Post by Belgarion on Apr 6th, 2024 at 8:48am
Bobby. wrote on Apr 5th, 2024 at 9:39pm:
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Be not afraid Bobby.
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Member Run Boards >> Environment >> Nuclear Energy- Too Late, Too Costly, Too Toxic http://www.ozpolitic.com/forum/YaBB.pl?num=1712304487 Message started by whiteknight on Apr 5th, 2024 at 6:08pm |
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Title: Nuclear Energy- Too Late, Too Costly, Too Toxic Post by whiteknight on Apr 5th, 2024 at 6:08pm
Nuclear energy is an ugly duckling in every possible respect: Too late, too costly, too toxic :(
Renew Economy Apr 5, 2024 Twenty-five years ago, Australia banned nuclear energy generation at a Federal, State and Territory level. Partly because of this, Australia would be one of the last places you would invest in nuclear energy, notwithstanding our large uranium deposits. Australia has no nuclear power industry, so it has multi-level legislative barriers and no social licence. It also has abundant land, sun, and wind (with a vibrant renewables industry) and no obvious need for nuclear power. On top of all those impediments, renewable sources of power are already profoundly changing how our energy markets and infrastructure operate. Rooftop solar often accounts for all electricity grid demand and more during the day. This means consumers can use their non-grid (or ‘behind the meter’) electricity for free. Rooftop solar is expected to increase fourfold over the next 20 years. These changes create further impediments to costly, centralised, slow to build and ‘always on’ nuclear power. Try telling rooftop solar consumers that they’ll have to make way for nuclear power at who knows what cost. The Clean Energy Council recently reported that renewable energy provided 39.4% of Australia’s total energy generation in 2023, up from just 17% as recently as 2017. Combined large and small-scale additional renewable capacity in Australia reached around 5.9 gigawatts (GW – ie a billion watts) in 2023. Total investment in large-scale storage was $4.9 billion in 2023, up from $1.9 billion in 2022. Last month, Rio Tinto signed a landmark 25-year renewable energy purchase deal worth billions to power its alumina and aluminium facilities. The large-scale solar and wind farms are the largest of such projects ever financed in Australia. According to the International Energy Agency, new solar installations globally were 420GW in 2023 and new wind 117GW. New nuclear fell to just 5.5GW. On a per GW basis, barely 1% of the capital spent globally last year was on nuclear. These data make it abundantly clear that there is no ‘nuclear renaissance’. While many nations promised to invest more in nuclear at COP28 last year, we are yet to see this happen. Looking at the four big nuclear plants recently completed or nearly finished in the US, UK, France and Finland, cost overruns averaged over 300%, with more bad news to come. The builders either went bankrupt or were nationalised. Consumers, investors, and taxpayers will be paying for this for a generation. But cost is not the worst drawback. The more serious problem is that radioactive nuclear waste is extremely toxic and gets air-brushed out of arguments in favour of going nuclear. All the focus is on zero carbon emissions as if the toxic waste didn’t exist. This is disingenuous at best. Nuclear waste needs to be stored expensively and safely by experts for thousands of years; and longer. Given how things are going in the world (a ‘hot’ war in Europe; unprecedented middle East tensions and Trump Mark II), what confidence could we have in this being delivered? The risks of storing nuclear waste are imponderable because of the time horizons involved – well beyond our brief Anthropocene era. It is the height of human folly to assume that we can manage these risks. We have no idea what will happen when distant, future generations are involuntarily charged with looking after waste that they didn’t consent to nor benefit from and, critically, weren’t paid to look after. Another catchy, but fallacious, argument against renewables revolves around ‘baseload power’. This is the old argument based around the fact that the sun doesn’t shine at night and therefore on-demand power is the only option. The reality is that Australia is already rapidly moving towards flexible, dispatchable power because of the increasing contribution from rooftop solar and wind backed up by battery (and other storage technologies, including hydro). Despite comments to the contrary, nuclear power cannot ‘firm up’ renewable power sources; only variable sources of power can do this: batteries; hydro or ‘gas peaking’ – things that can be switched on and off quickly. This leads to the question of what we expect nuclear energy to do if and when it turns up in the 2040s. AGL’s CEO has already ruled out any nuclear plants being located on its former coal-fired power station sites citing the idea as potentially ‘de-railing’ investment in the energy transition. If nuclear power does arrive in Australia, it will be an ugly duckling in every possible respect; too late; too costly; too toxic and unable to supply a 21st century power grid that will have moved to flexible power sources. Unlike the famous Danish children’s story, the nuclear duckling will never be recognised as a ‘swan’. This is not to say that the transition to renewable energy is without challenges, costs, and the potential for delays. There are and will be obstacles, but we cannot afford to wait for nuclear energy while continuing to burn fossil fuels in the meantime. The risk-free and low-cost renewable alternatives are already here and that is where the market has already decided to allocate its capital. |
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Title: Re: Nuclear Energy- Too Late, Too Costly, Too Toxic Post by Belgarion on Apr 5th, 2024 at 6:39pm
And now for a dose of reality: https://www.facebook.com/AtomicDiaries/videos/michael-shellenberger_electricity-subtitles-1-1mp4/1195256284799631/
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Title: Re: Nuclear Energy- Too Late, Too Costly, Too Toxic Post by lee on Apr 5th, 2024 at 6:54pm Renew Economy? Now there is an unbiased source. ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D |
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Title: Re: Nuclear Energy- Too Late, Too Costly, Too Toxic Post by greggerypeccary on Apr 5th, 2024 at 7:19pm Belgarion wrote on Apr 5th, 2024 at 6:39pm:
Lol ;D "And now for a dose of reality" Followed by: "www.facebook.com" |
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Title: Re: Nuclear Energy- Too Late, Too Costly, Too Toxic Post by Belgarion on Apr 5th, 2024 at 9:24pm greggerypeccary wrote on Apr 5th, 2024 at 7:19pm:
From the Future is Nuclear page, check it out and learn something. ::) |
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Title: Re: Nuclear Energy- Too Late, Too Costly, Too Toxic Post by Bobby. on Apr 5th, 2024 at 9:39pm Nuclear waste takes too long to decay. What is the long term cost of looking after the waste? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioactive_waste Some common nuclear waste half lives: Plutonium 239 half life 24,110 years. Americium 241 half life 432 years Radium 226 Half life 1,600 years Uranium 236 Half life 15 million years. Plutonium 244 Half life 80 million years Uranium 235 Half life 704 million years Uranium 238 half life 4.5 billion years |
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Title: Re: Nuclear Energy- Too Late, Too Costly, Too Toxic Post by Belgarion on Apr 6th, 2024 at 8:48am Bobby. wrote on Apr 5th, 2024 at 9:39pm:
Be not afraid Bobby. spent_fuel.jpg (111 KB | 12
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Title: Re: Nuclear Energy- Too Late, Too Costly, Too Toxic Post by Bobby. on Apr 6th, 2024 at 8:51am Belgarion wrote on Apr 6th, 2024 at 8:48am:
So that container will work for over 100 million years? |
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Title: Re: Nuclear Energy- Too Late, Too Costly, Too Toxic Post by Belgarion on Apr 6th, 2024 at 9:48am Bobby. wrote on Apr 6th, 2024 at 8:51am:
Some more facts to allay your fears, take particular note of this bit: The fission products that quickly decay to stable ones create intense radiation. Long-lived ones release radiation occasionally. There are no long-lived, intensely radioactive, fission products requiring tens of thousands of years of guarded storage. https://www.realclearenergy.org/articles/2024/04/03/nuclear_power_what_about_the_waste_what_about_the_facts_1022801.html |
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Title: Re: Nuclear Energy- Too Late, Too Costly, Too Toxic Post by Bobby. on Apr 6th, 2024 at 9:55am Belgarion wrote on Apr 6th, 2024 at 9:48am:
No - Plutonium 239 half life - 24,110 years is deadly forever. Only a microscopic bit of dust could kill you from cancer if you inhale it. Yes - a particle too small for you to see. |
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Title: Re: Nuclear Energy- Too Late, Too Costly, Too Toxic Post by AusGeoff on Apr 6th, 2024 at 10:41am Bobby. wrote on Apr 5th, 2024 at 9:39pm:
Of course it's nonsensical to talk about the half lives of this type of waste in thousands or even millions(!) of years as the figures are nothing more than scare tactics used by the anti-nuclear activists. The generation of electricity from a typical 1,000 megawatt nuclear power station, which would supply the needs of more than a million people, produces only three cubic metres of vitrified high-level waste per year, if the used fuel is recycled. In comparison, a small 1,000 megawatt coal-fired power station produces approximately 300,000 tonnes of ash and more than 6 million tonnes of CO2, every year. Note that 1g of recycled plutonium has the energy density of 1.5 tonnes of coal. |
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Title: Re: Nuclear Energy- Too Late, Too Costly, Too Toxic Post by Frank on Apr 6th, 2024 at 1:26pm
Mr Dutton confirmed to The Weekend Australian that under the Coalition’s net-zero energy plan, to be released before the May budget, cheaper electricity bills would be offered to those communities that took up nuclear when coal-fired power stations were retired.
The plan will involve the creation of new precincts for advanced manufacturing centred on cheap energy from small nuclear reactors. Mr Dutton met privately last week with executives from nuclear power plant manufacturer Rolls-Royce and its Australian partner Penske over the pursuit of low-cost small modular reactor technology for Australia. It is understood Rolls-Royce is confident that its small modular reactor technology could be ready for the Australian market by the early to mid-2030s with a price tag of $5bn for a 470 megawatt plant. Each plant would take four years to build and have a life span of 60 years. Rolls-Royce will also build the nuclear reactors for the second tranche of the future AUKUS nuclear-powered naval submarines under contracts signed in February with the Albanese government. “There is every reason to be optimistic about bringing small modular net-zero emission nuclear into the power mix in the 2030s,” the Opposition Leader said in an interview with The Weekend Australian, adding: “I think the mid-2030s. |
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Title: Re: Nuclear Energy- Too Late, Too Costly, Too Toxic Post by Bobby. on Apr 6th, 2024 at 1:37pm AusGeoff wrote on Apr 6th, 2024 at 10:41am:
It's not nonsense. People have to look after that waste for millions of years. It doesn't stay at what it starts out as - there is a decay chain and it transmutes to many other daughter products and some of those are even far more radioactive. |
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