Peter Dutton's nuclear plan is just terrible public policy.
The truth is that, in an Australian context, with nuclear power more expensive per kilowatt hour than either grid scale solar & storage or coal, nuclear just doesn't make economic sense.
The UK has a mature nuclear industry. Its new Hinkley Point C plant, started in 2016, is now expected to not be complete until 2031, and costs £35bn.
So how much would it cost to replace all of Australia's coal power plants with nuclear ones?
We'll, at current exchange rates, £35bn — that's the cost of just one Hinkley Point C sized reactors — works out to A$67.6 billion.
So building just 10 nuclear reactors the size of Hinkley Point C costs $A676bn, making the AUKUS subs look like Home Brand corn flakes in comparison.
(Just for comparison, ScoMo's AUKUS subs cost $368bn, and Daniel Andrew's Suburban Rail loop is estimated at around $100bn.)
That's assuming Australia, starting from scratch, could build nuclear plants as quickly and cheaply as the UK, which was one of the first nations on Earth to split the atom.
So is it debt & deficit to fund this? Big new taxes? Even by the LNP's own measuring sticks, it's a crap policy!
The Australian Federal Government has previously examined the prospect of building nuclear power plants in the Switkowski report: https://webarchive.nla.gov.au/awa/20080117214749/http://pandora.nla.gov.au/pan/79623/20080117-2207/dpmc.gov.au/umpner/docs/nuclear_report.pdf
The big thing that's changed since it was published is that grid solar + storage is now cheaper than coal or nuclear power.
So would you support holding up the closure of coal plants for 15 years until nuclear plants are completed, then paying substantially more on your power bills, while the federal government pays hundreds of billions of dollars in government subsidies, while also hiring thousands of additional public servants to regulate it all?
#auspol #nuclear #ClimateChange #australia @australianpolitics
People seem to be under the impression that solar power is the cheapest source of power while strictly true it is only so under a very specific set of circumstances.
Firstly storage is out of the question. Outside of pumped storage chemical storage is the best option and it has many drawbacks. Batteries are inefficient to begin with and the materials used are hazardous to the environment and human health and are of limited recyclability. In addition the resources needed for these batteries are a leading cause of slavery globally.
Solar panels under the right circumstances can be cheap but depending on the time of day, weather and location are only that efficient for 5 hours a day. Notably the power is not available when needed as solar panels produce little to no power either side of peak sun and obviously none at night. In addition there are some elements of a solar panel that are not readily recyclable making them a not infinite and environmentally hazardous resource. In addition the cost of recycling is not factored into the cost calculations.
More important to this conversation is what makes nuclear so expensive. The short answer is the QA is not cost efficient because so few plants are built and none of them use the same parts, there is noneconomy of scale. Another problem is that the assessments made on solar panel efficiency are made on the peak of what is possible with today's tech whereas most nuclear facilities are 20 years old or older. So the comparison is being made between plants designed 30 years ago and the best solar has to offer right now. Nuclear has arguably progressed the most out of all power generation over that time while the fundamental concept remains the same things such as modular designs, reactors that recycle their waste materials and designs capable of providing heat for industrial purposes make the cost drop dramatically eclipsing the cost effectiveness of every other energy source by a wide margin.
In the past hysteria has created a negative public perception of nuclear that persists to this day. The waste is considered a large problem but in reality all global nuclear waste could fit in an Olympic swimming pool. This waste could theoretically be recycled and used as fissile material in another reactor thereby reducing it to a fraction of that size and render its hazardousness to essentially nothing.
The question then becomes if nuclear is so overwhelmingly dominant in its efficiency and cost effectiveness then why is it not used? Why is there this campaign of solar instead? and why not wind or something else?
The answer is simple: solar panels are the only renewable energy source that relies on highly comoditizable materials and because of its operating hours requires even more commoditizable materials to store for ready use.
If you take a look at the people present at these solar events, sponsoring organisations, etc they are they same big energy providers including hydrocarbon providers that are seeking to shift their business into the solar model, the most profitable renewable model.
Nuclear energy on the other hand is globally mainly managed as a state resource. The government owns it and provides power as a public utility which cuts out corporate profits.
Well, grid battery storage is using LFP batteries that don't actually have any of those expensive and dangerous materials.
Second, OP isn't talking about solar, they're saying solar and storage is cheapest. The cost of batteries is dropping like a rock, and we even have sodium batteries ramping up production and available for sale right now. They don't contain anything valuable.
Nuclear would get cheaper if we were manufacturing dozens of plants each year, but economies of scale work for solar and battery production too. It's not a magical advantage unique to nuclear. Batteries got something like 30% cheaper last year.
A nuclear plant that we started building today would maybe be up and running by 2035, and it'd be expected to operate until 2075 or so. Even if you make a case for nuclear vs 2024's solar and storage, it'd actually be up against 2035's solar and storage on opening day. And it'd need to be competitive vs solar and storage for its entire lifetime. It isn't.
While nuclear has traditionally been government owned and operated, so was the power grid and telephones. Any new nuclear is going to bring in private investment and non-government ownership like Hinkley Point C did, and they're going to want those corporate profits.