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Dave Irving's avatar

I thought we'd already had several mature debates about nuclear power, all of which concluded it was a stupid idea.

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Alastair Leith's avatar

Purely deflection.. The climate denial industry ramp up the pro-nuclear power propaganda any time a Labor/Labour/Democrat government is in power.

I've modelled the island SWIS grid in southwest WA for all levels of RE penetration using hourly demand projection and weather data and its very clear that baseload nuclear power is a terrible economic proposition at 30% RE as we have today on costs alone. Then there's the obvious delay and high court challenges that would inevitably follow (discussed already by John well I thought). But start looking at a grid with 60% RE or 80% RE or 90% RE and baseload nuclear is an even more terrible economic proposition in this country (as it is most places today, just check out the obscene take or pay PPA contract the UK Government signed up for Hinkley C even after their expert panel advised against the project going ahead).

One of the big problems for NPPs just as it is for coal fired power stations is the dispatch profile of PV and wind on the NEM (almost-national) and SWIS grids. PV dumps cheap or free or negative priced energy into the grid in the middle hours of the day and since behind the meter retail energy economics makes rooftop PV obvious to all with sunshine regularly hitting their roof during the day there's only going to be more PV exports in the middle of the day. It's polticalliy impossible to stop it, and even Time of Use tariffs cant stop new PV being installed on our rooftops. 2/3s of roofs remain waiting for PV (some wont be suitable of course).

The other thing is we have excellent wind resources in Australia and at times the wind is going to be sold in the wholesale market very cheaply, when demand is much lower than annual peak maximum levels and when there's a lot of wind and/or PV hitting the grid as exports. This kills off that overnight baseload market, the one where they used to give you half priced power for your hot water to incentivise night time demand to keep the economics of coal more profitable. (Again, baseload generation hates to ramp daily, let alone twice daily).

When renewable energy hit ~40% in South Australia Alinta summarily packed its bags and closed Northern and Playford coal fired power stations. For the exact same reasons I explained above. Even if they could ramp coal and cutler reactors twice a day, they still ahem to burn fuel when they aren't getting paid a price for the power they export that is more than the cost of the fuel they must burn to ramp them and to keep them on standby.

At this point someone always says French reactors can ramp. This is a half truth designed to confuse us. Some French reactors can ramp slowly to accomodate the old grid demand profile. None of them can ramp quickly to accomodate PV going from 20% output to 100% output in the space of a couple of hours, not when PV is providing a third or two thirds of the demanded power at any given moment in the day. And that is the future we're moving into. Also French nuclear reactors can only ramp early on in their fuel cycle and it comes so at the cost of increased maintenance work and outages. The exact same situation is true of coal power plants.

Further to maintenance, both nuclear fission and coal fired power have tendencies to unplanned outages. Almost all French reactors went offline for either unscheduled maintenance, scheduled maintenance or because of of summer heat making their river water temperature to high to use for cooling the reactors. in Australia we've had our own issues with coal and gas facilities overheating in summer and disrupting the grid with a big loss of generation during a high demand period when RCAC and HVAC cooling are literally keeping people alive.

More people die during bushfire season of overheating than they do by coming into contact with bushfire itself.

It's easy to identify this nuclear "debate" as 100% propaganda once you understand energy markets and the characteristics, costs and leanings rate of various technologies. Nuclear power has the worse record for learnings in the world of any realistic energy technology in spite of 70 years of seven superpowers and others throwing vast sums of public funding at civilian and military nuclear power.

Speaking of the military use of "SMR" technology or small nuclear at least, not so modular, quite expensive. Back of the envelope figures for Virginia class subs (which Australia has been talking into buying second hand) and Astute class RN boats which we'll be buying new from 2040 tell us just how compelling small nuclear is on price and proliferation.

Rolls Royce PWR3 were produced for four submarines under construction for the Royal Navy and would have cost about £3,.77m in 2024 currency => 5,358 million AUD per reactor. Assuming they push about 210 MW of power (I cant find a power rating on line for the PWR3 reactors) similar to Virginia Class sub (rather than Ohio or Columbia) that's 734,086,570 AUD per reactor.

(many conversions for inflation and currency required: £11 Billion per reactor, divided by four => £275,000,000 per reactor (2012 British pounds Stirling currency) => £376,667,170 pounds in 2024 terms => 734,086,570 AUD 2024)

that's a snip at 3,495,650 $/MW for "small nuclear" from UK compared to 1500 $/kW = 1.5 $/MW for utility PV from CSIRO Gencosts 2023-24. to be fair the CSIRO GENCOSTS report estimates $31,000/kW for today and declining rapidly. Not sure where you can buy one so that $30/MW remains speculative in my book, as do their rapid cost declines, that's something the nuclear industry has never managed to do, ever.

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