Nuclear Power For Australia?

[SirRumpole]

Looks like a lot of exaggeration from the anti-nuclear brigade.

Japan's build time for a nuclear power station is 5 years, that is pretty good.


View attachment 181514

You have to compare apples with apples, and for countries that already have reactors then construction times will go down over time because lessons have been learned and a "critical mass" of labour and expertise have been established.

For us just starting out, the landscape is different, nuclear engineers are hard to come by even from overseas because they are working on current projects and would not be interested in coming to a country that is trying to start from scratch.

 

[JohnDe]

You have to compare apples with apples, and for countries that already have reactors then construction times will go down over time because lessons have been learned and a "critical mass" of labour and expertise have been established.

For us just starting out, the landscape is different, nuclear engineers are hard to come by even from overseas because they are working on current projects and would not be interested in coming to a country that is trying to start from scratch.

True. However, if we look at things like you mention nothing new would be built. No Snowy hydro, no Holden car, no Colins Class submarine, and so on.

With good planning, good management, good crew things can be done.

I find it hard to believe that Australia would have difficulty enticing the right skilled workforce to come here. Australia is one of the top locations in the world for high skilled and educated people wanting to come to live, the problem is the regulations that our government puts in place.

And as you mention, the first will take the longest to build. But the others will be completed faster each time.

Watch the video, she even explains the cost factoring.

 

[SirRumpole]

True. However, if we look at things like you mention nothing new would be built. No Snowy hydro, no Holden car, no Colins Class submarine, and so on.

We have done and are doing hydro, so why shouldn't we stick with that given that we have the expertise and it's a far cheaper option than nuclear in the long run?

 

[JohnDe]

We have done and are doing hydro, so why shouldn't we stick with that given that we have the expertise and it's a far cheaper option than nuclear in the long run?

SA & WA would struggle to find a suitable source of water for a hydro plant.

The rest of the states would struggle to pass the approval stage, just look at what happened in Tasmania and the Franklin River dam project. Which I am glad it was stopped, having visited the Frankin river and seeing the beauty everywhere.

Why build another dam and destroy habitat and natural beauty when a small nuclear power plant can be built?

 

[SirRumpole]

when a small nuclear power plant can be built?

Cost and viability.

SMR's aren't operational anywhere, do we really want to be the guinea pig ?

And if we wait until they are proven and do nothing else in the meantime like the LNP are proposing, our coal stations will be on their last legs and the lights will almost certainly go out.

 

[JohnDe]

Cost and viability.

SMR's aren't operational anywhere, do we really want to be the guinea pig ?

And if we wait until they are proven and do nothing else in the meantime like the LNP are proposing, our coal stations will be on their last legs and the lights will almost certainly go out.

Every option is going to have cost and viability issues.

The Labor government keep telling us that solar and wind is free energy, but they conveniently stay quiet on the cost to build the equipment, the transmission lines, and the replacement intervals.

Besides those problems, we have the environmental issue of construction on massive amounts of land to build wind tunnels and solar panels, including the recyclability in Australia. And we're talking huge scale for both, not to mention the battery packs to store backup power when the wind and sun diminish or stop for a few days.

Your mention of hydro plants is not going to happen, people will not accept the damming of anymore rivers in Australia. They will protest and scare governments off. Hence Snowy 2.0. Plus, not every state has enough water to build a dam for hydro.

There is a reason that many countries across the globe are building nuclear power stations. Australia can get in on the trade and build a viable industry that can sell our skills to our neighbours.

Time to think 50 years into the future, not 5 or 10. We won't be here, but our legacy will.

 

[SirRumpole]

There is a reason that many countries across the globe are building nuclear power stations. Australia can get in on the trade and build a viable industry that can sell our skills to our neighbours.

Maybe, but it won't work on the timescale that the LNP are thinking of. I may believe 20 years if we started now, but I wouldn't bet the future of the grid on it.

 

[macca]

There has been a lot of talk about the building of Nuclear power plants being a no go because it would take too long to build them.
below is a chart I found listing the South Korean Nuclear power plans.
Note that the larger ones took upwards of 9 years to complete.
The slightly smaller ones were around 4 to 5 years.

View attachment 181470

The most recent starts are larger than previous plants, but they give no completion date.


View attachment 181471
There must be a very good reason why we as a nation are unable to follow the lead set by other countries.
But thats politics for ya.
Mick

Aah, Michael me lad you are forgetting that here in Australia we need to be able to have rest days to enjoy our beautiful country.

You can't be expecting people to turn up and actually finish the job on time.

Us lags only work when we are driven with a whip, it is the convict background you see...........

 

[macca]

Maybe, but it won't work on the timescale that the LNP are thinking of. I may believe 20 years if we started now, but I wouldn't bet the future of the grid on it.

Just hook the Subs up to the network when they are in port, they will probably be there most of the time if they are anything like the Collins subs.

 

[Smurf1976]

Why build another dam and destroy habitat and natural beauty when a small nuclear power plant can be built?

Economics and sustainability.

Conventional wisdom has always been that the means of electricity generation needed to be economically viable. There's been debate about what constitutes that viability, whether cost recovery is sufficient or whether profit is required, but nonetheless everyone's historically agreed with the basic concept that users at least cover the cost.

That's one point where the unions, Greens, electricity utilities, Labor, Liberal and everyone else did actually agree. And for the record, one of the best early analysis of the whole thing was indeed written by a politician - Bob Brown. He advocated user pays with a commercial rate of return for the record but key point is he, like all others, didn't go down the track of suggesting it be funded by taxation.

The Liberals are the first to have broken from that in Australian history, effectively advocating that electricity is a public service funded by taxation rather than something paid for by consumers. That's necessarily the case, because nuclear is simply too expensive under capitalist economics - that's why private enterprise doesn't build them, at least not without government backing.

I've yet to have the discussion with anyone who isn't 'off the record' thinking there's a bigger plan that it all fits into and that plan is, ultimately, one driven by international factors rather than electricity generation. Key points:

1. Nuclear makes no sense if the aim is environmental sustainability.

2. Nuclear makes no sense if the aim is lowest financial cost.

3. It does make sense if the aim is environmental conservation, as distinct from sustainability, but does anyone really think the Liberals have suddenly become conservationists?

4. It makes absolute sense if you're foreseeing a collapse of global trade.

From there, well I don't think it's rocket science to work out that 4 is the likely one the Liberals have in mind. If globalisation falls apart completely then that removes the supply of cheap solar components and it also removes the need for Australian industry to compete on price. That's the scenario under which nuclear makes a huge amount of sense.

 

[IFocus]

From there, well I don't think it's rocket science to work out that 4 is the likely one the Liberals have in mind. If globalisation falls apart completely then that removes the supply of cheap solar components and it also removes the need for Australian industry to compete on price. That's the scenario under which nuclear makes a huge amount of sense.

TBH I think the current Coalition position on nuclear energy is purely political and I say that based on the lack of any real engineering planning or detail the icing on the cake is Dutton saying it will bring cheaper energy.

IMHO its a real shame as I think there is a place for nuclear some time in the future and planning for that is very important which should start now or 20 years ago but thats unlikely with the current adversarial positions not helped by the Coalition playing politics.

 

[Smurf1976]

There is a reason that many countries across the globe are building nuclear power stations. Australia can get in on the trade and build a viable industry that can sell our skills to our neighbours.

If the aim's to be selling our skills then we'd be advocating wind, solar, batteries and hydro since those are the things where Australia has at least some technical lead over others.

SA is the actual leader when it comes to running a reasonably large power system on wind and solar.

For hydro well Tasmania has quite a lot of overseas involvement with various things. There's already a company set up for just that, indeed there has been since the mid-1980's. Work of varying descriptions has been done in India, Solomon Islands, Bhutan, New Zealand, Malaysia, Maldives, Philippines, Tonga, Samoa, Laos, Tuvalu, Nepal, Marshall Islands, Cook Islands, Micronesia, Fiji, PNG, Mozambique, Cambodia, Thailand, Vietnam, Sri Lanka, South Africa, plus every Australian state. Some of that's for things actually done, some of it's resource investigations and feasibility studies etc, but it's all an export of Australian know how.

Batteries there's been quite a few technical developments in Australia historically and we do have the resources and so on.

Versus nuclear where realistically we'll be buying an "off the shelf" standard design from the UK, France, Canada or US and paying a foreign contractor to build it. The choice will likely be more diplomatic than technical - whichever country government feels most comfortable with will get the contract.

So if the aim's about exporting Australian intellectual property, the fully renewable approach leaves nuclear for dead. Hydro is a strong point, so is operation of an electrically weak power system with minimal synchronous generation. If we're going to tell the rest of the world how to do it, those are the most likely areas.

Even coal we've exported some know how in the past. A direct clone of Loy Yang was built in the US many years ago.

 

[Smurf1976]

Looks like a lot of exaggeration from the anti-nuclear brigade.

Japan's build time for a nuclear power station is 5 years, that is pretty good.

The flight time from Adelaide to Hobart is 1 hour 55 minutes. Let's say 2 hours for simplicity.

In truth however it's closer to 7 hours once someone travels from home to the airport, goes through bag drop, security etc, waits for boarding, boards, waits for take off, flies to Melbourne, gets off the plane, walks around the airport for a while to kill time, boards the next flight, flies to Hobart, waits for and collects baggage, then travels by road to the Hobart CBD.

That it's 2 hours take off to landing with a plane flying direct is a technicality. First because relatively few direct flights actually exist, so odds are you won't be flying direct, second because of all the other things that need to happen.

Much the same with electricity. Historically we've built things relatively quickly, for example during the 30 year period 1943 - 1973 a total of 59 new generating units were installed within the state plus another 16 on the Vic - NSW border so 75 machines in total over 30 years. At the same time Tasmania installed 47 not including the temporary generator ship.

No chance anyone would get away with that level of doing things these days however. Not due to the environment and not due to safety but just due to the overall approach taken with doing things in Australia these days does not accept the approaches used back then.

That also applies to nuclear. Just because someone else can do it in 5 years doesn't mean there's any prospect of doing it that quickly in Australia. Those same other countries can also build any other technology rapidly and would do so, but that isn't accepted in Australia and hasn't been for decades now.

 

[JohnDe]

Economics and sustainability.

Conventional wisdom has always been that the means of electricity generation needed to be economically viable. There's been debate about what constitutes that viability, whether cost recovery is sufficient or whether profit is required, but nonetheless everyone's historically agreed with the basic concept that users at least cover the cost.

That's one point where the unions, Greens, electricity utilities, Labor, Liberal and everyone else did actually agree. And for the record, one of the best early analysis of the whole thing was indeed written by a politician - Bob Brown. He advocated user pays with a commercial rate of return for the record but key point is he, like all others, didn't go down the track of suggesting it be funded by taxation.

The Liberals are the first to have broken from that in Australian history, effectively advocating that electricity is a public service funded by taxation rather than something paid for by consumers. That's necessarily the case, because nuclear is simply too expensive under capitalist economics - that's why private enterprise doesn't build them, at least not without government backing.

I've yet to have the discussion with anyone who isn't 'off the record' thinking there's a bigger plan that it all fits into and that plan is, ultimately, one driven by international factors rather than electricity generation. Key points:

1. Nuclear makes no sense if the aim is environmental sustainability.

2. Nuclear makes no sense if the aim is lowest financial cost.

3. It does make sense if the aim is environmental conservation, as distinct from sustainability, but does anyone really think the Liberals have suddenly become conservationists?

4. It makes absolute sense if you're foreseeing a collapse of global trade.

From there, well I don't think it's rocket science to work out that 4 is the likely one the Liberals have in mind. If globalisation falls apart completely then that removes the supply of cheap solar components and it also removes the need for Australian industry to compete on price. That's the scenario under which nuclear makes a huge amount of sense.

Yeah, but if you take the rest of my quote into consideration it all boils down to Australia will never build another dam in a location that would accommodate a hydro power plant’.

SA & WA would struggle to find a suitable source of water for a hydro plant.​

​

The rest of the states would struggle to pass the approval stage, just look at what happened in Tasmania and the Franklin River dam project. Which I am glad it was stopped, having visited the Frankin river and seeing the beauty everywhere.​

 

[JohnDe]

The flight time from Adelaide to Hobart is 1 hour 55 minutes. Let's say 2 hours for simplicity.

In truth however it's closer to 7 hours once someone travels from home to the airport, goes through bag drop, security etc, waits for boarding, boards, waits for take off, flies to Melbourne, gets off the plane, walks around the airport for a while to kill time, boards the next flight, flies to Hobart, waits for and collects baggage, then travels by road to the Hobart CBD.

That it's 2 hours take off to landing with a plane flying direct is a technicality. First because relatively few direct flights actually exist, so odds are you won't be flying direct, second because of all the other things that need to happen.

Much the same with electricity. Historically we've built things relatively quickly, for example during the 30 year period 1943 - 1973 a total of 59 new generating units were installed within the state plus another 16 on the Vic - NSW border so 75 machines in total over 30 years. At the same time Tasmania installed 47 not including the temporary generator ship.

No chance anyone would get away with that level of doing things these days however. Not due to the environment and not due to safety but just due to the overall approach taken with doing things in Australia these days does not accept the approaches used back then.

That also applies to nuclear. Just because someone else can do it in 5 years doesn't mean there's any prospect of doing it that quickly in Australia. Those same other countries can also build any other technology rapidly and would do so, but that isn't accepted in Australia and hasn't been for decades now.

I was just giving an example to show that there has been a significant level of exaggeration by some people in the media.

I wasn’t being literal. We don’t really know how long it would take us to build, not until the engineers etc work it out during the process of tendering.

 

[JohnDe]

If the aim's to be selling our skills then we'd be advocating wind, solar, batteries and hydro since those are the things where Australia has at least some technical lead over others.

SA is the actual leader when it comes to running a reasonably large power system on wind and solar.

For hydro well Tasmania has quite a lot of overseas involvement with various things. There's already a company set up for just that, indeed there has been since the mid-1980's. Work of varying descriptions has been done in India, Solomon Islands, Bhutan, New Zealand, Malaysia, Maldives, Philippines, Tonga, Samoa, Laos, Tuvalu, Nepal, Marshall Islands, Cook Islands, Micronesia, Fiji, PNG, Mozambique, Cambodia, Thailand, Vietnam, Sri Lanka, South Africa, plus every Australian state. Some of that's for things actually done, some of it's resource investigations and feasibility studies etc, but it's all an export of Australian know how.

Batteries there's been quite a few technical developments in Australia historically and we do have the resources and so on.

Versus nuclear where realistically we'll be buying an "off the shelf" standard design from the UK, France, Canada or US and paying a foreign contractor to build it. The choice will likely be more diplomatic than technical - whichever country government feels most comfortable with will get the contract.

So if the aim's about exporting Australian intellectual property, the fully renewable approach leaves nuclear for dead. Hydro is a strong point, so is operation of an electrically weak power system with minimal synchronous generation. If we're going to tell the rest of the world how to do it, those are the most likely areas.

Even coal we've exported some know how in the past. A direct clone of Loy Yang was built in the US many years ago.

What size battery backup facility would be required to protect every major city?

What will the cost be to build the required wind and solar power plants to supply all Australia?

What is the life expectancy of each device used: solar, wind?

Can Australia recycle all the materials after its use by date?

How many minutes does the SA battery backup station stay active before depletion?

Where is the majority parts for our solar and wind infrastructure manufactured?

 

[Smurf1976]

Yeah, but if you take the rest of my quote into consideration it all boils down to Australia will never build another dam in a location that would accommodate a hydro power plant’.

On one hand I agree. Nobody's keen to build another dam for hydro.

On the other hand, there's also considerable opposition to nuclear and to every other option.

Eg as per media reports many Labor supporters, and some within the party, aren't at all happy with recent announcements about the need for major new investment into gas. The Greens aren't too keen on it either.

Which way to go comes down to value judgements. Prioritising one thing over another without the ability to "prove" in any way that one view is more correct than another.

Those who advocate hydro are simply doing so as an alternative to gas for the same purpose, that is deep firming of wind and solar. Swap the impacts of gas for the impacts of hydro due to a value judgement as to their relative merits.

Those who prefer gas say no, gas is better than hydro. That's a judgement as to one impact versus another.

Those who prefer diesel are the same. One impact versus another.

Those who advocate nuclear are doing so as an alternative to renewables. Swap the wind, solar and firming (using whatever technology) for nuclear.

Fundamentally, there's no way to "prove" that one is better than another overall since the things being measured are dramatically different. Eg how does one compare the impact on scenery with climate, nuclear waste or geopolitics? How does one compare an increased or decreased financial cost to a change in impact? It's not really possible - they're different things so can't simply be measured, it's case of value judgements as to what's most important.

Ultimately though, something has to give if we're to maintain life as we know it. We've got a rising population, there's the push to re-industrialise, and there's the reality that we're going to need a lot more electricity just to replace direct fuel combustion if that's to occur.

So I can't say nuclear is better or worse as such. I can only say it's better or worse based on a particular criteria. Same with the rest and that's what leads to it being a "religious" debate. It's not arguing something objectively measurable that can be proven, it's arguing about values of one thing versus another.

With the further complexity that how something's done also is a variable. Eg the cost of nuclear or renewables depends on the model of delivery and that itself is, at present, driven by political ideology. Same with other major projects in Australia, the model of delivery is relatively high cost compared to historic approaches.

Only thing that'll resolve it in my view is force. A major threat - either a severe economic recession, an occurrence perceived as being a climate change "incident", the lights go out or a proper war starts. Until then it's muddle through.

 

[Smurf1976]

TBH I think the current Coalition position on nuclear energy is purely political

Exploring that track, it raises the question as to whom is the politics intended to appeal to? Whose vote is the Coalition expecting to gain? And who if anyone are they taking for granted in doing so?

Environmental politics, using that term generically not just in relation to the Greens party itself, traditionally hasn't acknowledged factions within it although I contend they exist by default and are an unavoidable natural occurrence.

One faction is the traditional environmental movement focusing on nature conservation. So no dams, save the trees, save the whales, no sand mining, etc. Historically those exact statements, word for word, were the stereotype of environmentalism.

Another environmental faction focuses on sustainability. So that is climate change, groundwater depletion, use of finite natural resources, species extinction, economic sustainability, etc. This is typically a more hard headed and mathematically focused line of thought that doesn't oppose doing something per se, but does oppose that which cannot be sustained.

Those aren't mutually exclusive, just as the more openly acknowledged factions within other political ideologies are not mutually exclusive, but they do conflict over certain issues and energy is the big one of relevance here.

Measured on the basis of nature conservation, hydro development is shockingly bad and quite literally the founding basis of what ultimately became the Greens party. Measured on the basis of sustainability however it's typically less problematic than most alternatives although there are of course some notable exceptions.

Same applies to wind, transmission lines, solar farms etc. On the basis of conservation it's exactly the sort of large scale physical impact of industrial infrastructure the conservation movement emerged to oppose in the first place. If the criteria is sustainability however, generically it beats most alternatives with specific case exceptions. Harnessing a renewable resource is fundamentally more sustainable than consuming a non-renewable one.

On the other hand fossil fuels are relatively low impact in terms of conservation. Not always, there are exceptions of course depending on location of the mining or drilling, but generically they're a long way down the list of conservation issues hence haven't traditionally been the flashpoint, indeed conservationists on several occasions argued for coal not against it. Measured in terms of sustainability however, fossil fuels are horrendous and not just due to the climate. Their use as fuel is a total loss, recycling is not practical at all, and whilst uncertainty as to their true scale exists reserves are ultimately finite, it can't go on forever.

That being so, nuclear rationally appeals to those with views prioritising conservation. The relatively small physical footprint of a nuclear power station beats the much larger physical footprint of a system based around wind, solar, extensive transmission networks, batteries and some form of deep firming that, with present technology, is realistically either fossil fuel or hydro. Emphasising the rationally bit there, since traditionally mainstream conservation has been mostly anti-nuclear despite its benefits on that measure.

On the other hand those focused on sustainability, or with a focus on non-environmental issues most obviously financial cost, aren't going to be so convinced on the merits of nuclear.

But then politically the Coalition might be the smart one here. Regardless of what they gain or lose, it's put Labor in a bit of an uncomfortable spot. The strategy not of winning an election but on getting the side to lose it.

Labor is anti-nuclear and has long been so but also has a political difficulty with alternatives. They can commit to renewable so far as it can be pushed with wind and solar and existing hydro, but gas, diesel or new large storage hydro for deep firming is politically a grenade with the pin pulled, ready to blow up whichever way they go. Burn any gas or diesel at all and that's a political problem with regards to climate. Dam anything on a scale big enough to provide actual deep firming and there goes the conservation vote. Too many wind farms and transmission lines also threaten the conservation vote. Meanwhile the party also has a broader issue of the working class versus others to contend with that's significantly tied to this issue.

Now I'm far better placed to comment on electricity generation as such than on the political strategy of the Coalition but that's my two cents on it. By pushing discussion to a subject where Labor has a lot of potential to stumble, by shifting the debate from climate change to electricity generation directly, politically that seems plausibly clever. Labor would seem to have more to lose than the Coalition.

Acknowledged that others will have very different views. I've said a lot over several posts but then it's a subject I've been around my entire adult life and have spoken on publicly in the past. My own bias is I'm firmly in the "sustainability" camp both with resources and economics on the basis that tomorrow does come. Acknowledged that others will have different priorities and that the merits of one issue versus another are subjective.

 

[SirRumpole]

From there, well I don't think it's rocket science to work out that 4 is the likely one the Liberals have in mind. If globalisation falls apart completely then that removes the supply of cheap solar components and it also removes the need for Australian industry to compete on price. That's the scenario under which nuclear makes a huge amount of sense.

I guess it's a scenario where coal makes a great deal of sense too?

If you work out the economics of nuclear vs coal with CCS(or CO2 reduction) what would come out ahead?

We could be self reliant on either coal or uranium for decades, but you can just blow up old coal plants instead of taking them to pieces bit by bit any burying the remains for centuries.

 

[sptrawler]

Well it is China as usual, with the cutting edge announcements.
Time will tell.

China to launch world's first thorium molten salt reactor in 2025

China is set to revolutionize nuclear power with the world's first thorium molten salt reactor, which offers safety and sustainability.

interestingengineering.com