Dalek

Any-one inside the power generation industry will tell you (in a candid moment) that the only reason Nuclear reactors were adopted is because they can be used to make nukes.

DavidMc

It is true that nuclear power rode on the back of nuclear weapons and submarine technology. However, nuclear power reactors are not used to produce nukes. You know that Dalek. So why did you say it?

Dalek

er.. The reactor at Dimona (for example) has been used to make nukes by altering its operating conditions under the very noses of the US inspectors. The neutron flux in any reactor can be used to produce Pu, or whatever, just a question of yield. (Apparently under the rules of asymetric moderation it is OK to characterise me as a liar)

You are right that some power reactors can be used to make nuclear weapons. In fact, I now recall that some Soviet reactors were dual use.  Also new entrants into the nuclear club can use a civilian program as a cover for a military one.

However, the fact remains that for most reactors and most countries with reactors, there is no connection between nuclear power plants and the production of nuclear weapons.

The nuclear power industry in the USA, UK and Soviet Union came after the development of nuclear weapons. I don't think any US or UK power plant is involved in nuclear weapons production.

There are many countries with civilian programs that show no sign of acqiiring nuclear weapons. These include Argentina, Belgium, Canada, Czech Republic, Egypt, Finland, Hungary, Mexico, Netherlands, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland.

By the way, according to the Uranium Information Center Israel does not produce any nuclear power. So the reactor at Dimona is presumably not a nuclear power facility.

Dalek

Not a single reactor installed any-where in the world prior to 1975 has been able to make electricity at any-thing like the cost per kWh of other forms of generation. This from a technology that was  described as "too cheap to meter". Even in Japan, big subsidies are required.

DavidMc

Whatever the cost difference, it certainly has not been enough to cripple the French economy which relies on nuclear energy for 80 per cent of its electricty.

Dalek

Cripple maybe not. Might be something to do with the fact that France is the economic basket case of "old" Europe?

According to The CIA Factbook, France's GDP per capita is the same as  Germany,
a fraction higher than Italy and a bit less than the UK.

Dalek

"No reactor has yet been de-comissioned, except for Chenoble!"

David Mc

"Going by this 2004 document from the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission, four US reactors have completed the decommissioning process and another US 19 plants have been permanently shut down and are undergoing decommissioning"

Dalek

Love this; check out the type and purpose of these reactors and then come back to me. I am talking big power producing ones like Three Mile Island for example, they are still trying to work out how to do it.

Here is the Uranium Information Centre's Briefing Paper on Decommissiong for anyone who is interested in the subject. Also try the Wikipedia entry.

Dalek

Yes the thermal efficiency of geothermal from hot water resources is low, but it is not an issue as the "fuel" is free - in the nuclear case the fuel is not free.

Geothermal energy is not free. You have to drill very deep and expensive holes to get to it. The deeper the resource, the more expensive. In fact most of the resource will only be accessible with the development of new technologies. In other words it is for the moment infinitely expensive.

Given that it is not free,  thermal efficiency will  affect the ultimate price of a unit of electricity.

Dalek

What exactly does "virtually indestructable canisters" mean?

Either indestructable for all practical purposes or low expected failure rate that would cause a level of contamination that was acceptable given the benefits of the energy provided.

Here are some interesting quotes from a news report on the cost of domestic solar panels.

They refer to solar roof tiles which may possibly be more expensive than standard panels that are attached to an existing roof. It is also written by a journalist and provides no sources.

The typical American household uses about 10,656 kilowatt-hours of electricity each year, or about 888 kwh per month, which means a 6 kw solar power system would be needed to cover all of that home's electricity needs.

A one-kilowatt BIPV solar roof system costs about $14,000 before incentives, says Art Rivera, marketing representative for Sunslates, a solar roof tile manufacturer in Sacramento, Calif. At that cost, the typical American family would have to spend $84,000 to generate all the electricity it uses.

...

Each 1 kw shingle system requires about 100 square feet of roof space and produces between 1,600 and 2,000 kilowatt-hours of electricity each year, depending on where you live. If electricity costs 10 cents per kilowatt-hour, each 1 kw of solar power would reduce your electricity bill by $160 to $225 each year for the life of the system. Solar shingles typically last 20 to 25 years, and are designed to withstand hail and tropical-storm force winds.

...

... solar power does best on a south-facing roof. Electricity production falls about 15 percent if the roof is facing east or west.

No wonder considerable subsidies and other inducements are needed to get people to  buy these systems.

David, We could argue about much of this stuff forever ever so I concede the battle on nuclear. OK? But there are two points.

1) Dimona was promoted as a reasearch reactor for the production of energy, much as the one in Sydney is. As I said any reactor can be used to make weapons grade material.

This paper is very interesting  http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/israel/nuke/farr.htm

 

2)However your argument about geothermal energy is very wrong.

• "Geothermal energy is not free. You have to drill very deep and expensive holes to get to it. The deeper the resource, the more expensive. In fact most of the resource will only be accessible with the development of new technologies. In other words it is for the moment infinitely expensive". Firstly the hole drilling technology is standard oil well stuff. No new technology is required at all. I think by "infinitely expensive" you mean high capital cost (try to NPV something with a lifetime of say 200 Years).
• Many oil wells yield nothing, the geothermal well always yields thus the capital cost of the hole is trivial.
• Unlike an oil well the useful life time of  geothermal hole/s is measured in 100's of years. This does present a problem for orthodox economic assesment
• The long lifetime of the holes (100years+) means that standard NPV and IRR economic models do not work (I have just come back from the office next door where I put these questions to our economic modeller. He basically said that Capitalism has no way to deal with really long term assets).  We discussed your assertion that thermal efficiency will ultimately determine the price. He made the point that thermal efficiency was only relevent in terms of fuel cost. For example PV has no fuel costs at all,  its generation costs are determined by its capital costs
• The theoretical Carnot efficiency of the Cooper Basin resource is about 50-60% a realisable efficiency could be say 40% close to standard thermal coal. There is also a huge resource that will come in at a Carnot efficiency of  40% - So I guess your argument fails totally.
• Those who fear change (the entrenched power generators) are fighting this developement tooth and nail  

I find it interesting that peoplewho so loudly espouse "modernity" and "progress" can often be found on the side of stasis and reaction.

Dalek

 

I  am advised that in the first generation, actual efficiency in the Cooper Basin plant will be of the order 20-30%. The water down there is really hot - in an actual hole at Inniminka 250^oC. 4300m down. 4300m is commonplace for the oil industry.

You said: "In fact most of the resource will only be accessible with the development of new technologies. In other words it is for the moment infinitely expensive".

You should share this insight with the guys who have already drilled the hole/s at Inniminka, they would be very grateful for your insight. http://hotrock.anu.edu.au/cooper.htm

Dalek

 

 

Here is a paper on Geo-thermal energy resources in Queensland. http://www.nrw.qld.gov.au/factsheets/pdf/mines/m7.pdf

BTW,  the "thermal efficiency" (equivalent) of average Geothermal and PV are about in the same range (12- 25%). The difference is that PV has about 10 times the cost per MW of generation capacity than Geothermal.

The operational lifetime of a Rankine cycle turbine set is probably of the order 40-50 years (they use it in space where maintenance facilities are hard to find). 

So you drill a few holes plonk down some plant and transformer to the Grid, move on a few km and do it again (need a HV branch line as well) then come back 20 years later for the first scheduled maintenance. Easy.

After the 3^rd scheduled maintenece the fusion boys might have something good enough to do you out of business. C'est la vie eh? 

Dalek

I have to side with Dalek, generally,  on the question of civil and military nuclear power. In most, but all countries,  civil nuclear power was used as a cover for the production of enriched uranium and plutonium to be used for military purposes. This is why the Americans and UK government are so sceptical of Iranian statements on nuclear power. They used the same story themselves 50 years ago!

In the mid-eighties Mrs Thatcher decided, in her wisdom, to privatise the UK electricity generating industry. The original plan was to include the nuclear power plants, but even though there were plenty of takers for the conventional sector there were none for the  nuclear sector, even with Government promising to underwrite insurance,  decommisioning costs and with other sweeteners to the deal. This exposed the lies that had been told in the previous thirty years on the relative cheapness of nuclear power.

I can accept that geothermal power would be a good option for Australia but what about other countries? Its hard to see that it would have the same place in Europe and China, for instance.

 

My take on geothermal energy can be found here.

David's 'take on geothermal energy' makes a lot of sense to me. For those who didn't click on his 'here' button, this is what it says:

Geothermal Energy

Beneath a relatively thin cool outer layer, the earth is a furnace with a central core as hot as the sun. This is due mainly to the initial heat from gravitational collapse, when the earth was formed some 4.5 billion years ago, and to the on-going radioactive decay of potassium, thorium and uranium. The amount of heat beneath our feet is so great that the ability to exploit even a small fraction of it would belie any doubts about our ability to vastly increased the level of energy consumption.

To date, exploitation of the resource has been confined to its hydrothermal and geoexchange forms. The hydrothermal resource is the subterranean store of heated water and steam, and is the more important of the two. It is more readily exploited, the closer it is to the surface and the higher the heat gradient, i.e., the increase in temperature with each unit increase of depth. It is mainly located near where the tectonic plates meet, resulting in considerable volcanic activity and the placement of magma at higher than usual levels. The main areas are located in New Zealand, Japan, Indonesia, Philippines, the western coastal Americas, the central and eastern parts of the Mediterranean, Iceland, the Azores and eastern Africa.[528]

Hydrothermal electricity generating capacity is about 9,000 MWe.[529] This modest contribution is equivalent to 10 to 15 coal or nuclear power plants. Six countries are responsible for over 80 per cent of capacity, with the USA and the Philippines well out in front.[530]

Where the water is above 150^oC steam is created which can be directly fed into a turbine connected to a generator. If the temperature is between 100^oC and 150^oC, electricity can still be generated using binary plant technology. The steam heats, through a heat exchanger, a secondary working fluid (isobutane, isopentane or ammonia), which vaporizes at a lower temperature than water. The working fluid's vapor turns the turbine and is condensed before being reheated by the geothermal water, allowing it to be vaporized and used again in a closed-loop.[531]

Undertaken on a similar scale to electricity generation is direct use of the heat.[532] This is primarily for space heating. For example, in Reykjavik in Iceland pipes carry hot water for tens of kilometers to homes and other buildings. The resource can also be put to a range of industrial uses such as drying food crops, lumber, and bricks, heating fish ponds and greenhouses, and pasteurizing milk.

Geoexchange systems or heat pumps also provide space heating by taking advantage of the fact that the ground immediately under the surface stays at a fairly constant temperature all year round even while the temperature above changes with the seasons. In the temperate regions the ground temperature stays between 10 to 16 degrees Celsius (50 to 60 degrees Fahrenheit). By circulating water or some other fluid through pipes, thermal energy is extracted from the ground during the coldest times of the year and deposited in the ground during the hottest times. Pipes can be buried vertically, if the ground is not too rocky, or, if space permits, horizontally in shallow trenches a couple of meters underground. While the system requires electric power, this is only needed to move the heat rather than produce it. As a result it delivers 3 to 4 times more energy than it consumes.[533] Currently the use of this technology is quite limited. Just over half a million systems have been installed of which about half are in the US.[534]

While the hydrothermal and geoexchange resources have the potential to grow and continue to be a significant sources of energy in some regions, they could never be a major player. If the nether regions are to perform that role, we will need to exploit the much larger sources of heat. At this stage hot dry rock in the earth's crust is technologically within reach. Further down the track we should be able to tap into the pockets of extremely hot molten rock - or magma - which are widespread throughout the earth's crust and also the area beneath the crust called the mantle which begins 5 to 10 kilometers beneath the sea and 20 to 70 kilometers beneath the continents.

The approach being developed to exploit hot dry rock involves creating a man-made reservoir by drilling a deep well bore down into high-temperature, low-permeability rock and then forming a large heat exchange system by hydraulic or explosive fracturing. Water is then injected into this original well and retrieved from one or more production wells after circulating through the fractured rock. As with the hydrothermal resource, the hot water or steam can be used to generate electricity or to supply combined heat and power systems.

The technology has been mainly developed at the Hot Dry Rock Test Facility in Fenton Hill, New Mexico. A hot dry rock reservoir was successfully created which generated thermal energy continuously at a rate of about 4 MW in two test phases lasting 112 and 55 days. About 10 per cent of the power produced was consumed by the injection and production pumps.[535]

While trials such as these have proven the concept, a great deal of development would still be required to make it commercially viable on a wide scale. These include: (1) the development of inexpensive high-temperature hard-rock drilling techniques, (2) improvements in three-dimensional rock fracturing, (3) mastery of methods for maintaining low-impedance fluid circulation through the fracture system and (4) improvements in power generation methods appropriate to water at temperatures considerably lower than that in fossil or nuclear powered plants.

Drilling costs account for one third to one half of the total costs of a geothermal project[536] and the cost of reaching between 5 and 10 kilometers has to be reduced significantly for hot dry rock to compete with other energy sources. At the moment costs shoot up dramatically as those depths are approached. Basically, drilling has to be faster and less prone to break downs under increasingly hostile conditions. The prospects for improvements seem quite good.

To begin with, the sharp end of the system can be improved in a number of ways. Drill bits can be made of new harder materials that allow them to operate at much higher rotary speeds and weight-on-bit loads. Or a bit that simply tries to grind through hard rock can be replaced by one that shatters it, possibly assisted by applying heat to create thermal stresses. Down hole motors can be developed which apply more power to the bit than the more traditional rotary power transmitted from the surface. Improvement can also follow from basic research into the physical and chemical processes associated with penetrating rock.

The development of so-called smart drilling should also make a big difference. This will involve a high-speed broadband data link to the drill bit where sensors will report in real-time on the conditions around and ahead of the bit and so enable the operator to avoid problems and maximize the drilling rate. Real time knowledge of drilling conditions such as the strength and composition of the rock will allow appropriate changes to be made in weight on bit and drill speed. Knowledge of the precise location of the drill bit will mean it can be steered around undesirable zones. And information on the state of the entire drilling unit, including wear of tools, state of other mechanical components and the flow of coolant would allow timely corrective action. Expected advances in computer science and miniaturization should be able to provide this technology.

The energy content of hot dry rock is huge. It is everywhere under the earth's surface, although more accessible in some places than others because of the different thermal gradient.

While the average thermal gradient is around 25^oC/km,[537] about 11 per cent of the land area is classified as high grade with gradients substantially above normal.[538] In these areas rocks hot enough for electric power generation - usually taken to be at least 150^oC but preferably higher - can be found at depths of less than 5 kilometers. Lower grade resources would need anywhere up to a depth of 10 kilometers. Mining for direct uses such as space heating can start at much lower depths.

Armstead and Tester have identified an energy resource of 105 million quads.[539] This is their estimate of the resource in rock with temperatures greater than 85oC, to a depth of 10 kilometers and lying beneath the 100 million square kilometers of land area not covered in ice or mountain ranges.[540] Of this resource, 26.5 million quads are moderate to high grade (a gradient higher than 40oC/km) while 78.5 million quads are low grade.[541] It is a bit under a quarter of a million times the 2004 level of energy production of 445 quads (or 470 EJ). Current production is the equivalent of the average energy beneath 400 square kilometers, in other words a square with 20 kilometer sides.

It is important to keep in mind that energy losses would be larger when using geothermal rather than fossil resources. This would be the case both in the direct use of hot water for washing and heating and in the creation of secondary forms of energy such as electricity and transport fuel. In the case of electricity generation, there would be lower thermal efficiency because of the lower temperatures at which the conversion takes place. Until we can easily extract heat at depths greater than 10 kilometers, the temperature will always be far lower than that created by the burning of fossil fuel. In the production of hydrogen as a transport fuel, via electricity production or some other method, the energy loss will always be far greater than that in the conversion of crude oil or gas to the refined fuel.

So, how long would the hot rock last? If we magically switched to 100 per cent reliance on it tomorrow and our energy consumption increased annually by 2 per cent, it would last almost 400 years on the assumption that two quads were required to replace one quad from fossil fuel because of the greater energy losses. If three quads are required, the resource would last 370 years. Employing the two quad assumption, the resource would last over 17,000 years if consumption increased annually by 2 per cent until 2100 (providing a 6.7 fold increase in annual output) and then remained constant. (It is over 11,000 years with three quads.) Using the two quad assumption again, just 1 per cent of the resource would last over 160 years, with a 2 per cent growth rate. (It is 140 years with three quads) This would reduce the average temperature by 0.5^oC, given that a 1^oC cooling provides 0.00215 quads of energy from every cubic kilometer.[542]

The area that would need to be exploited at any time will depend not only on the output but also on the draw down rate. So, if, for example, the regions being exploited were cooled annually by on average of one twentieth of a degree Celsius to a depth of 10 kilometers, a total of 413,953 square kilometers would be required to provide 445 quads per year. [543] This is equivalent to a square with 643 kilometer sides and is less than 3 per cent of the area of crop land. (Here no allowance is made for the greater energy conversion losses compared with fossil fuels.)

Until drilling to 10 kilometers is a routine and low cost exercise, the exploitation of hot dry rock would be confined to regions where the resource is high-grade. While a large resource, it is not evenly distributed. For example, in the US it is confined to the western regions of the country. Eventually, we will be able to drill below 10 kilometers and tap an even larger and hotter resource. As a result the heat that can be extracted from below a given area of ground will be greatly increased.

Water supply may prove to be a constraint in some areas. While there is a closed loop, with cooled water being re-injected, there is some leakage from the system necessitating an on-going demand for water. Some of the water is absorbed into micro-pores of the reservoir rock and nooks and crannies at the periphery of the reservoir. Although this tends to decline with time as these fluid sinks become saturated.[544]

Geothermal energy has advantages over resources such as solar and wind in that it is available anytime without energy wasting storage and the quantity can be adjusted quite quickly to meet changes in demand.[545]

A number of environmental concerns have been raised. Cooling of rock could cause some shrinkage and result in subsidence. However, this tendency would be counteracted by the high pressure water injection. If there is some slight subsidence, we would just need to avoid that small proportion of places where this poses a problem. Cooling of rock and water pressure could both cause seismic shocks. However, these take the form of many scarcely detectable micro earth quakes. There is no build up of stress that would cause a major earthquake. Any cooling would have negligible effects on temperatures in the surface regions where roots, burrowing life forms and ground water are to be found because the heat removal is occurring at great depths and rock is a very poor conductor of heat. Releasing waste heat into the atmosphere during power generation is a practice shared with fossil and nuclear power. The main difference is that individual power plants would tend to be considerably smaller. Apart from that, all that needs to be said is that it is microscopic compared with the heat of the sun and its variability.

While the surface 'footprint' of hot dry rock facilities would be a tiny proportion of the area exploited, they could still be a significant user of land, given the power generating equipment, wellheads, pipe distribution systems and transmission lines. Whether they would take up more or less land than fossil fueled power is unclear. On the one hand there is no need for strip mines, gas or oil pipelines, or waste repositories and heat generation takes place underground and uses no surface space. On the other hand, the fact that geothermal plants are expected to have significantly smaller output will mean various space consuming diseconomies. For example, there would be more transmission lines, more roads, and a bigger generating plant footprint for a given amount of output. If we eventually move to exploit magma and the mantle, footprints will become less of an issue as each facility will produce far more energy.

Energy Overall

After reviewing the resources on hand, it is clear that there are no insurmountable obstacles to providing a world of 10 billion people with the per capita energy levels that have already been reached in the rich countries. To achieve this by the end of the century would simply require the growth rates in energy production that were fairly normal in the 20^th century.

An annual energy growth rate of 2 per cent which is slightly less than the average rate of the last 30 years would provide a 6.5 fold increase if sustained for the whole century. If, as expected, energy consumption in the rich countries is at a slower rate, more of any increase would go to the poorer countries.

If rich countries were to continue increasing energy consumption by 1 per cent per year and their population remained static, while overall energy grew annually by 2 per cent and the population of the poor countries increased by 60 per cent, by the end of the century, rich country per capita consumption would increase from 5.5 to 14 toe and poor country per capita consumption from 1.1 to 6.8 toe. This would bring the poor countries as a whole almost up to present US per capita consumption levels and shrink the disparity between rich and poor countries from five to one to two to one.

With the large resources of coal and gas, fossil energy could well remain a major player into the 22^nd century, with CO₂ capture if deemed necessary. Sun and wind resources are vast and non-depletable and could provide indefinitely the level of consumption anticipated by 2100, although it would require gathering the resources from quite large areas. With current and easily foreseeable technology nuclear power could play a larger but not dominant role during this century. If innovations such as breeder and thorium powered reactors, and ocean extraction of uranium, prove feasible and economic, nuclear power could provide a growing level of energy for many centuries. Hot rock could become a massive resource once we can drill routinely to 10 kilometer depths. The further we travel into the future the more we will be able to rely on energy sources that are presently either infeasible and unforeseeable. Fusion energy, solar power from space, and heat from magma and extreme depths are among those in the former category.

 

B.

cyberman, Mrs. Thatcher "in her wisdom" made the whole global warming hypothesis an international issue. She set up the Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research, which became the operating agency for the IPCC's scientific working group. Thatcher did this because she wanted to greatly reduce the coal industry and was a supporter of expanded nuclear energy.

 

Here's some history about Thatcher's key role:

Overseas politicians began to take notice of Mrs Thatcher’s campaign if only to try to stop her disrupting summit meetings. They brought the matter to the attention of their civil servants for assessment, and they reported that - although scientifically dubious - ‘global warming’ could be economically important. The USA is the world’s most powerful economy and is the most intensive energy user. If all countries adopted ‘carbon taxes’, or other universal proportionate reductions in industrial activity, each non-US industrialised country would gain economic benefit over the United States. So, many politicians from many countries joined with Mrs Thatcher in expressing concern at global warming and a political bandwagon began to roll. Mrs Thatcher had raised an international policy issue and thus become an influential international politician.

Mrs Thatcher could not have promoted the global warming issue without the support of her UK political party. And they were willing to give it. Following the General Election of 1979, most of the incoming Cabinet had been members of the government which lost office in 1974. They blamed the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) for their 1974 defeat. They, therefore, desired an excuse for reducing the UK coal industry and, thus, the NUM’s power. Coal-fired power stations emit CO2 but nuclear power stations don’t. Global warming provided an excuse for reducing the UK’s dependence on coal by replacing it with nuclear power.

And the Conservative Party wanted a large UK nuclear power industry for another reason. That industry’s large nuclear processing facilities were required for the UK’s nuclear weapons programme and the opposition Labour Party was then opposing the Conservative Party’s plans to upgrade the UK’s nuclear deterrent with Trident missiles and submarines. Unfortunately, the Three Mile Island and Chernobyl accidents had damaged public confidence in nuclear technology. Then, privatisation of the UK’s electricity supply industry exposed the secret that UK nuclear electricity cost four times more than UK coal-fired electricity. Global warming became the only remaining excuse for the unpopular nuclear power facilities needed for nuclear weapons. Mrs Thatcher had to be seen to spend money at home if her international campaign was to be credible.

So, early in her global warming campaign - and at her personal instigation - the UK’s Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research was established, and the science and engineering research councils were encouraged to place priority in funding climate-related research. This cost nothing because the UK’s total research budget was not increased; indeed, it fell because of cuts elsewhere.

 

The full essay, 'Global Warming: How it all began' is by Richard Courtney. http://www.john-daly.com/history.htm 

By the way, I do not share the author's view that man-made global warming is a physical impossibility, as I do accept that human activity affects the rest of the environment.

 

Global warming catastrophists like Tim Flannery can expect to succeed with their recognition that nuclear is part of the solution to the problem as they see it.

 

Barry

David I am interested in "infinitely expensive" as in  "You have to drill very deep and expensive holes to get to it. The deeper the resource, the more expensive. In fact most of the resource will only be accessible with the development of new technologies. In other words it is for the moment "infinitely expensive". Again I ask what does "Infinitely expensive" mean?

Dalek 

One gorilla in the kitchen with nuclear power is waste disposal.

The following countries have invested huge resources in the search for a safe waste depository; The UK. France, The US. Despite vast expenditure by tax payers.  None has succeeded. All are putting the "solution" out to 2030+.

The Soviet Union has a huge waste disposal problem. Decomissioning of large scale power plants (like 3 Mile Island and Chenoble) is in "Progress".

Another Gorilla is cost per unit of energy delivered. The French nuclear industry  (for example) has yet to make a return on investment.

The third Gorilla is the need to improve the utilisation of the resource with fast breeders enrichment etc, all this increases the risk of yet mor "incidents".

Dalek

Cyberman, it appears that Australia is gifted with an easily accessible hot rock source, not only this but there is a considerable hot water resource as well. Other countries may not be as well placed. Should we therefore ignore this resource?

There is, in my view, only one reason to go down the nuclear industry path - weapons. The economics simply do not stack up- even in France. There the weapons program funded the reactor program. It is disingenuous to assert that weapons cannot be made with power producing reactors, it is the nuclear industry that makes weapons. The manufacture of enriched fuel rods is not far removed from bomb making it's really a question of degree. For example the Brasilian navy has a super secret uranium enrichment program for civilian purposes, - they say. http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/0509-01.htm. The navy??

In Australia the reactionaries fear Indonesia more than any-thing else. They see the wide open spaces of Australia (particularily the far north) as vulnerable to Invasion. Their answer to this has always been the bomb. Check out the plan to build an Ozzie bomb in the 70's.  http://www.discontents.com.au/words/review_reynolds.php (Hostile review) In particular the reactionaries fear a theocratic Muslim state.

Extract: "

"The NPT was anathema to the bomb lobby because it would have strongly inhibited open opportunities for obtaining nuclear weapons. The Liberal-Country Party government for two years refused to declare its position. It is noteworthy that the Prime Minister, John Gorton, had spoken out in favour of nuclear weapons years earlier when he was a senator (Anon., 1969a). Finally in 1970 the government announced it would sign the NPT, but would not ratify the treaty until satisfaction was obtained concerning various reservations. It is ironic today that the primary reason offered then for opposing the signing of the NPT was that the treaty was not considered adequate to prevent proliferation. This stance is apparent in the revealing statements made by two nuclear scientists who were prominent in the NPT debate, Sir Ernest Titterton, then Professor of Nuclear Physics at the Australian National University, and Sir Philip Baxter, then Chairman of the AAEC, whose views are analysed in some detail in my study Nuclear Knights (Martin, 1980, 31-32, 49-51).

The government's grudging decision to sign the NPT in 1970 was a defeat for the bomb lobby. One reason for signing the treaty was to prevent the loss of Australian access to information on nuclear developments from the US and the UK (Barnes, 1970). The treaty was not ratified until after the Labor Party formed a government in 1972.

Besides the NPT, the other major issue that concerned the bomb lobby and which came to a head in the late 1960s was that of a nuclear power plant for Australia. The bomb lobby and the associated 'nuclear power lobby' favoured speedy construction of a power reactor on the ground that Australia then would be able, if desired, to produce nuclear weapons using plutonium from the reactor (Encel and McKnight, 1970). In June 1969 Prime Minister Gorton announced that Australia's first nuclear power station would be built at Jervis Bay.

The close connection between nuclear power and nuclear weapons was well recognised by those in the bomb lobby. For example, federal parliamentarian E. H. St John in 1968 advocated building a nuclear power station and using it to produce plutonium which would be stockpiled for possible nuclear weapons (Encel and McKnight, 1970). The link was also made clear in statements by Sir Ernest and by Sir Philip (Martin, 1980, 30-32, 48-49).

As it turned out, plans for the Jervis Bay reactor were deferred after William McMahon became Prime Minister in 1971. This was a second and very serious defeat for the bomb lobby (Barnes, 1971). The reasons for the decision to defer the reactor were primarily the high economic cost of the plant and the change in key decision-makers involved (Ball, 1979; Moyal, 1975). The reactor proposal was eventually cancelled by the Labor government. "

http://www.uow.edu.au/arts/sts/bmartin/pubs/84search.html

I guess it is incumbent upon those in the "left" who would support nuclear power in Oz to state if they support the deferred program as outlined above or if they oppose it..

Dalek

BTW the foundations for the reactor are still to be seen.........if you are nifty.

 

I'm not currently interested in spending my time studying the relative cost and efficiency of nuclear vs geothermal power and I don't think the purpose of this forum is to pontificate on issues  such as this.

We are here to debate  world views.

I have no objection to the use of either geothermal energy or nuclear energy. 

Dalek's advocay of geothermal energy is becoming rather tedious.  My view is that if it really is cheaper it will win in the end.  What capitalism requires is a cheap energy supply and the same would be true if the system were a socialist one.

I think it's ludicrous to argue that there is a "secret bomb lobby" in Australia which could swing government policy toward a less efficient/more expensive option (ie nuclear power).

The only sane policy for any Australian  government with regard to "the Indonesian threat" is to see the development and greater democratization of that region as the answer.  No other policy would make any real-world sense in this era.


(And I couldn't see anything alarming in the link that dalek posted about Brazil's uranium enrichment facility. - can't really see why he posted it at all since it doesn't confirm his argument).

I'd prefer this discussion to get back to the issue of "sustainability" vs "unsustainability" and to get into the serious (related) discussion of why negative views about the future of human development are so widespread.   That is a clear question of ideology. Does it, as Arthur suggested in this post  reflect the moribund state of the bourgoisie:

In any class society the ideas of the ruling class are the ruling ideas. A moribund bourgeoisie has every reason to be pessimistic and fearful and every reason to encourage the sort of anti-scientific outlook expressed so eloquently by your insistence on ignorant debate.

I think a discussion about this (and about the notion of "ignorant debate")  would be far more fruitful.  

I thought that Cyberman's response to the above post indicated that he had not really  grasped the point Arthur was trying to make (which in my view was not spelt out very clearly).   What I got from that post was not as Cyberman concluded that Arthur was saying that revolutionary and correct ideas  cannot be developed when they conflict with those of the ruling class, but that the dominant ideas will be those of the ruling class.  And we should remember that in many historical periods the ruling class can itself be split (between more progressive and more backward elements) -  as is the case today. 

The whole idea of "consensus science"  runs completely counter to the nature of science. Truth is not something which can be decided by a democratic vote.  The "ignorant debate" and witch hunting of individual scientists who challenge the consensus is clearly anti-science.

In any case the reality is that the truth or otherwise of the current scientific consensus that human activity is causing some degree of climate change on Earth is one thing. And the question of what economic policies should be adopted in light of the consensus view is another.

Since I don't have the time or the background to thoroughly study the complex science involved in the controvery about the  degree and cause of global warming, I can only remain agnostic it. 

For me the issue remains one of world outlook.  Rather than spending our time trying to pick holes here and there in a scientific controversy we should be (a) discussing things such as the widespread committment to the "precautionary principle"  (b) defending the very nature of science against  the idea that truth is on the side of whichever position has majority support (c) opposing the idea that there is some direct connection between scientific findings and economic/social/behavioural policy.

I think we might be getting to the heart of it all. Keza makes the very valid point that there is no point picking holes in each other's scientific arguments. We could do that ad nauseum, with each side digging in even further.

There's certainly a lot of politics involved:

On the right:

(i) The sections of the ruling class with interests in coal and oil support and fund the anti-global warming lobby. Many of these seem  recently to have been recruited from the pro- smoking,  anti-health risk lobby.

 (ii) There is another section who are pushing the nuclear barrow and are very much tempted to use the global warming argument in the same way,  as Barry points out, Margaret Thatcher did in the eighties. Barry should also have pointed out that she did later express her regret at having done this. The nuclear lobby aren't just about civil nuclear power. As Barry correctly said,  Mrs T had military nuclear power very much in mind. It isn't as ludicrous as Keza might think that sections of the right wing political establishment in Australia may be thinking along similar lines.

On the left:

(iii) Many environmental greenish left  groups have sprung up. They certainly have seized on the global warming argument to support their anti-capitalist agenda. We all know about these so there is no need to describe them in detail. Except to say, that they are do very much represent the mainstream of 21st Century  Marxist thinking.

(iv) You guys are  unusual, possibly even unique, in attacking the global warming issue from a left perspective. However, your weakness as I see it is that most of the sources you cite in support of your arguments are sponsored by (i) and which doesn't appear to cause you much discomfort. (I certainly feel a certain level of discomfort about sharing an opinion , however briefly it may have been held, by Margaret T !). In a way I hope you turn out to be right. No-one wants a global environmental catastrophe. However, I don't think that you are going to establish the validity of your political and scientific position unless you totally sever your links with the shady right wing orgainisations who are sponsored by (i). 

Of course , I accept that those of us who might be broadly classified as (iii) should avoid any temptation to align ourselves with (ii) or utilise any support and arguments eminating from them.

At the same time I think that we all need to look at our personal motivation and ask ourselves if we are arguing from a position of what we would like to be true as opposed to what we believe is likely to be true according to the scientific evidence.

 

 

Dalek

David I am interested in "infinitely expensive" as in  "You have to drill very deep and expensive holes to get to it. The deeper the resource, the more expensive. In fact most of the resource will only be accessible with the development of new technologies. In other words it is for the moment "infinitely expensive". Again I ask what does "Infinitely expensive" mean?

If something is impossible it is infinitely expensive. There are regions of the world such as the eastern US where you would need to be drilling 10 km down to get at a resource hot enough to use for power generation. For the moment that is not technically possible. In the future it will be.

The good thing that has come from this discussion so far is that there are practical and financial limits (infinity) to technological intervention, so lets have no more talk of sea walls (To counteract sea level rise) around the coast of Australia, Bangladesh and virtually every-where else OK? Also lets not have discussion of satellite gizmo's and all the other heroic solutions that are so glibly proposed by "lets deal with it when it happens school".

I detect a gradual but very grudging recognition on this site that there is something going on with this planet and that maybe humanity has some-thing to do with this. That's a good start, better than the previous (implicit) position that humankind could not possibly have an impact on our environment.

The politics of global warming are indeed complex. I see it as a class question (an unfashionable concept in many places). Those who are already suffering from the modest sea level rise so far are Islanders in the Pacific, Working class families in Queensland who have suddenly discovered that the family home is now worth nothing and as the rise continues millions of poor people in Bangladesh.

There will always be those who rush about saying the sky is falling in, to use this as an excuse for doing nothing when the evidence mounts daily is very poor logic. Remember that there were those who spoke loudly and often in a very agitated and "over the top" way in the 1930's about the death camps in Germany, they were called the same names that the Global Warming deniers use on those who do go over the top now. This is not a way to get at the truth. 

Dalek.

cyberman, I agree that it's more fruitful to debate the politics at this site. (Drat, just when I came across this scientific site run by the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change, which publishes peer-reviewed papers and other articles about the benefits of increased CO2 in the atmosphere: http://www.co2science.org/scripts/CO2ScienceB2C/about/mission.jsp ). To suggest that opposition to the global warming hypothesis is strong at the level of the ruling class doesn't match the way the mainstream media deals with the issue, which is rarely in a scientific way and rarely skeptical. Also, just as the coal and oil industries have a vested interested in fossil fuels, so too does the nuclear industry have a vested interest in promoting catastrophic scenarios about global warming.

 

The fact of economic vested interest, however, doesn't prove a point either way. And my initial point about Thatcher's nuclear objectives was based on the belief that to properly understand something, including the politics of global warming, one has to look at its history. That it began as an attempt by a government to displace coal and promote nuclear does not lessen my skepticism about it - though, as I have said elsewhere, I have no major problem with nuclear, regardless of the politics of fear on which the better publicized global warming scenarios are based.

 

When I was becoming politically conscious in the 1960s, it was the old communists who advocated the peaceful atom and who drew the distinction between nuclear weapons and nuclear energy. The weapons can be controlled - it has been more than 60 years since a nuclear bomb was dropped on a population. Yet I also went through the 1980s decade adhering to views closer to your own (as I understand them from your posts thus far) and supported groups like People for Nuclear Disarmament because they convinced me, sort of, that nuclear war was imminent and that the planet would be stuffed completely if it broke out on a significant scale in the northern hemisphere. That all turned out to be nonsense, and I wish I had had access back then to the quality of left-wing ideas that frequently are posted on this site. It's easy to get caught up in a political sect, as I was in the 1970s, and it's easy to become part of a sub-culture in which one's ideas are reinforced socially by everyone else sharing them. There is no interest in real debate within a sub-culture like that and at least most people at this site want debate. While there is a definite and obvious problem with 'huddling' at this site, it's good that there's no social blocism, as far as I know. People's fears about global warming, and crisis and catastrophe in general, reflect a cultural predisposition. The outlook of a ruling class that is moribund will not be reflected in a mass culture that is optimistic. This is indeed part of the reason why the campaign against environmental pessimism, especially the green philosophy, is so important to left-wing thinkers.

 

Australian moves for a nuclear weapons' program predate the fears of Indonesia that were expressed in the 1970s. The nuclear moves were to do with the Cold War and, I think, were first raised by one of the Menzies governments.

 

Greenies like Flannery and Havelock who support the nuclear option, in full knowledge of the nature of the waste disposal technologies, do so because they believe that the component of global warming that is caused by CO2 from fossil fuels is potentially catastrophic or, as dalek put it seven years ago, the planet may already have passed that point. By contrast, leftwing supporters of nuclear power for civilian purposes do so out of a commitment to unleashing the productive capacities of humanity with a view to creating a better future with greater freedom and bigger and better stuff for those who want it.

 

The real, meaningful, political debate will occur not so much over the scientific details as over issues like the carbon tax, which is a direct assault on the working class. It can only narrow their options and horizons in life - much like the electric car that needs recharging every 50kms and can only go at slow speeds. Most people want to travel further distances more quickly, and green policies will continue to piss me off until such time as they come up with a 'nature-friendly' way of doing that. The choice isn't between the nifty electric car that will take you places more slowly or the large four-wheel drives but, in the real world, it would be a choice between the new slow car and the type of cars most people drive: Datsun and Ford sedans (to mention the two that I've had over the past 20 years). Leftwingers are the ones who want the options and horizons of life expanded and those who are influenced by Marxism in their thinking understand that this can only happen through the overthrow of the present system of social relations. This is where we part company with the faction on the Right that is also skeptical about environmental doom and gloom. They (usually neo-cons) see capitalism as the driver of progress. If you think progress is harming nature now, just wait till after the socialist revolution when the workers have power!

 

Unfortunately, I don't have time right now to further address the important point you make when you assert that: Many environmental greenish left  groups have sprung up. They certainly have seized on the global warming argument to support their anti-capitalist agenda. We all know about these so there is no need to describe them in detail. Except to say, that they are do very much represent the mainstream of 21st Century  Marxist thinking.

 

I'll be off-line for a few days and hope others will take up this point. After quite a few years studying people like Rudolph Bahro in the 1980s, looking for a way to synthesize Marxism and environmentalism, I came to the only conclusion possible (if one is to remain true to what Marx actually argued and demonstrated) and that is that environmentalism as expressed in Green philosophy is a creature of the Right. The green critique of capitalism is reactionary because it works against progress as defined above.

 

Barry 

 

As I am going off line for a few days, I am responding quickly to dalek's latest arrogant and probably wilfully misleading post in which he says:

The good thing that has come from this discussion so far is that there are practical and financial limits (infinity) to technological intervention, so lets have no more talk of sea walls (To counteract sea level rise) around the coast of Australia, Bangladesh and virtually every-where else OK? Also lets not have discussion of satellite gizmo's and all the other heroic solutions that are so glibly proposed by "lets deal with it when it happens school". I detect a gradual but very grudging recognition on this site that there is something going on with this planet and that maybe humanity has some-thing to do with this. That's a good start, better than the previous (implicit) position that humankind could not possibly have an impact on our environment.

 

To the first point: it is possible to akcnolwedge practical limits and yet still support as elementary a measure as building sea walls (should they prove necessary). The IPCC worst scenario for sea level rises is 30cm by 2050. These will not cause a uniform problem everywhere and sea walls will not be needed around entire coast-lines (obviously!).

 

As is so common with dalek, the voices in his head are at it again when he suggests that the people at this site who disagree with him are in the 'let's deal with it when it happens school'. Nuclear energy is one way forward and geo-thermal seems to be another (though limited in its applicability to all countries). What this site isn't on about is reducing people's standards of living, quality of life, and prospects for the future because of an exaggerated fear of natural catastrophe.

 

The big lie is in his condescending claim of detecting "a gradual but very grudging recognition on this site that there is something going on with this planet and that maybe humanity has some-thing to do with this. That's a good start, better than the previous (implicit) position that humankind could not possibly have an impact on our environment".

 

Putting the word implicit in parenthesis does not compensate for the fact that he is lying yet again. The kindest I can say for him is that, as he is relatively new to the site, he has missed the earlier discussions about climate engineering, yet even in this thread no-one has argued that 'humankind could not possibly have an impact on our environment'. It is not contentious that humans have an impact on the environment - and may we rock on!

 

Finally, in haste, please stop the chest-beating about class. Having been in academia as a ressearch assistant and as a fellow for most of the 1990s, I am too aware that 'class' is a standard sociological concept and not really controversial (though the po-mo brigade sometimes say strange things about it). Just check any bourgeois sociolgy text and it'll be there. What Marx did for class, in my humble opinion, is to add the notion of struggle to it and to demonstrate how it worked as a motor for social change.

 

One need only read the Manifesto to pick up on how Marx was enthusiastic for progress and, despite being so close to the awful destruction of human lives and forests during the Industrial Revolution, still none the less was supportive of it because of the potential for liberation of the working class that it offered. dalek, you have done nothing at this site to persuade me that your carbon-free society would improve the working class standard of living or their prospects for greater freedom. On the contrary, you offer a scenario as reactionary as capitalism itself.

 

Barry

 

 

Electric Vehicles:Er Barry re: "It can only narrow their options and horizons in life - much like the electric car that needs recharging every 50kms and can only go at slow speeds. Most people want to travel further distances more quickly, and green policies will continue to piss me off until such time as they come up with a 'nature-friendly' way of doing that. The choice isn't between the nifty electric car that will take you places more slowly or the large four-wheel drives but, in the real world, it would be a choice between the new slow car and the type of cars most people drive:"

The vehicle described below has at least a 200km range. (Not at 370kph)

So it costs Euro170,000  should not you "modernists" be getting in behind this and buying lots to bring the price down ?

I really like the 0-60 km in 4 seconds

 

I rode in a 4 seater really fast electric vehicle in Switzerland last year - >200km range. When we parked the car there was this neat little recharge point, in the parking bay. the driver swiped a card hey presto it was topped up while we had lunch. You guys definitely need to get out more.

 

Eliica eight-wheeler

It doesn't require plutonium to power its flux capacitor. It won't travel through time when it reaches 88mph. And unlike the Doc and Marty McFly's DeLorean of Back To The Future fame, it needs nothing more than a power point to keep it running.

By Peter Lyon

November 2004

Barry BTW,We drove on icy sleet covered roads at >100km/h, the legal limit in Switzerland, I think. The car was made by Fiat and is identical with the petrol version. (except it is lighter)  The cars accelerate better than the petrol version and they cost bugger all to run. Every car park in Switzerland has charging stations.

Dalek