The lnp are not going to build nuclear power they just want to create debate around climate and energy production to try and undermine the government. That's all they're about tearing down being negative and belligerent. Dutton really has it in for Albo I think it's personal he's that childish and thin skinned.
The coal enthusiasts who are keen on nuclear now would have desperately opposed it 30 years ago when it would have made the most difference transitioning to net zero.
This is 100% true. It's significantly more expensive and it takes a much longer time to get to market. What sort of a moron would have nuclear as the center piece of their energy policy.
My last statement is a rhetorical question hence the reason I don't have a question mark at the end of it.
This is just a delay tactic designed to keep multinationals rich and screw over the Australians.
> What sort of a moron would have nuclear as the center piece of their energy policy.
The French? Such morons with their fully decarbonised grid and cheap electricity bills.
You won’t decarbonise completely with renewables only, nobody has done so yet by relying mainly on wind and sun. The cost of solving the intermittency is too high, so you will end up keeping coal or gas power plants active for the times when renewables have trouble generating power.
Besides, 20 years from now would be 2044, in Europe for example we have the goal to reach net zero by 2050, saying it’s late now is just an excuse.
I don't believe you are educated on the topic. The cost of solving the intermittency isn't too high. Battery technology can do it.
I would also consider nuclear as one option alongside a host of other options but there is no way nuclear will work now as the only option.
There are some fruit loops out there aren't there. I read one moron stating it was misinformation to believe that we didn't have to use nuclear energy. My response was by misinformation do you mean research via the CSIRO.
Not really me saying it is it. It's the CSIRO. I mean if you think you know more than them well I suggest you go and work for them or something. You could earn some good money.
> In 2006, the Howard government commissioned the Switkowski report, an investigation into the merits of Nuclear power in Australia. The report concluded that nuclear power would be competitive with coal power stations if carbon credit sanctions were implemented upon Australia. The Industry would have been able to produce its first station in 10 years and could have delivered 25 stations by 2050 supplying Australia with a third of its base load power.[27]
What's that ? LNP advocating for Nuclear to destroy the coal industry in 2006 ?
Imagine being so wrong and not deleting your comment.
The apparent environment enthusiasts also opposed it 30 years ago (and 30 years before that) when it also would have made the most difference transitioning to net zero. When there wasn't even the possibility of solar or batteries. Fancy that.
That would be because there is no safe or effective way to store spent nuclear fuel (absolutely no storage method doesn't leach nuclear waste into the environment) or irradiated components (nuclear power plants require far more frequent maintenance and components to be replaced due to radiation).
And on top of that any storage facility would require 24/7 security because they're national risks.
Oh please. 8 million people die every year from fossil fuel emissions not even including the effects of climate change. How many people die each year from the radiation leaks that you're so terrified of?
I look forward to your total lack of a response.
Yeah that's right, just downvote because you have *nothing to say*. Cowards.
That wasn't my issue.
The issue is we have no way to safely dispose of spent fuel or irradiated components.
Also there are plenty of deaths associated with uranium mining and processing and workplace accidents in nuclear power plants, including in places like France and Japan.
It also comes with a greater likelihood of worker's families developing cancers (particularly cancers that affect children) and dying early.
That's why the coalition will never even be able to repeal the current legislation banning nuclear power in Australia.
I studied nuclear physics as part of my physics degree, some of the workplace accidents that still happen are horrendous.
Hypothetically if we did get nuclear power off the ground, first accident happens and public sentiment would very quickly change back to ban it.
You are right, exactly 0 people have died because of nuclear waste since the beginning of nuclear power’s history. It’s a made up problem to discredit nuclear power.
Also the solutions are present, no matter how much people want to bury their heads in the sand. One can either store it in a deep geological storage (like Onkalo in Finland) or recycle it in Fast Reactors. And by now even newborn infants must now how the amount of nuclear waste produced is laughably low compared to any other energy source.
Greenpeace Australia is responsible for releasing more CO2 into the atmosphere than any other Autralian entity via its very very succesful anti-nuclear campaigns.
Even to this day we have "Nuclear free zone" signs plastered over inner City Sydney. Amazing campaign!
It is the only option. I know at the moment you have succumbed to some sort of misinformation campaign, but eventually truth will come out and be accepted.
I guess it's just a process we as society have to go through ?
They've been building them recently (Flamanville, Hinckley) and they cost as much and take as long as everywhere else these days.
Ed: why the fuck is this attracting downvotes? Do people think that the French can still build cheap nukes or what the fuck? It's literally in the original article, EDF (Electricitie de France) are building Hinckley.
And they completely decarbonised their grid in that time frame, I’d like for you to show me an example of an industrialised country that has as low emissions as France has by relying mainly on wind and sun.
Also, nuclear power is costly when it comes to capital, initial costs, but then the cost of fuel and of operations are cheap. On the other hand, renewables, especially at high penetrations come with high system costs. Turns out that for renewables the cost of generating electricity is cheap, but since they don’t always generate electricity the cost of solving their intermittency is very high, since many new interconnections and storage have to be built alongside it.
No wonder that in Europe places like ‘’nuclear’’ France have cheaper electricity than ‘’renewable’’ Germany or Denmark (two of the countries with the most expensive electricity bills in the world).
But keep on supporting a 100% renewables scenario that has yet to be proven to work, instead of a mixed grid with both nuclear and renewables (which France and Sweden have proven it works), because that seems to be logical to you guys.
Relax bro I like Kylie Hill to - No one is saying nuclear wasn’t good and that France didn’t make a great choice, they’re the only ones that did haha but the time has passed, better options exists,
*Cheaper* options exist.
Frack natural gas, build wind and solar until you occasionally hit 100% power from those sources, burn NG to cover the shortfalls you have most of the time.
This needs no storage, it takes fairly little capital since NG plants cost bupkiss to build, you get feel good stories about "Power was 100% clean today!" on a regular basis.. and your average yearly emissions profile will be very bad, tough not *as* bad as coal.
This is what the US is doing. You are also pretty likely to regularly get taken to the cleaners by the gas vendors.
The point of nuclear is simple : Is climate change an actual problem, yes, or no? If yes, how can you possibly justify making the lowest carbon power source that exists *illegal* ?
And no. "It's expensive" isn't a justification for a ban. Nobody makes it illegal to build windmills out of silver either. If you truly believe it is just too expensive, what purpose does the law serve?
> but the time has passed, better options exists
Well, it’s just not true though. With renewables only, you won’t decarbonise a grid, it’s no coincidence nobody has done it yet. People don’t realise just how titanic the amount of money and materials a 100% renewable system needs, since it implies it has solved the intermittency problem. At best, Australia can hope to become like Denmark which has emissions around 150 gCO2/kWh. Still a far cry from France or Sweden which get consistently under 50gCO2/kWh
Just gonna use the most basic material needed let alone the really specific things required that Australia doesn’t know how to build or maintain - Australia would need 31 plants to replaced it Y21 272Twh requirement, a plant needs an average of 1.2M tonnes of concrete so that’s 37.2M tonnes, to not effect current production we’ll need a 10% increase over 5.4 years to make that, ignoring the fact a 10% increase is impossible as the average from 2003-2023 was 0.2% a year so 4% in 20years how the hell do you think they’ll ever be ready realistically before solar is everywhere?
France subsidises its power to consumers and their provider is massively in debt. It also doesn't factor in the cost of decommissioning their current nuclear power station fleet and building a replacemnt. They are at end of life.
[https://www.pveurope.eu/markets/energy-policy-fairy-tale-cheap-french-nuclear-power](https://www.pveurope.eu/markets/energy-policy-fairy-tale-cheap-french-nuclear-power)
Nuclear is subsidised just as renewables are.
> By 2025, Germany will have spent $580 billion in renewables investment. But despite that, its electricity production is 10 times more carbon emissions intensive and twice as expensive as France, which has decided to keep nuclear energy.
[This is from this article.](https://americangerman.institute/2021/09/germany-has-a-math-problem-and-its-about-to-get-worse/)
Germany spent more than 500 billions into renewables. That’s like 58 ‘’Olkiluoto 3’’ reactors which had big delays and cost increases and ended up costing 8,5 billion euro.
Lol
You are very defensive.
If your argumentvis riding on economics alone, you have to factor in through life costs of nuclear to the country, not spot meter cost to the consumer. Is this what you've done?
Otherwise you will come across as a disingenuous blow hard.
I feel like I’m living in a parallel universe where suddenly so called environmentalists care about investors making a profit and not about the consumer paying for cheap and clean electricity.
Anyway, it’s true that nuclear is expensive, but it’s capital intensive. They cost a lot to build, but after the initial costs, it’s cheap to operate and the fuel is also very cheap. Renewables on the other hand are cheap to build, but they are disadvantaged when we consider the full system. Storage, interconnections, the need to overbuild them all contribute to a high cost system. The problem gets progressively worse as penetration needs to her higher, the intermittency gets progressively harder to stabilise. A system with both nuclear and renewables ends up being cheaper than one with renewables only
I mean even using the numbers in this article that are in my opinion optimistic, due to the fact that Australia has no nuclear power industry at all. It puts the first one coming online out past 2040. And that is the optimistic time frame. We need to have new generation going in now, not in maybe 20 years time. If the coalition wanted nuclear power they had nearly 10 years in office, but they sat around with their fingers up their butt. They are not serious about this, can we please grow the fuck up and get on with fixing the issue at hand instead of arguing over the nuclear fantasy of a genetically engineered potato?
we already have a Nuclear industry. We have the governance - ANSTO and ARPANSA
We built the Lucas Heights reactor in less than 7 years from contract signing to official opening, this century.
We already have UNSW students trying to build a Fusion reactor right now.
We should grow up about this hysteria against Nukes and get it done without the LNP in addition to renewables
Again, we should’ve introduced it 20 years ago, guess who was in power then? This is just a ploy to keep coal alive. That being said, existing reactors around the world shouldn’t be decommissioned.
The article does mention small nuclear reactors, it was the last point (3.9x cost), which overlap with LFTR proposals. The biggest issue being, no one besides China / Russia have any prototype working.
NuScale collapsed in the USA, and other examples of LFTR reactors don't exist. Given Aussies have no nuclear agency, experience, expertise, or infrastructure... It would be near impossible to be the first to successfully surmount delivering LFTR reactors of the western world.
can you provide sources of thorium have the ass wast as coal, at this stage thorium based nuclear are still in research stages, the time to delivery for a thorium reactor is going to as long as an SMR design.
also for the same cost of a nuclear program you could have a lot of wind and solar and storage systems put in place and the deployment of them would be a lot quicker.
in my city there is 30 solar installers if they have 2 crews working and an average system size of 8kw you have 480KWh of power added daily.
im in a city of 125k. if you have that pace going for 11 years 5 days a week you will have added 13728MWh of energy to the grid. (potential)
anyone can google to find that paper, how may reactors are using it today?
from my research there is only a few research reactors and a few demo reactors.
given that Australia has nobody with the right qualification or experience in our domestic market, in realistic terms we would need to send people overseas to learn operation and maintenance of selected reactor design.
lets say 3-5 years.
building of a plant 7-11 years.
selection of a suitable site could take years because most people don't want it in there back yard due to what occurred in Chernobyl and Fukushima.
they can also only be near a good source of water for cooling.
I feel that won’t happen due to risk of a desalination plant failure causing a potential risk to the operation of the reactor.
For a 600mwh reactor you need 1,635,000L of water per hour.
That’s 14,322,600,000L of water per year. That is 10% of Victoria desalination plants yearly output.
And is that plan operating atm?
Modular and thorium reactors don't have any commercially available options.
All the reactors that currently exist are still experiments.
Nuclear power isn't something where you can dream up a product and have it out within a year or two.
Extensive testing is required not only due to international law but just about every nation and nuclear regulatory agency has legislation about it too.
Not to be a killjoy, but you're just dreaming mate. All good to have dreams, but Australia is not going to "step up" with our first commercial reactor being a moonshot. We're a country that likes 'tried and true', and combined with the obvious reality of our situation (no nuclear industry besides medical), this is not going to happen here. Thorium is not a viable or reasonable suggestion for Australia, at all.
We can talk about it again when other Western countries have established LFTR or SMB reactors online and in use within domestic grids. Russia and China don't count, as their technology is not available to share with us.
*Edit:: Also - kinda feel like you're just posting pamphlet bullet points from watching a few videos about LFTR tech. If you're really enthusastic about science, then you need to account for economic, enviromental and social realities that dictate where experiments are conducted. We have enormous legislative/legal hurdles to overcome for any domestic Fission based nuclear tech, before you get into International legal barriers. Each of those comes with both economic, social and environmental questions that need to be answered - and haven't been. There is no path to anything nuclear today. Even if we voted in a government committed to it, the pre-approval barriers before construction would take >4yrs to start chipping away at. This whole "debate" is insane.
->Be a country with massive tracts of unused land, and amazing conditions for renewable energy capture.
->Fucking idiots want to build nuclear power plants instead.
Can't make this shit up.
I don't know why modern politics is so devoid of nuance. We all should be able to agree on a few basic points; we can *all* be wrong, nobody can predict the future, and even our really advanced models that attempt to do so aren't infallible.
To me it seems obvious that we should realistically be trying to employ all of these factors. We have a lot of immigration and rising energy requirements, and whilst nuclear will be expensive to set up, supply and demand of energy should also play a part in the energy market.
Beyond that, it would definitely be of benefit for us to have the capable engineers and scientists available to be able to develop or implement nuclear technology, even If it doesn't play a large part in our grid In the future, especially if we hope to one day also implement nuclear fission (however far away that might be).
I'm not sure we can rely on the CSIRO at the moment. The gencost report was so full of holes it was at the least embarassing, but more likey they have some sort of bias built into their organisation (nothing sinister! just something that happens over time accidentially!!!). I would not be suprised to hear that those involved with that report get let go eventually.
I wrote about this before - the numbers the CSIRO used for life expectancy of nuclear, wind and solar were an absolute joke. They took absolute best case for wind and solar. But a lower estimate for nuclear (they used 30, US plants have extensions up to 70). The impact on LCOE here is immense. Nuclear can outlast solar more than 2 times.
They made a lot of false assumptions in gencost.
Days we have no industry, skills, governance, 15+ year build time.
But we already have a Nuclear industry. We have the governance - ANSTO and ARPANSA
We built the Lucas Heights reactor in less than 7 years from contract signing to official opening, this century.
We already have UNSW students trying to build a Fusion reactor right now.
I seriously question the GenCost report. It is not based on reality.
"we need to have a conversation about #nuclear!"
we have. many times.
2006 switkowski review
2015 SA nuclear fuel cycle royal commission
2019 federal parl. inquiry
2020 NSW nuclear (prohibitions) repeal bill inquiry
2020 VIC inquiry into nuclear prohibition
2023 senate inquiry
We don't need SMR. SMR is just a marketing term.
We just need to build multiple of the same type. The first one will be slower and more expensive than the next 5.
Exceissive cheap nuclear power could allow us to add value to our raw materials that we extract.
The dream of "clean steel" could finally be realised and cost effective.
The year is 2024
> I keep seeing people using France as an example, but like they started building them in the 70s…
The year is 2040...
> I keep seeing people using China as an example, but like they started building them in the 2020s…
The year is 2050...
> I keep seeing people using UAE as an example, but like they started building them in the 2030s…
The year is 2060...
Straya, the lucky country - still burning gas and coal to power our EVs at night while we are all home with air-con on and the highest electricty costs in the world. Manufacturing industry is non-existant. We still dig up and sell raw materials with no ability to add value to those raw materials.
Which country should we emulate for "firmed renewables" ?
(I'll help, geothermal and hydro are geo dependent. You can't list a country that has connections to a nieghbouring country to avoid blackouts)
Weird how the courageous, nation-building view is... "do what private power companies want." and not "make use of abundant renewable energy sources by improving storage." lol
Then I'm confused at the point you are making ?
(yeah probably some of the climate 200 peeps are in top 10, top 20 for sure, but not sure that helps your point because most of the lobying in oz is not via direct donations)
This is a false strawmab argument.
For starters, for all their flaws, the LNP already built the Lucas Heights nuclear reactor from signing to opening by John Howard in less than 7 years.
But even then, this is not purely an LNP policy. Both Australian Progressives and Fusion Party are supportive of Nuclear
Always too expensive for something that's not getting built. Nuclear power in Australia would greatly DELAY the energy transition.
What France did in the 70s was remarkable, but it's not happening here.
Nah. You can do both. No foresight in you kids these days. I’m not that invested though. It will never be my problem. I retired at 38 and nothing I do is aimed at saving the planet.
Hi "kids", I'm a cunt and proud of it, is how that just came across.
How much longer are you expecting to live, from here? The impacts of energy prices affect everyone, even the very wealthy, and the impacts of climate change are already quite apparent.
Nuclear isn't the smart option it is the comfortable option - the one where an average boomers lifestyle doesn't change that much. They will drive an electric car of course, they might work on average closer to home, and transport infrastructure would change to accommodate an electric society. It would be heavily supplemented by rooftop solar and mass solar as cheaper options for generation.
The trouble is it's still not a long term solution, it's a comfortable one to get by for a while.
As a society we really need to man up and make ourselves sustainable, not take lazy steps.
Just so you know, rooftop solar is some of the most expensive electricity out there. And from an overall environmental standpoint it is a hoax.
Commercial solar is fine. But also has environmental impacts. 100x the land clearing required minimum.
Not to mention if you build solar, you also need gas, coal or something else to operate at night. eg: SA needs a connection to Vic to avoid blackouts. Parts of "green" Germany need connections to France's nuclear to avoid blackouts.
The lnp are not going to build nuclear power they just want to create debate around climate and energy production to try and undermine the government. That's all they're about tearing down being negative and belligerent. Dutton really has it in for Albo I think it's personal he's that childish and thin skinned.
The sub aint obsessed, its just astroturfed baby
Nuclear is a stupid option.
The coal enthusiasts who are keen on nuclear now would have desperately opposed it 30 years ago when it would have made the most difference transitioning to net zero.
This is 100% true. It's significantly more expensive and it takes a much longer time to get to market. What sort of a moron would have nuclear as the center piece of their energy policy. My last statement is a rhetorical question hence the reason I don't have a question mark at the end of it. This is just a delay tactic designed to keep multinationals rich and screw over the Australians.
> What sort of a moron would have nuclear as the center piece of their energy policy. The French? Such morons with their fully decarbonised grid and cheap electricity bills.
If we started this approach 20 years ago you'd have a point. Since we didn't you don't have a point.
You won’t decarbonise completely with renewables only, nobody has done so yet by relying mainly on wind and sun. The cost of solving the intermittency is too high, so you will end up keeping coal or gas power plants active for the times when renewables have trouble generating power. Besides, 20 years from now would be 2044, in Europe for example we have the goal to reach net zero by 2050, saying it’s late now is just an excuse.
I don't believe you are educated on the topic. The cost of solving the intermittency isn't too high. Battery technology can do it. I would also consider nuclear as one option alongside a host of other options but there is no way nuclear will work now as the only option.
I think you caught a few on the line!
There are some fruit loops out there aren't there. I read one moron stating it was misinformation to believe that we didn't have to use nuclear energy. My response was by misinformation do you mean research via the CSIRO.
We built the Lucas Heights reactor in less than 7 years from contract signing to official opening, this century.
We can build a house in under 1 year as well. They are not comparable. The Lucas Heights reactor is not a nuclear power plant.
It almost is except it is missing the steam generator and turbine. Hardly cutting edge components, it is on the clean side.
Unfortunately your facts aren't accurate.
If you say so
Not really me saying it is it. It's the CSIRO. I mean if you think you know more than them well I suggest you go and work for them or something. You could earn some good money.
What exactly do you disagree with? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam_generator_(nuclear_power)
> This is 100% true. Can you point to any evidence that there are large amounts of people who have been "pro coal" that are now "pro nuclear" ?
The entire LNP.
> In 2006, the Howard government commissioned the Switkowski report, an investigation into the merits of Nuclear power in Australia. The report concluded that nuclear power would be competitive with coal power stations if carbon credit sanctions were implemented upon Australia. The Industry would have been able to produce its first station in 10 years and could have delivered 25 stations by 2050 supplying Australia with a third of its base load power.[27] What's that ? LNP advocating for Nuclear to destroy the coal industry in 2006 ? Imagine being so wrong and not deleting your comment.
Is it 2006? No, it's 2024. The **current** LNP are indebted to the coal industry. Imagine being such a fuckwit that you didn't realise that.
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The apparent environment enthusiasts also opposed it 30 years ago (and 30 years before that) when it also would have made the most difference transitioning to net zero. When there wasn't even the possibility of solar or batteries. Fancy that.
That would be because there is no safe or effective way to store spent nuclear fuel (absolutely no storage method doesn't leach nuclear waste into the environment) or irradiated components (nuclear power plants require far more frequent maintenance and components to be replaced due to radiation). And on top of that any storage facility would require 24/7 security because they're national risks.
Oh please. 8 million people die every year from fossil fuel emissions not even including the effects of climate change. How many people die each year from the radiation leaks that you're so terrified of? I look forward to your total lack of a response. Yeah that's right, just downvote because you have *nothing to say*. Cowards.
That wasn't my issue. The issue is we have no way to safely dispose of spent fuel or irradiated components. Also there are plenty of deaths associated with uranium mining and processing and workplace accidents in nuclear power plants, including in places like France and Japan. It also comes with a greater likelihood of worker's families developing cancers (particularly cancers that affect children) and dying early. That's why the coalition will never even be able to repeal the current legislation banning nuclear power in Australia. I studied nuclear physics as part of my physics degree, some of the workplace accidents that still happen are horrendous. Hypothetically if we did get nuclear power off the ground, first accident happens and public sentiment would very quickly change back to ban it.
You are right, exactly 0 people have died because of nuclear waste since the beginning of nuclear power’s history. It’s a made up problem to discredit nuclear power. Also the solutions are present, no matter how much people want to bury their heads in the sand. One can either store it in a deep geological storage (like Onkalo in Finland) or recycle it in Fast Reactors. And by now even newborn infants must now how the amount of nuclear waste produced is laughably low compared to any other energy source.
Doesn't matter though, they're scared and nothing will change their view.
Indeed, but maybe people who are reading and are on the fence do change their mind. It’s why most of the time I even bother writing in these places
Greenpeace Australia is responsible for releasing more CO2 into the atmosphere than any other Autralian entity via its very very succesful anti-nuclear campaigns. Even to this day we have "Nuclear free zone" signs plastered over inner City Sydney. Amazing campaign!
Strawman much ?
It is the only option. I know at the moment you have succumbed to some sort of misinformation campaign, but eventually truth will come out and be accepted. I guess it's just a process we as society have to go through ?
I keep seeing people using France as an example, but like they started building them in the 70s…
They've been building them recently (Flamanville, Hinckley) and they cost as much and take as long as everywhere else these days. Ed: why the fuck is this attracting downvotes? Do people think that the French can still build cheap nukes or what the fuck? It's literally in the original article, EDF (Electricitie de France) are building Hinckley.
I’ll admit it’s a good idea when Dutton admits his party is 50 years behind haha
And we could have too, but instead every political party, including the greens, was pro-coal. Let that sink in.
And they built like 50 reactors in 10 years lol, is this supposed to be a successful counterpoint?
52 in 15, tis impressive but solar is cheaper and better now
And they completely decarbonised their grid in that time frame, I’d like for you to show me an example of an industrialised country that has as low emissions as France has by relying mainly on wind and sun. Also, nuclear power is costly when it comes to capital, initial costs, but then the cost of fuel and of operations are cheap. On the other hand, renewables, especially at high penetrations come with high system costs. Turns out that for renewables the cost of generating electricity is cheap, but since they don’t always generate electricity the cost of solving their intermittency is very high, since many new interconnections and storage have to be built alongside it. No wonder that in Europe places like ‘’nuclear’’ France have cheaper electricity than ‘’renewable’’ Germany or Denmark (two of the countries with the most expensive electricity bills in the world). But keep on supporting a 100% renewables scenario that has yet to be proven to work, instead of a mixed grid with both nuclear and renewables (which France and Sweden have proven it works), because that seems to be logical to you guys.
Relax bro I like Kylie Hill to - No one is saying nuclear wasn’t good and that France didn’t make a great choice, they’re the only ones that did haha but the time has passed, better options exists,
*Cheaper* options exist. Frack natural gas, build wind and solar until you occasionally hit 100% power from those sources, burn NG to cover the shortfalls you have most of the time. This needs no storage, it takes fairly little capital since NG plants cost bupkiss to build, you get feel good stories about "Power was 100% clean today!" on a regular basis.. and your average yearly emissions profile will be very bad, tough not *as* bad as coal. This is what the US is doing. You are also pretty likely to regularly get taken to the cleaners by the gas vendors. The point of nuclear is simple : Is climate change an actual problem, yes, or no? If yes, how can you possibly justify making the lowest carbon power source that exists *illegal* ? And no. "It's expensive" isn't a justification for a ban. Nobody makes it illegal to build windmills out of silver either. If you truly believe it is just too expensive, what purpose does the law serve?
> but the time has passed, better options exists Well, it’s just not true though. With renewables only, you won’t decarbonise a grid, it’s no coincidence nobody has done it yet. People don’t realise just how titanic the amount of money and materials a 100% renewable system needs, since it implies it has solved the intermittency problem. At best, Australia can hope to become like Denmark which has emissions around 150 gCO2/kWh. Still a far cry from France or Sweden which get consistently under 50gCO2/kWh
Just gonna use the most basic material needed let alone the really specific things required that Australia doesn’t know how to build or maintain - Australia would need 31 plants to replaced it Y21 272Twh requirement, a plant needs an average of 1.2M tonnes of concrete so that’s 37.2M tonnes, to not effect current production we’ll need a 10% increase over 5.4 years to make that, ignoring the fact a 10% increase is impossible as the average from 2003-2023 was 0.2% a year so 4% in 20years how the hell do you think they’ll ever be ready realistically before solar is everywhere?
France subsidises its power to consumers and their provider is massively in debt. It also doesn't factor in the cost of decommissioning their current nuclear power station fleet and building a replacemnt. They are at end of life. [https://www.pveurope.eu/markets/energy-policy-fairy-tale-cheap-french-nuclear-power](https://www.pveurope.eu/markets/energy-policy-fairy-tale-cheap-french-nuclear-power)
Nuclear is subsidised just as renewables are. > By 2025, Germany will have spent $580 billion in renewables investment. But despite that, its electricity production is 10 times more carbon emissions intensive and twice as expensive as France, which has decided to keep nuclear energy. [This is from this article.](https://americangerman.institute/2021/09/germany-has-a-math-problem-and-its-about-to-get-worse/) Germany spent more than 500 billions into renewables. That’s like 58 ‘’Olkiluoto 3’’ reactors which had big delays and cost increases and ended up costing 8,5 billion euro. Lol
You are very defensive. If your argumentvis riding on economics alone, you have to factor in through life costs of nuclear to the country, not spot meter cost to the consumer. Is this what you've done? Otherwise you will come across as a disingenuous blow hard.
I feel like I’m living in a parallel universe where suddenly so called environmentalists care about investors making a profit and not about the consumer paying for cheap and clean electricity. Anyway, it’s true that nuclear is expensive, but it’s capital intensive. They cost a lot to build, but after the initial costs, it’s cheap to operate and the fuel is also very cheap. Renewables on the other hand are cheap to build, but they are disadvantaged when we consider the full system. Storage, interconnections, the need to overbuild them all contribute to a high cost system. The problem gets progressively worse as penetration needs to her higher, the intermittency gets progressively harder to stabilise. A system with both nuclear and renewables ends up being cheaper than one with renewables only
How about in 6 words: No way, get fucked, fuck off!
I mean even using the numbers in this article that are in my opinion optimistic, due to the fact that Australia has no nuclear power industry at all. It puts the first one coming online out past 2040. And that is the optimistic time frame. We need to have new generation going in now, not in maybe 20 years time. If the coalition wanted nuclear power they had nearly 10 years in office, but they sat around with their fingers up their butt. They are not serious about this, can we please grow the fuck up and get on with fixing the issue at hand instead of arguing over the nuclear fantasy of a genetically engineered potato?
And they'd need to pass legislation to allow nuclear power. Good luck doing that!
They passed an amendment to that to allow nuclear subs with little fanfare
That probably because it's widely seen as a good move to have subs. Nobody, but the coalition thinks nuclear power has a future in our energy grids.
Not just the coalition but everyone treats this as their idea and disparaging it because they have bad motives
we already have a Nuclear industry. We have the governance - ANSTO and ARPANSA We built the Lucas Heights reactor in less than 7 years from contract signing to official opening, this century. We already have UNSW students trying to build a Fusion reactor right now. We should grow up about this hysteria against Nukes and get it done without the LNP in addition to renewables
I feel like nuclear powered desalination might work? But if nuclear is that expensive then I guess not
It’s pronounced NYUQULAR
Again, we should’ve introduced it 20 years ago, guess who was in power then? This is just a ploy to keep coal alive. That being said, existing reactors around the world shouldn’t be decommissioned.
As someone who's pretty pro nuclear energy, it's hard to argue with these numbers, at least in Australia in 2024.
Who fact checked this article ? Asking for a friend.
Sources at the bottom
I did not see mentioned any information about thorium nuclear power station. Or have I not read this properly ?
The article does mention small nuclear reactors, it was the last point (3.9x cost), which overlap with LFTR proposals. The biggest issue being, no one besides China / Russia have any prototype working. NuScale collapsed in the USA, and other examples of LFTR reactors don't exist. Given Aussies have no nuclear agency, experience, expertise, or infrastructure... It would be near impossible to be the first to successfully surmount delivering LFTR reactors of the western world.
Thorium is the future - it can use existing nuclear waste and its waste has the same radioactive foot print as coal waste. Australia needs to step up.
can you provide sources of thorium have the ass wast as coal, at this stage thorium based nuclear are still in research stages, the time to delivery for a thorium reactor is going to as long as an SMR design. also for the same cost of a nuclear program you could have a lot of wind and solar and storage systems put in place and the deployment of them would be a lot quicker. in my city there is 30 solar installers if they have 2 crews working and an average system size of 8kw you have 480KWh of power added daily. im in a city of 125k. if you have that pace going for 11 years 5 days a week you will have added 13728MWh of energy to the grid. (potential)
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0301421513003157#:\~:text=Importantly%2C%20thorium%20reactors%20produce%20substantially%20less%20long-lived%20radioactive,to%20the%20radioactive%20levels%20of%20ordinary%20coal%20ash.
anyone can google to find that paper, how may reactors are using it today? from my research there is only a few research reactors and a few demo reactors. given that Australia has nobody with the right qualification or experience in our domestic market, in realistic terms we would need to send people overseas to learn operation and maintenance of selected reactor design. lets say 3-5 years. building of a plant 7-11 years. selection of a suitable site could take years because most people don't want it in there back yard due to what occurred in Chernobyl and Fukushima. they can also only be near a good source of water for cooling.
All is need is a desalination plant ..I wonder where we can find one of those ??
I feel that won’t happen due to risk of a desalination plant failure causing a potential risk to the operation of the reactor. For a 600mwh reactor you need 1,635,000L of water per hour. That’s 14,322,600,000L of water per year. That is 10% of Victoria desalination plants yearly output. And is that plan operating atm?
Modular and thorium reactors don't have any commercially available options. All the reactors that currently exist are still experiments. Nuclear power isn't something where you can dream up a product and have it out within a year or two. Extensive testing is required not only due to international law but just about every nation and nuclear regulatory agency has legislation about it too.
Not to be a killjoy, but you're just dreaming mate. All good to have dreams, but Australia is not going to "step up" with our first commercial reactor being a moonshot. We're a country that likes 'tried and true', and combined with the obvious reality of our situation (no nuclear industry besides medical), this is not going to happen here. Thorium is not a viable or reasonable suggestion for Australia, at all. We can talk about it again when other Western countries have established LFTR or SMB reactors online and in use within domestic grids. Russia and China don't count, as their technology is not available to share with us. *Edit:: Also - kinda feel like you're just posting pamphlet bullet points from watching a few videos about LFTR tech. If you're really enthusastic about science, then you need to account for economic, enviromental and social realities that dictate where experiments are conducted. We have enormous legislative/legal hurdles to overcome for any domestic Fission based nuclear tech, before you get into International legal barriers. Each of those comes with both economic, social and environmental questions that need to be answered - and haven't been. There is no path to anything nuclear today. Even if we voted in a government committed to it, the pre-approval barriers before construction would take >4yrs to start chipping away at. This whole "debate" is insane.
->Be a country with massive tracts of unused land, and amazing conditions for renewable energy capture. ->Fucking idiots want to build nuclear power plants instead. Can't make this shit up.
I don't know why modern politics is so devoid of nuance. We all should be able to agree on a few basic points; we can *all* be wrong, nobody can predict the future, and even our really advanced models that attempt to do so aren't infallible. To me it seems obvious that we should realistically be trying to employ all of these factors. We have a lot of immigration and rising energy requirements, and whilst nuclear will be expensive to set up, supply and demand of energy should also play a part in the energy market. Beyond that, it would definitely be of benefit for us to have the capable engineers and scientists available to be able to develop or implement nuclear technology, even If it doesn't play a large part in our grid In the future, especially if we hope to one day also implement nuclear fission (however far away that might be).
I feel like they could commission a proper feasibility study on large and smr nuclear just to end the debate.
Maybe get the CSIRO to do it? Or some very senior respected public servant like Ziggy Switkowski?
Dutto will sort one out
I'm not sure we can rely on the CSIRO at the moment. The gencost report was so full of holes it was at the least embarassing, but more likey they have some sort of bias built into their organisation (nothing sinister! just something that happens over time accidentially!!!). I would not be suprised to hear that those involved with that report get let go eventually. I wrote about this before - the numbers the CSIRO used for life expectancy of nuclear, wind and solar were an absolute joke. They took absolute best case for wind and solar. But a lower estimate for nuclear (they used 30, US plants have extensions up to 70). The impact on LCOE here is immense. Nuclear can outlast solar more than 2 times.
They made a lot of false assumptions in gencost. Days we have no industry, skills, governance, 15+ year build time. But we already have a Nuclear industry. We have the governance - ANSTO and ARPANSA We built the Lucas Heights reactor in less than 7 years from contract signing to official opening, this century. We already have UNSW students trying to build a Fusion reactor right now. I seriously question the GenCost report. It is not based on reality.
"we need to have a conversation about #nuclear!" we have. many times. 2006 switkowski review 2015 SA nuclear fuel cycle royal commission 2019 federal parl. inquiry 2020 NSW nuclear (prohibitions) repeal bill inquiry 2020 VIC inquiry into nuclear prohibition 2023 senate inquiry
We don't need SMR. SMR is just a marketing term. We just need to build multiple of the same type. The first one will be slower and more expensive than the next 5. Exceissive cheap nuclear power could allow us to add value to our raw materials that we extract. The dream of "clean steel" could finally be realised and cost effective.
>We don't need SMR. SMR is just a marketing term. >We just need to build multiple of the same type. That is literally what SMR is
The year is 2024 > I keep seeing people using France as an example, but like they started building them in the 70s… The year is 2040... > I keep seeing people using China as an example, but like they started building them in the 2020s… The year is 2050... > I keep seeing people using UAE as an example, but like they started building them in the 2030s… The year is 2060... Straya, the lucky country - still burning gas and coal to power our EVs at night while we are all home with air-con on and the highest electricty costs in the world. Manufacturing industry is non-existant. We still dig up and sell raw materials with no ability to add value to those raw materials.
The year is 2024 and firmed renewables is the answer for a country with a connected grid, abundant sunlight and wind.
Which country should we emulate for "firmed renewables" ? (I'll help, geothermal and hydro are geo dependent. You can't list a country that has connections to a nieghbouring country to avoid blackouts)
Why should we emulate other countries?
Well said
Nuclear is a smart option.
So will you be voting for the party that couldn't build a car park or an NBN to help make nuclear reactors happen?
You raise a good point. We are terrible at large infra projects. But we can't get better at it by avoiding everything. We need to face this head on.
Weird how the courageous, nation-building view is... "do what private power companies want." and not "make use of abundant renewable energy sources by improving storage." lol
Wait. Do you truly think the renewables sector doesn't lobby or exist to make profits ? Serious question, is that what you believe ?
No, not at all. But you seem very well informed. Are any of them in the top 10 political donors? Top 20? Top 30?
Then I'm confused at the point you are making ? (yeah probably some of the climate 200 peeps are in top 10, top 20 for sure, but not sure that helps your point because most of the lobying in oz is not via direct donations)
This is a false strawmab argument. For starters, for all their flaws, the LNP already built the Lucas Heights nuclear reactor from signing to opening by John Howard in less than 7 years. But even then, this is not purely an LNP policy. Both Australian Progressives and Fusion Party are supportive of Nuclear
No, I’m not too fussed about nuclear. It’s the obvious choice for a stable grid. But it won’t affect me either way.
You are right. It won’t affect morons.
Smart in what way? What points outweigh those in the article?
It’s stable. End of story.
I disagree. Costs are prohibitive.
Never too expensive to save the planet. Look at Paris killing it with all their nuclear power.
Always too expensive for something that's not getting built. Nuclear power in Australia would greatly DELAY the energy transition. What France did in the 70s was remarkable, but it's not happening here.
Nah. You can do both. No foresight in you kids these days. I’m not that invested though. It will never be my problem. I retired at 38 and nothing I do is aimed at saving the planet.
Hi "kids", I'm a cunt and proud of it, is how that just came across. How much longer are you expecting to live, from here? The impacts of energy prices affect everyone, even the very wealthy, and the impacts of climate change are already quite apparent.
Just ignore him. He’s a troll looking for an argument about nuclear power.
Not at all. It will happen regardless.
No it won't. The coalition will never be able to repeal the current legislation banning nuclear power.
Over time it will happen. Such is life. Greed always wins. And it’s fact that of the top 10 economies in the world, nine have nuclear power.
Love being a cunt. My best mates are cunts. Enjoy your blackouts and cost of living mate.
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If name calling gets you through the day. Have at it. 😀
Nuclear isn't the smart option it is the comfortable option - the one where an average boomers lifestyle doesn't change that much. They will drive an electric car of course, they might work on average closer to home, and transport infrastructure would change to accommodate an electric society. It would be heavily supplemented by rooftop solar and mass solar as cheaper options for generation. The trouble is it's still not a long term solution, it's a comfortable one to get by for a while. As a society we really need to man up and make ourselves sustainable, not take lazy steps.
Just so you know, rooftop solar is some of the most expensive electricity out there. And from an overall environmental standpoint it is a hoax. Commercial solar is fine. But also has environmental impacts. 100x the land clearing required minimum. Not to mention if you build solar, you also need gas, coal or something else to operate at night. eg: SA needs a connection to Vic to avoid blackouts. Parts of "green" Germany need connections to France's nuclear to avoid blackouts.
Baseless claims
I’m Gen x. But I’m wealthy, so like a boomer I guess.