A Sustainable Futures Fund for a Fuel and Climate Emergency
Posted by Phil Hart on March 8, 2008 - 11:00am in TOD: Australia/New Zealand
Topic: Policy/Politics
Tags: climate change, funding, sustainable development [list all tags]
This is a guest post by Garry Glazebrook, who is an urban transport consultant and urban planning lecturer at the University of Technology, Sydney. The Sustainable Futures Fund is described in the Australian context, but with our population of 21 million and a local currency approaching 1:1 with the US dollar, the figures suggested here could be considered comparable with those required in a moderate size state in the USA.
Readers of TOD are well aware of the oil supply threat and its implications for society. Recent reports such as “Crude Oil – The Supply Outlook” by Energy Watch Group suggest global oil production could fall 50% by 2030, while research by Jeff Rubin at CIBC suggests OECD countries will experience an 8% fall in supply by 2012 due to delays in Megaprojects, declining production from existing fields and strong oil demand growth in OPEC, Russia and China.
Similarly, more and more people are aware of the potential for dramatic climate change, though few are perhaps fully across the critical nature of our current circumstance. In Australia, Professor Ross Garnaut’s interim report has frightened some State Premiers, with quotes such as these:
“Only urgent, large, and effective global policy change leaves any hope of holding atmospheric concentrations (CO2e) at the 450 ppm or even the 550ppm levels” (p19) or “The review does not consider 'business as usual' a likely outcome” (p24).
However the Climate Code Red report by David Sprat and Philip Sutton makes for even scarier reading. Drawing on 250 references, many of them recent scientific papers, the authors call for recognition of a “sustainability emergency”, noting that global average temperatures have already risen 0.8 degrees C above per-industrial levels, that there is a further 0.6 degrees 'locked in' from past emissions, and that melting of the sea ice in the Arctic (which could happen in the next few years) would add 0.3 degrees due to albedo feedback. This would take us perilously close to the 2 degree “safe” limit assumed by many European Governments, but which scientists like James Hansen believe is already above the threshold for dangerous climate change.
How these two major threats develop and interact is the 64 million dollar question, but it is already clear that a dramatic change of course from current “business as usual” is required. Either governments foresee what will happen and act urgently, or we face a series of rolling recessions from the rising oil prices and the impact of significant carbon pricing. 2010 is perhaps shaping as a crunch year, with a new US government settling into its second year and the economy struggling out of a sub-prime mortgage-induced recession. In addition, we are approaching a demographic turning point, when large numbers of baby boomers begin to retire, and start drawing on savings rather than contributing to them.
How to avoid this coming crunch?
My suggestion is to move immediately to declare a “Climate and Fuel Emergency”; to institute carbon taxing on coal, oil and gas at point of production or import, as a prelude to carbon trading, and to establish a “Sustainable Futures Fund”.
This Sustainable Futures Fund would receive the revenue from the carbon taxes (later carbon trading) and allocate it to three key areas:
- Rapid deployment of renewable energy generation and support for new renewable energy technologies
- Rapid development of mass transit; networks of “greenways” for bicycles and small electric vehicles, and other sustainable transit initiatives
- Introduction of transitional assistance, targeted at those most at risk from the sudden shift in priorities.
Assistance would include electricity and gas subsidies for low income families, petrol subsidies for low income outer suburban and non-metropolitan families, and regional and industry adjustment assistance – for example for the Hunter Valley, Central Queensland and the Latrobe alley which are all tied to the coal industry, or to the current car manufacturing sector. Such assistance would be aimed at strengthening the capacity of the regions and firms to develop new industries or products which will contribute to rather than detract from sustainability.
Currently Australia produces some 320 million tones pa of CO2 from electricity generation and transport. A carbon tax of A$40/tonne CO2 would equate to around $120 per tonne of coal or 30c per litre of petrol. These price signals would drive expansion of existing renewable energy options such as wind and solar and accelerate the move to walking, cycling and public transport which has emerged in the last two years in Australia. For example, rail patronage grew 3.7% in Sydney last year, 20% in Melbourne in the last two years, and a staggering 41% in Perth following the opening of the new line to Mandurah last year and purchase of additional rollingstock.
The Sustainable Futures Fund would generate some $13 billion in year one. This would allow electricity / gas subsidies of $1000 on average for four million families, and a petrol subsidy of $1000 for a further 4 million families. These subsidies would be wound down gradually over ten years to give people time to insulate their homes, install solar power, buy smaller vehicles and alter their travel behaviour. It would also enable an initial $2.3 billion to be invested in renewable energy, sustainable transport and transitional industry and regional assistance.
By year four, the peak spending year, annual spending on these investments would total $8.8 billion. This is designed to allow time to gear up major programs, and to avoid adding to current inflationary pressures or labour shortages caused by the current resources boom. It can be expected that the resources boom will be levelling off or declining in 4-5 years as Chinese and Indian growth rates slow, in part from the impact of peak oil and climate change mitigation efforts, and efforts to accelerate investment in renewable energy, rail and public transport will therefore provide counter-cyclical expenditure at that time.
Over time the renewable energy fund revenues would gradually wind down as CO2 emissions taper out, as fossil fuel consumption should eventually be largely eliminated (unless carbon capture and storage can be proved effective on a wide scale). A profile of expenditure for the Sustainable Futures Fund is shown, with transitional family subsidies largely wound down within 10 years, although regional and industry assistance programs would continue up to 20 years.
A program of planned retirement of older coal fired power stations would be introduced. By 2030, virtually all our existing coal fired plants will be 45 – 50 years old in any event. The existing car fleet would also be almost entirely retired by 2030 – policies would be needed to phase out production or import of current generation cars within 7 years. Our electric rail systems could be converted to 100% greenpower within the next two years as large scale wind plants (as just proposed near Broken Hill) and solar (like the concentrated solar PV plant announced by Senator Wong on 25th February) rapidly gear up.
What could this achieve over the 20 year life of the fund?
- $27.5 billion assistance to accelerate renewable energy, plus a further $2.5 billion in R&D. In this context, the rise in general electricity prices and the fall in costs for renewable energies from scale economies should allow this assistance to be phased out within about twelve years.
- $15.6 billion to upgrade our main interstate rail freight system, enabling a significant shift of long distance to rail, which is three times more energy efficient than road freight. This will also reduce congestion and maintenance costs on major highways
- $31.7 billion to significantly revamp our urban public transport systems. This would allow such projects as electrification and expansion of Adelaide’s rail system, major new mass transit systems for growing areas such as the Gold and Sunshine Coasts, Perth and Western Sydney, expansion of bus priority and cross regional bus services, and bringing Sydney’s rail system into the 21st century.
- $7.4 billion to create a comprehensive network of “greenways”, “greenlinks” and “green lanes” to allow safe, energy-efficient and healthy personal mobility in our cities and towns, using bicycles, electric bicycles, electric scooters and electric gophers. These will be needed even in the absence of climate change and peak oil to cater for the mobility needs of our rapidly ageing society.
- $13.7 billion of regional and industry assistance to assist transition to a more sustainable future.
Without such a comprehensive approach, it is highly likely Australia will fail to make the necessary transition away from oil and fossil fuels in time to avoid massive social and economic damage.
Excellent plan, sir. I hope it gets the required support.
One query. Is it really true that "Our electric rail systems could be converted to 100% greenpower within the next two years"? I can imagine trains slowly grinding to a halt like be-calmed wind-jammers at sea.
Can diesel-electric locos be dual fuel? Would be useful in a transition phase.
Electrified rail transport uses relatively little electricity compared to total electricity consumption. So what he probably means is, rather than sticking a solar panel on top of a train, instead of the train companies buying electricity from coal-fired stations, they buy them from wind, etc.
Alernately, he might mean that the train companies could invest in renewable energy power plants to match the energy they use.
Either way, costs for them would go up a bit. But they get enormous public subsidies as it is. The Victorian government is spending $1 billion over ten years just for the stupid Myki "smartcard" ticketing system... after which there'll no doubt be another change anyway.
Currently wind, solar, coal and gas are all together in a national grid. If I tell my power company I want to buy wind they don't hook a line from my house to a turbine. They just charge me for it. And I'm charged the same whether the wind turbines are turning or humming along like mad. So if on a particular day only 1% of our power comes from wind, and 50% on another day, that wind customers make up only 10% of consumers makes no difference. It just all goes into a national pool of electricity generated.
Edit: I think Hart's got a decent plan, by the way. I've had an article like this fermenting on my hard drive for some time, but I was looking for more data to see where the subsidies would go.
Actually the article is by Garry Glazebrook.
Me stupid.
You'd think a guest poster would recognise other guest posts :-)
I hope this plan gets up. The infrastructure spend that we need to make in the next 15 years is frightening. The fact that most of this spend will occur at a time of declining oil and increasing costs takes the cost from "frightening" to "Nightmare".
Starting a fund now is a step in the right direction.
The spending's not that frightening.
For example, what was last year's federal budget surplus? $17 billion? Well, best figures I can get, taking averages from around the world,
Not perfect, but gives us an "order of magnitude" sort of figure for the costs per delivered watt. Note that I've been pessimistic; load factors decline once there's a lot of the stuff built, as the plum spots get taken, the manufacturing and maintenance quality often declines, etc. I've not taken into account economies of scale. It's best to be pessimistic about these things.
In 2005 Australia produced about 240 billion kWh. This is 240x109 x 3.6x106 = 864x1015J over the year, or effectively 27GW.
For $17 billion we could, ignoring geography and "where to buy from" issues, get ourselves,
8.5GWdel geothermal, or
3.8GWdel hydroelectric
0.9GWdel solar PV
2.1GWdel solar thermal
1.9GWdel tidal
2.3GWdel wind turbines
We may not have 8.5GW geothermal capacity, I don't know. They reckon there's only 100GW unused capacity in the world (that's for power generation - for water heating and the like there's oodles). We're too dry and flat for that much hydroelectric. But it's reasonable to suppose that between all the rest, for an amount equal to our federal budget surplus we could add a couple of gigawatts a year. This is 2/27 = 7.4% of present delivered power. Well, probably we need to factor in increased population, and turning off some of the old fossil fuel generation.
So we might get 2-5% - call it 3% - conversion to renewable annually. That'd be 100% renewable by 2040. Emissions due to electricity generation would be about a quarter to a third what they are today, assuming no positive feedback; for example now a lot of the emissions associated with building renewables come about because they're built using fossil fuel driven vehicles, and in factories with electricity from fossil fuels. As the economy became increasingly renewable-dependent, we could expect that to decline, so that the emissions due to electricity would be lower than that 1/4-1/3. They'd never decline to zero, though, if only because of all the concrete they use...
Of course we're unlikely to spend the whole federal surplus on any one thing, but there are state surpluses, too, and possibilities of a carbon tax to raise funds, as noted in this article.
In an Australia where we're happy to spend a billion bucks each for submarines that don't work, to hand $300 million in bribes over to Saddam Hussein, to spend $500 million on locking up a few reffos, $250 million each for some fighter jets, a cool $1 billion for a "smartcard" ticketing system for the trains - I really don't find this sort of infrastucture spending frightening at all. It's bloody expensive, but at least we'd see a result.
Great post Phil.
I hope you submit it to Rudds Australia 2020 Summit planning meeting.
Here is a submission I prepared. I would be very grateteful for some review and comment:
Sail Dog,
Great to see some activity for mthe 2020 summit. I think your submission is great but remeber it should be limited to 500 words or less ( I counted 818).
I think you should drop the climate change reference as I think that the delegates will get plenty of that anyway and just concentrate on the Peak Oil issue. Also I think that your response number 3 a-d may be just be a lttle too long winded. I suggest shortening it as follows
1. Immediate Public Debate on risks of Peak Oil led by governemnt
2. Establishment of National Oil Vulnerbaility Task Force from Federal, State and Local governments
3. Reassessment of taxation in shifiting from high to low oil consumption
Fine post- thanks.
I am a bit confused though as to where the oil is going to come from for the people you want to subsidise - the assumption seems to be that if the price is right oil will be readily obtainable, but I am not sure that that will be the case.
Perhaps it might be necessary to convert substantial numbers of cars to natural gas, too.
Have you got your assumed costs for solar and wind, and perhaps geothermal over the time period?
Converting cars to natural gas has been something both the major parties have pushed in recent years, with substantial subsidies available for conversion.
How wise this is long term, given that most of our gas seems destined to be exported, is a matter for debate (one I hope to have a post on in the near future).
Using biogas for CNG in rural areas might be a good idea long term though.
Not sure what costs Garry was using for solar and wind (at this point large scale geothermal would just be a guess until the GeoDynamics experiment is complete), but solar CSP is currently estimated to cost between 13 and 17 cents per kwh and expected to drop to around 8 cents per kwh - the same as wind costs today.
http://www.insnet.org/ins_headlines.rxml?id=6303&photo=
http://www.technologyreview.com/Biztech/20356/
Solar should track your needs much better than wind in many parts of Australia, so the cost difference may not count for that much.
If you used a solar thermal plant and simply sent the power to an air heat pump then you should be able to cool a well-designed house sufficiently to last the night - perhaps by chilling water.
Hopefully they have a massive program for residential solar thermal panels too, or at least are putting one in place.
Household solar panels and (thermal) hot water systems are both subsidised by the government (up to a point).
Feed in tariffs have just been introduced in South Australia - hopefully they will be elsewhere as well in the not too distant future, especially with the new government talking about a 20% renewable energy target for 2020.
I know it is incredibly politically incorrect in Australia but if we really want to make substantial cut in CO2 emissions by 2025 we need nuclear power. The only addition this plan needs to enable it is to remove the current policy impediments and the market will drive it. Nuclear comes in cheaper than coal at $120 per tonne and is much cheaper than wind + storage.
Not really.
We can't get nuclear going without uranium mining and refining, which is not exactly carbon neutral. And you can't just chuck yellowcake into reactors, you have to enrich the stuff. Enrichment is very energy-intensive, for example with gas centrifuges. If we wanted to have a nuclear reactor, we'd have to have an enrichment facility and power for it - 1,000MW or so. So we'd have to build a fossil fuel-fired generator to be able to enrich fuel for the nuclear one. Basically it takes one power station to be able fuel each two or three others, depending on how you do things.
Then as time goes on and the rich uranium ores get tapped out, the less rich ones are mined, and eventually you spend more energy getting the stuff from the Earth than you'll get out of it.
I'm constantly puzzled that on a website dedicated to the idea that fossil fuels will deplete, people can't grasp that other resources deplete, too. All mineral resources are finite and will deplete. Uranium's no different from coal, oil and natural gas in that respect. You can fiddle the numbers a bit with efficiencies and so on, but you're just delaying the inevitable. Mineral resources run out if you burn them.
We need to rely on stuff that doesn't deplete as you use it.
The "market" is nothing but the decisions of people. My own indecent proposal is that each area vote on what, if anything, they'd like to get their power from. That's democracy, and it's also a free market. When it has to be in their backyards, I'd be interested to see if wind turbines still look so hideously ugly to them, and whether nuclear seems prettier to them.
This is really not on. if you seriously believe that your comments on the energy costs of nuclear power and the availability of fuel is as you say then you are grossly misinformed, and are misinforming others
Your figures for the energy costs of mining and enrichment are complete nonsense.
http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf100.html
Energy Balances and CO2: WNA
The audited lifetime costs are around 1.35% of the energy generated is consumed in the production, including construction, mining, ENRICHMENT and all lifecycle costs.
As for not being able to understand why people who are concerned about peak oil should not always feel that we are in trouble on all minerals, that is because they have taken the trouble to inform themselves on the actual situation in different resources.
Oil and fossil fuels are produced only in very limited and specialised circumstances, other materials like uranium are a substantial proportion of the earth's crust.
We already know how to produce uranium by getting it from seawater:
http://npc.sarov.ru/english/digest/132004/appendix8.html
Fuel costs are such a small part of total nuclear generation costs that even at that price it would not greatly affect price per Kwh.
Of course, no one is going to bother whilst it is far cheaper to mine it, and when we need it costs can be vastly reduced anyway by a variety of strategies, as indicated in my quote.
How Australia chooses to power itself is entirely up to them, and the low population and good resources of the country probably mean that they could power themselves without nuclear power if they so choose - but at a cost.
It would be far, far cheaper to build the 20 or so nuclear plants that Australia would need, and contrary to your assertion you would certainly not need one coal plant for every two or three nuclear plants - that is quite absurd.
It seems a shame as your comparisons of renewable costs were pretty good, if some of them were perhaps a touch on the low side, maybe due to old data, and I can only imagine that you have some sort of blockage in looking at nuclear power.
The choices Australians need to make should be set out fairly to them, if those who advocate an all renewables future wish to argue their case it should be done from an accurate assessment of costs, not an entirely specious prospectus such as that given.
Maybe Australians will be happy to pay multiples of the price of alternatives - check out the price per Kwh of 75% nuclear France.
Ask them, but ask them fairly.
I might add that at virtually every step of the fuel process for nuclear...it can be energized by *nuclear* power. You don't have to build *fossil* powered production facilities, you can build *nuclear* ones.
So...in a country like france...80% of the energy to create and process nuclear fuel and waste is by carbon-free nuclear power.
DWalters
How much carbon is produced - note I didn't say could or would - by the construction of nuclear power plants and their total support/supply chain? Please include any carbon sinks destroyed by site selection.
Cheers
It's hard to say. The nuclear industry itself hasn't published any greenhouse gas emissions studies of construction, let alone complete lifecycle, of nuclear reactors and their fuel. Nor is there any independent official board or group entrusted with all the data to study things like lifecycle emissions.
So we're left with the estimates from various groups, from the political to the academic. And those give widely varying conclusions, from 50% to 0.1% the emissions of a similarly-sized coal-fired plant. Often though they have glaring omissions, like not considering different ore richnesses and so on, or assuming the lowest richness or the highest, or assuming the oldest and most inefficient uranium enrichment technology, or the newest and untried enrichment technology, and so on. But more often the conclusions are published without mentioning the methods and assumptions behind them.
What's clear is that it's not carbon zero, though like the wind and solar industries they often claim or at least strongly imply they are. If nothing else, the concrete used in the things causes emissions, since concrete is made with cement, which is made by roasting limestone and driving off the CO2 in the limestone; so even if your roasting oven were powered by entirely carbon free energy, that chemical process gives us CO2.
So basically all electricity generation technologies around produce some greenhouse gas emissions. The question is how much they produce relative to each-other.
But to me that's not the killing argument against nuclear. Rather, it's that uranium, like coal, oil and natural gas, is a depletable resource. The stuff's going to run short, and then after that run out. So we'd just be delaying the problem of how to get energy without depleting resources.
When you confront nuclear advocates with that they tend to start talking about getting it from seawater, breeder reactors and so on. The similarities between those arguments and "but what about tar sands? and also enhanced recover technology, and better efficiency for cars, and biodiesel, and -" are quite striking.
The timescales may or may not be different. Depending on whether you're talking about the same number of reactors as today but with as yet unproven technology and with breeders and fuel recovery and unconventional uranium, or the whole world current reactors and no breeders, you get anywhere between 7 and 1,000 years for how long the nuclear reactors would power the world - or part of it.
But in the end, the stuff runs short and later runs out. At that point we're again faced with the problem of running our civilisation without using stuff that runs out. I don't really see why we should be putting off dealing with this fundamental problem, handing it to future generations.
I mean, we have the technology now. If nobody had invented photovoltaic cells, solar thermal, geothermal, wind, water and tidal turbines, then fair enough, one depletable resource runs short so we change to another. But we have invented these things, and they have been proven to work, and be commercially successful - at least as commercially successful as nuclear, anyway. So why fuck about?
There is no such similarity, the analogy is entirely false.
Oil from tar sands involves removing an immense overburden of soil, or heating the area significantly, both of which are extremely energy intensive and very dirty processes.
To extract uranium form sea water you manufacture plastic membranes and suspend them in a cage in seawater where there is a current to pass water through the membrane, so most of the energy is provided by the current.
Apart from manufacture of the cages and membranes the only other energy involved is to lower the cages into position before use and to raise them 200 or so days later after they have absorbed the uranium.
When we need to we will build the cages out of plastic to give them a specific density similar to water and minimise the cables and support structure.
You are seeking to equate a very clean, energy efficient technology with a very energy expensive, dirty one.
You also have very significant mining operations involved in windpower, you know, as they are very materials intensive.
As is often the case Dave, you respond with your head up yer arse. You really need to start communicating without an agenda overlaying everything you say.
His analogy had nothing to do with the carbon footprint or energy intensity. It was a comparison of pie-in-the-sky hopes and dreams vs. current realities.
But thanks for playing.
Cheers
Please - cut out the insults guys - you can argue without being rude...
You really area an ill-mannered chap, aren't you?
Thanks for showing so clearly the level you are on.
Rational debate is plainly too difficult for you, and that explains the prejudiced standpoint you so often show.
Do grow up.
Both of you - stop it.
I had thought my response was mild and in no way abusive - perhaps your comments would be better directed at those who wish to use gross abuse and offensive language.
I've directed my comments to everyone who deserved them.
Your "grow up" comment is just inflammatory - if you can't keep yourself under control, I will - got it ?
'Leave him! He's not worth it!' :-)
The analogy's not false at all.
With oil beyond the conventional, the EROEI drops as time goes on; with uranium ores beyond the conventional, the same holds.
With oil beyond the conventional, the promise is of dramatically increasing the recoverable reserves at a high energy cost, requiring unproven technology, and at a low rate of production. This is the same with uranium.
If these things were so technically simple, then they'd have been done regularly already. Less than 1kg of uranium has ever been extracted from seawater. There exist no public plans for commercial operations. It's lab stuff.
"Oh but the price of uranium today is too low, and -" - ah, much the same as gets said about oil. This or that unconventional oil extraction technique is always deemed to be economical at whatever today's price is plus 40% or so.
You cannot say that any electricity generation complete lifecycle is "very clean" or "very energy efficient." You can only give absolute figures for the emissions and efficiency, and/or say that relative to some other technology it's clean/dirty and in/efficient.
Wind turbines certainly require material to be mined for them, as do nuclear reactors. Both require maintenance which uses material. Let's suppose that wind turbines delivering X electrical energy used just as much material and energy as a nuclear reactor delivering X electrical energy - they actually use less, but let's be kind to nuclear and suppose it's the same. There remains the fuelling of the things; wind turbines require no fuel, nuclear reactors do. They thus require more resources and energy to keep fuelled than do wind turbines.
Thus, wind turbines produce less emissions and require less mineral resources in their complete lifecycle compared to nuclear; wind is clean and energy efficient relative to nuclear.
Of course nuclear and wind each have other advantages and disadvantages both, which must be considered along with their emissions and resource use.
In the end, this must be a decision of the public. If the public don't want nuclear reactors, they shouldn't have them. Likewise, if they don't want wind turbines ruining their view, they shouldn't have them, either. Each region should be given the choice:
I'd be interested to see if people worried so much about wind turbines ruining their pretty view when coal or nuclear steam towers were their alternative :D
Yes you're not even wrong, but it helps to actually have some numbers detailing where the truth lies.
Conveniently they've been posted numerous times. Consider the Rossing mine data, where the uranium mined in these mining operations yields 500 times the energy in light water reactors in the once through fuel cycle than is consumed in these mining operations. We wont bother with seawater extracting simply because conventional resources are so vast that we could run our current civilization for thousands of years before exploiting seawater becomes a reasonable thing to consider.
An incomplete analysis which is glaringly wrong on some points; Quoting some numbers:
Nuclear power plants built in the 1970’s used 40 metric tons of steel, and 190 cubic meters of concrete, for each megawatt of average capacity.
Modern wind energy systems, with good wind conditions, take 460 metric tons of steel and 870 cubic meters of concrete per megawatt.
Nuclear power uses 1/5th the concrete and 1/10th the steel as modern wind turbines before dispatchable energy systems are brought into play. Wind certainly has its advantages (financing, licensing, grid integration on small scales) but to portray it as universally inferior to nuclear is to be willfully ignorant.
Thanks for the response.
This combined with safety issues is my problem, too. While the operation of plants is relatively safe, it is not safe enough given the long term storage issue. When we have Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Chernobyl and depleted uranium shells being used in Iraq, how can anyone claim it is safe to keep this stuff lying around? How purely lucky have we been that none of the FSU warheads has gotten away?
It's like climate change: the risk is so great, why continue letting that genie out of the bottle? It's a no-brainer to me.
Let's add in that autonomy and change requires the people not be beholden to a small group of powerful interests and advocating nuclear becomes but a bizarre obsession to me. As I've said, the cost of the government supplying every home in America with solar power is less than the cost of one nuclear power station. The government is putting 20x that amount into yet another economic package.
3 billion to reduce US energy consumption by, what? 50%? 80%?, or 200,000,000,000 in welfare to bankers.
How much more simple do people need this to be before they get it?
Cheers
I prefer not to argue the safety issues, it just goes round and round. You point out Chernobyl, they pull out some stupid official figure of 25 deaths from it or something, you mention nuclear weapons, they say, "oh but modern designs don't allow nukes to be made from the spent fuel, and anyway nobody's used a nuke since 1945", etc. It's pointless.
The other thing is that they're pretty well-practiced at arguing about safety. That's why it goes round and round. I mean, say "nuclear reactor" to anyone and the first thing they think of is deadly radiation. The pro-nuke guys know this, so they prepare their arguments.
But they're less well-practiced at defending nuclear on the basis of emissions, and they're extremely weak on its using a depleting resource. "Oh but the latest reactor designs... fast breeders... extraction technologies..."
"Okay, then, the latest solar PV designs using inkjet printers to make them -"
"But that's not a commercially-proven technology."
"Neither are the latest reactor designs, fast breeders, or extraction technologies."
"No, you don't understand. The latest technology and science works perfectly and can be trusted when it's my favoured technology, and is imperfect and can't be trusted when it's not."
If you argue safety you go round and round. If you argue emissions and the depleting resource, they get a bit lost.
And let's face it, in principle nuclear could be made entirely safe. In practice, of course bloody not, we're human after all. But in principle, sure. But even in principle nuclear will always be relatively high emissions (compared to geothermal, wind and solar, at least - though not compared to hydroelectric), and will always use a depleting resource.
Just don't argue the safety issue. It goes round and round, it's pointless.
The figures I gave are audited figures authorised by the Swedish government of 1.35% of the total energy yield of a reactor being required as all the energy inputs including construction.
From that you can estimate the carbon input.
Since they are much more extensive and use much more materials wind-turbines also have significant carbon inputs.
The issue isn't wind, it's statements by nuclear nuts that nuclear is zero carbon. It ain't.
A little honesty would be appreciated. As would less defensiveness.
What's the carbon input of a home-built windmill, eh? Quit being argumentative. Look for solutions.
Cheers