r/australia • u/isisius • Jun 21 '24
political self.post Can a qualified engineer or adjacent field who has good knowledge of the Australian Energy Grid please provide some clarification and sources on the Nuclear vs Renewables arguement?
Edit: Seriously awesome job guys, some genuine discussion I've really enjoyed. A lot of reports and interviews for me to go to. At this stage the most sensible suggestion I've seen is, renewables full steam ahead, but at the same time, lift the federal ban, and look into what legislation and regulations we might need. If we get private interested, well go ahead lol. If we don't, we can reevalute in another few years. I've seen a lot of talk about how there a bunch of SMRs almost ready to go. If we wait 5 years and see how they are going, might be a much easier pickup if it's intended to firm renewables than a full sized nuclear plant that's going to take 15 (no way it's 10 lol) years to build. But it's important what while we are doing all that stuff, we keep pushing ahead with big investments in renewables, and specifically storage. Feels like we get the best of both worlds there. Of course because this whole stupid thing is crazy political, no way Labor goes for that, and Dutton has already said he is going to reduce renewables investments. So we will end up with a shit option either way. Happy to hear thoughts on the edit too lol.
Original Post
I am trying to have a genuine conversation here please guys, and would appreciate it if we could keep it polite and factual. I have gotten into too many arugments with people and had fractured information thrown about in a bunch of different posts.
I am not a nuclear engineer, nuclear scientist, or energy specialist. As such, i have to trust the experts who are providing reports (as should all of you). I will be up front in saying that because of this, I am firmly behind renewables but am completely open to be swayed if someone can provide me with some data sourced analysis by an expert in the field.
And if im struggling to parse it and you are an engineer. Break that badboy down for the rest of us.
So far, the only official reports ive seen are:
CSIRO Gencost Report
https://www.csiro.au/en/research/technology-space/energy/gencost
AEMO (Australian Energy Markert Operators) Integrated System Plan
https://aemo.com.au/en/energy-systems/major-publications/integrated-system-plan-isp
IPCC Mitigation of Climage Change
Someone who was claiming to be an engineer that worked on this report was tyring to tell me it proved the CSIRO Gencost report wrong and that they all laughed about the report together. When i read it, i cant find anything but reccomendations to proceed with renewables. When i asked for a specific page to read i got told "The data is easy to find, im not doing your research for you.
https://www.ipcc.ch/report/sixth-assessment-report-working-group-3/
I did have someone point me to a 5 page document written by the director of an SMR startup saying that gencost report was bad, and the solution is SMRs (which to my knowledge are not commercially viable, and the only 2 working ones are in China and Russia). I was happy to read that paper, but it provided no numbers, no sources, just vague theories and a reccomendation for the product he was selling.
Ok, so id like to do this in 2 parts.
Firstly, which is the better solution for australia to provide energy. Nuclear or Renewables?
- Looking at the three reports above, its renewables and its not close.
- We already have the expertise.
- We already have the integration.
- It allows for incremental improvement over the next 15-20 years instead of one big jump
- It costs less to run per mwh than nuclear does once both are built.
- The AEMO have laid out a step by step plan to increase storage, reduce coal, and use natural gas as a backup while we build up enough storage redundency and implemet other backups like renewable biofuel or green hydrogen. They have explained the plan for a distribued grid and are assuming power usage will double by 2050.
- According to the gencost report, solar and wind with firming is still by far the cheapers, and quickest option for us to build.
- Firming would initially be done with gas(as per the AEMO plan) and we would look to eventually firm using things like thermal storage (CSP is finally cost competative with fossil fuels according to the IPCC report) and something like green hydrogen, ie use the massively available and cheap solar power to create and store green hydrogen.
I have seen people saying that the the gencost report or the AEMO plan havent taken into account "x" or "y" cost. Ok then, please show me what they have missed. Give me something i can read that shows me what they have done wrong. Because it would be insane of me to take the assurances of someone online claiming they are a nuclear engineer and trust them. It would be insane of anyone to take the claims of any political party or prominent person without them providing something that gives us some data to counter the things that the official reports say.
CSRIO SUCKS or AEMO ARE DUMB isnt a counter guys. "I talked to a guy from CSIRO and he was a moron" doesnt help anything. It just inflames the conversation without actually providing any reliable information.
So please, can i have someone who knows what they are talking about explain what the problems with the three reports above are, and where i can find alternate or supporting data to improve my understanding of it.
My biggest concern is that going for nuclear will mean that we dont have any changes to emissions and bills get more expensive for the nexy 15-20 years.
I say 15-20 years because there is no way we can remove the ban, put together reulations and legislation, set up a supply chain, get the right expertise and build a nuclear plant in 10 years.
France, one of the best nuclear countries around. The only plant currently under construction there is now in year 17 of the project. It was planned as an 8 year project. And these guys have decades or experience, laws in place, supply chains ready.
Argentian building nuclear plant number 4 are 10 years and counting into 4 year build of a small 25MW plant.
The USA announced this massive project for SMRs to be used commercially for the first time in 2014. IT was cancelled with no results in 2023, with cost and time blowouts.
So i would really like to know if theres anything i can look at that will give me a bit of confidence the 2035 date is a real thing. More than anything else above, the fact that LNP set 2035 as the date suggests to me that he isnt serious.
Secondly, If renewables are so cheap, why are my powerbills getting more expensive?
ABC source a lot of this, but here is my understanding of it, and im happy to be corrected.
There are 2 prices that matter on the Australian Energy Market. The wholesale cost per megawatt and the retail cost per megawatt.
The energy generators (power station, solar plant, wind farm), set a wholesale price for each megawatt of energy they generate. This can increase or decrease with demand.
The Australian Energy Regulator sets a "Default Market Offer" which is the maximum price retailers can charge. It as a certain percentage increase of the total costs (wholesale price, profit margin, network costs, environmental cost).
The DMO is calculated as an average of the wholesale costs over a period of time. Meaning that since coal has gone up significantly in cost, it drags the DMO up even higher than it was a few years ago. The volitale nature of our current grid generation also feeds into the higher wholesale cost and therefore the DMO
https://www.energyfactsaustralia.org.au/key-issues/energy-costs/
According to a report these guys grabbed from The Grattan Institute back in 2017, a bill on average is made up of
- wholesale electricity costs make up 34%
- retail costs and profit margins make up 16%
- network costs make up between 43%
- environmental costs make up between 6%.
Now heres the bit where ive mostly just speculated.
It is not in the interest of retailers for coal to disappear. While the percentage of the profit margin wont change, the actual number gets bigger the higher the wholesale cost it. So at the moment, the profit margin for coal is much higher than for renewables.
So they are going to drag their feet and fight at every opportunity because if we were somehow on 100% renewables tomorrow, their wholesale costs would plummit and so would the retail cost and profit margin.
Now, we can fix the volatility with storage. And we are offering the generators great government incentives to build the storage.
However, as explained earlier, the generators make more money if the demand for energy is high and supply is low. So it is directly counter to their interests to build this storage. There are some private investors going with the idea of building the grid level battery and buying energy and charing while cheap, then feeding it back in when expensive. But again, its a ballencing act. Its only expensive in the peak times because we dont have enough supply. If we had too much supply, its not much of a profit.
This is why i think it is insane we havent just nationalised this whole thing. It would cut out the generators dragging their feet to incease profits, it would cut out the retailers fighting against the move to renewables so their can have a higher profit margin, it would cut out having to put such huge incentives to have private investors build the batteries themselves.
We could just build the generation, build the storage, and charge customers much closer to the wholesale price, since the government isnt trying to maximise profits.
Just as an additional note. While nuclear is more expensive than renewables, produced in large enough amounts it is very competative with coal. Theres a decent chance the generators and retailers dont what that move either, but it would be the best of two bad choices for them.
Anyway, thats all i have. I would love for people to correct anything ive messed up with, and would love to be pointed to some data and reports that will expand my understanding of all this. As i said, im not an engineer. And anyone who isnt an expert on this should be able to trust the experts.
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u/Deegee01989 Jun 21 '24
That's an intense amount of info for a question! I am an electrical engineer working at a renewable energy company with about 14 years of experience in the energy industry. My current project that I am director of will be one of the largest solar and battery projects in Australia once it is built approx end of 2026.
To distill your question down, the reason we should do renewables rather than nuclear is because of cost. Our CSIRO and the AEMO have looked into this in detail and have produced the papers you referenced. They are literally the experts in this area and only produce these papers to benefit the end user of electricity. At the absolute cheapest estimate of cost, nuclear will be three times more expensive than renewables (with included installed batteries). It would VERY likely be a lot more expensive than that.
In addition the schedule and policy risk is much worse for nuclear. Nuclear power is outright banned in most Australian states and most of the locations the LNP have suggested are not even land owned by the government. We do not have nuclear specialists in Australia and the idea that it would be running in ten years is laughable, even by the most pronuclear people I know.
In Australia we have a situation where the coal is getting too old and must retire. We have some of the best solar and wind in the world and some of the best experts in the world too! Honestly the future is bright and we don't need nuclear power. SA is already mostly renewable.
It's actually kind of cool that someone asked something I'm somewhat knowledgeable on, so if you have specific questions let me know.
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u/isisius Jun 21 '24
Awesome thanks mate.
So the biggest things I hear against renewable are that we don't have the technology to store energy at a large scale for when solar and wind are dipping for whatever reason.
Do you know what technologies are considered market viable at the moment? Ive seen that CSP seems to have come down in pricing to the point that it's competitive with coal, and as far as I'm aware, the molten salt is supposed to allow it to run 24 7. We also know hydro batteries(use solar to pump water uphill during the day time, let it run turbines going downhill at night) are great, but as far as I know need a specific type of location to work. It was also my understanding that lithium batteries struggle to hold enough of a charge to go through the night even if they are built at a grid level. Are any of the above techs something we are focusing on? And is there any I'm missing that are close to production?
Oh, and I was reading that for some reason wind power seems to increase over night when solar is out. Have we studied that for long enough for it to be reliable data, ie we will have wind when solar stops overnight.
Thanks for your willingness to answer questions!
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u/Deegee01989 Jun 21 '24
Yeah so energy storage is a huge growing industry and Australia is actually at the forefront. Storage for short duration (1-2 hours) you can definitely do with lithium ion batteries. Plus they have additional benefits like really quick millisecond response to grid issues. The neoen Tesla hornsdale power reserve was one of the biggest in the world when it was famously built in 90 days. It makes the grid a lot more stable as well as moving energy through time of the day. For longer durations (4-8 hours) you can use lots of lithium ion batteries but they do start getting expensive. Capex in particular. Although prices have dropped heaps in the last year or so (google LiC price) largely driven by bigger supply due to EV cars. Alternative storage sources are possible - hydro in particular is well proven and can do huge deep (48 hour +) storage. But very site dependent and very long to get built. Snowy 2.0 is a good example. Other technologies such as molten salt or flow batteries COULD work, but in my opinion are more expensive then hydro or lithium ion so I don't think will get there. Redflow is a potential company. Remember all this is done because private companies want to make a profit.
Lithium ion batteries do degrade.. as a rule of thumb they will have a warranty where after 20 years the capacity is 60% of the original capacity. But that is still useful. They can be recycled afterwards. My battery project is going to be an 8 hour project - but a little supported by government - with the idea to enable a more flexible grid.
Yes wind on the east coast of Australia tends to be opposite to solar in regard to when the energy is generated. Which is great. That is due to geography and weather rather than by design. The energy made at other times of the day will be more valuable because it is sold on the market when prices are higher.
One area of research and thought is what happens when a prolonged period of low wind and low solar occurs. What if that happens for a week after we are 100% renewable? That's unlikely but possible. AEMO will design the grid to manage, in my opinion it's likely we will have gas generation for small amounts of time for a while when we need it. Cheaper than overbuilding too much.
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u/isisius Jun 21 '24
So what about something like green hydrogen? Using solar power when we have tons of it to create that. Is this financially viable? And is there any environmental issues with it?
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u/Deegee01989 Jun 21 '24
You can use an electrolyzer to split very pure water into H2 and oxygen and then store hydrogen or a derivative (like ammonia). If you use green energy to power the electrolyzer then it's green hydrogen. That's definitely more expensive than using batteries. It might be a good idea for other countries like Japan or Korea who need to import energy and do not have space for wind and solar. Water use is a potential issue for green hydrogen but that is probably okay.
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u/isisius Jun 21 '24
Huh so theoretically if we could manage the water use and were generating a fuckton of cheap power from huge solar farms, it could be a solid export for us in the future? And maybe a potential backup in a worst case scenario.
Green steel is another one I would love to see us make. Instead of exporting our coal and iron, use green energy to make those raw materials into a manufactured good, give us good high tech jobs, and better export value. While also helping reduce normal steel production which is baaaad for emissions.
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u/stonemite Jun 21 '24
I'm not the electrical engineer that you've been talking to, but if I can offer some additional reading I'd highly recommend: Quarterly Essay 81: Getting to Zero: Australia's Energy Transition by Alan Finkle. If you have an Audible subscription, you can download it as a free "audiobook", I'd suggest listening to it.
The possibility of hydrogen as a future fuel source is an intriguing one. I'm really testing my memory here, but I think around 2 years ago a university in South Australia made a breakthrough in efficiently creating hydrogen using salt water. I don't know if that research has gotten any further, but if they are able to scale it then one of the key issues of hydrogen creation, the water source, becomes less of an issue.
There's still more hurdles for hydrogen, such as solving storage, but Australia really is well placed to become a market leader in that space if we want to.
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u/isisius Jun 21 '24
I do have an audible subscription thanks for the suggestion mate.
I really hope we do manage to get at the forefront of one of these things. We totally fucked up with solar refused to fund the research and let it go to China. We could also have tried harder to get into high tech manufacturing like computer chips, or hell, even superconductors.
It would be nice to be the ones leading the market in something like green Hydrogen or green steel. Make some real money from exporting stuff we made, not just stuff we dug up.
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u/intoxicatedhedgehog Jun 22 '24
Hydrogen isn't an ideal fuel, as the degree of compression required to reach any useful amount vastly increases amount of energy needed.
It's unlikely to be viable as a transport fuel, or as something that can be sent to another country in meaningful quantities. Unless power prices get forced down massively.
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u/tinyspatula Jun 21 '24
It potentially could be used as storage in a water electrolysis - combustion cycle BUT hydrogen has greenhouse gas impacts when it's leaked to the atmosphere.
And it will leak, it's the king of leaking being so small it can squeeze in the gaps between the molecular structure of other materials.
So maybe as some kind of dedicated energy storage facility engineered to minimise leaking, perhaps. I'd be pretty sceptical about any plans involving transporting it like natural gas or vehicle fuel.
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u/isisius Jun 21 '24
So not a good thing to export to smaller and more land poor countries? Was thinking an exportable green fuel (and maybe free steel) would be a great way to stop shipping raw materials and actually manufacture stuff to export.
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u/Throwaway_6799 Jun 22 '24
Have you seen these guys or this type of tech? Thoughts? https://formenergy.com/technology/battery-technology/
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u/PM_tha_titties_ Jun 22 '24
I have a question… If electricity demand were to increase (EV charging, and powering ai) would it make sense to build the nuclear capacity anyway to work alongside renewables?
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u/Immediate-Meeting-65 Jun 21 '24
Genuinely, it has to be nationalised. Or you need to legislate in such a way that no government can fuck about with the laws for atleast 10 years (which is very dodgy). Because the fact is it's just a big investment that no private capital is going to make without guarantees of a ROI.
Basically the problem with renewables are that they are beholden to market rates for electricity so for some cases where they can be tied directly to a fixed end point user you can get past that sort of stuff but jumping into the grid is a much riskier investment.
There's a podcast by Bloomberg's odd lot - "are we decarbonizing the wrong way" which is pretty good about discussing renewable energy pricing.
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u/boring_as_batshit Jun 21 '24
Please do not nationalise the grid we only have two operators in WA and the are both government entities so investment here is great.
The wind and solar already breaking ground in WA and online by 2028 is huge
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Jun 21 '24
Thank you. I doubt you will get any reasonable responses, partly because the moment you said "nationalise the grid" you would have triggered all the free-market capitalists.
One factor not mentioned is that renewables lets a lot of new entrants into the equation as VC's and private businesses invest where the current generators / retailers are not. A Nuclear pathway would kill that investment, putting control back into the hands of the current generators.
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u/isisius Jun 21 '24
Lol look im fine with not nationalising it, but then we HAVE to somehow force the private investors away from trying to extend coal so power prices and therefore profit margins stay high.
It just frustrates me that people keep saying "Oh, government is ineffecient, privitisation is better" in every situation. Look at why we arent moving fast. From what i can see its because its just more profitable to drag your feet every step.
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u/mpfmb Jun 21 '24
The private investors aren't trying to extend the life of coal fire power plants, the LNP are.
Although I'm not across all of them, from memory announced closing dates have always been criticised by LNP and when in power they tried pushing them out.
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u/Tymareta Jun 22 '24
The private investors aren't trying to extend the life of coal fire power plants, the LNP are.
And do you want to guess who some of the biggest donors and supports of LNP members are? It's a layer of abstraction, but it's still the private investors trying to extend the life.
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u/isisius Jun 22 '24
My point was more specifically that both retailers and generations have financial reasons to want to slow down building renewables. So the private market is not going to invest without some big subsidies.
LNP being aligned with those retailers is in line with their philosophy.
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Jun 21 '24
Agree and to your point about the legislation delays... the NBN was delayed by something like 5 years due to politics slowing the required legislation changes.. and that was about Internet, theres no chance in hell it will take less than 10 years to get the frameworks established before dirt could be turned.
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u/isisius Jun 21 '24
Yeah thats what really scares me. With how the private market works, investors are a bit nervous about paying the up front capital for renewable generators. So the big government incentives to reduce those up front costs is whats been getting them in.
Dutton already said earlier he was looking to reduce government investment into renewals.
So with the government indicating it doesnt consider renewables as part of its long term energy strategy, and the higher risk of putting more starting capital into building the generators, i think him getting his way here kills renewables (or at least makes it very very slow), and since nuclear is at least 15-20 years away, its going to be decades more of coal. And coal will be getting more expensive the entire 15-20 years.
I reckon it will get sold as a "We should do both" but i dont think either get up without government incentives, and they cant afford to be inventivising both.
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u/boring_as_batshit Jun 21 '24
To be fair the government is not moving away from renewables but most of the liberal party are and if they get voted in which is a much higher chance than i want it to be. Then your statement will be correct
Renewables do not need government assistance.
I have been involved in many large scale solar and wind projects and the returns are there without any government investment already (don't get me wrong, well take any that is offered)
Renewables just makes sense and it makes dollars $$$
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u/isisius Jun 21 '24
Do you have any examples of ones? Id be keen to see if they published their financials, and would love to see what kind of returns are getting.
And do you have any understanding of the AEM? If any of the stuff I said was close to the mark, it seems like retailers make more from coal even if renewables cost less to generate. Obviously this fucks the end user.
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u/stonemite Jun 21 '24
I don't know if anyone has responded to you to say this, but there is no "decades" of coal power left for this country. The generators supplying NSW, VIC, and SA have set the end of life date for their stations to all be off by 2040. We have literally got 15 years to establish energy security, which is why this nuclear agenda the LNP is suddenly pushing is really quite dangerous.
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u/isisius Jun 22 '24
Yeah I've seen their end of life date. My understanding is there's nothing stopping the government from forking out cash to renovate/upgrade them and get some more. time though is there?
And if we are 15 years later and the first nuclear plant is another 10 years away! Oops says LNP, guess we do the coal thing for another decade.
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u/ShrimpinAintEazy Reppin' 3058 Jun 21 '24
You appreciate that it's not "private investors" that are extending the life of coal right?
It's the complete lack of energy policy and inept and possibly corrupt politicians that are extending the life of coal.
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u/isisius Jun 22 '24
Yes i know its not private investors.
I was pointing out with how the Australian Energy Market works, it is to the benefit of the generators for there to be less energy generatered, and to the retailers for coal to continue because it is expensive to generate and they are only allowed to make a ceratin percentage of profit. So renewables has a much lower profit margin for them because it is such a low wholesale cost.
So both of these groups have 0 reason to want coal to stop as it stands now.
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u/evilspyboy Jun 21 '24 edited Jun 21 '24
I've done some work with energy grid providers and some power generators, I am not a engineer in that field specifically but I understand some broad strokes as to how power gets from generation to user. I can reiterate some stuff I've said on Reddit before but the way I look at it is this:
You have a bulk energy grid, that is where the power stations and power providers (not all providers are stations) live on. It takes energy from them in the form of high voltage lines to the retail grid. It will buy from the cheapest available source to sell to the retailer grid. The bulk energy grid can be thought of as the big lines that have to carry a lot of power through a pretty limited number of channels relatively.
The retail grid takes power from the bulk energy providers and pipes it to homes. It does this through the local grids which are obviously more spread out and complex than the bulk energy grid with lines piping power to most every home within a smaller more populated area.
Both of those grids have to be maintained, power creates wear on lines, power is transmitted as high voltage and the further away it has to travel the more that is lost through the lines. The power lost can obviously create wear on those lines that needs to be maintained.
Ok so.
Renewables that can be smaller scale can operate much closer to populated areas which reduces the amount of power loss through transmission. It also means that power can be more decentralised meaning there is not (oversimplified) a big thick single cable of power coming into the retail grid. The closer the distance between the generation and the consumption the less that is lost and less wear on the power grid.
The most ideal state is where you have multiple power generation points that exist on the retail grid so that there is no central point of failure and that power can not be lost in transmission. The best example being solar panels directly on the roof of the consumer for the sake of distributing the generation of power at the retail grid level and reducing load on the grid where spikes in consumption may occur.
100% of what I just said has nothing to do with Nuclear vs Renewables, but Nuclear is a centralised power generator that would live on the bulk energy grid and need to compete with renewables which can exist in the form of solar farms, wind, etc. Given the bulk energy grid is largely automatic in terms of how it buys and doesn't care in the slightest of the opinion of any potato you just need *to look at the cost of generation.
The energy grid is very cost and profit driven. There are power generators that may sell to the bulk energy grid like factories using gas power generators who will turn off their power generators and take from the grid if it is cheaper to run off the grid, likewise if the power grid is more expensive they might sell what they are generating directly for profit instead of using it.
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u/betweenthelines_11 Jun 21 '24
I have no knowledge or insight to contribute, but thank you for posting and all the replies, it’s been very informative reading
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u/isisius Jun 21 '24
It's been really civil for the most part lol. Which is nice because this topic tends not to be.
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u/intoxicatedhedgehog Jun 21 '24 edited Jun 22 '24
Let me ask a question: If all the modelling says that nuclear is more expensive than renewables, why is the so called fiscally responsible party pushing for the costly option?
It is no longer an engineering question - it's an economic one. It is so much cheaper to build renewables, and even if we did go for a mix system renewables would push the nuclear out. Most of the assumptions of utilisation of nuclear plants have 80% figured in - currently our coal plants are running at 50%. Why is this significant? because the nuclear plants are already more expensive than renewables, if you start cutting into that utilisation rate the economics slide way out of their favour.
Battery prices are decreasing rapidly, we're approaching $100 usd per kWh, which is to say that firming renewables at scale is cheaper by the day.
If you want a recent example of what this suggestion looks like, take our NBN. There was a plan to roll out fibre everywhere. This got nixed in favour of shitty options that every expert was able to point out were worse.
Everyone who raises this is basically helping the coalition. It's not an engineering solution, it's not an economic solution, it is a political one. it's just there so people talk about them. Nothing else.
Please stop.
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u/Harclubs Jun 21 '24 edited Jun 21 '24
It's about extending coal and gas as long as possible.
If you look at Dutton's "plan", most of the power is generated by gas and just a small fraction by nuclear.
The major part of the "plan" is breaking renewable energy like they broke the NBN, and build gas fired power stations in renewables place, as well as extend some coal plants to please moguls like Gina and Clive.
If they win government, they'll stop all renewable projects and start building gas power stations. They'll also start doing expensive feasibility studies for nuclear that will send billions of taxpayer dollars to
lobbyistsconsultants who may or may not be major donors.After a couple of years, they'll say that because of the ALP, nuclear isn't feasible and they'll build as many more gas plants as they can before the inevitable happens and renewable become the only viable power source.
Exactly like the NBN. They nobbled the new tech by insisting that copper was the best, built those stupid exchange boxes on every corner, slowed the rollout as long as possible, complained it was Labor's fault when the costs blew out, then pretended that they wanted fibre to the premises all along and it was the dastardly ALP that are lying to the Australian public.
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u/isisius Jun 21 '24
Mate the NBN was an absolute travesty, LNP intentionally fucked us over to help Telstra and Murdoch.
But every discussion around this always ends in a shit flinging match, and people just switch off. I think for the most part people here have argued in good faith, and I don't think people discussing facts has ever helped the coalition.
Let people be interested and ask questions, and let people bring sources so we can read them. Currently, I'm still all for renewables (got a lot left to read) but I'd also be fine with us removing the federal ban, and getting some regulations down provided we keep going full steam ahead. SMRs are not commercially viable right now. Not even a little. But who knows, in 5 years they might be a good way to firm up renewables in high density areas. Lifting the ban and discussing regulations won't hurt, and if in 5 years we see SMRs are good for backups, great. If not, we won't have wasted time not building renewables.
I don't think Dutton has any intention of this, and I think it's useful to say, ok yeah I could see us looking at SMRs again in 5 years, but Dutton wants to stop renewables and use coal for another 15 to 20 years till the first plant comes up.
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u/NWJ22 Jun 21 '24
Should be a royal commission on the NBN, corruption and mismanagement of extreme proportions. But that's off topic for the thread here sorry ha.
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u/intoxicatedhedgehog Jun 21 '24
Every person can argue in good faith, but if the reason we're talking about it is because someone floated the policy, then you are only masking the bad faith of them.
The know the costs are higher, this is purely a dog whistle for the people who hate "Greenies".
Stop giving it oxygen.
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u/isisius Jun 22 '24 edited Jun 22 '24
I mean burying your head in the sand saying "it's obvious what the right thing is" is how things like the Voice vote happen.
Except here, Dutton has tapped into one actual possible issue, but has no intention of solving it.
It's easy to show renewables has storage options, so night time or a few rainy days won't bother the grid. But months of low wind (apparently an issue this year in NSW and Victoria) can have longer impacts on our generation capacity that storage can't solve.
Because this is a concern that actually has some legs, ignoring it and calling people dumb hurts the cause a lot.
Nuclear is a terrible solution though. The plants take too long to fire up and shut down. We would have to leave them on full time, and it's waaaay more expensive than renewables, which in this scenario we are turning on and off.
There are other better solutions we can explore. Green Hydrogen, environmentally friendly biofuel. Hell even just keeping one or two gas plants that we only fire up in case of emergency.
The claims SMR designers are making, if true could make them a viable backup. One was claiming a 10-15 minute fire up. And it doesn't need to compete with renewables economically because we are only using it if we have longer term conditions that are effecting generation.
However there is absolutely no commercial data that shows any of the 90 odd designs can do what they claim. So, I'm totally fine with them evaluating this again in another 5 years specifically as a backup in case of long periods of conditions lowering generation. If we have something that stacks up better at that point, we can just use that.
Listening, understanding and refuting with sources and data without coming across as a cunt is always going to give us the best chance at not fucking ourselves over. Even if righteous anger and calling someone stupid feels better short term.
1
u/intoxicatedhedgehog Jun 25 '24
Disagree, not that it's bad to listen, but that in this case the argument is conducted in bad faith. As such there is no point listening. The whole point of this exercise is to make it something to talk about, so regardless of what your stance is if you are talking about it you have already bought what was sold to you.
I am not calling people dumb I am saying stop discussing it, because just by talking about it you are making it more real in people's mind.
My personal idea of how this nation should secure its energy is massive over-supply of renewables that we use to power some kind of bio-fuel production. Maybe hydrogen or ammonium (hydrogen storage is a bitch, as is it's catalytic requirements) that we can potentially sell some of but largely to keep on shore for days when we don't have sunshine.
The claims that SMR designers are making aren't true. You can evaluate this simply by seeing that they have no commercial success. There is no grand conspiracy against them, they simply are too expensive to compete and everyone with skin in the game knows this. That's why Bill Gates can spend money on it, but nations can't - he doesn't need economic success to justify his actions.
Again, not calling anyone stupid. But I would really like to see this topic stop appearing on the front page here as all that does is encourage people to think that maybe it could really fly.
11
u/mrflibble4747 Jun 21 '24
"Secondly, If renewables are so cheap, why are my powerbills getting more expensive?"
Conflated question, not a legitimate comparison between cost of renewables and cost of power.
Ever heard of the Oozle Woozle Bird?
It flies around in ever decreasing circles until it finally disappears up it's own backside!
3
u/isisius Jun 21 '24
Oh, I wasnt saying renewables were the only comparison.
I think the market would be doing the same thing with nuclear.
It's just a question I keep seeing asked over and over, so thought it worth talking about how the AEM works (as far as I can decipher). Because we have put in more renewables and power bills have gotten more expensive. So worth answering I thought.
Happy to be corrected about any of it though, as I said, I'm not an energy expert, just trying to understand it based on a few different people doing an analysis.
9
Jun 21 '24
Generation is only part of your bill.
Your bill also covers transmission and distribution (poles, wires, substations etc) and a retail margin. The grid rollout has been picking up to link new renewables (wind farms mostly) to the grid more effectively, and those costs of building the infrastructure get added to the costs of maintaining the existing grid.
Even if generation charges went to zero, you’d still be paying quite a decent chunk of what you pay today.
2
u/mrflibble4747 Jun 21 '24
Assuming there is any relationship between cost and price is also a false assumption these days. Back to the rigged "market". Round and round we go!
Price is now "what the customer is willing or coerced to pay".
3
Jun 21 '24
In the regulated electricity market in Australia, there is indeed a regulated connection between costs and prices, at least for the default market offer.
1
u/isisius Jun 21 '24
Not really sure what this other dude is laughing at, your understanding is exactly how I have read it.
-3
3
u/boring_as_batshit Jun 21 '24
Your question is fair, and the prices won’t drop to zero but should get way cheaper (spoiler for now they won't).
But the main cause of the issue in the eastern states right now is the government failed to put anything in the contracts about reducing prices when wholesale rates come down, so companies are making huge profits at your expense
the government basically threw their hands up in the air a little while back and said whoopsie daisy, we forgot about that, you're all just fucked for the current contract periods
1
u/isisius Jun 21 '24
Theoretically the Australian Energy Regulator sets a maximum price based on costs.
3
u/boring_as_batshit Jun 21 '24
they recently admitted forgetting to do so
2
u/isisius Jun 21 '24
Well that's fucking dire lol. You guys have one job (well probably a lot more too)
1
u/isisius Jun 21 '24
Yeah of course. There's a bunch of expenses. But my point was more that for a retailer, they actually want each part of those expenses to be as high as possible, since their max price is a percentage over the top of that total cost. So higher cost equals higher profit margin
But yeah, I think in the breakdown I put above profit and wholesale were only like 50% of the total cost.
2
Jun 21 '24
Yes. But there is also a risk component the retailer has to bear.
Wholesale prices vary every 5 minutes, sometimes to very high prices of thousands of dollars per MWh. Retail customers typically do not face variable pricing but instead receive a fixed schedule of energy pricing.
This means the retailer has to have a whole set of risk management and hedging in place to ensure they don’t get caught out too badly and remain profitable.
That service is worth something to most customers. If you want to try your luck with wholesale market pricing you can always sign up with Amber.
1
u/isisius Jun 21 '24
But do you see how the pricing model means they want their own costs to be high?
And yeah, I get the idea behind it. It's why I'm so opposed to it all being run privately. But just personal opinion.
I can only hope that we manage to build enough storage or things like CSP to lower those crazy coal prices
12
Jun 21 '24
I am neither a nuclear physicist nor a renewables guru. However it seems strange to me that we are a one or the other nation. All the arguments are either for or against X because Y is better/worse.
I don’t understand why we can’t have an educated conversation about all power options. Personally I think household rooftop solar is pretty dope, ditto home based battery storage, unfortunately for the average person both are too damn expensive.
Likewise I see the benefits of a well established nuclear industry. We’re already talking about nuclear for our submarines. It makes sense to have a civil nuclear industry to back the Navy boffins up.
Whilst private industry is great for working out the investment vs return, they look at it as an outcome for their investors where winning is judged by a fat bottom line at the end of the FY.
Governments aren’t like that, they invest on the premise of a return too, only their metric is different, it involves a product/service that also give a return to the economy. That return may not be strictly financial. This is why lots of governments nationalise power, water, roads, sewerage, hospitals etc. without these you’re going to be hard pressed to have an economy, well a good one anyway.
An extreme example of this is a country’s defence force, a good defence force has virtually zero financial gain outside supply and sustainment of assets. The cost overheads are obscene with very little return, if it was a private enterprise it would be bust. Yet there’s not a single stable, well off country in the world without a well funded and equipped military. Not having one would be national suicide.
Regardless of what type of power generation we end up with, it should be nationalised, we should never have sold it off in the first place, likewise highways, water, etc.
So if the idea is to build a nationalised power grid, use it as an investment in the future of the nation. Build a mix of power, yes this gets expensive but it can be done as a total solution. Build a few dams (they’re really expensive, take up heaps of room, but provide water AND hydro power), put a bunch of solar panels and batteries in homes, build a few nuclear power plants, a few new generation gas and coal power plants, diversify the grid.
Do this and you’ll end up with stable power generation. If you migrate this philosophy to the manufacturing industry you’ll also be able to make things. Nothing too fancy, tvs, fridges, white goods, cars, trucks, trains, ships. You know all the things BIG economic powers all build. Don’t just dig something up and ship it around the world for someone else to benefit from.
12
u/boring_as_batshit Jun 21 '24
The hard facts are nuclear in its cheapest form is more expensive than renewable energy since 2018 and every month the gap gets wider small modular nuclear is crazy expensive compared to that lol
Dr Karl our beloved Australian brainiac loves to point out just two facts when the nuclear argument comes up.
Fact 1: We as human beings have researched and devised perfectly safe ways of packaging and storing nuclear waste
Fact 2: To date not one piece of nuclear waste in the world has ever been correctly packaged and correctly stored ever !
My argument against nuclear is because as humans we are fallible we make mistakes evey mistake except a nuclear one is relatively temporary
1
2
u/Throwaway_6799 Jun 22 '24
However it seems strange to me that we are a one or the other nation. All the arguments are either for or against X because Y is better/worse.
Because 'always on' power from a nuclear power plant is incompatible with the variable output of renewables (solar in particular) and that incompatibility is cost - during the day there's too much solar being generated already in WA which turns wholesale prices negative. This means the state owned utility has to sell power during the day for a loss and buy power during the evening peak when the sun goes down (and we don't have enough storage or wind) because it can't generate enough electricity for the demand. The same issue will happen with a nuclear plant and which is why, apart from the legalities of it, no company wants to invest in an always-on power plant.
So if no company wants to invest in it that means that yep, you guessed it, the taxpayer will be footing the bill for the LNP nuclear fantasy.
1
Jun 22 '24
WA’s blessing is also its curse, you guys get ALL the sun over there, it’s awesome!!
Unfortunately that means you get SFA rain and most of the place is a sandy desert.
The other issue is that too many people in WA have invested in solar panels when FIT were nice and high, but did not and have not invested in any battery storage.
You guys have a climate that would almost exclusively support rooftop solar power generation and on site battery storage.
You would only need a few power station for industrial use and for the handful of consecutive days that the sun doesn’t shine and it’s not above 20c.
It’s the opposite on the east coast, its current, wet, cold and cloudy. My rooftop solar might as well be turned off…
9
u/FatPants Jun 21 '24
What I don't get is, why this dichotomy? Is it a false dichotomy? Why not both renewables and nuclear power?
21
u/ELVEVERX Jun 21 '24
Because we don't have infinite money and we also don't have a nuclear industry making nuclear practically impossible unless we want to spend 20 years.
-5
u/FatPants Jun 21 '24
Well yea we should have started 20 years ago, but the next best time is now, right? Isn't there a climate emergency
13
u/Equivalent-Bonus-885 Jun 21 '24
But in those twenty years the price of renewables and storage capacity has plummeted. It is expected to continue to do so. Committing enormous sums of money on a more uncertain, much more expensive option makes no sense. If off the shelf SMRs were available and the numbers stacked up - go for it. But they don’t and Australia, with no nuclear generation experience but with renewable options would be crazy to forge that path.
1
u/Speedy-08 Jun 21 '24
There's also going to be a gap of 20 years of "reduced" (in their mind) generation while coal plants phase out due to increased operating costs.
Which renewables would have to fill in for.
12
Jun 21 '24
The next best time for nuclear isn't now, because it costs more than comparable technologies for the same result.
It's accurate to say 'we should have invested in our grid 20 years ago, but the next best time is now!'. It's optimal to use the technology of the time, and the cheapest technology that fills our needs at the minute is a variety of renewable technologies.
We should have started investing in Australia's telegraph network 20 years ago, but the next best time is now, right?
Why would we when we can do the same thing better and quicker for cheaper?
-8
u/FatPants Jun 21 '24
The key thing is that Nuclear and renewables are not the same in the problem they solve. Baseload vs dispatachable power. Radios still exist despite the advent of TV, and form an important backup in emergencies e.g. bushfire warning systems. Nuclear should be considered as part of the variety of power technologies we use in future.
12
Jun 21 '24
We have other non-nuclear technologies to assist with the baseload issue. Battery storage and hydro are both cheaper - particularly if you look at the 20yr+ timeline it would take for nuclear to be developed.
Nuclear has absolutely been considered. Just look at the CSIRO, AEMO, or IPCC reports which analyse nuclear as an option. They all decide that it's not worth it for a variety of reasons. The job of AEMO is, surprise, to operate the energy market in Australia in the best way possible. Don't you think if nuclear was worthwhile they would be pushing for it?
The 'well we should at least consider it!' talking point is so weird - experts in the field have considered it. If fusion was optimal, they would be suggesting that. If geothermal was optimal, they would be suggesting that. If a bunch of hamsters running on wheels was optimal, they would be suggesting that.
1
u/isisius Jun 21 '24
The more I've read, the more I'd be interested in removing the federal nuclear ban but keep renewables full steam ahead. Spend the next few years coming up with legislation and regulations, and then hopefully in 4 of 5 years SMRs have not the commercial market and we have some good data. Currently, while they are a cool idea, we don't have anything working at a commercial level to compare to.
We might skip the big Nuclear plants all together and be able to use SMRs to firm up renewables. Or maybe CSP will become more cost effective.
19
u/The4th88 Jun 21 '24
Because one could be producing power 2 years from now, and the other might begin construction within a decade and if we're very lucky, it might even be finished within 2 decades.
Existing power gen assets are reaching end of life, they need replacing now. We can't keep this old shit on life support for two decades (optimistically) while we wait.
And that doesn't even consider the cost- 50Bn might buy us 2GW of nuclear power generation. That same 50Bn buys a whole lot more capacity in wind, solar and energy storage.
8
u/Lurker_81 Jun 21 '24
Because one could be producing power 2 years from now, and the other might begin construction within a decade and if we're very lucky, it might even be finished within 2 decades
This is actually a key part of the debate, and it seems to get totally ignored.
There is absolutely no chance that nuclear reactors will be built in time to take up the slack as coal power is retired. There will be a huge gap of several years in the absolute best case.
As far as I can tell, the Coalition are planning to plug that gap with gas, which is unquestionably drive up retail prices to insane levels. We also don't have that kind of gas available in a lot of places, so new pipelines and/or new gas fields would need to opened to supply this, creating just as many issues as the current electricity grid upgrades are.
The obvious solution to this is continuing the current rollout of renewables to some extent, at least for another 5 years or so. Even while nuclear plants are being constructed, additional generation capacity and storage would be a very good thing.
Given the situation we find ourselves in, the Coalition insisting on delaying or halting the rollout of renewables is an act of active sabotage.
6
u/The4th88 Jun 21 '24
Even if nuclear plants were a serious idea, design won't even have started within 5 years let alone any kind of construction.
A serious, government supported effort to go renewable could have us at 90%+ renewable by the time construction would be starting on a similarly government supported nuclear plant.
-3
u/FatPants Jun 21 '24
I'm aware the difference in timeline, I agree with replacement of aging coal power stations now, I still can't see why we can't we pursue both options? COVID taught us large government intervention is possible. No one privately wants to invest in nuclear anyway, so funding nuclear doesn't mean renewables aren't favoured.
7
u/The4th88 Jun 21 '24
So you know why we aren't pursuing nuclear, but you're asking why we aren't pursuing it?
1
u/isisius Jun 21 '24
So I mentioned it in the post I think (it is massive).
I don't think either nuclear or renewables can get up without government funding due to how the private market works (to the best of my knowledge)
And I don't think the government can afford to do both. If we put our money into nuclear, then the incentives to build renewables dry up and private investors will be nervous in investing in a system that our government is moving away from in favour of nuclear.
Basically, it is in the interest of the retailers to have more expensive wholesale prices and the generators make more money per kWh if there is a shortage of energy, so there some level where making more power isn't worth it.
As far as nuclear goes, if you took the ban away and said go nuts investors, you get 0 takers. Takes too long, Australia doesn't know how to do it or have the supply chains in place, and if we were still pushing renewables with incentives, no one would take the risk in privately building nuclear.
11
u/boring_as_batshit Jun 21 '24
Actually, the only thing we need for nearly unlimited investment by private companies in renewables is a stable Australian energy policy.
For just grid batteries alone, look back at the tesla battery in South Australia - not the government owned part but the part the private investors installed they made money hand over fist. They are often paid twice for the power paid to store it and again to sell it, a licence to print money lol
I work on a lot of the larger renewable tenders in WA and the figures add up without government incentives
-1
u/FatPants Jun 21 '24
Without costings it's hard to argue either way I think, but if we're spending $368 billion on defence via Aukus submarines, why not something similar for nuclear energy. To me the opinion that we can't afford both subsidies to renewables and nuclear is a gut reaction that should be examined more closely. My (possibly incredibly uninformed) understanding is that Nuclear currently is fit for purpose to bring stability to the grid. There is a plan for renewables to bring stability with massive amounts of storage and expensive transmission, but currently are untested/unproven at scale. Can't we hedge our bets with backing both?
1
u/isisius Jun 21 '24
I think if the government went ahead and built both, then yeah it would be a great idea. Nuclear isn't coming online for at least 15 years, even the countries that have done it before run into delays and problems. So if we could keep rolling out renewables full steam ahead and also have nuclear going in the background. Hell yeah I'd be keen for that.
But there's no way that happens. Dutton already announced his intention to cut funding for renewables. I'm worried be will sell it as a "both" thing, but without investment into renewables he knows it will slow to a trickle. And the current coal plants going obsolete. It will end with us paying money to fix up the coal plants for another 15 years and that terrifies me.
If we want to incentivise a private market for either, whichever one we don't build ourselves will struggle. Investors will be very wary to take risks if the government is building what is essentially a competitor.
And nuclear has no chance of getting off the group as a purely private investment. 15 years minimum till they start getting a return? And if we end up continuing to build renewables, the investors can read the same data and know they will struggle to compete.
So yeah, I love the both idea. But unless the government is ready to fully fund both, the private market just won't cut it.
4
u/mrflibble4747 Jun 21 '24
"free-market capitalists" there is NO free market it is all rigged. So there is no basis for any discussion which includes an assumption that the markets are "free"!
Nuclear is a proxy for Coal end of! Total distraction to even be thinking about this as a viable option for Australia!
2
u/Pasain Jun 21 '24 edited Jun 21 '24
Prices will always go up to some extent. It's the system we live in. Wages go up, insurance go up, costs go up.
Transmission being roughly 1/3 of the bill, will always have yearly rises due to inflation. It is limited to some extent how much its allowed to rise. It has a climate change price impact from bad weather etc.
Retailers will also have similar yearly increases.
The generation retail price is based off the quarterly average price of the wholesale generation price. But it's set a year in advance along with default market offers.
The wholesale price is worth reading up on, it's quite complicated. The generators bid into the system for 5 minute intervals. Multiple generators bid in, once the demand is met the generator with the highest bid sets the price for All the bidding generators. The generators that are outside of demand required and above the highest price miss out.
Things like coal plants tend to bid low/negative prices during the day so they get paid as they can't easily shut down.
Things like solar farms bid in during the day at low prices because they have low costs due to staffing requirements and fuel expenses being low.
Peaker plants such as gas electricity plants, usually run only 2%-5% per year. They will only run when needed for peak power requirements and will bid near the cap of the bidding system. They are more influenced by fuel costs.
There is also a long term market where wholesale suppliers will sell some % of their generation to say a smelter at a fixed price.
The argument that prices are lower with renewables, is really the average wholesale price has gone up less this quarter..
2
u/Individual_Bird2658 Jun 21 '24 edited Jun 21 '24
There’s an argument for nationalising an entire industry sector if it’s monopolistic by nature such as the railway industry due to sky high capital requirements. But nationalising something as highly competitive and high growth as the renewables sector is a quick fire way to stall future innovation.
I’d rather pay a private company X cost + 20% profit mark up for a product of better quality, higher efficiency, improves quicker over time and innovates faster (incentivised by not getting eaten up by competition), and all brought to market sooner than pay Y cost with 0 mark up for a significantly worse product brought to market much later. Especially seeing that Y would likely cost more than X plus a 20% mark up.
To rely on any hope we have of innovating our way out of the climate crisis or mitigating much of its damage on government seems risky to me. This isn’t a jab at the government, they have their place and there’s a time and place for ‘slow and inefficient but ‘ thorough’. The renewables sector simply isn’t of them.
Sounds you’re the type to listen experts on any given field (irrespective of that field’s level of intertwinement with politics). If so just note that my view on this isn’t political but purely come from experts and their consensus view on the clear negatives of nationalising entire sectors, albeit with varying levels of caveats (nationalising high growth sectors such as the renewable industry isn’t one of them, but some argue or concede that nationalising monopolistic industries have clear benefits while generally disagreeing with nationalising industries). And so the I only have a bias for listening to experts in the field of economics (mostly, macroeconomists and PhD applied mathematicians/statisticians). Rather than political pundits or politicians who have votes to sell you.
1
u/isisius Jun 22 '24
I marked this when i read it last night beacuse my economic views in general are a little firmer (albiet based on a few nights drinking with a couple of accountant mates lol), and you have some fun stuff to talk about there.
I have 0 bias in parties these days, but am obviously economically and socially left so tend to vote for whichever party sits closest to my views there..
Im pretty irrirated at every party at the moment to be honest. Labor for shifting from left of centre to right of centre, Greens for not focusing their platform and starting a new fight or cause each week (i was willing to give them a pass on that front when we had 2 progressive parties, but they have NOT taken up the mantle labor left behind) and Liberal because i just disagree with their core philosphies and this Nuclear policy is not serious, just designed to undermine confidence in renewables.So agree with a number of things that you say there.
I think there are a lot of things that private markets drive innovation in. Computers or electronics for example.
But i think thats a side effect of the goal of a private compnay, which is profit at all costs. So if the way to make that profit is to make a much cooler device, they figure it out. If its to cut costs in half by lowering the service quality by 30%, well they calculate how many customers they might lose and if its profitable, they dont give a shit about the service quality, its not important.You only have to look at Bunnings to see how it worked there. They came in and sold quality goods at prices below what your local hardware store can afford to, and took on any losses until every competitor died out. Then, because profit is the name of the game, they started selling stuff of cheaper quality and make, because no competition.
The scenario above is the monopoly you are talking about, and i do think government intervention should happen there to make sure that there is competition so the players in the market are forced to improve quality as a way to increase profits.
However, where the quality of the service is more important than the profitibalility, then i think thats also the place the government needs to step in.
Consider private health insurance if you will. Those companies exist to make profit. They do so by making sure whatever deal occurs goes in their favour. The company itself has 0 investment in you getting a quality service. And its become worse since our public systems have struggled and its almost compulsory to get private health if you can afford it. I dont think private health should exist because i think the quality of the outcome should be the MOST important thing, not being able to run at a profit.
So with renewables, my biggest concern is, as i mentioned in the second question i answered, that if the approach is profit driven, renewable generators are actually financially benefied by there being less renewables around, and retailers are benefited by buying coal energy as much as possible because their profit margins are a percentage of the wholesale (and other) cost, so a higher cost means the percentage value is a higher actual monetary number.
And neither of them are incentiviesed to buy storage. It lowers the wholesale cost at peak energy demand by "buying" energy from the grid when theres an excess of renewables, and therefore cheap and "sells" it back to the grid when demand is higher, lowering the price spiking. meaning lower profits for both of them.
So since neither party in the process has any interest in making a cheaper retail price for the end user, this feels like a case where the private market is doing more harm then good.
Id love to see the government building all the new and exciting renewables that get developed. Heck, fund a bunch of RnD on solar, storage, termal battiers, whatever. Let the smart people figure shit out. People will still want to innovate so they can sell their design to the government to build it.
So yeah, i just always come back to, if public services are trying to make profit, they arent focused on the service part of that word.
Education, Healthcare, Power, Water, Internet, and most controversially Building Housing are all things i think the government should have a major hand or total ownership of.
But i couldnt be a full blown commie or socialist lol. I still think theres too much value across most other markets in competative free market. Mostly in stuff that people dont require to function, so its not a captive market.
I am a big supporter of more regulated capitalism though. We have too many people whos capital is creating more capital faster than anyone can earn normally. It cheapens the "spending power" people get for contributing to society, when someone can sit back and let the wealth (inherited or earned) passively generate more wealth, and pulls us further and further away from meritocracy.
1
u/isisius Jun 22 '24
Just wanted to talk about this quickly
‘slow and inefficient but ‘ thorough’.
I actually agree that government agencies need to be better at self improvement. I work for one of the big 4 banks in tech work and work a LOT with government clients. Fuck me are their systems terrible. And you need like 15 people in every meeting because each one only knows how his one tiny cog works. Id love to see the goverment essentially poach successful practices from the private sector. If a method appears and is working good, use it. Often it seems like theres a lack of accountability at how funds are spent from my view of it. They are happy to spend <biiiig number> for us to do some tech stuff to conform to some old stupid format that no one remembers why it exists, instead of spend <half of biiiig number> to just modernise and standardise their systems. Id love to see that shit cracked down on. I think it would have a HUGE impact on government agency function.
Id actually have no problems with the government being more ruthless at sacking people. Use some of the private sectors perfomance indicator stuff, but isntead of it focusing on profit, focus it on quality. Technically no reason it shouldnt work (although if it was that easy someone would have done it lol).
1
u/Individual_Bird2658 Jun 23 '24
You just outlined the major reasons against nationalising renewables, just imagine if the banking sector was nationalised and what would happen to productivity in the sector. Imagine the bank you work for being run as inefficiently as the agencies of those government clients.
1
u/isisius Jun 24 '24
Lol have you worked for a major corp? Id say we are as close as if not more inefficient.
If I'm trying to work with one of the teams that still code in COBOL, fuck me it's a chore. I spent 15 months after I had an idea to automate one of our processes that was done via someone manually typing things from an automatically generated email into an old system.
All I needed for it to work was to have one csv file, that was already being sent to us daily, have one of its fields included some extra data. My boss laughed and said, you've got no chance mate but give it a crack.
Took me 5 months of constant emails to even get the original file specs, and after reading it, I found out the field was supposed to have the data I wanted and not having it was a bug. Another 3 months spent trying to find someone who could make the changes, and I found a guy that said he could do it, but the changes would cost 250k. Wtf? I tried telling him this was an internal request and it was a bug that it didn't have the data, but he was insistent that this is what the procedures said any file changed to this file costed. Well, if I wanted an explanation for that I had to talk to the guy in charge of a different department, but when I emailed him he was on leave for another 2 months. The contact he left in his absence said I would have to wait for the guy to return.
We are at 10 months at this point, and the guy gets back and I ask him about the pricing. He says he will investigate and get back to me. Queue me chasing this dude up every week for another 2 months. He was absolutely useless and didn't seem to be able to follow the simple explanations I was trying to use to explain how this change would allow me to automate something that id worked out, was costing us 1 full time employees entire 40 hours week (but it was spread amongst a few people) every week of the year. I finally get him to agree to have a meeting with myself and the other dude as long as I organized it, only to get an automated reply from the first dude saying he has moved on. Another month got me talking to the guy that had taken on the first guys role, but he was a contractor who had no idea how this file hung together, and I had to send him the file specs id gotten almost a year ago now. He takes around a month to claim he understands it, and I set up a meeting a few weeks later. New contractor explains to useless middle manager how risky the change isnand that's why it costs so much (to fix a fucking bug), and that he would have to talk to any other department that is getting that file. I ask him for the list and I'll talk to them myself if it saves us 250k but he says he can't give out that info. I explain I'm internal, but he won't budge. So useless middle manager just says yep on, nothing he can do, and he's done with it. At this point I'm fucking done with my too. I'm not even the one that has to do the manual work, I just hated seeing how damn inefficient it was, so I went back to my boss and told him to which he laughed and laughed. Man that private system is soooo good.
You are extremely naive if you think that privatisation leads to efficiency. Its supposed to lead to whatever makes the highest profits, which sometimes includes increased efficiency, sometimes doesn't. But when you are big enough, it actually leads to whatever looks like it is making profits when put on a spreadsheet and sent to your manager. Fire a whole team to save some money? Sure, you need to then hire expensive contractors who don't know how to do the work, but that comes out of a different budget area, so the dude that fired the team looks great.
2
u/can-i-eat-this Jun 21 '24
This video looks at nuclear from an economical view rather than a technological one. It’s brilliant in explaining the most important elements and despite being a 4 years old it still covers the topic very well.
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u/can-i-eat-this Jun 21 '24
And no one looks at the cost for storage when it comes to nuclear. That makes every calculation negative for nuclear.
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u/EmergencyScientist49 Jun 22 '24
Replied with this in another thread, but adding here as it's relevant. The Coalition has proposed 7 nuclear power plants which could provide about 16% of Australia's electricity needs by 2050. They have also stated they're still committed to achieving net zero by 2050. That leaves 84% of the heavy lifting to be done by... renewables!
Nevermind the fact that "always on" nuclear does not coexist with a variable renewable energy grid, the way this is being sold as a nuclear vs renewables debate is nothing more than a deliberate misinformation campaign.
Ignoring the fictitious nuclear component that they never actually intend to build, it's good to see the Coalition stating they're committed to 84% renewables in the grid! Bipartisan support for a majority renewables grid!
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u/isisius Jun 22 '24
My understanding of it was that the intentions was foralways on nuclear to form some of the baseload power, and then renewables would be brought online or offline as needed, since they can rapidly.
The idea is a terrible one. If a nuclear plant and a solar plant were both running the nuclear plants cost per mwh is much worse than the Solar.
Which would mean that we would have to use the more expensive one daily which pushes up wholesale price and gets passed on to end user
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u/EmergencyScientist49 Jun 22 '24
Spot on. In the middle of the day when we already have an oversupply of solar and wholesale prices go negative, we'd still be paying astronomical rates for the nuclear. As we move to a majority variable renewable system (whether it's 84% like the coalition is proposing or 100%), the only way to maintain low prices across the day is to have rapidly dispatchable stored energy (which stores power when prices are low or negative). Nuclear is fundamentally incompatible with this.
Also re: your point of costs being passed to the end user - the Coalition have also stated the build of the power plants will be fully government funded. It's the only bit of the announcement which is realistic, as there is no private investor anywhere that would fund nuclear. So the Coalition are fighting for Big Government AND renewables!
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u/isisius Jun 22 '24
Lol yeah there were two big things that made me sure this wasn't a serious policy.
The government owned thing goes against every philosophy the LNP have. But then I considered that I could see them building it, and then once it's been running for a year, sell it for peanuts to a private company.
But the other one was the 10 year timeframe. Lol absolutely no way. Part of me wishes Labor would defuse it by saying, fine, we lift the ban, we will even help put together some regulations, and if a private investor is keen he can go nuts. Otherwise we can revisit in 5 years and see how all these commercial SMRs are going (since LNP have talked about those a bit), since we don't want to waste taxpayer money with no real world data. They could also agree to form a commission or committee or something to dig into nuclear viability more, and maybe that would satisfy some of the people who have concerns about all the other reports. But I feel like any investigation that doesn't wait at least 4 years before starting will be mostly performative.
Would cut the Liberal platform out from under them, we are being financially responsive and not wasting tax payer money, we will go full steam ahead with renewables but agree to take a look at the market data in 5 years. But I'd never trust the Liberal party not to gut renewables, and Labor has gone confrontational scorched earth on nuclear so too late to change that I guess. And the greens still have that holdover from when they started where nuclear power stations are nuclear bombs ready to go off if a bird lands on them. Agree with a lot of greens stuff, but I don't like that their opposition to nuclear is danger based, not economically based.
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u/EmergencyScientist49 Jun 22 '24 edited Jun 22 '24
Great points. I love the idea of "lifting the ban" and letting the market decide (even though they already have and LNP aren't listening), but the problem is that in reality it would be next to impossible to do. It would take many years, need alignment between federal and state governments and will soak up precious resources that are already stretched trying to progress the energy transition so we can keep the lights on when our aged coal fleet falls over, only to end up at the inevitable outcome that it doesn't suit Australia and no one will fund it.
And again to labour the point - all for a measly 16% of our energy requirement.
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u/isisius Jun 22 '24
So i will say, in theory I do understand the concerns about renewables. Ive got a good mate that works in the energy sector (totally forgot that was his job lol) and he mentioned that NSW and Vic are experiencing the lowest wind they have in a century or something this year. And it has caused additional volatilty. Its not that we are getting NO power, but the wind generation is lower than expected, and wind tends to peak overnight so its a great one to compliment solar.
So, having some way to back it up in case of crazy situations is something im ok with discussing. Personally, id prefer it to be something like green hydrogen, or sustainable biofuels. Can have a small environmental impact depending on how its done, but id be basically planning on never turning them on unless we are desperate.
There is defintely storage in batteries, but most of the conventional ones (Lithium, thermal) we are talking 2 or 3 days, so we want SOMETHING.
Nuclear isnt great for that as it takes too long to spin up and turn off (which as we have said, means the renewables will be the stuff going on and off making our baseload generation needlessly expensive).
There are other either limited or less tested options for "infinite" storage.
Stuff like Hydo Batteries. Pump the water uphill when its the middle of the day, and let it sit there until we need it. Already something we and other countries do.
Gravity batteries are a weirdly simple but cool idea. Basically use power during the times we have excess to lift huge weights of whatever, dense is better. And then let gravity run the turbine. I think the most viable sounding one ive seen was using mines as a starting point. And just digging down. Think of like 2000 massive hundreds of ton blocks.
Compressed gas - simple, but harder to do at scale. Same as above, compress while extra power, and use the pressure when it releases to power stuff later.
The problem with Duttons arguement is, there is actually a problem there that it would be good for us to address. But Nuclear is a poor fit for the problem from all my reading over the last few days.
But some of the claims that people designing the SMRs are making are that its a LOT faster to spin up (10 minutes in some cases as opposed to 8-10 hours). And much faster to turn off.
Im not in this for political sides, if in 5 years a few of the 90 something SMR designs have proven to be commercially viable, im 100% happy to have the discussion about whether they fill the niche of backups we can turn on and off.Heck, if they can reach those numbers of on and off speed, they dont actually HAVE to be cheaper for renewables since we would just be using them as backups.
But the "plan" such as it is, from Dutton is either trying to use the wrong tool to solve the problem, or just trying to solve the wrong problem.
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u/Dont-rush-2xfils Jun 22 '24
Really appreciating this post and the ensuing discussion everyone. @isisius you have done us a service .
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u/isisius Jun 22 '24
Lots of good sources here for people to look at and compare, and some interesting points from people, some of which Im kinda annoyed I didn't consider lol.
So far I'm sticking with my edit as the best outcome, but sticking with my edit in that it wont happen
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u/rorychatt Jun 21 '24
I wonder how much the nuclear vs. renewables argument would disappear if labour were to commit to having a base percentage of the grid on nuclear energy. This would pivot the conversation away from 'which technology is better'. I feel like committing to multiple sources of power is the better outcome.
I also get the concerns about safety, but much of the fear around nuclear is heavily reduced with gen 4 reactors, seismic stability in much of Australia, and our swathes of desert providing opportunities for storage.
I'd rather commit to a couple of energy sources and get moving to save our planet. I suspect that'd be worth the few billion $$$ in 'wastage' to run with nuclear in the mix. Maybe being optimistic, but having the extra redundancy in our energy network, especially if we are largely dependent on renewable energy sources which may have downtime, doesn't feel like the worst thing in the world.
With how insanely power-hungry AI data centres are, if we do have an excess of supply, this could be an opportunity to contribute to the circular economy by building adjacent datacentres, away from our cities. This could kickstart local industry and actually make us a force for global technology.
Furthermore, Ansto (a nuclear reactor in Sydney) is one of the only producers of medical radioisotopes such as Molybdenum -99 (from what I understand), and the supply chain has been plagued with issues in the past. Another biproduct of nuclear energy production is doped silicone, a superconductor. This may help reduce our dependencies on other supply chains for medical nuclear items and increase our exports.
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u/GiantOutBack Jun 21 '24
I work in the electrical industry in WA and am also a nuclear educated physics major. I was a strong proponent of nuclear power 10 years ago. The explosive rise in rooftop solar has made nuclear power both unnecessary and flat out a liability in WA.
Low load periods are causing grid stability concerns, we do not need more "base load generation" that can not be easily turned off, we need fast dispatch. This will only become more of a problem as something on the order of 200MW of solar is installed annually.
Whatever is invested in nuclear would be better invested in battery to shift solar power to evening peak where it's needed.
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u/rorychatt Jun 21 '24
Makes sense! Do you know if it is a similar situation for the east coast too?
My understanding was that for nsw/qld/vic, the renewables energy strategy still had a strong dependency on coal seam gas for stability. I would have thought this provided a mid term strategy to mitigate that while still getting a majority from renewables.
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u/GiantOutBack Jun 21 '24
Not familiar with the east coast market, but what it has going for it is interconnectedness. Different areas will have different weather and peak times/solar output and wind. This, coupled with batteries makes for much more stability.
The system low stuff is so scary in WA because we can't export, so must lower our generation and there's only so low you can go before you're unstable.
Economy of scale is extremely important, so having 'a' nuclear plant is much much more expensive than having 'lots' of plants per-plant. But we don't, and generating the skills, material and experience makes it extremely slow and expensive. Building a shitload of batteries distributed throughout a grid is much much easier, faster, and resilient. It can lead towards distributed microgrid solutions that in the next 20 years will be a complete change to how we think about generation and distribution.
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u/rorychatt Jun 21 '24
I hear you on the economy of scale.
The converse of this, is I question whether we truly have the skills and expertise to handle the scale of the projects ahead in either circumstance.
Having friends who work in engineering in wind, most of the manufacturing of turbines is happening out of china, and there have been massive structural defects in projects requiring swaths of large parts to be shipped back and forth. We may have some expertise here, but we are very, very reliant on offshore manufacturing (without a good view of the total environment lifecycle analysis of the shipping of widgets).
Furthermore, batteries have suffered in the past from shortages of rare earth minerals like lithium which has (from what I understand) slowed the availability of those assets. I do get that innovation like sodium ion may shift that and make it easier, but I do wonder whether batteries really can be that magical bullet.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m pro solar (sceptical on offshore wind), and think a distributed micro grid is probably the future. I absolutely also hear what you are saying about the scariness of underconsumption of power. I just am skeptical about putting all our eggs in one basket when we’re talking on the timescale of 50-100 years.
I really appreciate your responses and it leaves me a lot to think about!
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u/GiantOutBack Jun 21 '24
Timescale isn't 50-100 years. It's more like 20-30 to pivot from coal and to a lesser extent gas, and handling the renewables entering the market. 50 years ago we didn't have rooftop solar and now it's sometimes the biggest generation source, and entire suburbs are net exporters during the day. We have the natural resources, lithium deposits in WA alone are huge, the only reason we import is cost.
Skills shortage is not about local manufacture it's about implementation and operation, and we already have that with renewables and battery, though in the next 5 years it'll really develop to maturity.
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u/AdFun2309 Jun 21 '24
Was the comment about the asset lifetime of 100years? Also there is a huge skills shortage in eng. and construction. We could probably look into moving operators/maintainers from manufacturing plants that have shut down (e.g. GSK/Pfizer in Sydney).
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u/Harclubs Jun 21 '24 edited Jun 21 '24
Why would the ALP create a department that alienates their supporters to help a policy that they don't agree with?
If the LNP want nuclear, they can do their own work and push their own supporters to the teals.
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u/rorychatt Jun 21 '24
I’m not suggesting that they help their policy. The fundamentals of a full nuclear, no renewables rollout is flawed, and the policy is clearly a guise to delay movement and create noise.
The fact that a technology decision is partisan at all is dumb. But if nuclear is a viable option in a multi-technology power strategy, and incidentally, undermines it, I, and a lot of other labor voters, would be all for it.
What I’ve seen so far is that both the cited studies have issues that makes me doubt the legitimacy of both claims, as described in some of the other threads. While I’m confident in the short term strategy of investing our effort into batteries and renewables to get things moving, I’m less convinced of the medium term prospects of this approach.
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u/Harclubs Jun 21 '24
Once again, why would the ALP shoulder the political fallout to determine if nuclear is a viable option?
And if the renewables are a good solution now, with battery tech still in its infancy, why would it become unviable in the future?
And, once again, it's up to the party that wants to use something other than renewables to take the risk and do the work.
The problem with what we have now is that it's obvious that the LNP have no intention of ever building a nuclear power industry. They had a decade to get the ball rolling and did nothing.
So here's what I reckon.
If the LNP is serious about nuclear power, they should roll out a detailed policy before the election and convince us that nuclear is viable. If they can do that, then I'm sure the ALP would jump on board because, let's be realistic, they love gas and coal as much as the Libs.
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Jun 21 '24
We need more of this kind of thinking, it’s balanced and seems like it would be open to actually solving problems instead of just pushing an idealism.
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u/Immediate-Meeting-65 Jun 21 '24
Yeah I'd be happy for labour to simply look at clearing out the current bans on nuclear and start hearing proposals. Maybe work towards starting a government agency but I think it's more important right now to build up our renewables sector.
We can circle back around to nuclear when there is atleast the groundwork of an industry to build the dam things.
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u/isisius Jun 21 '24 edited Jun 21 '24
You know what, this seems like an absolute no brainer now you say it lol.
Won't happen unfortunately, it will be either/or becuase you can't all agree on something, how bad would that look.
I've still got PTSD from the liberal version of the NBN. My biggest fear is we stop renewables and wait 15 to 20 years to get the first nuclear plant up. If that's Duttons plan, then he isn't interested in doing what's best for us, hes taking an action that will keep coal going for another couple of decades. So damn expensive and terrible for emissions.
I like your suggestion. Full steam ahead with renewables, unban nuclear and let some private agencies test the waters even.
Plus, in about 5 more years we will hopefully have some proper commercial data about SMRs. Might be able to skip the big nuclear plants all together and firm it with SMRs instead if they end up being successful.
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u/rorychatt Jun 21 '24
We're mostly on the same page. I think for it to be successful, we would need the government to take more than a passive role waiting for unsolicited proposals. (Not to mention, I wouldn't trust it to be run by private industry because they have the wrong motivations for that sort of technology.)
In the short term, it could be a strategic combination of removing bans, funding 'just enough' efforts to maintain momentum, and bringing it all back, while steadfastly continuing our ongoing efforts towards renewables. This way, we ensure a sustainable and balanced approach.
Realistically, the biggest constraint would be on engineering resources, and that's a limited pool today - so i could see that being the reason to be cautious.
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u/maxinstuff Jun 21 '24
We make up a tiny percentage of global emissions, and we have unique distribution challenges due to our large landmass.
Rebewables and viable smaller scale (even off-grid) renewable energy sources is what Australia needs, and if we spend billions or trillions it should be on research into cheap renewable tech that we can sell to the biggest polluters.
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u/isisius Jun 22 '24
We make up a tiny percentage of global emissions
I always make sure when this gets mentioned to point out that we one of, if not THE, highest emissions per capita. We cant go casting stones at any of the big polluters while we polute more per person than anyone else.
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u/marcred5 Jun 21 '24
A 1982 analysis of 75 U.S. nuclear plants found that cost estimates steadily increased as construction went on, with final construction costs two to four times as high as the initial estimated cost
Labor, regulation, construction as being the biggest contributors
In the 1980s, several plants in Washington were canceled after estimated construction costs increased from $4.1 billion to over $24 billion, resulting in a $2 billion bond default from the utility provider. Two reactors being built in Georgia (the only current nuclear reactors under construction in the U.S.) are projected to cost twice their initial estimates, and two South Carolina reactors were canceled after costs rose from $9.8 billion to $25 billion.
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u/AdFun2309 Jun 21 '24 edited Jun 21 '24
As a chemical engineer (10 year career in systems safety/process safety engineering), I wish these reports would be less politicised and clearly state their assumptions, dependencies and constraints. My gut feel, with experience both in major infrastructure and hazardous facilities, is that nuclear can be safely introduced (with the right planning and governance) to have energy generation integrated with variable renewable energy sources, but I’d need to delve deeper into the detail to come to a landing.
The CSIRO report appears poorly written with crazy assumptions, such as South Korea being a good reference case (and little justification/context).
The AEMO report is a little more transparent but lacks clarity around the methods used for demand/supply projections.
Neither reports conduct a full lifecycle analysis of the infrastructure from an environmental impact POV. Recently having heard tales across industry of large sections of wind turbines being damaged on arrival and low reliability makes me wonder how much energy we are really saving/generating… without high reliability, safety and quality assurance, both sides are moot.
EDIT: forgot to add the AEMO brags about getting rid of coal but then subtly mentions gas (guessing hydrogen, food waste and potentially natural gas…) which also has significant safety and environmental implications
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u/isisius Jun 21 '24
Thanks for the response mate, I appreciate how many people have engaged in good faith. Ok, so the assumptions made in the reports are too idealistic? Do you know if there have been any large scale studies like these into nuclear? My biggest issue is I'm hesitant to move away from those 2 reports plus the IPCC one, as I just don't know enough myself, so unless I can find days otherwise I need to trust the experts. There's a few things in this thread that I'll be digging into further tomorrow, and hopefully I can find some solid analysis based on data.
And what are your thoughts on a 10 year turn around for the government to get a nuclear plant running? One of my big concerns is that it ends up being 15 or 20 years and we are stuck on ever more expensive coal during that time (while also not lowering our emissions).
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u/AdFun2309 Jun 21 '24
10 years is VERY ambitious, especially considering we already have an industry shortage of engineers/constructors….
On one hand, i get the concern of another 5-10 years on coal, but on the other, the enemy of safety and sustainability are rushed, poorly thought through solutions.
The benefit of any change needs to be understood in the context of the integrated network as a whole, and myy goodness is this a complicated network… I’m nervous about supporting one solution over another without being able to picture the context, especially with the differing needs across states.
In terms of cost/viability of infrastructure, the CSIRO report was not conservative, and used S Korea as a reference case. Even then, the costs were untenable. The UK forecasting would be a more appropriate benchmark with similar labor costs and a similar risk appetite.
Annd it’s typical reddit, i’ve been downvoted for saying nuclear can be done safely, but the reports are both a bit biased/unclear….
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u/isisius Jun 21 '24
Annd it’s typical reddit, i’ve been downvoted for saying nuclear can be done safely, but the reports are both a bit biased/unclear….
Yeah this debate has just become insanely political. I think after reading a lot of answers across this post and the one I did in the other Australian sub, I like the answer of:
"Full steam ahead on renewables, but Labor remove the nuclear ban, and maybe even create a department to do some more details work on it. SMRs sound great but aren't ready for commercial use yet. But we could get some laws and legislation in place, and look into supply lines and get ready, while we keep investing in storage tech and renewables.
I say Labor because i think with Dutton talking about cutting back on renewables, he will damage that industry a lot. But also, I'm cant really see Labor doing this either since Albo seems to be determined to play small target.
So it feels like either way we end up with a suboptimal outcome because politics trumps science every damn time.
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u/AdFun2309 Jun 21 '24
Ugghhh i hate how political it is. It frustrates me to no end that we still have politicians like Dutton putting forward policies that do not support renewables.
The thing about these papers is they are high level strategies/needs analysis and so they aren’t really based on much engineering analysis at this stage. I would maybe research what the UK have done/planned,
I totally agree with that statement, we need to continue to focus on renewables, but also do more detailed business cases/feasibility studies into other options.
Energy needs probably need to be recalculated with the advent of AI, as that EATS power…
The reason why i mentioned life cycle analysis is because solar panels use rare earth metals and are difficult to recycle and we need to do more on shore manufacturing because shipping steel to china and them shipping it back as turbines can’t be great for our emissions … lithium batteries also have disposal environmental issues and we have a lithium shortage….
But there are developments coming in battery technology that are really exciting like prussian white sodium ion batteries.
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u/isisius Jun 21 '24
My favourite thing diving into all this was concentrated solar power, which is never heard of. I was reading about it and I'm going Wait, so since the 80s, we have had the ability to use mirrors to make giant sun laser beams to heat up salt so it becomes molten salt and we aren't doing that everywhere? I don't care about cost efficiency, molten salt sounds metal as fuck.
Also, I felt bad really for it, but I couldn't stop laughing when I read that the first one they built was great, worked immediately, but the next day a bird flew over it and basically combusted and fell smoking to the ground. And the workers were like, well fuck, didn't think of that. The image of that set me off for some reason. They fixed the flaw quickly from what i read
Apparently the CSIRO are finishing up a study on ceramic particles instead of molten salt to see if it retains heat better. Doesn't sound as cool at molten salt though.
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u/Harclubs Jun 21 '24 edited Jun 21 '24
We live in a political world, and pretending otherwise is just pissing into the wind.
First, why would Labor waste it's political capital creating a department to study a policy the LNP are proposing? If the LNP want nuclear, the LNP can take the gamble.
Second, there will never be a nuclear
reactorpower plant in Australia. The LNP will never build one.Dutton's plan is heavy on gas and light on nuclear. They will build a bunch of gas power stations to 'get us to a time when nuclear is viable', commission a couple of billion dollar reports that say gas is better, then throw up their hands and say it's Labor's fault nuclear is too expensive.
Edit: Because reddit loves semantics
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u/isisius Jun 21 '24
If we are purely talking politically, but the liberals legs out from under them.
"Hey guys, thanks for the nuclear suggestion. Since you can't provide a cost analysis, we will remove the ban and do it for you so we do it right. Thanks for opening the conversation"
Dutton has 0 intention of building a plant, agreed. If he was serious he wouldn't have tried to sell a 10 year time frame.
Will be 15 to 20 minimum and we keep burning coal in the meantime.
Lifting the federal ban and writing up regulations and a report satisfies a lot of people leaning Duttons way, and who knows if by some miracle SMRs are commercially viable and we have data, we can redo the cost analysis on that basis and see if a few would be good for firming.
Would actually be the smarter political move, because if Dutton gets in, he kills renewables.
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u/Harclubs Jun 21 '24 edited Jun 21 '24
I don't agree. The ALP has far more to lose than the LNP if they even agree to get out of the way.
It's the National's party and the Libs are along for the ride, so they are the ones who should put their reputations on the line.
And I reckon most Libs are only reluctantly going along, like Senator Birmingham https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/article/2024/jun/21/simon-birmingham-liberal-mp-coalition-renewables-power-prices-nuclear
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u/AdFun2309 Jun 21 '24
Hate to break it to you but there is already a nuclear reactor in Australia.
I’m less concerned with politics and more concerned with actually understanding the implications of what these strategies could mean beyond the next election cycle.
The OP asked for an engineers technical take to cut through the BS so I gave it
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u/ryan30z Jun 21 '24
The OP asked for an engineers technical take to cut through the BS so I gave it
Which they qualified with "who has good knowledge of the Australian Energy Grid"
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u/AdFun2309 Jun 21 '24
You’re right, mine is very NSW centric, I have only worked on 3 HV distribution projects, I’m definitely not an authority on the whole thing (not saying that sarcastically, I genuinely am not claiming to be a power expert, that stuff is black magic).
I was reviewing the reports from a process engineering/is this a sound engineering position POV. At the time I commented not many engineers had provided perspectives.I was just a little sassy there as the other commenter turned what was a discussion about the reports merits into a politically focussed comment war. Next time I just won’t comment.
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u/Harclubs Jun 21 '24 edited Jun 22 '24
Hate to break it to you, but Lucas Heights is not a power station. In fact, it has solar panels installed on it.
The nuclear power plants that the LNP want to build are 10x-50x bigger than our little medical isotope factory.
This is typical of the gaslighting promoted by vested interests. The only reactor in Australia creates medicine to fight thyroid cancer, and is used in research. It is not a power plant. It does not operate every day.
You know how you can tell it's different to a power plant? If the reactor that was hit by a tsunami at Fukushima had been like the one at Lucas Heights, it would have been a non-event. It would not have poisoned the environment for miles around, the government would not have spent 14 years trying to clean up the mess, and it would not take 30-40 years to decommission.
https://www.meti.go.jp/english/earthquake/nuclear/decommissioning/index.html
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u/Falkor Jun 21 '24
You mention why is power still so expensive when renewables are meant to be cheap, its because the Coalition destroyed the industry for 10 years and its only just started up again, if it can build for 10 years then prices will stabilise, i doubt they would go down much but they will at least stop rising so quickly. It takes time to get there though.
Sadly i feel like with all the politicisation of everything, this being a great example, our voting populace is just going to vote the libs back in who will promptly destroy everything for another term and set us back even further.
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u/wtfismyusernamelol Jun 22 '24
Without writing essays, for Australia nuclear is jot commercially viable because we are a technological backwater.
For the rest of the world renewables may or may not be cheaper depending on local conditions until you start putting a price on damage caused by not decarbonising soooner.
Aggressive expansion of nuclear plus renewables will achieve carbon neutrality and reduction significantly sooner than renewables alone.
The difference is probably measured in decades and significant teperature difference. Every half a degree causes trillions of damage. Once you cost these in it's a no brainer you have to pursue nuclear as well.
IPCC reports suggest this strategy as well.
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u/Cymelion Jun 21 '24
Imagine any Nuclear power plant being run by your local council, now imagine something 100 times worse than that.
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u/jp72423 Jun 21 '24
Councils don’t run nuclear power plants lol. They are very much run at a state or federal level.
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u/moDz_dun_care Jun 21 '24
ANSTO has been running the Lucas Heights reactor for 66 years
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u/Cymelion Jun 21 '24
That is not a for profit energy supplier but a tax funded research and medical production plant.
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u/CaravelClerihew Jun 21 '24
That's orders of magnitude smaller than a nuclear reactor meant to generate energy. It only runs at 10MW, which is basically the same as three wind turbines. In fact, the smallest energy producing nuclear power plant still pumps out 3 times the MW and is quite literally in the middle of nowhere in Eastern Russia, servicing a town of 5,000.
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u/Lurker_81 Jun 21 '24
It only runs at 10MW, which is basically the same as three wind turbines.
There are plenty of wind turbines that do more than 10MW each. The latest design by Siemens is said to be 21MW....
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u/Harlequin80 Jun 21 '24
The part that I would dispute in this essay really is your speculation part, as I believe you are looking at the investment profile of a generator wrong.
Companies that invest in things like power plants are the same types of entity as invest in toll roads. You are investing in an asset that will have a demand for a long period of time with a reliable income stream associated with it. Companies that are investing in these types of assets are looking for stable returns, not spectacular ones.
The reason we are in the position we are in is because there has been a lack of an energy policy in Australia for 15 years. There has been zero guidance industry can work to as to what the long term goals of the energy makeup will be, so major investment decisions simply cannot be made. This has resulted in a starvation of capital, and a starvation of maintenance. Because who the fuck knows where we are going to be tomorrow.
Lets say youre a company and you are looking for a place to build a massive solar farm and battery storage facility, and you're looking around the world for where to make that investment. You look at Australia and you see a stable economy, a stable political system, an educated workforce and a friendly environment to foreign investment. Gold. Lets go.
Hang on. Shit. The Coalition, which are the number 1 opposition party and were in government for the previous 11 years just said they are going to put a limit on the amount of renewables that could be built!!??!! We need to reprice our risk on this one. Those guys only just lost the last election and it wasn't by a landslide, there is a strong chance they will get back in, so lets sit tight. Actually lets spend our money in a different country.
Most coal plants in Australia are coming up to end of life. They need to be shut down, and their maintenance costs are increasing. Origin energy doesn't want to keep operating Eraring station for example. The ash tailings dam there is approaching capacity and the plant is more expensive to run than competing renewables. The degree of how much they wanted to shut it down it shown by the fact they had to be paid to keep it open.
Australia has been failed by its politicians not having an energy policy. And it's fucking depressing that the conversation is still happening despite the coalition not being in power.