36 comments on The Bullroarer - Monday 14th July 2008
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36 comments on The Bullroarer - Monday 14th July 2008
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But will you be able to run hospitals and aluminium smelters off CSP if it rains everywhere for a week? I noted the Ausra VP interviewed on ABC seemed to back off the notion of solar baseload. I sense a long thread coming up and my preferred link to Ted Trainer is broken.
I think nuke plant will have to be largely prefabricated with automated operation and a fixit flying squad ready to call in at short notice. However some in the know say that option is limited. Realistically that could mean in 10 years time;
not both of nuke and renewable
not either one of nuke or renewable
but neither nuke nor renewable baseload.
No doubt someone will say the Ausra guy really meant something else or that hospitals and aluminium smelters don't need guaranteed power.
Please have a look at the records at the BoM and tell us of a time when it rained across the entire continent of Australia - or even in all eight state and territory capitals - continuously for a weeek.
Just one time, ever in recorded metereological history.
Once.
And if you have a mix of wind, biogas, tidal/wave, geothermal and use pumped storage, there isn't a problem at all.
Even better, no uranium mining, no radiation from the full fuel cycle, no waste, no depletion issues, no bottomless pit of decomissioning costs etc etc etc
Its not really a choice if you take all the factors into account - we should just go straight to the long term solution.
if it's going to rain everywhere for a week (!) then we'll just fire up one of those coal fired power stations that we kept on standby.
seriously, geographically distributed renewables of a various kinds are pretty robust. then once we build up a serious amount of storage we have no problem.