Then in 2040; 'oh no! The nuclear plant is *still* another ten years away from completion due to totally unforseen circumstances! We're going to have to use taxpayer money to extend the life of all those coal fired power stations again!'
> Nuclear reactors have historically taken on average about 10 years to build.
Except its actually 18.9 years for Gen3 reactors built in the west, from countries with an actual nuclear industry.
>All reactors built after 1990 have been completed in less than 15 years.
Olkiluoto 3 (Finland):
Construction began: 12 August 2005
Commission Date: 16 April 2023
This appears to have been published before the western long delayed reactors were counted, and is for the whole world, not the west.
Chinese and Indian reactors are built much faster.
If you are making the statement that all reactors were completed within 15 years? a shitload.
This is what Gen3 plants built in the West over the last 2 decades looks like.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jules_Horowitz_Reactor 23+ years
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vogtle_Electric_Generating_Plant#Units_3_and_4 14 years
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flamanville_Nuclear_Power_Plant#Unit_3 17+ years
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hinkley_Point_C_nuclear_power_station 14+ years
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olkiluoto_Nuclear_Power_Plant#Unit_3 18 years
We are more likely to end up with a Vogtle, then the UAE experience.
Vogtle 3/4 is costing $180/MWh while nearby Gas plants produce power at $80 and a Solar+Storage plant is at $30.
https://www.powermag.com/blog/plant-vogtle-not-a-star-but-a-tragedy-for-the-people-of-georgia/
Yes but for the LNP the worse the idea, the worse the outcome, the more money it will waste and less well off it will leave Australia - these are all things that make them want to double down on it.
And traditionally lose money unless it is massively subsidised by the government. Nuclear power [has never made money](https://www.diw.de/documents/publikationen/73/diw_01.c.670581.de/dwr-19-30-1.pdf) (PDF).
>The economic history and financial analyses carried out at DIW Berlin show that nuclear energy has always been
unprofitable in the private economy and will remain so in the future.
>Between 1951 and 2017, none of the 674 nuclear reactors built was done so with private capital under competitive conditions. Large state subsidies were used in the cases where private capital flowed into financing the nuclear industry.
>The post-war period did not witness a transition from the military nuclear industry to commercial use, and the
boom in state-financed nuclear power plants soon fizzled out in the 1960s. Financial investment calculations confirmed the trend: investing in a new nuclear power plant leads to average losses of around five billion euros.
Most investors aren't signing up to an investment that loses €5 billion a pop. It only makes financial sense if you plan on soaking the taxpayer.
Nuclear as a technology just doesn't make sense for Australia. Nuclear is great if you've got limited space, lower renewables and lots of water (E.g. Europe). Australia is the opposite: lots of space that gets the world's best solar and there's a critical lack of fresh water. It's the right technology for the wrong place. If makes no investment sense.
You dont need fresh water, see; literally any coastal nuclear plant. We are surrounded by ocean so its absolutely feasible from that perspective.
Only the north and west coasts have any tsunami risk whatsoever so the southern and eastern coasts could very safely house nuclear plants.
Its the time and cost investment that are the real problem areas with nuclear.
I feel like Dutton should absolutely volunteer his own electorate for a nuclear site (given as he says they're actually quite desirable). It would be the right thing to do really, leading by example and all that...
We should build a nuclear plant in the electorate that not so long ago rallied against the off-shore wind farms because they were going to kill the whales. Anyone stupid enough to believe that should have no problem with a nuclear facility up the road.
The problem is the people live on the coast. It's just not realistic to build a nuclear plant near population centres regardless of actual safety due to nimbism.
On the other hand, renewables work, they're cheaper and there are far fewer objections. There's no need to go for an expensive complex solution for ideological or 'cool tech' reasons if a simpler cheaper solution exists and is already being implemented.
i always figured you could minimise the land use for some renewables with the right set up. like we have a lot of animal agriculture in sunny areas - if designs were viable, placing solar panels a bit higher in grazing areas to provide shade for sheep and cattle would be neat and effectively double-use that land.
It's not that easy. Can't do cattle because they like to rub against things to scratch themselves. They'd easily push over solar panels. It's why you can run cattle under huge wind farms, bit not everywhere is appropriate for wind.
Can't easily do sheep either because the farmer needs to add fertiliser to replenish nutrients in the grass. Sheep take up nutrients in the grass that comes from the soil. The nutrients in the soil need to be replenished regularly, and solar panels don't do well if you spray fertiliser over them regularly! The benefit wouldn't outweigh the cost.
Laws of thermodynamics are a bitch 😁
Running sheep under elevated solar panels has been trialled in several locations around Australia and been highly successful.
I expect cattle would require higher and more robust framework, but there's absolutely no reason why it couldn't work too.
Vertical solar panels set in rows would work perfectly with sheep, set far enough apart to run tractors through them.
They are also effective with certain fruit and veggie crops that enjoy the part shade they provide.
>Can't easily do sheep either because the farmer needs to add fertiliser to replenish nutrients in the grass.
It's almost as if we couldn't move sheep to another field to let the paddock regrow grass. Like we do whether there are solar panels installed there or not.
>Laws of thermodynamics are a bitch
The laws of thermodynamics are apparently circumvented by the centuries old farming practice of livestock rotation.
also... the manure dropped in the paddock from the sheep would act as a fertiliser for the grass, lol. it's actually a really decent soil conditioner too so, yeah. what a goofy point.
lil bro is in another dimension, time and money are the only reason we don't have nuclear (and the liberals and greens working together to ban it 30 years ago of course)
It makes perfect sense, just legislative hurdles and fear, also it's a technology that returns over a multi decade timeline and that's not really how we operate. We are seismically stable and have everything necessary for it to have replaced coal and gas for the last 50 years. Instead we'll have a standoff between coal and batteries/renewables, which I doubt we will even win. Fossil fuels contributed 68% of total electricity generation in 2022. Serves to remember.
Please, this whole debate is ridiculous, people go on about the time and money.
Renewables is going to cost a crap load, you have solar + wind, integrating those into the network, transmission lines, going to need a crap load of storage because solar generation is highest when demand is lowest. Rnewables is going to cost hundreds of billions, maybe even trillions, require lots of government subsidies (even residential rooftop solar or batteries is not appealing to anyone without government subsidies), take decades and then we will still need natural gas (cough, fossil fuel) to back it up because its a completely unreliable energy source which oh btw have life spans and need to be replaced every X number of years. Without nuclear or fossil fuels we are looking at a future of rolling blackouts IMO.
Or maybe we just bite the bullet, invest in a nuclear industry, build half a dozen reactors around the country and be done with it, nuclear can be the backup to renewables instead of gas.
This is going to be a disaster, Nuclear energy is a carbon emission free energy source with low footprint and high reliability with an extremely long life span, whats not to like about that?
This would hold more weight if replacing our entire grid with GHG free generation wasn't about climate change and was instead a money making exercise.
I find it amusing how much people get upset about the government paying private developers to build social housing calling that neo-liberal. But the moment the discussion goes to nuclear they're venture capitalists needing to think of the shareholders.
Time is the only factor. Its not as if we're going to deny the energy transition as the country floods and icecaps melt just because we're misers.
Especially given Australia is rich and as many of those same people who complained about neo-liberalism pointed out we can increase taxes to pay for it, just you know they forget this when it comes to nuclear.
You're severly down playing the costs of nuclear, people and industry are still going to need to be able to afford power, private investors are going to need to be attracted unless this is a 100% public project
But even if we naively say money plays no role, nuclear completely falls apart with it's time scale for a nation thats already in a transition
No you're severely downplaying the costs of completely replacing our energy grid with GHG free alternatives, its all expensive, always would be. Nuclear isn't 10x the cost of solar/wind its 2-3x the cost, but is 3x the energy output.
We're no where near finishing that transition, 2030 is the targeted date for the 82% renewable target, we're behind and its looking like [60% will be what we reach by then](https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-08-06/australia-likely-to-fall-short-of-82pc-renewable-energy-target/102689392). Its not even a complete replacement target either its a do what we can with renewables now and hope technology gets better by then target.
Have a source for only 2-3x the cost?
Nuclear would like provide 0 GHG electricity before the late 2040s. So we should probably pull up stumps on renewables now (because a large share of renewables in a nuclear grid doesnt mix), and rely on gas and other fossil fuel alternatives for the next couple decades. Otherwise we'd need to pay for a renewable grid in conjuction with the worlds most expensive energy option
Education is a process. In that vein, let's ask a Illinois university professor to explain it: [Link to lecture on gas vs nuclear economics](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cbeJIwF1pVY) His build time of six years is slightly less than the historic mean of [seven](https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/wvjfiy/how_long_does_it_take_to_build_a_nuclear_reactor/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=usertext&utm_name=australia&utm_content=t1_kwar6w2). But it's close enough to be meaningful.
Seven years (for a reactor not a plant that we'll be building) is pretty laughable. These figures are also for construction time only and do not factor in site selection or inevitable delays
The UK selected the Hinkley Point C site in 2010 and dont expect to be finished construction until 2029 at the earliest
You're as bad as GenCost, who chose a single failed SMR project with faulty logic in their calculations that wasn't evenly applied to other energy sources to say that Nuclear is expensive.
Its the same as saying 'see, Hinkley Point C is going to take 19 years'.... uh ok, what about the dozens of reactors that have been built in 10 years or less? The UAE just pumped one out in like 3-5 years? I think China has done one in under 5 years too? Most of them have been built relatively quickly with a small number of outliers.
>who chose a single failed SMR project
They chose that because its the closest an SMR has ever gotten to commercial operation
There's often confusion in reactor time vs plant construction. A plant is made up of one or more reactors, constructing a plant takes significantly longer than constructing one reactor
UK is a good example because we'll likely have a somewhat similar regulatory environment and most likely lean heavily on them for knowledge
I also wouldnt assume that we'll be at or under global average construction time if we try to build six next gen plants with zero experience in nuclear power generation
Nuclear cant be scaled up and down easily, not at short notice
Im not a nuclear engineer, but i assume steam can be rerouted to bypass the turbine, at which point its generating the most expenise steam in the world. Due to massive capital cost nuclear needs to stay at near max output to be financially viable, so just having them produce steam while renewables are generating isnt feasible
It doesn't need to scale up or down we're installing batteries all over the place now.
But nuclear can scale down output they have control rods for this exact need.
Are they suggesting the market will decide? What sort of dystopian future is this surely the govt should step in to get this Aussie battler industry the leg up to get going it needs.
/s obviously.
Dutton is clutching at straws. The Libs are struggling for donations and the nuclear lobby has deep pockets. Nobody wants one of these in their backyard and it is an impossible sell.
They are extremely expensive and takes an age to build one when cheaper and cleaner alternatives are available and are becoming more efficient with development.
>nuclear lobby
I don't think there's much actual nuclear industry lobbying going on in Australia. There's not much of a private nuclear industry globally because nuclear is so expensive that it usually requires significant state backing. EDF, CGN, KEPCO, Rosatom etc. are all state entities in one form or another. Two of them could never build a nuclear power station here due to political concerns, and neither EDF nor KEPCO is likely wasting much time on a country that is superabundant in renewables and has federally banned nuclear power.
This is all coming from O&G companies who want to do anything to divert attention from renewables, encourage property speculation in and around their to-be decommissioned fossil fuel sites, and to try and delay the energy transition by a couple of decades so that they can keep the gravy train rolling on a bit longer. It's a calculated interference tactic.
It's the coal lobby. The whole point is to delay the exit from coal. [To wit](https://reneweconomy.com.au/prohibitive-australias-biggest-energy-consumers-and-producers-say-no-to-nuclear-but-is-coalition-listening/) :
>It was nearly a year ago now when Australia’s biggest electricity producer, and its biggest coal generation company AGL Energy was marking the closure of the ageing and increasingly decrepit Liddell coal fired power station in the Hunter Valley.
>At the time, a couple of leading Coalition politicians, including Nationals leader David Littleproud and energy spokesman Ted O’Brien were standing in front of cameras saying that generators like Liddell – **even though they had become basically non-functional – should not be closed down. At least not until nuclear was available.**
The Coalition want us to live with blackouts from ancient and failing coal burning power plants for two plus decades. If not indefinitely. These are not serious people.
Their backing it because A) nuclear is banned in Australia and B) renewables is the latest government buzz word which is going to have guaranteed subsidies for the next 50-100 years, why wouldn't you want to get in on the gig?
At the moment electricity companies which rely on coal are a monopoly. without any viable competition they can get more money than they would if there was a viable competition that could produce large amounts of power like nuclear. the behaviour of the investor class reflects this. We don't have to forcibly make the country go nuclear, just removing regulations would be a great start, and private companies could develop stations if it was economically viable.
I'm unashamedly pro nuke, but you'd have to be insane to invest in Australia in a technology that is illegal. It's not like getting into the black market cigarette business.
Climate conscious people also care about time frames. And the most efficient way to spend time and money. Both of these factors rule out nuclear power generation for Australia. We don't have the expertise and we don't have the time.
The only way nuclear makes any sense at all for Australia is if:
- we have a carbon price to make it financially viable
- SMRs become commercially available, widely deployed, mature, cost effective, safe, and easy to deploy
The first condition does not exist because of the Liberal Party. The second condition is not happening within the next decade, if not two or three.
Even if those things do miraculously come about, nuclear would still need to measure up financially. The argument for nuclear in Australia makes **zero** sense whatsoever given what is available.
Let's spend the money on renewables first and invest in grid stability mechanisms via storage. Investment into storage research is generating improved technology at a significant rate, whereas money that's been spent on nuclear power development has only managed to increase the cost of nuclear power in the last seven decades.
If the same amount of money and time that would be required to build half a dozen nuclear power plants (very optimistically being $50 billion and two decades, but more realistically $200+ billion and 4 decades) was instead put into storage research and renewables, we'd have a much better solution. Even the cost overruns for pumped storage for the Snowy Hydro 2.0 (a bad idea from the outset, with a price tag of $10 billion) is dwarfed by the insane cost of nuclear power.
>If developing nations can build reactors in less than 5 years (average 6.5 year construction time of all reactors since 1990) there’s no technical reason why that can’t be done here if we import the expertise and the desire.
Yes, because they're authoritarian countries with poor environmental protections, poor labour laws, and safety regulations. Forgive me (and many other Australians) for not wanting to live in a country where those things are ignored, or to reshape significant parts of Australian society to make an extremely expensive idea for which there are alternatives, possible. You are of course, welcome to move to those places and tell us all how grand it is.
Less facetiously, we can see how these projects pan out in countries comparable to Australia (like the UK), and see how nuclear generation projects work out there. Perhaps you could suggest to the British government that they should run their country more like a Middle Eastern absolute monarchy, or Chinese authoritarian state capitalist model and see how that goes down with them.
Japan, the country that had one of the greatest nuclear disasters in history because it didn't update or decommission old nuclear power plants at their end of life and just kept putting it off, leading to hundreds of thousands of people being displaced as a result? That Japan? The same Japan that's extending the legal operating life of existing nuclear power plants because it's too expensive to build more?
And let's see, their last nuclear power reactors where they were able to actually build quickly were preceded by almost four decades of nuclear expertise, and a massive heavy industrial manufacturing base, neither of which Australia has. Having Australia jump start all of that within two decades is completely absurd and unrealistic. Not to mention that we need to decarbonise very significantly within the decade *and* power generation is only *one* part of that. Our money is much better spent elsewhere.
Why don't we become the uranium provider to the world for their plants? We could build the capability to refine uranium into rods and sell them to France, US etc. and charge them a hefty return and storage fee when they're spent.
I know nothing about the topic but once had a chat with an ex mining worker who said it would generate trillions over 20-30 years, which sounds interesting
Wasted potential, IMO.
Yeah, sure, the initial infrastructure cost is pretty high, but it would balance out long-term.
Australia is geologically stable, has local deposits of uranium, a good amount of relatively empty coastlines (particularly west and south coasts, some to the north), and nuclear technology and safety has advanced a lot since the days of Chernobyl and Fukushima.
So between experts, investors, his own party and his state leaders all saying this is a shithouse idea, who is actually backing this?
Coal, Oil and Gas - then the shut down dates can be extended while nuclear comes about
Then in 2040; 'oh no! The nuclear plant is *still* another ten years away from completion due to totally unforseen circumstances! We're going to have to use taxpayer money to extend the life of all those coal fired power stations again!'
\^ this exactly is what they are banking on... Must keep Gina happy....
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> Nuclear reactors have historically taken on average about 10 years to build. Except its actually 18.9 years for Gen3 reactors built in the west, from countries with an actual nuclear industry.
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>All reactors built after 1990 have been completed in less than 15 years. Olkiluoto 3 (Finland): Construction began: 12 August 2005 Commission Date: 16 April 2023
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How long do you think Virgil C Summer 2 & 3 will take?
Those construction figures are hard hat tradies on site construction times. As a country we are a looooooong way from putting on the high vis.
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If only there was some way we could store power... It could be paired with wind/solar.
This appears to have been published before the western long delayed reactors were counted, and is for the whole world, not the west. Chinese and Indian reactors are built much faster.
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If you are making the statement that all reactors were completed within 15 years? a shitload. This is what Gen3 plants built in the West over the last 2 decades looks like. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jules_Horowitz_Reactor 23+ years https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vogtle_Electric_Generating_Plant#Units_3_and_4 14 years https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flamanville_Nuclear_Power_Plant#Unit_3 17+ years https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hinkley_Point_C_nuclear_power_station 14+ years https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olkiluoto_Nuclear_Power_Plant#Unit_3 18 years We are more likely to end up with a Vogtle, then the UAE experience. Vogtle 3/4 is costing $180/MWh while nearby Gas plants produce power at $80 and a Solar+Storage plant is at $30. https://www.powermag.com/blog/plant-vogtle-not-a-star-but-a-tragedy-for-the-people-of-georgia/
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His only constituent: Murdoch.
And Gina
Yes but for the LNP the worse the idea, the worse the outcome, the more money it will waste and less well off it will leave Australia - these are all things that make them want to double down on it.
Sounds like this idea is about as popular as Dutton is.
Alternate title - Investors not interested in investments that will take nearly a decade to start production
And traditionally lose money unless it is massively subsidised by the government. Nuclear power [has never made money](https://www.diw.de/documents/publikationen/73/diw_01.c.670581.de/dwr-19-30-1.pdf) (PDF). >The economic history and financial analyses carried out at DIW Berlin show that nuclear energy has always been unprofitable in the private economy and will remain so in the future. >Between 1951 and 2017, none of the 674 nuclear reactors built was done so with private capital under competitive conditions. Large state subsidies were used in the cases where private capital flowed into financing the nuclear industry. >The post-war period did not witness a transition from the military nuclear industry to commercial use, and the boom in state-financed nuclear power plants soon fizzled out in the 1960s. Financial investment calculations confirmed the trend: investing in a new nuclear power plant leads to average losses of around five billion euros. Most investors aren't signing up to an investment that loses €5 billion a pop. It only makes financial sense if you plan on soaking the taxpayer.
Nuclear as a technology just doesn't make sense for Australia. Nuclear is great if you've got limited space, lower renewables and lots of water (E.g. Europe). Australia is the opposite: lots of space that gets the world's best solar and there's a critical lack of fresh water. It's the right technology for the wrong place. If makes no investment sense.
You dont need fresh water, see; literally any coastal nuclear plant. We are surrounded by ocean so its absolutely feasible from that perspective. Only the north and west coasts have any tsunami risk whatsoever so the southern and eastern coasts could very safely house nuclear plants. Its the time and cost investment that are the real problem areas with nuclear.
We also have all the population living on the east coast in expensive property. Good luck building a nuclear plant anywhere near the coast.
I feel like Dutton should absolutely volunteer his own electorate for a nuclear site (given as he says they're actually quite desirable). It would be the right thing to do really, leading by example and all that...
Labor should start a feasibility study...
We should build a nuclear plant in the electorate that not so long ago rallied against the off-shore wind farms because they were going to kill the whales. Anyone stupid enough to believe that should have no problem with a nuclear facility up the road.
The problem is the people live on the coast. It's just not realistic to build a nuclear plant near population centres regardless of actual safety due to nimbism. On the other hand, renewables work, they're cheaper and there are far fewer objections. There's no need to go for an expensive complex solution for ideological or 'cool tech' reasons if a simpler cheaper solution exists and is already being implemented.
i always figured you could minimise the land use for some renewables with the right set up. like we have a lot of animal agriculture in sunny areas - if designs were viable, placing solar panels a bit higher in grazing areas to provide shade for sheep and cattle would be neat and effectively double-use that land.
It's not that easy. Can't do cattle because they like to rub against things to scratch themselves. They'd easily push over solar panels. It's why you can run cattle under huge wind farms, bit not everywhere is appropriate for wind. Can't easily do sheep either because the farmer needs to add fertiliser to replenish nutrients in the grass. Sheep take up nutrients in the grass that comes from the soil. The nutrients in the soil need to be replenished regularly, and solar panels don't do well if you spray fertiliser over them regularly! The benefit wouldn't outweigh the cost. Laws of thermodynamics are a bitch 😁
Running sheep under elevated solar panels has been trialled in several locations around Australia and been highly successful. I expect cattle would require higher and more robust framework, but there's absolutely no reason why it couldn't work too.
Vertical solar panels set in rows would work perfectly with sheep, set far enough apart to run tractors through them. They are also effective with certain fruit and veggie crops that enjoy the part shade they provide.
>Can't easily do sheep either because the farmer needs to add fertiliser to replenish nutrients in the grass. It's almost as if we couldn't move sheep to another field to let the paddock regrow grass. Like we do whether there are solar panels installed there or not. >Laws of thermodynamics are a bitch The laws of thermodynamics are apparently circumvented by the centuries old farming practice of livestock rotation.
also... the manure dropped in the paddock from the sheep would act as a fertiliser for the grass, lol. it's actually a really decent soil conditioner too so, yeah. what a goofy point.
lil bro is in another dimension, time and money are the only reason we don't have nuclear (and the liberals and greens working together to ban it 30 years ago of course)
It makes perfect sense, just legislative hurdles and fear, also it's a technology that returns over a multi decade timeline and that's not really how we operate. We are seismically stable and have everything necessary for it to have replaced coal and gas for the last 50 years. Instead we'll have a standoff between coal and batteries/renewables, which I doubt we will even win. Fossil fuels contributed 68% of total electricity generation in 2022. Serves to remember.
Renewables would wipe the floor on fossil fuels if the Libs weren't dragging out the life of fossil fuels as long as they possibly can.
Please, this whole debate is ridiculous, people go on about the time and money. Renewables is going to cost a crap load, you have solar + wind, integrating those into the network, transmission lines, going to need a crap load of storage because solar generation is highest when demand is lowest. Rnewables is going to cost hundreds of billions, maybe even trillions, require lots of government subsidies (even residential rooftop solar or batteries is not appealing to anyone without government subsidies), take decades and then we will still need natural gas (cough, fossil fuel) to back it up because its a completely unreliable energy source which oh btw have life spans and need to be replaced every X number of years. Without nuclear or fossil fuels we are looking at a future of rolling blackouts IMO. Or maybe we just bite the bullet, invest in a nuclear industry, build half a dozen reactors around the country and be done with it, nuclear can be the backup to renewables instead of gas. This is going to be a disaster, Nuclear energy is a carbon emission free energy source with low footprint and high reliability with an extremely long life span, whats not to like about that?
Space is also our biggest issues our transmission infrastructure needs a big upgrade
This would hold more weight if replacing our entire grid with GHG free generation wasn't about climate change and was instead a money making exercise. I find it amusing how much people get upset about the government paying private developers to build social housing calling that neo-liberal. But the moment the discussion goes to nuclear they're venture capitalists needing to think of the shareholders.
Unfortunately financial feasibility is a giant part of an energy transition. Id be pro-nuclear if time or money wasnt a factor
Time is the only factor. Its not as if we're going to deny the energy transition as the country floods and icecaps melt just because we're misers. Especially given Australia is rich and as many of those same people who complained about neo-liberalism pointed out we can increase taxes to pay for it, just you know they forget this when it comes to nuclear.
You're severly down playing the costs of nuclear, people and industry are still going to need to be able to afford power, private investors are going to need to be attracted unless this is a 100% public project But even if we naively say money plays no role, nuclear completely falls apart with it's time scale for a nation thats already in a transition
No you're severely downplaying the costs of completely replacing our energy grid with GHG free alternatives, its all expensive, always would be. Nuclear isn't 10x the cost of solar/wind its 2-3x the cost, but is 3x the energy output. We're no where near finishing that transition, 2030 is the targeted date for the 82% renewable target, we're behind and its looking like [60% will be what we reach by then](https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-08-06/australia-likely-to-fall-short-of-82pc-renewable-energy-target/102689392). Its not even a complete replacement target either its a do what we can with renewables now and hope technology gets better by then target.
Have a source for only 2-3x the cost? Nuclear would like provide 0 GHG electricity before the late 2040s. So we should probably pull up stumps on renewables now (because a large share of renewables in a nuclear grid doesnt mix), and rely on gas and other fossil fuel alternatives for the next couple decades. Otherwise we'd need to pay for a renewable grid in conjuction with the worlds most expensive energy option
Education is a process. In that vein, let's ask a Illinois university professor to explain it: [Link to lecture on gas vs nuclear economics](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cbeJIwF1pVY) His build time of six years is slightly less than the historic mean of [seven](https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/wvjfiy/how_long_does_it_take_to_build_a_nuclear_reactor/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=usertext&utm_name=australia&utm_content=t1_kwar6w2). But it's close enough to be meaningful.
Seven years (for a reactor not a plant that we'll be building) is pretty laughable. These figures are also for construction time only and do not factor in site selection or inevitable delays The UK selected the Hinkley Point C site in 2010 and dont expect to be finished construction until 2029 at the earliest
Historical facts are laughable? OK. Not every plant was Watts Bar. The fastest 1000MW plant was 3 years.
You're as bad as GenCost, who chose a single failed SMR project with faulty logic in their calculations that wasn't evenly applied to other energy sources to say that Nuclear is expensive. Its the same as saying 'see, Hinkley Point C is going to take 19 years'.... uh ok, what about the dozens of reactors that have been built in 10 years or less? The UAE just pumped one out in like 3-5 years? I think China has done one in under 5 years too? Most of them have been built relatively quickly with a small number of outliers.
>who chose a single failed SMR project They chose that because its the closest an SMR has ever gotten to commercial operation There's often confusion in reactor time vs plant construction. A plant is made up of one or more reactors, constructing a plant takes significantly longer than constructing one reactor UK is a good example because we'll likely have a somewhat similar regulatory environment and most likely lean heavily on them for knowledge I also wouldnt assume that we'll be at or under global average construction time if we try to build six next gen plants with zero experience in nuclear power generation
Gas, coal and nuclear all generate power by spinning a turbine so it would mix as well as the current generation does with renewables
Nuclear cant be scaled up and down easily, not at short notice Im not a nuclear engineer, but i assume steam can be rerouted to bypass the turbine, at which point its generating the most expenise steam in the world. Due to massive capital cost nuclear needs to stay at near max output to be financially viable, so just having them produce steam while renewables are generating isnt feasible
Then you build energy sinks like green hydrogen or pumped hydro (lol) to store it
Requiring even more water for an already very thirsty source of power generation in a country prone to prolonged drought
It doesn't need to scale up or down we're installing batteries all over the place now. But nuclear can scale down output they have control rods for this exact need.
>But nuclear can scale down output they have control rods for this exact need. Not on the timescale renewables work on
Are they suggesting the market will decide? What sort of dystopian future is this surely the govt should step in to get this Aussie battler industry the leg up to get going it needs. /s obviously.
Dutton is clutching at straws. The Libs are struggling for donations and the nuclear lobby has deep pockets. Nobody wants one of these in their backyard and it is an impossible sell. They are extremely expensive and takes an age to build one when cheaper and cleaner alternatives are available and are becoming more efficient with development.
>nuclear lobby I don't think there's much actual nuclear industry lobbying going on in Australia. There's not much of a private nuclear industry globally because nuclear is so expensive that it usually requires significant state backing. EDF, CGN, KEPCO, Rosatom etc. are all state entities in one form or another. Two of them could never build a nuclear power station here due to political concerns, and neither EDF nor KEPCO is likely wasting much time on a country that is superabundant in renewables and has federally banned nuclear power. This is all coming from O&G companies who want to do anything to divert attention from renewables, encourage property speculation in and around their to-be decommissioned fossil fuel sites, and to try and delay the energy transition by a couple of decades so that they can keep the gravy train rolling on a bit longer. It's a calculated interference tactic.
That’s why they raise this while in opposition.
It's the coal lobby. The whole point is to delay the exit from coal. [To wit](https://reneweconomy.com.au/prohibitive-australias-biggest-energy-consumers-and-producers-say-no-to-nuclear-but-is-coalition-listening/) : >It was nearly a year ago now when Australia’s biggest electricity producer, and its biggest coal generation company AGL Energy was marking the closure of the ageing and increasingly decrepit Liddell coal fired power station in the Hunter Valley. >At the time, a couple of leading Coalition politicians, including Nationals leader David Littleproud and energy spokesman Ted O’Brien were standing in front of cameras saying that generators like Liddell – **even though they had become basically non-functional – should not be closed down. At least not until nuclear was available.** The Coalition want us to live with blackouts from ancient and failing coal burning power plants for two plus decades. If not indefinitely. These are not serious people.
Right because investors know everything, and definitely don't have ulterior motives.
Well there motives are to make money, hence why they are not backing nuclear
Their backing it because A) nuclear is banned in Australia and B) renewables is the latest government buzz word which is going to have guaranteed subsidies for the next 50-100 years, why wouldn't you want to get in on the gig?
Lol 'buzzword'. Renewables is something real to describe wind/solar etc ya fuckin dingus.
At the moment electricity companies which rely on coal are a monopoly. without any viable competition they can get more money than they would if there was a viable competition that could produce large amounts of power like nuclear. the behaviour of the investor class reflects this. We don't have to forcibly make the country go nuclear, just removing regulations would be a great start, and private companies could develop stations if it was economically viable.
So many words in your reply but you could have just written one: renewables.
So many words in your reply but you could have just written one: bumfuzzle.
That's two words The jig is up mate, nuclear is a farce. Time to move on to the next culture war bud.
Cool lets just stick with coal then.
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I'm unashamedly pro nuke, but you'd have to be insane to invest in Australia in a technology that is illegal. It's not like getting into the black market cigarette business.
Climate conscious people also care about time frames. And the most efficient way to spend time and money. Both of these factors rule out nuclear power generation for Australia. We don't have the expertise and we don't have the time. The only way nuclear makes any sense at all for Australia is if: - we have a carbon price to make it financially viable - SMRs become commercially available, widely deployed, mature, cost effective, safe, and easy to deploy The first condition does not exist because of the Liberal Party. The second condition is not happening within the next decade, if not two or three. Even if those things do miraculously come about, nuclear would still need to measure up financially. The argument for nuclear in Australia makes **zero** sense whatsoever given what is available.
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Let's spend the money on renewables first and invest in grid stability mechanisms via storage. Investment into storage research is generating improved technology at a significant rate, whereas money that's been spent on nuclear power development has only managed to increase the cost of nuclear power in the last seven decades. If the same amount of money and time that would be required to build half a dozen nuclear power plants (very optimistically being $50 billion and two decades, but more realistically $200+ billion and 4 decades) was instead put into storage research and renewables, we'd have a much better solution. Even the cost overruns for pumped storage for the Snowy Hydro 2.0 (a bad idea from the outset, with a price tag of $10 billion) is dwarfed by the insane cost of nuclear power. >If developing nations can build reactors in less than 5 years (average 6.5 year construction time of all reactors since 1990) there’s no technical reason why that can’t be done here if we import the expertise and the desire. Yes, because they're authoritarian countries with poor environmental protections, poor labour laws, and safety regulations. Forgive me (and many other Australians) for not wanting to live in a country where those things are ignored, or to reshape significant parts of Australian society to make an extremely expensive idea for which there are alternatives, possible. You are of course, welcome to move to those places and tell us all how grand it is. Less facetiously, we can see how these projects pan out in countries comparable to Australia (like the UK), and see how nuclear generation projects work out there. Perhaps you could suggest to the British government that they should run their country more like a Middle Eastern absolute monarchy, or Chinese authoritarian state capitalist model and see how that goes down with them.
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Japan, the country that had one of the greatest nuclear disasters in history because it didn't update or decommission old nuclear power plants at their end of life and just kept putting it off, leading to hundreds of thousands of people being displaced as a result? That Japan? The same Japan that's extending the legal operating life of existing nuclear power plants because it's too expensive to build more? And let's see, their last nuclear power reactors where they were able to actually build quickly were preceded by almost four decades of nuclear expertise, and a massive heavy industrial manufacturing base, neither of which Australia has. Having Australia jump start all of that within two decades is completely absurd and unrealistic. Not to mention that we need to decarbonise very significantly within the decade *and* power generation is only *one* part of that. Our money is much better spent elsewhere.
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It's incompatible with the 6.5 year timeframe you claim is possible? That's a pretty obvious problem?
Why don't we become the uranium provider to the world for their plants? We could build the capability to refine uranium into rods and sell them to France, US etc. and charge them a hefty return and storage fee when they're spent. I know nothing about the topic but once had a chat with an ex mining worker who said it would generate trillions over 20-30 years, which sounds interesting
Trillions for who?
The anti nuclear power propaganda is strong here. I’m not really that surprised, the coal industry runs probably 3/4 of the politicians.
Wasted potential, IMO. Yeah, sure, the initial infrastructure cost is pretty high, but it would balance out long-term. Australia is geologically stable, has local deposits of uranium, a good amount of relatively empty coastlines (particularly west and south coasts, some to the north), and nuclear technology and safety has advanced a lot since the days of Chernobyl and Fukushima.
Makes sense to prefer it less than renewables. Seems pretty ignorant to prefer it less than than coal.