it and dispose of it.  There is also the cleaning up of the tailings from the mines once they're depleted.  This is never never succcessful and the toxins always unavoidably leak into our underground water systems.  A huge percentage of uranium miners also have serious lung diseases and there is a high incidence of cancer amongst them.

Until a NP plant is established - it uses obscene amounts of fossil fuel energy which no-one ever considers and the depleted uranium is often used for nuclear weapons.  NP plants are also susceptible to terrorist attacks, not to mention horrific accidents which are still occurring regularly regardless of how many modern "safety" measures are put in place.

Only the ignorant believe the spiel spruiked by the pro nuclear lobby who know it isn't a viable industry, and need billions in government funding to prop it up.  

It is also estimated that we only have another 30-60 years of uranium left depending on the demand.

It's a crock.

mantra - i agree entirely.
it is almost a crime to consider anything but renewable energy in this age.
The energy used to produce clean nuclear energy is enormous.

imagine if a serious push had been made for renewable energy 20 years ago in Aussie.

Spot on Mantra, there is no reason for australia to go nuclear, it is the dumbest choice possible.

When cretins still harp on about how being environmentally responsible is bad for the economy, I have to laugh, obviously unregulated greed, corporate unaccountability, and government waste is economically viable.
What a bunch of maroons.

There is one major  factor in its favour. Develop a technology for carbon capture and sequestration that works, and you can use it on biomass power generation. That way you actually extract CO2 from the atmosphere.

Potentially it can work. The CO2 if buried in the right places can ultimately form carbonate rocks.

Let's not be too fast to condemn anything that gives us a chance. Let's avoid language like 'cretins' and 'we should only consider renewable energy'. It's a question of environmental accounting. Anything that improves the bottom line (in terms of carbon footprint) is worth considering.

We need to re-examine our paradigms, especially when we live in a time of huge economic bailouts.

We have an imminent environmental crisis just as serious. We need to use all means at our disposal - not just one or two.

Yes if you listen to environmentalists then clean coal will never work and nuclear power will always be too expensive and dangerous. On the other hand renewables will improve in leaps and bounds.

The fact is switching to renewables is asking to put an energy hungry world on a energy crash diet.

pjb05 wrote on Sep 27^th, 2008 at 6:05pm:

Yes if you listen to environmentalists then clean coal will never work and nuclear power will always be too expensive and dangerous. On the other hand renewables will improve in leaps and bounds. The fact is switching to renewables is asking to put an energy hungry world on a energy crash diet.

Why?
I can only assume you nothing of renewable energy to make such a dumb statement.
Rather than read the personal opinions of climate change sceptics get out there and get educated on the subject,.YOU will be surprised at how easy it would be for all of us to live on renewable energy.

[quote author=athiest link=1222382664/0#11 date=1222566431
Why?
I can only assume you nothing of renewable energy to make such a dumb statement.
Rather than read the personal opinions of climate change sceptics get out there and get educated on the subject,.YOU will be surprised at how easy it would be for all of us to live on renewable energy.[/quote]

Then why don't you surprise me? Renewables need massive back up (about 90%) from baseload sources for electricity generation.  And what about transport? Planes, ships cars and trucks need liquid fuel. You need energy to grow the economy. You need 3% economic growth each year to keep unemployment in check. Anything we do here in Australia will be insignificant compared to the rapid growth going on in the developing world (esp India and China).

PS, all this has nothing to do with climate change skepticism.

pjb05 wrote on Sep 28^th, 2008 at 2:25pm:

[quote author=athiest link=1222382664/0#11 date=1222566431 Why? I can only assume you nothing of renewable energy to make such a dumb statement. Rather than read the personal opinions of climate change sceptics get out there and get educated on the subject,.YOU will be surprised at how easy it would be for all of us to live on renewable energy.

Then why don't you surprise me? Renewables need massive back up (about 90%) from baseload sources for electricity generation.  And what about transport? Planes, ships cars and trucks need liquid fuel. You need energy to grow the economy. You need 3% economic growth each year to keep unemployment in check. Anything we do here in Australia will be insignificant compared to the rapid growth going on in the developing world (esp India and China).

PS, all this has nothing to do with climate change skepticism.
[/quote]

I dont know where you are getting your info from but it isn't just wrong its total lies.
Renewables need a 90% "back up" , really?
I live on renewable energy, I have NO back up,let alone 90%.

What makes you think you can grow the economy with nuke energy but not with renewable?

As for China and India,
China has embrased alternate energy better than Australia and have in use many different forms of power production than just coal.
They also have hydro plants that make the snowy mountain scheme look like a fish pond.
India has many villages that run on solar, its good to see these two large nations understand the importance of renewable energy, pity Australia are so far behind in their thinking.

wrote on Sep 28^th, 2008 at 11:47am:

Why? I can only assume you nothing of renewable energy to make such a dumb statement. Rather than read the personal opinions of climate change sceptics get out there and get educated on the subject,.YOU will be surprised at how easy it would be for all of us to live on renewable energy.

Of course we can live on renewable energy, but in response to your other post, China and India have not exactly embraced clean energy technology yet. There is a site (which I'll attempt to Google) that gives a breakdown. China is slightly behind Australia in terms of total renewables, but way behind in terms of percentage of total  power generation (by a factor of 10). The biggest producer of clean energy is by far the USA (About twice that of Australia by percentage of total generation, and by a factor of about 30 on total renewable power generated).

Here it is :

http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/international/electricitygeneration.html

You can download spreadsheets on electricity generation and a breakdown of conventional and renewable generation.

Quote:

Then why don't you surprise me? Renewables need massive back up (about 90%) from baseload sources for electricity generation.

The following article on the fallacies of base load power goes into the technical side - so I've just taken basic extracts from it.  It's obvious that our governments and the coal, gas and uranium industries are doing everything within their power to discourage the use of renewable energy.

Opponents of renewable energy, from the coal and nuclear industries and from NIMBY (Not In My Backyard) groups, are disseminating the fallacy that renewable energy cannot provide base-load power to substitute for coal-fired electricity. Even Government Ministers and some ABC journalists are propagating this conventional ‘wisdom’, although it is false. The political implications are that, if the fallacy becomes widely believed to be true, renewable energy would always have to remain a niche market, rather than achieve its true potential of becoming a set of mainstream energy supply technologies.

Renewable energy can provide several different clean, safe, base-load technologies to substitute for coal:

• bioenergy, based on the combustion of crops and crop residues, or their gasification followed by combustion of the gas;
• hot rock geothermal power, which is being developed in South Australia and Queensland;
• solar thermal electricity, with overnight heat storage in water or rocks or a thermochemical store; and
• large-scale, distributed wind power, with a small amount of occasional back-up from peakload plant.

It is obvious that the first three of these types of renewable power station are indeed base-load. Efficient energy use, the natural companion of renewable energy, can also substitute directly for base-load coal. However, the inclusion of large-scale wind power in the above list may be a surprise to some people, because wind power is often described as an ‘intermittent’ source, one that switches on and off frequently.

Combinations of efficient energy use and renewable sources of electricity can replace electricity generating systems based on fossil fuels and nuclear power. With renewable sources, base-load electricity can be provided to the grid by bioenergy, hot rock geothermal, solar thermal electricity with storage in water, rock or thermochemical systems, and wind power with a little back-up from gas turbines. Natural gas and coal seam methane can also substitute for some base-load coal-fired power stations, although supplies of these gases are limited in eastern Australia.

Intermediate load can be supplied by solar PV electricity without storage, when it becomes less expensive. When natural gas supplies become scarce, gas turbines used for peak-load supply can be fuelled by biomass.

By 2040 renewable energy could supply over half of Australia’s electricity, reducing CO2 emissions from electricity generation by nearly 80 per cent.  In the longer term, there is no technical reason to stop renewable energy from supplying 100 per cent of grid electricity. The system could be just as reliable as the dirty, fossil-fuelled system that it replaces.

Taking account of the high costs of greenhouse impacts (Stern 2006), the barriers to a sustainable energy future are neither technological nor economic, but rather are the immense political power of the big greenhouse gas polluting industries: coal, aluminium, iron and steel, cement, motor vehicles and part of the oil industry.

Actually, there is one constraint on a renewable electricity future. Growth in demand has to be levelled off, or there will not be enough land for wind and bioenergy. In the long run, this would entail a change in the national economic structure and the stabilisation of Australia’s population.

http://www.cana.net.au/documents/Diesendorf_TheBaseLoadFallacy_FS16.pdf

CRETINS, OOPS, I said it again!

Seriously, the denialists are all over the shop with their arguments.
There is no GW.
There is,GW, but it's not our fault.
There is no energy crisis.
Addressing the energy crisis will destroy all our economies.
Renewables will never cope with peak load.
Solar is too expensive.
Nuclear is more environmentally friendly because we can utilise it more quickly.

Any one who chooses to believe that the same decision makers, that oversaw the profligate greed and corruption that brought us to our current economic position, has any agenda other than pandering to the wants of that corporate greed, raise your hands.

Now for the rest of us, well the good old US could have built enough solar power facilities to power the whole of the US, for less than they have spent on Iraq, but toppling Saddam is far more important than sustainable energy.

Now the China argument, if they do it, we should too.

You can leave your details with the mods, and be first to trial another outstanding chinese practice we should emulate.

The new mobile execution buses will be starting tomorrow, so we can keep up with their great human rights record as well, we certainly want to advance our culture along the lowest common denominator principles of developing nations.

This last paragraph is a beauty. After saying we could easily switch over to renewables and slash our CO2 emissions (without offering much in the way of hard evidence), he then says that this would also entail changing our whole economic structure and curbing our population! What about the heavily populated Northern Hemisphere? How are they then going to switch to renewables?

"Actually, there is one constraint on a renewable electricity future. Growth in demand has to be levelled off, or there will not be enough land for wind and bioenergy. In the long run, this would entail a change in the national economic structure and the stabilisation of Australia’s population."

muso wrote on Sep 28^th, 2008 at 3:33pm:

wrote on Sep 28th, 2008 at 11:47am: Why? I can only assume you nothing of renewable energy to make such a dumb statement. Rather than read the personal opinions of climate change sceptics get out there and get educated on the subject,.YOU will be surprised at how easy it would be for all of us to live on renewable energy. Of course we can live on renewable energy, but in response to your other post, China and India have not exactly embraced clean energy technology yet. There is a site (which I'll attempt to Google) that gives a breakdown. China is slightly behind Australia in terms of total renewables, but way behind in terms of percentage of total  power generation (by a factor of 10). The biggest producer of clean energy is by far the USA (About twice that of Australia by percentage of total generation, and by a factor of about 30 on total renewable power generated). Here it is : http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/international/electricitygeneration.html You can download spreadsheets on electricity generation and a breakdown of conventional and renewable generation.

Thanks for that Muso.

pjb05

Quote:

Actually, there is one constraint on a renewable electricity future. Growth in demand has to be levelled off, or there will not be enough land for wind and bioenergy. In the long run, this would entail a change in the national economic structure and the stabilisation of Australia’s population.

That is one statement that does make a lot of sense.  As it is our existing energy infrastructure can barely cope with our population as it is today - yet our governments are bringing in more and more migrants.  So the current solution is just to build more and more power stations and increase our mining to ridiculous proportions where Australia will eventually just be one large quarry trying to cope with a population that it can't possibly sustain.

It's not just our energy supply we have to worry about - there's our water and farming which is dwindling rapidly.  It won't be too long into the future that energy will be the least of our problems.

This article is 10 years old - and there were serious concerns even then.  Immigration has now reached approx. 300,000 p.a. and that's not counting births, visa overstayers or those from NZ.

The driest of all vegetated continents, Australia's total runoff of water is well short of the runoff from the Mississippi River alone. The landscape is also an inhibitor. No less than 70 percent of the continent is considered arid or semi-arid, with few permanent rivers, unpredictable rainfall and ancient soils.

On top of that, Australia is facing severe environmental problems, with intense agriculture and deforestation causing widespread salinity, desertification and soil erosion. Just seven percent of the original vegetation remains, writes population expert Paul Ehrlich, and the removal of native trees has greatly disrupted the normal water cycle and dramatically reduced the amount of arable land.

"We've been overtaxing the land for so long there's no more 'give' in our ecosystems" warns botanist Dr. Mary White. She believes Australia may already be overpopulated, and suggests 13 million as an appropriate figure.

Immigration, rather than natural fertility, has been the primary engine behind Australia's rapid population growth, particularly in the 1980s, when annual influx climbed above 100,000. The anti-immigration talk has brought charges of racism forth, but Australia's aboriginal population, expected to number no more than 350,000 by the year 2001, is also concerned about being overwhelmed by what it calls "totally unsustainable" population growth.

So then mantra, what will the World's population need to be reduced to in order to make renewables viable?

PS how do you propose to achieve this reduction?

Phew, Got these figures from the link muso posted.


2005


Worldwide total electric ----      17,350
Worldwide net hydro power  ---  2,900
World nuclear power ------         2,625
World conventional thermal ----11,455
World solar/wind/wood/waste    ---369


I assume conventional thermal is coal stations.

Quite disappointing really, how low real renewables are.
Plenty of room for growth :-)

Here's something for the nuclear power skeptics:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article4836556.ece

Mark Lynas: the green heretic persecuted for his nuclear conversion
The climate change expert Mark Lynas has been scorned by eco-colleagues for daring to speak up for atomic power


I know I should be furious. The EDF takeover of British Energy means that four nuclear power stations could now be built around the UK, the first nuclear new build in a generation. As a long-standing Green party member, one who chops his own wood, grows his own leeks, keeps chickens and puts the kids in washable nappies, antinuclear indignation should spring easily to my lips.

After all, energy is something I care about. The last time I checked my carbon budget, I came in at a fifth of the national average. I rarely fly, even when booked to address faraway audiences about my personal obsession, climate change – a subject I’ve covered in three books. Whenever the word “nuclear” comes up at my talks, a shudder runs through the room. Because everyone knows that real environmentalists loathe nuclear power. It is just evil. Full stop.

Except, well, I don’t believe that any more. Just a month ago I had a Damascene conversion: the Green case against nuclear power is based largely on myth and dogma. My tipping point came when I discovered just how much nuclear power has changed since I first set my mind against it. Prescription for the Planet, a new book by the American writer Tom Blees, opened my eyes to fourth-generation “fast-breeder” reactors, which use fuel much more efficiently than the old-style reactors, produce shorter-lived waste and can also be designed to be “walk-away safe”.

Best of all, these new reactors – prototypes of which have already been tested – can produce power by burning up existing stocks of nuclear waste. As Blees puts it: “Thus we have a prodigious supply of free fuel that is actually even better than free, for it is material that we are quite desperate to get rid of.” Who could object to that?

Just about everyone on the eco-scene, it turned out. I began to receive e-mails from friends and colleagues warning me off the topic. Did I really want to risk my entire reputation by alienating the green movement? The backlash to my first magazine article on the subject prompted my inbox to collapse, the blogs to drip with venom, the dirty looks to multiply.

A former Greenpeace campaigner posted on my website that I needed to show “a bit of humility” and “less arrogance”. On Greenpeace’s blog my views were mocked as “wishful thinking of the day”. On Radio 4’s Today programme, Green party leader Caroline Lucas accused me of having “lost the plot”. When I argued back, she accused me of “just being silly”. I was a traitor.

This was a moment I had been dreading for nearly three years, ever since I first suspected that much of what I had been brought up to believe about nuclear power – that it is, without exception, dirty, dangerous and unnecessary – was untrue. Science has moved on. The old figures just don’t stack up any more.

According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, nuclear is just as low-carbon a power source as wind and solar: the world’s 439 operating nuclear reactors save the planet from 2 billion extra tonnes of carbon dioxide per year, which would have been emitted had coal been used instead.

And those dangers? They’re still there but we need to discuss them truthfully. Take Chernobyl. We all know it was a disaster: the Greenpeace website states a death toll of 60,000 already and predicts another 140,000 deaths in the future. But these statistics fly in the face of mainstream science: according to the World Health Organisation and the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation, 28 people died in the initial phase and several thousand more have suffered from nonfatal thyroid cancer because of the accident. The UN report concludes that “there is no evidence of a major public health impact attributable to radiation exposure 20 years after the accident” – so the real death toll from the world’s worst nuclear accident is tiny. On a deaths per gigawatt-year basis, nuclear is safer than coal and oil.

Curiosity whetted, I searched the scientific literature for evidence to support the other great green charge levelled at nuclear power: it kills its neighbours. I sifted through piles of rigorous epidemiological studies from all over the world, searching for proof that people who live near nuclear sites are more prone to cancer and leukaemia. None of the reputable journals turned up a link.

These are just two examples of eco-myths: there are many more. If only we were allowed to discuss them without being flayed for heresy.

When I e-mailed a senior ecological scientist with my conclusions, he agreed, but only privately. “Do not cite me as promoting nuclear,” he begged. I am still shocked that people of his stature are too intimidated to speak out. The result of this fear is that the public is dangerously misinformed about nuclear power.

I have finally thought of something useful that I can do with my Green party membership card: I’ll auction it on eBay and send the money to EDF – with a suggestion that it beefs up its marketing department. Any bids?

It's always interesting pjb05 when all of a sudden an environmentalist and anti-nuclear protestor changes his/her stance to the opposite of what they have believed for years.  What's the bet - he is doing some work or has some directorship or other interest in a nuclear power company.

This has been the case with a few others and I will hunt around - provided he hasn't covered his tracks too well - to see what company is paying him off.

No-one who knows the procedures of producing nuclear power and has been totally against it and shouting this message from the rooftops for years suddenly changes his mind without a good reason - and it's usually money.

pjb05 wrote on Oct 2^nd, 2008 at 4:49pm:

Here's something for the nuclear power skeptics: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article4836556.ece Mark Lynas: the green heretic persecuted for his nuclear conversion The climate change expert Mark Lynas has been scorned by eco-colleagues for daring to speak up for atomic power

I'm not worried about speaking up for nuclear. I don't know one single environmental professional in my circle who would disagree with me.

Solar thermal is looking pretty good, but even that will not fill the gap entirely.  We need a mixture of renewable technologies.

I just had a quick look through Lynas's Blog - which sounded professional enough if inaccurate - but it was full of holes which were brought to his attention by some experts in the nuclear area.  See for yourself.  He was full of bulldust.  He is being paid off definitely by someone.

http://www.marklynas.org/2008/9/19/why-greens-must-learn-to-love-nuclear-power

Really Mantra? I thought he countered those so called experts rather well. Their main argument which kept cropping up was that what they really want is to curb power use and our industrialised way of life. They see nuclear power as a 'get out of jail free card'. And you accuse Lynas of hidden agendas!


Mark Lynas
September 22nd, 2008 at 03:13 PM
Theo – I’m not arguing that the waste problem can be forgotten about, but that it is pretty negligible in terms of its impacts on the environment (and people), certainly when compared with other non-renewable energy sources. With vitrification and deep disposal, the reduced amount of waste would not present much of a threat. Remember, there is radioactivity all around anyway in the ambient environment – radon gas is a good example – which our bodies have evolved to cope with. Check out the Cohen online book (ref #2) for more on that.

Plus, as I said, this is not an either/or with nuclear and renewables. I see nuclear as replacing coal and gas primarily. Ideally we’d see a 60/40 split in UK electrical power with renewables/nuclear, though how the grid is managed is pretty complicated.

In terms of powering down electricity use – this simply isn’t going to happen. It’s wishful thinking. Sorry. We’re going to see continual increases in electricity use, particularly as the transport sector is increasingly electrified (cars, trains etc). And as George Monbiot’s book shows, going for energy efficiency can peversely increase electricity use, but making it cheaper. The main thing is to have a strong cap on carbon, not energy per se.

- Dr David Lowry: It’s not good enough to say that my article is “replete with so many errors” if you can’t actually name any. Please oblige, or recant. Simply posting someone else’s tangentially-relevant article is not going to make your argument for you.

- Osbert Lancaster: I totally agree that we need to reduce pressure on ecosystems. Nuclear is probably the energy source that does this best. Fossil fuels and biofuels are worst. What we want to avoid is swapping a below-ground usustainable source with energy harvested from the ambient biosphere, further to the detriment of the remaining natural ecosystems. Renewables like wind and solar are very benign at small scales, but scale them up too far and there will again be impacts – on land use, biodiversity, water, toxics etc. I think that in terms of pure ecology nuclear is probably the most benign of all, despite the fact that there is a waste issue. Just look at the natural environment around Chernobyl, which is flourishing, because all other human impacts have stopped.

Anja – as I say in the article, nuclear on any comparable scale is safer than most other energy sources, partly because it is subject to such a stringent regulatory system. Has there been a single death in the UK attributable to having 20% nuclear electricity for the past 30 years?

Peter and Maurice – The old chestnut about how long it takes to build a nuclear power station and the urgency of climate change simply won’t wash (sorry to mix metaphors!). Are you suggesting that we won’t need any energy in 15 or 20 years? No? Then we need a long-term solution to the problem. Sure, we can peak emissions in the meantime with quicker options, but we still need energy indefinitely. Plus – if there were less challenges to nuclear from greens, it would be a lot quicker to build! The time is mostly about the planning system, not the engineering.

mantra wrote on Oct 2^nd, 2008 at 5:21pm:

It's always interesting pjb05 when all of a sudden an environmentalist and anti-nuclear protestor changes his/her stance to the opposite of what they have believed for years.  What's the bet - he is doing some work or has some directorship or other interest in a nuclear power company. This has been the case with a few others and I will hunt around - provided he hasn't covered his tracks too well - to see what company is paying him off. No-one who knows the procedures of producing nuclear power and has been totally against it and shouting this message from the rooftops for years suddenly changes his mind without a good reason - and it's usually money.

I guess it's a question of risk. What's the worst thing that has ever happened with nuclear power generation? How many babies were born with mutagenic effects even as a result of Chernobyl, whose design was ill conceived and never to be repeated?

On the other hand what is the worst possible scenario when it comes to continued use of coal fired power stations? How many people have died a premature death as a result of the emissions? How much radio active waste goes into the atmosphere as a result of coal fired power stations? Compare that with nuclear.

We need to look at the facts and remove the emotion from the argument.

The 'good' reason for changing ones mind on nuclear power might be global warming and the fact that the technology has advanced, Mantra.

In the case of Chernobyl this reactor was a a type which had never been contructed in the West. It didn't have a containment vessel and the roof was actually made of flammable materials!

Also new advances include thorium reactors which don't have the same issues of weapons proliferation and radioactive waste. Pebble bed reactors have also been developed which are inherently much safer than conventional designs.  

Climate change critics should be pleased that our PM is putting big business before decent investment in clean alternative energy.

Given that the vast majority of our electricity comes from coal, which contributes over half our GHG emissions, this may not be such a bad idea, even if 'clean' does not mean zero emissions. Reducing the GHG emissions by 50% is just as good as getting 50% of our electricity from renewables and may be a lot cheaper.

According to critics there is no such thing as clean coal - all they can do is convert it to gas and store it - who knows where.

They store it underground. There are pilot plants in QLD.

eric:

But seriously, there's absolutely no reason (other than the irrational bitching of uniformed environmentalists) why Australia hasn't gone nuclear yet.

What about getting cheaper and less dangerous energy from geothermal. This could even happen faster than we can get nuclear up and running.

PJ:

The fact is switching to renewables is asking to put an energy hungry world on a energy crash diet.

What makes you think that?