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Nuclear Power For Australia?

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Seriously the sensible option for remote locations. I am sure Gina looked at the options and would have chosen an alternative if it was remotely competitive.
 
bull**** baffles brains
There is some very cynical politics happening.

I do think there is a case for maybe 1 or 2 nuclear reactors to increase the confidence or availability of supply and reduce reliance on hydro and batteries and create another option for supply reliability- as long as we are willing to pay extra for this (and reduce emissions), but the Coalition plan is disingenuous pretending they will build many plants.

I would guarantee they know this and would build 2 at most.
 
Reading an analysis, the biggest criticism of Dutton’s plans is that it hopes that the past will be the future and we won't need increasing amounts of electricity to run plant and EVs.
EVs are the future, get over it. Gas is running out in the Bass Strait, new homes won't use gas for heating.

Nuclear isn't that popular. Last year 5 Nuclear plants were completed but equally 5 were decommissioned. We will see more nuclear but its not like it will take over.

China is the biggest proponent, 27 reactors under construction but way more wind and solar.

Last year China added 1GW of nuclear power. Seems a lot.
But they also added 278GW of wind and solar!
 
Yeah, but the big difference is that Nuclear is reliable, and available pretty much 24 hours a day, something that wind and solar have struggled with, and always will.
The proponents of the Sun cable that was going to send clean Solar and Wind generated power to Singapore might be somewhat alarmed to see that Singapore has signed agreements with the US to transiton to Nuclear Power.
from State Department


Mick
 
Singapore is an island. Surprised they didn't put nuclear in years ago. I'm not anti nuclear because I want coal and gas replaced.
 
I haven't heard much about the Sun Cable project, since Twiggy pulled out, it certainly is a massive project and will be worth following.
 

Areas with high population density small land areas makes sense Japan / South Korea, for China they make weapons grade material so fuel is a spin off.

Note I think most of the cheaper US fuel at one stage was coming from Russian decommissioned nuclear weapons.

Not surprised Singapore would look at nuclear the renewables cable stuff to me never stacked up IMHO.

As for Dutton's plan its just getting pillared by everyone as expected, still many will believe Dutton over the CSRIO gen Cost report, AEMO, AEC etc.

Some of the stuff that's at odds with reality,

"Frontier only has wind and solar generation capacity rising from 24GW to 46GW by 2051, according to its “nuclear inclusive progressive scenario”.

But then

"According to Aemo, there are 45 gigawatts of renewable projects in the pipeline to connect to the national energy market (NEM)."

And this

"Using Frontier’s progressive scenario, rooftop solar would almost double from about 23GW now to 44.5GW by mid-century. Aemo’s step change scenario, by contrast, had estimated our homes will be accommodating a hefty 110GW of solar by then."
 
Facts without the emotion of politics -

The case for nuclear generation in flat and dry Australia is compelling. The case against it is embarrassingly weak, as we discovered last Friday when Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen set out to discredit Frontier Economics modelling and failed.​
​
Accusing Frontier of pushing “dodgy figures” and labelling Peter Dutton’s endorsement of its findings as “a Christmas con job” provided copy for plodding journalists. Yet Bowen could not refute the report’s most damaging finding: the cost of decarbonising the grid under his policy.​
​
Frontier’s headline figure of $594bn is a conservative underestimate. It does not include the cost of cleaning up the grids in Western Australia and the Northern Territory.​
​
In 2020, AEMO said transmission lines to support the New England Renewable Energy Zone would cost $1.5bn. In the 2024 Integrated System Plan, AEMO has upped that figure to $3.7bn.​
​
The Queensland SuperGrid was supposed to cost $500m. Now they’re telling us it’s $3.3bn. The HumeLink was supposed to set us back $2.4bn. AEMO’s latest guesstimate is $4.9bn.​

 
It's a bit socialist though.
Instead of relying on private enterprise, the taxpayer has to fork out many billions and most the projects on the books from private enterprise get axed.
 
Knobby22 said:
It's a bit socialist though.
Instead of relying on private enterprise, the taxpayer has to fork out many billions and most the projects on the books from private enterprise get axed.
Click to expand...

South Australia once had the cheapest electricity and the best social housing program in the country, created by the Playford state government. Nothing about it was socialist, it was good governing with a long-term plan for prosperity and nation building.

Funny thing is it was a socialist government that started dismantling the housing trust system and leaving the state to pay hotels for rooms to house the homeless.

I would rather government funded nuclear power stations, than government funded Chinese solar panels, wind farms and grids across every spare piece of land at a cost that has no end.
 
If one is looking for "nuclear facts without emotions" this analysis nails it well.
Excellent history background of nuclear power in Australia as well as a clear eyed analysis of the costs and timing of the proposed nuclear power development.

The Coalition’s nuclear energy plan takes a sharp turn away from a cheaper, cleaner future​

Simon Holmes à Court

After 22 failed energy policies, the Coalition is being guided by a roadmap to higher bills and higher emissions

Mon 16 Dec 2024 13.12 AEDT

On the front cover of Frontier Economics’ costings of the Coalition’s nuclear policy is a stock photo entitled fork in road, implying that we’re at some kind of juncture where we must decide between a nuclear or renewables path.

In 1969 John Gorton’s Liberal government chose the nuclear path with the construction of the Jervis Bay nuclear power plant project. As Gorton later said, “We were interested in this thing because it could provide electricity to everybody and it could, if you decided later on, it could make an atomic bomb.”

In 1971 Billy McMahon’s Liberal government cancelled the project after a review deemed it too expensive. The cleared site became a massive car park at Murray’s Beach.

No nuclear power station was built in the intervening 27 years before John Howard introduced a federal ban on nuclear power. There were no attempts to overturn the ban during the next 18 years of Liberal government.

At the start of the 1970s we were indeed at an energy crossroads, we took the road towards coal, and as one of those who’d like to pass a safe climate on to the next generation, I wish we had taken the road towards nuclear instead. Our emissions would be dramatically lower

The Coalition’s nuclear energy plan takes a sharp turn away from a cheaper, cleaner future | Simon Holmes à Court

After 22 failed energy policies, the Coalition is being guided by a roadmap to higher bills and higher emissions
www.theguardian.com
 

What, no emotions form Simon? Get real.

He's all emotional about political donations: Climate 200 founder slams political donation caps

Simon doesn't like the media questioning his input into the political party he founded:

The member for Wentworth admitted at the National Press Club on Wednesday that she tried to pressure the Australian Financial Review to remove Mr Holmes a Court from a power list designed to rank the most powerful figures in Australia who operate behind the scenes.​
The AFR’s Political Editor Phillip Coorey revealed Ms Spender personally visited his paper’s press gallery offices and tried to pressure the paper to remove her biggest donor from the list because “he did not want to be on it”.​

His emotions transfer through his political representatives: Teal MP Zoe Daniel referred to National Anti-Corruption Commission over Simon Holmes à Court favour

National Anti-Corruption Commission to investigate the inner-city Melbourne politician for lobbying on behalf of one of her financial supporters, wealthy renewables campaigner Simon Holmes à Court, to keep him out of the press.​

And let us not forget about Simon's investments - Mr Holmes à Court is an investor in renewable energy and founder of the Climate200 fund
 
Yeah.. Did you actually read the analysis.? Like how about doing that first John and critiquing what he says.

For the sake of anyone else who is interested in the discussion I'll post it in full.
 

The Coalition’s nuclear energy plan takes a sharp turn away from a cheaper, cleaner future​

Simon Holmes à Court

After 22 failed energy policies, the Coalition is being guided by a roadmap to higher bills and higher emissions
Mon 16 Dec 2024 13.12 AEDT


On the front cover of Frontier Economics’ costings of the Coalition’s nuclear policy is a stock photo entitled fork in road, implying that we’re at some kind of juncture where we must decide between a nuclear or renewables path.
In 1969 John Gorton’s Liberal government chose the nuclear path with the construction of the Jervis Bay nuclear power plant project. As Gorton later said, “We were interested in this thing because it could provide electricity to everybody and it could, if you decided later on, it could make an atomic bomb.”

In 1971 Billy McMahon’s Liberal government cancelled the project after a review deemed it too expensive. The cleared site became a massive car park at Murray’s Beach.
https://www.theguardian.com/austral...ar-plan-represents-4tn-hit-to-economy-by-2050
No nuclear power station was built in the intervening 27 years before John Howard introduced a federal ban on nuclear power. There were no attempts to overturn the ban during the next 18 years of Liberal government.

At the start of the 1970s we were indeed at an energy crossroads, we took the road towards coal, and as one of those who’d like to pass a safe climate on to the next generation, I wish we had taken the road towards nuclear instead. Our emissions would be dramatically lower.

In 1997, just before he banned nuclear, Howard took us down a different path – he announced the mandatory renewable energy target, a plan to add a tiny slice of renewable energy to our sliver of hydroelectricity. In 2009, in what was perhaps the last act of bipartisanship on domestic energy, parliament agreed to massively increase the target to 20% renewables by 2020. Today we’re just shy of 40%, and the government’s policy is to double it again by the end of this decade.

Howard’s modest renewable energy target was surely more successful than he ever intended, in great contrast to the 22 failed energy policies the Coalition famously held during its last tenure. Its latest energy policy began shortly after the last election, when in August 2022 Peter Dutton tasked Ted O’Brien to “examine the potential for advanced and next-generation nuclear technologies to contribute to Australia’s energy security and reduce power prices”. We had to wait until Friday for the costings, published after many of the country’s journalists had filed their last stories for the year.

Here are four reasons why in my opinion the costings, prepared by Frontier Economics, completely undermine the Coalition’s 23rd energy plan:

1. The Coalition plans for lower household income and the collapse of heavy industry​

Of the three scenarios the independent market operator Aemo published in June, the Coalition has chosen what’s known as progressive change, giving Aemo’s preferred scenario, known as step change, to Labor.

Under the Coalition’s scenario, large industrial load collapses in 2030, signalling the closure of smelters and presumably datacentres – goodbye AI! By 2050 industrial demand is down by 62%. Over the 25-year modelling period, household disposable income will be down a whopping $2.8tn more compared to Labor’s plan.



With a pivot away from electrification, under the Coalition’s plan Australians will burn an additional 273bn litres of petrol and diesel through to 2050 costing $465bn and an additional 1,831 PJ of gas costing at least $36bn. Even if the Coalition’s purported cost savings were credible, this $501bn would mean that Australia’s total energy bill would be considerably higher.

On top of this, the Coalition’s plan would see a 61% reduction in rooftop solar, meaning that millions fewer Australians would be able to slash their electricity bills.

Currently we are paying hundreds of millions to three coal power stations to stay open for a couple of years. The Coalition budgets nothing to coax the other 14 coal power stations on the east coast to extend their lives by a decade or more.

Economist Steven Hamilton has calculated that the Coalition’s plan would see the power sector emit about 1,000 million tonnes of carbon dioxide above our current trajectory. The Coalition’s crabwalk away from electrification would add a further 723 MtCO2.

The Coalition has chosen an energetically and fiscally poorer Australia with higher energy bills and higher emissions. I’ve long suspected that the Coalition hasn’t bothered to read or understand Aemo’s last seven years of modelling, and this pretty much clinches it.

2. The analysis lowballs nuclear’s cost then punts it over the horizon​

Frontier appears to have made the rookie error of confusing the nuclear industry term nth of a kind (Noak) with next of a kind. The Noak cost is not what we’d pay for the next reactor built, but a cost target we’d theoretically hit eventually if we got really good at building them. If you build, say, eight identical reactors on a site, the last one should cost a lot less – and provided nothing goes wrong, theoretically you’d approach the Noak cost.

If Australia were to achieve Frontier’s costs, it’d be the cheapest nuclear built in the western world this century, by a wide margin. Frontier’s head, Danny Price, told the ABC on Friday that he wouldn’t put himself in the category of a nuclear expert, so maybe it’s no surprise that the modelling appears to confuse Noak with next-of-a-kind pricing.

Frontier are, however, modelling experts, so the next thing they did was with eyes wide open. The modelling pushes the vast majority of the cost of nuclear beyond 2050, so if the program is delayed it would appear cheaper and if the cost triples, it’d barely show in the analysis. Nice work!

Next, Frontier assumes that building nuclear reactors will get cheaper every year – what’s known as a positive learning rate. In reality, the US nuclear industry is famous for its negative learning rate – is that a forgetting rate? – meaning that Noak costs are more theory than practice.



3. The Coalition’s unrealistic schedule leaves us short of power​

As I told a recent nuclear inquiry – the eighth since 2005 – there’s not a hope in hell that Australia can deliver its first nuclear power reactor producing power before 2040. Even with fantastical assumptions, such as a Coalition that controls both Houses of Parliament, states quickly overturning their bans, the first project sailing through environmental approvals and court challenges and fast build times, it’s almost impossible to achieve the first nuclear kilowatt hour before 2044.

Czechia, a country with 66 years of nuclear experience, embarked on a nuclear construction project in 2022. If all goes well the first unit will start commercial operation in 2038. Australia is at least six years behind this project, and we face many more barriers, so 2044 for our first really does seem optimistic.



4. Our grid doesn’t have room for these reactors​

Frontier’s analysis assumes that Australia builds 13.3GW of nuclear, equivalent to 12 AP-1000 reactors, and that these run flat out when they’re not off for refuelling and maintenance.

The problem is that for much of the year Australia uses less power. Our minimum system load (MSL) is already below 10GW and on its way down to 2GW around the end of this decade, thanks to rooftop solar. The inflexible manner in which the Coalition plans to run the reactors would result in masses of excess power and require that we turn off massive amounts of renewables, both utility-scale and rooftop solar. Alternatively we could soak up the excess nuclear energy with gigantic battery farms.

Over the weekend I sent a polite text message to Danny Price, the consultant behind the Coalition’s modelling, explaining that I’m not a newcomer to nuclear and outlining three of the above flaws. Price replied:

“Thanks for sending me your credentials and your generous offer to set me straight, but I will decline. I’ve got all the help and technical advice I need. I know you are just protecting you (sic) financial interest. I get it, but please don’t contact me again.”

Contrary to Coalition belief, I am not a large investor in renewable energy (nor am I a billionaire). This shows the depths of the culture wars we’re in – where impugned motives trump rational discussion. I took the opportunity to reply:

“Since you misinterpreted my motives, allow me this: Less than 2% of my investments are in Australian renewables – similar to millions of superannuation accounts I’m advised – and if the renewables transition slows, the value of those investments would likely increase.”

The fact is, over the last six years, Australia has added wind and solar generation equivalent to the annual output of six gigawatt scale nuclear reactors, according to data from OpenElectricity.

If we’re at a crossroads it’s one where the Coalition took a sharp turn, based on what looks to me like some really sloppy advice. Let’s hope that Australians stay on the path to a cheaper, cleaner and more prosperous energy future.
 
basilio said:
Yeah.. Did you actually read the analysis.? Like how about doing that first John and critiquing what he says.

For the sake of anyone else who is interested in the discussion I'll post it in full.
Click to expand...

I did, twice because I don't know what the article is about other than Simon's emotions about his investments in renewables.

I have followed the nuclear debate ever since I discovered science in primary school, and science fiction in middle school. Australia has had the nuclear debate ever since I can remember, but the majority of the public has been against. and that has been for several reason, we have cheap carbon fuels, nuclear technology was primitive, the nuclear bombs and the radiation scared the hell out of everyone.

Today is a different story. Carbon fuels need to be reduced, nuclear energy technology has been proven for decades and through massive natural disasters, the public are now more acceptable.

Simon is worried about his investments.
 

Today is certainly a different story. Solar, wind, hydro and rapidly improving battery costs make firmed renewable energy far more cost effective than anything else.

Coal, Nuclear, fairies in thegarden.

Nuclear is not currently cost effective. It cannot be developed before current coal fired power stations run out of legs. The discussion about the short to medium term direction of Australia's energy future is overwhelmingly about the best mix of renewables and firming.

Is there a space for Nuclear ? Perhaps Post 2050. If somewhere, somehow a cost effective nuclear power solution is developed say by the mid/late 2030's Australia could develop a project for 2050 plus. But here and now the proposals offered by the Coalition are not viable either economically, in terms of capacity to deliver and finally the overall national interest.
 

Imagine a solar powered transport, or a wind turbine emergency response power supply. Any civilisation that chooses that route is doomed to circumstance.

Instead imagine a future that invested in nuclear technology and found the holy grail of energy with its advances, similar to what happened with the combustion engine over the past 150 years. A nuclear power plant that can be manufactured to the size that suits its purpose, at a cost that is cheap enough to for all industries.

That can only be happen if we start to allow industry the freedom to choose, just like the combustion engine.

Renewables have their place, but they can’t be used for everything, and they aren’t reliable all the time.

Think of the last 2000 years we used to wood, coal, oil, whale fat, vegetable oil, produce diesel and petrol, used steam and nuclear.

The future will be a mix to get us through.
 
Another view point, from someone that has been involved in the electricity industry since the 1960’s to the present -

 


cost generation estimates put out by the CSIRO must look an ill-conceived and befuddled mess to an outside observer. Apart from the obvious question of why a government-funded scientific organisation is even undertaking such an exercise – estimating costs is an exercise for economists, accountants and engineers, not scientists – the guesses are simply irrelevant. The thing that really matters is system-wide costs.



Around the world, new nuclear plants are being built and old ones are being refurbished. There is even a nuclear power plant being built in Egypt, with Russian technology and Russian funding.

And let’s not forget here the group of countries at the recent climate COPs that have committed to tripling the capacity of nuclear generation in their countries by 2050 – 31 this year. Australia is increasingly looking like an irrelevant wallflower on the world stage of climate action.

It is also why the cost generation estimates put out by the CSIRO must look an ill-conceived and befuddled mess to an outside observer. Apart from the obvious question of why a government-funded scientific organisation is even undertaking such an exercise – estimating costs is an exercise for economists, accountants and engineers, not scientists – the guesses are simply irrelevant. The thing that really matters is system-wide costs.
 
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