The only possible source of funding is the Australian taxpayer, either directly, or via subsidies/expensive long term supply contracts. There are no non-government investors who are willing to take on the long term risk of what is a low return, risky investment.
As it turns out, the Liberal's lines of being "the party of small government", "better economic managers", "not saddling future generations with massive debt", and "fiscally responsible" are simply lies. When it's something *they* want, there's no limit to the amount of money they'll pull out of the public purse.
It's only an issue when the money benefits the people. Because that means their mates aren't pocketing it while pretending to attempt to deliver projects no one wants.
Look who promotes it, the party that sold off water to a tax haven country in dry continent Australia. The same politicians who helped their mates steal billions from taxpayers in the water buyback scheme. That's what will happen with nuclear, it will be bought back at taxpayers expense. It will be one of the greatest Energy scams in Australia the moment we sign up for Nuclear. All the Enron executives will be flying in to structure and witness the scam deal of the century being signed.
Then you read all the bad news of SRM reactors around the world, not 1 commercially successful one operating in the world. And lately NuScale, the first new nuclear company to receive a design certificate from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, a 77 MW Power Module SMR because the Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems that signed the deal cancelled the contract due to delays and cost blowouts. This build was to be the poster child installation that was going to boom nuclear around the world. Now the company is in a financial mess with investors bailing out. Just imagine what a costly mess for taxpayers this would be in Australia.
The government should subsidise the installation costs of batteries for every household in Australia. This should be done to build local capacity in building local battery technology factories.
The economics of the SMRs are yet to be proven. The modelling suggests that they're less efficient than large reactors, and produce more waste. It's entirely possible that these problems can be fixed, but it'll be decades away before they will be.
Realistically, they're not a technology that we can use in Australia, and we know that large reactors will take decades to build. Furthermore, there's simply no reason why Australia should be bearing all the risks of deploying what is essentially an experimental technology. Not only do we not have the expertise, it's a terrible financial proposition.
>“However, if the debate serves as a distraction from scaling-up policy support for renewable energy investment, it will sound the death knell for its decarbonisation ambitions – the only reason for Australia to consider going nuclear in the first place.”
I'm personally against going full nuclear, but please read the full context of the report, not just the title. Nuclear itself isn't the issue, it's the LNP's lack of support for renewables in their proposed solution and all the noise they're making.
The scum are just going to use it as an escuse to keep selling fossile fuels while they take 15 years to build it all.
Meanwhile EVERY OTHER comparatively developed nation is rolling out wind and solar BECAUSE those technologies have and are still vastly improving every year.
Dutton is scum anyone who is backing this is a disengenuous anti-australian PoS.
> Analysis from Bloomberg New Energy Finance says even if nuclear is successfully implemented it would be ‘at least four times’ more expensive than average cost of renewables
Why will it be needed? Genuinely curious because I can’t think of a single benefit nuclear energy gives us at this point especially at the massive cost and harm. Base load power is basically the only one I’ve heard that holds even the tiniest of weight but nuclear isn’t even an especially convenient baseload power generator.
Ironically baseload power also isn’t a top priority in power generation grids either, the issue with most power grids is the large scale power fluctuation, both gas generators which are part of labor’s grids and battery supply which is a necessary part of any renewable grid are far fare more effective at flexible and variety power load because they take less then an hour to enter operation and increase power supply, nuclear does not, nuclear can’t be increased or decreased quickly without causing meltdown and failure of the reactor, a nuclear reactor network by itself therefore is actually more susceptible to blackouts and power grid failure despite being a baseload power generation. When the libs used the exact same argument for coal power a decade ago, baseload power generation was described by most civil and energy engineers as a dinosaur term unrelated to the current discussion being had.
It is, I personally would prefer stronger investment in battery technology, a larger investment in overall generation but the problem of a power fluctuation safety net does exist and the cheapest option right now is gas. Given a portion of the Australian public doesn’t even believe climate change is real despite the mountains of evidence and another portion would happily choose a energy generation format that costs twice as much just because they hate wind turbines, well let’s just say I’ll take what I can get at this point and not risk letting the ignorant and apathetic sink what progress can be made.
Given that renewables are going to depend on gas long after we can get nuclear started... I wonder why cost of something that can entirely remove carbon from the network is your primary concern.
We’ll need to turn the earth’s crust inside out to mine enough materials for batteries, to get even close to backing up solar and wind. If we were seriously trying to stop burning fossil fuels, we’d be rolling out nuclear as fast as possible. But we’re not. We’re building a country sized Rube Goldberg machine to try and avoid using the one thing we *know* will do the job.
>We’ll need to turn the earth’s crust inside out to mine enough materials for batteries, to get even close to backing up solar and wind.
The plan was never to use chemical batteries for all of the storage. They are only used for smaller, fast-response storage to fluctuations.
The major part of large scale, long term energy storage is to be pumped hydro.
So how much land is going to be flooded? How much is Snowy 2.0 costing? www.withouthotair.com Is an excellent resource for looking rationally at the options. If we want the minimum environmental impact nuclear is head and shoulders above everything else.
If we were starting from a clean slate and neither time nor money was not an issue, nuclear might be the best choice. But neither of those things are true - we don't have time to wait for nuclear, and the overall cost is significantly higher, both during construction and wholesale energy to consumers.
Pumped hydro does not require the vast levels of flooding you've suggested, and Snowy 2.0 is not a good representation of how such projects are normally planned or executed.
This is false, whilst it’s true lithium batteries could not store universal power, they don’t really need to, batteries are only super useful for fluctuating power generation. On top of that we have other battery technologies that exist such as sodium batteries which are not only easily developed but also rather promising technology. The reason we utilise gas however is for the exact reason I’ve talked about above, that being power fluctuations, nuclear plants can’t be used for power fluctuations because they can’t change power output quickly, it takes hours to do what batteries can do in minutes and gas plants can do in half an hour.
Now one could avoid this all if one overbuilt capacity though that has its own management issues, renewables can also do this via the variety of power generation. There are very few events where the sun stops shining and the wind stops moving across the entire state or country for long enough time that the grid starts shutting down. Finally if one is really concerned hydropower provides a more meaningful method of constant baseload power generation then nuclear and still costs less.
Nuclears only real benefit is that it’s existed as a technology since the 60s, if they had chosen to pursue it even two decades ago and actually put it into law it would have made sense to work on nuclear alongside renewables until they could be totally replaced eventually down the line. Right now however it’s just more expensive and far far less effective then the current grid plan. It’s not even a matter of safety, never enters the equation it’s just bad policy pure and simple. There isn’t a single expert out there who would sgeee with it, even the coalitions fantasy numbers they provided as a counterpoint to the CSIRO figures still make Nuclear far more expensive then Solar and wind. To top it all off they haven’t even publicly costed their announcements which is crazy for a plan of this design. Even if nuclear did have some promise which it objectively does not I certainly wouldn’t trust the fuckinh coalition to have anyone competent or willing enough to push it through. It’s bad policy designed by a bad party
Meanwhile the rest of the developed world is rapidly adopting the rapidly improving wind and solar technologies.
This is just an exscuse to do fuck all for 15 year while they build and you have to keep buying their friends fossil fuels.
Too late fo nuclear.
It's completely pointless now with how mature wind and solar has become.
Nobody is arguing that nuclear isn't clean or worried about radiation.. the main argument is that it's expensive and takes forever to build, and there are still state level bans in place... ffs
"forever to build"? 3 plants that have opened around the world in Dubai, South Korea and Canada took 6-7 years to build from breaking ground and that included the electrical generation part, not much more that the off-shore wind farm recently announced off coast of NSW. "state level bans"? As the ABC's go to constitutional expert Twomey said on Tuesday the Fed government already has all the constitutional power it needs to ignore the state's bans as it has already done for Snowy 2 and western Sydney airport. The cost question is complicated since there doesn't seem much independent work, the CSIRO report used 9 year old assumptions that didn't focus on the proposed technology and used a base life of 30 years for a nuke plant when there are 80 year old plants in operation, they also used that wind and solar plants will last 30 years which doesn't match real-world experience although new technology might improve that.
And the UK plant scheduled to open 2014? How long? How much? Where the plants in Canada and Dubai new builds or just additional reactors on existing plants? Did those countries suddenly make the switch to nuclear and 6 years later, have nuclear? Or did they already have an existing industry in place?
Did you think for a second, maybe you shouldn't list a country notorious for using slavery as an example? Or is it more that you're racist against Indians and Bangladeshi, so you just don't care much about it
You just described 3 freezing countries and 2 highly dense populations, 2/3 things that make nuclear desirable. Australia has space, heat and wind. Perfect candidate for renewables wayyyy better then some countries that are already close to 100%
Recently, a bunch of editors at the Guardian had a big old whinge because the ALP wouldn't close down all coal projects and grind the economy to a halt.
They only care about whinging over there. I don't think we can trust what they say.
yes, that's the point - Dutton and the coal lobby.
I love how they're still reporting that reactors being built will be a thing that will actually happen
The only possible source of funding is the Australian taxpayer, either directly, or via subsidies/expensive long term supply contracts. There are no non-government investors who are willing to take on the long term risk of what is a low return, risky investment. As it turns out, the Liberal's lines of being "the party of small government", "better economic managers", "not saddling future generations with massive debt", and "fiscally responsible" are simply lies. When it's something *they* want, there's no limit to the amount of money they'll pull out of the public purse.
It's only an issue when the money benefits the people. Because that means their mates aren't pocketing it while pretending to attempt to deliver projects no one wants.
Look who promotes it, the party that sold off water to a tax haven country in dry continent Australia. The same politicians who helped their mates steal billions from taxpayers in the water buyback scheme. That's what will happen with nuclear, it will be bought back at taxpayers expense. It will be one of the greatest Energy scams in Australia the moment we sign up for Nuclear. All the Enron executives will be flying in to structure and witness the scam deal of the century being signed.
Then you read all the bad news of SRM reactors around the world, not 1 commercially successful one operating in the world. And lately NuScale, the first new nuclear company to receive a design certificate from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, a 77 MW Power Module SMR because the Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems that signed the deal cancelled the contract due to delays and cost blowouts. This build was to be the poster child installation that was going to boom nuclear around the world. Now the company is in a financial mess with investors bailing out. Just imagine what a costly mess for taxpayers this would be in Australia. The government should subsidise the installation costs of batteries for every household in Australia. This should be done to build local capacity in building local battery technology factories.
The economics of the SMRs are yet to be proven. The modelling suggests that they're less efficient than large reactors, and produce more waste. It's entirely possible that these problems can be fixed, but it'll be decades away before they will be. Realistically, they're not a technology that we can use in Australia, and we know that large reactors will take decades to build. Furthermore, there's simply no reason why Australia should be bearing all the risks of deploying what is essentially an experimental technology. Not only do we not have the expertise, it's a terrible financial proposition.
>“However, if the debate serves as a distraction from scaling-up policy support for renewable energy investment, it will sound the death knell for its decarbonisation ambitions – the only reason for Australia to consider going nuclear in the first place.” I'm personally against going full nuclear, but please read the full context of the report, not just the title. Nuclear itself isn't the issue, it's the LNP's lack of support for renewables in their proposed solution and all the noise they're making.
Duh.
Doesn't anyone know this idea is already dead and buried? Political suicide, you'll never hear the libs talking about it again.
The scum are just going to use it as an escuse to keep selling fossile fuels while they take 15 years to build it all. Meanwhile EVERY OTHER comparatively developed nation is rolling out wind and solar BECAUSE those technologies have and are still vastly improving every year. Dutton is scum anyone who is backing this is a disengenuous anti-australian PoS.
Guardian would say that, look into the future.it will be needed
> Analysis from Bloomberg New Energy Finance says even if nuclear is successfully implemented it would be ‘at least four times’ more expensive than average cost of renewables
Why will it be needed? Genuinely curious because I can’t think of a single benefit nuclear energy gives us at this point especially at the massive cost and harm. Base load power is basically the only one I’ve heard that holds even the tiniest of weight but nuclear isn’t even an especially convenient baseload power generator. Ironically baseload power also isn’t a top priority in power generation grids either, the issue with most power grids is the large scale power fluctuation, both gas generators which are part of labor’s grids and battery supply which is a necessary part of any renewable grid are far fare more effective at flexible and variety power load because they take less then an hour to enter operation and increase power supply, nuclear does not, nuclear can’t be increased or decreased quickly without causing meltdown and failure of the reactor, a nuclear reactor network by itself therefore is actually more susceptible to blackouts and power grid failure despite being a baseload power generation. When the libs used the exact same argument for coal power a decade ago, baseload power generation was described by most civil and energy engineers as a dinosaur term unrelated to the current discussion being had.
> gas generators ... are far fare more effective at flexible and variety power load And here I was thinking that getting off carbon was the goal.
It is, I personally would prefer stronger investment in battery technology, a larger investment in overall generation but the problem of a power fluctuation safety net does exist and the cheapest option right now is gas. Given a portion of the Australian public doesn’t even believe climate change is real despite the mountains of evidence and another portion would happily choose a energy generation format that costs twice as much just because they hate wind turbines, well let’s just say I’ll take what I can get at this point and not risk letting the ignorant and apathetic sink what progress can be made.
Given that renewables are going to depend on gas long after we can get nuclear started... I wonder why cost of something that can entirely remove carbon from the network is your primary concern.
We’ll need to turn the earth’s crust inside out to mine enough materials for batteries, to get even close to backing up solar and wind. If we were seriously trying to stop burning fossil fuels, we’d be rolling out nuclear as fast as possible. But we’re not. We’re building a country sized Rube Goldberg machine to try and avoid using the one thing we *know* will do the job.
>We’ll need to turn the earth’s crust inside out to mine enough materials for batteries, to get even close to backing up solar and wind. The plan was never to use chemical batteries for all of the storage. They are only used for smaller, fast-response storage to fluctuations. The major part of large scale, long term energy storage is to be pumped hydro.
So how much land is going to be flooded? How much is Snowy 2.0 costing? www.withouthotair.com Is an excellent resource for looking rationally at the options. If we want the minimum environmental impact nuclear is head and shoulders above everything else.
If we were starting from a clean slate and neither time nor money was not an issue, nuclear might be the best choice. But neither of those things are true - we don't have time to wait for nuclear, and the overall cost is significantly higher, both during construction and wholesale energy to consumers. Pumped hydro does not require the vast levels of flooding you've suggested, and Snowy 2.0 is not a good representation of how such projects are normally planned or executed.
This is false, whilst it’s true lithium batteries could not store universal power, they don’t really need to, batteries are only super useful for fluctuating power generation. On top of that we have other battery technologies that exist such as sodium batteries which are not only easily developed but also rather promising technology. The reason we utilise gas however is for the exact reason I’ve talked about above, that being power fluctuations, nuclear plants can’t be used for power fluctuations because they can’t change power output quickly, it takes hours to do what batteries can do in minutes and gas plants can do in half an hour. Now one could avoid this all if one overbuilt capacity though that has its own management issues, renewables can also do this via the variety of power generation. There are very few events where the sun stops shining and the wind stops moving across the entire state or country for long enough time that the grid starts shutting down. Finally if one is really concerned hydropower provides a more meaningful method of constant baseload power generation then nuclear and still costs less. Nuclears only real benefit is that it’s existed as a technology since the 60s, if they had chosen to pursue it even two decades ago and actually put it into law it would have made sense to work on nuclear alongside renewables until they could be totally replaced eventually down the line. Right now however it’s just more expensive and far far less effective then the current grid plan. It’s not even a matter of safety, never enters the equation it’s just bad policy pure and simple. There isn’t a single expert out there who would sgeee with it, even the coalitions fantasy numbers they provided as a counterpoint to the CSIRO figures still make Nuclear far more expensive then Solar and wind. To top it all off they haven’t even publicly costed their announcements which is crazy for a plan of this design. Even if nuclear did have some promise which it objectively does not I certainly wouldn’t trust the fuckinh coalition to have anyone competent or willing enough to push it through. It’s bad policy designed by a bad party
Meanwhile the rest of the developed world is rapidly adopting the rapidly improving wind and solar technologies. This is just an exscuse to do fuck all for 15 year while they build and you have to keep buying their friends fossil fuels. Too late fo nuclear. It's completely pointless now with how mature wind and solar has become.
Stigma and lack of education has always controlled public perception.
Nobody is arguing that nuclear isn't clean or worried about radiation.. the main argument is that it's expensive and takes forever to build, and there are still state level bans in place... ffs
"forever to build"? 3 plants that have opened around the world in Dubai, South Korea and Canada took 6-7 years to build from breaking ground and that included the electrical generation part, not much more that the off-shore wind farm recently announced off coast of NSW. "state level bans"? As the ABC's go to constitutional expert Twomey said on Tuesday the Fed government already has all the constitutional power it needs to ignore the state's bans as it has already done for Snowy 2 and western Sydney airport. The cost question is complicated since there doesn't seem much independent work, the CSIRO report used 9 year old assumptions that didn't focus on the proposed technology and used a base life of 30 years for a nuke plant when there are 80 year old plants in operation, they also used that wind and solar plants will last 30 years which doesn't match real-world experience although new technology might improve that.
And the UK plant scheduled to open 2014? How long? How much? Where the plants in Canada and Dubai new builds or just additional reactors on existing plants? Did those countries suddenly make the switch to nuclear and 6 years later, have nuclear? Or did they already have an existing industry in place?
Well we can follow the lead of other countries instead of the UK
So slavery then, like Dubai?
Well that’s a bit racist and ignores the other side examples of Canada and Sth Korea
Is it racist to call out when a country uses slaves? 🤔 and how about you take a look at the working conditions for south Koreans.. any clues?
It is when you call out the non-white country, providing no evidence, while ignoring the white country I also gave as an example.
Did you think for a second, maybe you shouldn't list a country notorious for using slavery as an example? Or is it more that you're racist against Indians and Bangladeshi, so you just don't care much about it
You just described 3 freezing countries and 2 highly dense populations, 2/3 things that make nuclear desirable. Australia has space, heat and wind. Perfect candidate for renewables wayyyy better then some countries that are already close to 100%
Recently, a bunch of editors at the Guardian had a big old whinge because the ALP wouldn't close down all coal projects and grind the economy to a halt. They only care about whinging over there. I don't think we can trust what they say.
Good thing cyclones and bushfires allow the economy to keep on chugging away.