Open Thread 3

“Je déteste les idiomes anglais” – Balzac

I have to agree. Yet another one to strike off my list, never to be used again.

But thank-you, Lawrence, the only way I find out is if someone is kind enough to tell me.

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Well, the tour to ANSTO (Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organization) I was organizing finally happened yesterday. Thanks Finrod, Pip, Geir and Nick for coming, Peter Lang was unfortunately unable to attend.

Thanks to David Ross our very knowledgeable tour guide on the day, OPAL Reactor Manager David Vittorio, Head of Environmental Research John Dodson who showed us the biggest tank of SF6 I ever want to see, GM of Gov. Affairs Andrew Humpherson and Geoff Parsons from Waste. It was a great presentation from all for us.

Its particularly bizarre, having seen a (mockup of) a reactor core the size of a wastepaper bin, the desire by the Greens and others to close this down, particularly given all the great neutron science going on there. I’ve bounced a few neutrons of a few nuclei in the past, and seeing the beam hall and detectors was amazing.

Thanks again everyone.

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Douglas Wise, on 1 April 2010 at 0.17 Said:

However, it seems not unreasonable to keep an eye on non nuclear developments in the hope that, one day, something economically sensible might emerge.

It seems all the focus is on ‘down in the weeds’ possibilities and this is to the detriment of where our effort should be placed. We’ve been doing this for at least 20 years. In Australia, our research effort has been and still is on fossil fuels and renewable energy and zero on nuclear. We need to turn that around. Constantly talking about wind, solar, geothermal, wave, tidal and crushing rocks with windmills is a waste of our effort, in my opinion. It is a distraction.

Meanwhile, there is no serious debate on what we need to do to implement nuclear in Australia at an electrcity generation cost that would be less than coal.

It must be doable because the energy density of uranium is ome 20,000 times that of coal – higher for enriched uranium.

I would like us to focus on what needs to be done by our federal and state governments to remove the impediments to low-cost, acceptably-safe, nuclear power in Australia.

My objectives:

1. least cost electricity for the long term
2. energy security (we have that with coal now, but that security might be reduced or removed in the future by international agreements/pressure)
3. improved environmental and health effects of electricity generation
4. maintaining Australia’s position in the world with modern technologies
5. Help the world to move to low-cost, clean electricity as quickly as possible

In my opinion all of these objectives can be achieved by bringing nuclear power to Australia, if we focus on least cost.

To do that the main focus needs to be, initially, on what we need to do to remove all the regulatory and policy impediments. As part of that we’ll need to educate the public – or as some say, ‘have the debate on nuclear power’. I suggest we need a faculty in at least one university in each mainland capital city who will work on how we can implement least cost nuclear power in Australia. If you prefer to avoid picking winners, call it least-cost, low-emissions, baseload electricity

The early focus needs to be on identifying the impediments to low-cost nuclear generation. The actual technology is a side issue at this stage. I brought up sever al examples of low cost nuclear just to show that the technology is not the issue. The issue is the government policy and regulatory impediments.

By the way, I do not believe ‘nuclear waste’ (once-used nuclear fuel) nor proliferation are major technical or cost issues. I believe they are public perception issues that must be tackled and sorted by education. That will be one of many that need to be achieved by the university faculties.

We need to change our bias from high cost useless technologies (i.e. renewables) to low cost, clean, safe, abundant energy of the future (i.e. nuclear).

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DV82XL:

I am in no position to question your judgement. You essentially make two points:

1) It is pointless to consider a policy that seeks to maximise the speed of transition from gen 2/3 to 4 because the latter designs are insufficiently developed to be deployed safely in the near term.

I am now wondering whether you misunderstood me. I had not envisaged any commercial Gen 4 before 2020 in my maximised scenario – rather, I was considering maximum rollout thereafter, which would be determined, among other things, by access to sufficient start charge material. The choice of such a strategy was based upon the fear that , by 2050 plus, a large expansion of thermal nuclear reactors might start limiting uranium availability.

If you did not misunderstand where I was coming from, may I take it that you are not concerned that uranium will become limiting? Alternatively, are you suggesting that factors that are limiting will not be resources but lack of skilled personnel and/or finance?

2) Coal to nuclear will be a regulatory nightmare if one attempts to plumb into the theoretically usable equipment extant on site. Therefore, it would be better to brownfield the site and start again. In percentage terms, what is your best guess for savings to be gained from the brownfielding compared to greenfield start ups?

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I should have added that the rate of substitution of electricity for oil and gas will be faster the lower is the cost of electricity.

So we can speed the rate of substitiution of clean electrcity for oil and gas, and therfore speed the rate of reduction of GHG emissions, by making the cost of electrcity as low as possble.

Low cost electrcity also gives the country (and the world) more wealth and more aboility to handel all the problems society wants addressed, including environmental problems.

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Hi Barry,

I understand your point, and perhaps I should be careful to stay out of local politcs. However, I am still wondering if this is a wise thing to be advocating.

1. While the Olympic Dam mine will have a 700MW demand at a point in time, that will vary greatly over time. Nuclear power stations are most economic for base-load not fo following load changes. The load changes will be large on a single load source like Olympic Dam mine. I wonder what the base-load would be as a proportion of the 700MW (I expect it might be as low as 20%). What happens to the remainder of the power when demand from Olympic Dam is low?

2. I would expect we would eventually build power stations consisting of at least two and perhaps four units. Why would we want to build a large power station at Ceduna rather than near the main demand centre?

By the way, when I said “near Adelaide” I was thinking of somewhere between Port Augusta and Adelaide. I think the distance from Port Augusta to Olympic Dam is similar to that from Ceduna.
So the transmission costs to Olympic Dam would be similar, but the costs to Adelaide would be much less.

I still reckon the costs of building and operating an NPP so far from a major population centre will be a significant cost impost. And I also think the education and PR benefits of having our first NPP (and all future NPP’s) near a city are significant.

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John Newlands,

The proposal you are advocating needs a full options analysis, with proper analysis of all financial and other risks.

Sitting here in tha Canberra, from where all wisdom amnd money eminates, I am somewhat dubious aboit an NPP at Ceduna being cost effective.

This is what an NPP should look like (see picture on p11). Notice the background (you might be able to see Terry Krieg in one of the back yards if you look carefully!).

Click to access jan-carr.pdf

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John, I was referring to the page numbers. The picture in on p11 of the article (the article starts on p8). Sorry for the confusion..

The Terry Krieg you refer to, and who posts here, is a school teacher who spent an exchange year in Toronto near Pickering – the power station pictured. He learnt a lot while he was there and has been trying to educate the Australian public and politicians ever since. His brother is a research geologists who knwos a lota about the Officer Basin and has been promoting it as the world;’s best site to take the world’s nuclear waste (if there si any left to dispose of, of course).

Your last paragraph is a repeat of what you’ve said in previous posts, on this and other threads. But it does no address my main question about the economic viability of lacating it at Ceduna instead of somewhwere between Port Augusta and Adelaide. Salt is one issue, but is it an overriding issue or just one of many factors that need to be taken into account in an overall cost benefit analysis? I don’t know the answer, but your arguments seem a bit overly pushing a particluar site, rather than looking even handedly at all the alternatives to find the best solution.

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John,

All true. But this doesn’t address the question I am asking – the overall costs versus benefits of siting at Ceduna versus between Port Augusta and Adelaide.

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John,

When you mention an eas west transmission line, you make me think noone has crunched the number os all this thing you are advocating.

It is not a big issue, for me; I just thought I’d raise it. It seems to me that advocating Ceduna as a site for an NPP nees to be carefully considered. It sends messages, to various interst groups of:

1. It must be really dangerous if we are having to put it that far away from inhabited areas,

2. It looks like a very high cost option,

3. Perhaps we should have our first NPP in Victoria to replace the dirty brown coal power stations, or in NSW because their electricity system is a basket case, they have insufficient capacity and it is government owned which should make it easier to implement nuclear, etc, etc, etc.

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I believe I have been clear that in North America at least, these organizations, have sided with natural gas interests, not coal.

They have established this through their actions and rhetoric for several years now, and in some instance are quite open about it. At any rate anyone supporting wind and solar, necessity supports NG as a backup fuel, except in those rare case when it is linked with hydro.

We should also note that the footsoldiers of these organizations, probably have bought into the propaganda – this is not always so for the upper echelons of these groups.

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The latest quarterly report from NPCC is out and the latest 20 year plan was passed. These plans are updated ever five years, but this is the first to assume some form of carbon offset or tax will happen in the next 20 years. More important, perhaps, the plan calls for an astounding 5,900 average megawatts over the next 20 years via energy efficiency, “the most agressive conservation target in the nation”.

Next up after that is “renewables”, which here in the PNW means wind, mostly, with a bit of geothermal. While not mentioned directly in the plan, there is consierable interest in the steady (well, steadier) winds well offshore from Washington and Oregon.

After that comes natgas.

Given the current low cost of natgas, I suspect that actuality will be more natgas and rather less wind than in this plan.

The is no interest and nothing in the plan about building Gen 3 NPPs, despite the supurb siting on the Hanford Reservation. That paln does specify that no new coal burners are to be built. (But likely none of the 4–5 existing ones will be dismantled.)

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Kaj Luukko – I am going to answer you on the IFR FaD 4 – a lifetime of energy in the palm of your hand thread where this question belongs.

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Peter I’m using a mix of psychology and wider system economics, albeit unquantified. If Olympic Dam doesn’t expand then future SA jobs, royalties and contract work will either be lost or handed to China. Gen 2/3 NPs will pay more for uranium in future because world supply has been politically restricted. Being way out of the big smoke Ceduna provides a guinea pig or demonstration effect. If a NPP/desal creates good jobs and there are no meltdowns and two headed fish in the cooling water then city folk might feel more kindly towards a similar plant near town.

On the money side BHP Billiton has already laid out the ground plans for a reverse osmosis desal on the gulf at Whyalla and 300 km pipeline route. Details as to the ~40 MW power source are fuzzy. Intense lobbying over cuttlefish and salinity changes will probably kill that site. Locals want an even bigger bigger desal to supply the coast as well as the inland. They suggest alternative sites south of Whyalla and an open water site near Elliston heading towards Ceduna.

However for OD to expand to 18,000 tonnes of U3O8 a year plus gold, copper etc the mine will need not only desalinated water from some part of the coast but another 650 MWe more than the SA grid can provide. An ex Roxby Downs resident now living in Hobart told me they think only a NPP could provide the grunt. Therefore BHP is up for big bucks for the desal side of things and they may secretly hope for nuclear power paid for by someone else.

How real the concentrate-to-China threat is hard to say because it would require a massive loading terminal. With RO desal there is no need for the power source to be co-located I just think it is a good PR move.

So I think the comparative scenarios would be

1) 1000 MW NPP near Adelaide distributed as say 100 MW RO desal and pipeline on the west coast and 650 MW X 500 km transmission to OD. Surplus power for Adelaide 250 MW with only minor new transmission.

2) everything on the west coast 1000 MW NP, 100 MW RO desal and pipelines, 650 MW X 350 km transmission to OD, 250 MW X 700km transmission to Adelaide or 400 km to Pt Augusta.

Note BHP pays for the mine fraction of the desal.

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PL the eastern side of St Vincent Gulf is thick with mangroves yet Adelaide’s urban sprawl is heading out that way. Opposite on both sides of Yorke Peninsula there are rocky headlands but I’m not sure of summer water temps or whether they get the cool Flinders Current. Land transmission easements are already there that could be upgraded.

I took BHPs claim at 690 MW at face value of which around 40 MW will go on coastal desal. In times of reduced mine load the desal could produce extra water for a non-rainy day and store it in large elevated tanks. That would require some modelling.

In fairness to Ceduna it is a hi tech town with a university observatory and communications stations. It has lost its nuclear virginity via the Maralinga A-bomb tests and the fact mildly radioactive zircon will be shipped from the wharf. There’s talk of oil drilling offshore so they know energy is where the money is. I sense the good folks of Adelaide might prefer if the first NPP went there which may be irrational but an easier sell even if there is a cost premium.

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Finrod:

Excellent article.

Initially, I stumbled over the 10kW per capita power consumption in the USA to include all energy needs. This translates to 240 kWh/day. Given the public’s potential to get muddled by differences between rate of energy production and amount used per unit time and by the fact that the term, power, is often kept to describe energy from electricity only when, currently, most of the American energy use doesn’t come from electricity, I was wondering whether your document might be marginally improved by re-wording what is nevertheless an accurate statement.

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Finrod – Some examples of fraudulent claims in LEED certification http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mvCP3s7Xq48 .

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Peter Lalor, on 27 April 2010 at 17.55 Said:

“I referenced this book by Yablokov and the 2 Nesterenkos more than once already and met with resounding silence. This will have been for various reasons among BNC neocon and neoliberal worshipers of the Chernobyl Forum as an “independent arbiter”. And as noted before, WHO has been formally required since its inception not to tread on the toes of IAEA: a facsimile of the relevant document from 1958 or 1959, I forget which, is on the Net..”

First, it is statistically impossible to hide a million plus deaths for almost 25 years, such that they could only be detected by Eastern European researchers, working for most part during the collapse of the Soviet empire, and the poor conditions that were typical of that period. Had the claim been ~50,000 or so I might consider it possible, but the number one million is just too high to be taken seriously by anyone that has any understanding of radiation related health issues.

Most of the papers used in this survey were of poor quality and politically motivated, Chernobyl served as a cause célèbre for those that were working to throw off the Soviet yoke, and this was reflected in much of the reportage on that incident.

The numbers that this report bandies about are also obviously exaggerations, based on very questionable extrapolations from very poor data sets. It is simply beyond the capabilities of the researchers of these documents to have gathered and verified enough data points to give their conclusions any meaningful confidence level.

The general rule of thumb is:

>5 sigma: discovery
~3 sigma: observation
<1.5 sigma: noise

and the best of these papers in the survey didn't do better than 2 sigma.

In short garbage in, garbage out. Repackaging this collection of rubbish, and publishing it under the imprinteur of the New York Academy of Sciences, cannot hid the smell of what is within.

And this bears repeating: The events at Chernobyl were cause by poor design, criminal negligence, and a culture that was already in terminal decay. It does not represent nuclear power, or the issue surrounding nuclear power anymore than the Titanic represents modern ships. To continue to hold this up as a reason to reject nuclear energy is false logic of the worst kind.

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I did notice you used this property of silicon as an upper bound in a calculation in your article, and wondered why you didn’t use SiO2.

Only because I didn’t have the figures to calculate for it. If I can get those I’ll use them instead. That should be a pretty good match for the amount of power actually needed.

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Vitreous silica is rare in nature because it is minutely higher in energy than quartz. So you get fulgurites, but not very old fulgurites. They revert to quartz, and quartz has a sharp melting point.

The energy required to melt quartz also figures in setting a crude lower bound on the energy payback ratio of concentrating solar plant, and in doing that here — search within the page for Frank Shuman — I used 127.5 kJ/mol as the heat input to raise quartz from room ‘T’ to 1996 K and then melt it.

(How fire can be domesticated)

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