My latest in The Conversation If you believe Newspoll and the Australian Financial Review, Australia wants to go nuclear – as long it’s small. Newspoll this week suggests a majority of us are in favour of building small modular nuclear reactors. A poll of Australian Financial Review readers
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.
"We" should not want to build or not build small or large nuclear power reactors. We should want a regulatory framework that allows building whatever size reactors that would be profitable to build if net CO2 emissions were appropriately taxed. A debate about how to get to that regulatory framework (not the outcome) would be worth having.
On the face of it it seems to fit the bill, so long as you rely only on surface appearances and don't delve into the reality. Encouraging ignorance, misinformation and confusion seems to be used deliberately to market it better. But when the intent isn't to achieve zero emissions, but to save fossil fuels FROM zero emissions holding out for the most unpopular and unachievable appears to support the status quo. Except the status quo shifted in favor of RE over fossil fuels by the magic of market economics, so impeding RE more explicitly has become more significant.
Even the "nuclear for the last 20%" type thinking isn't going to help nuclear because 80% renewables leaves a gap for things that do a few hours a day or a few days a month or a few weeks a year, not baseload. Yes when 20% is always nuclear that will mean 20% is still there when everything else is missing but the problem for nuclear is to make sufficient income during those shrinking periods to cover costs, because most of the time RE will fill ALL demand.
Even a grid that specifically excludes solar farms (to assure nuclear viability) will face lost demand from privately owned solar on the other side of the meter. Even deliberately excluding solar feed-in (that reduces grid demand for nuclear even further) will not prevent the loss of effective capacity factor from more of each day and month and year of selling output below cost.
I have no ideological objection to nuclear power plants but they aren't a short or even medium term possibility for the reasons you stipulate. As Simon Holmes à Court says, the pressing need at the moment is to build what is needed to firm intermittent renewables, which will be mostly batteries plus pumped hydro.
Mercurial: no, no, no. I did not mean that. It is not OK to dehumanise one's adversaries, however deplorable, with insect similes, a standard trope of hate speech. We should for instance reject the description of the Russian invaders in Ukraine as orcs, Tolkien's problematically irredeemable race of monsters. We can call them thugs (after a murderous Hindu sect), assassins (after a murderous Muslim sect), crusaders (after a murderous Christian movement), rapists, murderers, kidnappers ... a list of perfectly human categories of evildoing that fit Russian behaviour. My maggots are just rotten Australian arguments.
"Everyone else won't let us fix it with nuclear - so we'll just to keep using fossil fuels until then and it will be their fault". Same old empty rhetoric, holding up a bar too high, to force everyone under, not over.
I think it is a RW fantasy, where diverting the taxpayer support for renewables to nuclear sees renewables growth collapse (because it is an article of faith that it can't stand on it's own), where nuclear never really threatens fossil fuels because anti-nuclear sentiment prevents it - is allowed and expected to prevent it. Where what is left after that is fossil fuels.
Mature, right. A model is the traditional mature cheese in Sardinia and Corsica that features live maggots. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casu_martzu . It is technically illegal, but the reckless and determined can still seek it out.
I thought we'd already had several mature debates about nuclear power, all of which concluded it was a stupid idea.
Not mature enough until they come up with the desired answer, it seems
lol
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.
"We" should not want to build or not build small or large nuclear power reactors. We should want a regulatory framework that allows building whatever size reactors that would be profitable to build if net CO2 emissions were appropriately taxed. A debate about how to get to that regulatory framework (not the outcome) would be worth having.
On the face of it it seems to fit the bill, so long as you rely only on surface appearances and don't delve into the reality. Encouraging ignorance, misinformation and confusion seems to be used deliberately to market it better. But when the intent isn't to achieve zero emissions, but to save fossil fuels FROM zero emissions holding out for the most unpopular and unachievable appears to support the status quo. Except the status quo shifted in favor of RE over fossil fuels by the magic of market economics, so impeding RE more explicitly has become more significant.
Even the "nuclear for the last 20%" type thinking isn't going to help nuclear because 80% renewables leaves a gap for things that do a few hours a day or a few days a month or a few weeks a year, not baseload. Yes when 20% is always nuclear that will mean 20% is still there when everything else is missing but the problem for nuclear is to make sufficient income during those shrinking periods to cover costs, because most of the time RE will fill ALL demand.
Even a grid that specifically excludes solar farms (to assure nuclear viability) will face lost demand from privately owned solar on the other side of the meter. Even deliberately excluding solar feed-in (that reduces grid demand for nuclear even further) will not prevent the loss of effective capacity factor from more of each day and month and year of selling output below cost.
I have no ideological objection to nuclear power plants but they aren't a short or even medium term possibility for the reasons you stipulate. As Simon Holmes à Court says, the pressing need at the moment is to build what is needed to firm intermittent renewables, which will be mostly batteries plus pumped hydro.
Mercurial: no, no, no. I did not mean that. It is not OK to dehumanise one's adversaries, however deplorable, with insect similes, a standard trope of hate speech. We should for instance reject the description of the Russian invaders in Ukraine as orcs, Tolkien's problematically irredeemable race of monsters. We can call them thugs (after a murderous Hindu sect), assassins (after a murderous Muslim sect), crusaders (after a murderous Christian movement), rapists, murderers, kidnappers ... a list of perfectly human categories of evildoing that fit Russian behaviour. My maggots are just rotten Australian arguments.
I've got an idea: let's use the biggest nuclear reactor we can find - the sun!
"Everyone else won't let us fix it with nuclear - so we'll just to keep using fossil fuels until then and it will be their fault". Same old empty rhetoric, holding up a bar too high, to force everyone under, not over.
I think it is a RW fantasy, where diverting the taxpayer support for renewables to nuclear sees renewables growth collapse (because it is an article of faith that it can't stand on it's own), where nuclear never really threatens fossil fuels because anti-nuclear sentiment prevents it - is allowed and expected to prevent it. Where what is left after that is fossil fuels.
Mature, right. A model is the traditional mature cheese in Sardinia and Corsica that features live maggots. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casu_martzu . It is technically illegal, but the reckless and determined can still seek it out.
Peter Dutton? Maggots?
Now I get it!
Trenchant analysis
Thanks for posting.