Nuclear energy may well be that backup, or indeed (as I suspect) a mainstay for future energy generation in Australia and worldwide… there is a technology …called integral fast reactor nuclear power, which burns up 99 per cent of the nuclear fuel, leaves no long-lived waste, is passively safe … and does not generate weapons-grade material… read more here.
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About Me
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD has worked in industry and government. She is currently researching a novel technique for long-range weather forecasting funded by the B. Macfie Family Foundation.
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Jen,
I do agree with Barry Brook and James Hansen in their strong advocacy of “Gen IV” nuclear energy. Tom Blees’ “Prescription For the Planet” gives some great info on IFRs and if they can supply centuries of cheap, abundant, safe energy and at the same time mop up all the ticking time bombs left over from the cold war, nothing else comes close!
To a layman like me this seems like the logical “stop gap” until nuclear fusion.
This is also an interesting take on nuclear:
http://www.acceleratingfuture.com/michael/blog/2006/10/a-nuclear-reactor-in-every-home/
Although it sounds great, Gen IV nuclear power is still vaporware. Some estimates say that it may be commercially available by 2030. In the meantime, let’s continue the research on this promising technology. If it doesn’t pan out, Gen III will still be part of the mix.
Larry, Any nuclear reactor in Australia is “vaporware” but that even applies to Gen III in the US these days with a 20 fold increase in construction costs due to safety restrictions.
Gen IV is basically a safer and lower cost proposition.
It’s good to see that as of 2 days ago the ITER nuclear fusion plant was still going ahead.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5h1yBAXN4bdBlZyW6KVgNHLyAfSrg
EXPERIMENTAL nuclear fusion facility would be a more accurate description than nuclear fusion plant. Talk about vaporware!
What do you think the “E” in ITER stands for?
Don’t be such a smart arse.
As my avatar would say, sorry about that.
Larry,
If Gen IV technology was developed 15 to 25 years ago and modules have been built at known costs, it can hardly be described as “vaporware”.
“The future of nuclear power is brighter still. Although the 2006 Switkowski report on nuclear power in Australia hardly mentioned so-called `fast reactors’, these have the potential to provide vast amounts of clean, baseload energy, for thousands of years.
For instance, there is a technology developed between 1984 and 1994 at the Argonne National Laboratory in the US, called the Integral Fast Reactor (IFR), which burns up 99 per cent of the nuclear fuel, leaves only a small amount of waste which drops below background levels of radiation within 300 years, shuts itself down if the control systems fail or the operators walk away, and cannot be used to generate weapons-grade material. A new book by Tom Blees, Prescription for the Planet, describes this technology in fascinating detail.”