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Open Thread 17

The Open Thread is a general discussion forum, where you can talk about whatever you like — there is nothing ‘off topic’ here — within reason. So get up on your soap box! The standard commenting rules of courtesy apply, and at the very least your chat should relate to the general content of this blog.

The sort of things that belong on this thread include general enquiries, soapbox philosophy, meandering trains of argument that move dynamically from one point of contention to another, and so on — as long as the comments adhere to the broad BNC themes of sustainable energy, climate change mitigation and policy, energy security, climate impacts, etc.

You can also find this thread by clicking on the Open Thread category on the cascading menu under the “Home” tab.

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Note 1: For reference, the last general open thread (from 7 June 2011) was here. Why another one so soon, I hear you ask? Well, blame yourselves, you worked the last one over too quickly (almost 600 comments accumulated), and this payload slows down the thread loading too much. Hence, a fresh canvas for you.

Note 2: I have now added the BNC animated video as a permanent widget, located at the top right hand column of the blog — so it will always be easy to find (and, I hope, will act as an introduction to the site for those who are visiting for the first time).

Note 3: Some interesting reading… Joe Shuster (a member of SCGI and author of ‘Beyond Fossil Fools’) has written a 24-page pamphlet called “Energy Independence Day: July 4th 2040” (PDF download). This US-focused plan includes 15% wind, 15% solar, 5% hydro, 6% biomass, geothermal, tides and waves, 5% plasma remediation (waste), 12% natural gas, and 42% nuclear (an initial build out of advanced LWR and a transition to predominantly IFRs). Click the link to read the document, which is well argued (even if you disagree with some details), colourfully illustrated, and thought provoking. Tom Blees said the following:

Joe Shuster has distilled the confusing energy picture and presented in this brief report a rational, logical, and quantified solution to some of the most intractable problems of our day. Unlike most visions of humanity’s future, Joe foresees an energy-rich world that would enable a dramatic improvement in the lives of everyone on the planet. This is not just about energy. It’s about social justice on a planetary scale.

—Tom Blees, President of the Science Council for Global Initiatives—

By Barry Brook

Barry Brook is an ARC Laureate Fellow and Chair of Environmental Sustainability at the University of Tasmania. He researches global change, ecology and energy.

557 replies on “Open Thread 17”

So what do you think the price will be Peter? You say avoidance, but to me the price is irrelevant, what is important is the impact on the economy of that price, which I believe is manageable.

Given that we have no idea, at present, what the tax/ets detail is, we have no idea who is getting freebies, therefore don’t really know the “cost” of abating the lowest 5% of emissions. I honestly don’t think that your question has an answer that can be known… maybe I could be more certain after this weekend’s announcement, depending on just how much detail is released.

I’d expect it to be between $40 and $100 per tonne to be honest… depending on how many of the low cost emissions are given freebies.

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Just to add, Peter, that until the detail is out I’m not committed as a supporter of the tax/ets. So I essentially agree with your comment “If you cannot answer this question then why on Earth are you advocating for a carbon price?”

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@ Peter:

Greens and catastrophists.

I think you misspelled that — It’s “Greens and Climatologists”.

I have four questions for the carbon price advocates:.

I decline to answer on the grounds that I’m NOT a Carbon Price advocate, but really and truly wuuly am just bored to tears by it.

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@ Moderator,

That answer is avoidance. Pure and simple avoidance.

The answer needs to be a figure with a dollar sign in front.

Will it be $2, $20, $200, $2000 per tonne CO2?

If you cannot answer this question then why on Earth are you advocating for a carbon price?

To do so is totally irreeesponsble.

To avoid answering key questions like this is a sign of lack of objectivity.

By extension, the fact that most Progressives want to avoid this question demonstrates a lack of objectiivty in arriving at their beliefs.

Is there any way to ask Peter to stop attacking us personally? Why does he get to attack Matt like he did above just because Matt answered — in all due honesty — that the market will set the price? Why does Peter then get to emotively inflame the thread with attacks on not just Matt’s motives — but then have a rant against all ‘Progressives’ character and objectivity?

Peter seems to label *anyone* who takes climate change seriously or has a flexible attitude to taxation policy as a “Progressive”.

Can we please open a Carbon Tax thread and direct all Carbon Tax conversations across to it? Then see who pays it a visit, and STOP Peter using this thread to attack people who are simply BORED TO TEARS by his constant foaming at the mouth about a Carbon Tax? Please?

I’ll be good — I promise ;-)
MODERATOR
I agree that the OT is being choked by the Carbon Tax debate and PL, actually, also asked for a seperate thread. I have asked Barry if he will put one up but he is away at the present and very busy, so it may have to wait.
Attacks on groups in general but not individuals, (if I have missed a personal attack I apologise and will re-check that) are allowed on the OT and it is happening on both sides of the spectrum.
You posit “Is there any way to ask Peter to stop attacking us personally?” so I will ask you – is there any way to get you to stop attacking PL personally? The only answer lies with the pair of you, as with everyone on the blog, just be civil and play the ball not the man.
Don’t forget this thread is a “soapbox”. You want to stop Peter and Peter wants to stop you and others who he claims are trying to divert the thread. Impossible, as I have already pointed out, to divert/derail an Open Thread.

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@ John,
I just listened to the ABC Environment podcast on Moree and they positively RAVED about it. There was a short section on this inconvenient thing we call “night” but they quickly brushed that aside saying they often have power outages at Moree, so any more power was good power. “Daytime supplier and night time supplier” … “It’s all part of the grid” … “I buy the power and I don’t really know where it comes from…” “It will shore up our power supply a little bit”. “Jobs for indigenous people”.

There you go. A few words and “night” just disappears! Otherwise, it’s all good — jobs, infrastructure, doesn’t hurt topsoil, tourist attraction….
http://www.abc.net.au/rural/telegraph/content/2011/s3255561.htm

It seems to me BNC needs to monitor all renewables propaganda across the media and create a resource base of reporting back this propaganda and countering it. Otherwise, with Fukishima, it’s game over. We’ve lost unless we can unite and get the energy facts out there.

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MattB,

to me the price is irrelevant, what is important is the impact on the economy of that price, which I believe is manageable.

The price is relevant because it is what causes the effect on the economy.

I agree, it is the effect on the economy that is important. You think the effect will be small. Why do you believe that?. Or don’t you think you need a reason to support your beliefs?

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(Deleted inflammatory comment.)
MODERATOR
It appears you haven’t read my comment, in response to yours, regarding incivility between posters. Please read it before commenting again.

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You think the effect (of peak oil) will be small — yet the price of oil has doubled. Or don’t you think you need a reason to support your beliefs (that peak fossil fuels will be negligible and not devastate the world economy?)

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Peter believe it or not I am reading your links (when I have the time) and an not closed to what you are saying. But I am not an economist, and while I’ll attempt not to appeal to authority I have found that the arguments that it will be a reasonable and small effect make more rational sense than the arguments that it will be doom and gloom end of the earth.

Is this wound up/influenced by some ideology/belief I hold dear?… I can’t rule it out, but I think many here would agree that many of your opinions appear to be entrenched in ideology (possibly/probably both mine and yours).

Having abandoned my anti-nuclear stance I feel I am in a position of having to question most things I used to take as a given…. but that does not mean that all those things are wrong.

EN THanks but I can look after myself:) For sure my comment that the market will decide is my honest opinion, but don;t think for a second I didn;t say it precisely to get Peter fired up:) honesty and mischeviousness at the same time is my speciality

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EN they claim one of the objectives of Moree will be to evaluate realtime grid integration problems. Perhaps that means avoiding brownouts when a bank of clouds passes over at midday. Hopefully data will enable an estimate to be made of the cost of CO2 avoided. To me it’s just a bright shiny toy.

Moree is small potatoes (but expensive). It’s harder to believe they will fully replace Loy Yang coal station. Every second 2 gigajoules of electricity is currently produced with say 35% efficiency from brown coal costing 60c a gigajoule. They want to replace it with gas costing $7 a gigajoule with say 55% efficiency. My bet is nothing happens for years on that front.

On the other hand Moree will be a marvellous photo op and should get built quickly. At the opening ceremony the the entourage will fly over in their VIP jets, land nearby and transfer to the site in a fleet of limos. Perhaps the PM can do a ‘welcome to country’ set to appropriate choreography. Bummer if it rained that day. Give the public what they want.. warm and fuzzy feelings.

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To the advocates of a carbon price,

MattB asked how I would answer my own questions,

Below is a short answer. Now, I’d ask you and the other advocates of carbon pricing to give your own answers to the questions.

2. What effect would such a carbon price have on the economy?
A. see below

3. What would be the effect on world GHG emissions?
A. No reduction in world emissions. Andy savings in Australia will be more than made for by higher emissions from oveseas

4. What would be the effect on the climate?
A. None

2. What effect would such a carbon price have on the economy?

First step (determine the limit): assume carbon intensity is inelastic. In that case GDP per capita growth would have to be cut from +1.6% p.a. to -1/7% p.a. average for 8 years (2012 to 2020). That means a very deep, long recession. I’d expect unemployment greater than 20% (like Spain has now). Do we want to turn ourselves into anothe basket case lie Europe?

Second step: consider the elasticity of carbon intensity to GDP.

This is more complicated. The carbon intensity is comprised of two components: Energy Intensity GJ/$ GDP) and Carbon Inetensity kg CO2 / GJ).

1. Energy intensity – is decreasing at around 0.5% to 1%p.a. How much faster can it be reduced? One solution is to force the energy intensity industries to shut down (the growth is coming from the mining and LNG industries – so should we shut them down?)

2. Carbon Intensity – how much can we change that in just 8 years? Without nuclear as an option, how much can we do? We need to cut emissions by 160 Mt/a. Where are the cuts going to come from?

I’ve looked at this and can’t see how we can cut much, realistically, in 8 years without a massive recession. That is the one option we have if we want to achieve the unconditional targets.

I’m persuaded, at the moment, it is not practicable to achieve them. The carbon tax is a diversion from biting the bullet on what we really need to do – remove the impediments to low cost nuclear. We need to realise the 2020 targets are not achievable and we need to work on setting the policies that will give us the greatest cuts fastest. That means getting rid of the ban on nuclear.

We are doing so much wrong it is just ridiculous. The carbon price is another example of a long list of really bad policies, such as:

ban on nuclear
Renewable Energy Targets
Renewable Energy Certificates
Subsidies for renewable energy
Pink Bats home insulation scheme
Green loans
Green cars
NSW GGas
The list goes on for ever.

We have 240 pieces of legislation and regulations to cut GHG emissions. Most cost a bundle and do almost nothing, as the Productivity Commission has pointed out.

We changed incandescent lights for poisonous mercury lights in every house (Mercury is a pollutant in EU but not when used in lights – that is an indication of how ridiculous are our regulations).

As of 1 July, no more resistance hot water heaters are allowed to be installed. That’s dumb. It forces us onto gas (and heat pumps in some locations but either way much more expensive than the simple resistance hot water heater). Why I say it is dumb is because once we do get clean, electricity (e.g. from nuclear) then the best thing we can do is to go back to electric hot water instead of gas.

We are doing it all wrong. We should bite the bullet and embrace nuclear.

Now over to the advocates of carbon price to justify their beliefs – not just attack mine with no substantiation for your own beliefs.

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MattB,

I have found that the arguments that it will be a reasonable and small effect make more rational sense than the arguments that it will be doom and gloom end of the earth.

Firstly, I didn’t say a Carbon Price imposed by the Australian government on Australia would doom and gloom the Earth. A Carbon Price imposed in Australia will disadvantage Australia and advantage all other countries. It will not reduce world emissions.

Now, please answer my question. Why do you believe that a carbon price, high enough to achieve the unconditional 2020 target, will have a small effect on the economy? What is your source?

I’d suggest you need to be appropriately sceptical about what you read. For example, what are the assumptions used. Below are a few you need to watch our for.

Firstly, the CPRS assumed the world would agree to an economically efficient ETS. That clearly won’t happen in the foreseeable future

Secondly, the CPRS modelling assumed Australia would be able to trade emissions permits internationally. That is not the case under the proposed carbon tax system. That makes a huge difference. Under the CPRS, most of the emissions cuts would have been achieved by buying permits from overseas.

Thirdly, most of the Government’s arguments about the economic impact of the proposed carbon pricing scheme are highly misleading. For example, the Treasurer quoted selectively from Treasury modelling to say GDP per capita growth would be cut from 1.2% to 1.1.% p.a. But that is not at a carbon price that would be needed to achieve the unconditional 2020 target. It is for the introductory, $20/tonne (“honeymoon” rate if you like to suck in the unwary and gullible). The voters will of course be massively bribed as well. But the bribes will only last a year or so. Once the legislation is in, the damage is done.

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MattB,

I answered your latest questions a feww seconds before you posted the question.

I’ve stayed 20 years ahead of the Progressives on the best policy on this issue for 20 years. :)

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Peterthis article from CLimate Spectator makes good points I think: http://www.climatespectator.com.au/commentary/not-hard-it-looks

MOst notably in relation to your assumption of inelasticity, wheras for example “the UK economy had already cut its emissions by 28 per cent since 1990, while growing the economy by 48 per cent.”

p.s. “doom and gloom end of the earth” I was not referring to an earth wide impact, more comparison to people with sandwich boards proclaiming the end of the world is nigh.

Anyway, as I say, we can have this debate once the details are out on the weekend. WHo knows I may well agree with you by then as at the mmoment any position is a bit of a guess.

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Deckermann @6 July 2011 at 2:17 PM

Thank you. I see where you got the “approximately $50/tonne” from.

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MattB,

I saw the article on Climate Spectator when it was published. I’d give zer credibilty to that stie. It is sponsored by the renewable energy indudtry for the renewable energy industry. In my opinion it is complete rubbish.

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I will post a dedicated carbon tax blog tonight after I get back from a working dinner – thereafter please use only that thread for carbon-tax-related comments.

(Wipes sweat off brow).

Thanks Barry! Awesome news!

Good dinner? Energy stuff or Uni business?

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I’m at Byron Bay for an intense workshop on extinction rate estimates, EN.

Sad — was it statistical modeling extrapolating out how many earthworms and soil-biota might have gone missing, or is this measured, empirical, actual extinction rates of higher level animals that have already gone? Please don’t think I’m understating the importance of soil micro-biota, I’m not, but I understand this area may have been one where estimates of extinction rates were blown out of proportion in previous estimates and perhaps led to some cynicism about how bad things really are out there?

(Personally, the way we’re paving over, plowing up, polluting, preying on, spreading pests and over-populating this planet I’m amazed there’s anything left!)

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David Walters, on 5 July 2011 at 1:16 PM:

Was I an operator? Not quite, though at times I considered becoming one. I was for 30+ years primarily involved as an engineer in construction, operation and modification of power stations. More recently, I have been involved with design and construction of several solar thermal arrays.

Semi-retired now, I have time to spend typing comments on BNC and really enjoy being able to think deeper about some things which beforehand I had only considered slightly – eg nuclear power, of which there is none in Austraia, hence I have no direct experience of it.

An emerging major concern of mine is the accelerating rate of environmental effects arising from anthropogenic climate change. I first came to this site seeking knowledge about climate change, its causes, risks and so forth. I really doubt that my grandson will inherit a world which resembles that which I am enjoying: abundant energy, national security, stable society, personal opportunity and more – all are threatened by climate change, which I unfortunately for us all has been shown conclusively to be both real and unavoidable.

That otherwise intelligent folk are able to convince themselves or be conned by others into a belief that climate change is anything other than a huge and present challenge, far more important than even the health of the world’s economies, I simply cannot understand. This is not about Man’s constructed notions of economic principles first, followed by considerations of planetary survival. Clearly, reality will trump economic theory every time.

The Egyptian pyramids may well be colossal monuments to personal achievement but they have absolutely no physical value… they just sit there and do nothing. Climate change denialism is an industry which surpasses the pyramids both in its size and its ability to just sit there and do nothing.

Lord Monkton and his fellow travellers have constructed a huge monument to singlemindedness, short-termism, private profit today despite public/universal costs tomorrow, and misuse of the tools of public communication. This monument has effectively blocked the road to rational response to demonstrated risk for a couple of decades and appears capable of ensuring that the worst outcomes will be the result.

So, like George Monbiot and many others, I came to consider nuclear power via thinking about climate change. BNC is a marvellous confluence of thought on both topics.

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(I’m gritting my teeth at what I just heard on the ABC … )

Yes Monckton, the climatologists know there have been much higher Co2 levels in the past. This is no mystery, and — just like water — it’s all about context. Too little and we die of thirst, too much and we die of water poisoning or Tsunami’s or flood! Monckton, how about answering the question Adam Spencer (and climatologists) actually put to you instead of waffling on about how the whole world is against you??

Check out how slippery Monckton was this morning, and ask yourself why anyone would go and hear one of his talks when he is not only a failed hack of a pretend scientist, not really a Lord, but also this unpleasant when interviewed by someone who has a clue?

http://tinyurl.com/6av5ehu

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Activist Opportunity!

Scientific American has a podcast and newsletter that attract opinion and comments. Sign up below and get their email once a fortnight (or something like that) and make sure you tick the box for Energy & Sustainability and you can defend nuclear power there and debunk solar and wind scams. Click below and sign up!

http://tinyurl.com/3nfsk5j

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Via the post The Nuclear Debate – Monbiot et al., discuss the pros and cons at TalkNuclear I found this video: The Nuclear Debate, hosted by the Royal Society of Chemistry. It’s set up as a formal debate followed by public discussion. The audience votes to accept or reject the resolution, which is: that it will be impossible to meet the emission reductions required (50% by 2030) without the use of nuclear power.

I’ve brazenly stolen the TalkNuclear summary. Spoiler alert: I give it away at the end of this post.

Each speaker made seven-minute opening statements. Here are some highlight points on each:

George Monbiot (pro):

On onshore wind: turbine construction is enough of a challenge as it is, but the lines required to connect them are worse and have not been commented on by Greenpeace
Solar: unbelievably expensive, poorly matched to time of electricity demand
If the UK maximizes its penetration for green energy, we can hit 45% by 2030 which is fantastic, but what do we do about the rest?
Given the public backlash against every energy option, maybe we should suggest rolling blackouts instead as a less controversial option

Roger Levett (con):

To defeat this motion, we can simply stop producing and start importing energy, or if we travelled abroad more rather than locally (because then carbon is attributed to the receiving country)
The problem is in overindulgence – we’d be better off with cars that don’t do 0-60 quickly without the safety features required for those speeds and the entertainment features to keep your kids entertained during those trips.
Local economies means less energy is required for transportation, so we can eliminate huge portions of our current energy use
Use a behavior-based approach rather than new energy supply (people should use less energy)

Malcolm Grimston (pro):

Believes it’s impossible to meet our target with or without nuclear, but nuclear is going to get us close.
There’s a fallacy that puts nuclear and renewable against each other
If I could reinvent the world I would leave out the 2nd law of thermodynamics
If we end up in a position of playing a game with millions of participants acting for their own situation, we’re in trouble. See John Nash.

Doug Parr (con):

Opening comment: disappointing to be on the opposite side of George Monbiot
Nuclear waste: we still don’t know what to do with it
Proliferation: if nuclear is the answer in the UK, it needs to be the answer everywhere. If you’re comfortable with nuclear power, you need to be comfortable with nuclear power in Africa & the middle east and other politically unstable territories
Nuclear unduly competes with renewables for share of investment capital

Each speaker then had the opportunity to reply to the others’ opening statements. (See Monbiot and Grimston rebuttals!) Finally there was a Q&A with the audience.

A winner was called at the end with a house vote. The result of the vote was 63-9

It’s the first time I’ve seen and heard Monbiot speak; he’s very passionate. The rebuttals, starting about 43 minutes, are interesting too.

Spoiler: the vote was 63 to 9 for the motion, in other words, nuclear power is essential.

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I was wondering if anyone could comment on these quick calculations I just did of the total costs of nuclear, coal and gas in Australia, combining LCOE and externalities.

2015 LCOE estimates in Australia

Brown coal 89.65 AUD$/MWh
Black coal 80.67 AUD$/MWh
(Split the difference – 85 AUD$/MWh)

Nuclear 133 AUD$/MWh

Combined cycle gas 94 AUD$/MWh

source: http://www.ret.gov.au/energy/Documents/Unlocking_Australias_Energy_Potential.pdf

Median external costs according to Externe 2001 (median value for each nation with estimates, then median across these nations)

Coal 5.5 €cent/kWh
= 55 €/MWh
= 73 AUD$/MWh

Nuclear 0.3 €cent/kWh
= 3 €/MWh
= 4 AUD$/MWh

Gas 1.5 €cent/kWh
= 15 €/MWh
= 20 AUD$/MWh

source: http://www.externe.info/externen.pdf

Total costs (LCOE + externalities)

Coal 85 + 73 = 158 AUD$/MWh

Nuclear 133 + 4 = 137 AUD$/MWh

Gas 94 + 20 = 114 AUD$/MWh

I think my calculations are a bit shakey, e.g. using 2001 external costs with 2015 LCOE estimates. Also, fluctuating exchange rates, not taking into account resource abundance (esp. for gas), externality figures from the other side of the world, etc.

Anyone have better estimates?

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@ Luke Weston and David Walters:

Before you get too excited, read the linked report again. Nowhere does it say that the solar generator was at or near nameplate rating for any part of the day, let alone overnight.

Until a proper report is received, I remain skeptical that the energy sent out was anywhere above nominal during the night. At the very least, meaningful reports of this event should include a figure for the energy sent out over the claimed 24 hour period, along with salt temperatures before and after, to indicate how much energy has been borrowed from stored heat.

This said, the result is of great value, because it is an industrial scale operation which can be on line for the morning peak and does not need several hours’ warming through after sunride before first generation. Without overnight storage and circulation, Solar thermal cools down overnight and requires at least half of the morning to re-start. Sorry, I don’t have links to support this last statement. I know it to be true from personal experience but public records of overnight and startup performance are not available, as far as I know, to the public.

Let’s hope that the owners and developers of this record breaker are proud and confident enough that they will put their data out for public review. I would be most impressed if the unit managed to average 40MW, ie 960 MWH total during the 24 hours test, because historical performance of CST has been very much less than 33% of nameplate rating when averaged over a day or days.

David, your calculation then looks like $600M for 125MW peak capacity, 40MW average during favourable weather conditions and with the added benefit of reliability within at least a schedule of several hours, ie can be relied on to last through a peak period. This is great stuff.

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IT’s amazing how they almost never have actual MWhrs shown. The writers, who receive the info off of press releases, simply can’t parse what’s out there or ask the right questions. “100MWs”…for 24 hours? NOT!

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http://www.proactiveinvestors.com.au/companies/news/17757/russia-sees-opportunity-in-nuclear-energy-after-fukushima-17757.html

Working the anti-nuclear side of the street however, which has grown far broader in the last four months, Rosatom has recently been in discussions with Germany’s Siemens on a broad array of nuclear issues, including assisting in closing down Germany’s nuclear power plants.

Ever upbeat, Rosatom Deputy General Director Kirill Komarov told reporters, “We can look at different types of partnership, not just nuclear reactors, but at nuclear medicine or the closure of nuclear power plants.”

Opportunity is where you find it. Why am I not suprised that Rosatom is eager to assist Germany decomission its nuclear plants?

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I don’t know Luke Weston, “incompetent” is a bit harsh – other than the one hiccup (using the word “reactor” instead of “combustion boiler”), the article is pretty spot on. News of what we’re doing to global ecological systems is fairly sobering in my view.

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Weather related incidents are in the news these days all the time. Then they cross to to a story where a captain of industry says there is no need to do anything about climate change. As time goes by the disconnect must be harder to maintain. I myself nearly got swept away in a mudslide a couple of days ago. Yesterday the ground was snow covered at 200m altitude; today it’s warm. Even the old timers admit it’s unusual.

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@Peter Lang

Curiously, your link 1 July 2011 at 11:23 AM to Treasury under FOI in regarding the 2020 5% reduction on 2000 levels seems to have had the details deleted ……….
MODERATOR
Graham – please note that Peter Lang has been banned from BNC for persistent violations of the Comments Policy.

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In a big industrialized country with an integrated power grid, an energy mix based on nuclear and hydro, augmented by wind, solar and gas is probably the way to go if you want to largely decarbonize electricity production.

But what about remote rural areas with no grid connection, or small islands which today rely mostly on diesel generators for their electric power? They can set up a couple of wind turbines and solar panels to replace the diesels most of the time, but they still have to keep them around for periods of low wind or overcast skies. In order to get rid of the generators alltogether, they have to find ways of storing renewable energy to get through extended periods of below average renewable electricity production.
Pumped storage may be an option in some rural areas, but on most smaller islands, say in the Pacific, it is not feasible to construct because of lack of space and height differential. Batteries are an option, but they get heavy, bulky and expensive the more electricity they have to store.

What about hydrogen? There are several test sites in the world where they produce hydrogen from wind power, compress it, store it and burn it in a generator. This sounds good (better than wasting excess wind energy), but it is pretty inefficient, and hydrogen — because it’s the smallest molecule in the universe — tends to leak out of containers, so long-term storage is difficult.

A process which may adress the storage problem is methanization. You run CO2 and hydrogen through a Sabatier generator and produce methane gas, which can be stored in compressed or liquid form and combusted in a gas turbine.
Now the interesting option I’m thinking about is running the methanization process using atmospheric CO2. This was first proposed by NASA scientists working on a manned mission to Mars. If the the Mars expeditionary spacecraft had to carry all its return propellant from Earth to Mars, it would have been much too heavy to be launched on top of even the most powerful heavy lift rockets. So in order to reduce the mass of the outbound spacecraft, the engineers decided to equip it with only a small hydrogen feedstock in a separate tank, a small nuclear reactor and a small propellant production module. It would fly out essentially on empty tanks. After landing, the ship would start producing methane-oxygen rocket propellant for the return journey using nuclear electricity and Martian atmospheric carbon dioxide. Using only five tonnes of hydrogen feedstock, about 96 tonnes of methane-oxygen rocket propellant would be produced.

How are the prospects of using this process here on Earth:

excess renewable/nuclear electricity -> hydrogen -> methanization using stored or atmospheric CO2 -> storage -> burning in a gas turbine for power if needed -> release of the CO2 into the atmosphere or storage for recycling

… or is it more efficient to directly use the hydrogen in large fuel cells?

Could such a storage system added to wind and solar system, with perhaps the addition of a small anaerobic digestion plant be an adequate solution to the challenge of brining zero-carbon electricity to small islands and rural areas, not only when mother nature permits it but when it is demanded?

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Max a few people are thinking along these lines e.g. wind fuels http://www.dotyenergy.com/ who claim it can be done with 60% efficiency and even a car maker.

Perhaps 60% efficiency means the EROEI is the reciprocal 1.67 which is better than corn ethanol at 1.25. That still doesn’t say what the Sabatier methane fuel will cost per kwh, MJ or kg. As you say the trick is to simplify the technology so it can not only be done by Martian astronauts but also by island dwellers. At 0.04% w/w atmospheric CO2 is too dilute. I’ve tried making concentrated CO2 using charcoal and chemical oxygen. Messy. I’m about to experiment with different catalysts in a Sabatier reactor so if I stop posting it all went bad. BTW I’ve been making biodiesel for years.

While inefficient plenty of piston engine generators can run on methane. We see them at landfills and they are cheaper and more robust than fuel cells. Perhaps synthetic and bio-methane could be blended. Fast forward to year 2050 when natural gas is expensive or unobtainable. How do we balance wind power?

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Interesting proposals. The guys at dotyenergy seem to be doing exactly what I described. I also didn’t know that Audi is looking at synthetic gas as a car fuel.

The process is 60% efficiency compared to what? I doubt they mean 60% overall efficiency in electricity storage. Remember that you have to use the excess wind power electrolyze water into hydrogen and oxygen first, a process which is barely 60% efficient and then, expending power yet again, manufacture methane using H2 and CO2 in a Sabatier reactor, compress and store the produced gas and then burn it in a generator or turbine, which in itself is nowhere near 60% efficient. The whole process should only be 20% or so efficient in storing electricity, but that’s better than wasting the excess wind power. I can definitely see this powering remote communities such as islands, and perhaps even producing fuel for agricultural machinery, boats or trucks in these areas, but not as a general subsititute for oil in transportation.

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There is some amazing stuff on peak coal on the net lately. Anyone checked the math of growth and run a Hubbert’s bell curve across it? So many sites seem to support alarming stats like *running out* in 119 years, but then when you add 2% growth (or whatever we can expect after peak oil with Hirsch’s coal-to-liquids programs running), and *then* on top of growth try to smooth for peak coal… wow.

It’s looking close. As in my lifetime, and I’m only in mid 40’s.

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The round trip efficiency of synthetic hydrocarbons as an energy store must be low. That’s why we should conserve natural gas as a cheap versatile hydrocarbon and not burn so much in power stations. People who claimed to be tuned into sustainability issues blithely assume gas will always be there. For example the huge offshore processing platform to be built http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-13709293 All the gas will go to foreigners. Not only will they avoid paying carbon tax on an Australian fossil fuel but Shell is to get partial c.t. exemption for the gas burned onsite to run the rig. As Graham Palmer points out it worsens the CO2 cut we will have to make by 2020.

I would like our bureaucrats to write a paper on Australia’s long term gas supply and demand. Minor topics to touch on include replacing oil imports and gas for south eastern Australia such as converting Hazelwood. Perhaps flogging our WA gas while exempt from carbon constraints won’t look such a good idea.

EN one of my secrets (or was) to a good brew of biodiesel is to keep the reaction close to flash point for an hour. There’s a chance a hose could burst so I keep several fire extinguishers handy.

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Some good news from Japan:

NHK in Japan now is reporting that Tokyo Electric Power Company and the Japanese Government have announced in a joint statement that the reactors at Fukushima Daiichi are stabilized. This means that cooling water injection is controlled, that temperature of the reactors is in an acceptable range and can be controlled, and that nitrogen to prevent hydrogen burn or explosion is being injected to all three.

http://atomicpowerreview.blogspot.com/2011/07/tepco-japanese-govt-reactors-stabilized.html

I believe this is the first major milestone achieved in the recovery effort.

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The Open Source Hardware energy systems have been described as “Amish on crack”. They are remarkably upbeat about the energy that can come from food polyculture biomass waste. I’m suspicious because if done wrong, biomass creates the Food V Fuel competition. But they are claiming both, and I have heard of systems that provide food *and* fuel in certain carefully designed agricultural processes.

http://opensourceecology.org/wiki/Energy_Literacy_101

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I just read a report by a German renewables “think tank”, which states that the overall efficiency of electricity-methane-electricity (the last step in a combined cycle gas powerplant) is about 35%. The CO2 needed to produce the methane is supposed to come from the burning of biomass for electricity.

Electrictiy-hydrogen-electricity would be 7% more efficient, but you would need to design new gas turbines for that, or inject nitrogen decrease reaction temperature. Also, in order to use hydrogen, you would need to build a new storage and transportation infrastructure.

Obviously they are thinking about using this system on a very large scale.

Which process is more advantageous for rural areas and remote islands? Using pure hydrogen allows you to get rid of the biomass component, but that shouldn’t be a problem in the not to densely populated countryside. Also, you wouldn’t use combined cycle gas turbines but rather generators, so the efficieny of using “renewable methane” may be even lower.
In a tropical location (Maldives, Polynesia), I’d probably go for windmills and rooftop solar, with an added electrolyzer and fuel cell array for power storage.
In a colder climate I’d burn the hydrogen (or methane) in a small combined heat-power plant to supply electricity and heat to houses.

Any comments?
MODERATOR
As per BNC Comments Policy, please supply the link to the report you are quoting so that others can read it in full and then make their appraisals.

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Max an all-hydrogen system has been trialled a number of places including Stuart Island off Washington State.
http://www.siei.org/mainpage.html
They say their round trip efficiency is 7% but if they give a cost per kwh it is not on their cost page. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was well over $1/kwh as some solar-battery systems have ie without fuel cells.

The Methane Economy has a lot going for it including sunk costs (eg gas grid), medium tech (eg piston engines), multiple sources (bio, synthetic, natgas) and conversion losses avoided (eg 40% in gas-to-liquids). The main problem would be fugitive emissions.

While this isn’t on the radar I think it will become so in a few years. The govt says they will drop the 18c/L diesel fuel rebate. When liquid diesel hits say $2/L for truckers I think there will be a major shift to CNG. That will seriously drive up the price of gas for stationary users such as power stations. It’s one of the reasons why I think a full gas replacement for Hazelwood brown coal station will never happen despite it being a hot topic in the news.

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@ John Newlands:

With Victoria and SA already knocking at the door of gas shortages, any conversion of Hazelwood to gas is in the “Too Hard” basket, with or without price rises for NG. Vic’s share of Australian gas supplies is about 6%. At current rates of extraction, Victoria’s gas reserves (Proved and Provable) will last about 10 years. See: http://www.accc.gov.au/content/item.phtml?itemId=961581&nodeId=a934a0311336f67b0f7303f344579f82&fn=Chapter%203%20Natural%20gas.pdf , especially Table 3.1.

The available list of options for future electricity supplies grows a little shorter every day. Australia’s destiny is to continue down the path of eliminating each of the alternatives to nuclear power until nothing else remains and, only then, re-examining the political constraints and reluctantly considering nuclear power.

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JB I think it’s uncanny that R.F.X. (Rex) Connor predicted the need for a NW->SE gas pipeline 30 years ago. Shame it didn’t end well..
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rex_Connor

Perhaps he would be pleased if an east-west HVDC line eventuated.instead. Rex also wanted a uranium enrichment industry. I’ve previously given a link to an article suggesting SA’s once great gas field (Cooper Basin) needs fracking to bring a new lease of life.

It’s not just SA and Vic but according to Sen, Milne 50% of Tasmania’s summer power comes via the HVDC cable that ends next to the Loy Yang Vic brown coal station.. That cable only became fully operational in 2006.

Therefore NP with suitable transmission would be of massive benefit to SA, Vic and Tas who are all on borrowed time. I think either SA or Vic should be the site of Australia’s first commercial NP tied in with desalination, brown coal replacement and new industry.

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John,

Agreed 100%. Reginald Francis Xavier Conner. Love him or hate him, an interesting fellow then and still. Gough Whitlam had an interesting bunch of ministers whose names began with a C: Cass, Connor, Crean, Cairnes… all Contentious.

I tend to favour Victoria for the first 4x 800MW NPP’s, perhaps Hazelwood site, but above flood level please. Otherwise, replacing Loy Yang A. Closely behind, a couple of 800MW units in SA to feed Olympic Dam and the desal plants (Adelaide’s and BHP’s). The desal plant provides a nice large load which can be used to manage demand, thus enabling the nuclear power plants to run flat out, because otherwise their capacity might be a bit large for the SA end of the grid.

That should balance up the opportunities quite well, even leaving room for a phased transition to providing cheapish power for the aluminium industry, which has been made out to be an ogre. Energy-hungry, yes. Ogre, no. It depends where the electricity comes from and at what price.

The next phases could well be an HVDC link across the continent, which will also help to kick off solar in the desert and/or pumped storage on the Nullarbor, followed closely by a repetition of the exercise in NSW – perhaps with 1000MW or more per unit. Think: Wallerawang (2), Munmorah (1 or 2), Vales Point (2 to 4), Liddell (2 to 4). That brings NSW’s total to 7 to 12 with minimal transmission line upgrades, on existing sites, using existing workforces, provided that these black coal power stations are retired at the same time or beforehand.

That should deliver Australia’s first 15 to 20 GW of NPP’s, as well as a fat chunk of solar thermal and/or PV. The question is: “When?”

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John Bennetts further study of your link suggests how SA and Vic coal stations could be replaced with gas for several decades. The eastern option would be for Queensland coal seam gas to be diverted to the Adelaide-Moomba pipeline then reverse the flow in the SA-Vic line (SEAgas). I don’t know if this would be subject to capacity or blending constraints. Also Qld seem hell bent on liquefying and exporting a lot of their gas.

The other option is either to build a transcontinental pipe or ship WA LNG around the coastline from any of several onshore and offshore fields. I’d expect LNG to cost double piped gas and it is inefficient. As you say R/P ratios for the SE gas basins don’t justify large new plant. It might be easier to put a few solar panels out the front of Hazelwood and buy offsets from somebody with some spare jungle.

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JB

The question is: “When?”

When we’ve created the viral video meme that slays the ghosts of older Generation nukes, and emotionally excites and motivates the average Aussie to favour nukes. We need a unified message and strategy, otherwise we’re done and dusted.

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@ John Newlands, on 17 July 2011 at 3:41 PM:

I noticed that longer term gas discussion, but IMHO it should be disregarded. It relies on availability of pigs which do not yet fly, in the form of coal seam methane and pipelines which do not exist and may never do so.

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Interesting collection of Shale Gas & Oil articles here, where industry analysts and insiders are not as bullish on the reserves and economics as some companies would have us believe.

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Has anyone noticed this last item in the Coalition’s 2010 Energy and Resources Policy?

17. Examine the potential of thorium as an energy source for export
The Coalition will examine the potential use of thorium as an energy source.
Australia possesses an estimated 18.7 per cent (489,000t) of the world’s identified resources of thorium7.
The primary source of thorium in Australia and globally is the mineral monazite. Thorium can be used as an alternative source of fuel for energy generation and possesses an energy content that can be utilised almost in its entirety.

Maybe they should also examine the potential of thorium as an energy source for domestic generation.

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ABC Radio National’s The National Interest will have shadow environment minister Greg Hunt on the next show. The host, Peter Mares, solicited questions from listeners for Mr Hunt. If you’re interested you can log them here. My question:

Dear Peter,

I am very concerned about climate change and so I look forward to your upcoming interview with Greg Hunt. If the opportunity presents I would be grateful if you could put to him the following question:

Given the Coalition’s policy of direct action on climate change, and given that the single most effective policy change that could be made to reduce our emissions would be to rescind the ban on nuclear power, will the Coalition add nuclear power to its list of direct action initiatives?

And I note by way of background to the question:

* The much smaller environmental footprint of nuclear power and the nuclear fuel cycle relative to any proposed renewable energy alternative
* The need for large amounts of zero carbon energy to support water desalination in the future
* The superior safety of nuclear power relative to our current generation infrastructure (Fukushima nothwithstanding)
* The example of France as the only industrial economy to have essentially eliminated greenhouse gas emissions from electricity generation, and the failure of all attempts to do so with just renewable energy in other countries
* The Coalition’s support for our existing uranium mining and export industries, including uranium exports to India and its pledge to examine the use of thorium for energy

Kind regards,
John Morgan

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I’m new to this site. I stumbled on to it 3 days ago and have been reading voraciously ever since the mature and intelligent discussions about often contentious ideas and issues. I’ve not seen anything better on the net.

It seems Peter Lang’s post Pumped-hydro energy storage – cost estimates for a feasible system and comments has been quiet since April so I ‘m going to ask my questions here in the open thread.

A pumped storage generator project has been proposed for construction in my community. I’m seeking comments and analysis from this community of the obviously concerned, knowledgeable and talented.

How’s that for a preamble?

The proposed facility would have a 1.25 billion gallon upper reservoir feeding water through a pump/generator into a 600 foot deep open mine pit. A concept drawing shows the 600 foot deep pit as being filled almost completely and the upper reservoir being virtually empty at the end of the generating phase. ( I’ve just learned that there is, apparently, no way to post a graphic here)

The graphic of the proposal shows the bottom of the reservoir at/on ground level and the top of the pit at (of course) the same ground level with the pen stock feeding from ground level down to the turbine 600 feet below and out into the bottom of the mine pit.

To my untrained eye and my physics inept brain it seems to me that as the water level in the pit rises so will back pressure against the turbine. As the reservoir empties there will also be less weight of water pushing down onto the turbine.

Most of the pumped storage facilities I have read about drop into a river or into a reservoir behind a dam, very large bodies of water that would not suffer an appreciable level rise from the additional water being placed there-in by the turbine outflow. They also, in most instances, have the water dropping 1000 feet or more.

Wouldn’t the weight of the constantly rising column of water in the pit reduce output from the generator as back pressure increases?

Will the generator actually be able to maintain full 400 MW output for 5 hours?

Some specs given for this proposal are 400 MW for 5 hours with 322 cms flow through a Francis generator/pump.

More details and graphics are available on the Northland power web site.
(The graphic I would like to have been able to post here is page 17 of the PDF, 1st URL below)

Click to access Perspectives_2011_INTELLIGENT%20ENERGY_Northland_Power_English.pdf

http://www.northlandpower.ca/Home.aspx

Thanks for your comments

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Fred I think there must always be an air gap between the turbine and the full height of the lower reservoir. The latter is called a sump or cuddie in the mining industry. If there was continuous fluid Pascal’s law would stop the flow.

Interesting that a mine shaft is used to get the vertical drop. Kind of the opposite of a cliff top tank with the sea as the lower reservoir. Suits Hawaii since a higher sea cliff means the tank doesn’t need to be as large for the same energy.

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@ John N:

The mine is not an underground one. The fall is between a pond and a residual void. The surfaces of each pond will always be at atmospheric pressure.

The idea is a good one. If we must have residual voids, we should at least use them productively.

OTOH, miners could always choose to fill their mines and revegetate the restored surfaces before they leave. It’s only good manners.

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Eclipse Now,

Modified carbon nanotubes can store solar power indefinitely… but at what cost? And when can I buy one for a few extra bucks? ;-)

http://tinyurl.com/6j5vyoj

I didn’t comment on this before because there wasn’t enough info in the nextbigfuture link to figure out what was going on. We’ve known about state flipping azobenzenes for decades – why attach them to a nanotube? (Other than that it turns research in “chemistry” into research in “nanotechnology” and is therefore much more buzzworthy.) And how do you use these things? Do you spread them in a very thin film because thats the best solar collecting configuration? But its also the worst possible energy recovery configuration – regenerated heat would be lost. Do you scoop the stuff up and put it in jars? Sounds like a recipe for an incendiary.

Then this morning I saw Ars Technica has also covered this story and gives a better account. The nanotube attachment provides stabilization to ground and excited states, increasing shelf life of the high energy state.

But the real kicker here is that the molecule doesn’t exist.

This material has never been made. It exists only as a computer simulation. There is no guarantee that the material behaves as designed. There is no knowledge of other relevant material properties or chemical stability. There is no guarantee that the material can even be synthesized. There is no tested synthetic pathway. For any synthesis you might conceive, there is no knowledge of percentage yield, and many other things. Without knowledge of synthetic pathway, yield or or conversion processes, you cannot say anything about the cost of the material. But I can tell you that Sigma Aldrich is selling the nanotube feedstock for $1500 a gram.

Nowhere in the nextbigfuture coverage is it mentioned that this compound only exists in a simulation. Its reported as if it has been made. This is really irresponsible.

A couple more comments on the claims in that article:

storing the solar energy indefinitely

Ars Technica states the half life is “over 1 year”

volumetric energy density of Li-ion batteries

We don’t know anything about the bulk material properties of the stuff so take any discussion of energy density as completely unreliable. But the bigger issue is recoverable energy density. The recoverable energy is proportional to the temperature rise above ambient that can be achieved. High efficiency requires high temperatures. The proposed molecule is an azo-benzene functionalized nanotube. The azo compounds are, shall we say, not renowned for their stability. How hot can you heat this stuff in air before it decomposes, or bursts into flames? Not hot enough to drive a turbine, or recover any meaningful amount of energy in any other form. [Hint – its the kind of molecule you could brown in your oven at 180 C, if it doesn’t catch fire. In fact taking the rule of thumb that chemical reaction rates roughly double for every 10 C temperature increase, and based on a 1 year half life, 30 mins at 180 C would see it nicely cooked.]

So the stored energy can only be recovered as low grade heat, not a more useful form like electricity, except at conversion efficiencies that make the whole exercise laughable. As far as I can tell we’re talking about a very expensive pocket warmer.

less expensive than the earlier ruthenium-containing compound

Maybe. But astronomically expensive all the same, and an outrageous claim for a material that hasn’t been made.

while this process is useful for heating applications, to produce electricity would require another conversion step, using thermoelectric devices or producing steam to run a generator

Which it couldn’t do because the decomposition temperature is way below that required to run a steam turbine, or achieve useful conversion efficiency regardless the technology.

This sort of reporting verges on criminally irresponsible. And for the academic involved, I don’t care that he’s from MIT, talking up the potential of these materials in this way is professionally negligent.

Lets have a look at the other article linked from nextbigfuture, this time from our very own Monash university:

Graphite + water = new battery with storage as good as Lithium Ion but recharges in seconds.

http://tinyurl.com/6enyyee

What has been reported by nextbifuture is:

“When used in energy devices, graphene gel significantly outperforms current carbon-based technology, both in terms of the amount of charge stored and how fast the charges can be delivered.”

What has actually been done is to report a new gelling process, presumably water intercalation between layered graphene sheets at there edges (I can’t access the abstract). In other words, no battery or supercapacitor has been made, there is no knowledge of energy densities of any device that might use this material, no knowledge of charge, discharge rates, power densities, self-discharge rates, cost, etc. This is drawing a very long bow from observation of a gelling behaviour.

So once again nextbigfuture is reporting breakthoughs in imaginary devices.

This kind of journalism is a real problem. It is breathless and uncritical reaction to what is essentially a marketing hook for what is otherwise scientifically interesting research. Both of these pieces you’ve linked to, taken in the context of a scientific research exercise, are interesting reports. Neither of them have any basis for any claim on future deployment, but both of them have been reported as if they have already enabled energy storage for renewable energy.

The state of journalistic coverage of renewable energy technologies is deplorable and reminds me very much of where scientific coverage of biochemistry etc. was at a decade or two ago. That is, some researcher would find some legitimately interesting metabolic pathway or somesuch, and it would be reported as a cure for cancer, to the detriment of the scientists, the doctors, patients, and the journalist. Science journalism has cleaned up its act a lot in this regard – I think there is less of this sort of outrage in the biological sciences than there used to be (though there are constant howlers). But renewable energy breakthroughs are the new cures for cancer, and material science journalism really needs to go through the same process of maturation as medical science journalism seems to have.

Dilbert absolutely skewered this sort of reporting here:

http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/2011-03-29/

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Misinformation is all around … and not just from the renewables sector.

The highest value commodity in this energy policy consideration has to be trust.

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John Morgan, ouch!

Thanks for a fascinating, not to mention brutal, review of the nextbigfuture article – reprehensible, full of spin.

It really is rather sad the way “green technologies” get spun in the media (not to mention advertising campaigns too) at the moment. Interesting also that I never bothered to so much as glance at the article in the first place, due to an initial suspicion the article would have little or no substance. Goes to show how commonplace this misreporting currently is. From enormous pistons lifting granite for energy storage to Azobenzene-Functionalized Carbon Nanotubes…

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I’m shortly expecting some Adelaide visitors here in Tasmania. These people trot out the latest green technology idea year after year. They seem completely untroubled by lack of implementation or indeed undiminished reliance on coal. The important thing seems to be that greentech will one day save us in some unspecified time frame.

The thing that unites SA, Tas and Vic is that our gas reserves only have 10 good years left. Yet all three are inordinately pleased with their wind build program that needs gas backup. If there is to be an energy storage breakthrough it had better come soon otherwise those wind farms will be even less relevant.

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I think this cartoon is counter-productive.

It is not the way to demonstrate objectivity – for just as there are unsubstantiated, optimistic claims about renewables; there are unsubstantiated, optimistic claims about new nuclear.

This cartoon could just as easily be retagged “imaginary IFR technologies” given that so many of the essential capabilities appear to be unproven outside the lab.

When I read Tom Blees’s book I felt very optimistic about IFRs, boron and plasma. But that optimism was tempered by his cautionary words that a lot of work remains to prove the solution on a commercial scale; let alone prove that the multinational regulation/governance mechanism is doable.

So for the moment it is not possible to demonstrate that:
* the risk of containment failure due to “accidents” is acceptably low
* the risk of containment failure due to hostile attacks is acceptably low
* the risk of fuel cycle breaches leading to nuclear material ending up in the hands of hostiles is acceptably low
* the re-use of waste from older reactors can be economically achieved
* the final waste from IFRs can be safely stored for a dramatically shortened period
* there is reliable and significant intention on the part of multiple, leading governments and the leading commercial enterprises to work cooperatively on such things as standardised designs and multilateral governance (which would likely involve international law)

As far as I can see all this remains “design ambition” and there are heaps of hurdles to cross. The technology is at “development” stage – no more.

The strategy should be to win the right and funding to demonstrate the solution on an industrial scale.

If that right is won and the demonstration validates the design ambition then there is a real case for change that can influence those who, like me before, have been conditioned against nuclear.

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@ Alan:

All of Alan’s supposed issues are safety related and safety is one huge plus for nuclear as far as I can tell.

Hypothecising about possible but improbable events, indeed events with near zero probability of happening in a lifetime anywhere in the world, or which have never been known to happen is a rare luxury which is not available to those millions, many millions per year who are dying and will continue to die due to excessive fossil fuel usage by the privileged few (ie those who have a life expectancy above, say, 35 years at birth), while emotional exaggeration continues to steer analysis of life and death safety matters away from reality and towards dead ends and fanciful maybe’s.

Sure, these issues must be considered, but the costs of focussing only on them whilst ignoring the biggies could well include loss of civilization as we know it, widespread famine, resource wars and global environmental collapse. Why place no priority on these issues?

Besides which, what does Alan’s sixth point mean? Is it really essential that international law be used to enforce standardised designs and that technical progress be outlawed? Is this about one world government, or what? It certainly isn’t about optimising safety, environmental and social equity outcomes from the energy industry.

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Abbott is right; 80% emissions reductions by 2050 means the world coal industry should also shrink by 80%. Why the hell are Gillard and Swan boasting that the Australian coal industry will double? It’s a bit like saying liquor sales to responsible adults have declined but sales to drunks and minors have increased.

I was impressed with the way Gillard stood her ground with the carbon tax announcement.but now she is undermining her credibility. One recent report I read (author Pearse, link lost) said Australian exported coal accounted for over 700 Mt a year of CO2. Australia as a whole is at 580 Mt net for all fossil fuels and we are trying to knock off a few percent. I think it was Basil Fawlty who asked ‘what’s the bleedin’ point?’.

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@ John Bennetts

All of Alan’s supposed issues are safety related and safety is one huge plus for nuclear as far as I can tell

1, 2 & 5 are related to safety; 3 is related to weapons; 4 is related to cost and energy security; 6 is related to cost, safety & weapons.

They are all real issues in that IFRs are not yet deployed to any degree; they are all real issues because opposition to nuclear is strongly rooted in these issues.

Hypothecising about possible but improbable events, indeed events with near zero probability of happening in a lifetime anywhere in the world, or which have never been known to happen is a rare luxury

Well I think you need to separate concerns before assessing risk and how that directs engineering design.

Failure modes & effects analysis is used to estimate the probability of system failure under normal operating conditions. Engineering design has advanced greatly and you might end up with an estimate like Barry quoted in the “For climates sake” thread at https://bravenewclimate.com/2011/07/17/nuclear-climate-necessity/#comment-131723

the risk of a meltdown as serious as the Three Mile Island incident in the US (which resulted in no fatalities) for GE-Hitachi’s Economic Simplified Boiling Water Reactor has been assessed as once every 29 million reactor years.

This sounds great. Once every 29 million years … no worries!

But other risk factors which might lead to events like containment failures or fuel cycle breaches – by accidents or hostiles – most likely dwarf the risk of failure in normal mode. Fukushima.

From an engineering design perspective the challenge becomes to develop a solution which delivers on the ambition.

I recall Tom talking about the concept of putting the reactor underground. Fine … but not proven. What about the fuel reserves and waste stores? Has the design for that been proven? Not to my knowledge. What about the sealing of final waste in the glass compound? Great idea … but has it been proven?

The engineering design challenge is to make the system reactor and the fuel cycle demonstrably passive safe and indestructible (natural disasters & hostile attack) and unbreachable (to hostiles) to a degree that the “reasonable” person accepts.

While there is empirical evidence from the Argonne facility it is not at industrial scale. Tom has guesstimated that about $4 billion and 5 years is required to demonstrate at industrial scale.

Besides which, what does Alan’s sixth point mean? Is it really essential that international law be used to enforce standardised designs and that technical progress be outlawed? Is this about one world government, or what?

I suggest you refer to Tom’s book. The argument for international governance is powerful and I agree with it 100%. While it could be argued that market innovation would be reduced, I seriously doubt it … there’s lot of money to be made and design improvements are essential. And there are huge potential benefits in construction and operating efficiencies.

To summarise the concept … if we are looking at a future with thousands of reactors deployed across dozens of countries, what sort of international oversight is suggested given the demonstrable political instabilities that plague humankind.

Tom posits that an international governance/treaty mechanism be established for regulation of design, construction, operating etc. Another element of his proposition is that huge cost and time benefits are realisable if there was a substantial uniformity of system design – rather than a plethora of bespoke designs – because manufacturers, constructors, operators and maintainers would become highly skilled.

This makes eminent sense to me. We’re dealing with hot technology here. Having international regulation at this level is a small constraint to achieve the objective of ubiquitous base load energy for billions.

“One World Government” it is not!

My reference to “international law” is a personal muse. I wonder how rogue states could be deterred from doing what war machines do – attack the utilities like power and water. My thoughts drifted to international laws which prosecute the leadership of aggressor states if their war machines ever attacked a nuclear facility (even if they aimed their smart missiles at the transmission yard not the reactor).

Maybe automatic life imprisonment for the government and military leaders is suggested. Maybe an automatic impost of $1 trillion on the aggressor country might do the trick. I don’t know.

But enforceability of international governance is essential.

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“Why would we look to nuclear power when Germany, Japan and Italy are looking to remove it ?” These nations share in common that they all have had conservative constitutions forced upon them. If a large enough section of the voting population goes weak at the knees, the government is forced to back down. The rest of us have no such excuse.

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Thanks John Morgan for the review of the nano-battery’s exaggerated claims! Glad you found those other articles. I copied and posted your comment up at Next Big Future and explained a friend did the work. Cheers.

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Eclipse, you’re welcome. I hope you realize my rant was directed not at you but at those who failed you, namely the journalists selling a puff piece, the university pr departments promoting the work, and the academics reaching for contrived application scenarios for their research – an identical chain of broken logic coming out of different institutions on opposite sides of the world.

Tom Keen, sometimes you have to be cruel to be nasty, and its been a while since I’ve done a good debunking.

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The real peer-reviewed work I need is a thorough, calm, objective debunking of Wind + the Nullarbor dam idea (seawater pumped hydro combination).

(I also no longer trust a single thing Peter Lang wrote as objective, and if I owned this blog would probably be removing all his work and replacing it with better, more objective peer-reviewed work).

Wind seems to be the cheapest renewable if *only* measuring it on a grid feed in rate. But it’s making it baseload that sucks and gets expensive. Yet part of me still plays the “What if we can’t get Parliament to back nukes?” game.

I *know* nuclear uses 10% or less of the concrete and steel and is the quickest way we have to shore up clean base-load power in this country! But I just want to see the price of an alternative system.

So assuming:-
* a good overbuild across Australia
* a HVDC super-grid across the continent
* all the best wind sites covered so that there was always some wind blowing
* “enough” Nullarbor dams, I’d love to see the final bill.
(Note: I’m not going to commit to reading each and every technical comment that might appear on this thread as an attempt to answering the above. I was expressing the wish to see the finished peer-reviewed results — not necessarily even the working out — of such a study by peer-reviewed experts. I’m not even sure if I’d fully trust the work by either greenie renewable activists OR nuclear activists to be objective — worldviews and deep-seated belief systems are hard things to abandon for true objectivity).

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@Eclipse Now

The inner imp in me says: “If it was economically viable, or even close, we’d know the answer. We don’t, so it isn’t.”

A longer version would be: “If it was economically viable, or even close, people would be trumpeting the statistics we need to calculate (power generation time-series statistics) the answer from every roof-top. They aren’t. They are, instead, being conspicuously quiet and secretive with the numbers. One expects, then, that the numbers are very, very bad.”

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@Kray – don’t underestimate the power of “commercial-in-confidence” restrictions…

I.e. if the numbers are bad, you wont hear them. But if the numbers are good, you wont hear them either, because someone wants to make money out of them…

I agree with EclipseNow – it’d be nice to see a credible review of the likely costs of baseload wind.
We’ve seen the ZCA report, but they make some wildly optimistic assumptions about how much demand-side reduction is achievable, and it appears some pretty optimistic assumptions about how fast cost will come down for solar thermal.
Perhaps a ZCA revision that includes a number of scenarios for demand & cost of renewables?
And one that includes nuclear in the mix – no point excluding it for the reasons ZCA gave (takes longer than 10 years to implement), because there’s no prospect of Australia going 100% carbon-free in 10 years anyway. We’ll be struggling to meet the “2000 – 5%” target…

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Eclipse Now, on 20 July 2011 at 10:22 PM said:

The real peer-reviewed work I need is a thorough, calm, objective debunking of Wind + the Nullarbor dam idea (seawater pumped hydro combination).
Any future energy scenario is going to have to evolve from what we have today(78% coal, 14% natural gas ,6% hydro and 2% wind,90%), rather than “debunking” a hypothetical energy storage scheme. By the time that >90% CO2 reductions are achieved (2050?) generation IV nuclear may be a low cost option and /or better energy storage options may be available.

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Eclipse Now, on 20 July 2011 at 10:22 PM said:

The real peer-reviewed work I need is a thorough, calm, objective debunking of Wind + the Nullarbor dam idea (seawater pumped hydro combination).
Any future energy scenario is going to have to evolve from what we have today ;78% coal, 14% natural gas ,6% hydro and 2% wind,1% solar and no nuclear to a period when almost all coal fired is replaced by either nuclear and natural gas or renewables and natural gas or a mixture of renewables plus nuclear and natural gas.
Replacing that last natural gas FF used for peak demand, is going to be relatively expensive, requiring either increased pumped hydro storage, or an overbuild of nuclear or an overbuild of renewable storage, or generation of bio-gas, for relatively small savings in CO2 emissions.
It seems to me that getting to the point when 85% of electricity is generated from low CO2 sources and none from coal is the important step (ie reducing CO2 emissions by electricity generation 90%), rather than “debunking” a hypothetical energy storage scheme. By the time that 90% CO2 reductions are achieved (2050?) generation IV nuclear may be a low cost option and or better energy storage options may be available.

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Hi Neil

Any future energy scenario is going to have to evolve from what we have today

And it will do so based on the energy scenarios that politicians and energy corporations believe.

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Eclipse Now, on 21 July 2011 at 5:34 PM said:

it will do so based on the energy scenarios that politicians and energy corporations believe

add the words ‘they can sell’ and I think you’ve nailed it.:)

Risk management is a difficult concept for many to begin with.
The risks with nuclear are direct..what happens if the thing cooks off.

The risks with intermittent energy sources are indirect…what happens when that record continent wide heat wave shows up (as it did this last week in the US) and the wind doesn’t blow. How many people are going to die from heat stroke?

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Hi John,
yes — that site seems to just link to any hair-brained overblown report claims without any critical thinking. It’s a grab-bag chasing techno-utopian dreams. Some of those dreams interest me in a Sci-Fi sense, but I’m increasingly wondering if the host even *reads* the full articles he posts.

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I don’t think he does. He responded to me:

This is an article that had no analysis from me .. It was re-reported science news. .. It was not worth my time to dig into this work. .. I did zero original assessment.

This is the problem.

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@ John Morgan,

Great commentary over at nextbigfuture. The site owner’s replies to your comments are quite bizzare, I don’t understand why he’s being so defensive – all you’ve done is given an honest appraisal. Nothing “whingy”, nothing offensive or personal. *shrug*

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A peer-reviewed journal has just published a special edition (part 1) on wind turbines:

http://bst.sagepub.com/content/31/4.toc

From the press release:

“GLOBAL FIRST: Leading Scientific Peer Reviewed Journal Publishes Special Edition on Wind Turbines

Immediate Release

Toronto Ontario July 20, 2011/ The first peer reviewed scientific journal devoted solely to the impacts of wind turbines on communities was published today by SAGE Publications Bulletin of Science, Technology and Society”

“The groundbreaking Special Edition called WINDFARMS, COMMUNITIES AND ECOSYSTEMS PART I, features peer reviewed articles documenting adverse health effects and their cause from wind turbine installations.

Subjects range from an original case definition by Dr. Robert McMurtry of Ontario Canada, to noise characteristics and their impacts on communities in Australia by Dr. Bob Thorne, New Zealand. One featured article describes the specific and unique nature of wind turbine noise while another speaks to impacts of wind turbines on sleep disturbance and how this affects human health.

Two other articles of great importance are an epidemiological analysis of the WindVoice Health Survey (Krogh et al). This case series, begun in February 2008 in Ontario Canada, chronicles the many health outcomes experienced by people in Ontario living within the environs of wind turbine installations.

The other article follows the thread of the way those suffering receive no support from their government or community and how that lack of social justice is creating a whole new set of issues for victims of wind turbines.

Critics of those who are calling for stringent, authoritative guidelines regarding the locating of wind developments have continuously claimed there is a lack of peer reviewed evidence. This claim is false and now SAGE will be adding to that existing body of research including further context and current up to date research.”

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Interesting, bryen.
The counterpoint to the health impacts of wind turbines is, as a colleague of mine put it, that money is a 100% effective vaccine.
I.e. the people who get paid to have turbines on their land, for some reason suffer no adverse health effects at all. It’s only their neighbours who seem to be affected.
Mind you, I’m not aware of any serious studies that document that, so it’s only anecdotal evidence at this point as far as I’m concerned – but until these papers were published, the same could be said of the adverse health affects.
From what I’ve read on the topic, there seems to be a strong psychosomatic component to it – similar to the way some people can sleep soundly next to a busy rail freight line, while others get perturbed by a dog barking three streets away.

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@ Bryen,

Do you have any other examples of papers on the health effects from wind turbines? I’ve looked before, and haven’t really found any substantial evidence. I’m a bit concerned that this journal appears to have taken a one eyed view on the issue too – but of course, I could be wrong (I’m not familiar with Bulletin of Science, Technology and Society).

In my mind, intermittency (unreliability), poor scalability, and high costs are the primary problems for wind energy.

Then again, if they really are the cause of health problems they should be dealt with in the same manner as any other technology which has detrimental effects.

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Bern,

The “oney is a 100% effective vaccine” is incorrect/unproven and disingenuous / unscientific to apply to all circumstances, and unfortunately is being heavily promoted by Prof Simon Chapman:

http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/45730.html

But Chapman just selectively quotes this research study :

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19640029

J Acoust Soc Am. 2009 Aug;126(2):634-43.
Response to noise from modern wind farms in The Netherlands.
Pedersen E, van den Berg F, Bakker R, Bouma J.
Source

and ignores all of Pedersen et al’s & other scientific research.

However, if you examine the published research in the journal issue linked in my previous comment, and many of the papers referenced within them, you will find that the situation is somewhat more complex.

The facts are that wind turbine noise is different from other types of community noise (road, rail, aviation) and causes “annoyance” (a primary health effect) at much lower levels due to its unique characteristics (Pederson and Persson-Waye, J. Acoust. Soc Amer 2004; 116:3460). For a view of this relationship see also Dr Alec Salt of Cochlear Fluids Research Laboratory, Washington University in St. Louis web page titled :

“Wind Turbines can be Hazardous to Human Health”

http://oto2.wustl.edu/cochlea/wind.html

In particular see the graph on page 10 of this paper, which has a reproduction of the Pedersen & Persson-Waye 2004 results showing higher annoyance for lower sound levels than road, rail & aviation:

Click to access saltaudiologyarkansas2011.pdf

I would also highly recommend Dr Daniel Shephard et al’s recent paper at the 2011 International Conference on Wind Turbine Noise:

Wind turbine noise and health-related quality of life of nearby
residents: a cross-sectional study in New Zealand.

Daniel Shepherd, David McBride, David Welch, Kim N. Dirks, and Erin M. Hill

Abstract

“Hearing allows humans to detect threats in the environment and to communicate with others. However, unwanted sound has the capacity to evoke reflexive and emotional responses, and can act a stressor. The World Health Organisation classifies noise as an environmental pollutant that degrades sleep, quality of life and general health. Previous research provides evidence of a relationship between wind turbine noise and both annoyance and sleep disturbance. However, wind turbines are a relatively new source of community noise, and as such their effects on health have yet to be fully described. We report a study exploring the effect of wind turbine noise on health and well-being in a sample of New Zealand residents living within two kilometres of a wind turbine installation. Our data provide evidence that wind turbine noise can degrade aspects of health-related quality of life and amenity. On this evidence, wind turbine installations should be sited with care and consideration with respect to the communities hosting them.”

& Shephard’s submission to the recent Senate Inquiry on wind farms from his evidence in the Kent Breeze wind farm case is a very comprehensive document:

https://senate.aph.gov.au/submissions/comittees/viewdocument.aspx?id=6de2b5fc-0602-48e0-96ee-62b4604a49fc

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@ Tom Keen

I totally agree with your statement: “In my mind, intermittency (unreliability), poor scalability, and high costs are the primary problems for wind energy.” and would add also ineffective and costly at reducing emissions based on previous posts here at BNC.

I don’t consider the Journal to be one-sided, and it is a special issue looking particularly at those negative impacts.

Another place I would recommend regarding industrial wind turbine noise is the Acoustic Ecology Institute:

http://acousticecology.org/wind/

They have just published their annual “Wind Farm Noise” report, available for download as well as some other resources.

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bryen, thanks for the reponse & the pointer to that submission.

I should point out that I’m an acoustic engineer – noise assessment & control is my day job. My colleague has extensive experience in assessing wind farms, particularly in the UK. I’ll send him that submission and see what he has to say.

I’ll note two things, though:

1) The report was prepared for the parties opposed to the wind farm. As much as people might say expert witnesses’ reports aren’t affected by this, I’d disagree, having seen quite a few expert reports that were specifically tailored to push the client’s position (including several that were, in my mind, technically indefensible)

2) This quote from the report caught my eye:

noise level explains between 15 – 20 percent of the variation in the annoyance response across individuals

To me, such a low correlation says the annoyance response had very little to do with noise. I consider it likely that noise was seized upon as an identifiable factor that might provide grounds for arguing against the proposal.

I’ll note here that I also agree with Tom Keen re the practicality of replacing baseload fossil fuel with wind farms, but I’m quite sceptical of the noise issue. Based on my experience & reading of peer-reviewed articles on the matter, people who are particularly concerned about a noise will find it annoying when others literally wouldn’t notice it.

Working in acoustics, it’s amazing to compare your perceptions of the acoustic environment to that of normal people. You can sit there rattling off the list of noise sources you can hear & identify, and other people are going “I can’t hear anything!”

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anyone know of some easily accessible graphs charting daily wind production? The U.S. is currently experiencing a heat wave covering large regions of the country. it’s so hot that in the nation’s capital, the temperature is still 90 degrees at midnight.

How are the wind farms doing in these areas, to the extent that there are any? solar would do well during peak afternoon hours but when the heat stays so high at night?

Imagine a nearly all renewables grid under such circumstances, ones that will become more common? No knowledgeable country is going to turn heavily to renewables–wind and solar. it’s a non starter.

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GM can’t help with wind maps but 32C at midnight far inland suggests cloud cover trapping heat. If so it means solar energy without storage fails to follow air conditioning demand on two counts
1) obvious – no local insolation at night
2) less obvious – reduced insolation during the day.

Does the heatwave mean the US public could one day accept GHG abatement measures like carbon tax?

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