[permaculture-oceania] Jedd's response - Permaculture, energy and the future for humans

Fri Jun 2 12:38:22 EST 2006

Dear Permies,

Have been away in South Africa and am just getting to read some of this.  I had a brainwave the other night that relates to something Russ says here.  It is about baseline capacity.  To stabilize CO2 you have to reduce fossil fuel burning by 60 to 80 percent.  You might get 30% out of efficiency measures but that could easily be eaten up by a 3% pa growth rate.  Anyway, ignoring that, you still have 30% to 50% to replace if you are using the same amount of energy as now - i.e. what the leaders of the world would want to do!   While wind power and nuclear are about the same for cost per kilowatt produced, the most important difference is the one Russ talks about - the times when the wind is not blowing.  But also, the cost of transporting this energy to where you need it.  The same is true of solar power - the sun is not shining or you have to transport it.  The implication is that you will need to store energy in some way.  Also, that you will need to transport it.  These things bring up the effective cost of delivering it to the consumer when they want it.  The point is that this is no small extra bit.  It is huge.  For example, Ted Trainer, who calculates all this in immense detail, argues that we would be looking at 20 times the amount of money to deliver the same amount of power using wind or sun (compared to a coal fired power station) - if we have to take into account this storage and transport of energy.  What these world leaders see as the advantage of nuclear is that none of these problems apply - you build it where you need to use it and operate it 24/7 as they say.  That is why Port Stevens etc. seem such likely sites.  So the effective cost - if we are talking about replacing 30 to 50 percent of fossil fuel power - is vastly different for wind and solar in comparison to nuclear.  This is a sickening thought but unfortunately it makes a lot of sense.  Ted Trainer is revising his work on this at the moment and will be putting out a book on this soon.  In the meantime he has had to take this stuff off his website.  The most recent published material is probably his 1995 Conserver Society.  Since then he has been revising all this year by year with new data and has now found a publisher for it.

Terry

>>> info at pacific-edge.info Tuesday, 30 May 2006 12:09:46 pm >>>
On 29/5/06 1:57 PM, "Gordon, Sue" <Sue.Gordon at det.nsw.edu.au> wrote:
> 
> Can I ask a single question.  With the amount of money it costs to set up a
> nuclear power plant  ... (I don't know how many millions it would cost)
> 
Don¹t have an answer to this but there is a report on nuclear energy that
has just gone before the federal government and it might have that data when
it is released. ANSTO did release a five-page summary to the media a couple
days ago.

The Herald yesterday reported that an Australian nuclear power station would
cost AU$400 million to insure, however. That takes into account its role as
a terrorist target (and that is a real concern as breaching the reactor
vessel and releasing radiological materials offers big return for small
investment as well as great shock and fear value; that is why Sydney¹s
research reactor at Lucas Heights is well guarded - well, let¹s hope is
still is anyway).
> 
> How much renewable energy would that buy instead...that is if we bought solar
> panels or wind turbines
> 
The problem facing renewables such as those you mention Sue is that they
shut down at night or in periods of still winds. Thus there is insufficient
of what is called ³baseline capacity² in the system - what is constantly
needed to power not only households but hospitals, public transport etc.

I am certainly a long way from being an energy expert - others on this list
might better advise on this - but tidal generators might offer a useful
technology for a mix of energy sources. They are renewable and most of our
population centres are on the coast, so perhaps they could be conveniently
located. I know there is experimentation overseas but have no information on
efficiency and viability.

Wind turbines are already viable - witness the number along the southern
coast - but I understand what holds them back is resident resistance (visual
aesthetics and noise) and the failure of the federal government to increase
the mandatory renewable energy target - the amount of energy that has to
come from renewable sources. I understand the industry is pressuring
Canberra to raise the level as they have aleady achieved the target.
> 
...Russ
> 
> Sue
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: permaculture-oceania-bounces at lists.cat.org.au 
> [mailto:permaculture-oceania-bounces at lists.cat.org.au] On Behalf Of brookman
> Sent: Friday, 26 May 2006 11:34 PM
> To: permaculture-oceania
> Subject: [permaculture-oceania] Jedd's response - Permaculture,energy and the
> future for humans
> 
> Thanks for your exercise in philosophy Jedd. Its a long time since I've had
> the time to ruminate so fully over absolute logic, and I appreciate the care
> you've taken in working over my thoughts. Forgive me if I let the trail go a
> bit cold as we are getting into seeding time and there is so much practical
> stuff to do.
> I've based my comments on uranium only on information that I've been able to
> get from  references outside the employ of the nuclear industry itself so
> pehaps it is a pessimistic view. I have no doubt that the world's uranium
> will be used, so perhaps the more energy that can be derived from it and the
> shorter the half-life of the by-product the better. The uranium energy
> period will be brief if fast breeder reactors (or something more energy
> efficient) cannot be made to work reliably. Whilst I quoted only one case of
> the unfortunate fate of citizens' resources in the failed French Superphénix
> fast breeder reactor, the Americans have a number that were commissioned and
> as far as I know all have been shut down. It is quite fair for citizens to
> ask for current proof of the medium term energy effectiveness of investing
> resources in nuclear infrastructure rather than R&D into sustainable  energy
> capture (in addition to rejecting uranium as the long term energy solution
> and on other grounds).
> 
> I thought your lumping of the risks to the current global ecosystem of
> nuclear and fossil fuel based weapons in the same basket was frivolous, if
> logically correct.
> I agree that anyone who discounts the capacity of humans for technological
> breakthroughs is as foolish as anyone who thinks we are not over-extending
> the planet's capacity to maintain its current ecosystem, but currently the
> technophiles have a lot of inventing to do if they are to stabilise a system
> that is into exponential decline.
> The Swedes, who have had one of the most successful nuclear power regimes,
> are wanting to head toward a renewable energy system which suggests that,
> unlike adolescent countries such as the US and Australia, they can see that
> renewable power sources will be needed sooner rather than later. As you
> mentioned, India is into nuclear power and has also warned us that its
> citizens want to have their day as consumers like the USA and Oz and are not
> intending to keep greenhouse emissions to current levels. The assurance of
> 'fairness' is a strong facilitator of grassroots change (eg..acceptance of
> restraint). Ignoring fairness may be a costly bit of arrogance on our part.
> 
> I had a look at some population stats recently and the rate of growth in the
> world's population is slowing but even ticking away at 1.3 % we need to
> remember the rules of maths, as so frequently repeated by Prof Albert
> Bartlett
> 
> ' Let us consider a quantity that is experiencing steady growth at a rate
> such as  2%  per year. First we note that this growing quantity will double
> in size in a fixed time.  This doubling time is found by dividing  70  by
> the percent growth per year.  For example, the doubling time for a steady
> growth rate of  2%  per year is  70 / 2  =  35 years.
> 
> Second, we note that a few doublings can give enormous numbers.  It is
> convenient to remember that ten doublings causes the growing quantity to
> increase in size by a factor of approximately 1000:  twenty doublings will
> cause an increase by a factor of 1,000,000, etc'
> 
> If world population growth was simply exponential it would double in 55
> years to 13 billion. With assorted adjustments the United Nations Population
> Division projects a global population of 8.04 billion for the year 2025 and
> 9.37 billion for 2050.
> 
> Professor Barlett's maths also reveals the absolute impossibility of
> national economies and consumption continuing to grow at say 3% ad
> infinitum, doubling every 23 years forever, with the attendant damage to the
> Earth.
> 
> I am troubled by our state population plan in SA (at least we have one) that
> is aiming to increase our population to 2 million, amongst other things, to
> balance the ratio of older and younger South Australians, which is evidently
> 'vital' if older citizens are to be sustained in the manner to which they
> are accustomed.but without reference to any demonstration that the place has
> the (sustainable) carrying capacity for 2 million people. As a bit of
> trivia, Today can be remembered as one of the first days that Adelaide had
> hardly a drop of diesel in storage other than that in the actual tanks at
> service stations.
> 
> 
> In my email I mentioned the Milankovich cycles (which are caused by the
> complex changes of the orbiting of the Earth around the Sun) because humans
> have witnessed their influences before and they have influenced the
> phenomena of  ice ages and interglacial periods that have had massive
> impacts on the ecosystems (including humans) of the northern Hemisphere and
> sea levels in the southern Hemisphere.
> 
> Natural changes will occur again and whilst we may not have to
> worry about influences in coming decades, we must bear in mind that such
> natural changes will cause more grief (loss of biodiversity) in an ecosystem
> that is stretched and unstable. Even in the last few hundred years 'the
> little ice age' caused dislocation and migration. The aboriginal
> civilization has lived through a couple of major glacial periods.
> 
> I believe you also under-estimate the culturally intrenched fertility
> control methods used until recently by aboriginal people to tune population
> to carrying capacity of land on a seasonal basis. Now they, as much as any
> other Australians, can benefit from Permaculture Design skills in the
> future.
> 
> 
> Back to basics
> Care of the planet
> Care of others
> Acceptance of personal responsibility for population and consumption
> 
> 
> 
> I will fossick out some info on apple performance and chill hours for you.
> 
> Cheers
> 
> graham
> 
> 
> 
> 
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "jedd" <jedd at progsoc.org>
> To: "permaculture-oceania" <permaculture-oceania at lists.cat.org.au>
> Sent: Sunday, May 21, 2006 5:26 PM
> Subject: Re: [permaculture-oceania] Permaculture,energy and the future for
> humans
> 
> 
> Hi Graham,
> 
>  ] We are also bent on convincing ourselves that the
>  ] tiny world reserves of Uranium and possibly Thorium will solve ...
> 
>  Let's not forget Plutonium.
> 
>  And the size of the reserves are hotly debated.  There's a bucketload
>  in seawater, for starters, and it'd be hubris to believe that we
>  won't develop an economical way of extracting it, if the need arises.
> 
>  ] Taking the full life cycle of a nuclear
>  ] reactor into consideration it is now not worth building one, for using
>  ] Uranium at current world levels we will run out of high grade ore in
> under
>  ] 20 years (before a  reactor has paid itself off in energy terms - in 35
>  ] years) (Van Leeuwin and Smith 2005, Diesendorf 2005).
> 
>  From my understanding, that figure was arrived at pretty casually,
>  and the pro-nuclear lobby certainly isn't happy with it.  The Other
>  Side asserts between 300 and 10,000 years worth of supply, depending
>  on the technologies used (in discovery, extraction, and usage).
> 
>  Again, it'd be hubris to project the current technology forward,
>  without allowing, even modestly, for advances yet to be made.
> 
>  ] ... by the Chinese who hope to commission a 'fast breeder reactor'
>  ] by 2010, which they say will produce 60 times the energy a
>  ] normal reactor would from a kilogram of Uranium oxide; however
>  ] fast breeders use liquid sodium as a coolant and are more dangerous
>  ] than ordinary nuclear reactors.
> 
>  Well, the Indians seem to be pretty keen on FBR's too, with some
>  pretty sizable prototypes being built.
> 
>  Not sure that FBR's are more dangerous, at least not while they're
>  operating normally.  Certainly you could assert they have a higher
>  impact in the event of an incident, and possibly even that they are
>  a higher risk proposition.
> 
>  ] So far, fast breeders have all been technical and economic failures.
> 
>  This kind of faulty logic (assuming an implication that future
>  plans for fast breeders should be discarded because of past
>  performance) should be avoided by any proponents of renewable
>  energy sources.*
> 
>  ] The largest was the French 1200 MW Superphénix, which commenced
>  ] operation in 1985 as a commercial industrial prototype. It operated only
>  ] intermittently and was shut down in1998 after costing some A$15 billion.
> 
>  Again, citing a single instance, and ignoring the commercial
>  and operational imperatives that led to that single instance,
>  in favour of the argument du jour .. is dangerous logic.
> 
>  Russia has been happily running a 600MW FBR for some decades,
>  and is building newer, larger versions of same.
> 
>  FBR's typically become more attractive, from a fiscal point of view,
>  once uranium prices go up.  Anti-FBR, anti-nuclear, types will often
>  ignore this as the primary reason behind the lack of popularity
>  for FBR's -- instead adopting a faulty syllogism based around their
>  current small number of operational reactors.
> 
>  And as fuel prices do go up, and FBR's become more $-feasible, then
>  you do end up getting much more power per unit of material input.
> 
>  ] Even if the fast breeder technology was mastered and the general and long
>  ] term hazards of radioactivity and uranium's specific use in acts of
>  ] aggression were ignored,
> 
>  Think how cumbersome it would be if every time we mentioned any
>  petroleum products, we had to make an en passant reference to their
>  use in acts of aggression.  (Napalm, anyone?)
> 
>  Don't get me wrong -- I'm far from a nuclear apologist.  I think that
>  fission reactors are hugely contra-indicated, and there's any number
>  of perfectly sensible reasons why that's the case -- but going
>  with emotive arguments, non sequiturs, and dodgy math simply
>  weakens the argument against them.  Stick with the major problems,
>  such as how to deal with waste over the span of millenia, the
>  necessarily stop-gap measure that any non-renewable power source
>  implies (regardless of time-frame), and maybe the operational risks
>  (though these are typically over-stated).  High impact, low risk
>  scenarios are something humans generally have trouble getting their
>  heads around -- at least in my experience.
> 
>  ] ... ultimately warm up as the earth's wobble in orbit around the
>  ] sun increases world temperatures in the centuries to come (as
>  ] per the Milankovitch Cycles model).
> 
>  AFAIK these cycles operate at some dozens of thousands of years,
>  the effects are miniscule, and indeed the predicted historical
>  cycles conflict, in many cases, with the observed data (taken from
>  glacier cores, etc, I presume).  At the very least, their impact
>  would be trivial in comparison to the influences generated from
>  within the biosphere over the past hundred years.
> 
>  ] ... in Australia ... where the  indigenous human population had
>  ] more or less reached a steady state with the environment over a
>  ] period of some 60000 years.
> 
>  One theory behind that stasis is based on the lack of development
>  of any form of agriculture -- nomadic life enforced a fairly
>  restrained population growth elsewhere on the planet, too.  Ie, it
>  wasn't through design or conscious decision, so much as by NOT
>  doing any of the kinds of things that permaculturalists would do.
> 
>  ] Without offending our increasingly mainstream
>  ] students we need to introduce this issue in our courses.
> 
>  Whereas I think they should be offended .. but perhaps not in the way
>  that you're trying to avoid.  I've bemoaned previously the lack of
>  interest in discussing population control -- apart from anything
>  else it's a fabulously entertaining subject.
> 
>  ] Incidentally Lloyd Evans (ex chief of Plant Industry in the CSIRO),
>  ] in his book 'Feeding the Ten Billion' put a figure of about 3 billion on
> a
>  ] world population sustainable without non-renewable fuels).
> 
>  I'd heard figures of around 700-800,000 -- but either would be a
>  laudable goal.  I don't see it happening, though, as behind your
>  argument that reproduction is the core issue, lies, IMO, the other
>  core issue that for many people, an escape from having to contemplate
>  the pointlessness of their own lives is found in having children.
> 
>  Yes yes .. a generalisation, of course, and I'm sure there are any
>  number of exceptions -- or maybe I just know [mostly] the wrong
>  kinds of people.  In any event, I think the problem of telling people
>  to stop spawning excessively will need to involve a substitution of
>  something else to do with their time and money.
> 
>  Good luck.
> 
>  ] I truly
>  ] thought the pistachio nut trees on our farm (our main crop) would be a
>  ] resilient and relatively 'permanent' key component of our property design
>  ] however the warming of Australian autumn and winter temperatures last
> year
> 
>  OOC, how many hours of chill did your varieties need, how many
>  hours does your region normally get, and how many did you get last
>  year?  I'm looking at banging in a lot of apples in the next few
>  years, and I've put off the calculations and projections so far,
>  particularly since many of the 100 or so varieties that I want to
>  grow aren't well documented as far as their chill requirements go.
>  Plus I was hoping that I'd have a few decades left before there was
>  a sizable jump in the number of chill hours in my part of the world.
> 
>  Cheers,
>  Jedd.
> 
>  *  "It's a poor blaster that doesn't point both ways." -- Isaac Asimov
> 
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