Last Tuesday representatives from 116 regional community groups from far north Queensland to southern Victoria travelled to Canberra for the Reckless Renewables Rally. The press either ignored them or made fun of them; called them selfish or victims of misinformation by their local members. These were people who already have wind turbines, solar farms, and transmission lines next door. They care about climate change and our natural environment which is currently sequestering as much carbon dioxide as Australia produces. They feed not only Australians but many other peoples around the world as well. They watch while our forests are being made more fire prone, and our best agricultural soils are being lost. Our regional farmers are receiving 1970 prices for their produce while the big companies are making record profits.
Perhaps it’s time to listen.
I have enclosed a copy of their flyer which lists the wide range of entities involved.
Burning coal to produce electricity is a terrible waste when coal has so many other important uses. At this time, the energy from it is still essential for the manufacture of wind turbines, transmission lines and solar panels.
It is not always realised that coal is needed:
as a source of essential ingredients for the manufacture of many dyes, pharmaceuticals, explosives, perfumes, plastics, paints and photographic materials; and
to produce the very high temperatures needed to manufacture steel, cement, aluminium, bricks, glass and some metals and chemicals.
Latrobe Valley, Victoria, Australia
A few weeks ago, David and I attended a conference in the Latrobe Valley held by CRC TiME called “Bridging Diverse Interests”. https://crctime.com.au/ When a coal mine or any mine is closed down, a complex rehabilitation process follows. Delegates at the conference had the opportunity to visit both Hazelwood and Yallourn brown coal mine and power station sites.
The Latrobe Valley mines are large, close together, close to local communities and infrastructure. The power stations have a small footprint on each mine site. Mine Land Rehabilitation Authority
Hazelwood Power Station and its associated coal mine stopped operating in 2017. The owner, French company Engie plans to spend a billion dollars rehabilitating the mine site by filling the giant mining pit with water. The volume needed will be greater than that of Sydney Harbour. The plan is still under discussion by many stakeholders. We heard from some of the community groups about their hopes for the site. The closure has already had a big impact on local townships and the staff who lost their jobs. Three years after the closure, a survey found these highly skilled workers were still only earning an average of 50 % of the income received prior to the closure. Questions remain about the feasibility of the rehabilitation plan. Enough water may not be available and contaminant levels in the ash have been highlighted by a green group as a possible long-term issue.
Yallourn Power Station – photo by David Jones
Yallourn is scheduled to close in 2028. River water, currently used by the power station for cooling, will be used to fill the pit. It will take decades. The ground is soft, like the brown coal itself, and collapse of the sides of the pit must be carefully avoided. The ash is low in contaminants and should not pose a problem with water quality. Often there is disparity between the requirements of the regulators, the local community, the First Nations People and the technical and economic considerations of the miners. Just because the community desires a certain outcome, it may not be technically possible and safe.
Yallourn Coal Mine: the coal seam is 80 metres thick and can be seen in the background. Lines of trees have been planted in the bottom of the pit. Photo by David Jones
The third power station, Loy Yang, and its associated mine is also scheduled for closure in 2035 bu.
What is the future of the Latrobe Valley? Will it be left with lots of orphaned transmission lines and closed businesses, medical facilities and schools? This will happen unless viable solutions developed in consultation with regional communities are identified and implemented. It has been suggested in other forums that coal-fired power stations could be replaced by nuclear power stations thus making use of these industrial sites and transmission infrastructure, while providing similar jobs for the already skilled workforce. Participants I spoke to from other places in Australia were pro-nuclear but locals were wary. The social licence was not there because of a historical distrust of Government processes. Technically the sites would need to be evaluated for ground stability.
A central theme of the conference was that First Nations People should be properly and fully involved early in the process of planning mine closure.
Mining Rehabilitation
The NT Government is working in partnership with the Australian Government and Traditional Owners to rehabilitate the former Rum Jungle Uranium Mine Site. Early rehabilitation work was undertaken in the 80s and the traditional owner groups were not involved in the process. The site does not meet today’s standards. The current project will remove a major impediment to the site’s return in good order to the Kungarakan and Warai people.
The inspirational project leader, Jackie Hartnett of NT Government, gave an insightful presentation on the project. She has worked hard to find solutions acceptable to all the traditional owners with the tremendous assistance of Gowan Bush, the community manager. Jackie is undertaking the rehabilitation work by training and employing the local people. As a mother myself, I noted that a female birthing site will be restored by sending a stream back to its original path. Nobody knows whether this will be fully successful but the women are delighted.
My husband Dr. David Jones gave a technical presentation on the Rum Jungle Rehabilitation Project on behalf of NT Government as an Industry Fellow of UQ Sustainable Minerals Institute. https://smi.uq.edu.au/ It is noteworthy that the main source of environmental problems on the site is acid mine drainage with copper levels causing the issues rather than uranium or radioactivity.
The presentations were praised by the head of INAP as a new paradigm for mine rehabilitation. INAP stands for International Network for Acid Prevention and is an organisation set up by the mining industry itself to find, promulgate, and use the best methods of preventing and coping with acid and metalliferous drainage (AMD). AMD can occur with any type of mine depending on the geology of the area.
“AMD is one of the most serious and potentially enduring environmental problems for the mining industry. Left unchecked, it can result in such long-term water quality impacts that could well be this industry’s most harmful legacy.” https://www.inap.com.au/
How do we use coal apart from making electricity?
China uses the most coal in the world with the U.S and India in a distant second place. The U.S. has 2/3 of the world’s known supply. Australia only mines 4% of the world’s coal but we export 80% of it, making Australia the second largest coal exporter in the world. We export low sulfur bituminous coal for energy production used to manufacture “renewable energy infrastructure” and the highly valued and rarer metallurgical coal, also known as coking coal, to produce steel and cement and critical metals and other ingredients.
There are 4 main types of coal and the world still has 400 years’ supply at our current rate of use.
Peat is the youngest form of coal. It is low quality and is burnt for fuel and heating on a small scale or even used as a soil conditioner by gardeners.
Lignite or Brown Coal is about 150 million years old. It has about 50% carbon and low sulfur content. It is used to produce electricity but is relatively inefficient because it has a high water content and must be dried first. This results in the highest amount of carbon dioxide per unit of electricity produced. The Latrobe Valley Coal mines produce brown coal.
Bituminous Coal has a high carbon content ( 50-80%) but often has a high sulfur content. It is the most plentiful type of coal in the U.S. and is about 300 million years old. Sub-bituminous coal has a lower sulfur content and carbon content and is a little younger. Sub-bituminous coal is the preferred form for power plants.
Anthracite, often known as Metallurgical Coal. is the highest quality of coal with a high carbon (95%) but low sulfur content and is about 500 million years old. Australia has large supplies of this form of coal which is valued for all its uses apart from electricity production. There is limited supply worldwide and it almost a sin to burn it up to produce electricity. It is the hardest and cleanest burning coal.
Anthracite is valuable
· as a source of essential ingredients for the manufacture of many dyes, pharmaceuticals, explosives, perfumes, plastics, paints and photographic materials; and
· to produce the very high temperatures needed to produce steel, cement, aluminium, bricks, glass and some metals and chemicals. The carbon in anthracite forms part of the matrix of steel.
· It is used in smelting operations to release metals such as lithium from their ores – a very energy intensive process.
Coal pyrolysis, or destructive distillation, is an old technology that started on a commercial scale during the industrial revolution. When coal is burnt without the presence of oxygen, three main products result: coal gas; coal tar; and coke.
Coal tar is the actual source of the essential ingredients to make many products such as some dyes, pharmaceuticals, explosives, perfumes, plastics, paints and photographic materials.
Various forms of gas can substitute for some of coal’s uses. It can act to stabilise the electricity grid much more efficiently and produces far less carbon dioxide per unit of electricity produced.
Hydrogen and some types of nuclear power may be able replace the high temperatures produced by coal and gas as the technologies mature. The production and use of hydrogen is a very energy inefficient.
What about Oil? Why Can’t We Stop It’s Use Tomorrow?
Nearly half of a barrel of oil is separated as gasoline/petrol. Slightly more than half is used as feedstock in the manufacture of more than 6000 products. I found a list of 144 of them. Just taking one item, combs. Can you imagine making combs the old way from turtle shell or bone? The world’s population has grown so much it is hard to imagine doing without many of the items listed below. And what do we plan to do with all the waste stream of petrol in the future?
Can we face a world without antibiotics and anaesthetics or hospitals? Imagine there are no building materials except wood or mud or straw, no fertilizers or pillows or candles or ink and no forests or wildlife. We still need coal and oil to produce electric cars.
We have a lot of thinking and planning to do. Imagine a world without any:
This is a particularly important blog for Australians. It is time we learnt about our land and just what happens in Australia.
Earth Systems and Climate Change Hub provided a big red flag and some fascinating insights into Australia’s total carbon budget from 2010 to 2019. The ESCC Hub is funded by the Australian Government’s National Environmental Science Program and feeds data into the international entity the Global Carbon Project. Carbon budgets provide information and data to inform and raise awareness about how the world is tracking against the global climate change mitigation challenge.https://nespclimate.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/ESCC_Global-and-regional-carbon-budgets_Brochure.pdf
Good News: Australia was almost carbon neutral for the ten years from 2010 to 2019.
We only emitted 0.1% of the carbon dioxide added to the atmosphere worldwide over that 10-year period. It is our wonderful natural land that acted as a giant carbon sink squirrelling away almost all the carbon dioxide we produced. The situation varies from year to year depending on weather conditions and our actions.
Yes, we can save our biodiversity and do our bit to fight climate change at the same time. Indeed, we must do so.
Bad News: bushfires produced half the carbon dioxide.
In many parts of Australia, when bushfires start, we simply let them burn. Most firefighting is done by an ageing voluntary fire service with little equipment and even this equipment is old and often no longer safe.
Work undertaken, particularly in the Northern Territory, shows that traditional fire management practices work well to reduce emissions. Indeed, our First Nations People earn carbon credits using their traditional cultural practices. Using properly timed cool burning techniques, the carbon dioxide produced by fire is greatly diminished. If these practices were used more widely, great savings could be made in the loss of human life, property, and biodiversity. Indeed, scientific studies have shown that biodiversity can even be improved.
As the climate gets hotter, the potential damage done by bushfire in Australia will increase dramatically unless we do all we can to protect our land from fire and fight fires quickly and effectively when they do start. It has already been shown that access to water bombing helicopters can result in fire being stopped very quickly. Timing is critical – the sooner a fire is reached, and action taken, the less the damage. Satellites can now provide the necessary information in real time.
A First Nations man told me recently that Australia spends less than 5% on fire management and 95% paying for the damage afterwards. He wanted to know why we had it so backwards.
We are spending billions of dollars to reduce the emission of carbon dioxide when we produce electricity. Yet, fire releases far more carbon dioxide and has the potential to become much worse. If we stay on our current pathway, we will destroy the ability of our land to be a carbon sink.
Worldwide, natural systems on both land and sea still sequester over half the world’s production of carbon dioxide each year. But there are signs of this slowing. So far, as we have produced more carbon dioxide each year, the natural systems have kept up. We need to be helping natural systems as much as we can, and this is particularly important in Australia. Worldwide, the oceans do half of the work and land systems the other half. But in Australia, our natural land-based systems can sequester all of our carbon dioxide.
Figure: The Australian carbon budget, including natural and human-caused CO2 sources and sinks (and their net effect in the atmosphere). Annual fluxes are the average for the 2010-2019 decade. Units are in million tons of CO2.
What should we do with the resources we have?
Upgrade our fire fighting ability with quicker, scientifically backed fire fighting techniques. A stitch in time saves nine and saves lots of human lives and property, carbon emissions PLUS our precious BIODIVERSITY.
Use the best sources of energy. Ask: Which power systems impact the least land area, are low carbon, use the least materials in their manufacture, and can be used to make steel and bricks and cement?
Australia is dotted with pit lakes from mining activities. Many of these pit lakes may be suitable as a source of water for water bombing in regional areas.
Here are 8 good reasons. Most of this post comes from a simple pamphlet I recently put together.
Nuclear Saves Habitat, Jobs and Farming Land
We could be replacing coal-fired power stations with Nuclear Power on the dirty old coal sites. A high proportion of the skilled workforce could be retained with decent salaries. Current transmission infrastructure would replace the need to build new transmission lines, saving money, resources such as copper while saving even more habitat and our best food producing soils.It is our land and its habitat that is sequestering most of the carbon dioxide that Australia produces. See my 2 previous blogs for more information.
2. Nuclear Power is a Low Carbon Energy Source
3. Nuclear Power is Safe
Nuclear activity and its ionising radiation are part of the natural world and were there when life began. Biology had to learn how to live safely with low and moderate levels of radiation. Otherwise, it would not have survived. The problem is with neither the physics nor the biology but with ourselves. While like all animals we are naturally protected and have no need to worry about immersion in moderate radiation, we have learned how to build instruments and make measurements that scare us. We put regulations in place that are designed to protect us from risks that nature has already covered.- Wade Allison Nov 2023
The Cellular Changes Needed To Initiate Cancer Have Not Been Observed at Low Dose Rates. At least 6 to 8 of specific cellular changes must occur for cancer to result. The “Hit Theory” of DNA mutation as a cause of cancer is way out of date and not applicable.
4. Nuclear Waste is the Power Source of the Future
We do know how to bury it safely for ever – Nature has shown us how and some countries are doing so now. BUT, what a waste!
5. Materials Needed to Manufacture Power Systems
The metals used in solar and wind power and transmission lines are becoming scarcer. It takes more than a decade to open up a new mine but we do not even have enough mineral resources to build the first generation of renewables. Recycling is very energy inefficient.
Recent evaluations of all the materials needed for the Energy Transition indicate a shortage of many materials. We do not even have sufficient minerals in the ground- Simon Michaux. We must be careful with all the resources we have whether minerals, money, or biodiversity. We must never forget how much nature is doing to look after us.
6. We Need to Decarbonise More Sectors Than Just Electricity
7. The Energy Produced from a Power System Compared to the Energy Used to Produce that Power System
Until a solar farm can produce enough energy to make itself again, it shouldn’t be called renewable. If it takes too much energy to make and use a power source, it is not a viable long-term solution. Most calculations of money or energy costs do not include all of the system costs.
Why does Nuclear Power have such a high EROI? ANSWER: Because of the orders of magnitude higher energy density of the fuels it can use such as uranium and thorium.
8. The Future
When should Australia introduce nuclear energy? Are we Australians ready yet? The false fear of radiation has even slowed our ability to even look after our low dose waste from research facilities and hospitals to a ridiculous extent. Most of the cost and time delays that effect the building of nuclear power plants around the world do not arise from the reactor itself but from ordinary engineering works. Australia’s recent history with big infrastructure projects including Snowy 2.0 is not impressive. It seems many big projects have very big cost and time overruns.
However, the first stage of the process will take time that we shouldn’t waste. Stage One involves removing the current bans both nationally and state by state. By the time we finish this first stage, we will be in a better position to judge what to build and purchase.
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While we are stressing trying to make our electricity production low carbon, we are overlooking the impact of fire. Dozens, if not hundreds of scientists around the world are doing their best to measure carbon fluxes. It is easy to get lost looking at all the detail and miss the big picture. Some years Australia is a net carbon dioxide sink, some years we are a small net producer of carbon dioxide. It all depends on our bush fire frequency and intensity plus the rainfall patterns and soil moisture levels in any particular year. Looking at the data illustrated in my last blog, Australia only emitted 0.1% of the carbon dioxide emitted to the atmosphere from 2010 to 2019. Nature is doing all the hard work for us. But our record for protecting our natural landscape and our biodiversity could be much better.
Even WORLDWIDE nature is removing over half the carbon we produce. Both Land and Sea are doing the work in so many different ways.
Yet all over the world, climate change policies result in billions of dollars being spent on new infrastructure that has not reduced carbon dioxide emissions nearly enough. Are we spending our resources wisely?
Here is a reminder of Australia’s carbon budget from 2010 to 2019 shown in millions of tons of carbon dioxide per year.
The carbon dioxide emitted by fire is almost equal to the emissions from fossil fuels and over half of our land sinks. One has to ask where we would get the best value for dollars spent. We are at a crossroads, if we do not improve our fire prevention we face a future with horrific bushfires, losing more and more lives, property, and livelihoods while killing off Nature’s ability to help us. The cartoon below illustrates what could be Australia’s future in a somewhat sarcastic manner if we don’t start thinking smarter.
What should we do with the resources we have?
Upgrade our fire fighting ability with quicker, scientifically backed fire fighting techniques. A stitch in time saves nine and saves lots of human lives and property, carbon emissions PLUS our precious BIODIVERSITY.
Use the best sources of energy.
I am not any sort of expert on fires, but I see so many wonderful articles on the web from firemen, scientists, and indigenous experts that need to be heeded. Economically, we spend 3% on protection and 97% after disasters happen. If we keep doing what we do now, our carbon emissions will be huge. Our land could become unlivable.
Australia currently depends on our Rural Fire Brigades, volunteers who put their lives at risk with outdated and insufficient equipment.
This year up where I live in Far North Queensland, the undergrowth stayed too wet for cool burns until later in the year. When the undergrowth was just right, a total fire ban was put in place by those 2,000 km away. The result: few cool burns and later, lots of rampaging fires because the fuel load was too high. This has thoroughly frustrated our local fire fighters.
Indigenous fire systems work well in parts of Australia. We need to learn from our Indigenous people use their skill and knowledge far more. It is so much cheaper to prevent fires than to pay for all the damage later.
Modern satellite monitoring can really assist if the information reaches the right people very quickly. Most fires start from lightening strikes when conditions are dry. We can pinpoint them quickly now. What we need is the ability to reach these fires fast and put them out as quickly as possible.
In the process of researching information for this blog, I have learnt a lot that surprised me. My final conclusions are that we need to be concentrating on 2 things in Australia:
Helping nature to do its work in every way we can.
Using nuclear power for energy production.
Know the Enemy
It always helps to know the enemy as best we can when planning the strategy for any fight. It increases our chances of success and reduces costs to ourselves or things we value. When we plan strategies for dealing with “Climate Change”, we really need to understand the big picture or we risk wasting all our resources fiddling around the edges. Many countries around the world are spending or planning to spend trillions of dollars and so far there has been no global reduction of carbon dioxide emissions to our atmosphere. Meanwhile Nature is being trashed with the survival of more and more species being threatened every year that passes. The threat of food and water shortages is leading to a very unstable world politically as climate refugees try to survive.
Our ability to measure carbon budgets has improved with time. The recent uses of satellite data and AI systems are impressive.
This blog begins by presenting text and diagrams from the Earth Systems and Climate Change Hub https://nespclimate.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/ESCC_Global-and-regional-carbon-budgets_Brochure.pdf The ESCC Hub is funded by the Australian Government’s National Environmental Science Program. To learn a lot more about their activities, visit https://nespclimate.com.au/ The ESCC Hub feeds data into the international entity the Global Carbon Project. Their diagrams are simpler than those I gave in my last blog but the data is very similar even though the units used are different. I suggest that readers take the time to look closely at the diagrams in this blog.
Tracking emissions of carbon dioxide over time through carbon budgets allows us to quantify and explain how human activities and natural processes add to and subtract emissions from the atmosphere. This can help to identify where the biggest opportunities for mitigation exist, and how carbon-climate feedbacks might help or hinder efforts to achieve global targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
Carbon budgets track sources and sinks of carbon dioxide and their transfer between the atmosphere, ocean and land.
The Global Carbon Dioxide Budget
I start with the Global budget so it can be compared with the unique features of Australia’s carbon budget.
Source: Global Carbon Project – the numbers are in billions of tons of carbon dioxide per year averaged between 2010 and 2019.
The arrows show the major fluxes. So, fossil fuels and industry produce 34.4 billion tons per year (Pg CO2/yr) while land use change emits 5.7 for a total carbon dioxide source of 40.1 billion tons CO2/yr.
The land sink is 12.5 billion tons of CO2 per year and the ocean absorbs 9.2 making a total sink of 21.7 billion tons of carbon dioxide per year. Again, the data shows that natural systems were removing more than half of anthropogenic (man-made) carbon dioxide between 2010 and 2019 averaged over this period.
The land and ocean draw down atmospheric CO2 and act as sinks to slow the accumulation of human caused CO2 emissions, thereby slowing the progression of climate change. Combined, land and ocean sinks removed an annual average of 54 per cent of all CO2 from human activities – with land sinks removing about 31 per cent of all annual emissions and ocean sinks about 23 per cent. These natural sinks therefore play an important service in mitigating climate change.
Although CO2 has continued to accumulate in the atmosphere, the proportion of emissions removed by land and ocean sinks has remained constant over the past 60 years. This suggests that strong self-regulating feedbacks have led the sinks to increase their carbon sequestration capacity over time. However, there is large interannual variability of both the land and ocean sink strength in response to climate variability (e.g. El Niño) and extremes. This suggests likely sensitivity of the sinks to future changes in climate and variability.
Tracking land and ocean sinks and how they may change under a warming and variable climate is vital for understanding the climate change mitigation challenge faced by the international community.
Some assessments focus on the carbon cycle as it relates to carbon dioxide just like the one given above. Methane and other greenhouse gases are assessed separately. The assessments discussed in this blog are undertaken in this way. The numbers given track carbon as calculated on the weight of carbon dioxide: CO2 units. The numbers are higher by 44/12 than when data is presented in C units. That means all the numbers will be 3.66 times higher than those given in my previous blog post where the data was in C units. As long as all the numbers are in either C units or CO2 units, they are directly comparable. But I have noted assessments that mix up these units and come to erroneous conclusions. All of this blog is in CO2 units.
The Effect of Land-Use ChangesDeforestation, the main driver of land-use emissions, has remained high in the last decade. Re/afforestation has counterbalanced approximately half of the deforestation emissions.
The ocean and land sinks have continued to grow with increasing atmospheric CO2 and take about half of the emissions. Climate change is already reducing these growths by about 4% (ocean sink) and 17% (land sink). Friedlingstein et al 2022; Global Carbon Project 2022. https://www.globalcarbonproject.org/carbonbudget/22/files/GCP_CarbonBudget_2022.pdf
Land Sink removed 29% of total emissions while the Ocean Sink removed 26%.
Surprisingly, Nature still manages to remove almost 60% of our emissions BUT 2015 was a bad year globally as illustrated below due to land use change. We cannot keep destroying the land sink. It does far more for us than all the renewables have so far. A Gt is the same as a billion tons and the same as Pg.
The Australian Carbon Budget
Note that the data for Australia is in millions of tons of CO2 per year while the global data is in billions of tons of CO2 per year. Our net emission of CO2 to the atmosphere was 23 million tons per year between 2010 and 2019 on average while the global net emissions were 18.4 billion tons per year. This suggests that Australia only produced 0.12% of the net emissions and that we were nearly carbon neutral from 2010 to 2019.
If only it were that simple. What about our coal and gas exports? The reality that we are buying our wind turbines and solar systems and batteries and EV cars manufactured overseas some of which has been produced using energy from our coal. Simplistically, one could suggest that Australia’s transition to renewables is actually bad for climate change mitigation. Particularly so when we destroy natural system carbon sequestration when installing wind and solar.
Ref: ESCC Hub brochure – units are in millions of tons of carbon dioxide per year.
In Australia, our natural landscape, our natural ecosystems, removed twice as much carbon dioxide as we produced by using fossil fuels (746 to 386 million tons per year) on average for 2010 to 2019. However, this record was spoilt by fire(398). Thus, on average we fed climate change with our carbon dioxide emissions of only 23 million tons per year.
Unfortunately, Australia is a land of heat, fire and drought. 2019 was a particularly bad year. Due to drought our ecosystems were a source of carbon dioxide and not a major sink. Higher bushfire levels added to our totals. One of our major sources of carbon dioxide is fire that burns our dry tropical savanna lands over large areas. These fires are usually allowed to burn out and are not fought. For years now programs to lessen the impact of the fires has been undertaken by our indigenous peoples in the Northern Territory using “cool burns”. In bad years the CO2 from fires can negate all the carbon sequestration land-based Nature does: https://bg.copernicus.org/articles/10/851/2013/
It is our savannah lands that usually do most of the sequestration work. However, In very wet years our arid lands also remove vast quantities of carbon from the atmosphere and tie it up in soil.
Every attempt must be made to keep our land-based ecosystems photosynthesising as much as possible which will maximise carbon sequestration. This means keeping soils damp and not allowing them to heat up any more than can be helped. It means ensuring that we don’t make Australia more arid than it is now. Experiences in many countries around the world show that it is possible to help Nature help us by making arid lands wetter again. This is an enormous topic in itself and will be covered in future blogs.
How We Are Failing to Reduce Regional Climate Effects
Several classic situations exist in my current home state of Queensland.
Stupidly, we built a major transmission line along the peaks of the Great Dividing Range. This meant that Renewable Energy Project proponents wanted (needed?) to place their wind turbines and solar installations near this transmission line. This leads to the disturbance then destruction of some of our best remaining forests much earlier than might happen with Climate Change. It has been known for a long time that even narrow roads pushed through forest can change the composition of vegetation up to 100 metres on either side – edge effects. The giant wind turbines require very wide steep roads winding through the mountains, blasting of the mountain tops, direct loss of thousands of ha of forest – step by step loss of our effective land sink.
We forget that in the area near wind turbines, soil and forest dries out making fire risk much higher.
The next examples of poor planning and policy relates to solar energy. In Queensland, the big solar farms need to be turned down when there is too much electricity produced during the day. Never mind negative prices for large scale solar, operators still get their carbon credits which still makes operating them a financially attractive investment.
When the sun goes down solar energy stops. So, at night most of our power comes from coal-fired power stations which still need to run all day as they cannot ramp up from zero.
Roof top solar does a great job but subsidies have not encouraged battery storage with roof topsolar. The Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) has no means to control roof top solar.
The pseudo “Green” economy seems to replace some of these jobs with lower paid jobs – what someone described to me as “Toilet Jobs”. In contrast, replacing coal fired power stations with nuclear facilities would keep these skilled workers and provide even better paid positions.
Lastly, fire- fighting in most of Australia is dependent on Volunteer Rural Fire Brigades with little equipment. Should we be spending far more resources on fire mitigation? Logically, it takes a lot more effort to fight big fires than to deal with them adequately when they first start. Satellite systems and AI could be used to pinpoint fires early. Would we be better to spend all those billions of dollars on the very best fire-fighting personnel and equipment rather than imported renewables?
In conclusion, I believe we need to be concentrating on 2 things in Australia:
Helping nature to do its work in every way we can.
Mother Nature is still doing a magnificent job removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Over half of the carbon dioxide, we produce from fossil fuels and other carbon intensive activities is taken up by the ocean and vegetation on the land.
The Global Carbon Budget
There are many entities around the world, doing their best to measure and calculate the earth’s carbon budget. The clearest summary I have seen so far is shown below and copied from an overview article Carbon Stocks, Fluxes and the Land Sector by Graham Diedrich February 07, 2022. https://www.canr.msu.edu/news/carbon-fluxes-and-carbon-stocks
The figure above shows global carbon stocks and fluxes. The boxes represent the stocks of carbon in its different forms, but the numbers always relate to the amount of carbon. The arrows show the movement of carbon in or out of these carbon storages. The annual carbon exchange flux is represented numerically in PgC per year units, in which 1 PgC is equal to 1 billion metric tons of carbon. Nature has stored away huge quantities of carbon over eons of time as coal, gas and oil. Even more carbon is stored in the deep ocean (37 trillion tonnes). Each year we are burning carbon so that about 7.8 billion metric tonnes of carbon join with oxygen and add to the carbon dioxide already in the atmosphere. Land use change adds even more as we desecrate forests and release carbon from soils.
Mother Nature is still doing a magnificent job removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Over half of the carbon dioxide, we produce from fossil fuels and other carbon intensive activities is taken up by the ocean and vegetation on the land. The movement of carbon into the soil is very substantial but very variable and hard to measure. Note just how much carbon is stored in soil and permafrost.
Why Care About Natural Terrestrial Ecosystems
Nature provides a range of services such as:
Capturing and storing carbon.
Regulating climate – lowering the intensity of droughts and floods while stabilising temperatures.
Maintaining water balance – helping to make it rain and storing and cleaning water.
Providing biodiversity – bees to koalas to earthworms and magpies.
Creating jobs in ecotourism.
Providing resources for our use including our food.
Manufacturing soil.
Forests are particularly important not just for providing shade and storing lots of carbon, but they lower the earth’s temperature by as much as a degree. They do this through evapotranspiration, a process similar to the cooling produced by evaporative air conditioning. Some trees such as our eucalyptus also emit chemicals that trigger cloud formation providing yet more cooling effect.
A slide from one of my talks
But Australia’s natural ecosystems are at risk from:
climate change and variability – extreme heat events and droughts,
fire – carbon stored in woody vegetation is vulnerable to increased fire risk through burning under climate change,
land-use change particularly land clearing,
disturbance including invasive species, and disease.
Death of vegetation from drought stress, extreme disturbance events, disease, and pests could also result in increased carbon release to the atmosphere and changes to CO2 emissions from soils. An issue often overlooked is the release of water from soil as vegetation cover lessens. Lower soil water levels reduce the rate of photosynthesis and hence carbon removal.
Factors That Affect Nature’s Role in Reducing Carbon Dioxide in the Air
The vegetation on Earth holds a lot of carbon, somewhere between 450 and 650 billion tons of carbon (PgC). Just how much carbon is sequestered as vegetation each year is a delicate balance between photosynthesis and plant respiration and horror – wildfires or as we know them in Australia bush fires. During photosynthesis plants take up carbon dioxide and convert it to carbohydrates while releasing oxygen. During respiration plants take up oxygen and release carbon dioxide.
Lots of scientists are looking at the factors that effect the rate of photosynthesis and respiration by plants. What would it take to tip the balance in the wrong direction? What we know is that increasing carbon dioxide levels in the air are increasing photosynthesis. But far more important is the water available to plants and the temperature. There seems to be a maximum temperature for many plant species. Increasing temperature increases photosynthesis until the maximum is reached then as temperatures become even higher, photosynthesis falls away – heat stress. Droughts decrease carbon uptake by plants. Very wet years in Central Australia can result in massive increases in carbon uptake even over a short period of time. Unfortunately, plant respiration seems to continually go up as temperatures climb.
Will plants adapt to the changing conditions? It has been noted that plants in dry northern Australia recover from fire faster now and become carbon sinks again after a fire made the area a carbon source.
It is not surprising that seasonal variation is found depending on the weather. Winters are cooler. Rainfall patterns vary considerably. In Australia, there are major differences between El Nino and La Nina years. Long droughts in Australia can cause the more arid regions to become carbon sources.
Forests Buffer Thermal Fluctuation Better than Non-forests
A systematic study of thermal buffer ability (TBA) of different vegetation types showed that forests and wetlands buffer thermal fluctuation better than non-forests (grasslands, savannas, and croplands). Notably, seriously disturbed and young planted forests displayed a greatly reduced TBA as low as that of non-forests at high latitudes. Canopy height was a primary controller of TBA of forests, while the TBA of grasslands and savannas were mainly determined by energy partition, water availability, and carbon sequestration rates. Protecting mature forests is critical to mitigate thermal fluctuation under extreme events. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0168192320300964?via%3Dihub
An introduction to the Australian and New Zealand flux tower network – OzFlux
OzFlux is the regional Australian and New Zealand flux tower network that aims to provide a continental-scale national research facility to monitor and assess trends, and improve predictions, of Australia’s terrestrial biosphere and climate. https://bg.copernicus.org/articles/13/5895/2016/ and https://ozflux.org.au/index.html
Many universities and other research entities form the network and the OzFlux website provides hundreds of research articles if you wish to read more detailed information. OzFlux is part of a worldwide network FLEXNET.
Studies in Australia are measuring factors that effect photosynthesis and respiration, the effect of fires and other stressors. The earliest measurements were made two decades ago. Since then, lots more monitoring points have been added and some removed. The monitoring data collected by OzFlex and FLEXNET is used to calculate and understand the factors increasing carbon dioxide in the air to work out the best strategies to adopt to climate change and mitigate it. OzFlex has helped us to understand the major roles the savanna lands and arid desert play in Australia’s carbon balance.
The Protection of Our Ecosystems is Our Most Important Action
We must do everything we can to slow the loss of natural vegetation in Australia. Otherwise, we face a future where our carbon sinks become carbon sources and Australia becomes one of the hottest places on Earth.
Regional climate protection is in our hands. Global Climate Change is not. I will explain more in the next blog post and look at Australia’s carbon balance in more detail.
And for those readers who like a little more complexity, I include a few diagrams below from an older IPCC report. The numbers are outdated.
The Wet Tropics is where I have chosen to live now and every day I am still learning more and more about this special region. Much of the information in this blog has been copied from Terrain NRM websites: https://terrain.org.au/ and https://www.wettropicsplan.org.au
The Terrain NRM website is full of information, and it is obvious that a lot of time and careful thought was used in its creation. I loved their descriptions of this region. Hence, I have chosen to copy and paste a few sections that I particularly wish to emphasise. The website is now a few years out of date unfortunately.
There are now new threats to this special area that are not described on the Terrain website so in my next few blogs I will be writing about some of these issues. I will also be writing about the role Australia’s natural world plays in climate change and carbon sequestration.
I should note that I am currently Treasurer for an offshoot of Terrain, the Wet Tropics Soilcare group. This group of farmers care for the biota in the soil, reducing fertilizer use while increasing carbon and water in the soil thus protecting the Great Barrier Reef while producing more and better-quality food.
Terrain NRM is an independent, not for profit and community-based environmental management organisation. We think innovatively and act collaboratively, combining the latest science with local knowledge to develop sustainable solutions to increase the resilience of the rainforests, reefs, landscapes and local communities of Australia’s Wet Tropics region.
If you wanted one word to describe the Wet Tropics Region – it would be DIVERSITY.
Have you ever seen a cassawary in the wild?
Photo credits Terrain NRM
The Wet Tropics region is a melting pot of variety with elevated tablelands, vast outback savannah areas and eye-achingly green coastal floodplains nestled between the foot of the highest peaks in Queensland and the Coral Sea.
The region extends from the iconic Daintree forests of the north to the sugarcane land delta of the Herbert River catchment in the south and then west to the dry rangelands of the Upper Herbert.
The Wet Tropics is literally where the rainforest meets the reef.
This is the only place in the world where two World Heritage Areas are located directly adjacent to one another – the Wet Tropics and the Great Barrier Reef.
The great diversity in the rainfall, geology, soils, topography, drainage and altitude has resulted in a complex and extremely varied spectrum of plants and animals as well as many unique landscapes crafted by nature as well as human activity.
It is a region of contrasts.
The community of the Wet Tropics
Over 250,000 people call the Wet Tropics home and work in a variety of industries. The tourism and primary industries sectors form the foundation of the region’s economy.
Cairns is the largest urban centre in the Wet Tropics region with a population of over 150,000 people from 35 nationalities.
The Wet Tropics is home to a rich, vibrant and enduring Indigenous Rainforest Cultural Heritage, handed down since millennium within the many different Traditional Language Groups. These comprise 20 Traditional Owner Tribal groupings with over 100 clans and family groupings. Over 80 legal entities represent Land People and Culture.
In November 2012, the Wet Tropics World Heritage Area was re-listed to formally include its cultural values. This listing recognises that Rainforest Aboriginal heritage is unique to the Wet Tropics and is a remarkable and continuous Indigenous connection with a tropical rainforest environment.
Wet Tropics Biodiversity
Because of the enormous diversity in altitude and climate, the Wet Tropics region is truly a biodiversity hot spot of global significance.
Directly descended from Gondwana Land, pockets of rainforest in this region have survived 8 major stages of evolutionary change over 415 million years and have more life forms with primitive characteristics than anywhere else in the world.
These origins, along with the varied climate and the dramatic shape of the land, combine to create the perfect conditions for mega-biodiversity.
The Wet Tropics contains half of Australia’s bird species, one third of the continent’s mammals and about 3,000 plant species.
Endemic and Rare Species
The Wet Tropics is home to numerous endemic species, which means that they are found nowhere else in the world; many are rare and threatened plants and animals. Of particular interest is the Southern Cassowary, the Mahogany Glider and the Lumholtz Tree Kangaroo, a kangaroo which actually lives in the treetops of the threatened Mabi Forest.
The endemic and rare species don’t all live in protected areas. Visit the Rainforest Reserves website and learn about the Magnificent Brood Frog or the Northern Greater Glider or the Red Goshawk threatened by the Chalumbin Wind Project. https://www.rainforestreserves.org.au/
The ecosystems of the Wet Tropics region have also evolved over thousands of years through active Aboriginal interaction with the land and management of its resources. The plants and animals of the region are a fundamental and integral part of many aspects of the life and culture of Traditional Owners.
Biodiversity and Climate Change
Due to its diversity and the unique warm and wet climatic conditions and altitudinal variation, it is anticipated that the Wet Tropics region will be a really important refuge for quite a number of species in a changing climate. For example, species from further west may move into the Wet Tropics as it becomes drier. Species that currently call the coastal areas ‘home’ may move up the mountain slopes to cooler locations.
Threats to Biodiversity
Although 35% of the Wet Tropics region is in the World Heritage Area, the precious and unique plants and animals are still not adequately protected. There are many threats which, unless dealt with, will continue to erode the extraordinary biodiversity values of this region.
Habitat destruction and fragmentation are top of the list as they destroy ‘homes’ and limit the ability of animals to move and interbreed. Pests and weeds, which are rampant in this warm and wet climate, are another significant threat, while pollution, changing fire regimes and changes to waterways also play a part.
Protecting Biodiversity
Australia is in a unique position to protect the biodiversity of this region. Of the 17 ‘megadiverse’ countries, only 2 are developed. Australia’s low population and continental sovereignty provide a unique opportunity for Australia to be world leaders in the protection of the amazing spectrum of plant and animal life that call this region home.
Everyone has a role to play in keeping their footprint as light as possible, respecting the right of other species to exist and flourish, as well as sharing information about the importance of our plants and animals with future generations. The ecological, economic, cultural and social fabric of our Wet Tropics lives depends on this.
The Wet Tropics Bioregion
The Wet Tropics Bioregion, although only accounting for 0.26% of the total area of Australia, conserves a large proportion of Australia’s biodiversity, as demonstrated in the table below (from Goosem, 2002).
% of Australian Total
Wet Tropics Bioregion land area
0.26%
Animals
Mammals
35%
Birds
40%
Frogs
29%
Reptiles
20%
Freshwater fish
42%
Butterflies
58%
Plants
Vascular plants
26%
Ferns
65%
Cycads
21%
Conifers
37%
Orchids
30%
NB: the Wet Tropics bioregion (ca. 2 million hectares) does not fully align with the Wet Tropics NRM region (2.2 million hectares), and notably does not include the Upper Herbert .In either case, the rivers of this area all flow into the Great Barrier Reef.
Goosem, S. (2002). “Wet Tropics of Queensland World Heritage Area – including an Update of the Original Wet Tropics of Queensland Nomination Dossier”. Wet Tropics Management Authority, Cairns, QLD.
Our People of the Forest
Many Aboriginal people in the region have a mutual obligation or totemic relationship with certain animals or places.
The ecosystems of the Wet Tropics region have evolved over thousands of years through active Aboriginal interaction with the land.
Activities such as fire management, hunting, gathering, harvesting of materials for shelter, tools, ceremony and art and craft have always been integral to the ecology of the Wet Tropics.
The plants and animals of the region are of great importance to Aboriginal culture and there are many customs, stories, songs and dances associated with them. They are a fundamental and integral part of many aspects of the life and culture of Traditional Owners.
Traditional Owners don’t view the plants and animals of their landscape as resources to be exploited. Looking after Country and all the species that live there is a natural obligation for Rainforest Aboriginal People.
Many Aboriginal groups in the region have a totemic relationship with particular animals or plants which are considered their totems.
This means they must abide by the many social and spiritual responsibilities related to that totem and respect and conserve the totem by refraining from eating that species.
Traditional Owner Concerns
Traditional Owners across the whole region have grave concerns about things that threaten the health of the plants and animals of the Wet Tropics, including vegetation clearing, habitat fragmentation, pests and weeds, urban development and climate change.
There is a sense that there isn’t enough awareness of the cultural importance of the plants and animals of this region, and they would like to create more awareness.
They also want to be part of the solution and be respectfully involved in, and benefit socially, culturally and economically from research, planning, monitoring and management of plants and animals.
Please note the green areas on this map. It is such a small area. Please help to save it!
It is now more than 10 days since the massive rally at Ravenshoe, Far North Queensland, recorded by Nick Cater of the Menzies Research Centre. The question now arises as to whether Tania Plibersek, the Minister for the Environment and Water, will again postpone her decision on the fate of this extremely special forested area right next to the Wet Tropics World Heritage Area. The week before the rally, Ark Energy decided to submit a variation to their project. The project had been the subject of a Public Environmental Report. They even changed the name of the project. Locals still know it as Chalumbin Wind Farm. Locals have never confused the Wet Tropics World Heritage Area with the Ark Energy Project Site.
A map of the changes is given below, followed by my response to a Press Statement by Ark Energy. Lastly, I enclose the Statement itself in italics.
Copy of map on the project website
Last Ditch Stand by Ark Energy to Build the Chalumbin Wind Farm
It is only days before the Federal Environment Department were due to announce their decision about Ark Energy’s plan to build a wind farm near Ravenshoe in Far North Queensland. In their desperation, they have even renamed the wind farm and modified the project.
I have not been able to find any reference to the submitted design change or the name change on the EBPC site. I wonder if this is a back door route to keep other Ministers happy.
The site of the proposed wind development, whatever its name, lies within the catchment area of the Great Barrier Reef. Parts of the eastern boundary of the site are contiguous with the World Heritage Wet Tropics Area. This area was named by the IUCN as the second most valuable natural site in the world. It has been recognised for a long time that a much wider barrier protection area is needed next to the World Heritage Area. The ecological value of wet tropical forest is increased by the presence of wet sclerophyll and other forest beside it and should form connectivity between the sections of the World Heritage Area.
Ark Energy divided the proposed “Chalumbin wind farm” into two stages just before issuing the Public Environment Report for comment by the public.
Stage 1 turbines, roads and other infrastructure were mostly in dense, biodiverse forested areas. Stage 2 had areas of more open woodland where cattle grazed and there were some weed and pest infested areas. The forest and waterways of Stage 2 area were still of major importance from a biodiversity viewpoint but not as critical. As a last-ditch stand, Ark Energy has put in a variation of the project to government. If they had really wished to improve the impact of the project, it might have made sense to remove the turbines of Stage I and keep Stage 2.
But, No! Their new concept has basically removed turbines from the Stage 2 area and left the turbines of Stage 1. In other words, they have not removed the major environmental impacts of the proposed project but are making it sound as if they had. Their statements are extremely misleading and only careful perusal of their press release makes this apparent. It was not until we had a clear map of the turbine removal and remaining sites that the real situation could be seen. The press release states that the project completely avoids wet sclerophyll forest adjoining the World Heritage Area. Further information in the document states that “These changes reduce the impacts of the development to 0.7% of wet sclerophyll within 10 km of the project area.” These are carefully worded statements and are very misleading.
The claim is made that “After rehabilitation of the temporary construction disturbance the wind farm would have an operational footprint of approximately 57.6 hectares.” This suggests that full rehabilitation can happen relatively early and that the roads will be mostly rehabilitated. Even if rehabilitation planting could start immediately after the main construction phase, the restoration of actual habitat takes time. However, the roads are still needed for maintenance activities such as lubrication of the turbines, replacement of blades and ultimately removal of the entire wind turbine. I very much doubt that the area of cleared land will become only 57.6 hectares for a long time. In addition, about half a million tons of concrete would be used to form the bases for the turbines and these would not be removed or rehabilitated if the development was to go ahead. Neither will the deep scars on the landscape be rehabilitated.
The offsets are a joke as are so many other statements made in their press release. Offsets should be additional areas, not areas that are left alone. Actually, as I will explain in another blog, the “offset areas” may be subject to impact from the project. The impact assessments do not take into account the loss of soil water by the project.
Do not be fooled! Yet again Ark Energy showed pictures of cattle grazing in areas not impacted by the turbines, roads and other infrastructure. It should be remembered that the cattle stations range from heavily forested land to the east and open forest and pasture to the west.
The whole press statement has been written to make it sound as if they are really caring for our precious biodiversity when they are not. When our biodiversity is lost it is gone forever. It is not only the endangered species that are affected. There are no ways to rehabilitate or offset the loss.
By cutting down and dividing forest which currently works hard to sequester carbon, slow and clean and store water and cool the earth, the gains made by any renewable, unreliable electricity produced are greatly diminished. Indeed, the roads and the giant fan turbines will dry out large areas of forest and turn them into carbon sources rather than carbon sinks. It is quite possible that the carbon dioxide reductions afforded by wind power will be negated by the impact of the project itself. Will the forest itself be destroyed by poor climate change mitigation?
Media release Tuesday 5 September 2023
Controversial wind farm project in Queensland redesigned and renamed.
Environmental impacts reduced to low levels.
A proposed wind farm in north Queensland has shed its controversial name and responded to environmental concerns with a drastic redesign that halves its size.
The former Chalumbin Wind Farm has been renamed Wooroora Station Wind Farm, after its host property Wooroora Pastoral Station, a large cattle-grazing property, and has undergone a drastic redesign in response to concerns about the visual and construction impacts on the property, which is located next to national parks that form part of the Wet Tropics of Queensland World Heritage Area.
Forty-four of 86 wind turbines have been removed, halving the size of the project, and leaving a layout of 42 wind turbines. The new design includes a minimum buffer of 1 km to neighbouring World Heritage areas, and completely avoids wet sclerophyll forest adjoining the World Heritage Area as well as all known magnificent brood frog habitat.
A comprehensive nature positive plan includes rehabilitation of most of the construction disturbance and the establishment of magnificent brood frog nature reserves totalling 1,255 hectares. It also includes First Nations-led fire management and control of widespread feral pests (pigs, dogs, and cats) and invasive weeds, to improve the host property’s habitat for key species including the northern greater glider, masked owl, and spectacled flying-fox.
“These changes reduce the impacts to very low levels. We believe the benefits to the natural environment of this project far outweigh its impacts. Not least of them more clean energy into the grid in a relatively short time period and a significant improvement in habitat for protected species on private land adjacent to protected forests,” said Ark Energy General Manager Development for Queensland, Anthony Russo.
“After extensive public consultation, we have listened to feedback from the community, government, and the traditional owners, and made changes to the project to meet expectations. We look forward to working with all key stakeholders to achieve positive outcomes and we are committed to getting this project right from the outset and delivering on world’s best practice in the energy sector.
“We must navigate the tension between the construction required to transition to a clean energy system and protecting nature, and this project’s evolution offers an excellent case study of major design iterations to achieve nature positive outcomes.”
After rehabilitation of the temporary construction disturbance the wind farm would have an operational footprint of approximately 57.6 hectares.
It is hoped that the new name will also help to address a misunderstanding that the development could impact a nearby wilderness area also known as ‘Chalumbin’.
“Some opponents took advantage of the former name to spread misinformation and make unsubstantiated claims about what kind of habitat and species are in the project area and therefore the environmental impacts of the development. The reality is the project is NOT within the World Heritage area and it is important that the project is represented accurately, and the public have the facts,” said Mr Russo.
A variation has been lodged with the Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water, which is currently assessing the proposal. More information on the project is available online at wooroorastationwindfarm.com.au
On 9th September, a rally was held in Ravenshoe. Theoretically it was only days before the Federal Minister for Environment was due to announce her decision on the status of the proposed “Chalumbin Wind Farm”. I fail to see how the word farm applies to the wind turbine industry. Farming involves life that grows and reproduces itself. The proposed wind farm will only kill our beloved forest and all the creatures that live in it – death and destruction while doing very little to help mitigate climate change. The forest itself is doing a much better job while not costing Australia millions of dollars.
At the 11th hour the project proponent Ark Energy has submitted a change to the project. What happens next is unknown up here on the Atherton Tablelands. The fight continues.
Hundreds of people joined the rally which was recorded by Nick Cater of the Menzies Research Centre. The link below takes you to his video on ADH TV which is then followed by his interview with the wonderful Stephen Wilson of Queensland University explaining why companies like Ark Energy are so keen to take on these projects.
Decades ago, I worked as an environmental scientist based in Hong Kong. I still stay in touch with some of my staff, who now are very experienced in their careers. I had heard that Hong Kong people were being warned about buying seafood, particularly seafood from Japan due to the release of water from Fukushima. I received an interesting article yesterday and quote from a section of it in the original Chinese together with the translation. I have omitted the first paragraphs. The references vary in their language but Note 2 is in English.
I jump to the last paragraphs examining the above 7:30 report.
“Of course, you can still argue that the Japanese figures are fake. Then you can also check out Korean news. According to Yonhap news yesterday, the South Korean government has conducted emergency radiation tests at 30 points in the sea after Japan discharged nuclear waste water last Thursday, all samples met safety standards, and so far no radiation has been detected in seafood or imported seafood in South Korea. (Note 2)
In fact, South Korea has never believed in Japan, or even the International Atomic Energy Agency, so since July, South Korea has done its own water quality monitoring at 200 ocean points, and Japan is not welcome. But strangely enough, China has not joined the monitoring ranks like South Korea, just insist on scaring ghosts and doing “big internal propaganda” in mainland China and Hong Kong, letting writers like “financial writers” spread false information, lest the world will cause panic.
“So we can assume” that the central government is playing a big game of chess, aimed at “teaching the Chinese people a lesson in popular science”, guiding the public to snatch up Geiger counters that test nuclear radiation, and then looking back to discover that their own home’s radiation is more than 900 times stronger than Tokyo (note 3) – perhaps China’s building materials problem – the reason behind it is too heartening.”
As expected, the South Koreans have not been able to find fault with seafood or seawater. One has to question the motives of countries who spread fear about radiation when these same countries build and sell nuclear power plants. Is it a question answered as it so often is “Just follow the money trail”?
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) was created in 1957 in response to the deep fears and expectations generated by the discoveries and diverse uses of nuclear technology. The Agency was set up as the world’s “Atoms for Peace” organization within the United Nations family. From the beginning, it was given the mandate to work with its Member States and multiple partners worldwide to promote safe, secure and peaceful nuclear technologies.
The IAEA’s headquarters are in Vienna, Austria. It also has two regional offices located in Toronto, Canada (since 1979) and Tokyo, Japan (since 1984). The Agency runs laboratories specialized in nuclear technology in Vienna and Seibersdorf, Austria, and in Monaco.
Due to the involvement of both my husband and I in the regulation of uranium mining in Australia, we have a few friends who have worked for the IAEA in the laboratories and in the cleanup of mining areas in parts of the old Soviet Union. One of them had his office across the corridor from the man most responsible for the data on Chernobyl. David did a short consultancy in the Vienna offices. The scientists of the IAEA take their responsibility for nuclear safety very seriously and come from dozens of nations.
When Japan proposed the water discharge from the Fukushima nuclear plant, the IAEA examined the strategy very closely and gave its blessing but insisted that the discharge be monitored very carefully. Japan gave itself a tough standard of 1500 Bq/L knowing that the WHO standard for drinking water was 10,000Bq/L. A lot of data is available online which I have viewed. It is possible to see the data for every tank on site. Some of the tanks containing water cleaned up early in the process contain a fraction too much caesium isotopes. This water will be cleaned up again before release. The IAEA has a website that shows the monitoring data during the discharge in real time.
A snapshot in time (as I am writing) is shown below:
Green dots show that the data indicates that everything is OK. A red dot would indicate that the nuclear company, Tepco, should take action. A grey dot shows that a pump is not operating.
The water after dilution is shown as 207 Bq/L, way below the level Japan set for itself and only 2% of the WHO drinking water standard. It is about this amount each time I looked at the data.
What fascinated me was that seawater has slightly more radiation than the treated water as measured in cps. Although details are not given, Geiger type counters probably do not pick up tritium as the beta rays are so weak. These measurements are used to ensure other radioactive elements such as caesium are not being discharged. As the data shows, the levels in both the treated water and the seawater are very low.
In my last couple of posts, when trying to picture what enormous numbers mean, it was shown that 3 big teaspoons of natural rain falling on my head in Australia would contain about a million tritium atoms. This sounds really scary but as I will gradually show, it is of no concern. Washing our hair would increase the amount.
Tritium forms in our atmosphere every day when cosmic rays hit gases in the air, mostly nitrogen. It is washed down into rivers and streams to the ocean as well as falling directly into the ocean. Tritium forms a minute part of the background radiation that surrounds us always. Life evolved on Earth at a time when background radiation levels were 5, maybe even 10 times higher than today. All life with its complex biochemistry deals with low radiation levels so well, that there was never a need to be able to sense radiation and hence avoid it.
Tritium is even less dangerous than most sources of ionizing radiation. It gently sends out low energy beta rays. Too much of anything can kill us. High dose radiation is dangerous, and we need protection from it. The bigger the ray particle and/or the energy involved, determines just how harmful various forms of radiation are. Tritium’s beta rays are low energy electrons. It has a half life of about twelve and a half years. The rays are so weak, they cannot penetrate the skin. If swallowed most of it leaves as water in our urine within a day or so. If tritium water vapour is breathed in the World Health Organisation standard for drinking water is 10,00, it leaves again within minutes.
This is an ironic look at statements made out to be scientific fact. Most of the fear about radiation is not true and certainly not scientific fact.
I am still scared! A million sounds such a lot!
If you read my earlier posts on tritium, you may recall that 1 TU (Tritium Unit) is one tritium atom in 1018 hydrogen atoms. This is far smaller than one person among all the people on earth. You need to visualize one person only on as many planets as there are people on earth all with similar populations as Earth. Three big teaspoons of water contain 12*1023 hydrogen atoms. One million in 12*1023 is equivalent to 1 in 1018. It is mind boggling small.
Australia receives between 2 and 3 TU in rain falling on our land. 1TU is equivalent to 0.118 Bq /L of water. One becquerel (Bq)is defined as the activity of a quantity of radioactive material in which one nucleus decays per second. The World Health Organization standard for drinking water is 10,000 Bq/L. To reach the same levels of radioactivity in 3 big teaspoons of our rainwater you would need to drink about a quarter of a million litres of water in one day. Whoops! A small fraction of that amount of water as just H2O would kill you.
The human body has 30 to 700*1012 cells. Another enormous number.
So single strand DNA breaks occur naturally in the whole human body over 1016 times a day. This is another enormous number. Our bodies repair this damage.
These slides have been taken from a talk I gave to a group of CSIRO alumni.
The message is that the radioactivity associated with the Fukushima discharge will not harm anything physically. Fear may cause damage to many livelihoods.
The final step: making sure to put numbers in their right context. Are we looking at the whole picture? What works for some people may not work so well for others.
There is a tremendous amount of excellent technical information about radioactivity on the web, but it is often hard for anyone without that specific training to understand. There are also a lot of misleading statements and conclusions on the web. These even appear in peer-reviewed scientific journal articles such as the Chinese paper given as a link in my blog Tritium Trivia. This paper showed the results of modelling various releases of tritium water from Fukushima. Unfortunately, the last step was forgotten. Showing great expanses of red all over the Pacific Ocean would lead nearly everybody to say “How terrible! Japan is polluting the Pacific Ocean with radioactive material.” However, at the end of the document the background levels of tritium in the Pacific Ocean are quoted and this puts the release data into perspective. But nowhere in the paper was the context of the data given, that is that the levels of tritium were so low compared to normal background levels that they would be impossible to distinguish from the background variability.
I have made the decision that I will try to make my blogs as easy to read as I can so that they are suitable for most users of the web. This is not easy with technical information and my background of writing technical reports. Word has an editor function that allows you to calculate the readability of the document. Yesterday, for the very first time I managed to achieve my goal.
I was so excited that I quickly finished the blog and published it only to realize within minutes that I had forgotten a crucial step. I had jumped to the conclusion too quickly and not fully put the information into context. I rapidly edited the post and republished it. However, my subscribers received a set of comments that were not quite right. In my joy of finding a way to explain just how low tritium levels can be, I forgot just how many hydrogen atoms are in a little water. 18 g of water (one mole for the technocrats) contains 6*1023 molecules of water, 12*1023 hydrogen atoms and about a million tritium atoms. This is still just as teeny in radiation terms but the numbers 1 and a million sound so different. 1TU is only 0.118 Bq/L. I will explain what this means in future blogs.
I apologize to my subscribers. At my age you are allowed to call it a senior moment. However, I suspect that in our current haste over climate change mitigation, we are all making similar mistakes. We do the first part of the work but then forget to really look at the big picture and put everything into context.
We all have trouble looking at very big or small numbers and understanding their size and importance. I am one of those lucky people who have less trouble than most. This has had its downsides too. As a child I loved mathematics and algebra. I saw the patterns in numbers easily and it was all a big game to me until I was bullied at a small country school for being different. I was tied to a post, day after day, mocked at, spat at, and even pummeled with food scraps.
Now I am a senior, maths is not so easy, but I will try and make some numbers about radiation levels easier to understand.
Tritium is a natural substance.
Tritium is formed in minute quantities every day in our atmosphere. Cosmic rays from space hit the gases in the air, mainly nitrogen, forming tritium. Tritium is a type of hydrogen atom with 2 extra neutrons in its nucleus. Tritium quickly becomes part of a water molecule. Instead of a water molecule with 2 atoms of ordinary common hydrogen with one atom of oxygen (H2O), a few molecules of water are HTO. The chemistry of both is virtually identical. The mixture comes down as rain.
Just how many water molecules have tritium in them? Well, this is where the big and little numbers come in, making the situation hard to visualize. A new unit was created to help scientists assess the meaning of various concentrations. 1 TU or tritium unit equals 1 tritium atom in 1018 atoms of hydrogen. 1018 is 1 followed by 18 zeros. I find that hard to visualize. Let’s try. There are 8 billion people on Earth, that is 8,000,000,000 people. That is only 8 with 9 zeros. So, we have to imagine the same number of planets as there are people on the earth, with populations similar to earth to be in the right ballpark. So TUs are like one tritium or one person out of all those people on all those planets put together. I still find that hard to visualize, but it does tell me that finding 1 tritium atom in all those ordinary hydrogen atoms looks impossible. Yet scientists around the world can and do measure tritium levels in rain, river and ocean water and ground water. In Australia, ANSTO publishes some of this data.
So how high are tritium levels in rain? It is seasonal and dependent on rainfall patterns. In Australia it is 2 to 3 TU. Most numbers vary from 1 to 10 TU. Nuclear bomb testing increased tritium levels in rain for a time but still at levels in the same sort of range, definitely measurable but extremely small.
So, what does this actually mean? What are the chances of one tritiated water molecule falling on your head? 18 g of water (3 big teaspoons) contain 6 *1023 molecules of water. There would be a million tritium atoms in this rainwater.
Yes, if it rains on your hair, you will get natural tritium in your hair.
Before I write about the mechanisms all life on Earth uses to repair itself from any harm caused by low dose radiation, I feel I must present some information about tritium and the current political uproar about release of water at Fukushima in Japan.
Japan’s biggest seafood customer, China, has decided to ban seafood from Japan, followed by South Korea. New Caledonia has decided to ban swimming in the ocean.
Japan has been storing treated water from the damaged Fukushima nuclear power plants in large tanks. There are about a thousand tanks containing 1.2 million tonnes of water.
Japan has begun releasing treated wastewater used to cool down the nuclear reactors damaged by the tsunami in March 2011. The water has been treated to remove radioactive material, but small quantities remain. Tritium is hard to remove as it forms part of a few of the water molecules. There are very small quantities of carbon 14 and there may be even smaller quantities of strontium and iodine isotopes. Most of the latter were dispersed by May 2011.
Tritium is formed naturally every day in our atmosphere and added to the oceans and land as rainwater. Any taken into our bodies comes out fairly quickly in our urine. Radiation from tritium is weak beta rays. These rays do not travel far and are stopped by skin. Unless the dosage is extremely high, our bodies quickly repair any damage caused.
The release from Japan into the Pacific Ocean can be made to sound bad and scary. “But it actually isn’t. Similar releases have occurred around the world for six decades, and nothing bad has ever happened.
“The radioactivity in the Fukushima water is almost entirely tritium, a type of hydrogen. For scale, the Pacific Ocean contains 8,400 grams of pure tritium, while Japan will release 0.06 grams of tritium every year. The minuscule amount of extra radiation won’t make the tiniest jot of difference. A lifetime’s worth of seafood caught a few kilometres from the ocean outlet has the tritium radiation equivalent of one bite of a banana.” according to Nigel Marks is a Professor in Physics at Curtin University
Tony Hooker, Director of the Centre for Radiation Research, Education and Innovation at The University of Adelaide says: “I would like to reiterate that the release of tritium from nuclear facilities into waterways has and is undertaken world-wide with no evidence of environmental or human health implications. “
Tony Irwin, an Honorary Associate Professor at the Australian National University is also Technical Director of SMR Nuclear Technology Pty Ltd and Chair of Engineers Australia Sydney Division Nuclear Engineering Panel:“There is an understandable perception that all radioactive materials are always and everywhere dangerous, particularly liquid waste, but not all radioactive materials are dangerous. The Fukushima water discharge will contain only harmless tritium and is not a unique event. Nuclear power plants worldwide have routinely discharged water containing tritium for over 60 years without harm to people or the environment, most at higher levels than the 22 TBq per year planned for Fukushima.
“For comparison the Kori nuclear plant in South Korea discharged 91 TBq in 2019, more than four times the planned Fukushima discharge and the French reprocessing plant at La Hague discharged 11,400 TBq in 2018 into the English Channel, more than twelve times the total contents of all the tanks at Fukushima, again without harm to people or the environment.
“It is important that the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has carried out an independent and transparent review of the procedures and equipment for discharges and its comprehensive report issued in July 2023 confirms that the release will have a negligible radiological effect on people and the environment. The IAEA will maintain a continuous on-site presence on site to independently monitor discharges.
“More tritium is created in the atmosphere than is produced by nuclear power reactors, and it then falls as rain. Ten times more tritium falls as rain on Japan every year than will be discharged. The discharge limit for release of radioactive water at Fukushima is 1/7th of the World Health Organisation standard for drinking water. The discharge is ultra-conservative.”
A paper was published in August 2021 by seven Chinese authors with assistance from authors in the Netherlands, Ukraine, South Korea, and Spain with scary looking figures of their modelling of potential release scenarios by Japan. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0025326X2100549X
On closer examination problematic zones were about 0.1 Becquerel(Bq)/m3 of sea water. These scenarios were all assuming much faster dumping of the water than Japan actually plans. The paper itself gives the background concentration of tritium in the surface water of the North Pacific Ocean as around 50 Bq/m3 (0.2% increase, less than natural variation). Good luck monitoring any difference during the release except at the actual release point.
Japan plans to dilute the water in the tanks before release with a maximum concentration of tritium in the release of 1,500 Bq/l. The WHO drinking water standard is 10,000 Bq/l.
The IAEA will monitor the release at various points in the dilution and release system. The data is available at
As I write, the tritium concentration of the discharge is 207 Bq/l. This is way less than the tough standard Japan set itself of 1,500Bq/l. The gamma ray monitoring ensures the water does not contain other radioactive contaminants.
Sometimes I can hold two opposing viewpoints in my head about the same topic. I used to blame this on my birthdate as I am a Pisces. Some people believe Pisces people are best represented by two or even three fish with their tails tied together trying to swim in different directions. I now know the term for this phenomenon, and we can all suffer from it. It’s called Cognitive Dissonance and can arise when our behavior does not match our values or when fears generated in our primitive emotional brain argue with our rational brain.
We have all been fed false fears about low dose radiation since the 1950s. This is sad because these fears fight with the scientific knowledge we have now about ionizing radiation. Nowhere is this seen more clearly than in Japan and Germany.
From a Japanese tourist brochure: Misasa Onsen is an old hot spring with a history of over 850 years. Its spring quality is one of the highest radon contents globally and has excellent healing effects on the body and mind. People have loved it for a long time, including those who come to the hot spring for medical treatment.
“Radon,” which is a weak form of radiation, is produced when radium is decomposed. The body’s metabolism becomes more active when exposed to radon, and the immune system and natural healing power are enhanced. In addition, when inhaled or drunk radon, it increases the antioxidant function and helps prevent aging and lifestyle-related diseases.
Misasakan Hotel pool in Misasa Onsen Japan
Radiation killed nobody at Fukushima, but the tsunami killed about 20,000 people. Yet the press keeps describing it as the Fukushima nuclear disaster.
Germany has more radon baths than any other country. They are also particularly popular in Eastern Europe. There are an increasing number of scientific studies looking at doses and ailments treated. Pain relief from muscular skeletal diseases is well studied.
Despite all their spas which are being used more and more:
The German Solution – Close Nuclear Power Stations, Knock Down Ancient Forests to Mine Coal.
The figure below shows a proposed mechanism of action when radon is used to treat patients with chronic musculoskeletal diseases (mostly ankylosing spondylitis, osteoarthritis or rheumatoid arthritis).
If you are interested in digging deeper, try this German 2020 review paper about Radon Spas: Radon Exposure—Therapeutic Effect and Cancer Riskhttps://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33396815/
I have been having so much trouble writing this blog. There are so many people out there who can communicate in a clearer fashion than I can. Why would my blog make any difference to a world that needs so much help? Both you dear reader, and I need to remember that if we even educate or influence one other person, we have helped to change the world for the better.
It is impossible to share with others everything that I have learnt on this nuclear journey of mine, but I must try. Without nuclear power, we will find ourselves going back to the dark ages which was such a cruel world.
Renewable energy technologies can only take us so far. There are three major reasons for this. The first is energy density. Wind and solar power cannot provide enough energy to both manufacture themselves, mine the materials they require, recycle some of their components and still produce electricity for other purposes. Nuclear can. Secondly, the resources to make enough wind and solar for both the developed and the developing world don’t seem to exist. Basic physics ensures that the energy required to completely recycle components is enormous.
Finally, the land requirements for wind and solar are huge but not impossible. Unfortunately, to find enough land, we destroy or badly harm biodiversity of all types including forests, wetlands, mangroves and our precious and diminishing arable soils. Nuclear power requires less space despite the stupidity about radiation caused by fear.
Nuclear Now is a 2022 American documentary film, directed and co-written by Oliver Stone. It is a film that I would like everybody to watch. It is very long film and really has too much information for one sitting. I have provided a link to the film below. Do make use of the link while it still works.
There is also a book that I would love everybody to read. Jack Devaney makes some points that I believe should be considered by regulators in every country. The book is finally available as a paperback from a number of sources. It is a big book but even reading the beginning chapters and the final chapters is more than worthwhile.
The book is not as negative as the title “Why Nuclear Power has been a Flop”suggests. The book supplies many fascinating insights.
“Jack Devanney is the principal engineer and architect of the ThorCon molten salt reactor power plant. Since 2011 he has pursued his idea of using shipyard construction technology to mass-produce safe, inexpensive power plants that can bring the benefits of electricity to all the world, with no CO2 emissions. He married the advanced nuclear technology developed and demonstrated by Oak Ridge Laboratory with his own engineering experiences with ships, power plants, and energy.” – Amazon.com
Jack also speaks on Decouple and has lots of information and fascinating ideas on his Geordian Knot News. http://jackdevanney.substack.com
Low dose radiation has harmed few people, but the fear of radiation has killed thousands. I will back up this statement in future blogs.
Why do we fear radiation? Is it because we can’t see it, we can’t smell it, we can’t hear it? Yet many types of radiation are all around us and have been since the beginning of life on earth.
There are most types of radiation form a spectrum, yet evolution has only provided a very narrow window for our senses. We often call this window the visible spectrum, the colours of the rainbow, the light our eyes can see. Yet, if it was so important for our health that we needed to avoid all forms of radiation, why hasn’t evolution given us the tools to measure its intensity?
Advances in man’s technology have now provided the tools to measure the smallest amounts of low dose ionising radiation, tools such as Geiger counters and scintillation counters. I used scintillation counting extensively when I worked in biochemical and medical research.
We now know that our planet is bombarded from space by cosmic rays every day. The core of our planet is radioactive, and this helped to make life on earth possible by making the planet a little warmer. No matter where we live, radiation comes from the rocks below us. It is in the food we eat and the water we drink. The background levels in some places on earth are much higher than those in Australia.
Potassium is very important for the health of our bodies. All of this potassium contains a proportion of the radioactive form of potassium, potassium 40. So, every time we eat a banana or a potato or indeed get enough veggies or protein in our diet, we take in potassium 40.
Uranium, a word that puts fear in many people’s hearts, is absolutely ubiquitous in our world. It is everywhere. At one stage of my career, I had a team of people and a laboratory truck that travelled all over the Northern Territory sampling streams and ground water. The lowest concentrations of uranium we ever saw were in waters downstream of Ranger and Jabiluka mine sites. Our radiological standards in Australia are pretty tough but even so the drinking water standards are tougher still. Uranium is far more dangerous as a heavy metal then as a source of radiation. Heavy metals do damage to our kidneys.
Instead of protecting us by making ionising radiation visible to us, evolution has protected us with biochemical mechanisms that prevent, and repair damage created by low dose radiation. When life began on earth, the radiation levels were at least four times greater than they are now and may have even been even 10 times greater.
We now know far more about the effects of low dose radiation on people and other forms of life than we do about most chemicals in our environment. I will share some of that information in future blogs.
I have been procrastinating on writing this particular blog. The day I first started researching and writing, Queensland Government announced that there were now 12 renewable energy zones. These new zones are nodes where renewable energy projects are now built or on the way and are subsections of the three major Renewable Energy Zones.
The SuperGrid is all of the elements in the electricity system, including the poles, wires, solar, wind and storage that provides Queenslanders with clean, reliable and affordable power for generations.
My first comment on the Queensland Plan is that many critical elements of the plan will need to be replaced before or soon after 2050. Solar systems and wind turbines do not last for generations. Should we all assume that the wind and solar systems will be replaced on the same sites in the future?
So, developing nations will have no choice other than to use fossil fuels? Or do we plan to deny them even basic energy requirements to lift them out of poverty?
Another whoops! Can we really attract the level of investment needed to build all the infrastructure needed in Australia? We need $1.5 trillion in 7 years – Nick Cater has recently questioned this assumption in the Australian newspaper article Renewables vision is blind to the cost of calamity.
The detailed documents about windfarms in Far North Queensland usually state that the sites will be rehabilitated in 25 to 30 years’ time. For example, the huge concrete bases of the wind turbines proposed for Chalumbin will be left on site. Plans for the removal and storage of waste tend to be optimistic, nebulous and assume recycling will occur.
Anyway, here are more excerpts from the SuperGrid plan for Queensland.
Renewable investments: … Given the variable nature and capacity factors of renewable generation, around 25,000 megawatts (MW) of large-scale renewable generation (total) and around 7,000 MW of new rooftop solar generation is required to meet forecast demand in 2035 (without reliance on coal-fired generation). Significant large-scale renewable generation, beyond the 25,000 MW, will be required to support large new loads, including the emergence of an export-scale hydrogen industry or high electrification scenarios….
Storage, firming and dispatchable capacity: Queensland will need at least 6,000 MW of long duration storage …, complemented by approximately 3,000 MW of grid-scale storage and up to 3,000 MW of new low-to-zero emission gas-fuelled plant…The large-scale, long duration assets include pumped hydro energy storage … Borumba…and Pioneer-Burdekin…
Major network transmission and system strength: Queensland’s electricity system will become increasingly decentralised, and the transmission network must evolve to transport renewable energy around the state to when and where it is needed. Four new high-voltage (up to 500kV) backbone transmission projects will be constructed by the mid-2030s…
Phase 1 QREZ development Northern QREZ region The government has invested $40 million (from the $145 million QREZ funding allocation) to upgrade transmission infrastructure between Cairns and Townsville. This investment will provide up to 500 MW of renewable energy connection potential in Far North Queensland. Several investors have shown interest in this area, with the 157 MW Kaban Wind Farm under construction (expected to be operational in 2023).
More than $10 billion has been invested in Queensland renewables since 2015.
Ref: Queensland SuperGrid Infrastructure Blueprint – September 2022
Humans have lived through a range of temperature changes. It is recent civilization that we are trying to save with people living all over the earth in great numbers needing a lot of energy not least in the form of food. We tend to forget how hard life was trying to have enough energy to survive even after we discovered fire. For most of our existence, the only way for a few individuals to get ahead a little was to use slaves or beasts of burden or warriors. These living energy sources were fed as little as possible or used as canon fodder. They rarely lived very long.
Then, only a few centuries ago, we discovered much more energy dense fossil fuels. Suddenly, we could abhor slave labour, care about animal welfare and we could all have good shelter and food. Poverty has been slowly disappearing in many parts of the world.
Our modern food production is very dependent on a stable climate. It is also very energy intensive. A few degrees of extra heat or a little less rain has devastating effects on production levels.
How do we balance energy needs with maintaining a stable climate? The critical action at this time is lowering greenhouse gas emissions. To do this, the biggest tasks are the electrification of many processes as possible, decarbonization of electricity generation and carbon capture and storage. What is the only energy efficient and cost-effective method of carbon capture and storage? As discussed in my previous blog natural systems are wonderful at carbon capture and storage. Let nature do its work!
Hydro, wind, solar, nuclear, and geothermal power plants all use up energy and produce relatively small amounts of carbon dioxide in their manufacture, construction, demolition, and recycling. Energy is used in the mining for their manufacture. Some require lots of backup storage or have other firming or conversion requirements. All require transmission lines.
What are Queensland’s Plans?
Queensland Government plans to deliver:
50% renewable energy target by 2030
30% emissions reduction below 2005 levels by 2030
70% renewable energy by 2032
80% renewable energy by 2035
zero net emissions by 2050.
Far North Queensland has two wind farms, Mt Emerald (180MW) and Windy Hill(24MW), with a third, the Kaban Green Power Hub under construction. Under Phase 1, the government has invested $40 million to upgrade the coastal 157 KV transmission infrastructure between Cairns and Townsville to 275KV. This investment will provide up to 500 MW of renewable energy connection potential in Far North Queensland. Several investors have shown interest in the area, with the $400 million 157 MW Kaban Wind Farm now under construction and expected to be operational this year. At Kaban there are 28 wind turbines which are 226m in height to the tip of the blade.
A photograph of Kaban Wind Farm taken Dec 2022. More roads and turbines can be seen in the distance.
Windy Hill has been running just over 20 years and has already needed to replace the wind turbine blades.
During the second half of last year, the Draft Public Environment Report was issued for the proposed Chalumbin Wind Farm on two grazing properties in Far North Queensland. These properties border the World Heritage Wet Tropics on the East and extend westward to the scattered woodland of the Einasleigh Uplands on the West. Early pictures of the site by Epuron showed cattle grazing in scattered woodland but in reality, most of the wind turbines were to be sited on mountain ridges close to the eastern boundary in dense eucalypt and transitional forest. The potential impacts from the project are substantial and wide-ranging including threats to endangered species and aboriginal cultural heritage.
The site of the proposed Chalumbin Wind farm.
Photos used in publicity about Chalumbin Wind Farm
Under the current Australian system, comments on a draft PER can only be submitted to the Project Proponent. The proponent then revises the document and sends the document plus the comments to The Federal Minister for the Environment. A decision on the Chalumbin project under the EPBC Act is yet to be issued and has already been postponed a few times. At one stage during the comment period, the Proponent put a full-page ad in the Cairns Post stating that they would welcome positive comments thus inferring that they would not accept negative comments.
A few locals have calculated the implications of the project from a carbon dioxide viewpoint. There were a number of omissions and critical mistakes in the Chalumbin PER about this topic such as equating carbon loads with carbon dioxide loads. This is a factor of 44 to 12.
Figures for the loss of forest carbon storage following clearance vary depending on the type of forest. The Chalumbin site is mostly pretty dense forest with good canopy cover for much of the areas where turbines are to be located. There are many trees with diameters of a metre or more. The carbon stored in these trees would be lost immediately if the trees are piled up and burnt or more slowly if the biomass is just allowed to rot.
Other losses following clearing include soil carbon, carbon from the roots and from soil biota. Estimates made on eucalypt plantations of soil carbon and root carbon loss suggest this can be double or more the above ground loss depending on the eucalypt species, the age of the trees and the rainfall.
Many studies suggest that natural forests are better at carbon sequestration than plantation eucalypts and that tropical wetter eucalypt forests are better still.
At Chalumbin, I have conservatively calculated that loss of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere during clearing will be about 2 million tonnes. Loss of sequestration over 20 years by this lost forest is 1.1 million tonnes or more. The carbon dioxide footprint of the wind turbines during their manufacture and transport to the site is about 300,000 tonnes. This is a total of 3.4 million tonnes.
The maximum savings in carbon dioxide made by replacing current power production with wind power at Chalumbin is 12 million tonnes of carbon dioxide over a period of 20 years assuming a capacity factor of 30%. The currently operating Mt Emerald Wind Farm has not achieved this capacity. So, this estimate should be dropped to 10 million tonnes or less.
This means that at least a third of the lowering of greenhouse gas emissions are lost by building a wind farm in this precious forest.
The losses don’t stop with Chalumbin.
Wind farm projects being proposed in the Wet Tropics Catchment Area are numerous and in areas of high biodiversity value, close to World Heritage areas and on the mountain ridges. This is death by a thousand cuts. The cumulative impacts from wind farm projects in the Wet Tropics Area will be unacceptability large and not usually considered.
Fragmentation of Forest and Edge Effects Destroy Biodiversity and Carbon Sequestration
Edge effects strongly affect forest microclimate, tree mortality, carbon storage and a diversity of fauna.
The hydrological regimes of fragmented landscapes differ markedly from those of intact forest. Desiccating conditions may penetrate up to 100m into areas near the roads. Streams in fragmented landscapes experience greater temporal variation in flow rate than do those in intact forests. Cleared areas have less evapotranspiration and rainfall interception and absorption by vegetation. Rapid runoff promotes localized flooding in the wet season and stream failure in the dry season, with potentially important impacts on aquatic animals.
Even narrow forest roads (20–30m) result in increased tree mortality and damage with wide-ranging alterations in the community composition of trees and undergrowth. Some insects and other fauna will not cross even narrow roads, yet hundreds of km of 70m or wider roads are being proposed.
If our forests are themselves at risk from Climate Change, forest fragmentation will accelerate the process.
Proposed Wind Farms Could Add Pollution to the Great Barrier Reef
Projects like Chalumbin lie on the head waters of the river catchments of the Wet Tropics Area. Hundreds of kms of unsealed 70-metre-wide roads that cross waterways have the potential to dump turbid water and other pollutants down rivers through areas of World Heritage Rain Forest out to the Great Barrier Reef. Farmers fear they will be blamed for the impacts.
We should remember that pollution accidents do happen. Wind turbines need lubricating and “oil changes” every 3 to 7 years. Over 200 litres of oil or synthetic lubricant is needed per turbine.
Building Wind Farms in Forests is a Terrible Waste
Forests are giant carbon and water storage batteries. Why discharge greenhouse gases to the atmosphere by land clearing and lose all the benefits forests provide in the mitigation of climate change? When they are gone, we lose all the carbon sequestration and cooling they do every day. Natural forests do this better than plantation forests.
By clearing forest to build wind farms, we lose a very substantial proportion of the carbon savings we would make by siting them elsewhere. A substantial proportion of what we gain in lower carbon emissions from wind power, we lose by destroying forests.
Even worse, we contribute to climate change through the loss of a range of mechanisms forests provide, long before any of the benefits of wind energy mitigate carbon emissions. This is needlessly making climate change worse in the short term which is the opposite to why we are setting 2030 targets.
We are also desecrating our irreplaceable biodiversity, Aboriginal cultural heritage, and tourist jobs in areas of high importance. High quality patches of remnant forest are rare and precious, and one proposed windfarm project area was being planned for inclusion in National Parks in the future. What a waste! We can fight climate change and protect our natural diversity at the same time. When our natural assets are gone, they are gone!
Loss of Forest Affects Cloud Formation and Alters the Hydrological Cycles
Loss of forest on mountain tops will lessen rainfall and lead to more droughts and flooding. While one project may have almost negligible impact on weather, many more wind farms are proposed. The wind farm projects change the land use from forest to major industrial, with major extensions to each project being possible with much less assessment. This will impact on both our World Heritage listed Wet Tropical Forests and Great Barrier Reef while drying our inland agricultural lands to the west. Good agricultural land is critical to our future.
In Conclusion
A substantial portion of the savings in carbon dioxide emissions made by using wind power are lost by building them in our precious forests. What a waste!
What worth do we put on the loss of biodiversity and ecosystems, stunning landscapes, natural carbon sequestration and storage. Forests cool the earth and make it rain. Forests soak up runoff like giant sponges and help prevent flooding, while recharging aquifers. They clean the water of pollutants so that most of the water going to the Great Barrier Reef is clean. Forest stabilises the soil so that turbid water does not kill frogs, fish, or corals.
We are putting so much at risk by building wind farms where they should not be.
I thought the goal was to fight climate change, not make it worse.
The photos in this blog are courtesy of Michael Seebeck and Steven Nowakowski
In my next blog I will provide more information about Queensland’s Energy and Jobs Plan, the Queensland SuperGrid.
Worldwide, fossil fuel use spews about 37 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere each year. Recent technologies have been used to determine just how much work forests do when storing carbon. Between 2001 and 2019, forests emitted an average of 8.1 billion metric tonnes of carbon dioxide per year from deforestation and other disturbances. At the same time, forests absorbed 16 billion metric tonnes of carbon dioxide per year.
Just imagine how much more efficient and cheaper it would be if existing forests were allowed to do their work in Queensland without disturbance. Denser forests and rapidly growing forests are particularly important. We should not forget that Queensland has nearly 40 % of Australia’s forests.
Hopefully, no one would argue that forests alone can save us from climate change, but they have a major role to play. If we do not protect forests as much as we can, we will suffer far worse climate change impacts.
It is not effective to “offset” greenhouse gas pollution from burning fossil fuels by storing carbon in forests. This is because fossil fuels are pumping much more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than existing forests can absorb. At the same time, carbon stores in forests and other natural carbon sinks will become increasingly unstable as climate change progresses. Droughts, tropical storms, heatwaves and fire weather are increasing in severity and frequency because of climate change. This will continue to result in increases in forest losses, contributing to more and more carbon dioxide being released into the atmosphere. Risks are significantly reduced but not avoided by keeping the rise in global temperature well below 2°C.
The future
Protecting natural ecosystems and sustainably managing and re-establishing forests are important ways to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and slow down temperature rise in the short term by drawing down carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. At the same time, we must deeply and rapidly reduce global greenhouse gas emissions levels from fossil fuels – coal, oil and gas. If we do only the former and not the latter, we risk transforming more and more of our carbon sinks into carbon sources as climate change progresses.
Oh Dear! Yes, there is a risk that we could lose all our forests to Climate Change and that really would be Armageddon. Should we just stay on our current path and let it happen? Man has a tendency to picture the worst. It is an emotional response from our primitive brains. This type of thinking makes excuses and leads to a lack of appropriate action. Let’s just run around in circles instead, wasting money and time. /sarcasm
Why are forests vital?
Even now Earth’s forests are still capable of pulling nearly half the carbon dioxide produced by fossil fuels out of the atmosphere despite the clearing that has already happened. We must stop destroying our forests so that they can do this task to the greatest extent possible.
Forests keep the earth’s temperature down by 1°C or more. This happens in a number of ways. They shade the ground. They pull heat out of the atmosphere by using the sun’s rays for photosynthesis, they manufacture many products some of which they pass to the organisms in the soil in addition to wood formation. They also cool their surroundings using evapotranspiration, a technique similar to our evaporative coolers.
Forests are a very important part of the hydrological cycle and help to stabilise our climate in a number of ways. The soils below forests can be giant water sponges. This is particularly important on mountain ranges such as Australia’s Great Dividing Range. The water for rainfall passes down the mountain slopes much more slowly, preventing erosion and keeping our water clean and safe. The forest on mountain tops is important in cloud formation. It has been shown time and time again that rainfall is diminished if mountain tops are disturbed. In Australia this can lead to increased drought and flooding when it does rain.
As well as being a stabilising force for the climate, forests regulate ecosystems, protect biodiversity, play an integral part in the carbon cycle, and supply goods and services including shelter and food.
In order to maximise the climate benefits of forests,we must keep moreforest landscapes intact, manage them more sustainably, andrestore more of those landscapes which we have lost (from a recent IUCN statement).
What is Australia’s record? Nearly 50% of our forest cover has been cleared in the last two centuries, making Australia one of the worst developed countries for deforestation.
In Queensland about half of our recent clearing activity has been in catchment areas of the Great Barrier Reef particularly south of Townsville. WWF was not wrong when in December 2022 it stated that Queensland remains the land clearing capital of Australia.
Have we learnt any lessons? No, now we are threatening the densest eucalyptus forests clustering around our wet tropical rainforests near Cairns.
Australia’s best winds to drive wind turbines are found in the south-west. Places like Tasmania lie in the path of the Roaring 40s. Because the wind doesn’t always blow, a myth was set up that the wind would blow in these periods somewhere else and where better than the far north-east of Australia. The performance of existing wind farms in Far North Queensland is low at best and abysmal frequently. When the strong winds of the North come, we call them cyclones and the turbines will be shut down and are likely to suffer damage.
So, the current plan is to desecrate hard-working tropical forests to build poorly performing wind turbines. This is neither effective or efficient in money terms or in climate change mitigation terms.
The forest areas threatened by all the wind energy projects on the books or already being constructed are some of the most valuable in the world.
Here is just another of my slides.
There are alternatives to this rampant stupidity.
In my next blogs I discuss some of these projects in more detail. In the meantime, you might like to look at this brochure from Rainforest Reserves.
Queensland Government claims that our greenhouse emissions have reduced substantially since 2005. As I revealed in my last blog, it is only the reduction in land clearing that has reduced our reported emissions in a meaningful way.
Despite the substantial uptake and use of rooftop solar, our emissions from public electricity are still as high as ever.
It is our forests in Queensland that has been doing the hard work.
Sometimes, I read that many of the world’s forests are no longer carbon sinks or are heading that way. These statements can be misleading as they suggest forests are no longer working hard storing carbon. If a forested area has increasing areas that are cleared, the overall balance may be more like that of degraded land. Every time we clear, we reduce the forest’s ability to sequester carbon and release more carbon dioxide to the atmosphere from the felled trees and the soil.
Where are the forests in Queensland and which ones do the most work storing carbon? Unfortunately, some of the most important lie in Queensland’s designated Energy Zones for the building of “renewable” energy projects. This particularly applies in the Northern Renewable Energy Zone.
This blog presents a quick overview of Australian forests. My later blogs will examine the implications of the current energy zones in Queensland.
Forests provide many services to us. They are not just storing carbon.
Data on Forests
Australia has a total of 134 million hectares of forest, which is equivalent to 17% of Australia’s land area. Australia has about 3% of the world’s forest area, and globally is the country with the seventh largest forest area.
Queensland has the largest area of Australia’s forest (51.8 million hectares) – 39% of Australia’s forest. It has most of the tropical rainforest and mangroves plus a large proportion of Australia’s eucalypt forest.
Unfortunately, the classification and definitions of forest used by the Forestry Department are not quite the same as that used in the National Greenhouse Accounts and direct comparison of data can be misleading.
Most of Australia’s forests are native forests and these native forests are often divided into three classes based on their crown cover, and three classes based on mature tree height. Crown cover is the area of ground covered by tree canopies, ignoring any overlaps and gaps.
Less than a third of our forests are reasonably dense with more than 50% canopy cover. Rainforest is nearly three quarters closed canopy and of medium height.
Rainforest
Well over half of Australia’s rainforest is in Queensland. Australia has 3.6 million hectares of the rainforest native forest type, which is 2.7% of Australia’s total forest area. 50% is protected in nature conservation reserves with 2 million hectare belonging to Queensland.
Australia’s rainforests are typically characterised by high rainfall, lush growth and closed canopies. They rarely experience fire.
Rainforests are very important for the conservation of biodiversity. They provide habitat for many forest-dwelling and forest-dependent species of plants and animals. This includes numerous species that are endemic to Australia, and species listed as threatened under the Commonwealth Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999.
Rainforest comprises only 2.7% of Australia’s total native forest, but provides habitat for 60% of Australia’s plant species, 60% of butterfly species, 40% of bird species and 35% of mammal species.
One third of Australia’s rainforests lie within UNESCO World Heritage Areas. The World Heritage Wet Tropical Forest clusters around Cairns. The IUCN nominated this forest as the second most important natural area in the world. At the time of its listing, it was noted that the forest was partially degraded and that every effort should be made to link the various sectors together.
Eucalypts
Three quarters of Australia’s total forest area is dominated by Eucalypt forest.
Please note that the denser eucalypt forest in Queensland lies just west of the wet tropical forests clustered around Cairns. The other main zone lies to the south of Emerald and Rockhampton. Various sectors of the denser forest are protected as National Parks and Forest Reserves.
Nearly 90% of the eucalypt forest in Queensland is either leasehold or privately owned. Much of it is the open woodland forest type and is often used for cattle grazing.
My next few blogs will discuss some of the other services forests do for us and how this fits into Queensland’s Energy Plan.
We have so much to do to meet the challenges of climate change. We only have limited time, money and resources. So, it becomes critical that we don’t act like headless chooks running around in circles wasting energy. Whatever we do needs to be efficient and well planned and evaluated.
Our public electricity production generates more carbon dioxide per unit of electricity than most of the developed world. On the positive side, our households generate and use a very high level of solar energy outside of the public system.
The Queensland Government reports that our greenhouse emissions have already fallen by 29% since 2005. Our target for 2030 is 30% below our emission levels in 2005. This suggests that we have almost reached our target. What is responsible for this decrease? It is all about clearing land.
The forests in Queensland are doing a great job of capturing and storing the carbon dioxide we produce. Perversely the decrease in the emission data is entirely due to the slowdown in the rate of forest clearing. When forests are cleared two changes occur. Firstly, there is less forest working hard on our behalf. Secondly, the felled trees and the soil beneath release their stored carbon back into the atmosphere.
Let’s look at some of the data.
How is Queensland going? Queensland’s carbon intensity of electricity consumption is currently almost 700 gCO2eq/kWh. Only a couple of areas in the world produce more carbon dioxide from the production of electricity per unit of electricity. Grant Chalmers presents this data on a regular basis.
For comparison, Tasmania only produces about 25 g of carbon dioxide per kilowatt-hour of electricity produced while South Australia manages an average of slightly more than 100 g per kilowatt-hour of electricity. However, during the night, South Australia hits 400 after the sun goes down when it still relies on the dirtiest form of electricity produced – Victoria’s brown coal.
Unfortunately, most data available from Government sources are a year older than Grant’s data. Grant’s data does not take into account electricity used directly from rooftop solar.
The graph below provides an overview of Queensland’s production of greenhouse gases.
Two sectors stand out: Land use, land-use change and forestry at -3.2% and public electricity producing nearly a third of the greenhouse gases. The graph below shows how the various sectors have changed over time.
Even the quickest of glances at the graph above shows that greenhouse gas emissions from most sectors have not changed much or even risen since 2005. But look at the fall from the land use, land use change and forestry sector: 70 to below zero. In 2005 about one third of Queensland’s greenhouse gas emissions came from the land use change. Our forests and well managed soils are now just counteracting the damage we are still doing by removing trees in forests but also on grasslands.
The photo shows my scientist husband Dr. David Jones. David and I have long conversations about the environment. We have a small consultancy. I do the books these days and David does all the work. David is a geochemist with particular expertise in mining and water quality. He began his career with the CSIRO in the Coal and Energy Division, worked for mining companies as an Environmental Scientist and finished full time work as the Research Director for the Research Institute of the Supervising Scientist. We met each other on opposite sides of the table at a technical meeting about Ranger Uranium Mine a few years before I retired. David is an invited speaker on mining issues internationally. He was a member of the panel that produced the Pepper Report on the Technical Evaluation of Gas Extraction in the Northern Territory.
I gave a number of presentations on nuclear energy last year, including meetings to inform the public about wind farm projects proposed for far north Queensland. I even did my very first TV interview.
Then the Environmental Impact Statement on the proposed Chalumbin wind farm was made public for “positive comments” (word used in local newspapers by the developer). Under our current system, comments can only be sent to the project proponent, that is the developer. The Australian tax-payer heavily subsidises the project proponents who in the majority of cases are foreign entities. The project proponent then has to change their document and it is sent to the Federal Environment Minister with the comments. This process is triggered if species are at risk of extinction. The Minister then makes a decision about the project.
I spent months reading, evaluating and commenting on the massive document for this crazy project. I will write some of my next blogs on some of our findings. The Rainforest Reserves group has been tireless in its endeavours to save our precious tropical forests. Special mention should be made of Carolyn Emms and Steven Nowakowski. At this time we still don’t know the outcome, the decision has been put off for months time and again.
I ended up in hospital a couple of times this year threatened with blindness. Hopefully the worst is over. My mobility and independence is more limited. David has been wonderful with constant emotional and physical support.
I have never stopped caring about our future. The possibility of becoming blind was so threatening as I never stop investigating. I read various viewpoints on many issues at every level of detail. An abstract of a scientific paper is never enough. A sense of urgency has grown. I should be sharing my insights so that they are accessible to all who wish to know more. I need to learn more about ways to communicate technical ideas in ways that are more easily understood.
I want to express my immense gratitude to Dr Gus Yip for helping me overcome my periods of blindness. I continue to live in hope that I will retain enough sight for years and years of serving our environment.
I plan to share some of the insights my journey has given me over the last year in a variety of formats over the coming months.
The Damage from One Wind Farm May Not Cripple the Environment – But Lots of Them Could Be Catastrophic for our Biodiversity
The Queensland Renewable Energy Zones take in the entire length of the Great Dividing Range. Wind farm projects being sanctioned in the wet tropics catchment area alone are numerous and in areas of high biodiversity value, close to World Heritage areas and on the mountain ridges. This is death by a thousand cuts, and nothing is done to even evaluate the consequences. There is no mechanism either under the Commonwealth EBPC Act or at state level to consider cumulative impacts. Our World Heritage Wet Tropics is listed as the second most irreplaceable natural World Heritage site on earth by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN). Wind turbines are planned within 500m of the World Heritage site. The forest is unbroken between the some of the planned wind farms and the World Heritage areas.
Fragmentation of Forest and Edge Effects Destroy Biodiversity
Edge effects are a prominent driver of fragment dynamics, strongly affecting forest microclimate, tree mortality, carbon storage and a diversity of fauna.
The hydrological regimes of fragmented landscapes differ markedly from those of intact forest. Desiccating conditions may penetrate up to 100m into areas near the roads. Streams in fragmented landscapes experience greater temporal variation in flow rate than do those in intact forests. Cleared areas have less evapotranspiration and rainfall interception and absorption by vegetation. Rapid runoff promotes localized flooding in the wet season and stream failure in the dry season, with potentially important impacts on aquatic animals.
Even narrow forest roads (20–30m) result in increased tree mortality and damage with wide-ranging alterations in the community composition of trees and undergrowth. Many insects and other fauna will not cross narrow roads, yet hundreds of 70m roads are proposed.
Proposed Wind Farms Could Add Pollution to the Great Barrier Reef
Projects like Chalumbin lie on the head waters of the river catchments of the Wet Tropics Area. Hundreds of kms of unsealed 70-metre-wide roads that cross waterways have the potential to dump sediment and other pollutants down rivers through areas of World Heritage Rain Forest and cane farms out to the Great Barrier Reef. Farmers fear they will be blamed. There is no provision under the EBPC Act to consider any type of off-site impact. Water quality is not considered.
Building Wind Farms in Forests is a Terrible Waste
Forests are giant carbon and water storage batteries. Why discharge greenhouse gases to the atmosphere by land clearing and lose all the benefits forests provide in the mitigation of climate change? When they are gone, we lose all the carbon sequestration and cooling they do every day. Natural forests do this better than plantation forests.
By clearing forest to build wind farms, we lose a very substantial proportion of the carbon savings we would make by siting them elsewhere. Much of what we gain in lower carbon emissions from wind power, we lose by destroying forest.
Even worse, we contribute to climate change through the loss of a range of mechanisms forests provide long before any of the benefits of wind energy mitigate carbon emissions. This is making climate change worse needlessly on a temporal basis which is the opposite to why we are setting 2030 targets.
We are also desecrating our irreplaceable biodiversity, Aboriginal cultural heritage, and tourist jobs in areas of high importance. High quality patches of remnant forest are rare and precious, and some of windfarm project areas were being planned for inclusion in National Parks in the future. What a waste!
Loss of Forest Affects Cloud Formation and Alters the Hydrological
Loss of forest on mountain tops will lessen rainfall and lead to more droughts and flooding. While one project may have almost negligible impact on weather, more and more wind farms are proposed. A major failing of the EBPC Act is the absence of assessment of cumulative impacts. The wind farm projects change the land use from forest to major industrial, permitting major extensions to each project being possible with much less assessment. This will impact on both our World Heritage listed Wet Tropical Forests and Great Barrier Reef while drying our inland agricultural lands to the west.
Consideration of Aboriginal Science and Sites of Aboriginal Cultural Heritage
Aboriginal science is not considered by developer-led ecologists. For example, Traditional Owners speak of the impacts to migratory birdlife and the harms related to wildlife removal – why are their voices excluded from any meaningful reporting?
Many of these sites are sacred regions of high significance for the tribes and their clans’ peoples, including The Ancestors. What should the response be when it is stated, “Our culture means more to us than anything else. We know where we belong – we belong to the land. It is the land where our Ancestors reside, and where our future generations will go too. The land should remain undisturbed”.
Are We Getting our Money’s Worth?
It is very difficult to estimate how much the renewables sector is being subsidised by taxpayers’ money.
On Sky News in 2020, Nationals MP Barnaby Joyce said it is important to remember each wind turbine costs the taxpayer $660,000 per year, per tower, due to the government subsidy scheme for renewable energy developments. He was commenting on a $600 million, 77-turbine wind farm proposed just outside of Tamworth.
In Conclusion
What worth do we put on the loss of biodiversity and ecosystems, stunning landscapes, natural carbon sequestration and storage. Forests cool the earth and make it rain. Forests soak up runoff like giant sponges and help prevent flooding, while recharging aquifers. Forests produce lots of oxygen for us to breathe. They clean our air and water of pollutants so that most of the water going to the Great Barrier Reef is clean. Forest stabilises the soil so turbid water does not kill corals. Our drinking water is cleaner too! We are putting so much at risk by building wind farms where they should not be.
What is the cost of desertification, increased flooding and droughts? I thought the idea was to fight climate change, not make it worse.
As a reminder: The International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) has listed Our World Heritage Wet Tropics as the second most irreplaceable natural World Heritage site on earth.
We are about to turn areas close to the World Heritage Wet Tropics, such as at Chalumbin (Ravenshoe) below
into this.
This photo taken at Kaban (Ravenshoe), the least valuable of all the proposed sites in the catchment of the Wet Tropics, and only shows the site of two turbines. There are plans for hundreds of much larger turbines for the Wet Tropics catchment; many projects are already in the system. Hundreds of kilometres of roads wider than these have been designed.
We have seen and heard strong Far North Queensland Jirrbal truth-telling about their desire to preserve forest in the Wet Tropics catchment. Many of these sites are sacred regions of high significance for the tribes and their clans’ peoples, including The Ancestors. What should Australia’s response be when it is stated, “Our culture means more to us than anything else. We know where we belong – we belong to the land. It is the land where our Ancestors reside, and where our future generations will go too. The land should remain undisturbed…we are concerned about losing our identity”.
In my experience, the Jirrbal people seem to be becoming more and more positive about the use of nuclear power in Australia. It is viewed as a way of ensuring no more forests are desecrated and hence protect irreplaceable cultural heritage. A forest is not just trees and they cannot be replaced just by replanting trees. Cultural heritage is forever, and a loss of biodiversity and wildlife and totems cannot be replaced. Important decision-making is required as the ramifications are permanent and forever.
Some of my dread about more renewables arises from:
some of our best forests are being desecrated to build wind farms;
some of our best agricultural land is being covered and possibly polluted with solar farms;
no consideration is being given to the cumulative impacts;
no plans are in place for either waste disposal or recycling at the end of usefulness.
I am no longer convinced that renewable energy is cheap because of all the ancillary costs.
Everywhere that high levels of wind and solar power exist, power prices and grid problems have risen sharply if there is not high levels of hydroelectricity or geothermal power available.
Personally I think renewables should be part of the mix, if much more thought is given to their placement. Large areas of Australia have very low rainfall and relatively low biodiversity or have already been highly disturbed. Many of these areas have great solar and wind power potential if transmission lines are more carefully planned.
I would love you to spread it far and wide. These videos were recorded in Cairns 15 May. The presentation by Steven Nowakowski is wonderful. Steve is a photographer who really cares about our special places.
And since March 2022, more reactors have been shut down prematurely and more countries have started considering or ordering more nuclear power.
In Australia, it is not possible to have nuclear power without legislative changes. We do have a reactor at Lucas Heights in Sydney used to manufacture radioactive isotopes for medical purposes.
Some polls suggest there are more Australians that would consider or like nuclear power than are anti-nuclear. I have heard that some of the previous Government politicians considered putting nuclear power in their policies for the May 22 Federal elections but were told that the Coalition would lose if they did. I, for one, would have considered voting for them if they had done so. South Australia has recently enacted legislation that allows waste technologies.
Stephen Wilson of Queensland University has a very detailed report that can be downloaded from https://energy.uq.edu.au/research/social-economic-environmental-research under the nuclear subheading called What would be required for nuclear energy plants to be operating in Australia from the 2030s
This is only one of many pieces of legislation that would need to be changed. Several States have legislation also banning nuclear power. The Queensland Act evens tries to push its wishes on other states and the Commonwealth.
Even a small plug and play nuclear reactor would be banned in Qld even if the EBPC Act was changed.
Interestingly, The Commonwealth Parliament has a committee of MPs called “Friends of Nuclear”.
We export a lot of uranium and also have great stores of thorium. It all seems third world to me, we are happy to be a giant quarry for other countries. In some ways, we are making ourselves very energy vulnerable as we don’t have the facilities to manufacture the power plants needed for our own electricity needs. We have to import all the value added parts. I note that the US has decided to upgrade its manufacturing sector to make both nuclear requirements and renewable equipment and is even looking at more mining or at least forming commercial partnerships with other countries that don’t lessen their energy security.
We need MPs, both state and federal, prepared to champion nuclear power and work towards changing our legislation.
HOT OF THE PRESS: David Littleproud, has been elected as new leader of the National Party in Australia. The National Party kept all its seats at the recent election but is part of the coalition that just lost the election to the Labour Party.
David Littleproud has called on Prime Minister Anthony Albanese to “come with the National Party” to lead a conversation on nuclear power. The Prime Minister has vowed to rebuild Australian politics and focus on consensus and bipartisanship.
Later in this last week the new liberal leader, Peter Dutton said he’s ‘not afraid’ of nuclear debate.
In an April, the Institute of Public Affairs asked over 1,000 Australians whether they agree or disagree with the following statement: “Australia should build nuclear power plants to supply electricity and reduce carbon emissions”:it seems 53% agreed with 23% against.
The poll also identified widespread support across party lines for nuclear power:
70% of Coalition voters support building nuclear plants (13% oppose).
52% of Labor voters support building nuclear plants (27% oppose).
44% of Greens voters support building nuclear plants (30% oppose).
“Even more Greens voters support than oppose nuclear power in Australia.”
The poll also identified that more Australians across every age group support nuclear than oppose it:
52% of those aged 18-24 and under support building nuclear plants (19% oppose).
47% of those aged 25-54 support building nuclear plants (25% oppose).
62% of those aged 55 and over support building nuclear plants (23% oppose).
Support for nuclear power generation also crosses income groups:
71% of Australians earning $100,000 and over support building nuclear plants (16% oppose).
55% of Australians earning between $45,000 and $99,999 support building nuclear plants (22% oppose).
49% of Australians earning less than $45,000 support building nuclear plants (25% oppose).
Well after all this, it seems our politicians should be working hard to change our anti nuclear power legislation. Perhaps we need to give them a shove by writing to our local members.
This is the end of the nuclear talks on my blog. I will be writing about the desecration thoughtless implementation of wind power is doing to Australia’s precious biodiversity, agricultural lands and aboriginal heritage in future blogs.
Clearing forests on our Great Dividing Range will worsen climate change through a number of mechanisms, lead to more droughts and floods and destroy our special unique biodiversity.
I have not been able to insert some of the videos I used in my talks but links are given. There are now dozens of new designs around the world and it will be a race to see who dominates the market in various categories. In my talks I just gave an overview to provide a picture of the range of technologies and sizes on the drawing board.
Nuscale SMR has been fully licensed in the US and can now start manufacturing its units. It is now listed on the US stock exchange. This is an advanced Gen 3 design. If you are interested in more detail, there is a lot of information on the web.
Some of the front running companies are multi nationals such as GE Hitachi. This is their video on the very small SMR or microreactor, Evinci.
The next slide shows another current product that is too big to be called an SMR. Most of the text in slides is taken from company literature as I am not qualified to make comments on the technology.
The next product is very innovative and known as PRISM
The next video is about the BWRX-300, a design that has been used in some of Nuclear for Climate Australia models.
Other interesting technologies include those of Terra Power.
I note that the first benefit listed above applies to many or perhaps most new designs.
Molten salt reactors
A number of companies are designing and about to build molten salt reactors such as Thorcon in Indonesia, (https://thorconpower.com/0, TerraPower, Natrium, Samsung in South Korea, and in India. Experimental testing of containment materials continues at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in the US and research even happens in Australia with ANSTO (https://www.ansto.gov.au/our-science/nuclear-technologies/reactor-systems/advanced-reactors/anstos-contribution-to). One of the issues experienced withe design of molten salt reactors related to chemical corrosion of the vessels containing the molten salt. I was not surprised that fluoride salts might be very corrosive nut the salt mixtures have evolved, chloride salts would be far less challenging. I get the impression that this issue has been resolved but of course it is under wraps now to preserve various companies’ competitive advantages.
China is producing a number of designs of many types including molten salt reactors and plans a massive building program for nuclear power. Russia’s Rosatom was also interesting but has had a number of contracts cancelled second quarter of 2022. One of China’s designs is shown below. China is currently building a molten salt reactor.
The fuels for Gen 4 reactors can be very different to current fuel pellets. Some of the newer fuels are more like those that have been used in nuclear submarines for many years. Others are completely different like Triso balls or fuels dissolved in molten salt. TRISO particles cannot melt in a reactor and can withstand extreme temperatures that are well beyond the threshold of current nuclear fuels. For more see https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/triso-particles-most-robust-nuclear-fuel-earth. New designs can make use of so called waste fuel or thorium or a mix.
Some Gen 4 designs use HALEU fuel which has been used by the US military for decades.
In May 2022, Norway-based marine group Ulstein has launched the Ulstein Thor, its concept design for a 149-m (489-ft) replenishment, research, and rescue (3R) ship that will feature a Thorium Molten Salt Reactor (MSR) to generate large amounts of clean and safe electricity. This allows the vessel to operate as a mobile power and charging station for a new generation of battery-powered cruise ships at sea.
These are all fission based reactors but research on fusion based reactors continues and will be viable eventually but not in this decade or two. Fusion happens at extreme temperatures.
Australian Ben Heard has produced a number of detailed videos describing SMRs in more technical detail than I can such as:
Suddenly, after a long hiatus, so much is happening.
It is very difficult to obtain reliable costings for either renewables or nuclear power. There have not been many nuclear power stations built in recent times. Finland’s new reactor is often given as an example of major cost over-runs and delays. However, even at a cost of over 11 billion Euros, it is starting to look like cheap, reliable energy at a time when Germany is paying Russia a billion Euros a day for Russian gas supplies that could be cut off at any time. It also looks cheap compared to Australia’s Snowy 2.0 pumped hydro scheme which looks like blowing out to a similar figure in AUD. The cost of construction for the new Finnish nuclear power plant, 1,650 megawatt Olkiluoto-3, could be 19 Euros/MWhr if the plant runs for 40 years or double that for 20 years.
Worldwide, with the possible exceptions in Asia such as China, very large infrastructure projects are costing much more than estimated. The large concrete pours have been blamed, together with falls in productivity. In the nuclear sector, much of the cost increases have arisen in the administrative sphere, court cases between contractors or even anti-nuclear lobbies, as well as increasing safety regulations during the construction phase which mean design changes and reconstruction. Anyone who has been involved with large construction projects, as I have, knows that the best way to blow out costs is to change designs in the middle which leads to contractor squabbles and works having to be redone.
The companies pushing SMRs, which can be factory built, have worked hard to overcome some of these hurdles. By the time Australia changes its legislation, if we do so, we will know the situation. We may also be in a better situation to know the real, total costs of renewables so that costs can be compared on a true basis. There are many comparisons made of costs on the internet. I will include a few of these. Nuscale states that its 12-module VOYGR-12, 924 MWe plant design has a levelized cost estimate (LCOE) is in the range of approximately $40/MWh to $65/MWh in the southern states of the US. Levelized Cost of Electricity (LCOE) is an economic measure used to compare the lifetime costs of generating electricity across various generation technologies.
The Nuclear Energy Agency have a fascinating site listing LCOEs calculated on data from various forms of power generation already in operation around the world. (https://www.oecd-nea.org/lcoe/ ) The calculator enables the reader to change some parameters such as discount rate and gas price. At the central case for discount rate, nuclear power is cheaper than wind and solar. At low discount rates, hydro, wind and solar become cheaper. This raises lots of questions in my mind about comparative costs and all the various cost comparison tables I have seen.
The nuclear for climate group (www.nuclearforclimate.com.au) have a great website. Robert Parker and Dr Robert Barr have carefully worked out a scenario for Australia which on their modelling provides stable, reliable electricity for Australia based on the use of BWRX-300 nuclear power stations. These would replace retiring coal plants on the same locations and retain jobs for some of existing workers while creating lots of other highly paid jobs. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vQC5ijEieXE
James Fleay has produced a cartoon that illustrates some of the issues associated with balancing the grid. Australia has an enormous grid connecting all states bar Western Australia and the Northern Territory under AEMO. There is currently some discussion that suggests the grid should be split up again on a state by state basis.
The CSIRO has had a draft report out on costings of various sources of electricity production out for a while. The final is yet to be made public. Some of the costings are controversial and may be too conservative for some power sources and too lenient for others. A very difficult task. GenCost 2020-21 https://www.csiro.au › media › renewables-cheapest pdf
Robert Parker uses their data in his evaluation of costs. One of his graphs is shown below. The recent rises in wholesale power prices make all these Australian numbers out of date.
Numbers in red show the carbon dioxide ratings
It is often claimed that the more you build something, the more proficient you become and that this brings down costs. There were very few nuclear power stations built for a few decades, so as in Finland few contractors were experienced. Prices should come down – time will tell.
I read many claims that renewables have come way down in cost but are now leveling out. Unfortunately, the cost of using renewables does not include all the ancillary costs – the essential externals such as the extra grid infrastructure costs, battery storage and converters. The CSIRO has tried to take these into account but I found it confusing. The reality is that electricity prices in Australia are rapidly increasing. Wholesale prices rose almost 300% year on year in Queensland by the end of March 2022 as reported in the Australian Financial Review. Yet, by 1 May prices had skyrocketed as shown in the column on the right hand side of the slide below. Queensland had jumped from $175/MWh to $315.
According to an AEMO media release on 29 April 2022 :
“Wholesale electricity prices in the National Electricity Market (NEM) averaged $87 per megawatt-hour (MWh) for the first quarter of 2022, up 67% from Q4 2021 and 141% on Q1 2021, driven by increased demand, coal generator outages and higher electricity-generating fuel costs.” This information is now way out of date and prices in Australia are far too high.
AEMO’s Quarterly Energy Dynamics (QED) report shows that wind and grid-scale solar output increased 743 megawatts (MW) from Q1 2021 levels to a new quarterly record of 4,190 MW, along with increases in small-scale solar (460 MW), gas (271 MW) and hydro (42 MW). Declines were seen in brown coal (304 MW) and also black coal generation (374 MW), which hit its lowest Q1 average in two decades.”
“The average Balancing Price increased by 14% from Q4 2021 to $61/MWh, while the number of negatively priced intervals was down from Q1 2021 and the WEM saw no intervals with a Balancing Price lower than -$100/MWh.”
I have to admit I find the pricing of Australian electricity very complicated. The carbon credit system, RET, auctions, order of purchase etc. make it all very complicated. However there is no doubt that our electricity prices are going up, our coal fired power stations find it hard to mesh in with renewable energy as they are not designed to ramp up and down quickly. This wears out equipment and intermittent use causes the costs of generating power to rise. Coal fired power is base load power. The newest stations are in Queensland and their construction is still in the pay-back period and knowing they are likely to be shut down earlier than originally planned mean they have to increase their prices. Because they are not operating continuously as originally planned this also increases their costs and hence prices.
Gas fired power produces about half of the carbon dioxide produced by coal but because we have contracted our gas overseas, gas prices are high. Gas power stations can ramp up and down rapidly. Combined cycle gas plants are very efficient and score well as compared to most other forms of power generation apart from their green-house gas emissions.
Traditional nuclear power is also a form of base load power and better left operating continuously. It can be ramped up and down 10-20% without problems. The new SMRs are being designed to match with renewables by ramping up and down as required.
Let us not forget grid system costs. These are added after we build the transmission infrastructure itself. Our new Labour Government in Australia has a huge budget to upgrade our grid to match the needs of renewables.
The dark red bar on the right shows the LCOE for solar farms at a 10% discount rate from the slide showing renewables above this one.
The next slide is hard to read. Unfortunately costings for renewables rarely take into account the extras required to use them effectively. Lazards are known for their costings. The bottom graph shows the LCOEs of various storage systems. The top graph on the slide has been sized to match the bottom scale and shows LCOEs of the power sources themselves. Some of the costs in the bottom graph have to be added to the cost of renewables to make any comparisons valid.
Storage is expensive and requires lots of mining and manufacture. The green house gas production depends on the energy source used. There is already a supply chain issue for materials and this will worsen with the current situation with Russia.
It is often forgotten that we lose energy with each conversion. Battery storage technology is typically around 80% to more than 90% efficient for newer lithium-ion devices. Battery systems connected to large solid-state converters are being used to stabilize power distribution networks. These systems do not store power for use but are used to stop grid blackouts and brownouts. Converting electricity to hydrogen and then back to electricity again is very inefficient. 60% of the energy is lost. Hydrogen needs to be used to decarbonise other processes such as steel manufacture and fertilizer production not used to regenerate electricity.
It is of interest to note how long it takes to start up a mine or build a big coal-fired power station. China is managing to build nuclear power stations in three years. Nuscale Power claims they can do the same.
Another cost to energy production which is even harder to ascertain are subsidies.
On Sky News in 2020, Nationals MP Barnaby Joyce said it is important to remember each wind turbine costs the taxpayer $660,000 per year, per tower, due to the government subsidy scheme for renewable energy developments. He was commenting on a $600 million, 77-turbine wind farm proposed just outside of Tamworth.
One of the most confounding issues with wind and solar costings is how to include the intermittancy, seasonality etc. Data for wind suggests that most onshore wind farms only produce somewhere between 10% to 30% of their nameplate capacity each year. In very ideal locations, they may reach 40% as can some offshore wind farms. The latter are more expensive to build and maintain.
This means that the capacity needed to replace fossil fuels with renewables is many times their nameplate capacity and again there seems to be disagreement on just how many times. In every country there are days when the power generated from renewables dives to very little. This means some form of backup power or an enormous, currently not available, battery backup is needed. In reality, the amount of power stored in the big batteries only lasts for a short time, enough time for operators to turn on other sources of power to prevent blackouts or worse, brownouts which are exceedingly costly.
So for every MW of wind or solar there has to be a MW of coal or gas or nuclear or hydro ready, willing and able to pick up the slack, whenever the sun sets and/or calm weather sets in. This requires unnecessary duplication of capital costs.
In every place that has large reliance on so-called cheap renewable power, electricity prices have soared and destruction of the natural environment occurred. Germany is currently clear felling ancient forest to mine more coal. We are starting to do the same silliness in Queensland, clearing highly diverse forest with endangered flora and fauna to build wind farms – releasing carbon dioxide stored in trees and soil into the atmosphere and losing all the other climate change mitigation benefits that forests provide.
Just look at the power generated compared to name plate capacity! 22% for onshore wind, 34% for offshore wind wind, 11% for solar (Australia is a great place for solar but not Europe). This is only 18% for all renewables in Europe in 2021, yet so often all we hear about are the nameplate capacities. This means to really reach the capacity needed to replace fossil fuel power plants with 100% renewables , 5 times the capacity has to be built before taking into account seasonality or peak times and it still may not cover really bad weather
Imagine how many nuclear power stations could be build for 2038 billion Euros. Even at the same cost as Finland’s expensive new power station, nearly 200 Olkiluoto-3 plants could be built producing over 300 GW of reliable power for 40 to 60 years. That equates to over 2,600 TWhr each year or 10% of the world’s electricity while those renewables only produced 69 GW, a fifth of what nuclear would do and that doesn’t take into account the cost of building the renewables and extra transmission lines in the first place.
The Hornsdale battery in South Australia has a storage capacity of 194 MWhr. This provides just enough time for coal fired plants to ramp up if renewable power dips too much. It has paid for itself by charging enormous prices to the wholesale market such as A$14,000/MWhr in Jan 2018, 2 million AUD for a service nuclear does not need. South Australia now has more Big Batteries. South Australia produces about 13,ooo GWhr of electricity each year. Assuming this amount is averaged over the year and the day/night cycle, Hornsdale can provide the equivalent amount of power made in South Australia for about 7 minutes. Of course, this level of electricity would not normally be needed as only parts of the system would drop production suddenly in most instances giving the poor operators more balancing time.
Until recently, I had not questioned the mantra that renewables provided cheap, clean, green electricity. I am not so sure anymore.
The next few slides summarise some of the benefits of nuclear power. Some of the downside points have already been addressed in earlier sections. More will be addressed within sections of this fourth presentation.
This next slide came from literature we collected during our visit to Sweden in 2009. Vattenfall built, operated and decommissioned many forms of electricity generation in Sweden and other European nations. They undertook lifecycle analyses of a number of “pollutants”. At the time I was particularly interested in their studies on sulfur dioxide. The next slide shows their results for carbon dioxide.
Nuclear power, by their calculations, produced less carbon dioxide than any other power source. I noticed a recent report by Vattenfall looking closely at the fuel part of the data for nuclear power including mining and all the processes to produce the fuel pellets and came up with an even lower life cycle data for nuclear power.
The world uses 25,000 TWh
Wind and solar power require a much greater volume of metals and other materials to produce the same amount of power as nuclear energy. There is also all the battery storage and transmission infrastructure required. It is often argued that nuclear power stations take too long to build. What about the time it takes to set up new mines to provide the necessary materials? There are already supply chain shortages for a number of metals.
The new wave of nuclear power will include Small Modular Reactors (SMRs).
The International Energy Agency (IEA) has suggested that we need to speed up the construction of new nuclear power plants if we are to reach the Net Zero Scenario. The dark blue shows the existing nuclear power plants, the light blue area what is planned or should be planned in 2050, while the green shows the quantity that the IEA says we should be building. We need to accelerate our nuclear programs around the world.
Since January 2022, while some nations have been shutting down nuclear power plants, the number of new construction starts has accelerated and many nations are planning new nuclear power plants.
Most of the information in this post relates to high level waste such as used nuclear fuel.
About 2 billion years ago. there were 17 naturally occurring nuclear reactors in the Oklo region of Gabon. Discovered in 1972, these areas have provided a lot of information on the movement of nuclear by-products in various rocks over great periods of time. Sweden in particular has used this information to help design the canisters and long term storage surroundings for their nuclear waste.
The EU decided that deep repository storage should be the ultimate graveyard for high level waste. Once sealed these repositories can be entirely forgotten. They do not need further human intervention of any kind.
Most high level waste is still above ground as it is initially thermally hot and is either cooled in water or in air. These canisters are extremely robust and safe, one can stand beside them. There are many designs used by different countries. Some of the techniques are described below.
Australia’s ANSTO has produced a similar vitrification process and improved it over several decades. The technology is sold to others. One of the interesting uses of the Veolia process is to trap or destroy nasty, toxic organic wastes while entombing nuclear wastes.
The next few slides come from a talk I gave on Sweden’s nuclear industry a few years ago. I have recycled some of those slides.
Unfortunately, due to Germany’s influence condemning nuclear power after the tsunami that ravaged parts of Japan, even Sweden started to plan early closures of its nuclear facilities. As a result, the careful planning, including the economics were thrown into disarray. A large amount now has to be paid by the power plant owners in order to cover earlier disassembling of the plants and waste storage. As a result, the price of the power they can offer to the market is now much higher and not so attractive. This has resulted in less power being sold and an even higher tax being placed on the power plant operators. It seems to be the influence of the Green Party in Sweden that caused all the disruption even though they are not the majority party. Recent surveys suggest that most Swedes are still very pro-nuclear.
Copper has been shown to be particularly stable and trap any nucleotides. A gaseous nucleotide in extremely small quantities that can escape as illustrated in Gabon, is fully trapped by a centimetre or so of bentonite clay. In reality, this is a triple level safety concept. Each layer is probably enough to do the whole job on its own.
I was informed in Sweden in 2009, that Finland had decided to copy the Swedish model. It is ironic that Finland have beaten Sweden in finishing the construction of a final repository. Finland’s Green Party is pro-nuclear. I suspect that the long hold up in Sweden was political in nature. Sweden had to wait for years for the final permissions to be granted.
This video was given to me when David and I visited Sweden in 2009. The quality of the medium is not so good but the contents are great! A number of videos follow this one and the sound levels vary considerably. This video is quite loud.
This video has quite loud sound
My husband and I have stood looking at the interim high level waste pool shown in this video. We did not need any type of protective clothing.
Some Gen 4 designs for nuclear power reactors are based on the reuse of the so-called waste fuel. Indeed, there have been pleas to not make the waste too hard to access again by nuclear companies.
This video needs sound turned up louder. The sound level is low.
Sellafield waste reprocessing facility is closing down.
This next video is an excellent one explaining about Finland latest additions to their nuclear portfolio including their deep nuclear waste repository.
Delft University has examined the supply risks for the EU
The EU has set up some technologically advanced recycling centres. But if we look at where most of the waste is going, at this stage we have to assume that little recycling is actually undertaken. The most expensive part of recycling is the collection and segregation of waste.
This is a patch of water that you would not want to fall into, unless you had a death wish. Having worked in the environmental field in China, I know that China is doing as much as it can as quickly as it can to clean up the environment. As the population of China and Mongolia become more wealthy, they are not prepared to work under these conditions much longer either.
The recent happenings in Europe are letting us all know that we should not take any of our supplies for granted. Even the biggest cobalt mine in Africa is owned by China.
I often read that nuclear power stations take too long to build. Having worked in the mining industry, I also know how long it takes to open a new mine and start production even after the resource has been located and quantified. Over time we have gradually been mining lesser grade ores.
When looking at any of the graphs and data on these complex questions, the questions of what, what type, made where, when, complicate the matter further but the big picture is clear. We are likely to have supply issues if we plan to have massive amounts of renewables built in the next decade or so.
Since these slides were put together, Tesla has already stated that they have supply issues. The waiting period for the purchase and supply of electric cars in Australia is already long. Wind turbine manufacturers are fighting to retain profitability as prices of raw materials fluctuate. Mining companies are loathe to risk capital when the metal market fluctuates as much as it does.
What does this all mean? It has been estimated that hundreds of thousands of hectares of forest have already or will be soon destroyed to undertake the mining needed to provide even a portion of the metals and other materials needed for the renewable industry. This will result in massive loss of biodiversity, and all the benefits the forest provide mitigating climate change. If we’re not careful, this will be worse than a zero-sum game. I have yet to see any estimates of just how many materials will be needed for the amount of wind power and solar power that some countries are aiming to use. In the meantime, the US is closing nuclear power stations before they have replaced the power sources that these stations produce.
Some of the mining needed and much of the waste from renewables will impact heavily on the world’s poorest people. In some ways, this is even worse than slavery, because their lands become badly contaminated with toxic substances that don’t disintegrate in 100,000 years but there for ever. The cost of remediation will probably be too high to ever be undertaken.
Another cost and need for materials arises from all the new transmission infrastructure required, partly because power sources are scattered but also because much of the infrastructure was built many decades ago and needs replacing.
This next slide illustrates what a little ingenuity can solve. Instead of bare burned-out soil, solar farms could be very productive. Rain off the solar panels runs into gutters then storage tanks and used for irrigation. Sunlight and rain can directly pass to the soil. Some shading of the soil as temperatures climb could be very beneficial for some crops. However, it should be noted that more materials will be required for the same electricity production. I have also seen photos of solar panels being placed over irrigation channels in India. In this way, no extra space is needed and loss of water through evaporation reduced.
To to keep up the positive side, please enjoy the following cartoons.
When I first put these slides together, I didn’t fully understand just how insightful Brook and Bradshaw had been. I love the paper because it compared the areas needed for different electricity production technologies and because it suggested that nuclear might have real advantages. I now have a greater understanding of the conservation issues associated with the different forms of power generation and how the siting of the power facilities might not only have an impact on the land area impacted but that it could be critical in terms of the benefit to cost ratios. Biodiversity is important to the survival of this planet. Loss of biodiversity will lessen resilience to changes in climate and our ability to grow food.
The destruction of remnant forest areas in Australia has no excuse on this basis. The cost of building renewable energy sources in forest or on food producing land is enormous. Forests do so much to mitigate climate change. Not only do they store and sequester carbon in the trees, the roots and in the soil beneath, they have enormous influence on the climate itself through the hydrological cycle.
A review published in 2017 by the North East Forest Alliance called Clearing our Rainfall Away by Dailan Pugh can be accessed as a download at
We have known for centuries that clearing forests can reduce rainfall. Australia is a very dry continent. One thing we can all agree upon is that we do not want less rainfall on this continent. Unfortunately, removal of forest can also lead to increased flooding when it does rain.
One area that is not agreed upon is the real footprint of land based wind turbines. Some assessments suggest that the only footprint is the size of the base of a turbine. This may be the case for a few isolated turbines on certain types of agricultural land. It is certainly not the case for turbines built in forests. The greatest area of land clearing can be the access roads which as turbines become bigger, become wider and wider. For example, the access roads for the Chalumbin project will be 70 m wide. The total area absolutely cleared to bare ground is about 1200 ha. Further disturbance and fragmentation of the surrounding forest with its critical biodiversity is much greater. Some estimates of wind energy footprints include turbine spacing as shown in the slide below.
The next slides are based on a study undertaken by Princeton University. The first slide illustrates the area currently taken up by biofuels and other energy related land uses in the United States.
I am not sure whether the data above factors in all forms of energy that may need to replaced in a carbon neutral world. I doubt it.
This slide has been taken from another of my presentations but serves to illustrate some of the issues not taken into account when looking at the land-use areas required by different sorts of power generation. I have not seen estimates of the mining areas required to build wind turbines, nor is final waste requirements taken into account. I am not sure whether the estimates of wind power land requirements only take into account the nameplate estimates of power produced and not actual power produced. Certainly in Australia, it is very common to see nameplate figures for wind power used as if this was the amount of power that would be produced. In reality, throughout the world, wind farms tend to produce 10% to 30% of their nameplate power.
I will discuss some of the points in the slide above in later blogs.
Queensland has a plan to encourage the construction of many wind farms in Far North Queensland in the area where I live. These wind farms are in the water catchments for the World Heritage Great Barrier Reef and in some instances, the streams and rivers run through our World Heritage Rain Forest. Some are planned right next to our World Heritage Rain Forest. I will be writing a lot more about the dreadful loss of biodiversity, aboriginal heritage areas and sacred sites, and tourist jobs in future blogs. Our first wind farm, Mt Emerald, only provides 10-15% of its nameplate capacity. A reason given for siting wind farms up here was the likelihood that the wind will blow when it is not blowing down south. There is no evidence of this so far.
In order to speed up the process, Queensland has chosen to circumvent its environmental processes apart from those of the Federal EBPC Act. There is no requirement to consider the cumulative impacts of all of these projects. Quick calculations of the loss of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere by clearing dense forest compared to the gains of using wind power over conventional power indicate that a considerable proportion of the gains are lost through inappropriate placement. How inefficient and costly!
Renewables need to be sited on already disturbed land but not on precious agricultural land or forest.
Enormous areas of land are, or will be soon, having their planning status converted to heavy industrial use, making it easier for further land clearance to occur in the future. Bare soils are hotter and reflect more heat, they lose soil carbon not sequester it. They no longer retain water. Sounds like desertification.
I am currently trying to understand just how many Australian taxpayer dollars and electricity user dollars are being expended on renewables in my backyard.
Are we getting our money’s worth? All the talk about cheap power from renewables seems to be a myth. The wind farm proponents up in far north Queensland are companies based in other countries. Are we just easy, safe profits? Then there are the costs of battery storage and all the costs of upgrading our transmission system. We import the solar panels and the wind turbines.
On Sky News in 2020, Nationals MP Barnaby Joyce said it is important to remember each wind turbine costs the taxpayer $660,000 per year, per tower, due to the government subsidy scheme for renewable energy developments. He was commenting on a $600 million, 77-turbine wind farm proposed just outside of Tamworth.
Elon Musk is such fun. What a life he leads. I have to like him; he has been saying good things about nuclear power. In one talk he gave recently, he said that we shouldn’t be surprised because sometimes he can be wrong. In 2015, during what must have been his sales pitches for batteries, he supplied information which I have used to illustrate what an enormous task we have before us if we wish to only use low carbon sources of power.
In the last few weeks, the battery in my handheld vacuum cleaner has died after less than two years. In five years, we have replaced the battery in our lawnmower three times. Luckily, two of those occurred in the warranty period. I don’t know how long the giant battery facilities last but I’m sure they will not run as long as nuclear power stations. The capital cost of nuclear is very uncertain at this stage but even assuming the worst, the world could build a lot of nuclear power for US$23 trillion.
The latest nuclear power station to be built in Finland has been a source of ridicule for those against nuclear power. Yes, it wasn’t cheap but on the latest figures floating around, Snowy 2.0 will cost a similar amount of money and not produce or store anything like the power Finland has just added. Indeed, with all the money that Germany is paying to Russia for dirty fuel, Germany could have paid off that new power station in a month.
If every car in the US was an electric vehicle (EV) and they were all used to store electricity from solar power on every household with no other use, only a fraction of the storage needed would result.
In order to produce hydrogen (with zero emissions) a process called, electrolysis. 20 – 30% of energy is lost in the process of creating hydrogen. The hydrogen must then be compressed and stored, losing another 10%. Finally, another 30% is lost when converting the hydrogen into electricity. This leaves you with 30 – 40% of the original energy used.Andrew Lerma of Flux Power (https://www.fluxpower.com/blog/hydrogen-fuel-cell-efficiency-how-does-it-compare-to-lithium-ion)
Hydrogen is very flammable and needs very careful storage techniques. There are very good reasons for producing hydrogen such as helping to decarbonise steel manufacture and for the production of fertiliser. However, it seems to be a very inefficient, wasteful and potentially dangerous method for the storage of electricity.
This presentation was put together last February and in some form or another has been given to various groups a few times now. Between feeling my age and being busy answering questions and giving yet more talks, my blog has been totally neglected. It is definitely time that I finished publishing my first series of talks.
Australia is in the middle of voting for our Federal Parliament and few of the policy speeches from the main parties have mentioned energy policy other than to say we need lots of clean, green, cheap renewable energy. My early talks did not set out to question the use of renewable energy, only to show that nuclear power should be part of the mix. After I finish this series, I will be discussing in more detail just how clean, green or cheap renewable energy is in the form it is being implemented in Australia. The electricity system is very complex and obtaining complete costing data isn’t easy.
With time, it has become abundantly clear to me that many of the graphs used to compare energy sources do not take all the relevant issues into account. Energy storage is an important element in the renewable economy. This next slide shows with an additional bright red box, the extra greenhouse gases associated with one of the renewable electricity sources.
I have included this graph again, as it shows the levels of greenhouse gas emissions from various power sources.
These sorts of graphs take an enormous amount of work particularly when they attempt to fully consider the life cycle of an energy source.
I could not access a full copy of the paper illustrated above and so could not check what all the sources of indirect emissions were. It takes into account all greenhouse gases. The indirect emissions from hydro arise from the production of methane and the breakdown of vegetable matter covered by the water. I would like to see an analysis for the CO2 produced when forests are chopped down to build wind farms.
Despite any variations in the numbers, the message is clear, nuclear power is a very low carbon source.
Another complication that arises when looking at emission levels arising from manufactured products is geographical and technical. For example, what were the sources of energy used during the mining, and manufacturing processes? The graph below shows how different assessments can be.
For example, when assessing CO2 emissions from electric cars, it really matters where the car was manufactured and what source of energy was used during all the stages of mining and manufacture as well as the energy used to run the cars.
You may like to view the video below by Michael Shellenberger: Why I changed my mind about nuclear power.
One of the greatest fears about nuclear power, is that radiation causes cancer. I am currently trying to get a copy of the book “Low Dose Radiation” by Antone Brooks. Dr Antone Brooks served as Chief Scientist for the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) new Low Dose Radiation Research Program from 1999 to 2008. The slide below is taken from a presentation he gave in 2014 in Las Vegas. I have many references from other authorities that agree with his group’s research.
LNTH stands for Low-No-Threshold Hypothesis which is still used to set many radiation safety standards but is out of date. It was first proposed using high dose data when nuclear bombs were dropped on Japan at the end of the Second World War over 70 years ago. Dr Antone Brooks has also stated in another recent lecture that fear and excessive radiation protection kills people and is very expensive.
There have been over a dozen studies in Germany, trying to prove that nuclear power plants cause leukemia in children. I did not find the papers I could read very convincing. Then I came upon the study below published in 2007. The study tried to take into account confounding issues.
Something inside me said, this is Germany, and it manufactures many chemicals and plastics. A GP had noticed that a much higher level of leukemia was occurring in his young patients. With the help of Google, I discovered that a new chemical plant had been set up in the area the year before. Again, with the help of Google I found that most of the leukemia cases were much closer to this new chemical plant than to the nuclear power plant. This does not prove anything, but it is suggestive that much more work would need to be done to determine the cause of the leukemia cluster. It certainly left many unanswered questions.
This is not the first time that I have noted that blame is often quickly and incorrectly placed on radiation as the cause of illness. During my time as a regulator for Ranger Uranium Mine, Aboriginals that used a billabong downstream of the mine for food gathering and recreation became ill. The mine was blamed. Careful investigations measured almost non-existent levels of uranium or other contaminants in the water, except for very high levels of bacteria. The source, untreated sewage, was traced and treated and the illness disappeared.
I like the graph above as I can be sure it includes Chernobyl in its data.
The message is clear, nuclear is a very healthy way to generate power.
I tried to answer the arguments against nuclear power in the talks I gave to my local U3A group. I will continue to provide the same material in this series of blogs. I continue to learn more and more about the issues each day and will present some of this information when I have finally finished posting the talks.
The numbers I have seen on the cost of electricity generated by nuclear power plants vary considerably. Conservative estimates are based on the last few nuclear power stations built in Europe and the U.S. Few had been built for nearly 30 years and the costs blew out for several reasons. Firstly, nobody had built one before and it was a learning curve for the engineers. Secondly, regulatory authorities often required small changes in design which held up the works. Lastly, expensive court cases created by antinuclear groups held up the works. These days, every material used in the main parts of the power plants are tested by regulators in special facilities to ensure they won’t break down under extreme conditions. Some of the engineers in the industry believe that the pendulum has swung too far. Every safety element, pump, backup generator et cetera must be triplicated and must work by a different principle. Finland’s latest nuclear reactor which has just come into operation took a long time to build and the cost blew out to $10 billion dollars. It is often used to claim nuclear power is too costly and takes too long to build.
I note that Snowy 2.0 has also blown out to 10 billion dollars and will probably only provide far less electricity than the originally estimated 2000 MW.
France had some of the cheapest power in Europe for a long time. They built the same design of nuclear power plant repeatedly and the price came down as might be expected. It is always more expensive to build a prototype.
In China, however, nuclear power stations are now being built in 36 months or less. They are building several different designs but as each type of station is built again both the cost and the building time has reduced.
I may be wrong, but I note that comparisons between nuclear, renewables and fossil fuel electricity costs rarely take all associated costs into consideration. Extras such as battery or other backup storage, disposal costs, recycling costs, grid costs, loss of arable land and forest, government subsidies, and tax breaks don’t seem to be considered. Lifespan of a facility is usually included but I note that assumptions like nuclear power plants only operate for 40 years is a gross underestimate.
Items mostly left out of the cost comparisons are related to grid system costs.
There are many claims that 100% renewable energy is possible for all countries. The only countries to reach this target have a high percentage of hydro or easy to obtain geothermal power such as Iceland, Norway, and Uruguay.
It may be that modern IT and special algorithms can solve the problems of grid instability, but I see many practical challenges that will need to be solved.
If you are not technically inclined, this blog may not be of interest to you. Some of the first schematics have been presented in earlier blogs but are repeated here for ease of comparison
Canadian nuclear power reactors are CANDU reactors – heavy water reactors developed by Canadian scientists and engineers. CANDU stands for Canada deuterium uranium, because it uses deuterium oxide (heavy water) as a moderator and coolant and uses natural (not enriched) uranium as a fuel. There are 19 in operation in Canada and another 11 elsewhere in the world. India also has 16 nuclear reactors that are based on the CANDU model.
I have included this schematic because it shows other important elements of a nuclear power plant. When used fuel rods are first taken from a reactor, they are both thermally and radioactively hot and must be cooled down. They are placed in a special cooling pool close to the reactor, shown as “used fuel management.”
About a decade ago, my husband Dr David Jones was invited as a guest speaker on uranium mining at a conference in Sweden. We took the opportunity to visit every nuclear facility we could and included all stages of nuclear waste management. I talked them into giving me a copy of the video below which shows some of the aspects of waste handling in Sweden. It is worth watching.
Ultimately, all the energy we use arises from some form of nuclear energy. The Sun’s energy reaches our planet as a result of nuclear reactions in the Sun itself. This energy is critical to our survival on Earth. The sun provides the energy for photosynthesis and hence all our food, wood, and dung. All the fossil fuels were created many millions of years ago from plants that derived their energy from the Sun. Differences in the heat from the Sun hitting Earth at different latitudes drives our climate engine. These differences in heat around the globe creates the wind that drives our wind turbines. Going back in time, it was nuclear reactions out in space that created the elements we find on Earth.
This video introduces the concepts of nuclear fission and can be found on https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D91T-B-PVE0 if you have challenges making the embedded video work.
All the commercial nuclear power plants (NPP) operating today use nuclear fission as their source of heat energy. Optimism suggests we may be able to use nuclear fusion at some time in the future as an alternative to nuclear fission.
A great deal of energy holds the protons and neutrons of an element’s nucleus together. The heavier elements tend to degrade into lighter elements. Elements close to iron (Fe) in the periodic table are very stable. When elements come apart for whatever reason we call this nuclear fission. Because it takes less energy to hold the resulting smaller nuclei together, a lot of energy is released. Uranium and plutonium have excessively big nuclei and fall apart relatively easily depending on the number of neutrons present. Looking at the periodic table below, the heaviest elements are shaded in yellow, and they are all radioactive. The heaviest elements may only exist for minutes or seconds as they are so unstable. Some of the elements with smaller nuclei have minor isotopes that are radioactive, depending on the number of neutrons in their nuclei.
This schematic works for most types of electricity generation power plants operating today. In the case of nuclear power stations, the heat source is a nuclear fission reactor which creates hot, pressurised steam which turns a turbine. The fossil fuel power plants work in a similar manner. After use, the steam condenses back to water and recycles past the heat source again.
Cooling water is kept separate from the recycling water for many reasons. For example, condenser water, which is cooling water, can be sea water and taken directly from the ocean and returned to it at a slightly higher temperature. Marine life, close to a variety of power stations, is slightly different to that a little further away. In most cases, the slight increase in temperature leads to a greater density of some marine species. Detrimental effects are not found. The boiler water is usually exceptionally clean water with special additives to keep pipes and pumps from eroding or clogging up.
The giant cooling stacks are part of many diverse types of power stations and only emit steam from cooling water.
Even hydroelectric and wind power work in an analogous manner to that shown on the top part of the diagram above. There is no heat source, the power to drive the turbines comes from rushing water or air. There is no need for a cooling system. However, even hydroelectric schemes can have a small impact on water temperatures both upstream and downstream of the power plants.
The energy of the spinning turbines becomes electrical energy by moving magnets within the electrical generator. This short video was cut in my talks and was used just to remind us about electrical units. It has taken from MW vs. MWh: Do You Know Your Electric Units? https://www.enerdynamics.com
Since the beginning of 2022, many countries in Europe are doing a U-turn away from closing down their nuclear power stations to planning new nuclear power plants.
The BWR type reactors work in exactly the same way as shown in the general schematic for a power plant.
Light-water reactors use ordinary water, also called light water, to produce steam to drive their turbines. Water also acts as a neutron moderator that slows neutrons down so more reactions can occur. Water absorbs too many neutrons to be used with unenriched natural uranium as fuel. So, the fuel used is enriched to 3-5% U238. Canada’s CANDU reactors can use natural uranium as fuel, but they are not light-water nuclear reactors. Instead, the reactor water used is heavy water.
PWRs have one more system that circulates water. Water passing through the reactors is separate to that in the circuit that drives the turbines. In order to generate steam efficiently, the “reactor water” is maintained at a high pressure and thus higher temperatures can be reached.
Many people visualise nuclear waste from reactors as a liquid. All highly radioactive waste is solid and contained in fuel rods within a fuel assembly and then kept within further layers of protective containment More details about waste handling is presented in later blogs.
Man has used his brains to make his tasks more efficient for thousands of years. We even invented slavery and it certainly paid off to the instigators with wealth and power. It was the use of coal with the invention of steam driven equipment that finally led to the end of slavery in parts of the world. The invention and the expansion of the uses for electricity have led to a lifestyle envied by those without it. Over the last two centuries, we have moved away from the old-fashioned uses of wind and waterpower. Now we are in a phase of reintroducing the use of wind and Sun power via the generation of electricity. Waterpower has generated electricity for over a century.
We had been moving from low-density fuels such as wood and dung to coal, oil, and gas then nuclear fission. Should we continue to do so?
If we are to decarbonise our energy sources, we need to remember that electricity, as we currently use it, is only a portion of our total energy usage. So, we will need to do much more than simply replace fossil fuel generated electricity with low carbon electricity generation. There is also a second factor, population growth. A third consideration relates to increasing urbanisation and the desire by virtually all the people on earth wanting access to electricity. I have yet to see reliable estimations of just how much more generating capacity will be necessary by 2050. It will be more than double or triple and probably five times more. Five times may still be an underestimate.
As people are drifting into cities all over the world, they are demanding electricity even when living in slum areas. Commentators have stated that these people will steal electricity if it is not made available to them. This is already happening in South America. We have two choices: do the right planning now or face a world of increasing friction and violence.
Why are we planning on decarbonising our world? Well, there are lots of reasons including the chance for some entities to make lots of money. The main reason is illustrated below:
How are we doing? Well, I am sure that I saw graphs for Australia showing that our methane and nitrous oxide levels were coming down and I put the methane reduction down to the reduction in our cattle and sheep numbers over the last decade or so. I cannot find my reference to those graphs despite my attempts at filing the information I have read in the last few months. The recent data for methane emissions show that our levels are rising (IEA Methane Tracker). I assume that this is probably due to fugitive emissions from the Queensland newly developed gas fields.
I must apologise, as I gave the wrong impression at the first presentation of this information at U3A in Atherton. I did not put this information up on the screen, it was only verbal but some of the attendees will remember my statement about Australia’s methane and nitrous oxide levels coming down.
One of the difficulties I have found when preparing my talks is a disparity in numbers between one source and another. However, it is clear that on a per capita basis, Australia emits some of the highest levels of CO2 and methane. Methane is emitted from wetlands and in quite substantial amounts. Worldwide, the fossil fuel industry seems to be working hard to control fugitive emissions and flaring as shown on the slide below. A few more years of data will clarify the level of methane emission as the flattening of the curve may be due in part to restricted travel during the COVID epidemic. Methane is emitted from wetlands and in quite substantial amounts.
The next few graphs come from the International Energy Agency (IEA) website https://www.iea.org/data-and-statistics. It is obvious that the bulk of worldwide CO2 emissions arise from the use of the fossil fuels coal, gas and oil. Gas produces about half the CO2 compared to coal for the generation of the same amount of energy. All the fossil fuels are valuable commodities in their own right for the manufacture of many goods we take for granted in our modern lives. They form the feedstock for so many chemicals, and they are a finite resource. It is such a waste when we just burn them to produce energy. Coal is still needed for the production of steel and a substantial proportion of Australia’s coal exports are used for this purpose. Recent technologies such as the use of hydrogen for steelmaking offer hope for the future.
Nuclear power plants have been producing a steady supply of electricity for over 30 years, but nuclear power has not been used to supply energy for other purposes. Despite the rapidly increasing construction of solar and wind power, again these energy sources are only used for the production of electricity. One of the obvious ways to decarbonise our energy, is to use electricity as a replacement for the production of heat and for transportation. Some public transportation systems around the world have always been electric. Electric trucks have been used in some transport sectors for nearly a century. China has been remarkably busy building high-speed, electric train networks this century.
Unfortunately, some of the EU countries such as France, Sweden and Germany have been closing down some of their nuclear power plants earlier than needed. France has had some of the cleanest electricity in the world at cheap prices, but the push for replacement by wind energy has taken them in the wrong direction. In the last few months, a number of EU countries have taken a U-turn and are planning more nuclear power plants. There has also been a real push to improve efficiency of electricity use within the EU. As can assumed from the graph below, even France produces significant levels of CO2 due to the use of oil for heating and transportation.
Despite the billions of dollars and euros spent on erection of new wind farms, the percentage of electricity produced through wind power has not increased in the OECD countries. Indeed, the use of coal has increased while gas which produces half the CO2 compared to coal has gone down.
The first nuclear power plants were built during a period when safety was not considered as it is now.
When I did my undergraduate degree in chemistry in the 1960s, most of the organic chemistry department personnel were missing an eye. We were not considered true organic chemists until we had at least one labelled mark on the ceiling from an accidental explosion. We used Bunsen burners, naked gas flames, to distill off flammable and often carcinogenic solvents. I knew just what to do when my hair, lab coat and books erupted in flame from burning ether. Big drums were used for the storage of solvents and when the lab finally burnt down, the explosions from each of the solvent drums sent up spectacular columns of black smoke. The Research Laboratory of ICIANZ where I had a holiday job burnt down a year or so after I was there despite the training we received to prevent and extinguish solvent fires.
When I went to the dentist as a child, the dentist gave me mercury to take home for play. I first held a big bar of uranium metal in my bare hands in 1962.
The first safety features for nuclear power plants were just tacked on as an afterthought. I will describe current safety features for nuclear power plants later in my series of blogs. Safety is now designed and built in, made triply redundant and checked and cross-checked by regulators.
Three nuclear power plant accidents are well known. Using some of my slides from my presentations, the basic facts as best I can ascertain them are given below.
Fear caused all the health effects.
Chernobyl was a terrible happening. So many things were wrong including dreadful design with just a thin concrete cover and international coverup following the explosion. Documents are still being written about the details.
Recorded interviews with Babushkas are enlightening. “My friends who stayed away are all dead now and we are still alive.”
Ukraine, the site of the Chernobyl disaster obtained almost half of its electricity from nuclear power plants in 2021. It was planning to build more. I have been presenting detailed updates about the happenings and safety of nuclear facilities in Ukraine during each presentation I do.
In 2008, My husband and I attended an International Mining Water Association conference in Karlovy Vary within the Czech Republic. The U.S.S.R. had pillaged its surrounding countries leaving massive legacies. One of the remediation projects we visited was a uranium mine with contaminated ground water. The rehabilitation scientists presented the chemical data and then took us out to view the works which were in their last stages. In one area there were beautiful, ripe, wild strawberries. I picked a strawberry and illogical fear erupted around me. I said, “You have seen the data, these are perfectly healthy to eat, and I am not worried.” Suddenly, the men around me were trying the strawberries too and they were wonderful.
A friend who worked at the UN International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Vienna, told me in 2005 that the IAEA had learnt many lessons about how to manage a disaster at Chernobyl. A whole generation of rural farming children grew up without sufficient protein in their diets, eggs and milk being their traditional sources. Fear caused a lot of unnecessary damage. However, these lessons were forgotten or not learnt by Government authorities when a tsunami hit Japan.
Many studies have been published about the incidence of thyroid cancer in children following Chernobyl. A very large collection of thyroid tissue samples was collected from thyroid cancer sufferers. A very recent genetic study has shown that children receiving high doses of Iodine 131 soon after the disaster do have quite distinct genetic damage from that of children diagnosed with thyroid cancer since that time. (References:
Yeager M, Machiela MJ, Kothiyal P, et al. Lack of transgenerational effects of ionizing radiation exposure from the Chernobyl accident. April 22, 2021. Science. DOI: 10.1126/science.abg2365.
Morton LM, Karyadi DM, Stewart C, et al. Radiation-related genomic profile of papillary thyroid cancer after the Chernobyl accident. April 22, 2021. Science. DOI: 10.1126/science.abg2538.)
Iodine 131 breaks down very quickly. The following graph shows its decay curve. Half of it has decayed in 8 days and 99.9% in 80days.
Japan shut down many of its nuclear power plants. After very extensive safety testing and refurbishment, many of these power plants are now back in operation.
Antinuclear campaigners used the following picture with the heading shown on it to frighten people around the world. Yes, it is a graph produced by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association of the US (NOAA), but it is not a graph of radiation but of wave heights. It had no relation to radiation levels in sea water.
There is a tendency when people become sick, particularly with cancer, to blame nuclear radiation as the culprit. When I was head of the technical division for environmental regulation in mining in the Northern Territory the outcome of an investigation near Ranger Uranium Mine illustrated this point. Members of the Jawoyn people were becoming sick. They gathered food in a billabong downstream of the mine. The Jawoyn blamed the mine. Extensive monitoring of the food and water showed only very low background levels of radioactivity. The investigations detected dangerous levels of raw sewage contamination. Bacteria were causing the sickness and the situation was soon rectified.
There are other concerns voiced about nuclear energy, and these will be discussed in later blogs.
The decision to end the war quickly by dropping nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki was justified to the world as it was estimated to save up to a million lives. Was it? Probably. About 100,000 Japanese had been killed shortly beforehand from more conventional bombing of Tokyo. It certainly saved the lives of ten thousand Australians close to starvation in Japanese prisoner of war camps.
I was conceived just before the atomic bombs were dropped on Japan and grew up during the Cold War. Nobody was sure what would happen next.
Nobody can argue that nuclear weapons or nuclear weapon testing or indeed any form of war does not harm us all. The United States believes in deterrents. Are they right? Perhaps so. There has not been a nuclear bomb used in 75 years. William Perry believes we must still do all we can to remove nuclear weapons from our world and I agree.
How easy is it to make a nuclear bomb?
It is extremely difficult technically and extremely expensive both in money and energy terms.
In today’s dollars the cost to make enough fissile material runs into tens even hundreds of billions.
What about “dirty bombs”, bombs containing radioactive material. I read a comment from those responsible for clean-up and decontamination that it would be a simple, straightforward process.
Some of the information above came from my notes when I undertook courses from Stanford University online: “Living at the Nuclear Brink” by Dr. William J. Perry and “The Threat of Nuclear Terrorism”. These courses delved into these issues very intensively, but my notes are sparser. Dr. Perry and his associates did not underplay the threats of misuse of nuclear weapons.
Cosmic rays are extremely high-energy subatomic particles – mostly protons and atomic nuclei accompanied by many forms of electromagnetic emissions – that move through space, eventually bombarding the Earth’s surface. They travel at nearly the speed of light.
Cosmic rays are of two kinds: galactic and solar. Galactic cosmic radiation comes from the remnants of supernovas, which are powerful explosions during the last stages of existence of massive stars.
Solar cosmic radiation is composed of charged particles emitted by the Sun, predominantly electrons, protons and helium nuclei. Some of this radiation is continuously emitted from the Sun’s corona and known as ‘solar wind.’ The remainder comes from solar particle events – sudden and sporadic outbursts of electrically charged particles accompanied by electromagnetic emissions that occur when magnetic fields on the Sun’s surface stretch and twist. Like a rubber band, the Sun’s fields can snap, suddenly releasing enormous energy and presenting potential health concerns to astronauts in space. Although rare, strong solar flares can create radio blackouts and impact modern communication and navigation technology on ground.
The Earth is shielded by a magnetic field that makes the charged particles bounce from pole to pole, creating two gigantic donut-shaped belts populated by energetic electrons and protons. This field protects us from most of the cosmic rays. Passengers on aeroplane flights do receive higher doses of cosmic rays particularly at high altitude over the poles.
The background radiation levels originating from rocks in the earth’s crust, vary considerably. There is increasing evidence that people who live on granite areas have evolved stronger repair mechanisms to cope with the higher radiation levels.
Radon gas is the most insidious of background radiation sources. The gas is breathed into the lungs. Radon concentrations can build up to elevated levels in basements and tunnels or even houses built of granite. Ventilation goes a long way to solving the problem.
Potassium 40 levels can be surprisingly high in many foodstuffs such as bananas and potatoes. No harm has been measured from these sources.
There are quite a few different units used when describing nuclear radiation/radioactivity. The table above shows many of these units. Throughout this series, I have chosen to use millisieverts. This unit has both weighting factors for the type of radiation and also uses weighting factors for the tissue affected when appropriate. This standardisation makes comparisons easier.
Most of Australia has low natural background levels at 1.5 mSv per year. Surprisingly high background levels occur in some parts of the world. Many can be as high as 20 mSv per year. Recent studies are showing little evidence of increased cancer levels in these zones. Our cells divide and divide at enormous rates every day of our lives. Errors can occur. These errors are detected during the process of mitosis at several points in the cell division process and corrected by our wonderful biochemistry. It has been estimated that over 10,000 cancer cells are generated in our bodies every day. Our immune systems detect these cells and destroy them with incredible efficiency.
Australians double their exposure to radioactivity using medical diagnostics. A CT scan of the chest or abdomen delivers about 10 mSv. The levels of radioactivity used during radiation therapy for cancer are extremely high but are carefully aimed at the troubled tissue. Methods of delivering radiation therapy are becoming more sophisticated and more targeted.
Much of our knowledge about high doses of radiation and its effects, come from detailed studies of the impact of the nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Standards set for acceptable levels of radiation are extremely conservative and evidence is building up that these standards are far too low. Instead of protecting the general public, the standards have caused unnecessary fear and inappropriate actions that led to mental health issues and other health issues.
Statistics from the US show a lifetime risk of having some form of medically diagnosed cancer as 1 in 3 (33%) and death from cancer as 1 in 5 (20%). An acute dose of 100mSv has a cancer risk of only 0.4%. An accumulated dose at this level would be lower still as the body has a chance to repair itself.
I have noted that radiation doses and their effects vary from source to source but they are not dissimilar and the slides shown above provide a reasonable concept.
Recently, five ex-Prime Ministers of Japan sent a letter to the EU claiming children in Fukushima province were still suffering from thyroid cancer because of contamination from the nuclear power plant following the 2011 tsunami. The Governor of Fukushima Province was irate over this and said the information was not based on science. The inflammatory letter was probably based on two viewpoints. Many children had all, or part of their thyroid glands removed because of a large screening exercise for thyroid abnormalities following the impact of the tsunami and now some will need thyroid hormone substitution all their lives. Six of these children are currently suing Tokyo Electric Power Company, the Daiichi Power station operators for damages.
The first signatory to the letter, Koizumi Junichiro, is an advisor to a private organization that promotes zero nuclear power and renewable energy.
The large screening exercise was undertaken on hundreds of thousands of children using a new advanced ultrasound technology capable of picking up a range of abnormalities not usually seen and panic set in. When control screening was undertaken on children in 3 prefectures far from any possible contamination, the same extent and types of abnormalities were found. They did not lead to thyroid cancer. It is sad that so many children were overtreated. A wait and see approach would have been better and not led to further illness.
There is an optimum amount for most substances in biological beings. Too much is toxic, too little can often be harmful too. The optimum range is not the same from organism to organism and can be different at various times. For minerals, the optimum level ranges are often like those in the environment where the species evolved. Does this same concept apply to radiation?
The source of all our energy production is nuclear in nature. The energy of the sun comes from nuclear reactions. Earth heats itself through nuclear reactions which occur deep underground but not enough to sustain life, we need the heat of the sun too.
Every element has a unique atomic number, and this number corresponds to the number of protons in its nucleus. Protons are positively charged entities and would push away from each other very quickly if they were not buffered by neutrons. The mass number of an element is simply the sum of its protons and neutrons. Most of the carbon on earth has six protons and six neutrons to a total of twelve.
Carbon 12 is the common isotope of carbon. Carbon-14 still has an atomic number of six, six protons in its nucleus but eight neutrons for a total of 14. Carbon-14 is a radioactive isotope of carbon.
Hydrogen (H) is the lightest element and only has one proton. Deuterium and tritium are isotopes of hydrogen and contain one proton and either one or two neutrons. Thus, tritium has a mass number of three, one proton and two neutrons. The next element with 2 protons is Helium (He).
If, when an atom emits nuclear radiation, the number of protons in the nucleus changes, the atom changes to another element – the element that has the new number of protons.
Uranium is a metal and one of the heaviest, naturally occurring elements on earth. It is ubiquitous in our environment. It is in our drinking water, in our food, in our soils and in ourselves. When any element is much more concentrated in rocks than normal, we refer to it as an ore.
Uranium has 92 protons. Uranium 238 is the most common isotope and makes up 99.3% with 146 neutrons. It is very mildly radioactive with a half-life similar to the age of the earth itself. Uranium 235 only makes up about 0.7% and is much more radioactive. Even rarer, is the uranium 234 isotope with 142 neutrons.
The slide above shows a version of all the known elements. It is hard to see, but hydrogen (H) is right up in the left-hand corner. Uranium (U) is fourth from the left in the bottom row. All the elements on a yellow background are radioactive. Some of the minor isotopes of the elements on the white background are also radioactive such as iodine 131, potassium 40, and carbon-14.
The video below is an excellent presentation on radioactivity. Please watch it! It leads into the next blog. If you have trouble from this site watch it on YouTube:
Fear is one of the most basic human emotions. It is programmed into the nervous system and works like an instinct. From the time we’re infants, we are equipped with the survival instincts necessary to respond with fear when we sense danger or feel unsafe….
People fear things or situations that make them feel unsafe or unsure. For instance, someone who isn’t a strong swimmer might have a fear of deep water. In this case, the fear is helpful because it cautions the person to stay safe. Someone could overcome this fear by learning how to swim safely.
A fear can be healthy if it cautions a person to stay safe around something that could be dangerous. But sometimes a fear is unnecessary and causes more caution than the situation calls for. (Words quoted from https://kidshealth.org/en/teens/phobias.html.)
We also fear for those we love. A mother’s fear for her children can be particularly strong. This latter instinct has been utilised by anti-nuclear power campaigners very effectively. Anti-nuclear campaigners are very genuine in their fears which I believe is based on emotional thinking. Historically, there were good reasons for their fears, and I will address some of these reasons in future blogs.
A look at the early days of nuclear power show little regard for safety. Indeed, safety played only a small part of life just after WW2 and into the 50s. Nuclear bombs were tested. Nuclear proliferation was rife during the Cold War. Nuclear power and nuclear bombs were linked in our minds. This does not apply now. The technologies are very different, the fuel used is very different. Nuclear power fuel uses slightly enriched uranium or is not enriched at all. Nuclear weapons are very, very highly enriched and the fuel is technically difficult and horrendously expensive to produce.
In the 60s and 70s, our car broke down frequently, there were not even seat belts. We cannot pretend those cars compare with our cars now. New generation nuclear power plants are very different too. Indeed, safety was not considered in most areas of life in Australia. As a young chemist, I remember many practices that would not be allowed today.
The recent floods in Australia illustrate this point. Anything can beneficial or harmful. For example, we all know arsenic can kill but a couple of enzymes require arsenic as part of their structure. This probably even applies to nuclear radiation. It is rarely beneficial to have too much of a good thing.
The rest of this presentation introduces some essential concepts of nuclear physics and chemistry – Nuclear 101 – and looks more deeply at fears we may have.
With this background you will be in a better position to make rational decisions about nuclear power.
When nuclear reactions occur, two main forms of energy are released: heat and radiation. Radiation is used in nuclear power plants to cause more nuclear reactions to occur to keep the power plant operating. The heat is collected by a “cooling system” and makes steam which then drives turbines and generates electricity. Most of a nuclear power plant runs in a very similar way to electricity generation by a coal -fired or gas power plant. They all have turbines and cooling systems. When we burn coal, gas or wood, the energy is released in two main forms: heat and radiation. In this case, the radiation is in the form of infra-red radiation and light which is not so useful except perhaps psychologically sitting in front of an open fire.
There are about 440 nuclear power plants in operation in 33 countries. Australia is not one of these. Australia is the only G20 country where nuclear power is banned by Federal law. Nuclear power production is currently not permitted under two main pieces of Commonwealth legislation—the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Act 1998 (the ARPANS Act), and the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 (the EPBC Act).
Nuclear power plants provide 10% of the world’s electricity. It is one of the safest sources of power generation. It produces no CO2 or other pollutants during operation and is the only source of power where every stage of the entire life cycle is securely contained.
Civil nuclear power has more than 18,000 reactor years of experience. The first commercial power plants were built over 50 years ago in the 1960s. Many of the world’s current nuclear power plants were built decades ago and for many years, few new reactors were built due to the campaigns by antinuclear groups and community concerns following Chernobyl. This was concerning as the new technology with greatly improved safety and efficiency was not being implemented. Safety features were no longer just added on as the technology advanced but were an integral part of the designs.
A year ago, the USA and major countries in Europe were setting dates to rid themselves of nuclear. Even France that had 70% of its electricity produced by nuclear power plants was winding down the industry. Sweden was replacing nuclear with wind power and Germany was determined to close all its nuclear power plants. However, other parts of the world, particularly Asia, had a different view and saw nuclear as an important part of the energy mix. About 55 power reactors are currently being planned or constructed in 19 countries.
In 2022, attitudes seem to be changing. France’s president Emmanuel Macron has announced plans to relaunch the country’s commercial nuclear programme with the construction of at least six new nuclear power reactors – and the possibility of eight more for a total of 14 – if he is re-elected. He also announced he wants to extend the lifespan of older nuclear plants to 50 years or more from 40 years currently, provided it was safe to do so. Japan shut down most of its nuclear power plants following the Fukushima event but has then gradually reopened each plant following extensive safety assessment and refurbishment.
Over recent weeks, several Eastern European countries have stated they need nuclear power if they are to reach their 2050 climate goals.
The first set of blogs accompanying my PowerPoint slides provide some basic material on radioactivity and uranium, fact checks issues that worry most of us and asks the question “Why are we afraid of nuclear power?”.
Early next month I will finally give a series of talks to our local University of the Third Age (U3A). It is my way of sharing some of what I have learnt. The omicron variant of COVID-19 postponed many of my activities including these lectures.
The act of putting the presentations together, taught me how little I knew about these issues. I have learnt so much in the process. I have finally decided to present the contents of these lectures in my blog with encouragement from friends.
During the preparation of the talks, I spent many days being thrown from one viewpoint to another but did not stop until I had satisfied myself as to the basic facts. I have tried to take into account the biases and background of each source.
Luckily, I have been able to access many online university courses through EdX on topics ranging from batteries, electric cars, critical raw materials, energy economics, carbon capture and storage, hydrogen, nuclear terrorism and “Living at the Nuclear Brink” plus “Nuclear Energy Science.” (https://www.edx.org)
I have collected and read scientific papers, books, reports and articles, videos and films. Many of the graphs in these presentations have been taken directly from sources such the International Energy Agency (IEA). The one below has been modified to make the labelling more visible.
Despite all the rhetoric about solar and wind power and all the gains made so far, Australia faces enormous challenges. Reducing our use of CO2 emitting energy sources will be a hard road as can be seen from the graph above from the International Energy Agency (IEA) of which Australia is a member.
Unfortunately, we often equate energy with electricity which can give a very false picture despite our massive uptake of residential solar. Are we counting the CO2 emitted during the manufacture of green technologies: battery storage, electric cars, wind turbines or solar panels? Energy use is only part of our emissions of greenhouse gases and electricity is only part of energy production/consumption. Many positive changes sit on the horizon. For example, hydrogen could reduce the use of coal used in steel manufacture, but hydrogen still requires a lot of energy as electricity for its generation.
Australia’s energy production almost doubled between 1990 and 2020. Until a decade ago, our CO2 emissions were also rapidly rising. This rise has now flattened, principally due to greater use of gas over coal but gas prices could threaten this improvement. At best gas can only be a transition measure. Our CO2 emissions rose by 45% between 1990 and 2020. (ref: https://www.iea.org/countries/australia)
Australia is the world’s 14th highest emitter, contributing just over 1 per cent of global emissions. The Australian Government tracks the nation’s greenhouse gases emissions through the National Greenhouse Gas Inventory. According to the December 2020 update, Australia emitted 499 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent. (ref CSIRO) This a lot for a country with 0.3% of the world’s population.
We are one of the world’s highest green-house gas emitters per capita in lots of categories. We have reduced methane and nitrous oxide emissions substantially but are still very high in world terms. These gases are partly produced in the agricultural sector but changes in farming practices have already helped to halve these emissions. (ref: https://ourworldindata.org)
Data varies from source to source and data is often grouped in different categories making comparisons very difficult, but the big pictures are clear.
Tasmania produces clean, green electricity according to a fascinating live site on electricity production around the world (https://app.electricitymap.org/zone/AUS-TAS Approximately 60 % of Queensland electricity comes from coal and roughly 40 % from solar. The data I found on wind was sketchy.
The carbon intensity information below cleverly illustrates the differences energy source makes to carbon intensity of electricity generation. Grant Chalmers created the video using data from http:/docs.co2signal.com. Countries with lots of nuclear power and/or hydro have low carbon intensity per MW.
One of the issues not discussed enough relates to the materials needed for the green transition. I have heard very little discussion of the lead-in time for all the new mines needed for essential materials.
Does nuclear power have a place? Looking at world-wide statistics, it plays a huge role in those countries with low carbon intensities.
Until recently, my stance was that countries like Sweden could safely use nuclear power because they developed and implemented long term policies. When Australia could not even manage low level waste sensibly, I doubted we could safely use nuclear power.
Recently, many countries are changing their views about nuclear power. Currently, Australia has a ban on nuclear power but has a research reactor at Lucas Heights near Sydney producing medical isotopes.
Good background knowledge is essential for meaningful discussions about Australia’s energy future. By sharing my journey, I hope to put others on a pathway to learning more about low carbon technologies and the challenges we face.
The first of the series of talks is called Why Do We Fear Nuclear Power?
It is presented as a series of 6 blogs which are labelled a to f so that they can be accessed in a logical order.
The second and third lectures examine the question
Does Nuclear Power have a Place in the Era of Decarbonisation?
The final lecture in the series is called Nuclear Power for Today and Tomorrow
I worked as an Environmental Scientist in China and Hong Kong for a decade. My son married a wonderful Chinese lady and I have 2 grandsons living in the New Territory of Hong Kong. Having worked in Hong Kong both sides of 1997 and the transfer from British to Chinese sovereignty, I have some sympathy with the younger generation of Chinese who have enjoyed a democratic political situation for most of their lives. However, it should be remembered that Hong Kong under the British was far from democratic until the last Governor Chris Patten moved quickly to make changes.
The Australian media often describes China in a critical tone. There seems to be little understanding of the insults that have been delivered and copied around the world. Yes, we do need to stand firm on many critical issues but the language in which our views are expressed are often insulting and culturally inappropriate. In some cases, we need to be careful that it is not a case of the pot calling the kettle black. My young teenage grandson explains the interpretation given to many of our press articles. Of mixed heritage, he currently sees himself as Australian with strong Scottish genes.
China has done so much to help the Earth’s climate. The birth rate in many countries falls with prosperity and educational levels. China recognised the problems associated with massive population growth and brought in the One Child Policy. The degree of social and family disruption has been enormous and still continues – but the population curve has been slowed.
I sometimes hear that China is not doing anything about climate change. It is a difficult challenge to bring hundreds of millions of people out of poverty while decreasing CO2 emissions at the same time. In a recent speech by Xi Jinping, general secretary of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, Xi stressed that the country’s green pursuit is no easy job. He said that strategic thinking must be improved as people should bear in mind the big picture throughout the entire process of delivering the carbon peaking and neutrality goals.
Xi Jinping stated that the relations between development and emission reduction must be properly handled. Cutting emissions is not aimed at curbing productivity or no emissions at all. Economic development and green transition should be mutually reinforcing.
While bringing down carbon emissions, efforts should be made to safeguard energy security, industrial and supply chain security, and food security, as well as ensure people’s normal daily lives.
Simon Evans posted the following graph on Twitter
Yicong Zhu, an analyst of renewable energy for Rystad Energy expects over 50 gigawatts of utility solar PV and onshore wind projects to be connected to the grid in China, despite the end of national subsidies for these energy sources. Large battery storage facilities to match with these projects are proceeding. New ultra-high voltage cross-province transmission lines are being constructed to match the projects.
According to Xi Jinping: It is necessary to accelerate the development of new energy sources such as wind, solar, biomass and hydrogen energy that have scale and benefits, coordinate hydropower development and ecological protection, and actively develop nuclear power in a safe and orderly manner.
The numbers are changing rapidly, China opened a nuclear power plant in December and one more on 1 January 2022. The World Nuclear Association data lists China as having 53 operating plants, 18 under construction with another 200 planned or proposed.
How can anyone claim China is not doing its share of climate change mitigation? One argument rests on the fact that China is using increasing amounts of coal. CO2 levels emitted from China are increasing. However, it often forgotten that a lot of the metals and rare earth elements needed for ultimate decarbonisation are either mined or processed in China and this all takes energy for electricity and metallurgy. Then there is industrial production of the equipment to generate renewable power. Australia just imports wind turbines and solar panels. We are not manufacturing the equipment although we do mine ores for such essential metals as iron, copper, aluminium and lithium.
In 1999, I was invited to a special dinner and announcement. I had been leading some environmental studies for the Kowloon Canton Railway Corporation at the time. The invitation was a real honour and the memento of the occasion given to me is shown below.
Translation: China Hong Kong Railroad Association Establishment Celebration. 1999 January 25
The big announcement was the plan by China, with the participation of Hong Kong, to build a very extensive network of electric high- speed trains throughout China. By 2008 the first line was operational from Beijing to Tianjin. By 2013, 10,000 km was operational. There is now about 40,000 km of track and 70,000 km will be built by 2035.
Such projects require massive quantities of concrete and steel. Until innovative technologies replace current methods of production, massive amounts of CO2 are generated to make these materials. In operation, Chinese high- speed trains are powered by electricity and unless the electricity is very green, more CO2 results. Train travel has already reduced aeroplane fuel use in China. It is hard to see how China can reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in the near future but long term, China is surely on track to massively cut GHG emissions.
Early this morning, I watched the First Nations People ceremonies in Sydney on ABC TV. Then I chatted with a friend. After lunch, my husband David, who had been working hard reviewing a paper for our small environmental consultancy, needed to escape our house for a while.
The Atherton Tablelands has a wonderful mix of forests and farmland surrounded by hills and mountains. We drove out in the direction of the hectares of blueberry production. Yes, we do grow blueberries in Far North Queensland. We are blessed with a range of micro-climates and soil types on the Tablelands. Some soils are volcanic in origin and rainfall varies from very little to almost too much. Atherton itself is about 850 metres above sea level.
Here are a few photos from our little trip.
Don’t you love my horns? Part of Atherton can be seen in the background.I am just magnificent!So am I.This little shed is almost a century old and is made of chamfer boards. Note the tangle of discarded power lines.This old shed is also made of chamfer board. Old maize silos stand proud to the right.Details of the roof trusses in the old shed. A close up of the chamfer boards is shown below.
I am confused. I have been reading articles spruiking up ACT’s wonderful performance on the renewable electricity front. The ACT only produces about 5 % of its energy needs. According to SBS News on January 1, 2020:
The rest is drawn from the National Energy Market, which is overwhelmingly powered by non-renewable energy sources like coal and gas.
So for every watt of ‘dirty’ energy that Canberra draws from the grid, it pays to feed the same amount of ‘clean’ energy back into the system.
While 21 per cent of those payments are mandatory under the national Renewable Energy Target scheme, the ACT government pays the remainder voluntarily, at a cost that is expected to peak next year at around $5.50 per household per week.
The renewable energy the ACT purchases is drawn from solar and wind farms spread across the Territory and four other states.
A close look at http://opennem.org.au shows that while South Australia and Tasmania may have some renewable electricity to spare now and again, imported energy from Victoria and New South Wales would come principally from fossil fuels. Both Tasmania and South Australia also rely on some imported electricity.
This seems to be a big game of smoke and mirrors. If ACT buys renewable electricity from other states, then those states have less for themselves. Money might change hands but the overall CO2 production arising from that day’s electricity generation remains the same.
I would prefer that Canberra showed integrity and indicated just what type of sources really light up the city.
OR am I too old- fashioned preferring fact instead of fancy words?
Until we moved to Atherton, I thought all bats used sonar. We have a wonderful bat hospital here. About 50% of bat species do not have sonar and are susceptible to colliding with many objects. Many of the injured bats brought to the hospital have had their wings shredded by barbed wire fences. I have heard that bats are drawn in by wind turbines. Our area has many different species of bats.
I would like to introduce you to Cecil, a micro bat we rescued at our place. Cecil’s problem was believing he was ready to leave his nursery and fly with the rest of the adults at dusk. He was just a little too young and his wings were not fully developed. He flew a few metres and landed near our shed. He crawled in and managed to get tangled in bird netting. Next day, when the weather was already hot, we heard his cries.
I tried to follow Mummy, but my wings were not big enough yet!
Cecil was obviously badly dehydrated but despite our efforts we could not get him to drink. Jenny, the founder of the bat hospital, came to the rescue. He was too dehydrated for her to give him water using simple equipment so off to hospital he went for a couple of weeks. Finally, he was ready to fly and join the adult bats. By this time, he was almost as big as the rest of the bats. The photo below was taken just before he was launched.
Microbats like Cecil do use sonar, just look at his big ears. Cecil and other Little Northern Freetail Bats love to eat insects and keep the mosquito levels down.
My Blog has become My Nuclear Journey 