One thing that amazes me about nuclear power is that its effect is identical on the left and right: softening of the political brain. The German Greens shut down some perfectly operational nuclear plants for no apparent reason. (MOAR COAL!) The political right views nukes as the only acceptable alternative to fossil fuels, again for no apparent reason. (MOAR COAL!)
The reason was Chernobyl. Not a very good one, as the reactor design wa much less safe and the accident caused by a reckless and unnecessary test, but it wasn't a baseless fear. The Greens in Germany started as an anti-nuclear movement, and added climate change later. They did secure globally crucial early subsidies for solar, creating a market for Chinese manufacturers and securing early economies of scale. I suggest cutting the German Greens some slack on this.
The media response to the Dutton nuclear plan has been appalling. When people in the future ask how we failed so manifestly to prevent or mitigate climate change, you could do worse that pointing to this sorry saga. We're not in the realm of opinion or modelling or different assumptions - this is just about ignorance, laziness, selfishness and self-deception. Not one serious person talks about nuclear as a viable option in Australia, but because it suits a whole bunch of people to pretend to take it seriously, that's what happens. We inch closer to catastrophe while ordinary people don't understand the scale of the looming disaster and think nuclear might be a part of the solution, and that's simply because they're not informed. It's heartbreaking and infuriating.
In some ways it reminds me of that period before the Iraq war when anyone who listened to Triple J knew - didn't just think, but knew - there were no weapons of mass destruction, and that war would be disastrous for Iraq, but it suited a bunch of people to pretend otherwise. And off we went and we're still untangling those threads, let alone the pre-existing tangles we should have been solving instead of making new ones.
I don't think they care enough about climate and emissions to care if it fails and the insincerity of it seems as much feature as flaw. Much, maybe even most of the "advantage" can be wrung from the spectacle of climate concerned people and groups opposing nuclear. It is policy certainty and RE industry confidence wrecking in ways that, in Right politics style, can be blamed on their opponents.
A bit cynical of me to think they are cynically machiavellian about it, but these are people who have been studiously evading any public reveal of what they really think of climate science and IPCC advice about urgency for so long it is ingrained as a habit - and I suspect they rationalise it as something Political Corrrectness forces on them. Just as having no real zero emissions policies will be "forced" on them... after they don't really fight that hard for nuclear and get "forced" to abandon it as a policy. Blameshifting does seem like the one real conservative superpower.
What they say is one thing. Right now, on the ground around the rural electorates of Australia the LNP (mostly the N) actively opposes and obstructs the plans and projects that will make RE more reliable at high rates - transmission, storage, solar and wind farms - just to be sure of (as well as because of) their pre-made conclusion that RE can't deliver reliable electricity and fossil fuels are best.
"As in every election over the last 20 years, at stake will be the question of whether Australia chooses a clean energy future, or prolongs the life of coal and gas – an outcome the nuclear plan relies on."
The Frontier nuclear report (December 2024) does not mention the price of renewables. The analysis challenges AEMO’s nuclear costs, but for renewables appears to piggyback on AEMO’s Next Steps model scenario (September 2023) . That in turn just refers to the IEA’s World Energy Report, issued annually in October. The IEA must have based its 2022 cost scenarios on prices observed up to the summer of that year.
What actually happened to wholesale PV panel prices in 2023 was a price crash, falling in half to around 10c per watt. https://www.pv-magazine.com/2024/06/05/itrpv-says-solar-module-prices-fell-50-in-2023/ The modules are only part of the overall cost of an installation, but a significant one. Battery prices are also falling. We can’t expect modellers to update their price parameters continuously, but a health warning about price changes, and a qualitative double check, would be reasonable
The key point is that the surprises on renewables are likely to be good ones. A few of the key costs of wind and solar keep falling. Others – inverters, mounts, transmission, pumped hydro - are pretty static and mature technologies, unlikely to change much. In contrast, nuclear reactors and nuclear storage are near the top of Flyvberg’s table of the failure rates of big projects, while wind and solar are near at the bottom. https://www.enr.com/articles/55774-oxford-professors-latest-book-examines-roots-of-project-failure The risks of the nuclear option are all on the upside.
Dutton’s scenario adds two other nontrivial risks. The plan to prolong the life of old coal generating plants is untried and could very easily go wrong. Where do you find the engineers for it? The rusting plants are being retired for a reason, old age. The other risk is the political one of defying the global policy consensus. The EU’s plan for carbon border taxes is already casting a long shadow. It will speed up decarbonisation by Asian manufacturers currently importing Australian coal, and may extend to minerals like iron ore that are important exports for Australia.
An amusing footnote. Crocodile tears from Frontier: “There is also an enormous cost to rural and regional Australians who have to bear a disproportionate burden of the energy transition – first with the loss of jobs in the coal generation sector and now they have to bear the loss of amenity from living with wind and solar farms in their community and extensive new and augmented transmission networks across their land.” Let me introduce you to European nuclear protestors, who make wind and solar NIMBYs look like fan clubs. https://www.gettyimages.es/fotos/anti-nuclear-protesters-demonstrate-outside-hinkley-point-nuclear-power-station The unfortunate rural Australians will be getting significant flows of rental income and local property taxes from the wind and solar farms, and potentially from transmission lines as well. With agrivoltaics, they can secure generating income without any loss in farming revenue.
Just the sort of analysis we need John, thank you 🙏
One thing that amazes me about nuclear power is that its effect is identical on the left and right: softening of the political brain. The German Greens shut down some perfectly operational nuclear plants for no apparent reason. (MOAR COAL!) The political right views nukes as the only acceptable alternative to fossil fuels, again for no apparent reason. (MOAR COAL!)
Sigh.
The reason was Chernobyl. Not a very good one, as the reactor design wa much less safe and the accident caused by a reckless and unnecessary test, but it wasn't a baseless fear. The Greens in Germany started as an anti-nuclear movement, and added climate change later. They did secure globally crucial early subsidies for solar, creating a market for Chinese manufacturers and securing early economies of scale. I suggest cutting the German Greens some slack on this.
Experts have been advising our town for decades that we should stop pumping raw sewage into our lake and rivers asap.
Analogous to the Dutton nuclear plan, we have decided to build seven sewage-treatment plants between 2045 and 2050.
Until then we will continue to
increase the amount of pollution dumped into our water courses.
(Far from a perfect analogy I know but it makes one important point at least).
The media response to the Dutton nuclear plan has been appalling. When people in the future ask how we failed so manifestly to prevent or mitigate climate change, you could do worse that pointing to this sorry saga. We're not in the realm of opinion or modelling or different assumptions - this is just about ignorance, laziness, selfishness and self-deception. Not one serious person talks about nuclear as a viable option in Australia, but because it suits a whole bunch of people to pretend to take it seriously, that's what happens. We inch closer to catastrophe while ordinary people don't understand the scale of the looming disaster and think nuclear might be a part of the solution, and that's simply because they're not informed. It's heartbreaking and infuriating.
In some ways it reminds me of that period before the Iraq war when anyone who listened to Triple J knew - didn't just think, but knew - there were no weapons of mass destruction, and that war would be disastrous for Iraq, but it suited a bunch of people to pretend otherwise. And off we went and we're still untangling those threads, let alone the pre-existing tangles we should have been solving instead of making new ones.
I don't think they care enough about climate and emissions to care if it fails and the insincerity of it seems as much feature as flaw. Much, maybe even most of the "advantage" can be wrung from the spectacle of climate concerned people and groups opposing nuclear. It is policy certainty and RE industry confidence wrecking in ways that, in Right politics style, can be blamed on their opponents.
A bit cynical of me to think they are cynically machiavellian about it, but these are people who have been studiously evading any public reveal of what they really think of climate science and IPCC advice about urgency for so long it is ingrained as a habit - and I suspect they rationalise it as something Political Corrrectness forces on them. Just as having no real zero emissions policies will be "forced" on them... after they don't really fight that hard for nuclear and get "forced" to abandon it as a policy. Blameshifting does seem like the one real conservative superpower.
What they say is one thing. Right now, on the ground around the rural electorates of Australia the LNP (mostly the N) actively opposes and obstructs the plans and projects that will make RE more reliable at high rates - transmission, storage, solar and wind farms - just to be sure of (as well as because of) their pre-made conclusion that RE can't deliver reliable electricity and fossil fuels are best.
Spot on John.
"As in every election over the last 20 years, at stake will be the question of whether Australia chooses a clean energy future, or prolongs the life of coal and gas – an outcome the nuclear plan relies on."
The Frontier nuclear report (December 2024) does not mention the price of renewables. The analysis challenges AEMO’s nuclear costs, but for renewables appears to piggyback on AEMO’s Next Steps model scenario (September 2023) . That in turn just refers to the IEA’s World Energy Report, issued annually in October. The IEA must have based its 2022 cost scenarios on prices observed up to the summer of that year.
What actually happened to wholesale PV panel prices in 2023 was a price crash, falling in half to around 10c per watt. https://www.pv-magazine.com/2024/06/05/itrpv-says-solar-module-prices-fell-50-in-2023/ The modules are only part of the overall cost of an installation, but a significant one. Battery prices are also falling. We can’t expect modellers to update their price parameters continuously, but a health warning about price changes, and a qualitative double check, would be reasonable
The key point is that the surprises on renewables are likely to be good ones. A few of the key costs of wind and solar keep falling. Others – inverters, mounts, transmission, pumped hydro - are pretty static and mature technologies, unlikely to change much. In contrast, nuclear reactors and nuclear storage are near the top of Flyvberg’s table of the failure rates of big projects, while wind and solar are near at the bottom. https://www.enr.com/articles/55774-oxford-professors-latest-book-examines-roots-of-project-failure The risks of the nuclear option are all on the upside.
Dutton’s scenario adds two other nontrivial risks. The plan to prolong the life of old coal generating plants is untried and could very easily go wrong. Where do you find the engineers for it? The rusting plants are being retired for a reason, old age. The other risk is the political one of defying the global policy consensus. The EU’s plan for carbon border taxes is already casting a long shadow. It will speed up decarbonisation by Asian manufacturers currently importing Australian coal, and may extend to minerals like iron ore that are important exports for Australia.
An amusing footnote. Crocodile tears from Frontier: “There is also an enormous cost to rural and regional Australians who have to bear a disproportionate burden of the energy transition – first with the loss of jobs in the coal generation sector and now they have to bear the loss of amenity from living with wind and solar farms in their community and extensive new and augmented transmission networks across their land.” Let me introduce you to European nuclear protestors, who make wind and solar NIMBYs look like fan clubs. https://www.gettyimages.es/fotos/anti-nuclear-protesters-demonstrate-outside-hinkley-point-nuclear-power-station The unfortunate rural Australians will be getting significant flows of rental income and local property taxes from the wind and solar farms, and potentially from transmission lines as well. With agrivoltaics, they can secure generating income without any loss in farming revenue.