this post was submitted on 23 Dec 2023
43 points (90.6% liked)

Australia

3607 readers
34 users here now

A place to discuss Australia and important Australian issues.

Before you post:

If you're posting anything related to:

If you're posting Australian News (not opinion or discussion pieces) post it to Australian News

Rules

This community is run under the rules of aussie.zone. In addition to those rules:

Banner Photo

Congratulations to @[email protected] who had the most upvoted submission to our banner photo competition

Recommended and Related Communities

Be sure to check out and subscribe to our related communities on aussie.zone:

Plus other communities for sport and major cities.

https://aussie.zone/communities

Moderation

Since Kbin doesn't show Lemmy Moderators, I'll list them here. Also note that Kbin does not distinguish moderator comments.

Additionally, we have our instance admins: @[email protected] and @[email protected]

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
43
Nuclear Power Fanatic Peter Dutton Shows Off His Nuclear-Powered Christmas Lights — The Shovel (theshovel.com.au)
submitted 10 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
17 comments fedilink hide all child comments
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 17 points 10 months ago (2 children)

New nuclear power is now significantly more expensive than renewables, and almost any other form of grid-scale electricity.

It's also far, far, far too slow to build. If you started the consents process now, you might see it operational in 15 years.

Gigawatt-class units really don't scale well in smaller power grids. It's a pretty common rule in power engineering that you need enough spinning/fast reserves to cover the unexpected, instant loss of your largest generator or transmission line. That's fine if you have a 100MW grid; not so great when there's 10MW of load.

Small modular/meme reactors have thus far been rather disappointing.

Throw more solar, storage, and demand response at it with a side of synchronous condensers.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago (2 children)

15 years

why is Australian construction this fucking slow?

the largest nuclear plant (built in Japan in the 1980s) was commissioned 5 years after the start of construction. I can't imagine safety improvements since the 1980s would triple the time alone.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago

It's not Australian construction, it would seem to to be a Western country issue, or one potentially affecting any nuclear construction.

See Flamanville 3 ( https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-profiles/countries-a-f/france.aspx Under "new nuclear capacity"). It was started in 2007, and was estimated to be completed in 2012, but it's still not completed. It's currently scheduled to begin operating in 2024.

Oma powerplant in Japan was started in 2010, and is currently scheduled to be completed in 2026. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C5%8Cma_Nuclear_Power_Plant

South Korea's new Hanul reactors look like they've taken about 10 years each. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanul_Nuclear_Power_Plant (The table in section "Reactors" might be interesting, as it shows the pre-2000 reactors taking only about 5 years to complete)

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago

That is for construction of a single reactor, not the whole plant. It's also construction time, and does not include consents and consultation.

And yes, things are now that slow.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Do those cost calculations account for energy storage as well?

[–] [email protected] 10 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (2 children)

Yep. The latest CSIRO/AEMO report published this week addresses exactly this, with various levels of renewables penetration modelled, including associated firming costs (additional transmission & storage) Here’s an overview (spoiler: renewables are still cheaper by far.) https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-12-21/nuclear-energy-most-expensive-csiro-gencost-report-draft/103253678?utm_source=abc_news_app&utm_medium=content_shared&utm_campaign=abc_news_app&utm_content=link

[–] [email protected] -2 points 10 months ago (2 children)

If u go look at the spurce document and not a report on the document i found a couple interesting things.

  1. Risk profiles have not been considered due to renewables variation etc
  2. The nuclear costs are all based on one reactor from a single startup and overlooked the multitude of other reactors around the world at significantly better prices
  3. Renewables where assumed to go down in cost but we have seen that the cost of storage has actualy been rising recently
  4. Why does the IEA think nuclear is still cheaper?
[–] [email protected] 6 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Are you able to link the source document?

However, as an example of why nuclear is seen as risky, time-consuming and subject to massive cost blowout and time delays, see Flamanville 3 ( https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-profiles/countries-a-f/france.aspx Under "new nuclear capacity")

It's gone from being a project started in 2004 to build a 1650MWe plant costing 4.2 billion euros (in 2020 euros), to an estimated completion date of 2024, at 13.2 billion euros.

And this is France, a country that is very familiar and well-versed with building nuclear reactors.

Without the source document, this may well be the example you use from your 2nd bullet point. But I wouldn't have called this a startup.

[–] [email protected] -5 points 10 months ago

Does this not only look at 2023 to 2024 would that not skew it towards options that have a low upfront cost? Nuclear is strongest in the longterm not over the period of 1 year.