this post was submitted on 18 Jun 2024
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38
Coalition announces where they want to build nuclear power stations (www.theguardian.com)
submitted 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
20 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

"Peter Dutton has called a press conference for 10am, so it is all official – nuclear is go.

The Coalition teleconference meeting has wrapped up, and the seven sites have been named and it is as we thought: Collie in Western Australia, Mt Piper and Liddell in New South Wales, Callide and Tarong in Queensland, Northern Energy in South Australia and Loy Yang in Victoria."

"There are already issues being identified with the sites – first, the sites would need to be purchased from private operators. There will need to be some pretty major changes to legislation, both state and federally. The Queensland LNP, as recently as yesterday, said it would not lift the nuclear ban for the state, which is a problem given two Queensland reactor sites have been identified by Dutton’s team.

Tarong in Queensland is a particular issue as it doesn’t have a secure water source. In 2006, then-premier Peter Beattie had to propose a waste water pipeline as a last ditch measure to save the plant during a drought."

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 4 months ago (3 children)

Nitpick: Nuclear isn't obsolete, it's as modern as the design you choose.

Nuclear isn't a replacement for renewables (like the coalition tries to suggest), and it isn't evil (like an internal faction in the greens tries to suggest).

We need:

  • Renewables: for the best power production we can produce (when available)
  • Energy Storage: to store excess renewable power for when it's not available
  • Nuclear: to maintain baseline power (as opposed to peak power) for emergency scenarios.

Sidenote: Since whenever anyone suggests that nuclear isn't to be abhorred whenever it's brought up, here are the 3 common things brought up so no one has to ask it.

  1. Risk of meltdowns
  • Modern designs are meltdown-proof with passive safety built in (as opposed to active safety where you need to keep providing power to keep things safe like Fukushima). You can fly a plane into a modern nuclear reactor and the reaction just stops.
  1. Nuclear proliferation
  • We have our own large amount of uranium on the continent. We don't need to encourage others to mine and sell it, and we don't need to sell it overseas ourselves.
  1. Nuclear waste
  • It's common practice today to simply recycle nuclear waste as nuclear fuel. That way you get many more uses out of with less overall fuel that needs to be produced. By the end of it you have a kind of nuclear waste concentrate that burns itself out much quicker (meaning you only need to store it for about 100 years as opposed to 1000s of years). Also, that concentrate itself can be used in things like betavoltaics (think weak but long lasting batteries in things were you don't want to have to replace the batteries, e.g. pacemakers, smoke detectors, scientific sensors, etc...)
[–] [email protected] 7 points 4 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago (2 children)

That source doesn't have a link to their paper that works.

But based on what was stated just in your link, they say if we build enough storage then we wouldn't need any baseload generation, which is technically correct.

In particular, they're relying on hydro and gas storage.

(specifically renewable gas and not natural gas, because natural gas is still bad)

But as far as I know we can't build anywhere near enough hydro in Australia. Gas storage could technically work, but you'd have to build a ludicrous and economically infeasible amount of gas storage, or pump it into empty spaces underground (but I don't think we have enough of those in Australia either).

I'm under the impression that modern nuclear plants as baseload production would still be cheaper than the renewable gas storage we would need to maintain power.

Do you have a working link to the original paper or a study into how much renewable gas storage we'd require and the costs associated with it?

[–] [email protected] 6 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

But as far as I know we can’t build anywhere near enough hydro in Australia.

https://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Parliamentary_Departments/Parliamentary_Library/pubs/rp/rp2021/AustralianElectricityOptionsPumpedHydro

A study at the Australian National University (ANU) identified about 3,000 low-cost potential sites around Australia with head typically better than 300 metres and storage larger than one gigalitre (see Figure 3). The sites identified have a combined energy storage potential of around 163,000 GWh. To put this into perspective, a transition to a 100% renewable electricity system would need 450 GWh of PHES storage. The potential pumped hydro energy storage resource is almost 300 times more than required. Developers can afford to be very selective since only about 20 sites (the best 0.1% of sites) would be required to support 100% renewable electricity generation.

Emphasis mine.

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

Okay that's good, spaces for hydro storage isn't an issue.

The only problems/questions left are:

  • Are the spaces spread out in the right areas, and can they be chosen in the right combination that won't lead to problems down the line? (I think that's beyond the scope of that document, but we'll assume it is all good for now)
  • Time (let's just assume it's faster to get it all built than nuclear so we can examine hydro storage more)
  • Cost. Looking at the link I find:

Thus, the expected cost of a 1,000 megawatt pumped hydro energy storage system with a head of 600 m and 14 hours of storage is about $1.8 billion.

1000 MW = 1GW : $1.8B

And your quote says we need 450 GWh of storage.

So 450 x 1.8 = $810B

(I'm assuming I haven't made a mistake about the 14 hours of storage and the converting between GW and GWh).

Our current GDP is 1.6 trillion.

So we could do it, but it would cost us half of our GDP for one year (but we'd be spreading it out over multiple years).

I'm assuming economies of scale would come into effect, but how much more efficient can you be at making and pouring concrete.

I haven't found any source on the fiscal cost of the Coalition's plan (I doubt they even know, and I suspect that they're just trying to extend the life of coal by relying on delays), but it begs the question:

Would their seven proposed nuclear stations be cheaper than $810 Billion?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

So 450 x 1.8 = $810B

(I’m assuming I haven’t made a mistake about the 14 hours of storage and the converting between GW and GWh).

You have, that $1.8B would get 14GWh, not 1.
So 450 / 14 = 32.2
32.2 * 1.8 = $57.96B

These are all back of the envelope numbers of course, but 58 is ~ 14 times less than 810.

Would their seven proposed nuclear stations be cheaper than $810 Billion?

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-05-22/nuclear-power-double-the-cost-of-renewables/103868728

CSIRO has cranked these numbers out in a whole bunch of configurations.

In short: Australia's leading scientific organisation found it would cost at least $8.5 billion to build a large-scale nuclear power plant in the country.

8.5 * 7 = $59.5B

So it's within the ballpark to build 7 nuclear powerplants, compared to 33 (more likely less but bigger) off river pumped hydro locations.

Which don't cost as much to run, have no "scary" nuclear and can be operable much sooner, integrating with the existing infrastructure (instead of replacing it, as Nuclear effectively would have to).

If we build even one Nuclear power plant, we're going to see continuing solar and wind curtailment, exactly like they do with coal right now - which will effectively set an expensive floor on power prices.

Nuclear isn't happening if we follow the science, the money and the NIMBY sentiment.

Edit to add:
The BIGGEST difference in my mind is where the money will come from.
No financial institution will touch Nuclear, it would have to be tax dollars.
Whilst private companies are always angling for government subsidy, they are also clamouring to invest in this themselves.

A quick google search gives me a private example that is projected to come online this year: https://genexpower.com.au/250mw-kidston-pumped-storage-hydro-project/

It's only 2GWh, but it's going to start contributing to the end of coal by the end of this year, which ignoring the environmental benefit, is going to reduce wholesale power prices.

Waiting for Nuclear will make power prices worse, as the interim calls for continuing to run the coal and gas, which isn't going to make it 15 years, so new coal (or more likely a buttload more gas) will have to be built.
Which is going to RAISE prices, as it's no longer just running costs on paid off installations, it's repaying loans on new constructions.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 months ago

That source doesn’t have a link to their paper that works.

Yeah, link rot.
I did some googling for you: https://www.ceem.unsw.edu.au/sites/default/files/documents/Low%20Emission%20Fossil%20Scenarios.pdf

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

Nuclear is dead, my friend. I'd encourage you to take look at the cost curves of solar, wind and storage. They have come down an absolutely insane amount over the last decade and are predicted to come down another insane amount over the next half decade or so (about when your first reactor might be able to come online).

Just to give you an idea we're talking about around a 90% cost reduction for both solar and batteries and something like 45% for wind. It's crazy, but it's already happened. If you're interested I'd suggest taking a look at RethinkX's work. It's lead by Tony Seba who predicted these cost declines already back in 2010. Doesn't guarantee that he's right, but it is looking like the trend is going to continue.

There are also pretty profound implications for a 100% solar, wind and storage system as well that are pretty incredible. I don't think anything else makes sense in comparison.

EDIT: Here's a direct link to the report if you're interested in reading it.

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

Nuclear: to maintain baseline power (as opposed to peak power) for emergency scenarios.

That’s an incredibly expensive emergency power supply. If you can’t operate a nuclear plant 24/7 it’s going to take a veeeeerry long time to pay off the massive capital investment.

And that’s the crux of the issue. These plants won’t be supplying baseload. By the time they get built we will have twice as much rooftop solar, and lots more utility wind and solar. There will be very little room for them to operate at a spot price that earns them money.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago

Nuclear plants have really really long spin up/down cycles so when it's on, it's on for a while. It's not like solar, gas, wind where you can just stop it on a whim. So if you go nuclear, it's already running for a long time, and if they're running for a really long time they're also essentially running as baseload production.

As for the cost for emergency power, yeah it'd be great if it's cheaper. But the worse the emergency becomes, the less the cost matters. If I had to choose between coal or nuclear for emergency power, I'd probably choose both. Coal (which can be started and stopped quickly) just to cover the spin up time for the nuclear power, then nuclear for the rest of the emergency (and during spin down as whatever the emergency was is in the process of being resolved).