“The NRC is also expected to certify a modified version of the AP1000 in the autumn of 2011.

More than half of the applications for 26 new reactors already filed in the United States referenced the amended AP1000 design.”

That shot misfires, and I didn’t need it in the first place. They checked, in effect, that nuclear plants are “clean”, at least as far as known carcinogens go. This bit is on our side.

(admittedly “image problem” is also real, in a sense. And admittedly statistics can never give us a strict upper bound. Early cancers MAY CONCEIVABLY be a real problem. But, applying the same standard as we apply to everything else, we should be happy to live with this rather remote possibility.)

He also misleadingly insisted that we “debunk” the papers. Impossible and unnecessary. All we need, explore what the papers really say.

Then compare to what Caldicott says (referred to by Eclipsenow’s #69). “Strong” effect – yes, in percentage terms, “strong”; but it’s 77 early cancer cases where statistically 48 were expected! Over whole of Germany, 400+ reactor-years! (under 0.1 per reactor-year.) That’s the study she cherry-picked as her Exhibit A (she calls it “KiKK”) Then she quotes other studies, no longer saying “strong” – presumably because she can’t – but mentioning “statistical significance”. Yes, but statistical significance of what? Of, I guess, something between 0.01 and 0.03 cases per reactor-year?

And we don’t have a clue where the cases came from! KiKK checked for “known carcinogens”. How far did they go with their minuscule sample, 29 cases against 48 as background? Did they check for “being in the social category of people living within 5 km from nuclear plant”? “Living not far from heavy industry”? Etc etc.

PS: note the insinuation in #114. “Imagine … were consistently…” Implying, that it is indeed consistent. It isn’t. How I am sure? Because Caldicott would’ve told us.

Then there’s the problem of finding 690 MW for Olympic Dam. That’s presumably the average power requirement that can’t be postponed to when the wind is blowing. I suggest Mr Rann you won’t last long as the premier of a very dry and energy starved State.

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

Sign me up for that! I’ll even throw in a few 4th gen just to eat the old waste and nuclear warheads in a productive manner. In fact, I’d be happy for America, France & Russia to go ahead and get on with the 3rd gen mox reactors as a matter of dealing with the waste they’ve already created. Better than letting the stuff just sit there till kingdom come.

But I’m still agnostic as to how economical nuclear power will be as renewables are refined into the super-sized-smart-systems grids of the future. “Better Place” subsidising gigawatts of grid smoothing as part of the car market is just one example. Who knows what some kid in a laboratory is cooking up with new super-cap materials? Who knows how geothermal, CETO, OTEC, and solar-updraft towers (rain, hail, or shine, summer or winter) will scale economically? Maybe a *bit* more expensive than nuclear but no waste issues, no proliferation, no terrorism issues, etc. In other words, politically viable.

Why settle for 3rd or even 4th?

he’s a slacker. give me 10th gen or give me nothing …

;-)

Uranium-mining champion Premier Mike Rann is almost as adamant. “Neither National ALP policy, nor the State Government would embrace Rio’s reported position,” he says.

“In any case, it would massively force up the price of electricity in South Australia.”

So Rann’s view is that it would produce too much baseload power. Hmmmm, gets me thinking about this thing call the National Electricity Market, another thing call mine expansions, another thing called desalination, and finally, small reactors. One can but work at overturning misconceptions.

Hi Barry,
The State Government has rejected nuclear power as not economically viable.

Do you know what this is based on?

SOUTH Australia would need to rely on nuclear power to meet its green energy targets if predicted problems with solar, wind and geothermal alternatives come to pass.

The Government released its 33 per cent green power target in the State Budget.

However, an independent report by consultants McLennan Magasanik Associates, commissioned to set the target, shows nuclear power would be “likely” if geothermal could not deliver its promises, wind reached its limits, and solar stations proved too remote to be cost effective.

“The adoption of nuclear power as a solution seems a low-probability scenario that is only likely if geothermal power does not live up to its promise, wind power reaches its limits and solar thermal power is constrained,” the report states.

Geothermal Energy Association chief executive Susan Jeanes said the public should be aware that nuclear power was an option for future electricity if the development of geothermal continued to be disadvantaged in Federal Government development funding.

The State Government has rejected nuclear power as not economically viable.

However, the Liberal Party’s annual convention last month voted in support of a debate on the topic.

And without increased interstate electricity connectors driven by geothermal or nuclear power, a renewable target of only 30 per cent would be reachable, the McLennan Magasanik report has found.

University of Adelaide climate change expert Professor Barry Brook said the report, given to the Department of Premier and Cabinet, made it clear nuclear power would be necessary because wind, solar and geothermal energy would not live up to expectations in future decades.

“The opinion is significant because it reveals a high degree of uncertainty about energy planning and unless we look critically at that we don’t know what are the best options,” he said.

He said his research suggested that the predicted problems with wind, solar and geothermal were “more likely than not to occur”.

“It is a dangerous and short-sighted strategy to plan ahead without having in mind nuclear power as an alternative ,” he said.

On nuclear power PR, I absolutely agree with you, there is a huge image problem to overcome, certainly in Australia, and I presume elsewhere. There’s a lot of work to do to counter a lot of misinformation out there, which is one reason I try to engage these discussions. Hopefully the fact that a lot of the discussion is now being driven by environmentalists unconnected to the nuclear industry will at least get some information past the ‘its all an evil capitalist corporate conspiracy to poison us for profits’ types.

On the reactor epidemiology study, this reminds me of studies on cancers from living near high tension power lines, or using cell phones. The pattern is similar, an invisible miasma orders of magnitude smaller than the environmental background that sometimes shows up in a population study, but not always, and has no physiological mechanism for causing the purported effects. Reports of a measured effect must be treated with a high level of skepticism, and in the epidemiological literature, rightly are.

On Moore’s Law and batteries, I did have a quick look for historical trends in battery power densities and energy densities but came up short, though the information is out there. My expectation is that advances will be depressingly linear, not exponential. But even just googling ‘Moore’s law for batteries’ throws up as the first result an explanation from a battery manufacturer as to why Moore’s law doesn’t work for batteries:

“.. Battery technology can not keep up with Moore’s Law in the same way semiconductors can. Batteries are miniature chemical engineering plants, producing electrons at the expense of electrochemical reactions with their own behavior and as such, these active systems do not scale in the same manner as passive semiconductors. This is because battery technology is a prisoner of physics, the periodic table, manufacturing technology and economics. ..”

This is very close to what I wrote earlier on this topic. That line about being a prisoner of physics and the periodic table, thats real.

If Agassi did indeed predicate his business model on the operation of Moore’s law on battery technology, I would regard that as a reason for being very skeptical of his plans, since it would display a failure to grasp critical factors in technology evolution.

You can rant all you want about Caldicott’s writing, but the papers she quotes will seem more solid to the court of public opinion. And after the wonderfully *sensitive* comments about childhood cancer above, as they say, good luck with that.

Barry’s in the media a fair bit, and if this Munchausen’s retort gets out in the context of a public interview, it’s game over.

I wouldn’t stand by it, though, for another reason. I disagree with Cowan’s point. Eclipse correctly indicated existing image problems for n.p. Whether based in reality or not, image problems for nuclear power do exist.

***
Eclipsenow, will you please start answering at least some of the questions other commenters ask of you?

Also a blunder in #97. Not “several countries”, but 67 U.S. counties.

The actual papers were assessed by people here, objectively. You must have missed it in the red mist.

In the meantime I wake up and hear ABC news reports to the effect that Italian Mafia have been dumping radioactive waste straight into the ocean. Talk about an image problem! (Yes human greed and cost-saving is an issue across all technologies, but applied to nuclear it just ain’t pretty.)

So rather than pretending I’m referring to some mythical slander out there in the culture, how about addressing the actual papers involved and leave my son out of it?

****
Barry, can you please delete everything from this line and following and delete the offensive crap from Cowan’s post above?

The image problem is, you poisoned your own child (Munchausen by proxy). Fortunately he recovered. Did you stop poisoning him when the oil companies stopped paying you?

Barry, this is too much. What kind of retarded and personally offensive attack is this? What place does this have on this list? This is a new low for this list, and that’s coming from someone who once made some fairly strong statements against Mike Stasse’s doomerism.

Don’t forget I warned Mr Stasse of the potential outcomes of pushing his doomer philosophy, I was on his email list, and then met up with the father after that tragedy. I was INVOLVED!

Mr Cowan has just made unbelievably strong accusations without ever knowing me personally or being involved. I understand he was trying to make a flippant little point about “people not really saying these things” but as I already pointed out, he should be directing his Munchausen’s comments to the ABC this morning as they are the “nobodies” spreading these anti-nuclear memes this morning. Please delete Cowan’s comments and mine from the asterisks down.

“My boy is not a 0.1 anything, get it?”
I am only trying to give everyone – including your boy – a better chance. Why not work together. What are your numbers?

You said

Now I’m aware that coal does the same crap, and that this could just as easily have come from coal. All the more reason to head into a CLEAN renewable energy era. If it costs a *bit* more, so be it. I think the public will put up with that.

Why do you believe this?

Why do you believe that renewable energy is only a “bit” more costly than nuclear?

What do you believe the cost of that “bit” more would be in deaths per head of population? Have yoyu considered that?

Why do you believe renewables are cleaner than nuclear? Have you looked into it? Are you aware of the orders of magnitude greater quantities that are required for renewables to provide the equivalent of nuclear’s energy output? Do you recognise that all of these materials must be mined, transported, processed, transported, milled, transported, fabricated, transported, constructed, transported, maintained, ongoing transport requirement, decommissioned, transported, disposed of transported? Do you understand the amounts of toxic material released to the environment in all those process? Do you realise how much greater they are for r4enewables than for nuclear?

Lastely, and most importantly, do you know would be the total deaths and health effects from renewables compared with nuclear for a system to provide our electrcity generation.

Could I suggest that you attempt to partition the analysis of the electricty generation options from the emotional response to your admittedly dreadful personal experience.

The image problem is that you’re pushing something with connotations to bombs, radiation poisoning, childhood cancers, nuclear waste, nuclear accidents, terrorism and nuclear proliferation.

The image problem is, you poisoned your own child (Munchausen by proxy). Fortunately he recovered. Did you stop poisoning him when the oil companies stopped paying you?

Isn’t this fun? One can say anything if one says one isn’t saying it, just acknowledging that it’s being said, somewhere … somewhere out there… as an image problem.

When I asked you to answer a question of mine honestly, a question that did not seek facts, but rather a declaration of your own beliefs, why did you avoid giving any answer at all?

(Secrets for sale)