Jennifer Marohasy

a forum for the discussion of issues concerning the natural environment

Energy & Nuclear

A Windy Future

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wind tom quirk 1THE Australian government didn’t get its carbon trading legislation through the Senate last week and has now decided, at least for the moment, to just push ahead with that part of the legislation relating to renewable energy targets.   

It seems this legislation is likely to be passed sometime this week and according to many pundits the big winner will be wind farms.  

Wind is available now, is relatively cheap, and could snap up all the relevant concessions under the new legislation before emerging technologies like geothermal and solar thermal are ready for rolling out. 

Is this good news? 

According to the following article… wind farms in South East Australia are unlikely to supply any significant power output that system operators can rely upon, rather they will load the distribution system with sudden variations in power that are not predictable and are of a size that is ten times larger than the random variations of user demand.  [Read more…] about A Windy Future

Roll-out of Electric Car Rechargers to Begin in 2011

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CANBERRA, Australia 24 July 2009: Better Place Australia, the leading electric vehicle (EV) infrastructure and services provider today announced that it has chosen the nation’s capital, Canberra, as the site of its first city-wide roll-out of electric vehicle infrastructure in Australia.  [Read more…] about Roll-out of Electric Car Rechargers to Begin in 2011

Safe Portable Nuclear – Almost

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Nuclear Module“The future of nuclear energy could lie in plants that can be factory built, shipped to a site, and operated 30 years without refuelling…

“It has become commonplace to say that we are at the beginning of a global revitalization of the nuclear energy enterprise. The scope and timing of this “nuclear renaissance,” however, remain somewhat uncertain. What is known is that in countries around the globe, including the United States, significant numbers of new nuclear energy projects are under way or in various stages of planning, and this activity represents a departure from that of recent decades…

[Read more…] about Safe Portable Nuclear – Almost

The World in 2050: Nuclear Powered

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MatildaWay1_Neil HewettWORLD leaders are meeting in Italy and high on the agenda is climate change, in particular the need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Today’s declaration to reduce emissions by 50 percent globally by 2050 is aspiration. I say this because if it were imperative the timeframe would be a bit more meaningful.

Indeed few of today’s leaders will still be alive in 2050 and none of them will be in power.

So what will the world be like in 2050 and will this target have been achieved? [Read more…] about The World in 2050: Nuclear Powered

No Solar: A Note from Viv Forbes

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AUSTRALIAN electricity consumers can look forward to soaring charges for electricity and blackouts if state and federal politicians continue to undermine the power grid by mandating and subsidising solar power generation.

Solar power can never produce continuous, predictable, low cost power. It must always be supported by expensive power storage systems or by reliable power sources such as coal, gas, hydro or nuclear.

No matter how many millions of taxpayer money is poured into “research”, it can never solve the two fatal flaws of solar power.

[Read more…] about No Solar: A Note from Viv Forbes

A Green Argues for Nuclear Energy

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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.