Hi Rosie, This video was very interesting and the point you and John brought up about the lack of harmony between nuclear power plants and variable renewable energy is news to me. I am a nuclear engineering PhD candidate so I come from that side of the conversation but I also was exposed to EV and solar technology in the earlier parts of my career before i switched sides. I think it was great that you two had such a civilised conversation that was grounded in the numbers and modelling (something that is missing from this politicised debate about energy policy). I think two things that stand out for us on the nuclear side - and are repeatedly mentioned by energy policy researchers are: 1. The LCOE is a cost marker useful for investors to compare the profitability of certain technologies. I think it is safe to say that this is not a good representation of the cost that consumers actually pay for energy (business and home onwers). This is actually mentioned in the GenCost report in one of their 'frequently asked questions' in their Appendix. From what I remember, it said something like 'The Gencost report is only an analysis on the wholesale cost and not a full systems cost analysis - which would be a lot more complex and resource intensive to perform'. The problem is, this LCOE value is being misquoted as being the representative value for what consumers actually pay for when it is in fact a very inaccurate metric for it. From what I know, the inappropriatedness of LCOE for economic modelling of energy costs, especially of VRE technology, is very much agreed upon within current scientific literature. I am not going to speculate here as I am not an economicist but I think the complexity of the NEM and how pricing works in it will non-negligbly affect these cost comparisons. I think the problem here is - someone needs to do a proper full systems cost analysis of the different technologies in the context of the NEM and make it scenario based (explained more in my point 2). And in concurrence to this, we really need to put a disclaimer on the fact that the LCOE and the GenCost report is not appropriate to use for consumer energy prices. 2. As a link to what was mentioned in my first point, I think another problem I see is that it seems like all this costing comparison is based on full renewables grid VS full nuclear grid. I think most people in the nuclear world recognise that nuclear is here to support the renewables transition and is a carbon free alternative to peaking power gas plants. As such, it would only make sense to include nuclear in small/moderate part of the grid's capacity (like most of the world does or is planning to do). This is the problem with using the GenCost report for talking about nuclear in Australia as it can easily be interpreted as technology versus technology. The GenCost report models full grid of VRE firmed by hydro and gas (not net zero) vs a full nuclear grid (fun fact: the only thing on the list that is actually net zero). This is fine for the purposes of the report which is to compare the profitability of different technologies in isolation of each other (for investment bodies). But I don't think it is fair for the consumer because there is no world we are envisioning in the next few decades that will be 100% renewable or 100% nuclear. Us in the nuclear world would want to see what the cost comparisons would look like for a 10%, 20% or 30% nuclear grid with the rest VRE. This is why I thought what you and John mentioned about the lack of harmony between VRE and NPP as interesting as it may counter my point. I think someone needs to do a study on whether having a bit of nuclear energy in the mix would lower/increase cost (for the consumers). The way I see it is, if having a bit of nuclear in the grid is not too much more expensive - isn't it better to find a way for these carbon free energy technologies to work in harmony together rather than using (dirtyish) natural gas as peaking power? I'm not saying nuclear in a balanced mix is the best idea for Australia and we should go for it, what I'm trying to say is that we need to start a mature conversation about these nuances and implement scenario based modelling instead of blanket technology vs technology. I think as engineers, we are always taught about how we can use the best of all technologies in harmony and as STEM representitives in the debate, we really need remind ourselves of that. Regardless, I think this video was great and quite eye opening for myself. I would be very interested to know your thoughts on my two points above. I will like to add a disclaimer that I obviously have inherent bias as I am a nuclear engineer in training and my professional circle is skewed to the nuclear side as well. In saying that, I try my best to stay focused on discussions about the technological benefits/downsides so I can stay true to my training and expertise. But regardless, the economics and policy side of it is so interesting and is probably equally as important to talk about. Cheers, Harvey
I will also add another thing being that a big problem with the debate for us on the nuclear side is that regardless - we still have a federal ban. The state bans are also a problem but I think there's no point having/not having a state ban if you have a federal ban haha. It is very hard to have a mature conversation about nuclear if we still have a ban on the technology, this is the main thing that sets it apart from the rest of the picture. And it also makes it harder for us to have conversations about everything OUTSIDE the actual construction and operation of NPP that needs to happen such as forming a regulatory body, getting a legislative framework, figuring out what we do with waste etc. Having a federal ban makes the justification of even talking about this stuff very one sided.
Harvey thanks. Yes, the LCOE only represents the generation cost. Saying that, the retail, distribution cost (local powers and wires) would be roughly the same for any solution so usually generation is what drives the difference in final price. A lot of people mention transmission (i.e. you need more for smaller more spread out locations) but I don't think this is really a cost issue as it only makes up a small proportion of the final bill. I think it's more a social license problem as you need to buy up land from farmers etc. To complement LCOE, one way is to compare it to the market spot price. This was the slide where I was saying investors are interested in what revenue can be achieved and make a profit (i.e. value). In the video, I showed a video of spot revenue achieved by technology. (i.e. what was the spot price when it was sunny or windy, for coal, nuclear they get the spot price across the whole periods as they are always generating) As nuclear is running all the time, you can come LCOE to the annual average spot price and you might find that there's not enough revenue to cover the costs. www.linkedin.com/posts/john-poljak-40436b4_renewableenergy-fossilfuels-energysecurity-activity-7057295816482312192-wGvh And I've done it for Texas Ercot which has nuclear and you can see the spot price doesn't cover the LCOE so investors would struggle to invest in it whereas solar and wind and profitable. Saying this, this is for a current generation mix, who knows what the spots prices look like when there is a lot of renewables. www.linkedin.com/posts/john-poljak-40436b4_energy-nuclear-solar-activity-7070882945800040448-LRUh In terms of system, I did a thought experiment which was how much storage do you need to firm up a 100% nuclear grid. It kind of goes to the heart of the problem, nuclear and renewables need something to plug the gaps. This is usually gas and even in the AEMO ISP you see gas plays a part up to 2050. So where does that leave renewables or nuclear? I see it as you pick the cheapest and continue plugging it with some form of storage or gas. www.linkedin.com/posts/john-poljak-40436b4_nuclear-renewableenergy-battery-activity-7119097524023427072--Kfp And finally! This was a post I made on system cost. AEMO's Integrated System Plan had a generation mix up to 2050. I picked 2040 as a year and used the CSIRO GenCost report to add up all the generation (imagine building it new and calculating a system LCOE) and you find that the cost is not the worst although there some discussions on how to cost the benefit of home solar, V2G etc www.linkedin.com/posts/john-poljak-40436b4_renewableenergy-wind-solar-activity-7212207287799570432-9uno Hope this helps.
@@harveyling209 Hi Harvey, just on the ban, I wrote this on another comment. The history of nuclear in Australia includes a failed attempt to build a nuclear reactor at Jervis Bay which was chosen as it's a federal territory. This is from the PHd paper, "FROM ATOMIC ENERGY TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE; A History of the Australian Atomic Energy Commission" by Anna-Eugenia Binnie "The situation now produced a minor constitutional and legal problem; 'Constitutionally the Commonwealth had no power to generate power (ie electricity) and under the Act the AAEC was limited to the discovery, mining, treatment, use and disposal of uranium'113. This issue was solved by the agreement between the Commonwealth and the State of NSW in which the Commonwealth Government through the AAEC would own the nuclear reactor but any electricity generated from the steam produced would be owned by the State." So regardless of a federal ban, the Liberals will need to rely on horse-trading with state governments to make it happen. If you assume between planning and construction, it's a 10-15 year process and to put that in context, Australia has had 40 changes of federal and state leaders in that time frame. In effect, you would need a massive critical juncture to align everyone's interests.
Tony Seba "Rethink X" talks about a 100% renewable grid. He studied a bunch of locations, and says it takes 2-3 times the generation you need, and 1-5 days of storage depending on location. You also get a bunch of "free" extra power most times. Now I know that it sounds crazy wasting "precious" electricity, but we aren't trying to save electricity, we are trying to save dollars, so the question becomes, is more generation cheaper than storage. When the sun shines, or the wind blows, they are cheaper than nuclear, so nuclear can't make money. Then storage is moderating the crazy peaks. The other issue with nuclear, is if you build big nukes, you have to have a large market, which Australia doesn't, to be able to build enough of them to get good at it. In the US, under Obama we started building Summer 2 and 3, and Vogtle 3 and 4. The first two were abandoned after wasting billions, and the second two went way way over budget. Small nukes are less efficient. People have hopes and dreams, but until they build it, and get a price per kwh, it's just hopes and dreams. You can look at Flamanville and Hinkley Point C, all way more expensive. I will say, it's great for aircraft carriers and subs, and I can't help but wonder whether powering a large container ship with a nuke would pencil out. Diesel ain't cheap either.
HI Rosie. Thanks for engaging this topic in a professional manner. As for my location it's best explained by saying one view from my farm includes the steam plume from Mt Piper a.k.a. near one of the proposed nuclear power plants. I'm not particularly antagonistic to nuclear on basic principles but remember vividly my time in Philadelphia downwind of the Three Mile meltdown. Lots of moderate level warnings kept us alert. Looking forward to the data but very aware this nuclear project could end up as something resembling the worst version of a Snowy 3 by way of cost and time blowouts, i.e., basic coalition fossil financed snow job. Sigh!
When Fukushima blew up the damage was about 60 billion dollars and decommissioning the plant will cost another $70B. Tepco the company responsible for the disaster will not be paying the costs because they don't have an insurance policy that covers that. The Japanese government/tax payer is basically their insurance provider. This is a MASSIVE hidden subsidy. If a nuclear power plant had to go onto the private market to get an insurance policy the cost of a KWH would go from something like 25 cents to $3.25 and even if the insurance price came down over time, my guess is it would be least be $1.25. And NO ONE would pay that much for a KWH.
Thanks. No one is talking about the hidden socialised (nationalised) costs, which is prrof that nuclear proponents are dishonest and trying to deceive everyone.
Remember for the most part it's not about residential. In Australia that will be largely covered by solar PV. Once you have bought the gear, the cost of electricity is $0. The main issue is the electrical power needed for industry, that is about 65% of the total. For industry electricity cost is an input and therefore tax deductable and passed on through COGS. Industry's primary requirement is not so much about the cost of electricity as a reliable and abundant supply to keep the wheels turning. If the power fails and the pot lines freeze it is an industrial disaster.
Each time I've looked at such things I find the real costs obfuscated ie. I've seen much higher costing for this (it's also the case in the majority of heavy engineering projects I've worked on with elements shovelled from capex to operations as budgets are breached).
More and more Australians are investing in home PV and battery storage. In my case mostly I consume 3kwh per week from the grid and that includes EV charging, so I am most off the grid already.
Me too, but what happens when battery prices come down 50% or more. So many retail customers will go completely off grid, especially rural customers. So ...energy retailers will lose a large chunk of their revenue. What happens then to the price of grid electricity? It goes up significantly which means more people will want to go off grid.
And why haven't you invested in the solar/battery to get the last 3 kWh? My guess is that like everyone else, you have calculated out that those last 3 kWh are REALLY expensive, and given you only have to pay marginal cost for the 3 kWh is really cheap - you keep on with the grid. However, what you aren't paying for is that option for the grid. I get it, cheaper for you, but still a drag on society.
This sort of comment really bugs me. What are the heavy industrial users meant to do? All this RE (i have solar, too) actually creates problems for what was a simple, unified grid.
@@Discoworx Yes it does create problems but it will be a cheaper and a more decentralised system. Centralised power generation is a military target the more decentralised the better. Cheaper, safer, less polluting and important for national security.
@27:03 What Grant Chalmers meant was what would be the cost after 30 years? Even though nuclear generates clean energy for another 20 to 40 years (i.e 31 to 60 years) Life of Nuclear power Plant is 60 years and refurbishment extends the life for another 20 years (i.e. 80 years). When all capital cost is paid up in 30 years, what is the value of LCOE after 31 to 60 years. LCOE of Nuclear (60 years) 0 to 30 years: 156 AUD/kWh 31 to 60 years: 43 AUD/kWh
The returns on nuclear will be typically low when there is a glut of sun and wind, but returns will be very high in evening peaks and when there is less sun and wind available, and can offer as preferrable to gas open cycle peakers because nuclear is emissions free. So while nuclear may be expensive to build, it will pay itself off quickly, and then become a valuable asset for future generations.
@@jinnantonix4570 The long term future value has a much lower value today. If the game borrow $100 today and are paying interest on that money for 30 years then any income they receive after that is not as valuable because of the interest they have needed to pay over 30 years in order to get to that income.
Nuclear Power - Australia’s Secure Energy and Climate Solution for a Century This presentation by Dr Robert Barr and Mr Robert Parker makes the case for nuclear energy being Australia's dominant form of electricity generation. It provides our lowest system levelised cost of energy with ultra low emissions on a very small environmental footprint. th-cam.com/video/vQC5ijEieXE/w-d-xo.html
Excellent video Rosie. I do enjoy your work. I know i repeat but it is important. John said 30% transmission and 30% distribution plus administration and profits. John said 10cents kWh and my bill is 50cents. 5cents feedin tariff. Less daily connection fee. I say 90%, John says 80%, grid increases generation costs. The grid infrastructure needs to cover its investment. 20million buildings and vehicles will make offgrid look appealing when all electric. 😮
Stephen, thanks. It was a bit of rush to prepare all the models and background information so I was using a few things from a previous livestream I did with Rosie on LCOE. So the 30 cents was a bit out of date! I'll look to update it and post on linkedin in the future as it's worth doing a breakdown of the retail cost and compare it to the AEMO ISP future system cost. Specifically, how much extra transmission is required and the cost which considering it's not a big part, shouldn't be that much extra but for electric vehicles, how does that impact the cost of distribution, local poles and wires etc.
@@keynumbers thank you. Keep in mind that I am suggesting that if Australia poles and wires are to supply 100% from today's 15 or 20%, then that is impossible for Australia or the world. Materials and financing. But if rooftop and EVs, BVs over sized battery do the job in the end, then the bigger national electric grid will be a wasted and abandoned investment. Grids must have enough cash flow. Bigger grid capacity then bigger bigger cashflow. The grid works today because it is basically a small amount of the total energy used. Luxury priced for small amount to every customers full energy demands. I don't know the answer, I just see that the extreme end that everyone is saying is impossible. If you analysis any engineering in the extreme it will be successful or totally fail. The grid needs every customer. Expensive electricity. Rooftop PV and BV big batteries don't need the grid. Dirt cheap electricity. Good work and a good forum. 👍
@@keynumbers a little more of my insights. Most people are slow to realise that most vehicles are parked 23 hours every day and all night. That is why most trade in vehicles have an average of 10,000 miles per year. 9,000 hours in a year. 27 miles a day. Parked 23hrs every day. BV oversized battery and 15% of an average roof with solar PV panels can disconnect the grid every sunny day and the following nights. If millions of Battery Vehicles owners do the same then millions of customers cash flows to the grid owners stops for hundreds of sunny days every year. This is also a big economic problem. $billions every year. Sunny days and oversized electric vehicle battery and a small part of the roof are the grid owners BIGGEST problem 🙄 Grid utilization factor crashes BV, battery vehicles utilization factor goes to maximum. Battery materials technology and costs and life extending management are still rapidly improving. Solar PV panels technology is rapidly improving and costs are falling. Note. BV battery is 'oversized' for the daily drive but perfect every night.
@@keynumbers As fossil fuel supplies reduce, then the BV, battery vehicle, become useful. If every building's car park spaces has a $60 wall outlet then every BV oversized battery can easily top up on trickle currents all day long. 😊😊😊 Rooftop solar PV is dirt cheap electricity. Most vehicles are parked 23hrs every day. 😊😊😊
@@stephenbrickwood1602 thanks. I have a technology background and one of the big changes in the sector was the move away form big mainframes to cheap personal computers. Google made famous recycling old clunker computers and linking to do all the searches. I can see a similar situation where instead of focusing on a few super-powered fast charges, we utilise the fact most cars sit around for 95% of the time doing nothing. So a lot of simple smaller powered charges will do the trick.
Nuclear power would probably never have made it out of the demonstrator phase if it were not for governments needing reactors to produce fuel for nuclear bombs. In the US, nuclear energy has been EXTREMELY highly subsidized by the government. If the true cost of nuclear power were passed straight on to the consumer, it would add a zero (or more) to their power bills. For all the people who wonder why the nuclear industry went with reactor designs and fuel types that have the potential to melt down instead of going with any of the long list of likely much safer reactor designs and fuel types, the answer is partly efficiency but mostly because the government was footing a lot of the bill for these reactors and the government wanted reactors that could produce plutonium and bomb material. Also, until recently, nuclear reactors in the US were mandated by law to hire only union members for every speck of work done on or associated with nuclear power plant construction. Given that this means 10+ years of very high paying employment for hundreds or thousands of union members, (and their families)who will vote for the politician that votes funds for a nuclear power plant in his district, whether it makes economic sense or not, it's no wonder why nuclear power plants, with all their long known and understood problems, costs and limitations, still manage to receive support and LOTS of government funding.
You lost me early, when you said the CSRIO report offered true costs. How can they say that a nuclear reactor is operates less than 80% of the time! Also, while solar and wind may be very good here in Aus, it can’t give constant base load power to support industrial operations. It’s hard to manufacture anything without a steady base load.
But it's not as though "industrial operations" (or any power user) needs to use power from one single source the whole time. The whole point of a balanced grid is that you might get power from different sources (wind, solar, battery, has for example) at different times.
There’re detailed simulations out there that uses real data and shows that with with connected grids, multiple sources, and storage it will easily support current requirements.
What about when energy retailers lose half of their customers because 50% of them go off grid when battery prices come down 50% which is what they are expected to do. This would be especially applicable for rural areas. Less customers same running costs.
France sells excess nuclear power to the rest of europe; europe has a major sourcing problem in 2023-24 - missing Russian gas and German nuclear. Simultaneously, France has being doing a lot of maintenance on their reactors (possibly where the peak variation over the year come). The very flat production is to be expected, as many parts of Europe are paying more than 1.5 x as much for electricity now as to before the Russian Ukraine invasion.
For 9 out of the last 10 years, France has had a power trade deficit with Germany. As pointed out in the video it is dependent on connections to the European grid to balance its nuclear.
@@tassied12 What wasn't pointed out is that France exports electricity when the price is high, and imports electricity when the price is low. Also, we can note that prior to the EU, when the electricity grid was not as integrated as it is now, France had already built its reactors and was balancing its grid fine. To put it another way, yes, France is taking the easy route by using the European grid to balance nuclear. However, France *could* do without that. Versus Germany, which *requires* the European grid, and coal, to balance intermittent wind/solar.
@@factnotfiction5915 That is an over-simplification of the French situation. As the ENTSO data presented in the video shows, the French prefer to run their generators with a flat output profile. This also means they have to dump their power at a loss onto the wider European grid when demand (and hence prices) are low and it also restricts their ability to generate extra output when demand (and hence prices) rise. This is happening at the moment where they are enduring negative wholesale prices and have had to temporarily shut down some of the plants due to cheap renewables coming from Germany and Spain. When the French lost over 50% of their nuclear capacity in 2022, they could not have survived on their own. In that year they imported 17.65 TWh from Germany while only exporting 2.33 TWh Demand patterns are also very different today to when those plants were first built
I found the book "Shorting the Grid" by Meredith Angwin eye-opening about how markets work (at least in parts of the US). The half hour pricing does not tend to reflect the actual price of electricity as many generators get their income from other sources. 1) renewables get renewable obligations certificates (so suppliers and businesses can meet their N% renewable mandates), guaranteed prices (contract for difference), and feed in tariffs for smaller-scale; 2) gas (especially open cycle peaker plants) rely more on capacity payments so they can stand by ready to fill in gaps; 3) nuclear gets little (although that has now changed in the US given the Inflation Reduction Act production credits). On the subject of the GenCost report, what interests me is the notion that nuclear can be costed on a single price comparison. The 2.8 multiplier comes from comparing coal in South Korea and Australia, adjusting for plant size and inflation and various other factors. The story would be different were Japan and their ABWR to be used (since the coal plant in Japan cost around the same as Australia).
France is not "shutting down part of its its fleet" overnight and bringing those nuclear reactors back online for the following evening peak! Shutdowns are seasonal, not diurnal. Rather, it's reducing electrical output from many reactors at once. To some extent this can be done in the reactor itself via control rods, but ramping that way cannot be done quickly nor for a large fraction of the reactor's thermal output. Electrical output is easier to reduce though: steam can bypass the turbines, to be vented to the atmosphere if very rapid ramping is required, or cooled without delivering any mechanical or electrical power at all.
@@Paulo44.01 Indeed. Using control rods does not save very much in the way of costs either: fuel is saved, but fuel is only a tiny fraction of the total cost of nuclear power.
The analysis of how long build times are is misleading in a number of ways as well. Build is not the same as online time, the equivalent of saying house building time is only until the roof is on, not until you move in. Another part is that a lot of the "new" plants are worth digging into as the list I've seen seemed to be filled with refits, expansions, etc that are essentially expansions or updates of current reactors that will have much much shorter build times.
Thanks. One way or another Australia will need around 60GW capacity of GHG free electrical energy on line 24/7 by 2050. Some analysis suggests it will be twice this. Whether you propose to do it by renewables, nuclear or a combination, you have to have a detailed plan as to how this will be done. In my view renewables with lots of storage (principally pumped hydro and possibly compressed air) buttressed by nuclear is the way to go. Reliability of supply far outweighs cost when it comes to priorities.
Spot on in my view. Ditch the nuclear ban and let the engineering and economics sort out the appropriate technology mix. Reliability of supply will be critical for the social licence required , and what's needed now to reach targets is planning, design and construction. Unfortunately politicians seem ready to turn the energy transition into an NBN style debacle - all that did was waste lots of time and money.
So far it seems that renewables + a few hours of storage + a bunch of gas peakers that run ~10% of the time would be the best way to go. That last 10% of emissions are too expensive to solve with current technology and we're better off taking that money to decarbonize other things, like industrial emissions.
A little addition on space in Europe. You are absolutely right that there is limited space on land (except for rooftops). But the UK, Netherlands and Denmark for example are building a lot of wind capacity on the seas. The nice thing about this is that it works very well in the winter, offsetting the “dark” months with limited sunlight and hence solar power.
Fantastic work. I have only just caught up with this review. Please keep up the great work and thanks for your honesty. It really is easy to say Dutton is a disgrace but we do need our politicians to become honest and work in our interests.
You two are really reaching and contorting to reach a conclusion against nuclear. Wind and solar require all kinds of extra expensive storage and transmission to make them work. All this stuff can also work with nuclear and you don't need as much of it. If you have lots of nuclear power, wind and solar are superfluous and just an extra expense.
Australia does not have nuclear because coal was cheap. Australia joined the world leaders fearful of the military costs of nuclear INDUSTRIES in every country including all the dictatorships. 80% of the world's population live in dictatorships. Free voting for a few people. Uranium yellowcake is sold to a few countries. So to stop worldwide CO2 emissions with nuclear electricity Australia can feel safe with 6 USA nuclear submarines and selling uranium yellowcake to every nuclear industry. 😮 Australia is spending a fortune on USA military weapons systems as well. So dirt cheap nuclear electricity has no external costs. Wonderful 😊
All we need to do is to make nuclear legal and not spend a cent of tax payer dollars on it. If the market sees an opportunity for nuclear, it will build nuclear. I doubt that any private entity will decide to build a nuclear power plant in Australia. There is an interesting development in Europe, I believe, where they are heating 20 foot containers full of graphite (in a nitrogen atmosphere) from excess renewable energy and makes that available as high temperature steam to existing turbines from closed down coal power plants.
@@gavinw77 Interesting that. The LNP doesn’t believe in direct government provision of service. That suggests to me that they don’t really believe that nuclear generators will be built by the government. It’s just a dumb play to get re-elected.
@@dermotbalaam5358 And the LNP has actually reversed their position on community consultation - now they say that they will force the reactors to be installed, and the community will have no veto.
🎯 Key points for quick navigation: 00:00 *🎵 Einleitung und Begrüßung* - Rosie und John diskutieren über die Motivation der Live-Diskussion und den aktuellen Stand der nuklearen Debatte in Australien. - Rosie betont, dass Kernkraft in Australien illegal ist und erwähnt eine kürzlich veröffentlichte Liste von Standorten für Kernkraftwerke. - Die Kernkraftdebatte wird als besonders kontrovers und emotional beschrieben, mit starken Meinungen zu den verwendeten Daten. 02:24 *📊 Diskussion über Kernkraft und öffentliche Meinungen* - Analyse der öffentlichen und fachlichen Reaktionen auf Rosies Video und Post über Kernkraft. - Beschreibung der Reaktionen auf sozialen Medien und die Kritik an der Auswahl pessimistischer Daten. - John erklärt das Konzept von "Key Numbers" zur Objektivierung der Diskussion durch neutrale Datenanalyse. 05:38 *💡 Erörterung der Kernkraftkosten und Vergleich mit erneuerbaren Energien* - Diskussion über die Kosten von Kernkraft im Vergleich zu erneuerbaren Energien in Australien und der Einfluss auf die Energiepolitik. - Erwähnung einer CSO-Analyse, die jährlich die Kosten verschiedener Energiesysteme vergleicht. - Betonung, dass Kernkraft teurer ist als erneuerbare Energien, selbst wenn die Kosten für die Absicherung (Firming) berücksichtigt werden. 09:00 *🌍 Globale Perspektiven und deutsche Kommentare* - Einbindung internationaler Perspektiven durch Kommentare aus Deutschland und Großbritannien. - Diskussion über die Kernkraftpolitik in anderen Ländern und deren Vergleich zu Australiens Situation. - Erörterung der technischen und wirtschaftlichen Herausforderungen der Kernkraft im Vergleich zu erneuerbaren Energien. 12:04 *🔋 Zukunft der Energiespeicherung und Verbraucherverhalten* - Diskussion über die Rolle der Batterietechnologie und der Elektrofahrzeuge als Energiespeicher. - Erwähnung der zunehmenden Bedeutung von Batteriespeichern und der potenziellen Vorteile von Fahrzeug-zu-Netz (V2G) Technologien. - Überlegungen, wie Verhaltensänderungen der Verbraucher die Energienutzung beeinflussen könnten. 21:35 *🌬️ Bedeutung der Windenergie und ihre zeitliche Abstimmung mit dem Energiebedarf* - Diskussion über die Rolle von Windenergie und ihre Fähigkeit, den Energiebedarf während der Spitzenzeiten zu decken. - Windenergie passt gut zu den Zeiten hoher Nachfrage, insbesondere am Abend und am Morgen. - Es wird geplant, mehr Onshore-Windanlagen zu bauen, um die Lücken bei der Energieversorgung zu schließen, wenn die Windverfügbarkeit gering ist. 23:10 *🌐 Vergleich der Projektkosten für Kernkraftwerke weltweit* - Analyse und Vergleich der Kosten verschiedener Kernkraftprojekte weltweit, einschließlich der Annahmen über Bauzeiten und Kostenstrukturen. - Der CSIRO-GenCost-Bericht zeigt, dass die Kosten für Kernenergie in Australien relativ niedrig geschätzt werden im Vergleich zu internationalen Projekten. - Erörterung der Strategie Koreas, mehrere Kraftwerke hintereinander zu bauen, um von früheren Projekten zu lernen und Kosten zu senken. 25:14 *🏭 Diskussion über die Skalierbarkeit und Wirtschaftlichkeit von SMRs in Australien* - Überlegungen zur wirtschaftlichen Durchführbarkeit und Skalierbarkeit von kleinen modularen Reaktoren (SMRs) in Australien. - Bedenken hinsichtlich der Fähigkeit, Kosten durch nur zwei geplante SMRs signifikant zu senken. - Betonung der Notwendigkeit, mehrere Einheiten zu bauen, um die Lernkurve und Kosteneffizienz zu optimieren. 27:06 *📉 Erklärung des Levelized Cost of Electricity (LCOE) und dessen Berechnung* - Vertiefte Diskussion über das Konzept des Levelized Cost of Electricity (LCOE) und wie es zur Bewertung der Wirtschaftlichkeit von Energieprojekten verwendet wird. - Erklärung, dass der LCOE die notwendigen Einnahmen darstellt, um alle Projektkosten sowie eine angemessene Rendite für Investoren zu decken. - Diskussion über die Wertminderung zukünftiger Einnahmen und deren Einfluss auf den LCOE. 42:31 *🛠️ Flexibilität und Kapazitätsfaktor von Kernkraftwerken in Frankreich* - Analyse der Betriebsflexibilität französischer Kernkraftwerke und deren Kapazitätsfaktoren. - Trotz hoher Kernenergieanteile zeigt sich, dass französische Reaktoren meistens einen stabilen Basislastbetrieb aufweisen, ohne signifikante tägliche Leistungsschwankungen. - Diskussion der technischen und wirtschaftlichen Herausforderungen im Betrieb von Kernkraftwerken mit hohen Kapazitätsfaktoren. 44:10 *💰 Kosten und Kapazitätsfaktoren der Kernenergie in verschiedenen Ländern* - Diskussion über die Kapazitätsfaktoren und deren Einfluss auf die Kosten von Kernkraftwerken weltweit. - Niedrigere Kapazitätsfaktoren führen zu höheren Kosten pro erzeugter Megawattstunde, was die Wirtschaftlichkeit beeinträchtigt. - Frankreichs Kernkraftwerke haben mit der Zeit an Zuverlässigkeit verloren, was zu geringeren Kapazitätsfaktoren führt. 46:00 *🌍 Globale Energiepreise und die Rolle der Regierung in der Kernenergiefinanzierung* - Erörterung der Implikationen staatlicher Finanzierung für die Kernenergie und deren Einfluss auf die Strompreise für Verbraucher. - Kernenergieprojekte könnten staatlich finanziert werden, was die direkten Kosten für Verbraucher senken, aber die Steuerlast erhöhen würde. - Vergleich der Energiepreisgestaltung und Marktmechanismen in verschiedenen Ländern, einschließlich des Einflusses von Angebot und Nachfrage auf die Preisbildung. 48:05 *📉 Systemkosten der Stromerzeugung und Auswirkungen auf die Strompreise* - Analyse der Systemkosten für Stromerzeugung und deren Einfluss auf die Endverbraucherpreise. - Diskussion über die Notwendigkeit ausreichender Erzeugungskapazitäten, um Preisspitzen zu vermeiden und die Versorgungssicherheit zu gewährleisten. - Betonung der Bedeutung einer diversifizierten Energieerzeugung zur Stabilisierung der Strompreise. 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I felt the analysis on the life of project using the same discount rate overly simplistic. If offshore wind has a lifespan of 30 years this needs to be factored into a terminal value of $0 at the end of period, while if a nuclear last 60 it has value at year 30 much higher than 0. Using a set discount rate for both and changing the time period does not capture the true outcome, understood this approach has been taken from the Gencost report. A DCF model provides more flexibility to capture this. Further the LNP proposal is to fund the project by government debt which is approx 4.2 to 4.5% cost of funds, depending on tenure, hence this would be owned by the people and not subject to paying investors a return. This results in a major difference in price outcomes as project costs are inflated away rather than paid to an equity holder. More sophisticated modelling is required. My other question is on capacity factor. I feel this is overly simplistic, whilst it caters for no wind/no sun/shut downs etc, it does not cover the timing of usuage. The cross-over of solar across the grid, e.g. the sun goes down around the same time across the country hence it is not 19 - 32% it is materially lower, similar for wind but not as extreme. After the video I still wasn't assured that a 100% renewables with backup gas is appropriate. It feels like a gamble that I can't see any other nation has attempted or is currently living in. I live in SA and occasionally watch the NEM and scratch my head as to how SA would survive without interstate fossil fuels and what would happen if the whole of Australia adopted our approach, which is reflected in extreme variable energy pricing. I haven't seen good modelling linking the variable timing differences of renewable energy production and batteries across the nation, just a simplistic renewables is cheaper than nuclear using an overly simplist capacity factor. Regarding super funds, they are much likely to invest in projects with consistent known cashflows, energy is increasingly difficult, with rising renewables resulting in volatile energy prices. Given Your Future Your Super benchmarks do not provide an appropriate benchmark to hold these assets against, & the variable nature of cashflows, I struggle to see how super will invest in renewables going forward.
Tom, thanks. Providing subsidised funding at around 4-% would reduce the cost by about $20-30/MWh. On the capacity factor, it doesn't make sense to just look at each technology by itself. AEMO does an Integrated System Plan outlines a mix of renewables, storage, gas etc and they model the reliability standard of 99.998% in there. So you can assume that combination would be reliable. Also if you take their system mix and dividing it by production (in effect a system LCOE) you can get the cost of renewables plus storage. In theory, the LNP should be modelling the same but with nuclear somewhere in the mix to compare it to renewables + storage/gas. And you could do the same with the current generation mix which includes coal to see if it's cheaper/more expensive. For superannuation funds, normally a renewable energy project has sold their output via a purchase power agreement so there's a fixed revenue stream. And yes, the CSIRO models are very simplistic. There's a balancing act between having lots of parameters and keeping it simple for the intended audience. Most probably politicians! You can change the parameters that we used in the livestream through this link. keynumbers.com/#/public/page/nuclear-rosie-csiro-gencost-keynumbers-13197
@@keynumbers thanks for this. In your analysis is there a difference between the margin above the wholesale price a customers pays for variable intermittent energy source vs a more predictable base load? For example I would think a retail energy provider would put a wider spread (higher margin) if the cost of energy (wholesale price) has greater uncertainty in price? How does this work? Thankyou
@@tomnitschke4498 for larger retailers, they usually own their own generation (AGL, Energy Australia etc) so they are kind of naturally hedged against spot price fluctuations. This would, I think cover any operator of coal (baseload) in Australia and most probably you could say combined cycle turbine (natural gas running for most of the day) For smaller retail-only operations, they would normally enter into long term purchase power agreements for wind/solar and plug the gaps with gas generation. This gas generation could be bought on the spot price but is usually hedged using a $300 Cap. It's this part that could vary in that the cost to purchase a hedge could get expensive. But! In a world where the cure to high prices is high prices, the market would normally see more peaker plant generation being built (gas, batteries, hydro etc) due to higher profits which would eventually bring down prices and lead to a market where everyone makes just a reasonable profit. This is where the LCOE vs long term spot price acts as a kind of indicator in terms of whether to build new generation. (i.e. low daytime price, build less solar, high peaker price, build more gas) Couple of links for further reading: I wrote about South Australia electricity prices for a hydrogen article but goes into spot markets etc. www.linkedin.com/pulse/what-true-cost-electricity-john-poljak-r0omc/ AEMC links is the basics on spot and contract market www.aemc.gov.au/energy-system/electricity/electricity-market/spot-and-contract-markets This report to the SA Productivity commission has some good analysis on impact of renewables and spot prices. www.sapc.sa.gov.au/inquiries/inquiries/south-australias-renewable-energy-competitiveness/commissioned-research-to-support-the-inquiry/Question-D-Wholesale-and-retail-price-projections-UoW.pdf
The biggest fear is the cashflow crash to the national electrical grid owners. $110BILLION per year. If it takes 4 to 5 years to pay-off the rooftop solar PV system today. Tomorrow it will take 1 year with the Battery Vehicles plugged in 23hrs every day. As the grid is deserted, electrical prices and petroleum prices will explode. New solar farms can move their batteries closer to the population. Big batteries can be broken into useful parts. For building and home batteries. New solar farms can move their panels onto the populations rooftops. Nuclear plants and grid scrap values are an expensive economic problem.
Another problem for large nuclear in an Australian context is its size for redundancy. The usual size of a reactor unit & generator is just over 1GW. Which is around 1/50th of the NEM’s total generation capability in just 1 unit. When that goes off-line for refuelling (which I understand can take a month every 2 years) & deeper maintenance (which can take several months every 5-10 years) then there needs to be sufficient spare generation capacity to replace it. Or there is increased risk of supply shortages resulting in stratospheric prices or load shedding. Paying for that additional ~1GW of stand-by replacement generation adds to the cost of nuclear.
This replacement generation is already calculated into the LCOE (E for energy, not power). However, wind/solar have the exact same issue, but bigger. (ignoring storage and spinning reserve and choosing numbers for easy calculation) For a grid with 10 GW peak demand: * 1 GW NPPs, each of which have a 90% c.f. - you need 11 NPPs - 10 to support the grid, 1 is offline for maintenance. * 1 GW wind farms, each of which have a 30%.c.f. - you need 33 wind farms (you could break down into offshore/onshore, but the same basic logic applies). * 1 GW solar farms, each of which have a 25%.c.f. - you need 40 solar farms (irrelevant if utility-scale or rooftop, the same basic logic applies). BUT !!!!! - for the wind/solar you ALSO need gas/storage/extra wind/extra solar to make up for the times where ALL 33 wind/40 solar farms are offline. The c.f. is an average, not a point in time, so this is a real problem. It is these extra costs which makes the problem worse for wind/solar; and this cost is NOT included in the wind/solar LCOE. Ok, now include storage and spinning reserve back in, and you'll see the same basic logic applies. So, yes, you are correct; but you are also ignoring that solar/wind have the same problem to a greater degree.
@@factnotfiction5915 Absolutely correct that for every 10 (or fewer) 1GW nuclear generators in a fleet another 1GW of generation capacity is required to cover off-line periods for maintenance & unplanned outages. (Although this ratio can vary depending on average fleet capacity factor & grid transmission capability) However the premise is incorrect for a large scale wind or solar farm. Because, unlike a nuclear reactor, individual turbines & sub-groups of panels can be isolated & maintained whilst the rest of the generator units function. With individual turbines usually sized at 2-3 MW & the average total wind farm size ~50MW, each turbine contributes around 4 to 6% of the output. Barely even noticeable & easily replaced by other generators when being maintained. As to how many wind farms & solar farms are required you’re out by a factor of ten when those farms are geographically dispersed & interconnected. In reality, when the grid is fully completed, the ‘overbuild’ factor will be closer to 3 & 4 respectively. This is because covering the last few % to reach a true 100% wind & solar requires a disproportionate amount of additional capacity. Which because of low utilisation makes the last small % portion more expensive than other options. So a 100% RE grid will usually comprise of 90-95% wind & solar with gas peaking, hydro, batteries, CER, etc able to cover up to ~25 to 30% but regularly contributing between 5 & 15%. During periods of favourable weather conditions wind & solar will solely fully supply the grid & have sufficient excess to replenish batt & hydro storage. BTW, firming costs are included in the range of Levelised Cost Of Electricity calculations. Often presented as seperate figures or given as a range of cost points per MW/H.
@@markboscawen8330 > However the premise is incorrect for a large scale wind or solar farm. Because, unlike a nuclear reactor, individual turbines & sub-groups of panels can be isolated & maintained whilst the rest of the generator units function.... As to how many wind farms & solar farms are required you’re out by a factor of ten when those farms are geographically dispersed & interconnected. 1st - It doesn't matter if wind/solar is down for maintenance or because there is no wind/sun, the c.f. analysis is the same - i.e. the c.f. includes both. 2nd - 'geographically dispersed & interconnected' - maybe. Weather fronts can be 100s of miles in breadth/depth (a hurricane is about 300 miles across - about the size of the state of Texas). And we have seen this in the real world - even the Australian dunkelflaute Rosie mentioned was across the entire Australian eastern coast; the 2021/2022 North Sea dunkelflaute was across the North Sea, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Germany, Netherlands, UK, Ireland. These things are huge! 3rd - 'geographically dispersed & interconnected' - sure, you can build transmission from Perth to Sydney - now just include those costs in your model! Don't forget the 2nd set of wind turbines/solar panels at both ends! (i.e. if you are supplying Sydney with Perth RE, then you need RE for Perth + RE for Sydney; likewise you need to install extra at Sydney to send to Perth). Include those costs also. I was being fairly generous in only multiplying out by the c.f. inverse, but again you need EXTRA to ensure reliability since 'geographically dispersed' does not mean 'anti-correlated' it means 'less LIKELY to be correlated'.
@@factnotfiction5915 1st, it does matter as maintenance on a single turbine or group of panels doesn’t stop the rest of the facility from producing power when favourable conditions occur. This keeps the overall capacity factor of the facility up to the figures quoted whilst enabling scheduled maintenance to occur. 2nd. The scope of Rosie’s video is Australia. Hence so are my comments. I appreciate the duration & breadth of dunkelflaute in other parts of the world can be worse than here. That is their problem to manage & why, for some, their most viable option will be nuclear. As acknowledged, Australia has dunkelflaute as well. Though it’s very rare to last more than a day over one or two states and rarer still to simultaneously extend from Adelaide to Cairns. Storage will cover most occurrences & demand management will help bridge those extended once in a decade events. The BOM forecast period & accuracy helping decision making. Economically, it cheaper to suspend operations in two or three smelters for a day or two once a decade than build standby generation capability that would only be used 0.00082% of the time. 3rd Australia is indeed very fortunate in that our continent stretches over three time zones. So have the opportunity to help smooth out duck curves & have several opportunities to capture the same windy weather fronts as they move across the country. Though as storage ATM is far cheaper than a HVDC link between Perth & the NEM we won’t be having the Freo Doctor powering Sydney’s cooktops anytime soon. For all your comments FC, you haven’t refuted that building 1GW+ of standby generation capability to cover the short but relatively frequent times a large nuclear power plant goes off-line is expensive & problematic in the context of the Australian NEM grid. Both of which add to the very high cost of using NPPs in Australia.
@@markboscawen8330 > 1st, it does matter as maintenance on a single turbine or group of panels doesn’t stop the rest of the facility You really do not understand c.f. If your wind turbines have a c.f. of 35%, then that is it. You don't get to turn 1 one for every 2 off - they come like that. You build 1,000 onshore wind turbines - your c.f. is 35%. You build 10,000 onshore wind turbines - your c.f. is STILL 35%! (The c.f. takes into account that some of the time 80% of your turbines are on, and that sometimes 80% of them are off, or any % you care to note.) Now, with 10,000 turbines, it is true that you generate more of the time, but you are STILL only generating 35% of your total _capacity_. Ok, raising the capacity enables you to have less storage - STIPULATED. But raising the capacity ALSO increases your capital costs - REALITY! If your demand is 30 GW (Australia has 30 to 40 GW demand), then the number of wind turbines you need is 30 divided by the average capacity rating DIVIDED BY THE c.f.! So, for a 100% driven-by-onshore-wind grid with 30 GW demand, @ 10 MW a turbine @ 35% = 30000/10/0.35 = 8,571 wind turbines needed. The 8,571 turbines mooted above PRESUMES each wind turbine is INDEPENDENT of the others, which they obviously are not. Because wind is correlated across HUGE areas, your wind turbines are correlated across huge areas, so as you add capacity, it isn't a linear addition - you have diminishing returns, so to avoid storage, you will need MORE assets than the inverse of your c.f. Basically, 8,571 wind turbines is the minimum needed, the lower bound, the threshold. > demand management will help bridge those extended once in a decade events. ... Economically, it is cheaper to suspend operations in two or three smelters for a day or two once a decade than build standby generation capability that would only be used 0.00082% of the time. Agreed! However, it all depends on the precision of 2 forecasts - weather events and demand - and so it is less precise. With nuclear, we only need to forecast demand and build accordingly - it is much more certain. (ps - shocker - you can use demand management on a nuclear-centric grid with the same ease as on an intermittent energy-centric grid) > you haven’t refuted that building 1GW+ of standby generation capability to cover the short but relatively frequent times a large nuclear power plant goes off-line is expensive & problematic If we take the German example, you have to build MORE (%-wise) standby generation for intermittent RE than for other grids, nuclear or not. However, the main point about 'short but frequent' (not that I agree that a plant which shuts down every other or every third year as 'frequent') is that those shutdowns are PLANNED. We know when and for how long, and the predictability makes it simpler to deal with.
Thanks Dr Rosie. Have all the transmission lines been costed? Have all the current wind farms we are paying for been connected? So much information or missing information makes this chat subject to bias. I appreciate your views on. Where nuclear power works and where it doesn't. Regards James
I installed rooftop solar over 2 years ago. Paid $100 dep & int free loan over 2 years. The payback was less than 2 years as I am well in advance on my solar feedin Have not paid an electricity bill since installing Why is everyone making a simple problem so hard Living in Canberra. Sal
If 100% of people took up this deal then how would the generation/transmission/distribution system be paid for? The reliability this brings has a certain value, otherwise you'd buy some batteries and go off-grid, right?
@asabriggs6426 Most vehicles are parked 23hrs every day. Battery Vehicles, EVs, have oversized battery for the daily drive. Smart people top up daily. Battery mostly full every day. Selfplug-in V2G EVs trickle currents all day long only need a $60 wall outlet. Rapid charging will be on the main roads and at corner stores and community batteries.
@@stephenbrickwood1602 My question is "how will the grid be paid for if everyone (or even a large percentage) have rooftop solar that (net) covers their electricity bill?" Australian proposals for net zero heavily rely on industrial solar/wind and a much enlarged grid; that needs paying for, and that will happen through tax-payers or electricity bills.
Suggest looking at what E2S Power has developed who has converted a coal-fired power plant in India to run on pollution and waste free thermal energy in the form of 700C steam. Only took a month to refit. Was one of the cabling designers on Loy Yang A and B stations so know what goes into building a station from scratch. 'Just have a think' on TH-cam has an explanation of how it works, on a recent video.
@@stephenbradshaw3967 basic arithmetic yes, correct interpretation no Similar to: if you have 5 apples at $1 and 6 oranges at $2, how much for a dozen? (a dozen of what has not been specified)
But why is the LCOE relevant? It's the total cost that matters. You're looking at the wrong number. Even if wind and solar are the cheapest to 'add' to the grid, as the CSIRO says, wind loses to wind, solar loses to solar. Adding wind and solar makes the rest of the grid less efficient and thereby driving up costs of the grid as a whole. This is why grids with lots of wind and solar have high electricity bills. South Australia verses the other states. California verses the other states. Germany and Ireland verses the other EU. There are no exceptions. It's like comparing commodities, the levelised cost of commodities (LOCC); iron, cotton or opium. The LOCC would be good for comparing iron and cotton, but not good for opium because people will get addicted to opium then become unproductive and the market shrinks. But even as the market shrinks, all the way up to economic collapse, societal collapse and into an opium war, the LOCC would still say that opium has the largest profits. Wind and solar are the opium of the energy sector.
Really interesting presentation to listen to and it does a great job of illustrating why Nuclear is totally unsuitable for Australia. Just about to pay for my electricity in advance by installing solar and a 20 kWh Pylontech battery
If I was a nuclear advocate, I'd simply pick my battles and not try to force nuclear on one of the least suitable countries in the world. All that effort can be better spent elsewhere *cough* Germany *cough*
Idk. What to write, you basically negated yourself in the same comment. I mean good luck trying to market an reactor in Germany, a country were the last plant operators partly gave up due to renewable market penetration.
You can make new nuclear power plants powered by russian uranium when you've done your home work and built all PV and wind power you need for the next 30 years. And do not forget to ditch LNG from the Quatari. You will not be able to afford it 20 years from now. 30 years is about the time it takes for Germany to build a power plant - any type of large power plant - and the needed grid.
That all sounds wonderful. What happens when it's realised that the amount of minerals required to build out this system would supply less than 20% of the global population & the 80% of "have nots" come for the 20% of haves?
Conversation is all around domestic use of electricity: what about industrial applications that create jobs. + sovereign risk factor, China and India are building Coal power along with nuclear plants… as there goal is to be industrialised manufacturing nations, it appears from you show will become a nation of barista makers that cook by candles at night
This reactor vessel should be state of the art but the cost is not the issue It's the Time of the plant being operational and it is a transitional fuel so it should be temporary
Nuclear isn't intended to be a transitional fuel. Although i have conflicting information on the amount available fissible material, I have heard numbers of reactors lasting 80-100 years. I actually thought there was less available uranium than that.
@@gavinw77 there's plenty of uranium for the next 100 years in conventional gen3+ reactors, after that we will transition to gen4 advanced breeder reactors which will consume the spent fuel, and give us another 10,000 years of emissions free energy.
The main thing I don't understand is how the grid-scale storage, required for the (rare) dunkelflaute, will actually be achievable. I found Sabine Hossenfelder's video interesting, with compressed air being a candidate. But the scale just seems insurmountable. Gov website says electricity use in Australia is ~190 TWh/year. Naively averaged we get 520 GWh/day (peak consumption is ~55 GW). If we pick the energy storage target as 50% load for 21 days (as the worst case), that's 5.5 TWh of storage and ~25-30 GW of delivery (and some fraction of that as recharge speed). We obviously wouldn't use a single source, but if we did... batteries are out (440k AUD per MWh, for the first 100 MWh battery I saw on Google, would be ~2.5 trillion AUD). Hydro requires building hydroelectric power stations as well as dams (all of NSW's hydro generation is a bit over 5.5 GW, so 5x that). Hydrogen would require generating (at ~55% efficiency?) and storing a _lot_ of hydrogen, in addition to building a _lot_ of hydrogen-consuming power plants. Even with an optimal mix, that's a lot of storage to build in the next ten years. Fossil fuels seem like they'll stick around, at a decent fraction of energy generation, until that storage problem is solved. A deep dive into this, at the scale required specifically for Australia, would be pretty cool to see.
5,5TWh of battery storage currently costs about 5.5 trillion US$,8,25 trillion AUD. 1000 US$ per kWh. Actually it would be much less but lets take this number. Running 20 years with a cycle count of 200 per year that would be a total cost of 8.250.000.000.000 / 5,5 x 20 x 200 x 1000 x 1000 x 1000 that is 22.000.000.000.000 = 37,5 cents/kWh I think that is possible, financially feasible and practical. Of course only if your country makes the battery cells with your own raw materials yourself. Not when you buy everything from CATL or Gotion.
The only costs the consumer wants to know is the kWh cost to us. France's energy system comprises 70% of their generated power. Consumers pay approximately A$0.32 per kWh Many Australians pay up to $0.45 kWh. Much more expensive.
Just the water needed for cooling is a problem, heat of summer is an issue then waste couldn’t be left in open ponds because of the more frequent storms/cyclones and now tornadoes
> Just the water needed for cooling is a problem, heat of summer is an issue then waste couldn’t be left in open ponds Presumably you're talking about cooling a NPP and nuclear spent fuel waste. 1st - if the NPPs are being built on the site of existing coal plants, then the cooling water previously going to coal plants is now being consumed by NPPs, so it appears sources exist. (1b - alternatives to cooling water exist, such as at Palo Verde, the US' second-largest NPP - in the middle of the Arizona desert! 1c - newer Gen IV designs don't require as much cooling water) 2nd - Nuclear spent fuel waste is not left in open ponds - anywhere in the world. Essentially, It is put inside indoor covered swimming pools, and removed from the pool 5-10 years later and placed inside a 20-ton concrete 'dry' cask placed on the back parking lot, which does not require pools of water.
To calculate fission power plants lifetime expense, the cost of disposing and maintaining the safety of waste uranium fuels must be included and realistic. People that promote fission power plants are the people who stand to gain the most from their operation. The billions of dollars that are spent to build and operate generates huge profits for those people. Generally the people that promote fission nuclear power are front people for the people who have deep pockets and will gain the most from nuclear projects.
Exactly. The grid infrastructure owners have a bigger cashflow interest. The grid is $1TRILLION Cashflow is $110BILLON per year. When EVs or BVs are plugged in 23hrs every day and all night then grid cash flows will crash. Superannuation funds investment will suffer. Offgrid will be illegal and connection fees will go to $10 per day.
Tx for a great video topic. It's great to see OTHER PEOPLE be more level headed about an energy source most of the rest of us have very strong emotions about - for & against. There was one "disturbing" headline I saw that proposed an increase in gas usage while Oz waited for nuclear to come online. It made me think that perhaps the whole nuclear thing is just a charade in order to promote more gas, i.e. slow the energy transition down in favour of gas using nuclear as a smokescreen. My second "worry" is if there was a connection between wanting nuclear in Oz and Oz's AUKUS plans - can the plants planned to be built in Oz be reporposed to build nuclear weapons for nuclear subs instead? When discussing renewable energy anywhere the only tech discussed or referred to is solar & wind (and battery storage), probably because is so cheap. Fair enough. But other renewable tech exists & is being developed - what geothermal potential is there in Oz? - several undetwater turbines are doing well elsewhere? - onshore wave power? In Australia most cities (Oz has about 6 or 7 major cities?) are located around the coast (hence the 7 nuclear sites chosen), surely it makes to have interconnected energy hubs near each one - geothermal for "baseload" - tidal & onshore wave energy - rooftop solar & agrivoltaics with battery storage (eg community energy) - on shore wind, also supported by battery storage, for morning & evening peak - V2G to fill in the gaps (in the USA the yellow school buses provide battery energy during peak demand and recharge overnight ready for the school run the morning & afternoon) - thermal recovery for heat intensive industries I believe heat pumps can both heat & cool buildings... are heat pumps suitable / appropriate for Australia? With V2G I believe you are able to tell the software when to discharge to the grid (and earn some money) and when to recharge (when rates are low) so very little intervention is required.
I have been in a cabin that is off the grid and could not charge my phone for three days so I think we need a $1b nuclear reacator connected to Snowy 2 to send excess power as navies have used them for years.
The other elephant in the room for nuclear is that current technology nuclear energy is not renewable. In other words it relies on mining a very rare, finite resource (uranium) the economic reserves of which will be depleted within a matter of decades, given an ever-increasing world demand for energy. How does this factor into the costs? By the time we got any plants up and running costs would be all the more expensive as uranium becomes scarcer. Yes, the nuclear fanboys will bang on about fast breeder reactors and thorium, but these technologies remain uneconomic and/or technically troublesome which is why they don’t exist in more than one or two demonstration facilities. If we go nuclear it will only ever be for a few decades at best and (barring an economic thorium or fusion breakthrough) we will be back to replacing it with wind and solar anyway. There will always be free wind and sunshine.
Lol... what do you think renewables are made off, thin air. Do yourself a favour and google resources required to make solar panels, and wind turbines. Only thing renewable is every 10 or so years you have to replace them with new. Copper, lithium, rare earth metals are far scarcer than uranium and Australia has the largest deposits of that in the world.
> [nuclear] relies on mining a very rare, finite resource (uranium) Uranium occurs in most rocks in concentrations of 2 to 4 parts per million and is as common in the Earth's crust as tin, tungsten and molybdenum and about 40 times as common as silver. So, not very rare. If the world were to switch to 100% nuclear power (including the non-electricity portions of energy), we would have enough mineable uranium-235 to last a few hundred years. If you include uranium-238 and thorium, we have enough to last 10,000s of years. With 10,000+ years of potential progress, I believe we can let future generations innovate their own energy resources and not worry about them. 10,000 years ago is about the time homo sapiens invented cities and agriculture, so from there to fission in 10,000 years, we can assume SOME progress. > How does this [cost of fuel] factor into the costs? Fuel is about 5% of a NPPs total lifetime costs. Double or triple the price of fuel and basically a non-issue compared to the other nuclear costs like financing. > fast breeder reactors and thorium, but these technologies remain uneconomic and/or technically troublesome Each journey begins with a single step. It took wind 1000s of years to go from watts to kilowatts. Even if you count the heavy use of aerodynamics as your starting point, it has taken wind 50 years to go from 1 MW to 15 MW installations (growth = 150x) It took solar 100 years to go from microwatts to watts. Even if you count the starting point as durable solar panels (vs laboratory solar cells), it has been about 50 years, and although durability has increased, and efficiencies gone up a few % (to almost 20%!) you're still limited by the area covered. (growth = 2-3x) What is nuclear's progress? 200 watts in a laboratory setting to commercial GW-scale in .... 30 years. NOW THAT IS RETURN ON YOUR SCIENTIFIC INVESTMENT!! (growth = 5,000,000x) Thorium for example - are there challenges? sure. Are they solvable given enough time-and-money? yes. Wind for example - is intermittency soluble? no - no matter the time-and-money, IT IS NOT A SOLVABLE PROBLEM! (it is mitigable with storage? yes - great! - until you realize that nuclear can pair better with storage than wind/solar can, because with nuclear you can predict when you can charge the storage)
@@jaymoores8258 You are totally missing (or ignoring) the point. After wind turbines and solar panels come to the end of their life the resources still exist and can be recycled over and over again. The fuel comes from the sun which will last another 5 Billion years. When you use uranium in a nuclear plant it is gone forever.
You are missing (or ignoring ) the point. When solar panels, wind turbines or batteries reach their end of life (way beyond 10 years BTW) the valuable resources in them still exist and can be recycled (or mined) again for far less cost than it takes to mine from nature. The fuel for renewables is from the sun which will last another 5 billion years. When you use the uranium fuel in a nuclear plant that uranium is gone forever.
And the storage cost for nuclear? Because in the same way that dynamic generation does match a dynamic load - neither does a constant generation match a dynamic load.
@@y0uCantHandle > conventional nuclear is very slow to ramp up and ramp down true, but if you have a fleet of NPPs you can ramp quickly. Example: if you have 10 NPPs that can each ramp 2% / minute, then your fleet can ramp 20% / minute. This is how the French follow the demand load (vs Rosie's implication they just shut 1 off or just ramp 1). Also see my note to JohnR31415
@@JohnR31415 See my note to YoucantHandle First a simple scenario: So, presuming no ramping of NPPs, and an ideal of 24GWh demand over the course of the day, where there is more during the day and less at night (we predict 16 GWh demand during 12h of daylight, and 8 GWh demand during 12h of night) and 100% efficient storage. We build a 1 GW NPP and run in flat out (at an ideal 100% c.f.) for 24 GWh in our 24h period, broken down as: during the day, the NPP provides 12 GWh and storage discharges 4 GWh, during the night the NPP provides 12 GWh, 8 to the grid and 4 to charge storage. Ok, in the real world, you have to size your NPP fleet to total average demand OVER A 24H CYCLE on the peak day of the year, including the real c.f., including the real storage inefficiency, and sizing your storage to meet peak demand OVER A 24H CYCLE on that peak day, and including spinning reserve, including maintenance windows, etc. The point being is that storage costs (or natural gas costs, or etc) is calculated on the 24 h cycle of your worst predicted day in a year. Basically, you can predict the DEMAND LOAD very accurately (i.e. the big game is set months in advance, year-to-year average weather is broadly similar, that new aluminum smelter in 2026 will add YYY demand), and you can thus predict charging the storage predictably - you don't over-build storage - you have no idle assets. Now, do the same exercise for intermittent wind/solar. Here you CANNOT just take a 24h cycle, because you might have a dunkelflaute for 1 day, so you need 48h cycle; but every other year you have a 2 day dunkelflaute, and because you don't know if that is this year or next year you need to work the calculation for 72h cycle, but every 5 years you have 3 day dunkelflaute ..... (i.e. unlike the very accurate demand load calculation above, here you are predicting day-to-day actual WEATHER with much lower confidence levels). Ok, so you arrive at some risk-reward, 2 days, 3 days, etc - knowing that someday, somewhen you WILL hit your limit and then people die from lack of heat/cooling/food spoilage/etc etc - but you have your number. AND you also realize that because you have built for a 48h/72h/96h/XXh cycle, MOST OF THE TIME MOST OF THOSE STORAGE ASSETS ARE IDLE - you have over-built for the 'standard' case and your return-on-assets is terrible. Great! - just acknowledge that and be ready to pay the costs of that. I hope what you've taken out of this is that with nuclear, and constant generation, you just have to predict 1 variable: demand - so figuring out the storage is that prediction. With wind/solar, and intermittent generation, you have to predict 2 variables: demand & generation - so figuring out the storage is much harder, and more likely to be wrong, while also having idle assets (which must be paid for whether idle or active).
Rosie, the LCOE approach only partially looks at electricity supply from the point of view of a market participant. The regulator taking bids has a 'control' room with data feeds about current and future demand (meters, weather, season, time of day, maintenance, etc). This information is available to market participants??? A market participant has their own control room where they bid to supply, and turn their resources, both demand (including battery, virtual battery, pumped hydro) and supply, up and down. Full control of resources from the market participant's control room is key to profitable market participation. Participants want remote control of their physical resources to maximise profit. Ideally, they want unmanned resources - operations without labour present. However, electricity resources have a physical security cost, generally an operating cost, and a maintenance and breakdown cost. With the rise of renewables, plant security costs should have a top line cost centre as these vary markedly between sources. The more complex and dangerous the operation, the greater the operating labour requirement, and likely a greater security requirement. The public capital market has a strong aversion to plant shutdown and removal costs especially where governments can introduce requirements that add to costs at a later date. End of life might be a long way off, therefore devalued by time, but risks rise with time. Plants that operate for a long time gather uncertainty as to actions required for shutdown. Rio Tinto has had to take full control of some end of life mines to reduce shutdown cost risks. Coal power produces nuclear waste in that the ash is many times more radioactive with the carbon component of the fuel removed to the atmosphere. There are stewardship costs to coal for permanent management of the ash. Also permanent management costs for nuclear waste. Renewables have no fuel and waste costs. Solar plants have little installation and removal costs - thus are quick to assemble and fully disassemble. Wind turbine foundations need more thought for full removal even if a foundation might get used for hundreds of years. A gas power plant is fully removable, but it requires a fuel that can have high logistics infrastructure costs, and it dumps CO2 into the air. While CO2 comes out the turbine in a pipe (thus captured) at the plant, it is generally immediately dumped into the atmosphere due to the cost of storage. Renewable energy costs will continue to decline over time due to innovation (including automation) with a view to cost reduction by deleting processes. Electricity is electrons 'drifting' at a glacial pace in a conductor and an associated electric field which propagates near the speed of light. Being a very simple product, engineers continually look to delete unnecessary processes. Converting energy between several forms, as coal and nuclear power do, is an easy target for process deletion. Solar creates electricity when photons strike the cell. All other commercial forms use a turbine to turn a generator. We have wind, hydro, steam and combusted gas turbines. Batteries are storing energy using electricity to drive a chemical process. As nuclear power is limited to temperatures that align with steam turbines, the heat nuclear fission/fusion produces is too low for cement, steel and other heavy industrial processes. Using solar electricity to create and store hydrogen creates a fuel whose oxidation (when burnt) gives off the high temperatures needed for steel and cement making. Australia produces food for 1% of world population, and about 10% of the world's minerals (excluding coal). Given the low cost and regularity of solar in dryer parts of the world, and the cheap price of water, we should expect producing hydrogen for combustion heat to be used for both electricity and industrial process heat.
When I worked at Maralinga from 1998 through 2000 I thought it was silly that Australia made nuclear illegal and used so much coal. There weee so many things that make Australia a great place to use nuclear power, not the least of which was the well-educated workforce. Now that solar is so cheap I I can't imagine why you would use nuclear. Now I wonder why no one just uses the cliffs along the bite for gravity storage love seawater. I guess it would require high voltage DC to get the power back 2 populated areas.
Missing the 70 tonnes of concrete or the short lifespan of wind and solar?? No transmission lines for $$$$$$ of claimed wind or the unfunded rehab of wind footings?
Nuclear in Australia will only provide half of our electricity needs, and the plan is to have renewables provide the rest, so you will STILL have those things you find so horrible.
Dutton said that the waste from a nuclear reactor would be the size of a coke can per person. A talk I heard about Thorium reactors said that for an average Western citizen's LIFETIME's usage of power if it came from a Thorium reactor it would need a golf ball size amount of Thorium per person and result in a coke can of radioactive waste, of which 83% would be at back ground level radiation in 10 year's time and the remaining 17% would need 300 years to reach background radiation levels (i.e basically safe).
Dutton is totally wrong with his coke can quote. If you check any of the nuclear industry websites...they quote a coke cans worth of radioactive waste...but _per person_ per annum.
I'm fairly sure there's a reactor in the Gobi Desert in northern China. Drove past cooling towers back in 2008, although when I looked it up, they seemed to have only recently issued permits for it.
Norway here. Nuclear is Also discussed i Norway now (which has not had commercial Nuclear) and a governmental evaluation Will be performed over the next two years. My opinion is that Nuclear Will be too costly compared to alternyatives.
I wonder if there is another, unrecognised cost - the opportunity cost of investing so much capital into one monolithic technology. There would be no financial capacity or community appetite left to take advantage if/when new sources became available. I fully expect that technologies will improve. Storage methods will be developed. Solar panels will continue to improve. If we have everything invested in nuclear, those developments will be meaningless.
Well there will also be opportunities in nuclear tech . Also small amounts of capital would still be available to other people that are perfect for solar wind insulation and so on in private commercial , industrial and pubblic sectors
@@footbru @footbru a nuclear electricity grid needs cashflow 24/7. Australia has 20million buildings and vehicles, a handy coincidence 🤔 Vehicles parked 23hrs every day. Vehicles drive building to building. Building's carpark space with $60 wall outlet and trickle currents all day long and all night long. V2G BVs oversized battery selfparking selfplug-in will be perfect with Rooftop PV every day the sun shines. 🌞 The sun shines and nuclear grid electricity is a dead duck. When the sun sets the BVs oversized battery shines and nuclear electricity is a dead duck. Nuclear grid electricity is a $TRILLIONS infrastructure investment and dead cashflow every time the sun shines. 🌞 But only when the sun shines in Australia and any where else on the planet. On the warming latitudes. BVs and a few rooftop PV panels that shade hot rooftops and NO GRID COSTS. Happy days. 😊 The LNP will love the small government impact on the economy. The LNP will love the empty national grid that has no load from the 20million buildings but with a few more rooftop PV panels can send dirt cheap BVs oversized battery stored electricity into the national grid to power the new industry heavy demand 🫴 😀 Hahaha Hahaha 👍 😆 Happy days. $TRILLIONS SAVED as the grid does not have to be expanded Happy days. No nuclear plant, construction SAVINGS $100sBILLIONS. Happy days. 😊.
Great episode, as usual. But I think you largely missed a couple of the biggest issues with new nuclear power. Including planning and preparations, 10 years for a new first reactor is extremely optimistic. Assuming you'd start planning today, the current cost of alternatives is irrelevant, the cost for a new reactor should be compared to the cost of new wind, and large scale solar is likely to be in 2032, or 2033, and roof top solar in 2033 to 2034, and any storage and or other costs to make that generation meet the demand as well as a nuclear reactor would, if any, for the first 25 years or so of generation for the nuclear reactor. And that cost for wind and solar, will be somewhere between significantly less than it is today and practically free. After that first 25 years of generation, that is about 2059 in this extremely nuclear optimistic scenario, the nuclear reactor will have to compete with modern solar, wind, batteries and what ever is available then, in 2059. In other words, comparing costs of nuclear today, if everything goes reasonably well, with current costs of alternatives requires, all progress instantly stops when you start planning for a new nuclear reactor, essentially that time stops and waits for the reactor starts generating, which is very from from reality. To put things into perspective, less than 10 years ago unsubsidized solar won a contract based on cost for grid scale generation, for the first time ever, in the world. From not commercially viable, (without subsidies) anywhere in the world, to the cheapest form of new generation in large parts of the world, in less time than it is reasonable to expect to plan, prepare for and build a first new reactor. We don't know how much cheaper and better solar, wind, storage, DSM, transmission, possibly other solutions, we will have, in 2034 and further into the future, but it is much more certain that we will have significantly cheaper and better alternatives, than they are today, than it is that a new reactor even will reach commercial operation if you try to build one. Another issue for new nuclear power is that uncertainty, for nuclear power to be somewhat reasonable, and that's if assuming all other technological progress halts when you make the decision, it still assumes the reactor actually works well, and is needed for many decades. And that's when we know things like that a tsunami hitting the coast of Japan can make people all over the globe to freak out about nuclear power in general. People can change their mind back and forth multiple times in less time than it takes to get a new reactor generating, and that is a small part of the time people need to at least accept it, for building a new reactor to not be much worse than if it gets to generate commercially as long as it can.
Wake up my friend… “what about solar in the future” is not a solution. The grifters continue to demand subsidies. If they don’t get them it doesn’t happen. Learn from other countries experience. Germany is suffering. Their economy is tanking. Energy drives economic growth. Nuclear advocates want solar too. Solar advocates believe solar and wind can run a country, it just cannot. By 2030, AI is going to require the equivalent of 20% of the current US power grid demand. Technology companies know that intermittent renewables cannot be used. They need 24/7 guaranteed power. They have started to build data centres next to nuclear. Globally, 2030 targets are being reduced as people finally realise it’s not as easy to put up “capacity” that they doesn’t deliver. We see this time and time again. You seem like smart man. Do some proper research. Beyond the climate grifters. IEA is 55 Tufton Street think tank, it’s not there to help. Reneweconomy is apt, given the renewables have to get renewed themselves every 20-25 years. Nuclear goes to 80. A nuclear sub gets fuelled once in its operational life. Simon double barrelled is just a grifter who will say he can, and deny clear evidence to keep his gravy train going. Anyway, good luck ❤
Many years ago based on revised risk assessment TEPCO was told to raise the seawall by five metres. They failed to do so. Japan (and the world) is paying the price.
Great video Rosie, Nuclear is nowhere near the best option for Australia now. It will kill renewables and there are far better renewable technologies available today let alone in the time it will take for Nuclear to come on board.
There are some dangerous assumptions projecting 20 to 60 years ahead. Technology will change. Weather patterns will change. Rare earth metals and copper demand will outstrip supply. The cost of decarbonising power will change. To quote one example: Moltex in cooperation with New Brunswick power will build first of a kind a molten salt fast reactor early 2030 at a projected electricity cost of less than $3000/MWh. Coupled with molten salt energy storage it can load follow. Spent fuel will be reprocessed on site. The problematic transuranics will be consumed. Spent fuel from the Candu reactors will be a potential fuel source. A case can be made for a reliable 24/7 generation as the coal thermal power stations come to an end. Wind droughts will be solved by a reliable base load 24/7 and an optimum amount of storage. Queensland has a particular low wind problem. What are the costs of an integrated transmission system vs a local reliable power source. As we are experiencing in NZ transmission infrastructure is vulnerable to adverse weather and fire events. LCOE analysis is just not sufficiently nuanced. At least in Australia you are debating the issue.
Lizards and conspiracy? Hmmm, was this supposed to be a balanced view? I quite like your work Rosie, but please keep to scientific discourse. The nuclear discussion is particularly emotive. I do expect a 100% variable RE grid ,*can* become a reality for Australia, but I'm sure this will be the most complex machine ever built (isn't the NEM already?), which undoubtedly comes with ridiculous cost (not just economic). But hey, let's see. Perhaps don't try to connect lizards with the likes of nuclear technology, seeing as how nuclear is going to be VITAL for the transition to low carbon energy, which the IPCC/IEA recognise and the US/UK/China and so on are putting into action. Let's celebrate nuclear's contribution to the global energy landscape and legalise it in Australia so that we can have a serious conversation.
One thing Rosie. It’s our gas that we have. The government should demand that the gas companies provide gas for the Australian people at cost +10% for power generation. We sell this gas for multinationals to make incredibly profit!…Or introduce a tariff like other countries whom raise money for their countries people. Then you would have the money to replace our power plants….We need cheap power for a future in Australia.. Then we can produce or own steel, aluminium, hydrogen and synthetic aviation / transport fuels. Then our farmers and manufacturing industries can survive….Our politicians spend more time with distraction tactics rather than the rational debate on actual solutions.
I am a labor voter always have been but nuclear power has made switch sides But 52% of Labor voters support nuclear and Chris Bowen said it is ok for a labor member to vote for nuclear power
I have mostly been a liberal voter. but I switch sides occasionally because neither side fits my requirements. Next will definitely be Labour because nuclear is too slow to get off the ground. Any nuclear plan is no plan because it will be tested by at least three governments while it's being built. Just like NBN
Do they have a cost for the different Nuclear options like a Thorium reactor so instead of having HUGE reactor in a few places what about smaller but less costly Thorium reactors ?
@@gpsfinancial6988I drove past cooling towers in the Gobi Desert in northern China back in 2008. They recently issued permits for a thorium reactor, if it isn't already operational it's probably not far off.
Most vehicles are parked 23hrs every day and all night. BV battery vehicles can be on trickle currents all day long and supply your building and home a little over night. Ezi pezi
Where in Australia could a nuclear power project get environmental approval in any predictable time frame if ever? Where in a democracy has a 100% new nuclear power staion been started built and commissioned in less than a decade?? What is the real life time cost of such a project. Not just construction...which alone is huge, plus cost of investment is huge due to length of time before income starts 😊😊😊😊😊
> Where in a democracy has a 100% new nuclear power staion been started built and commissioned in less than a decade? Seriously? OPAL reactor in Lucas Heights Australia! Contract signed June 2000, full power test November 2006, officially opened April 2007. Of course, Australia would need a fleet of reactors - another democracy, France, built 56 reactors in 15 years. etc, etc
@@factnotfiction5915 No, it's not. You compound your initial error with more disinformation. Lucas Heights is tiny compared to a real NPP. I've read comparisons of a nuclear power plants as being like a small city. Nuclear Energy Institute says 1.3 sq km per 1000 MW of capacity - so the 3 or 4 GW stations proposed by Dutton would be at least four sq kms. And Lucas Heights already had approval and community licence, so the "effort" was minimal. All they had to do was choose the new reactor and purchase it. It WAS opposed, but most people recognised that we needed the medical isotopes it produced.
@@footbru > No, it's not. You compound your initial error with more disinformation. Lucas Heights is tiny compared to a real NPP. I've read comparisons of a nuclear power plants as being like a small city. Nuclear Energy Institute says 1.3 sq km per 1000 MW of capacity - so the 3 or 4 GW stations proposed by Dutton would be at least four sq kms. I readily admit that the size of a nuclear power _plant's_ area is usually about 1.3 sq km (or even more, particularly in the US), but the footprint of the buildings, parking lot, etc, etc is usually just 10-20 hectares. However, why 1 GW per 1.3 sq km? Because in the US, most plants are 1-2 reactors per site. That doesn't mean more reactors could not be added. For example, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Takahama_Nuclear_Power_Plant has four 870 MW reactors on 1 km2. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bugey_Nuclear_Power_Plant has five 800-900 MW reactors on 1km2 etc etc NUCLEAR IS DENSE. You're totally arguing up the wrong creek here if you believe I'm snowing you. Lucas Heights reactor is only marginally smaller than a power reactor, and the infrastructure (like turbine halls) are maybe 2-3x the existing footprint of LH. The rest is just room for growth, or 'dual-use' land for agriculture.
Im sick of so called experts claiming nuclear energy is green. The actual generation may produce little CO2 but the uranium supply chain certainly doesn’t- mining, processing, transportation, of fuel plus the same again for the spent fuel processing then ongoing waste management, because this still has not been solved and is simply a mounting problem for future generations. Also add construction and materials CO2. Then there is the water requirements for mining, and around double the water required for nuclear generation compared to coal plus it contaminates this with increased salinity and radiation as well as significantly elevated temperatures. Australia is struggling with water demand now, where is this coming from. What if there are accidents or leaks? Make sure cleanup costs are included in costings because its gonna happen. Look at the rate renewable tech has progressed in just a few years and the billions being spent on battery and alternate generation, Ai running virtual power plants controlling behind the meter batteries now ie Tesla, in 5 years we are going to be in a considerably better position than now when many of these plants and projects go live. Its also crap about nuclear plants lasting for 100 years, current ones I believe are around 40 at most and look at their maintenance costs. Our climate issue is NOW and we need to transition NOW not prop up fossil fuels for another 20 years, plus create the potential for an environmental disaster either by consuming and polluting water we don’t have or through nuclear waste or plant failure.
There are nuclear fuel recycling systems. Also, note that nuclear plants produce materials that can be used in other industries and also used in fusion reactors in the future. Nuclear fuel management and reuse has been solved AFAIC.
All power generation methods produce CO2, including solar and wind. Nuclear produces the least CO2 per MWh. Nuclear does not use more water than coal (you made that up). It makes sense to build them on the site of retiring coal plants because the water is already available, as well as transmission lines.
@@jinnantonix4570well nuclear does use more water than coal (at a single site) because it produces far more energy than coal. Both technologies only convert water to steam to produce electricity. More power = more water, however per mwh nuclear is more efficient than coal at water consumption. The problem is can the site selected keep up with water consumption. They could use once through salt water plants, or given that solar will compete with nuclear during the day, use daytime energy production for desalination
@@jinnantonix4570 ref nuclear.foe.org.au/wp-content/uploads/Water-NP-2xA4-2018.pdf This is just one report highlighting many water issues around EXISTING coal generation, and nuclear has even higher demands when we already have chronic water issues now. Please dont make accusations through your own ignorance.
Australia it is to me about responsible land usage and wind is not responsible land usage same for Solar. It takes 360 times land for wind that are only 40% efficent to a equivalent wind generation system. Solar is 75% more land for Solar. To produce equivalent. Gas is not zero CO2. The modern Nuclear can run down and run up generation the reactor is only part of a powerstation. So how can you say that Nuclear is not able to run down. The Generator is steam driven you can simply run steam straight to the cooling tower. The reason the cost can be reduced is Nuclear power plant is that the nuclear is operational 24 / 7 solar only produces around 6-8 hours a day. Solar life is only 10 - 15 years I have already replaced my roof top once at 8 years and I have a 5kw solar roof top connected to my home PC and have graphed its output and it is never reached 4kw. So it does not ever produce the specified amount I installed. CSIRO refuses to get any input from Nuclear industry. Look at UAE and South Korea. So when you get statistics from Wind and Solar. Life span is 60-80 years not 15- 20 years.
Do you know how much the national electrical grid costs and how little energy it distributes ??? The nuclear promoters say $1million per km The Clean Energy Council says 1million km. = $1TRILLION Electric energy used, www.energy.gov.au Petajoule 15% So nuclear grid electricity will do f..all.
Is there a shortage of land in Australia? Many rural landowners are making income from wind turbines - on land that is otherwise unproductive. Are you saying they are wrong?
@@gregorymcleod nuclear is grid electricity. If you are serious then the national grid capacity has to be 7 times bigger if Australia is to be 100% electric. The grid costs $1TRILLION and 7 times bigger is insane. Do your homework and grow up.
41:40 Oh you realised France is not very flexible although they do flexible ups and downs every Day, they follow the Day up and down during night...... But the real big Problem was, they hat damage in the cooling Area exactly due to this Mode they are running the plants.... They tried to switch safety vs. flexibility.... now they try to give you the electrixity very cheap druing night for your eletctric car, the same game the germans played in the 70/80s with their "Nachtspeicheröfen"
"although they do flexible ups and downs every Day," Actually they do not. They shut their plants down hard when they do not need and can not sell the power and buy the more flexible offers from Germany, Switzerland and Italy. They have so many nuclear plants that it looks like they moderate the energy output. Their plants are just too old to do that. 40 and more years old technical designs running Software from the 1960s can not do "moderate". They can not even afford to design new ones. They do not have the manpower. Just look at Hinkley Point and ask why the french want to ditch it and why the >Chinese have ditched it.
The nuclear horses are at the barrier chafing at the bit to power out of the gates. The starter however is not at the barrier. The starter is locked in a bitter battle with the stewards on whether the race should be run. The punters are throwing their hands up in exasperation amazed by the bizarre stupidity of the administration not to allow a start. This is the problem we had with the voice and we'll have it again with nuclear. Bipartisan support across the spectrum is the first battle and the three eyed fish argument will probably win out. Childish politicians playing their childish games.
When your soler don't work power is off that is not tenable for a lot of business living in the bush and having generator power then going to soler and batteries the generator was used a lot at certain points because of weather and brake downs it's a fool's errand to rely on batterys
Rosie, John, Your numbers are all ok, but your interpretation was generally useless. So, 40% of the cost of retail electricity is generation - so right there, the LCOE is not interesting. Or to put it differently, plant LCOE - a metric for investment companies - is not a useful metric for societal evaluation of nuclear. "nuclear is too expensive" was your mantra, but only with the perspective you were looking from; not from Australia's perspective. As examples, just towards the end of the video you got into the system LCOE, much more useful, but: A - you didn't compare the system LCOE with and without nuclear, so that was pointless, and B - you added coal/gas into the mix with just the asset costs (specifically stating you ignored costs of fuel, which are a good 80% of the cost of coal/gas), more pointlessness, Per the comments, I get it, you were rushed an unprepared - so basically just did the same job the CSIRO and AEMO reports have done!
Hi I'm from Perth and my aspect viewing this is the Liberal party want Small Modular Reactors and from my research no one has completed one of these yet but I believe China is close to completion after 16 years, so we are looking at very untried technology which so far is very expensive and we would be the Guinea Pigs in this experiment
Talking long term, into next century. Renewables arre not sustainable. Renewables remove the profitable of centralised base load generators. Uranium nuclear only has a future of decades due to a global shortage of uranium. Thorium based nuclear by contrast has multiple centuries if not millennia. Plutonium fast breeder nuclear also has a long future but the economic viability and technology difficulties are challenging. My opinion is fusion will never be economically viable. Economic viability is based on being able to produce about 20 times more energy than the total energy input. The minerals and metals needed to move to low emission energy are not available. Fossil fuels will be used to economic depletion within a few decades, when the cost of supply of commodities is more than the ability to pay. And most fossil fuels and commodities will be largely depleted before the end of this century. The planet is on track for 4 C warming and 2-3m sea level rise before 2100.
Don’t you just need to look at France vs its neighbours to know that nuclear energy is cheap and reliable? Seems to me that the cost of nuclear is artificially inflated by powerful anti nuclear groups.
French nuclear provider EDF lost so much money it had to be nationalized. The French Government spent about 45 Billion Euros in electricity subsidies in 2023 as so many of their nuclear reactors were offline. They imported electricity from Spain, Germany and the UK.
😩 Fra capped its prices during the energy crisis and then nationalised its nuclear to save it from the unsustainable position of its debts and being forced to sell power under cost. As to reliability in '22 the load factor was barely 50% as a succession of cluster faults forced to it import from across Europe.
This conversation was not definitive enough. I am still left wondering what the heck is the conclusion? For non industry people you need to talk in kilo watts because most people understand their electricity bill. Rosie you are a lovely person but please a get a new microphone. Sure nuclear is more expensive but by how much with realistic delay expectations and cost blow outs and factoring in that storage batteries will come down 50% or more in the next 5 years. These are reasonable assumptions. Even the CEO of CATL expects battery prices to fall below $50 U.S. per KW. We also need to discuss centralised power generation. Power stations are military targets so decentralised power generation and storage should be a significant national security issue. Certainly at a community level just being able to help friends, neighbours or family in a black out has to take the pressure off emergency services. Emergencies services that may not even be able to respond in the event of a war or significant natural disaster. Personalised power generation and storage should be as common as a water tank.
Mark thanks, we were a bit pressed for time and didn't get to the system costs as much but here's a quick way of looking at it. - CSIRO had nuclear at $150/MWh (15c/kWh) - History of nuclear projects is a 120% overrun so assume it goes to 30c/KWh - Liberals haven't detailed the sizing but lets say they want 30% of the grid to be nuclear, assume generation is a third of your bill and nuclear is a third of that so would mean 5c/kWh extra. With the long build time, you would most probably see it as a levy on your bill. Will this happen? Most probably not, mainly because of legal reasons. The history of nuclear in Australia includes a failed attempt to build a nuclear reactor at Jervis Bay which was chosen as it's a federal territory. This is from the PHd paper, "FROM ATOMIC ENERGY TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE; A History of the Australian Atomic Energy Commission" by Anna-Eugenia Binnie "The situation now produced a minor constitutional and legal problem; 'Constitutionally the Commonwealth had no power to generate power (ie electricity) and under the Act the AAEC was limited to the discovery, mining, treatment, use and disposal of uranium'113. This issue was solved by the agreement between the Commonwealth and the State of NSW in which the Commonwealth Government through the AAEC would own the nuclear reactor but any electricity generated from the steam produced would be owned by the State." So the Liberals will need to rely on horse-trading with state governments to make it happen. What's the chances?
Copenhagen Atomics figures are less than 10% of the CSIRO costs, someone is putting a finger on the nuke scales. Will Australia ignore Fusion if/when it happens?
@@user-co8vc5nd7lthere's a company in America that is scaling a one mega watt nuclear fission reactor cooled by gas why would you not buy from someone already doing it 🤔
Hi Rosie, yes nuclear is not for all countries, but for different reasons. On-shore wind is largely a storage and land utilisation issue whereas solar farms are a potential disaster waiting to happen and should be phased out. If skeptical whether man made (A.C.C) is real then, politics aside, clean coal burning technology maybe an appropriate technology for OZ. Forgive me for saying you need international experts to raise the debate from being parochial. For nuclear you need to attract people of the calibre seen on the Canadian 'Decouple' web site. Transmission economics and storage also seem poorly understood.
@@footbru Today's solar planning looks to have a horizon of only a few years. The Earth regularly faced and will face times when insolation is reduced by increased cloud cover. Events can be as short as 7 days but as long as even 1 year. Because they have little impact on crop growth they are ignored. There are different causes for these events. The most common are volcanic eruptions, but less common, yet still a significant risk, are meteoric. In addition because solar occupies very large surface areas we must include physical events that damage installations. Over a century this includes large hail-storms, CMEs and even human caused EMPs. We need more awareness of these events for our long term survival.
@@bobdeverell So, if I understand, you dislike renewables and would prefer nuclear or coal. And nuclear would be OK, even if volcanic or meteoric events occurred, or EMPs ... (forgive me, I don't know what CMEs are).
@@footbru Some renewable sources are reliable and predictable, eg. tidal, but not wind or solar. CME are Coronal Mass Ejections. These only impact unprotected electrical systems and occur typically once in a century.)
Please tell me you're not from America otherwise I'll have to bring up the pronunciation of aluminium!!! I grew up in a part of Sydney where everyone had immigrated from somewhere else. There was always a diversity of accents and pronunciations, and we had no problems figuring out what people said. Suggest you do the same.
Hi Rosie. This topic is very important and it’s very disappointing that the video link was so hopeless. Impossible to take you seriously with that crappy video quality.
Rosie, your analysis assumes renewables will work. But wind and solar only work 10-30% of the time, and firming is not clean, cheap and available. Gas peakers may be cheap (ish), but not clean, and approval is resisted because they do not fit with a net zero agenda. Batteries and pumped hydro are very costly (more expensive than nuclear per MW), and cause massive environmental damage. It's not getting cheaper, as claimed. V2G is not going to happen, why would you plug your car into the grid if its going to drain your battery in the evening peak so it's empty in the morning? So your claim that the energy transition will be completed within 15 years is just wrong. Nuclear power is valuable because it covers baseload demand and so reduces reliance on dispatchable power. The fact that rooftop solar occasionally produces all our needs does not destroy the need for baseload power, it shows that we already have too much VRE in the grid, and we should stop building renewables. AURECON are not experts in nuclear power. LCOE and Lazard analysis is not the same as cost of electricity to consumers. The Gencost numbers for nuclear were wrong because they assumed a plant life of 30 years, when it is closer to 60-80 years so has a long amortisation life. The claim that it must also deliver profits over that time does not invalidate this fact, because revenue has to be adjusted for future value. John waffled about this and failed to explain accurately.
Yeah, I'm all for more solar and wind power, they are great tech. But I'm also sick of the propaganda. There is no way Australia will be completely renewable in 15 years. I remember reading that the ACT was completely renewable already, that was 5 years ago about. And it was actually a lie. A massive campaign was run making the claim, and it turned out to not at all be true. They are still making the claim on websites, and it's just not true when you dig deeper. Meanwhile energy costs are rising - isn't everyone claiming the cost of batteries and panels is decreasing? So when do our energy bills start going down? There is a huge mismatch between what the renewable fanatics are claiming and reality.
@@gavinw77 yes, solar and wind are OK, but it's the firming that is the problem. Rosie never talks about the real cost of dispatchable backup in a >90% VRE grid, and the fact that the States are not building enough batteries and pumped hydro because it is WAY more expensive than nuclear, and dirty too. V2G with EVs = dreaming. Gas may come to the rescue, but then net zero is not possible. People voting against nuclear are voting for more gas, and more emissions.
Solar + battery at the current time is cheaper than nuclear. A 1GW solar farm cost about 800 million dollars and a battery of 1GWH battery storage from Tesla costs 450 million USD. Even if we put in 2 GWH Tesla mega packs, it would cost only 900 million. Also, this requires a land of 16 sq kms which government has to provide. So you can get 1 GW solar farm with 2 GwH storage costing less than 2 billion dollars. This can be installed within 2 years. This will generate in an average 4 GWH of electricity everyday. With 2gwh of that electricity available anytime of the day. A nuclear plant will take 10-15 billion per kWh, requires running cost and personnel and will be affected by any supply chain issues. However, solar requires zero,running costs, no daily people to run the plant and little periodic maintenance and repairs. Also, the price of batteries will come down lower than the current price with many Chinese companies coming out with grid scale batteries . When more storage batteries are installed , price of electricity will come down. Now, due to lack of sufficient storage, utilities charge whatever they want. One reader mentioned that battery are dirty. Batteries once manufactured will run easily from 20-25 years in Utility storage. After that they can be completely recycled. This is not like coal or peaker plants which are dirty and also constantly require fuels and personnel for their lifetime to run the plants.
When Fukushima blew up the damage was 60 billion dollars and decommissioning the plant will cost another $70B. Tepco the company responsible for the disaster will not be paying the costs because they don't have an insurance policy that covers that. The Japanese government/tax payer is basically their insurance provider. This is a MASSIVE hidden subsidy. If a nuclear power plant had to go onto the private market to get an insurance policy the cost of a KWH would go from something like 25 cents to $3.25 and even if the insurance price came down over time, my guess is it would be least be $1.25. And NO ONE would pay that much for a KWH.
@@ramb5193A 1GW solar farm has just enough capacity to charge a 2GWh battery on a sunny day. Ignoring losses this could discharge at 1GW for 2 hours per day. Compare this $2B investment, to $6.4B , 1GW AP1000 nuclear plant which can generate at full capacity 24/7. Further the AP1000 has a plant life of 60-80 years, while the solar plant and batteries need to be fully rebuilt 3 times over that period. The optimum solution is a combination of both solar and nuclear.
Yeah.......I mean what would a fully qualified and experienced Engineer know about engineering??? You're like Dinosaur Dutton....ignores the science and goes with his "gut" feeling.
Hi Rosie,
This video was very interesting and the point you and John brought up about the lack of harmony between nuclear power plants and variable renewable energy is news to me. I am a nuclear engineering PhD candidate so I come from that side of the conversation but I also was exposed to EV and solar technology in the earlier parts of my career before i switched sides. I think it was great that you two had such a civilised conversation that was grounded in the numbers and modelling (something that is missing from this politicised debate about energy policy). I think two things that stand out for us on the nuclear side - and are repeatedly mentioned by energy policy researchers are:
1. The LCOE is a cost marker useful for investors to compare the profitability of certain technologies. I think it is safe to say that this is not a good representation of the cost that consumers actually pay for energy (business and home onwers). This is actually mentioned in the GenCost report in one of their 'frequently asked questions' in their Appendix. From what I remember, it said something like 'The Gencost report is only an analysis on the wholesale cost and not a full systems cost analysis - which would be a lot more complex and resource intensive to perform'. The problem is, this LCOE value is being misquoted as being the representative value for what consumers actually pay for when it is in fact a very inaccurate metric for it. From what I know, the inappropriatedness of LCOE for economic modelling of energy costs, especially of VRE technology, is very much agreed upon within current scientific literature. I am not going to speculate here as I am not an economicist but I think the complexity of the NEM and how pricing works in it will non-negligbly affect these cost comparisons. I think the problem here is - someone needs to do a proper full systems cost analysis of the different technologies in the context of the NEM and make it scenario based (explained more in my point 2). And in concurrence to this, we really need to put a disclaimer on the fact that the LCOE and the GenCost report is not appropriate to use for consumer energy prices.
2. As a link to what was mentioned in my first point, I think another problem I see is that it seems like all this costing comparison is based on full renewables grid VS full nuclear grid. I think most people in the nuclear world recognise that nuclear is here to support the renewables transition and is a carbon free alternative to peaking power gas plants. As such, it would only make sense to include nuclear in small/moderate part of the grid's capacity (like most of the world does or is planning to do). This is the problem with using the GenCost report for talking about nuclear in Australia as it can easily be interpreted as technology versus technology. The GenCost report models full grid of VRE firmed by hydro and gas (not net zero) vs a full nuclear grid (fun fact: the only thing on the list that is actually net zero). This is fine for the purposes of the report which is to compare the profitability of different technologies in isolation of each other (for investment bodies). But I don't think it is fair for the consumer because there is no world we are envisioning in the next few decades that will be 100% renewable or 100% nuclear. Us in the nuclear world would want to see what the cost comparisons would look like for a 10%, 20% or 30% nuclear grid with the rest VRE. This is why I thought what you and John mentioned about the lack of harmony between VRE and NPP as interesting as it may counter my point. I think someone needs to do a study on whether having a bit of nuclear energy in the mix would lower/increase cost (for the consumers). The way I see it is, if having a bit of nuclear in the grid is not too much more expensive - isn't it better to find a way for these carbon free energy technologies to work in harmony together rather than using (dirtyish) natural gas as peaking power? I'm not saying nuclear in a balanced mix is the best idea for Australia and we should go for it, what I'm trying to say is that we need to start a mature conversation about these nuances and implement scenario based modelling instead of blanket technology vs technology. I think as engineers, we are always taught about how we can use the best of all technologies in harmony and as STEM representitives in the debate, we really need remind ourselves of that.
Regardless, I think this video was great and quite eye opening for myself. I would be very interested to know your thoughts on my two points above. I will like to add a disclaimer that I obviously have inherent bias as I am a nuclear engineer in training and my professional circle is skewed to the nuclear side as well. In saying that, I try my best to stay focused on discussions about the technological benefits/downsides so I can stay true to my training and expertise. But regardless, the economics and policy side of it is so interesting and is probably equally as important to talk about.
Cheers,
Harvey
I will also add another thing being that a big problem with the debate for us on the nuclear side is that regardless - we still have a federal ban. The state bans are also a problem but I think there's no point having/not having a state ban if you have a federal ban haha. It is very hard to have a mature conversation about nuclear if we still have a ban on the technology, this is the main thing that sets it apart from the rest of the picture. And it also makes it harder for us to have conversations about everything OUTSIDE the actual construction and operation of NPP that needs to happen such as forming a regulatory body, getting a legislative framework, figuring out what we do with waste etc. Having a federal ban makes the justification of even talking about this stuff very one sided.
Harvey thanks. Yes, the LCOE only represents the generation cost. Saying that, the retail, distribution cost (local powers and wires) would be roughly the same for any solution so usually generation is what drives the difference in final price. A lot of people mention transmission (i.e. you need more for smaller more spread out locations) but I don't think this is really a cost issue as it only makes up a small proportion of the final bill. I think it's more a social license problem as you need to buy up land from farmers etc.
To complement LCOE, one way is to compare it to the market spot price. This was the slide where I was saying investors are interested in what revenue can be achieved and make a profit (i.e. value). In the video, I showed a video of spot revenue achieved by technology. (i.e. what was the spot price when it was sunny or windy, for coal, nuclear they get the spot price across the whole periods as they are always generating) As nuclear is running all the time, you can come LCOE to the annual average spot price and you might find that there's not enough revenue to cover the costs.
www.linkedin.com/posts/john-poljak-40436b4_renewableenergy-fossilfuels-energysecurity-activity-7057295816482312192-wGvh
And I've done it for Texas Ercot which has nuclear and you can see the spot price doesn't cover the LCOE so investors would struggle to invest in it whereas solar and wind and profitable. Saying this, this is for a current generation mix, who knows what the spots prices look like when there is a lot of renewables.
www.linkedin.com/posts/john-poljak-40436b4_energy-nuclear-solar-activity-7070882945800040448-LRUh
In terms of system, I did a thought experiment which was how much storage do you need to firm up a 100% nuclear grid. It kind of goes to the heart of the problem, nuclear and renewables need something to plug the gaps. This is usually gas and even in the AEMO ISP you see gas plays a part up to 2050. So where does that leave renewables or nuclear? I see it as you pick the cheapest and continue plugging it with some form of storage or gas.
www.linkedin.com/posts/john-poljak-40436b4_nuclear-renewableenergy-battery-activity-7119097524023427072--Kfp
And finally! This was a post I made on system cost. AEMO's Integrated System Plan had a generation mix up to 2050. I picked 2040 as a year and used the CSIRO GenCost report to add up all the generation (imagine building it new and calculating a system LCOE) and you find that the cost is not the worst although there some discussions on how to cost the benefit of home solar, V2G etc
www.linkedin.com/posts/john-poljak-40436b4_renewableenergy-wind-solar-activity-7212207287799570432-9uno
Hope this helps.
@@harveyling209 Hi Harvey, just on the ban, I wrote this on another comment.
The history of nuclear in Australia includes a failed attempt to build a nuclear reactor at Jervis Bay which was chosen as it's a federal territory. This is from the PHd paper, "FROM ATOMIC ENERGY TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE; A History of the Australian Atomic Energy Commission" by Anna-Eugenia Binnie
"The situation now produced a minor constitutional and legal problem; 'Constitutionally the Commonwealth had no power to generate power (ie electricity) and under the Act the AAEC was limited to the discovery, mining, treatment, use and disposal of uranium'113. This issue was solved by the agreement between the Commonwealth and the State of NSW in which the Commonwealth Government through the AAEC would own the nuclear reactor but any electricity generated from the steam produced would be owned by the State."
So regardless of a federal ban, the Liberals will need to rely on horse-trading with state governments to make it happen. If you assume between planning and construction, it's a 10-15 year process and to put that in context, Australia has had 40 changes of federal and state leaders in that time frame. In effect, you would need a massive critical juncture to align everyone's interests.
Tony Seba "Rethink X" talks about a 100% renewable grid. He studied a bunch of locations, and says it takes 2-3 times the generation you need, and 1-5 days of storage depending on location. You also get a bunch of "free" extra power most times. Now I know that it sounds crazy wasting "precious" electricity, but we aren't trying to save electricity, we are trying to save dollars, so the question becomes, is more generation cheaper than storage. When the sun shines, or the wind blows, they are cheaper than nuclear, so nuclear can't make money. Then storage is moderating the crazy peaks. The other issue with nuclear, is if you build big nukes, you have to have a large market, which Australia doesn't, to be able to build enough of them to get good at it. In the US, under Obama we started building Summer 2 and 3, and Vogtle 3 and 4. The first two were abandoned after wasting billions, and the second two went way way over budget. Small nukes are less efficient. People have hopes and dreams, but until they build it, and get a price per kwh, it's just hopes and dreams. You can look at Flamanville and Hinkley Point C, all way more expensive. I will say, it's great for aircraft carriers and subs, and I can't help but wonder whether powering a large container ship with a nuke would pencil out. Diesel ain't cheap either.
HI Rosie. Thanks for engaging this topic in a professional manner.
As for my location it's best explained by saying one view from my farm includes the steam plume from Mt Piper a.k.a. near one of the proposed nuclear power plants.
I'm not particularly antagonistic to nuclear on basic principles but remember vividly my time in Philadelphia downwind of the Three Mile meltdown. Lots of moderate level warnings kept us alert.
Looking forward to the data but very aware this nuclear project could end up as something resembling the worst version of a Snowy 3 by way of cost and time blowouts, i.e., basic coalition fossil financed snow job. Sigh!
When Fukushima blew up the damage was about 60 billion dollars and decommissioning the plant will cost another $70B. Tepco the company responsible for the disaster will not be paying the costs because they don't have an insurance policy that covers that. The Japanese government/tax payer is basically their insurance provider. This is a MASSIVE hidden subsidy. If a nuclear power plant had to go onto the private market to get an insurance policy the cost of a KWH would go from something like 25 cents to $3.25 and even if the insurance price came down over time, my guess is it would be least be $1.25. And NO ONE would pay that much for a KWH.
100% correct.
Thanks. No one is talking about the hidden socialised (nationalised) costs, which is prrof that nuclear proponents are dishonest and trying to deceive everyone.
Remember for the most part it's not about residential. In Australia that will be largely covered by solar PV. Once you have bought the gear, the cost of electricity is $0.
The main issue is the electrical power needed for industry, that is about 65% of the total. For industry electricity cost is an input and therefore tax deductable and passed on through COGS. Industry's primary requirement is not so much about the cost of electricity as a reliable and abundant supply to keep the wheels turning. If the power fails and the pot lines freeze it is an industrial disaster.
@@jimgraham6722 Yet alumina is shipped all the way to Iceland for smelting - if businesses are cost agnostic they just must love the view.
Each time I've looked at such things I find the real costs obfuscated ie. I've seen much higher costing for this (it's also the case in the majority of heavy engineering projects I've worked on with elements shovelled from capex to operations as budgets are breached).
More and more Australians are investing in home PV and battery storage. In my case mostly I consume 3kwh per week from the grid and that includes EV charging, so I am most off the grid already.
Me too, but what happens when battery prices come down 50% or more. So many retail customers will go completely off grid, especially rural customers. So ...energy retailers will lose a large chunk of their revenue. What happens then to the price of grid electricity? It goes up significantly which means more people will want to go off grid.
And why haven't you invested in the solar/battery to get the last 3 kWh?
My guess is that like everyone else, you have calculated out that those last 3 kWh are REALLY expensive, and given you only have to pay marginal cost for the 3 kWh is really cheap - you keep on with the grid.
However, what you aren't paying for is that option for the grid. I get it, cheaper for you, but still a drag on society.
This sort of comment really bugs me. What are the heavy industrial users meant to do? All this RE (i have solar, too) actually creates problems for what was a simple, unified grid.
@@Discoworx Yes it does create problems but it will be a cheaper and a more decentralised system. Centralised power generation is a military target the more decentralised the better. Cheaper, safer, less polluting and important for national security.
@@markumbers5362 how will it be cheaper once you factor in all the storage and transmission?
@27:03 What Grant Chalmers meant was what would be the cost after 30 years? Even though nuclear generates clean energy for another 20 to 40 years (i.e 31 to 60 years)
Life of Nuclear power Plant is 60 years and refurbishment extends the life for another 20 years (i.e. 80 years).
When all capital cost is paid up in 30 years, what is the value of LCOE after 31 to 60 years.
LCOE of Nuclear (60 years)
0 to 30 years: 156 AUD/kWh
31 to 60 years: 43 AUD/kWh
The returns on nuclear will be typically low when there is a glut of sun and wind, but returns will be very high in evening peaks and when there is less sun and wind available, and can offer as preferrable to gas open cycle peakers because nuclear is emissions free. So while nuclear may be expensive to build, it will pay itself off quickly, and then become a valuable asset for future generations.
@@jinnantonix4570 The long term future value has a much lower value today. If the game borrow $100 today and are paying interest on that money for 30 years then any income they receive after that is not as valuable because of the interest they have needed to pay over 30 years in order to get to that income.
What if the refurb takes place in 30 to 60 yrs range, beznau needed near on 3 billion at 46 yrs and was offline for 3 years
Nuclear Power - Australia’s Secure Energy and Climate Solution for a Century
This presentation by Dr Robert Barr and Mr Robert Parker makes the case for nuclear energy being Australia's dominant form of electricity generation. It provides our lowest system levelised cost of energy with ultra low emissions on a very small environmental footprint.
th-cam.com/video/vQC5ijEieXE/w-d-xo.html
Excellent video Rosie.
I do enjoy your work.
I know i repeat but it is important.
John said 30% transmission and 30% distribution plus administration and profits.
John said 10cents kWh and my bill is 50cents. 5cents feedin tariff.
Less daily connection fee.
I say 90%, John says 80%, grid increases generation costs.
The grid infrastructure needs to cover its investment.
20million buildings and vehicles will make offgrid look appealing when all electric. 😮
Stephen, thanks. It was a bit of rush to prepare all the models and background information so I was using a few things from a previous livestream I did with Rosie on LCOE. So the 30 cents was a bit out of date!
I'll look to update it and post on linkedin in the future as it's worth doing a breakdown of the retail cost and compare it to the AEMO ISP future system cost. Specifically, how much extra transmission is required and the cost which considering it's not a big part, shouldn't be that much extra but for electric vehicles, how does that impact the cost of distribution, local poles and wires etc.
@@keynumbers thank you.
Keep in mind that I am suggesting that if Australia poles and wires are to supply 100% from today's 15 or 20%, then that is impossible for Australia or the world.
Materials and financing.
But if rooftop and EVs, BVs over sized battery do the job in the end, then the bigger national electric grid will be a wasted and abandoned investment.
Grids must have enough cash flow.
Bigger grid capacity then bigger bigger cashflow.
The grid works today because it is basically a small amount of the total energy used. Luxury priced for small amount to every customers full energy demands.
I don't know the answer, I just see that the extreme end that everyone is saying is impossible.
If you analysis any engineering in the extreme it will be successful or totally fail.
The grid needs every customer. Expensive electricity.
Rooftop PV and BV big batteries don't need the grid. Dirt cheap electricity.
Good work and a good forum. 👍
@@keynumbers a little more of my insights.
Most people are slow to realise that most vehicles are parked 23 hours every day and all night.
That is why most trade in vehicles have an average of 10,000 miles per year.
9,000 hours in a year.
27 miles a day.
Parked 23hrs every day.
BV oversized battery and 15% of an average roof with solar PV panels can disconnect the grid every sunny day and the following nights.
If millions of Battery Vehicles owners do the same then millions of customers cash flows to the grid owners stops for hundreds of sunny days every year.
This is also a big economic problem.
$billions every year.
Sunny days and oversized electric vehicle battery and a small part of the roof are the grid owners BIGGEST problem 🙄
Grid utilization factor crashes
BV, battery vehicles utilization factor goes to maximum.
Battery materials technology and costs and life extending management are still rapidly improving.
Solar PV panels technology is rapidly improving and costs are falling.
Note.
BV battery is 'oversized' for the daily drive but perfect every night.
@@keynumbers As fossil fuel supplies reduce, then the BV, battery vehicle, become useful.
If every building's car park spaces has a $60 wall outlet then every BV oversized battery can easily top up on trickle currents all day long. 😊😊😊
Rooftop solar PV is dirt cheap electricity.
Most vehicles are parked 23hrs every day. 😊😊😊
@@stephenbrickwood1602 thanks. I have a technology background and one of the big changes in the sector was the move away form big mainframes to cheap personal computers. Google made famous recycling old clunker computers and linking to do all the searches. I can see a similar situation where instead of focusing on a few super-powered fast charges, we utilise the fact most cars sit around for 95% of the time doing nothing. So a lot of simple smaller powered charges will do the trick.
Nuclear power would probably never have made it out of the demonstrator phase if it were not for governments needing reactors to produce fuel for nuclear bombs. In the US, nuclear energy has been EXTREMELY highly subsidized by the government. If the true cost of nuclear power were passed straight on to the consumer, it would add a zero (or more) to their power bills. For all the people who wonder why the nuclear industry went with reactor designs and fuel types that have the potential to melt down instead of going with any of the long list of likely much safer reactor designs and fuel types, the answer is partly efficiency but mostly because the government was footing a lot of the bill for these reactors and the government wanted reactors that could produce plutonium and bomb material.
Also, until recently, nuclear reactors in the US were mandated by law to hire only union members for every speck of work done on or associated with nuclear power plant construction. Given that this means 10+ years of very high paying employment for hundreds or thousands of union members, (and their families)who will vote for the politician that votes funds for a nuclear power plant in his district, whether it makes economic sense or not, it's no wonder why nuclear power plants, with all their long known and understood problems, costs and limitations, still manage to receive support and LOTS of government funding.
You lost me early, when you said the CSRIO report offered true costs. How can they say that a nuclear reactor is operates less than 80% of the time! Also, while solar and wind may be very good here in Aus, it can’t give constant base load power to support industrial operations. It’s hard to manufacture anything without a steady base load.
But it's not as though "industrial operations" (or any power user) needs to use power from one single source the whole time. The whole point of a balanced grid is that you might get power from different sources (wind, solar, battery, has for example) at different times.
There’re detailed simulations out there that uses real data and shows that with with connected grids, multiple sources, and storage it will easily support current requirements.
What about when energy retailers lose half of their customers because 50% of them go off grid when battery prices come down 50% which is what they are expected to do. This would be especially applicable for rural areas. Less customers same running costs.
It's inevitable that many small users will become energy independent.
Maybe where you live . here in Italy most people live in condos and so they cant be off grid.
@@corradoalamanni179 A lot in Australia too. My main focus is rural areas where going off grid would be a no brainer.
France sells excess nuclear power to the rest of europe; europe has a major sourcing problem in 2023-24 - missing Russian gas and German nuclear. Simultaneously, France has being doing a lot of maintenance on their reactors (possibly where the peak variation over the year come).
The very flat production is to be expected, as many parts of Europe are paying more than 1.5 x as much for electricity now as to before the Russian Ukraine invasion.
For 9 out of the last 10 years, France has had a power trade deficit with Germany. As pointed out in the video it is dependent on connections to the European grid to balance its nuclear.
@@tassied12 What wasn't pointed out is that France exports electricity when the price is high,
and imports electricity when the price is low.
Also, we can note that prior to the EU, when the electricity grid was not as integrated as it is now, France had already built its reactors and was balancing its grid fine.
To put it another way, yes, France is taking the easy route by using the European grid to balance nuclear. However, France *could* do without that.
Versus Germany, which *requires* the European grid, and coal, to balance intermittent wind/solar.
@@factnotfiction5915 That is an over-simplification of the French situation. As the ENTSO data presented in the video shows, the French prefer to run their generators with a flat output profile. This also means they have to dump their power at a loss onto the wider European grid when demand (and hence prices) are low and it also restricts their ability to generate extra output when demand (and hence prices) rise.
This is happening at the moment where they are enduring negative wholesale prices and have had to temporarily shut down some of the plants due to cheap renewables coming from Germany and Spain.
When the French lost over 50% of their nuclear capacity in 2022, they could not have survived on their own. In that year they imported 17.65 TWh from Germany while only exporting 2.33 TWh
Demand patterns are also very different today to when those plants were first built
I found the book "Shorting the Grid" by Meredith Angwin eye-opening about how markets work (at least in parts of the US). The half hour pricing does not tend to reflect the actual price of electricity as many generators get their income from other sources.
1) renewables get renewable obligations certificates (so suppliers and businesses can meet their N% renewable mandates), guaranteed prices (contract for difference), and feed in tariffs for smaller-scale;
2) gas (especially open cycle peaker plants) rely more on capacity payments so they can stand by ready to fill in gaps;
3) nuclear gets little (although that has now changed in the US given the Inflation Reduction Act production credits).
On the subject of the GenCost report, what interests me is the notion that nuclear can be costed on a single price comparison. The 2.8 multiplier comes from comparing coal in South Korea and Australia, adjusting for plant size and inflation and various other factors. The story would be different were Japan and their ABWR to be used (since the coal plant in Japan cost around the same as Australia).
Thanks for setting up the page to rewatch the stream and play myself on the numbers simultaneously! I will definitely do that this weekend.
France is not "shutting down part of its its fleet" overnight and bringing those nuclear reactors back online for the following evening peak! Shutdowns are seasonal, not diurnal. Rather, it's reducing electrical output from many reactors at once. To some extent this can be done in the reactor itself via control rods, but ramping that way cannot be done quickly nor for a large fraction of the reactor's thermal output. Electrical output is easier to reduce though: steam can bypass the turbines, to be vented to the atmosphere if very rapid ramping is required, or cooled without delivering any mechanical or electrical power at all.
Right, but then you're just curtailing the energy, so you still have all the costs you'd have spent anyway
@@Paulo44.01 Indeed. Using control rods does not save very much in the way of costs either: fuel is saved, but fuel is only a tiny fraction of the total cost of nuclear power.
The analysis of how long build times are is misleading in a number of ways as well. Build is not the same as online time, the equivalent of saying house building time is only until the roof is on, not until you move in. Another part is that a lot of the "new" plants are worth digging into as the list I've seen seemed to be filled with refits, expansions, etc that are essentially expansions or updates of current reactors that will have much much shorter build times.
Thanks. One way or another Australia will need around 60GW capacity of GHG free electrical energy on line 24/7 by 2050. Some analysis suggests it will be twice this.
Whether you propose to do it by renewables, nuclear or a combination, you have to have a detailed plan as to how this will be done.
In my view renewables with lots of storage (principally pumped hydro and possibly compressed air) buttressed by nuclear is the way to go. Reliability of supply far outweighs cost when it comes to priorities.
Spot on in my view. Ditch the nuclear ban and let the engineering and economics sort out the appropriate technology mix.
Reliability of supply will be critical for the social licence required , and what's needed now to reach targets is planning, design and construction.
Unfortunately politicians seem ready to turn the energy transition into an NBN style debacle - all that did was waste lots of time and money.
So far it seems that renewables + a few hours of storage + a bunch of gas peakers that run ~10% of the time would be the best way to go. That last 10% of emissions are too expensive to solve with current technology and we're better off taking that money to decarbonize other things, like industrial emissions.
@@Paulo44.01 If you can get storage to over 200 hours you are in business. Less is a waste of money.
A little addition on space in Europe. You are absolutely right that there is limited space on land (except for rooftops). But the UK, Netherlands and Denmark for example are building a lot of wind capacity on the seas. The nice thing about this is that it works very well in the winter, offsetting the “dark” months with limited sunlight and hence solar power.
Fantastic work. I have only just caught up with this review. Please keep up the great work and thanks for your honesty. It really is easy to say Dutton is a disgrace but we do need our politicians to become honest and work in our interests.
You two are really reaching and contorting to reach a conclusion against nuclear. Wind and solar require all kinds of extra expensive storage and transmission to make them work. All this stuff can also work with nuclear and you don't need as much of it. If you have lots of nuclear power, wind and solar are superfluous and just an extra expense.
Well I would not say superflous but surely than we may use them localy where they make more sense
Australia does not have nuclear because coal was cheap.
Australia joined the world leaders fearful of the military costs of nuclear INDUSTRIES in every country including all the dictatorships.
80% of the world's population live in dictatorships. Free voting for a few people.
Uranium yellowcake is sold to a few countries.
So to stop worldwide CO2 emissions with nuclear electricity Australia can feel safe with 6 USA nuclear submarines and selling uranium yellowcake to every nuclear industry. 😮
Australia is spending a fortune on USA military weapons systems as well.
So dirt cheap nuclear electricity has no external costs. Wonderful 😊
All we need to do is to make nuclear legal and not spend a cent of tax payer dollars on it. If the market sees an opportunity for nuclear, it will build nuclear. I doubt that any private entity will decide to build a nuclear power plant in Australia.
There is an interesting development in Europe, I believe, where they are heating 20 foot containers full of graphite (in a nitrogen atmosphere) from excess renewable energy and makes that available as high temperature steam to existing turbines from closed down coal power plants.
Shouldn't they be government owned and operated?
But the LNP plan is to fully fund Nuclear and also to restrict Renewables so they don't compete with their "investment"
@@johnpeters4214 The LNP plan is bullshit incarnate. Its about prolonging the profits from the fossil fuel cartel.
@@gavinw77 Interesting that. The LNP doesn’t believe in direct government provision of service. That suggests to me that they don’t really believe that nuclear generators will be built by the government. It’s just a dumb play to get re-elected.
@@dermotbalaam5358 And the LNP has actually reversed their position on community consultation - now they say that they will force the reactors to be installed, and the community will have no veto.
🎯 Key points for quick navigation:
00:00 *🎵 Einleitung und Begrüßung*
- Rosie und John diskutieren über die Motivation der Live-Diskussion und den aktuellen Stand der nuklearen Debatte in Australien.
- Rosie betont, dass Kernkraft in Australien illegal ist und erwähnt eine kürzlich veröffentlichte Liste von Standorten für Kernkraftwerke.
- Die Kernkraftdebatte wird als besonders kontrovers und emotional beschrieben, mit starken Meinungen zu den verwendeten Daten.
02:24 *📊 Diskussion über Kernkraft und öffentliche Meinungen*
- Analyse der öffentlichen und fachlichen Reaktionen auf Rosies Video und Post über Kernkraft.
- Beschreibung der Reaktionen auf sozialen Medien und die Kritik an der Auswahl pessimistischer Daten.
- John erklärt das Konzept von "Key Numbers" zur Objektivierung der Diskussion durch neutrale Datenanalyse.
05:38 *💡 Erörterung der Kernkraftkosten und Vergleich mit erneuerbaren Energien*
- Diskussion über die Kosten von Kernkraft im Vergleich zu erneuerbaren Energien in Australien und der Einfluss auf die Energiepolitik.
- Erwähnung einer CSO-Analyse, die jährlich die Kosten verschiedener Energiesysteme vergleicht.
- Betonung, dass Kernkraft teurer ist als erneuerbare Energien, selbst wenn die Kosten für die Absicherung (Firming) berücksichtigt werden.
09:00 *🌍 Globale Perspektiven und deutsche Kommentare*
- Einbindung internationaler Perspektiven durch Kommentare aus Deutschland und Großbritannien.
- Diskussion über die Kernkraftpolitik in anderen Ländern und deren Vergleich zu Australiens Situation.
- Erörterung der technischen und wirtschaftlichen Herausforderungen der Kernkraft im Vergleich zu erneuerbaren Energien.
12:04 *🔋 Zukunft der Energiespeicherung und Verbraucherverhalten*
- Diskussion über die Rolle der Batterietechnologie und der Elektrofahrzeuge als Energiespeicher.
- Erwähnung der zunehmenden Bedeutung von Batteriespeichern und der potenziellen Vorteile von Fahrzeug-zu-Netz (V2G) Technologien.
- Überlegungen, wie Verhaltensänderungen der Verbraucher die Energienutzung beeinflussen könnten.
21:35 *🌬️ Bedeutung der Windenergie und ihre zeitliche Abstimmung mit dem Energiebedarf*
- Diskussion über die Rolle von Windenergie und ihre Fähigkeit, den Energiebedarf während der Spitzenzeiten zu decken.
- Windenergie passt gut zu den Zeiten hoher Nachfrage, insbesondere am Abend und am Morgen.
- Es wird geplant, mehr Onshore-Windanlagen zu bauen, um die Lücken bei der Energieversorgung zu schließen, wenn die Windverfügbarkeit gering ist.
23:10 *🌐 Vergleich der Projektkosten für Kernkraftwerke weltweit*
- Analyse und Vergleich der Kosten verschiedener Kernkraftprojekte weltweit, einschließlich der Annahmen über Bauzeiten und Kostenstrukturen.
- Der CSIRO-GenCost-Bericht zeigt, dass die Kosten für Kernenergie in Australien relativ niedrig geschätzt werden im Vergleich zu internationalen Projekten.
- Erörterung der Strategie Koreas, mehrere Kraftwerke hintereinander zu bauen, um von früheren Projekten zu lernen und Kosten zu senken.
25:14 *🏭 Diskussion über die Skalierbarkeit und Wirtschaftlichkeit von SMRs in Australien*
- Überlegungen zur wirtschaftlichen Durchführbarkeit und Skalierbarkeit von kleinen modularen Reaktoren (SMRs) in Australien.
- Bedenken hinsichtlich der Fähigkeit, Kosten durch nur zwei geplante SMRs signifikant zu senken.
- Betonung der Notwendigkeit, mehrere Einheiten zu bauen, um die Lernkurve und Kosteneffizienz zu optimieren.
27:06 *📉 Erklärung des Levelized Cost of Electricity (LCOE) und dessen Berechnung*
- Vertiefte Diskussion über das Konzept des Levelized Cost of Electricity (LCOE) und wie es zur Bewertung der Wirtschaftlichkeit von Energieprojekten verwendet wird.
- Erklärung, dass der LCOE die notwendigen Einnahmen darstellt, um alle Projektkosten sowie eine angemessene Rendite für Investoren zu decken.
- Diskussion über die Wertminderung zukünftiger Einnahmen und deren Einfluss auf den LCOE.
42:31 *🛠️ Flexibilität und Kapazitätsfaktor von Kernkraftwerken in Frankreich*
- Analyse der Betriebsflexibilität französischer Kernkraftwerke und deren Kapazitätsfaktoren.
- Trotz hoher Kernenergieanteile zeigt sich, dass französische Reaktoren meistens einen stabilen Basislastbetrieb aufweisen, ohne signifikante tägliche Leistungsschwankungen.
- Diskussion der technischen und wirtschaftlichen Herausforderungen im Betrieb von Kernkraftwerken mit hohen Kapazitätsfaktoren.
44:10 *💰 Kosten und Kapazitätsfaktoren der Kernenergie in verschiedenen Ländern*
- Diskussion über die Kapazitätsfaktoren und deren Einfluss auf die Kosten von Kernkraftwerken weltweit.
- Niedrigere Kapazitätsfaktoren führen zu höheren Kosten pro erzeugter Megawattstunde, was die Wirtschaftlichkeit beeinträchtigt.
- Frankreichs Kernkraftwerke haben mit der Zeit an Zuverlässigkeit verloren, was zu geringeren Kapazitätsfaktoren führt.
46:00 *🌍 Globale Energiepreise und die Rolle der Regierung in der Kernenergiefinanzierung*
- Erörterung der Implikationen staatlicher Finanzierung für die Kernenergie und deren Einfluss auf die Strompreise für Verbraucher.
- Kernenergieprojekte könnten staatlich finanziert werden, was die direkten Kosten für Verbraucher senken, aber die Steuerlast erhöhen würde.
- Vergleich der Energiepreisgestaltung und Marktmechanismen in verschiedenen Ländern, einschließlich des Einflusses von Angebot und Nachfrage auf die Preisbildung.
48:05 *📉 Systemkosten der Stromerzeugung und Auswirkungen auf die Strompreise*
- Analyse der Systemkosten für Stromerzeugung und deren Einfluss auf die Endverbraucherpreise.
- Diskussion über die Notwendigkeit ausreichender Erzeugungskapazitäten, um Preisspitzen zu vermeiden und die Versorgungssicherheit zu gewährleisten.
- Betonung der Bedeutung einer diversifizierten Energieerzeugung zur Stabilisierung der Strompreise.
Made with HARPA AI
I felt the analysis on the life of project using the same discount rate overly simplistic. If offshore wind has a lifespan of 30 years this needs to be factored into a terminal value of $0 at the end of period, while if a nuclear last 60 it has value at year 30 much higher than 0. Using a set discount rate for both and changing the time period does not capture the true outcome, understood this approach has been taken from the Gencost report. A DCF model provides more flexibility to capture this. Further the LNP proposal is to fund the project by government debt which is approx 4.2 to 4.5% cost of funds, depending on tenure, hence this would be owned by the people and not subject to paying investors a return. This results in a major difference in price outcomes as project costs are inflated away rather than paid to an equity holder. More sophisticated modelling is required.
My other question is on capacity factor. I feel this is overly simplistic, whilst it caters for no wind/no sun/shut downs etc, it does not cover the timing of usuage. The cross-over of solar across the grid, e.g. the sun goes down around the same time across the country hence it is not 19 - 32% it is materially lower, similar for wind but not as extreme. After the video I still wasn't assured that a 100% renewables with backup gas is appropriate. It feels like a gamble that I can't see any other nation has attempted or is currently living in. I live in SA and occasionally watch the NEM and scratch my head as to how SA would survive without interstate fossil fuels and what would happen if the whole of Australia adopted our approach, which is reflected in extreme variable energy pricing. I haven't seen good modelling linking the variable timing differences of renewable energy production and batteries across the nation, just a simplistic renewables is cheaper than nuclear using an overly simplist capacity factor.
Regarding super funds, they are much likely to invest in projects with consistent known cashflows, energy is increasingly difficult, with rising renewables resulting in volatile energy prices. Given Your Future Your Super benchmarks do not provide an appropriate benchmark to hold these assets against, & the variable nature of cashflows, I struggle to see how super will invest in renewables going forward.
Tom, thanks. Providing subsidised funding at around 4-% would reduce the cost by about $20-30/MWh.
On the capacity factor, it doesn't make sense to just look at each technology by itself. AEMO does an Integrated System Plan outlines a mix of renewables, storage, gas etc and they model the reliability standard of 99.998% in there. So you can assume that combination would be reliable. Also if you take their system mix and dividing it by production (in effect a system LCOE) you can get the cost of renewables plus storage. In theory, the LNP should be modelling the same but with nuclear somewhere in the mix to compare it to renewables + storage/gas. And you could do the same with the current generation mix which includes coal to see if it's cheaper/more expensive.
For superannuation funds, normally a renewable energy project has sold their output via a purchase power agreement so there's a fixed revenue stream.
And yes, the CSIRO models are very simplistic. There's a balancing act between having lots of parameters and keeping it simple for the intended audience. Most probably politicians! You can change the parameters that we used in the livestream through this link.
keynumbers.com/#/public/page/nuclear-rosie-csiro-gencost-keynumbers-13197
@@keynumbers thanks for this. In your analysis is there a difference between the margin above the wholesale price a customers pays for variable intermittent energy source vs a more predictable base load? For example I would think a retail energy provider would put a wider spread (higher margin) if the cost of energy (wholesale price) has greater uncertainty in price? How does this work? Thankyou
@@tomnitschke4498 for larger retailers, they usually own their own generation (AGL, Energy Australia etc) so they are kind of naturally hedged against spot price fluctuations. This would, I think cover any operator of coal (baseload) in Australia and most probably you could say combined cycle turbine (natural gas running for most of the day)
For smaller retail-only operations, they would normally enter into long term purchase power agreements for wind/solar and plug the gaps with gas generation. This gas generation could be bought on the spot price but is usually hedged using a $300 Cap. It's this part that could vary in that the cost to purchase a hedge could get expensive.
But! In a world where the cure to high prices is high prices, the market would normally see more peaker plant generation being built (gas, batteries, hydro etc) due to higher profits which would eventually bring down prices and lead to a market where everyone makes just a reasonable profit. This is where the LCOE vs long term spot price acts as a kind of indicator in terms of whether to build new generation. (i.e. low daytime price, build less solar, high peaker price, build more gas)
Couple of links for further reading:
I wrote about South Australia electricity prices for a hydrogen article but goes into spot markets etc.
www.linkedin.com/pulse/what-true-cost-electricity-john-poljak-r0omc/
AEMC links is the basics on spot and contract market
www.aemc.gov.au/energy-system/electricity/electricity-market/spot-and-contract-markets
This report to the SA Productivity commission has some good analysis on impact of renewables and spot prices.
www.sapc.sa.gov.au/inquiries/inquiries/south-australias-renewable-energy-competitiveness/commissioned-research-to-support-the-inquiry/Question-D-Wholesale-and-retail-price-projections-UoW.pdf
From the team that brought you Snowy 2.0 we now have nuclear.
and inland Rail, Kurri Kurri gas plant...
The ongoing Nuclear debate and Fusion only -30- 10 years away 😃
The biggest fear is the cashflow crash to the national electrical grid owners.
$110BILLION per year.
If it takes 4 to 5 years to pay-off the rooftop solar PV system today.
Tomorrow it will take 1 year with the Battery Vehicles plugged in 23hrs every day.
As the grid is deserted, electrical prices and petroleum prices will explode.
New solar farms can move their batteries closer to the population.
Big batteries can be broken into useful parts.
For building and home batteries.
New solar farms can move their panels onto the populations rooftops.
Nuclear plants and grid scrap values are an expensive economic problem.
Great discussion thanks.
Another problem for large nuclear in an Australian context is its size for redundancy.
The usual size of a reactor unit & generator is just over 1GW. Which is around 1/50th of the NEM’s total generation capability in just 1 unit.
When that goes off-line for refuelling (which I understand can take a month every 2 years) & deeper maintenance (which can take several months every 5-10 years) then there needs to be sufficient spare generation capacity to replace it. Or there is increased risk of supply shortages resulting in stratospheric prices or load shedding.
Paying for that additional ~1GW of stand-by replacement generation adds to the cost of nuclear.
This replacement generation is already calculated into the LCOE (E for energy, not power).
However, wind/solar have the exact same issue, but bigger.
(ignoring storage and spinning reserve and choosing numbers for easy calculation)
For a grid with 10 GW peak demand:
* 1 GW NPPs, each of which have a 90% c.f. - you need 11 NPPs - 10 to support the grid, 1 is offline for maintenance.
* 1 GW wind farms, each of which have a 30%.c.f. - you need 33 wind farms (you could break down into offshore/onshore, but the same basic logic applies).
* 1 GW solar farms, each of which have a 25%.c.f. - you need 40 solar farms (irrelevant if utility-scale or rooftop, the same basic logic applies).
BUT !!!!! - for the wind/solar you ALSO need gas/storage/extra wind/extra solar to make up for the times where ALL 33 wind/40 solar farms are offline. The c.f. is an average, not a point in time, so this is a real problem. It is these extra costs which makes the problem worse for wind/solar; and this cost is NOT included in the wind/solar LCOE.
Ok, now include storage and spinning reserve back in, and you'll see the same basic logic applies.
So, yes, you are correct; but you are also ignoring that solar/wind have the same problem to a greater degree.
@@factnotfiction5915 Absolutely correct that for every 10 (or fewer) 1GW nuclear generators in a fleet another 1GW of generation capacity is required to cover off-line periods for maintenance & unplanned outages. (Although this ratio can vary depending on average fleet capacity factor & grid transmission capability)
However the premise is incorrect for a large scale wind or solar farm. Because, unlike a nuclear reactor, individual turbines & sub-groups of panels can be isolated & maintained whilst the rest of the generator units function.
With individual turbines usually sized at 2-3 MW & the average total wind farm size ~50MW, each turbine contributes around 4 to 6% of the output. Barely even noticeable & easily replaced by other generators when being maintained.
As to how many wind farms & solar farms are required you’re out by a factor of ten when those farms are geographically dispersed & interconnected. In reality, when the grid is fully completed, the ‘overbuild’ factor will be closer to 3 & 4 respectively. This is because covering the last few % to reach a true 100% wind & solar requires a disproportionate amount of additional capacity. Which because of low utilisation makes the last small % portion more expensive than other options. So a 100% RE grid will usually comprise of 90-95% wind & solar with gas peaking, hydro, batteries, CER, etc able to cover up to ~25 to 30% but regularly contributing between 5 & 15%. During periods of favourable weather conditions wind & solar will solely fully supply the grid & have sufficient excess to replenish batt & hydro storage.
BTW, firming costs are included in the range of Levelised Cost Of Electricity calculations. Often presented as seperate figures or given as a range of cost points per MW/H.
@@markboscawen8330 > However the premise is incorrect for a large scale wind or solar farm. Because, unlike a nuclear reactor, individual turbines & sub-groups of panels can be isolated & maintained whilst the rest of the generator units function.... As to how many wind farms & solar farms are required you’re out by a factor of ten when those farms are geographically dispersed & interconnected.
1st - It doesn't matter if wind/solar is down for maintenance or because there is no wind/sun, the c.f. analysis is the same - i.e. the c.f. includes both.
2nd - 'geographically dispersed & interconnected' - maybe.
Weather fronts can be 100s of miles in breadth/depth (a hurricane is about 300 miles across - about the size of the state of Texas). And we have seen this in the real world - even the Australian dunkelflaute Rosie mentioned was across the entire Australian eastern coast; the 2021/2022 North Sea dunkelflaute was across the North Sea, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Germany, Netherlands, UK, Ireland.
These things are huge!
3rd - 'geographically dispersed & interconnected' - sure, you can build transmission from Perth to Sydney - now just include those costs in your model!
Don't forget the 2nd set of wind turbines/solar panels at both ends!
(i.e. if you are supplying Sydney with Perth RE, then you need RE for Perth + RE for Sydney; likewise you need to install extra at Sydney to send to Perth). Include those costs also.
I was being fairly generous in only multiplying out by the c.f. inverse, but again you need EXTRA to ensure reliability since 'geographically dispersed' does not mean 'anti-correlated' it means 'less LIKELY to be correlated'.
@@factnotfiction5915
1st, it does matter as maintenance on a single turbine or group of panels doesn’t stop the rest of the facility from producing power when favourable conditions occur. This keeps the overall capacity factor of the facility up to the figures quoted whilst enabling scheduled maintenance to occur.
2nd. The scope of Rosie’s video is Australia. Hence so are my comments. I appreciate the duration & breadth of dunkelflaute in other parts of the world can be worse than here. That is their problem to manage & why, for some, their most viable option will be nuclear.
As acknowledged, Australia has dunkelflaute as well. Though it’s very rare to last more than a day over one or two states and rarer still to simultaneously extend from Adelaide to Cairns. Storage will cover most occurrences & demand management will help bridge those extended once in a decade events. The BOM forecast period & accuracy helping decision making.
Economically, it cheaper to suspend operations in two or three smelters for a day or two once a decade than build standby generation capability that would only be used 0.00082% of the time.
3rd Australia is indeed very fortunate in that our continent stretches over three time zones. So have the opportunity to help smooth out duck curves & have several opportunities to capture the same windy weather fronts as they move across the country.
Though as storage ATM is far cheaper than a HVDC link between Perth & the NEM we won’t be having the Freo Doctor powering Sydney’s cooktops anytime soon.
For all your comments FC, you haven’t refuted that building 1GW+ of standby generation capability to cover the short but relatively frequent times a large nuclear power plant goes off-line is expensive & problematic in the context of the Australian NEM grid. Both of which add to the very high cost of using NPPs in Australia.
@@markboscawen8330 > 1st, it does matter as maintenance on a single turbine or group of panels doesn’t stop the rest of the facility
You really do not understand c.f.
If your wind turbines have a c.f. of 35%, then that is it. You don't get to turn 1 one for every 2 off - they come like that.
You build 1,000 onshore wind turbines - your c.f. is 35%.
You build 10,000 onshore wind turbines - your c.f. is STILL 35%!
(The c.f. takes into account that some of the time 80% of your turbines are on, and that sometimes 80% of them are off, or any % you care to note.)
Now, with 10,000 turbines, it is true that you generate more of the time, but you are STILL only generating 35% of your total _capacity_.
Ok, raising the capacity enables you to have less storage - STIPULATED.
But raising the capacity ALSO increases your capital costs - REALITY!
If your demand is 30 GW (Australia has 30 to 40 GW demand), then the number of wind turbines you need is 30 divided by the average capacity rating DIVIDED BY THE c.f.!
So, for a 100% driven-by-onshore-wind grid with 30 GW demand, @ 10 MW a turbine @ 35% = 30000/10/0.35 = 8,571 wind turbines needed.
The 8,571 turbines mooted above PRESUMES each wind turbine is INDEPENDENT of the others, which they obviously are not. Because wind is correlated across HUGE areas, your wind turbines are correlated across huge areas, so as you add capacity, it isn't a linear addition - you have diminishing returns, so to avoid storage, you will need MORE assets than the inverse of your c.f. Basically, 8,571 wind turbines is the minimum needed, the lower bound, the threshold.
> demand management will help bridge those extended once in a decade events. ... Economically, it is cheaper to suspend operations in two or three smelters for a day or two once a decade than build standby generation capability that would only be used 0.00082% of the time.
Agreed!
However, it all depends on the precision of 2 forecasts - weather events and demand - and so it is less precise. With nuclear, we only need to forecast demand and build accordingly - it is much more certain.
(ps - shocker - you can use demand management on a nuclear-centric grid with the same ease as on an intermittent energy-centric grid)
> you haven’t refuted that building 1GW+ of standby generation capability to cover the short but relatively frequent times a large nuclear power plant goes off-line is expensive & problematic
If we take the German example, you have to build MORE (%-wise) standby generation for intermittent RE than for other grids, nuclear or not. However, the main point about 'short but frequent' (not that I agree that a plant which shuts down every other or every third year as 'frequent') is that those shutdowns are PLANNED. We know when and for how long, and the predictability makes it simpler to deal with.
Thanks Dr Rosie. Have all the transmission lines been costed? Have all the current wind farms we are paying for been connected? So much information or missing information makes this chat subject to bias. I appreciate your views on. Where nuclear power works and where it doesn't. Regards James
I installed rooftop solar over 2 years ago.
Paid $100 dep & int free loan over 2 years.
The payback was less than 2 years as I am well in advance on my solar feedin
Have not paid an electricity bill since installing
Why is everyone making a simple problem so hard
Living in Canberra.
Sal
😂😂😂 a lot of things use more electricity than you phone
If 100% of people took up this deal then how would the generation/transmission/distribution system be paid for? The reliability this brings has a certain value, otherwise you'd buy some batteries and go off-grid, right?
@asabriggs6426 Most vehicles are parked 23hrs every day.
Battery Vehicles, EVs, have oversized battery for the daily drive.
Smart people top up daily.
Battery mostly full every day.
Selfplug-in V2G EVs trickle currents all day long only need a $60 wall outlet.
Rapid charging will be on the main roads and at corner stores and community batteries.
@@stephenbrickwood1602 My question is "how will the grid be paid for if everyone (or even a large percentage) have rooftop solar that (net) covers their electricity bill?" Australian proposals for net zero heavily rely on industrial solar/wind and a much enlarged grid; that needs paying for, and that will happen through tax-payers or electricity bills.
@@asabriggs6426 Once we've all got PV and batteries who needs the grid?
Suggest looking at what E2S Power has developed who has converted a coal-fired power plant in India to run on pollution and waste free thermal energy in the form of 700C steam. Only took a month to refit. Was one of the cabling designers on Loy Yang A and B stations so know what goes into building a station from scratch. 'Just have a think' on TH-cam has an explanation of how it works, on a recent video.
you beat me to it, lol! i just posted a link above to the same thing :)
Thanks guys great work, you should be on TV. .journalist are still talking about baseload..this needs to change..
I don't think so, this seems like a very biased channel.
Basic arithmetic.
@@stephenbradshaw3967 basic arithmetic yes, correct interpretation no
Similar to: if you have 5 apples at $1 and 6 oranges at $2, how much for a dozen?
(a dozen of what has not been specified)
But why is the LCOE relevant? It's the total cost that matters. You're looking at the wrong number. Even if wind and solar are the cheapest to 'add' to the grid, as the CSIRO says, wind loses to wind, solar loses to solar. Adding wind and solar makes the rest of the grid less efficient and thereby driving up costs of the grid as a whole. This is why grids with lots of wind and solar have high electricity bills. South Australia verses the other states. California verses the other states. Germany and Ireland verses the other EU. There are no exceptions.
It's like comparing commodities, the levelised cost of commodities (LOCC); iron, cotton or opium. The LOCC would be good for comparing iron and cotton, but not good for opium because people will get addicted to opium then become unproductive and the market shrinks. But even as the market shrinks, all the way up to economic collapse, societal collapse and into an opium war, the LOCC would still say that opium has the largest profits. Wind and solar are the opium of the energy sector.
Really interesting presentation to listen to and it does a great job of illustrating why Nuclear is totally unsuitable for Australia. Just about to pay for my electricity in advance by installing solar and a 20 kWh Pylontech battery
If I was a nuclear advocate, I'd simply pick my battles and not try to force nuclear on one of the least suitable countries in the world. All that effort can be better spent elsewhere *cough* Germany *cough*
Idk. What to write, you basically negated yourself in the same comment.
I mean good luck trying to market an reactor in Germany, a country were the last plant operators partly gave up due to renewable market penetration.
@@deathgun3110 you mean where government bureaucrats lied about the benefits of nuclear to society?
You can make new nuclear power plants powered by russian uranium when you've done your home work and built all PV and wind power you need for the next 30 years.
And do not forget to ditch LNG from the Quatari. You will not be able to afford it 20 years from now.
30 years is about the time it takes for Germany to build a power plant - any type of large power plant - and the needed grid.
I mean, if advanced nuclear proves to be economical even in sunny Australia, it will be a no-brainer for any advanced economy in a few decades.
That all sounds wonderful.
What happens when it's realised that the amount of minerals required to build out this system would supply less than 20% of the global population & the 80% of "have nots" come for the 20% of haves?
Thank you for all this!
Conversation is all around domestic use of electricity: what about industrial applications that create jobs. + sovereign risk factor, China and India are building Coal power along with nuclear plants… as there goal is to be industrialised manufacturing nations, it appears from you show will become a nation of barista makers that cook by candles at night
Top content, thank you :)
Wind, solar and hydro are renewables. Nuclear is a delayable.
... by billions of years.
This reactor vessel should be state of the art but the cost is not the issue
It's the Time of the plant being operational and it is a transitional fuel so it should be temporary
Nuclear isn't intended to be a transitional fuel. Although i have conflicting information on the amount available fissible material, I have heard numbers of reactors lasting 80-100 years. I actually thought there was less available uranium than that.
@@gavinw77 there's plenty of uranium for the next 100 years in conventional gen3+ reactors, after that we will transition to gen4 advanced breeder reactors which will consume the spent fuel, and give us another 10,000 years of emissions free energy.
Uranium is basically being released to the oceans faster than humans could ever consume it.
good review
The main thing I don't understand is how the grid-scale storage, required for the (rare) dunkelflaute, will actually be achievable. I found Sabine Hossenfelder's video interesting, with compressed air being a candidate. But the scale just seems insurmountable.
Gov website says electricity use in Australia is ~190 TWh/year. Naively averaged we get 520 GWh/day (peak consumption is ~55 GW). If we pick the energy storage target as 50% load for 21 days (as the worst case), that's 5.5 TWh of storage and ~25-30 GW of delivery (and some fraction of that as recharge speed).
We obviously wouldn't use a single source, but if we did... batteries are out (440k AUD per MWh, for the first 100 MWh battery I saw on Google, would be ~2.5 trillion AUD). Hydro requires building hydroelectric power stations as well as dams (all of NSW's hydro generation is a bit over 5.5 GW, so 5x that). Hydrogen would require generating (at ~55% efficiency?) and storing a _lot_ of hydrogen, in addition to building a _lot_ of hydrogen-consuming power plants.
Even with an optimal mix, that's a lot of storage to build in the next ten years. Fossil fuels seem like they'll stick around, at a decent fraction of energy generation, until that storage problem is solved.
A deep dive into this, at the scale required specifically for Australia, would be pretty cool to see.
5,5TWh of battery storage currently costs about 5.5 trillion US$,8,25 trillion AUD. 1000 US$ per kWh.
Actually it would be much less but lets take this number.
Running 20 years with a cycle count of 200 per year that would be a total cost of
8.250.000.000.000 / 5,5 x 20 x 200 x 1000 x 1000 x 1000 that is 22.000.000.000.000 = 37,5 cents/kWh
I think that is possible, financially feasible and practical.
Of course only if your country makes the battery cells with your own raw materials yourself.
Not when you buy everything from CATL or Gotion.
21 days no sun in Australia?
Nicely done video.
Worcester, Massachusetts USA
It would be great if you declared your conflicts of interest.
The only costs the consumer wants to know is the kWh cost to us.
France's energy system comprises 70% of their generated power.
Consumers pay approximately A$0.32 per kWh
Many Australians pay up to $0.45 kWh.
Much more expensive.
I pay $0.352c per KwH. NOT much more expensive. Plus that per KwH cost is reduced by my solar feed in tariff.
Just the water needed for cooling is a problem, heat of summer is an issue then waste couldn’t be left in open ponds because of the more frequent storms/cyclones and now tornadoes
> Just the water needed for cooling is a problem, heat of summer is an issue then waste couldn’t be left in open ponds
Presumably you're talking about cooling a NPP and nuclear spent fuel waste.
1st - if the NPPs are being built on the site of existing coal plants, then the cooling water previously going to coal plants is now being consumed by NPPs, so it appears sources exist.
(1b - alternatives to cooling water exist, such as at Palo Verde, the US' second-largest NPP - in the middle of the Arizona desert!
1c - newer Gen IV designs don't require as much cooling water)
2nd - Nuclear spent fuel waste is not left in open ponds - anywhere in the world. Essentially, It is put inside indoor covered swimming pools, and removed from the pool 5-10 years later and placed inside a 20-ton concrete 'dry' cask placed on the back parking lot, which does not require pools of water.
To calculate fission power plants lifetime expense, the cost of disposing and maintaining the safety of waste uranium fuels must be included and realistic.
People that promote fission power plants are the people who stand to gain the most from their operation. The billions of dollars that are spent to build and operate generates huge profits for those people. Generally the people that promote fission nuclear power are front people for the people who have deep pockets and will gain the most from nuclear projects.
Exactly. The grid infrastructure owners have a bigger cashflow interest.
The grid is $1TRILLION
Cashflow is $110BILLON per year.
When EVs or BVs are plugged in 23hrs every day and all night then grid cash flows will crash.
Superannuation funds investment will suffer.
Offgrid will be illegal and connection fees will go to $10 per day.
Tx for a great video topic. It's great to see OTHER PEOPLE be more level headed about an energy source most of the rest of us have very strong emotions about - for & against.
There was one "disturbing" headline I saw that proposed an increase in gas usage while Oz waited for nuclear to come online. It made me think that perhaps the whole nuclear thing is just a charade in order to promote more gas, i.e. slow the energy transition down in favour of gas using nuclear as a smokescreen.
My second "worry" is if there was a connection between wanting nuclear in Oz and Oz's AUKUS plans - can the plants planned to be built in Oz be reporposed to build nuclear weapons for nuclear subs instead?
When discussing renewable energy anywhere the only tech discussed or referred to is solar & wind (and battery storage), probably because is so cheap. Fair enough. But other renewable tech exists & is being developed
- what geothermal potential is there in Oz?
- several undetwater turbines are doing well elsewhere?
- onshore wave power?
In Australia most cities (Oz has about 6 or 7 major cities?) are located around the coast (hence the 7 nuclear sites chosen), surely it makes to have interconnected energy hubs near each one
- geothermal for "baseload"
- tidal & onshore wave energy
- rooftop solar & agrivoltaics with battery storage (eg community energy)
- on shore wind, also supported by battery storage, for morning & evening peak
- V2G to fill in the gaps (in the USA the yellow school buses provide battery energy during peak demand and recharge overnight ready for the school run the morning & afternoon)
- thermal recovery for heat intensive industries
I believe heat pumps can both heat & cool buildings... are heat pumps suitable / appropriate for Australia?
With V2G I believe you are able to tell the software when to discharge to the grid (and earn some money) and when to recharge (when rates are low) so very little intervention is required.
Great video. Just some feedback, John's audio setup is not great. Not very clear. I found it had to understand him at times.
I have been in a cabin that is off the grid and could not charge my phone for three days so I think we need a $1b nuclear reacator connected to Snowy 2 to send excess power as navies have used them for years.
The other elephant in the room for nuclear is that current technology nuclear energy is not renewable. In other words it relies on mining a very rare, finite resource (uranium) the economic reserves of which will be depleted within a matter of decades, given an ever-increasing world demand for energy. How does this factor into the costs? By the time we got any plants up and running costs would be all the more expensive as uranium becomes scarcer. Yes, the nuclear fanboys will bang on about fast breeder reactors and thorium, but these technologies remain uneconomic and/or technically troublesome which is why they don’t exist in more than one or two demonstration facilities. If we go nuclear it will only ever be for a few decades at best and (barring an economic thorium or fusion breakthrough) we will be back to replacing it with wind and solar anyway. There will always be free wind and sunshine.
Lol... what do you think renewables are made off, thin air. Do yourself a favour and google resources required to make solar panels, and wind turbines. Only thing renewable is every 10 or so years you have to replace them with new. Copper, lithium, rare earth metals are far scarcer than uranium and Australia has the largest deposits of that in the world.
@@jaymoores8258every 10???? or every 30-50???
> [nuclear] relies on mining a very rare, finite resource (uranium)
Uranium occurs in most rocks in concentrations of 2 to 4 parts per million and is as common in the Earth's crust as tin, tungsten and molybdenum and about 40 times as common as silver.
So, not very rare.
If the world were to switch to 100% nuclear power (including the non-electricity portions of energy), we would have enough mineable uranium-235 to last a few hundred years.
If you include uranium-238 and thorium, we have enough to last 10,000s of years.
With 10,000+ years of potential progress, I believe we can let future generations innovate their own energy resources and not worry about them. 10,000 years ago is about the time homo sapiens invented cities and agriculture, so from there to fission in 10,000 years, we can assume SOME progress.
> How does this [cost of fuel] factor into the costs?
Fuel is about 5% of a NPPs total lifetime costs. Double or triple the price of fuel and basically a non-issue compared to the other nuclear costs like financing.
> fast breeder reactors and thorium, but these technologies remain uneconomic and/or technically troublesome
Each journey begins with a single step.
It took wind 1000s of years to go from watts to kilowatts. Even if you count the heavy use of aerodynamics as your starting point, it has taken wind 50 years to go from 1 MW to 15 MW installations (growth = 150x)
It took solar 100 years to go from microwatts to watts. Even if you count the starting point as durable solar panels (vs laboratory solar cells), it has been about 50 years, and although durability has increased, and efficiencies gone up a few % (to almost 20%!) you're still limited by the area covered. (growth = 2-3x)
What is nuclear's progress? 200 watts in a laboratory setting to commercial GW-scale in .... 30 years. NOW THAT IS RETURN ON YOUR SCIENTIFIC INVESTMENT!! (growth = 5,000,000x)
Thorium for example - are there challenges? sure. Are they solvable given enough time-and-money? yes.
Wind for example - is intermittency soluble? no - no matter the time-and-money, IT IS NOT A SOLVABLE PROBLEM!
(it is mitigable with storage? yes - great! - until you realize that nuclear can pair better with storage than wind/solar can, because with nuclear you can predict when you can charge the storage)
@@jaymoores8258 You are totally missing (or ignoring) the point. After wind turbines and solar panels come to the end of their life the resources still exist and can be recycled over and over again. The fuel comes from the sun which will last another 5 Billion years. When you use uranium in a nuclear plant it is gone forever.
You are missing (or ignoring ) the point. When solar panels, wind turbines or batteries reach their end of life (way beyond 10 years BTW) the valuable resources in them still exist and can be recycled (or mined) again for far less cost than it takes to mine from nature. The fuel for renewables is from the sun which will last another 5 billion years. When you use the uranium fuel in a nuclear plant that uranium is gone forever.
Cmon John, say it after me its "New -clea - are" - Nuclear, nuwcular is something else.
Renewables and nuclear are not a dichotomy... How about you include the storage cost of renewables?
And the storage cost for nuclear? Because in the same way that dynamic generation does match a dynamic load - neither does a constant generation match a dynamic load.
@@JohnR31415 it's not constant generation
@@SwordQuake2conventional nuclear is very slow to ramp up and ramp down.
@@y0uCantHandle > conventional nuclear is very slow to ramp up and ramp down
true, but if you have a fleet of NPPs you can ramp quickly.
Example: if you have 10 NPPs that can each ramp 2% / minute,
then your fleet can ramp 20% / minute.
This is how the French follow the demand load (vs Rosie's implication they just shut 1 off or just ramp 1).
Also see my note to JohnR31415
@@JohnR31415 See my note to YoucantHandle
First a simple scenario:
So, presuming no ramping of NPPs, and an ideal of 24GWh demand over the course of the day, where there is more during the day and less at night (we predict 16 GWh demand during 12h of daylight, and 8 GWh demand during 12h of night) and 100% efficient storage.
We build a 1 GW NPP and run in flat out (at an ideal 100% c.f.) for 24 GWh in our 24h period, broken down as:
during the day, the NPP provides 12 GWh and storage discharges 4 GWh,
during the night the NPP provides 12 GWh, 8 to the grid and 4 to charge storage.
Ok, in the real world, you have to size your NPP fleet to total average demand OVER A 24H CYCLE on the peak day of the year, including the real c.f., including the real storage inefficiency, and sizing your storage to meet peak demand OVER A 24H CYCLE on that peak day, and including spinning reserve, including maintenance windows, etc.
The point being is that storage costs (or natural gas costs, or etc) is calculated on the 24 h cycle of your worst predicted day in a year. Basically, you can predict the DEMAND LOAD very accurately (i.e. the big game is set months in advance, year-to-year average weather is broadly similar, that new aluminum smelter in 2026 will add YYY demand), and you can thus predict charging the storage predictably - you don't over-build storage - you have no idle assets.
Now, do the same exercise for intermittent wind/solar.
Here you CANNOT just take a 24h cycle, because you might have a dunkelflaute for 1 day, so you need 48h cycle; but every other year you have a 2 day dunkelflaute, and because you don't know if that is this year or next year you need to work the calculation for 72h cycle, but every 5 years you have 3 day dunkelflaute ..... (i.e. unlike the very accurate demand load calculation above, here you are predicting day-to-day actual WEATHER with much lower confidence levels).
Ok, so you arrive at some risk-reward, 2 days, 3 days, etc - knowing that someday, somewhen you WILL hit your limit and then people die from lack of heat/cooling/food spoilage/etc etc - but you have your number.
AND you also realize that because you have built for a 48h/72h/96h/XXh cycle, MOST OF THE TIME MOST OF THOSE STORAGE ASSETS ARE IDLE - you have over-built for the 'standard' case and your return-on-assets is terrible.
Great! - just acknowledge that and be ready to pay the costs of that.
I hope what you've taken out of this is that with nuclear, and constant generation, you just have to predict 1 variable: demand - so figuring out the storage is that prediction.
With wind/solar, and intermittent generation, you have to predict 2 variables: demand & generation - so figuring out the storage is much harder, and more likely to be wrong, while also having idle assets (which must be paid for whether idle or active).
Rosie, the LCOE approach only partially looks at electricity supply from the point of view of a market participant.
The regulator taking bids has a 'control' room with data feeds about current and future demand (meters, weather, season, time of day, maintenance, etc). This information is available to market participants???
A market participant has their own control room where they bid to supply, and turn their resources, both demand (including battery, virtual battery, pumped hydro) and supply, up and down.
Full control of resources from the market participant's control room is key to profitable market participation.
Participants want remote control of their physical resources to maximise profit. Ideally, they want unmanned resources - operations without labour present.
However, electricity resources have a physical security cost, generally an operating cost, and a maintenance and breakdown cost.
With the rise of renewables, plant security costs should have a top line cost centre as these vary markedly between sources.
The more complex and dangerous the operation, the greater the operating labour requirement, and likely a greater security requirement.
The public capital market has a strong aversion to plant shutdown and removal costs especially where governments can introduce requirements that add to costs at a later date. End of life might be a long way off, therefore devalued by time, but risks rise with time.
Plants that operate for a long time gather uncertainty as to actions required for shutdown. Rio Tinto has had to take full control of some end of life mines to reduce shutdown cost risks.
Coal power produces nuclear waste in that the ash is many times more radioactive with the carbon component of the fuel removed to the atmosphere.
There are stewardship costs to coal for permanent management of the ash. Also permanent management costs for nuclear waste.
Renewables have no fuel and waste costs.
Solar plants have little installation and removal costs - thus are quick to assemble and fully disassemble.
Wind turbine foundations need more thought for full removal even if a foundation might get used for hundreds of years.
A gas power plant is fully removable, but it requires a fuel that can have high logistics infrastructure costs, and it dumps CO2 into the air. While CO2 comes out the turbine in a pipe (thus captured) at the plant, it is generally immediately dumped into the atmosphere due to the cost of storage.
Renewable energy costs will continue to decline over time due to innovation (including automation) with a view to cost reduction by deleting processes.
Electricity is electrons 'drifting' at a glacial pace in a conductor and an associated electric field which propagates near the speed of light. Being a very simple product, engineers continually look to delete unnecessary processes.
Converting energy between several forms, as coal and nuclear power do, is an easy target for process deletion.
Solar creates electricity when photons strike the cell. All other commercial forms use a turbine to turn a generator. We have wind, hydro, steam and combusted gas turbines.
Batteries are storing energy using electricity to drive a chemical process.
As nuclear power is limited to temperatures that align with steam turbines, the heat nuclear fission/fusion produces is too low for cement, steel and other heavy industrial processes.
Using solar electricity to create and store hydrogen creates a fuel whose oxidation (when burnt) gives off the high temperatures needed for steel and cement making.
Australia produces food for 1% of world population, and about 10% of the world's minerals (excluding coal). Given the low cost and regularity of solar in dryer parts of the world, and the cheap price of water, we should expect producing hydrogen for combustion heat to be used for both electricity and industrial process heat.
When I worked at Maralinga from 1998 through 2000 I thought it was silly that Australia made nuclear illegal and used so much coal. There weee so many things that make Australia a great place to use nuclear power, not the least of which was the well-educated workforce.
Now that solar is so cheap I I can't imagine why you would use nuclear. Now I wonder why no one just uses the cliffs along the bite for gravity storage love seawater. I guess it would require high voltage DC to get the power back 2 populated areas.
Missing the 70 tonnes of concrete or the short lifespan of wind and solar?? No transmission lines for $$$$$$ of claimed wind or the unfunded rehab of wind footings?
Nuclear in Australia will only provide half of our electricity needs, and the plan is to have renewables provide the rest, so you will STILL have those things you find so horrible.
Dutton said that the waste from a nuclear reactor would be the size of a coke can per person. A talk I heard about Thorium reactors said that for an average Western citizen's LIFETIME's usage of power if it came from a Thorium reactor it would need a golf ball size amount of Thorium per person and result in a coke can of radioactive waste, of which 83% would be at back ground level radiation in 10 year's time and the remaining 17% would need 300 years to reach background radiation levels (i.e basically safe).
Dutton is totally wrong with his coke can quote. If you check any of the nuclear industry websites...they quote a coke cans worth of radioactive waste...but _per person_ per annum.
What thorium reactor?
I'm fairly sure there's a reactor in the Gobi Desert in northern China. Drove past cooling towers back in 2008, although when I looked it up, they seemed to have only recently issued permits for it.
@@Kiwigeo8339
Just did the math - a coke can in a lifetime seems accurate, assuming 1 GWh that's about 4 kg or 0.2 L of fuel.
Where are you putting the 5 million coke cans for Sydney?
Norway here. Nuclear is Also discussed i Norway now (which has not had commercial Nuclear) and a governmental evaluation Will be performed over the next two years.
My opinion is that Nuclear Will be too costly compared to alternyatives.
I wonder if there is another, unrecognised cost - the opportunity cost of investing so much capital into one monolithic technology. There would be no financial capacity or community appetite left to take advantage if/when new sources became available.
I fully expect that technologies will improve. Storage methods will be developed. Solar panels will continue to improve. If we have everything invested in nuclear, those developments will be meaningless.
Exactly.
Well there will also be opportunities in nuclear tech . Also small amounts of capital would still be available to other people that are perfect for solar wind insulation and so on in private commercial , industrial and pubblic sectors
@@footbru @footbru a nuclear electricity grid needs cashflow 24/7.
Australia has 20million buildings and vehicles, a handy coincidence 🤔
Vehicles parked 23hrs every day.
Vehicles drive building to building.
Building's carpark space with $60 wall outlet and trickle currents all day long and all night long.
V2G BVs oversized battery selfparking selfplug-in will be perfect with Rooftop PV every day the sun shines. 🌞
The sun shines and nuclear grid electricity is a dead duck.
When the sun sets the BVs oversized battery shines and nuclear electricity is a dead duck.
Nuclear grid electricity is a $TRILLIONS infrastructure investment and dead cashflow every time the sun shines. 🌞
But only when the sun shines in Australia and any where else on the planet.
On the warming latitudes.
BVs and a few rooftop PV panels that shade hot rooftops and NO GRID COSTS.
Happy days. 😊
The LNP will love the small government impact on the economy.
The LNP will love the empty national grid that has no load from the 20million buildings but with a few more rooftop PV panels can send dirt cheap BVs oversized battery stored electricity into the national grid to power the new industry heavy demand 🫴 😀
Hahaha Hahaha 👍 😆 Happy days.
$TRILLIONS SAVED as the grid does not have to be expanded Happy days.
No nuclear plant, construction SAVINGS $100sBILLIONS. Happy days. 😊.
Great episode, as usual. But I think you largely missed a couple of the biggest issues with new nuclear power.
Including planning and preparations, 10 years for a new first reactor is extremely optimistic. Assuming you'd start planning today, the current cost of alternatives is irrelevant, the cost for a new reactor should be compared to the cost of new wind, and large scale solar is likely to be in 2032, or 2033, and roof top solar in 2033 to 2034, and any storage and or other costs to make that generation meet the demand as well as a nuclear reactor would, if any, for the first 25 years or so of generation for the nuclear reactor. And that cost for wind and solar, will be somewhere between significantly less than it is today and practically free. After that first 25 years of generation, that is about 2059 in this extremely nuclear optimistic scenario, the nuclear reactor will have to compete with modern solar, wind, batteries and what ever is available then, in 2059.
In other words, comparing costs of nuclear today, if everything goes reasonably well, with current costs of alternatives requires, all progress instantly stops when you start planning for a new nuclear reactor, essentially that time stops and waits for the reactor starts generating, which is very from from reality.
To put things into perspective, less than 10 years ago unsubsidized solar won a contract based on cost for grid scale generation, for the first time ever, in the world. From not commercially viable, (without subsidies) anywhere in the world, to the cheapest form of new generation in large parts of the world, in less time than it is reasonable to expect to plan, prepare for and build a first new reactor.
We don't know how much cheaper and better solar, wind, storage, DSM, transmission, possibly other solutions, we will have, in 2034 and further into the future, but it is much more certain that we will have significantly cheaper and better alternatives, than they are today, than it is that a new reactor even will reach commercial operation if you try to build one.
Another issue for new nuclear power is that uncertainty, for nuclear power to be somewhat reasonable, and that's if assuming all other technological progress halts when you make the decision, it still assumes the reactor actually works well, and is needed for many decades. And that's when we know things like that a tsunami hitting the coast of Japan can make people all over the globe to freak out about nuclear power in general. People can change their mind back and forth multiple times in less time than it takes to get a new reactor generating, and that is a small part of the time people need to at least accept it, for building a new reactor to not be much worse than if it gets to generate commercially as long as it can.
Wake up my friend… “what about solar in the future” is not a solution. The grifters continue to demand subsidies. If they don’t get them it doesn’t happen. Learn from other countries experience. Germany is suffering. Their economy is tanking. Energy drives economic growth. Nuclear advocates want solar too. Solar advocates believe solar and wind can run a country, it just cannot. By 2030, AI is going to require the equivalent of 20% of the current US power grid demand. Technology companies know that intermittent renewables cannot be used. They need 24/7 guaranteed power. They have started to build data centres next to nuclear. Globally, 2030 targets are being reduced as people finally realise it’s not as easy to put up “capacity” that they doesn’t deliver. We see this time and time again. You seem like smart man. Do some proper research. Beyond the climate grifters. IEA is 55 Tufton Street think tank, it’s not there to help. Reneweconomy is apt, given the renewables have to get renewed themselves every 20-25 years. Nuclear goes to 80. A nuclear sub gets fuelled once in its operational life. Simon double barrelled is just a grifter who will say he can, and deny clear evidence to keep his gravy train going. Anyway, good luck ❤
Many years ago based on revised risk assessment TEPCO was told to raise the seawall by five metres. They failed to do so. Japan (and the world) is paying the price.
Great video Rosie, Nuclear is nowhere near the best option for Australia now. It will kill renewables and there are far better renewable technologies available today let alone in the time it will take for Nuclear to come on board.
It won’t kill renewables because renewables are much cheaper. What it will do is bankrupt the country
There are some dangerous assumptions projecting 20 to 60 years ahead. Technology will change. Weather patterns will change. Rare earth metals and copper demand will outstrip supply. The cost of decarbonising power will change. To quote one example: Moltex in cooperation with New Brunswick power will build first of a kind a molten salt fast reactor early 2030 at a projected electricity cost of less than $3000/MWh. Coupled with molten salt energy storage it can load follow. Spent fuel will be reprocessed on site. The problematic transuranics will be consumed. Spent fuel from the Candu reactors will be a potential fuel source. A case can be made for a reliable 24/7 generation as the coal thermal power stations come to an end. Wind droughts will be solved by a reliable base load 24/7 and an optimum amount of storage. Queensland has a particular low wind problem. What are the costs of an integrated transmission system vs a local reliable power source. As we are experiencing in NZ transmission infrastructure is vulnerable to adverse weather and fire events. LCOE analysis is just not sufficiently nuanced. At least in Australia you are debating the issue.
every where in the world this discussion happens europe usa russia germany and so on
Lizards and conspiracy? Hmmm, was this supposed to be a balanced view? I quite like your work Rosie, but please keep to scientific discourse. The nuclear discussion is particularly emotive.
I do expect a 100% variable RE grid ,*can* become a reality for Australia, but I'm sure this will be the most complex machine ever built (isn't the NEM already?), which undoubtedly comes with ridiculous cost (not just economic). But hey, let's see.
Perhaps don't try to connect lizards with the likes of nuclear technology, seeing as how nuclear is going to be VITAL for the transition to low carbon energy, which the IPCC/IEA recognise and the US/UK/China and so on are putting into action.
Let's celebrate nuclear's contribution to the global energy landscape and legalise it in Australia so that we can have a serious conversation.
One thing Rosie. It’s our gas that we have. The government should demand that the gas companies provide gas for the Australian people at cost +10% for power generation. We sell this gas for multinationals to make incredibly profit!…Or introduce a tariff like other countries whom raise money for their countries people. Then you would have the money to replace our power plants….We need cheap power for a future in Australia.. Then we can produce or own steel, aluminium, hydrogen and synthetic aviation / transport fuels. Then our farmers and manufacturing industries can survive….Our politicians spend more time with distraction tactics rather than the rational debate on actual solutions.
I am a labor voter always have been but nuclear power has made switch sides
But 52% of Labor voters support nuclear and Chris Bowen said it is ok for a labor member to vote for nuclear power
Are you making that number up?
@@bruceevennett955 don"t you look at the recent polls
I have mostly been a liberal voter. but I switch sides occasionally because neither side fits my requirements. Next will definitely be Labour because nuclear is too slow to get off the ground. Any nuclear plan is no plan because it will be tested by at least three governments while it's being built. Just like NBN
Do they have a cost for the different Nuclear options like a Thorium reactor so instead of having HUGE reactor in a few places what about smaller but less costly Thorium reactors ?
Hard to price something that does not exist. Perhaps one will be running in the next few years.
@@gpsfinancial6988I drove past cooling towers in the Gobi Desert in northern China back in 2008. They recently issued permits for a thorium reactor, if it isn't already operational it's probably not far off.
You don't put your batteries on wheels. Cars will have to be charged when the grid is not loaded otherwise we will need a bigger grid.
Most vehicles are parked 23hrs every day and all night.
BV battery vehicles can be on trickle currents all day long and supply your building and home a little over night.
Ezi pezi
What is this energy source he is talking about, nucular?? Is it similar to NUCLEAR??
Grammar Nazi ATTACK!
Where in Australia could a nuclear power project get environmental approval in any predictable time frame if ever?
Where in a democracy has a 100% new nuclear power staion been started built and commissioned in less than a decade??
What is the real life time cost of such a project. Not just construction...which alone is huge, plus cost of investment is huge due to length of time before income starts
😊😊😊😊😊
> Where in a democracy has a 100% new nuclear power staion been started built and commissioned in less than a decade?
Seriously?
OPAL reactor in Lucas Heights Australia!
Contract signed June 2000, full power test November 2006, officially opened April 2007.
Of course, Australia would need a fleet of reactors - another democracy, France, built 56 reactors in 15 years.
etc, etc
@@factnotfiction5915 Since when is Lucas Heights a power station? The OPAL reactor was replacing the old reactor, on an existing site.
@@footbru ok, so you would have a _slightly_ larger reactor footprint + a turbine building - but the basic effort is still the same
@@factnotfiction5915 No, it's not. You compound your initial error with more disinformation.
Lucas Heights is tiny compared to a real NPP. I've read comparisons of a nuclear power plants as being like a small city. Nuclear Energy Institute says 1.3 sq km per 1000 MW of capacity - so the 3 or 4 GW stations proposed by Dutton would be at least four sq kms.
And Lucas Heights already had approval and community licence, so the "effort" was minimal. All they had to do was choose the new reactor and purchase it. It WAS opposed, but most people recognised that we needed the medical isotopes it produced.
@@footbru > No, it's not. You compound your initial error with more disinformation. Lucas Heights is tiny compared to a real NPP. I've read comparisons of a nuclear power plants as being like a small city. Nuclear Energy Institute says 1.3 sq km per 1000 MW of capacity - so the 3 or 4 GW stations proposed by Dutton would be at least four sq kms.
I readily admit that the size of a nuclear power _plant's_ area is usually about 1.3 sq km (or even more, particularly in the US), but the footprint of the buildings, parking lot, etc, etc is usually just 10-20 hectares.
However, why 1 GW per 1.3 sq km?
Because in the US, most plants are 1-2 reactors per site.
That doesn't mean more reactors could not be added. For example, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Takahama_Nuclear_Power_Plant has four 870 MW reactors on 1 km2.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bugey_Nuclear_Power_Plant has five 800-900 MW reactors on 1km2
etc etc
NUCLEAR IS DENSE. You're totally arguing up the wrong creek here if you believe I'm snowing you.
Lucas Heights reactor is only marginally smaller than a power reactor, and the infrastructure (like turbine halls) are maybe 2-3x the existing footprint of LH.
The rest is just room for growth, or 'dual-use' land for agriculture.
If you would have released a Video like this in Germany, the Astroturfers and social Bots from the Nuclear industry would play Flood The Zone....
Im sick of so called experts claiming nuclear energy is green. The actual generation may produce little CO2 but the uranium supply chain certainly doesn’t- mining, processing, transportation, of fuel plus the same again for the spent fuel processing then ongoing waste management, because this still has not been solved and is simply a mounting problem for future generations. Also add construction and materials CO2. Then there is the water requirements for mining, and around double the water required for nuclear generation compared to coal plus it contaminates this with increased salinity and radiation as well as significantly elevated temperatures.
Australia is struggling with water demand now, where is this coming from. What if there are accidents or leaks? Make sure cleanup costs are included in costings because its gonna happen.
Look at the rate renewable tech has progressed in just a few years and the billions being spent on battery and alternate generation, Ai running virtual power plants controlling behind the meter batteries now ie Tesla, in 5 years we are going to be in a considerably better position than now when many of these plants and projects go live. Its also crap about nuclear plants lasting for 100 years, current ones I believe are around 40 at most and look at their maintenance costs.
Our climate issue is NOW and we need to transition NOW not prop up fossil fuels for another 20 years, plus create the potential for an environmental disaster either by consuming and polluting water we don’t have or through nuclear waste or plant failure.
There are nuclear fuel recycling systems. Also, note that nuclear plants produce materials that can be used in other industries and also used in fusion reactors in the future. Nuclear fuel management and reuse has been solved AFAIC.
All power generation methods produce CO2, including solar and wind. Nuclear produces the least CO2 per MWh. Nuclear does not use more water than coal (you made that up). It makes sense to build them on the site of retiring coal plants because the water is already available, as well as transmission lines.
@@jinnantonix4570 Yeah water usage is coal, gas, then nukes. Coal is just terrible in every possible way. That said it's still a LOT of water.
@@jinnantonix4570well nuclear does use more water than coal (at a single site) because it produces far more energy than coal. Both technologies only convert water to steam to produce electricity. More power = more water, however per mwh nuclear is more efficient than coal at water consumption.
The problem is can the site selected keep up with water consumption.
They could use once through salt water plants, or given that solar will compete with nuclear during the day, use daytime energy production for desalination
@@jinnantonix4570 ref nuclear.foe.org.au/wp-content/uploads/Water-NP-2xA4-2018.pdf
This is just one report highlighting many water issues around EXISTING coal generation, and nuclear has even higher demands when we already have chronic water issues now. Please dont make accusations through your own ignorance.
Australia it is to me about responsible land usage and wind is not responsible land usage same for Solar. It takes 360 times land for wind that are only 40% efficent to a equivalent wind generation system. Solar is 75% more land for Solar. To produce equivalent. Gas is not zero CO2. The modern Nuclear can run down and run up generation the reactor is only part of a powerstation. So how can you say that Nuclear is not able to run down. The Generator is steam driven you can simply run steam straight to the cooling tower. The reason the cost can be reduced is Nuclear power plant is that the nuclear is operational 24 / 7 solar only produces around 6-8 hours a day. Solar life is only 10 - 15 years I have already replaced my roof top once at 8 years and I have a 5kw solar roof top connected to my home PC and have graphed its output and it is never reached 4kw.
So it does not ever produce the specified amount I installed.
CSIRO refuses to get any input from Nuclear industry. Look at UAE and South Korea. So when you get statistics from Wind and Solar. Life span is 60-80 years not 15- 20 years.
Do you know how much the national electrical grid costs and how little energy it distributes ???
The nuclear promoters say $1million per km
The Clean Energy Council says 1million km. = $1TRILLION
Electric energy used,
www.energy.gov.au
Petajoule 15%
So nuclear grid electricity will do f..all.
Is there a shortage of land in Australia? Many rural landowners are making income from wind turbines - on land that is otherwise unproductive. Are you saying they are wrong?
@@gregorymcleod nuclear is grid electricity.
If you are serious then the national grid capacity has to be 7 times bigger if Australia is to be 100% electric.
The grid costs $1TRILLION and 7 times bigger is insane.
Do your homework and grow up.
41:40 Oh you realised France is not very flexible although they do flexible ups and downs every Day, they follow the Day up and down during night......
But the real big Problem was, they hat damage in the cooling Area exactly due to this Mode they are running the plants....
They tried to switch safety vs. flexibility....
now they try to give you the electrixity very cheap druing night for your eletctric car, the same game the germans played in the 70/80s with their "Nachtspeicheröfen"
"although they do flexible ups and downs every Day," Actually they do not. They shut their plants down hard when they do not need and can not sell the power and buy the more flexible offers from Germany, Switzerland and Italy. They have so many nuclear plants that it looks like they moderate the energy output. Their plants are just too old to do that. 40 and more years old technical designs running Software from the 1960s can not do "moderate".
They can not even afford to design new ones. They do not have the manpower.
Just look at Hinkley Point and ask why the french want to ditch it and why the >Chinese have ditched it.
The nuclear horses are at the barrier chafing at the bit to power out of the gates. The starter however is not at the barrier. The starter is locked in a bitter battle with the stewards on whether the race should be run. The punters are throwing their hands up in exasperation amazed by the bizarre stupidity of the administration not to allow a start. This is the problem we had with the voice and we'll have it again with nuclear. Bipartisan support across the spectrum is the first battle and the three eyed fish argument will probably win out. Childish politicians playing their childish games.
When your soler don't work power is off that is not tenable for a lot of business living in the bush and having generator power then going to soler and batteries the generator was used a lot at certain points because of weather and brake downs it's a fool's errand to rely on batterys
Ehem. "What about France?"
lol
Rosie, John,
Your numbers are all ok, but your interpretation was generally useless.
So, 40% of the cost of retail electricity is generation - so right there, the LCOE is not interesting. Or to put it differently, plant LCOE - a metric for investment companies - is not a useful metric for societal evaluation of nuclear.
"nuclear is too expensive" was your mantra, but only with the perspective you were looking from; not from Australia's perspective.
As examples, just towards the end of the video you got into the system LCOE, much more useful, but:
A - you didn't compare the system LCOE with and without nuclear, so that was pointless, and
B - you added coal/gas into the mix with just the asset costs (specifically stating you ignored costs of fuel, which are a good 80% of the cost of coal/gas), more pointlessness,
Per the comments, I get it, you were rushed an unprepared - so basically just did the same job the CSIRO and AEMO reports have done!
Hi I'm from Perth and my aspect viewing this is the Liberal party want Small Modular Reactors and from my research no one has completed one of these yet but I believe China is close
to completion after 16 years, so we are looking at very untried technology which so far is very expensive and we would be the Guinea Pigs in this experiment
Talking long term, into next century. Renewables arre not sustainable. Renewables remove the profitable of centralised base load generators. Uranium nuclear only has a future of decades due to a global shortage of uranium. Thorium based nuclear by contrast has multiple centuries if not millennia. Plutonium fast breeder nuclear also has a long future but the economic viability and technology difficulties are challenging. My opinion is fusion will never be economically viable. Economic viability is based on being able to produce about 20 times more energy than the total energy input.
The minerals and metals needed to move to low emission energy are not available. Fossil fuels will be used to economic depletion within a few decades, when the cost of supply of commodities is more than the ability to pay. And most fossil fuels and commodities will be largely depleted before the end of this century. The planet is on track for 4 C warming and 2-3m sea level rise before 2100.
Gold Coast
So gas will be a big part of the future grid. This will undermine net zero.
You realize net zero is not the same as zero. There are plenty of negative emissions from plants and the ocean.
Don’t you just need to look at France vs its neighbours to know that nuclear energy is cheap and reliable? Seems to me that the cost of nuclear is artificially inflated by powerful anti nuclear groups.
Germany closed their reactors!
French nuclear provider EDF lost so much money it had to be nationalized. The French Government spent about 45 Billion Euros in electricity subsidies in 2023 as so many of their nuclear reactors were offline. They imported electricity from Spain, Germany and the UK.
😩 Fra capped its prices during the energy crisis and then nationalised its nuclear to save it from the unsustainable position of its debts and being forced to sell power under cost.
As to reliability in '22 the load factor was barely 50% as a succession of cluster faults forced to it import from across Europe.
@@petermoller8337 So?
@@gavinw77 So if you have a source of power that is cheap and reliable....why would you shut it down??
This conversation was not definitive enough. I am still left wondering what the heck is the conclusion? For non industry people you need to talk in kilo watts because most people understand their electricity bill. Rosie you are a lovely person but please a get a new microphone. Sure nuclear is more expensive but by how much with realistic delay expectations and cost blow outs and factoring in that storage batteries will come down 50% or more in the next 5 years. These are reasonable assumptions. Even the CEO of CATL expects battery prices to fall below $50 U.S. per KW. We also need to discuss centralised power generation. Power stations are military targets so decentralised power generation and storage should be a significant national security issue. Certainly at a community level just being able to help friends, neighbours or family in a black out has to take the pressure off emergency services. Emergencies services that may not even be able to respond in the event of a war or significant natural disaster. Personalised power generation and storage should be as common as a water tank.
Mark thanks, we were a bit pressed for time and didn't get to the system costs as much but here's a quick way of looking at it.
- CSIRO had nuclear at $150/MWh (15c/kWh)
- History of nuclear projects is a 120% overrun so assume it goes to 30c/KWh
- Liberals haven't detailed the sizing but lets say they want 30% of the grid to be nuclear, assume generation is a third of your bill and nuclear is a third of that so would mean 5c/kWh extra. With the long build time, you would most probably see it as a levy on your bill.
Will this happen?
Most probably not, mainly because of legal reasons. The history of nuclear in Australia includes a failed attempt to build a nuclear reactor at Jervis Bay which was chosen as it's a federal territory. This is from the PHd paper, "FROM ATOMIC ENERGY TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE; A History of
the Australian Atomic Energy Commission" by Anna-Eugenia Binnie
"The situation now produced a minor constitutional and legal problem; 'Constitutionally the Commonwealth had no power to generate power (ie electricity) and under the Act the AAEC was limited to the discovery, mining, treatment, use and disposal of uranium'113. This issue was solved by the agreement between the Commonwealth and the State of NSW in which the Commonwealth Government through the AAEC would own the nuclear reactor but any electricity generated from the steam produced would be owned by the State."
So the Liberals will need to rely on horse-trading with state governments to make it happen. What's the chances?
@@keynumbers Thanks very much for the reply. Such a political football at the moment so very important to get to the truth.
Copenhagen Atomics figures are less than 10% of the CSIRO costs, someone is putting a finger on the nuke scales. Will Australia ignore Fusion if/when it happens?
Fusion power? It's about as likely as flying carpets.
Can you imagine the trades in Australia trying to build a nuclear power plant. They can barely knock up a shed without cost overruns
@@Withnail1969as likely as in a decade 😂 at least
@@user-co8vc5nd7lthere's a company in America that is scaling a one mega watt nuclear fission reactor cooled by gas why would you not buy from someone already doing it 🤔
@@Bennie32831 Which company? Is it operating?
Your nuclear scare mongering costs are ridiculous when simply looking at what France pays per kWh.
Qld Australia
Get a better mic.
Hi Rosie, yes nuclear is not for all countries, but for different reasons. On-shore wind is largely a storage and land utilisation issue whereas solar farms are a potential disaster waiting to happen and should be phased out. If skeptical whether man made (A.C.C) is real then, politics aside, clean coal burning technology maybe an appropriate technology for OZ. Forgive me for saying you need international experts to raise the debate from being parochial. For nuclear you need to attract people of the calibre seen on the Canadian 'Decouple' web site. Transmission economics and storage also seem poorly understood.
Why are solar farms "a potential disaster"?
@@footbru Today's solar planning looks to have a horizon of only a few years. The Earth regularly faced and will face times when insolation is reduced by increased cloud cover. Events can be as short as 7 days but as long as even 1 year. Because they have little impact on crop growth they are ignored. There are different causes for these events. The most common are volcanic eruptions, but less common, yet still a significant risk, are meteoric. In addition because solar occupies very large surface areas we must include physical events that damage installations. Over a century this includes large hail-storms, CMEs and even human caused EMPs. We need more awareness of these events for our long term survival.
@@bobdeverell So, if I understand, you dislike renewables and would prefer nuclear or coal. And nuclear would be OK, even if volcanic or meteoric events occurred, or EMPs ... (forgive me, I don't know what CMEs are).
@@footbru Some renewable sources are reliable and predictable, eg. tidal, but not wind or solar. CME are Coronal Mass Ejections. These only impact unprotected electrical systems and occur typically once in a century.)
If you are going to talk about nuclear at least learn how to pronounce the word. There is no such word as nucular.
Wow! Got him with that incisive observation.
Please tell me you're not from America otherwise I'll have to bring up the pronunciation of aluminium!!! I grew up in a part of Sydney where everyone had immigrated from somewhere else. There was always a diversity of accents and pronunciations, and we had no problems figuring out what people said. Suggest you do the same.
@@keynumbers Being a "pronunciation nazi" is sad. BTW If you look into it, as I have, both pronunciations of AL are correct.
Hi Rosie. This topic is very important and it’s very disappointing that the video link was so hopeless. Impossible to take you seriously with that crappy video quality.
Rosie, your analysis assumes renewables will work. But wind and solar only work 10-30% of the time, and firming is not clean, cheap and available. Gas peakers may be cheap (ish), but not clean, and approval is resisted because they do not fit with a net zero agenda. Batteries and pumped hydro are very costly (more expensive than nuclear per MW), and cause massive environmental damage. It's not getting cheaper, as claimed. V2G is not going to happen, why would you plug your car into the grid if its going to drain your battery in the evening peak so it's empty in the morning?
So your claim that the energy transition will be completed within 15 years is just wrong. Nuclear power is valuable because it covers baseload demand and so reduces reliance on dispatchable power. The fact that rooftop solar occasionally produces all our needs does not destroy the need for baseload power, it shows that we already have too much VRE in the grid, and we should stop building renewables.
AURECON are not experts in nuclear power. LCOE and Lazard analysis is not the same as cost of electricity to consumers. The Gencost numbers for nuclear were wrong because they assumed a plant life of 30 years, when it is closer to 60-80 years so has a long amortisation life. The claim that it must also deliver profits over that time does not invalidate this fact, because revenue has to be adjusted for future value. John waffled about this and failed to explain accurately.
Yeah, I'm all for more solar and wind power, they are great tech. But I'm also sick of the propaganda. There is no way Australia will be completely renewable in 15 years. I remember reading that the ACT was completely renewable already, that was 5 years ago about. And it was actually a lie. A massive campaign was run making the claim, and it turned out to not at all be true. They are still making the claim on websites, and it's just not true when you dig deeper. Meanwhile energy costs are rising - isn't everyone claiming the cost of batteries and panels is decreasing? So when do our energy bills start going down? There is a huge mismatch between what the renewable fanatics are claiming and reality.
@@gavinw77 yes, solar and wind are OK, but it's the firming that is the problem. Rosie never talks about the real cost of dispatchable backup in a >90% VRE grid, and the fact that the States are not building enough batteries and pumped hydro because it is WAY more expensive than nuclear, and dirty too. V2G with EVs = dreaming. Gas may come to the rescue, but then net zero is not possible. People voting against nuclear are voting for more gas, and more emissions.
Solar + battery at the current time is cheaper than nuclear. A 1GW solar farm cost about 800 million dollars and a battery of 1GWH battery storage from Tesla costs 450 million USD. Even if we put in 2 GWH Tesla mega packs, it would cost only 900 million. Also, this requires a land of 16 sq kms which government has to provide. So you can get 1 GW solar farm with 2 GwH storage costing less than 2 billion dollars. This can be installed within 2 years. This will generate in an average 4 GWH of electricity everyday. With 2gwh of that electricity available anytime of the day.
A nuclear plant will take 10-15 billion per kWh, requires running cost and personnel and will be affected by any supply chain issues. However, solar requires zero,running costs, no daily people to run the plant and little periodic maintenance and repairs. Also, the price of batteries will come down lower than the current price with many Chinese companies coming out with grid scale batteries .
When more storage batteries are installed , price of electricity will come down. Now, due to lack of sufficient storage, utilities charge whatever they want.
One reader mentioned that battery are dirty. Batteries once manufactured will run easily from 20-25 years in Utility storage. After that they can be completely recycled. This is not like coal or peaker plants which are dirty and also constantly require fuels and personnel for their lifetime to run the plants.
When Fukushima blew up the damage was 60 billion dollars and decommissioning the plant will cost another $70B. Tepco the company responsible for the disaster will not be paying the costs because they don't have an insurance policy that covers that. The Japanese government/tax payer is basically their insurance provider. This is a MASSIVE hidden subsidy. If a nuclear power plant had to go onto the private market to get an insurance policy the cost of a KWH would go from something like 25 cents to $3.25 and even if the insurance price came down over time, my guess is it would be least be $1.25. And NO ONE would pay that much for a KWH.
@@ramb5193A 1GW solar farm has just enough capacity to charge a 2GWh battery on a sunny day. Ignoring losses this could discharge at 1GW for 2 hours per day. Compare this $2B investment, to $6.4B , 1GW AP1000 nuclear plant which can generate at full capacity 24/7. Further the AP1000 has a plant life of 60-80 years, while the solar plant and batteries need to be fully rebuilt 3 times over that period. The optimum solution is a combination of both solar and nuclear.
this guy just talks and talks, and talks... and then mumble mumble mumble and then stops talking. Is this man joe biden?
As if I would bother listening to a no-body who thinks The Kardashians is the real stuff. What a terrible attitude. What a waste of a channel.
Yeah.......I mean what would a fully qualified and experienced Engineer know about engineering??? You're like Dinosaur Dutton....ignores the science and goes with his "gut" feeling.