The Doha climate conference is a circus. I see the Qataris are just as breathtakingly hypocritical about fossil fuel exports as Australia. We say export coal is not our problem they go further saying export gas is a blessing
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/breaking-news/turn-to-gas-to-fight-climate-change-qatar/story-e6frf7k6-1226524595806

Some project that Australia could overtake Qatar as a gas exporter. Note that Japan is now buying a third of world LNG with a Norwegian gas tanker currently en route to Japan via the Arctic Circle. That route has been opened up by global warming. Therein lies a key blind spot of the article; despite generous subsidies for clean energy fossil fuel use is also increasing. All that wind and solar seems to be additional to, not instead of carbon fuel burning.

The Germans for example recently opened a 2.2 GW brown coal burning plant. Japan has a record trade deficit due to the cost of importing coal and LNG post Fukushima. So much for clean energy displacing fossil fuel. I'll follow progress at Doha to see if they can come up with some sharp pointed sticks like carbon taxing exports from China and India, countries responsible for 75% of recent emissions increases. If they don't come up with anything hard hitting then perhaps these conferences are pointless.

It's hard not to turn articles like these into a bunfight on nuclear power...but...

Whether you think nuclear power is a good idea or not, the fact is that its lifecycle carbon emissions are extremely low, and comparable to most renewable energy.

At best, a switch away from nuclear and towards renewables is neutral for the global climate. If such a switch is accompanied by extra use of natural gas and coal to manage variability, it means additional net emissions.

Nick Rowley sais:

“Climate change is all about energy: the way we generate and use it for electricity, transport and food production. Energy is the foundation of the global economy. And negotiators working for environment ministers just don’t have the authority to contribute to decisions that affect these dynamics.

If you transform the energy system, you fundamentally transform the global economic system.”

This is true. But then the article goes on to advocate renewable energy. Why the bias for renewable energy and against nuclear? The bias is demonstrated in article after article on The Conversation. It is the bias against nuclear and for renewable energy that is the real block to progress. It has been for half a century. So I wonder why the Conversation is so biased, so unbalanced, so ideologically partial on these important issues.

Renewable energy cannot make much of a contribution to world energy supply and, therefore, cannot do much to cut global emissions. It is far too expensive and requires an order of magnitude more materials than nuclear for the same amount of electricity supplied. So it is not viable and not sustainable at the scale that would be required.

By far the least cost way to reduce global emissions would be with a cost competitive alternative to fossil fuels. Just replacing coal fired electricity would avoid 20 Gt/a in 2035: http://www.eia.gov/oiaf/aeo/tablebrowser/#release=IEO2011&subject=3-IEO2011&table=13-IEO2011&region=0-0&cases=Reference-0504a_1630 That’s nearly half the global emissions from fossil fuels. True it is not feasible to do this by 2035, but it shows the magnitude of the saving that nuclear could provide, and would have done if development hadn’t been thwarted so badly for the past 50 years.

If nuclear power is allowed to be significantly cheaper than fossil fuels, then low emissions electricity will substitute for some gas for heating and some oil for land transport. That would mean nuclear power would displace more fossil fuels (and the associated fugitive emissions).

To make this possible we need small nuclear power plants. Large plants like the ones being built now are too expensive and there is too much investor risk in building them. They are also not suitable for small grids, like Australia’s. We need small plants that can be implemented incrementally. This week Obama approved funding for just this – small, modular, factory-built, nuclear power plants: http://energy.gov/articles/obama-administration-announces-450-million-design-and-commercialize-us-small-modular

Once in commercial production these, and competitors, could be built as fast as global demand dictates. And costs will come down – perhaps 20% per doubling of capacity (according to Rod Adams). That is, the price would be halved by the time 1.5 GW is commissioned and would continuing down to perhaps 25% of first unit cost by the time12 GW are commissioned (I accept this may be optimistic, I am trying to get the big picture concepts across).

There are 43 small nuclear power plant designs described here: http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf33.html . The more that are commercialised the better. Competition improves the breed and reduces costs – just like it has done with commercial aircraft and air fares over the past 50 years.

To give a perspective of how fast production could be ramped up to meet demand, consider the case of another large and complex production. During WWII, the USA ramped up in just 18 months (1942-1943) to produce aircraft carriers in just 100 days. That is from first laying of the keel to the aircraft carrier being complete and fully loaded with weapons and aircraft: http://navalhistory.flixco.info/G/269245x269223/8330/a0.htm

Given that rate of production was achieved 70 years ago, small modular, factory built nuclear power plants like the one given the nod by Obama http://www.uxc.com/smr/Library/Design%20Specific/mPower/Presentations/2012%20-%20Reactor%20Design%20Overview.pdf we can envisage that they could be produced at the rate required to meet demand. The cheaper they are the more the demand, and the more that are produced the cheaper they will become.

If we want low emissions, I’d suggest this is where academics and The Conversation should be focusing.

This morning I read that India is proud to be approaching a huge number of solar PV panels. The number and capacity don't matter, because once output is averaged across the population, it amounts to a goal of achieving 2 to 3 watts continuously per person.

2 to 3 watts. A single LED.

Boiling a litre of water to make a pot of tea will consume a week's personal entitlement.

This is before transport, industry, commercial and communal energy consumption is accounted for.

I strongly recommend that, before optimists rush into print about the glorious future of PV and, for that matter, wind power, they step back, do a rough calculation as have just done, and ask themselves whether they are backing a winner or an excuse for continual failure.

The "renewables only" policies which keep popping up, here and elsewhere, don't pass the most basic of sanity tests and deserve to be laughed out of town.

That goes for ZCA2020 (Melbourne Uni and friends) and USW's Mark Diesendorf's work as well.

Rather than prolonging a phony war between renewables and other low- and zero-carbon energy sources, isn't it time that the real and pressing need for climate action over-rode the trumped up arguments of partisan barrow pushers against nuclear power, which is the single biggest, proven, safe and affordable energy answer available today, at least as a component of the world's response to climate change?