this post was submitted on 10 Jun 2024

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Nuclear power explained in 12 numbers to help you understand how it fits Australia’s energy needs (www.abc.net.au)

submitted 3 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

24 comments fedilink hide all child comments

As the shift away from fossil fuels gathers pace, the Coalition has turned to an emissions-free technology with a long and contentious history — nuclear fission. These are the numbers you should keep in mind when thinking about its place in Australia’s energy transition.

I encourage you to at least glance through the article before you leave a comment that other commenters will dunk on you for.

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 3 months ago (4 children)

I think those quotes at the bottom are a really great summary of the problem with the Coalition's nuclear plan:

“As I said, from an engineering point of view nuclear power is an excellent form of energy,” Dr Finkel said.

“What we can’t do is say, ‘Oh, nuclear is easy, therefore let’s stop all the wind and jump on to nuclear.’

“It just can’t possibly happen in the time-frame that we need. But that doesn’t mean we should rule it out because there’s that long term benefit.”

I could see the merits of beginning to invest in nuclear now, given the time required to get it up and running, but only so long as the shift to renewables isn't interrupted. Unfortunately, I think the LNP see this as a way to seem like they give a shit about climate change, but really it's just a way to buy them another decade or two to line their pockets with coal.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (3 children)

Nuclear power's already much more expensive than every other mainstream option, and the gap is widening every year. In twenty years time it's going to be so much more expensive it'll be ridiculous. No one's going to want to buy power for several times the cost of all the other options.

The idea's not only dumb - it's completely commercially unviable.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

Remember it's not really about building nuclear, it's about promising nuclear in a short enough timeframe to prevent investment in renewables, and then keeping the date moving steadily into the future until maybe 20 years later a reactor is built. It's about giving 20 more years to coal (and coal has the most radioactive exhaust of any power generation technology)

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago

The idea’s not only dumb - it’s completely commercially unviable

But I thought they were supposed to be good economic managers

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago

Unviable, unless they subsidise their nuclear mates.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Are there merits to investing in nuclear now?

A nuclear plant would take the best part of 20 years to build and has at least a 40 year lifespan. It'd be competing not against today's solar and batteries but against 2040's solar and batteries on day one. And it'd need to be profitable until 2070.

It would have been great to have invested in nuclear in the 80s, but we didn't. Like hydrogen cars, it could have been great but we've moved past it already.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago

Nuclear is difficult in Australia because of our low population. I agree it would have been nice to have some 40 year old reactors now (Lucas Heights doesn't count as it isn't a power reactor) but we don't because we don't and didn't have the population to support enough reactors for maintenance of one to not cripple the grid until small reactors were invented recently

[–] Weirdmusic 4 points 3 months ago

The time to invest in nuclear was ten years ago which (checks diary) was right about the time the last coalition government was in power and did ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. Now they're attempting to upend the inevitable transition to renewables by sprouting bullshit about nuclear.

Let me be clear: there are compelling reasons to go nuclear but the time and cost mean that this option is largely moot.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (2 children)

I'm sure I have also heard on radio national that Australia would have a lot of trouble running on nuclear because we only have ~26 million people.

We could only support about two or three normal sized reactors with our power usage

If we only had three, taking one down for months for maintenance would knock out a third of our supply, half if we had only two

We really would want to use small reactors and have dozens of them, but they're even more expensive, and we probably couldn't support the expertise to run them due to the small population

Solar and wind and batteries is cheaper. Solar and wind and pumped hydro is cheaper.

It looks like the largest effect of an attempt to go nuclear would be to extend the lives of coal plants under a promise that the new reactors are only five years away for the next two decades

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago (1 children)

You also can't just turn nuclear on or off. You'd need to also get rid of existing solar. Ie: get people to disconnect rooftop solar to make nuclear work.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 months ago (1 children)

If you told people they weren't allowed to export solar anymore, so many would disconnect from the electricity grid, starting the grid death spiral where wealthy individual subscribers unsubscribe, poorer people get higher bills and it gets relatively cheaper to get solar and go off the grid, etc

You end up with only the poorest buying electricity with government or charity money and industry using the grid

That would be really bad for nuclear, losing the bulk of the home market

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago

Yeah I can't remember where I read that but it's definitely a possibility IIRC.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 3 months ago (3 children)

...pumped hydro is cheaper.

It might be cheaper financially, but we've known about the huge environmental cost of dams for decades now. It boggles my mind that people suggest it in the same sentence as renewables.

Let alone that the immediate risk to life and property if a dam bursts can be similar to that of a nuclear meltdown.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 months ago (1 children)

We are talking in the Australian context where the dams were built in the '50s for hydro power.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 3 months ago (2 children)

And? We should be decommissioning and demolishing any that are upstream of settlements because of their huge risk of catastrophe.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 months ago (1 children)

because of their huge risk of catastrophe

Dams help prevent natural disasters. Preventing flooding is famously why the Aswan High Dam was built in Egypt, and the presence of flood-managed dams in SEQ is possibly one of the reasons we were affected so much less badly here in 2022 than Northern NSW, where the dams are comparatively small, ungated, and have no active management during flood conditions.

I agree that dams are not great ecologically and we should avoid building them, especially given how incredibly useful solar and wind power are (though wind has its own ecological problems). But it's not especially useful to say that they have a "huge risk of catastrophe".

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago

There are a class of American privately owned dams that recently got press for being at risk of catastrophe. I think that's what informed that lemming

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago

Just take them down? With what people paid with what money? Keep in mind that these dams are our best black start capability, that they have important use

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago

Pumped hydro is not exactly a dam. There's a hole and 2 water reservoirs. Yes there's a cost but so does anything.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago

Though I wonder what the environmental impacts are of mining Lithium to produce batteries on massive scales vs pumped hydro batteries to support solar whens it's dark or not very windy. There's plenty of other options as well like an elevator battery thing, but pumped hydro is probably more cost effective and safer to run as it's something we already know how to operate locally, the impact will just need to be managed.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 months ago (2 children)

What if I'm in the mood for being dunked on though?

[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 months ago

You may well be predisposed for politics, congratulations!!

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Your opinions are invalid, and you should be ashamed of yourself!

(Did that help?)

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago

Feels good!