A group called “Mums for Nuclear” has spent a lot of money on newspaper and online ads in the lead-up to the federal election, claiming that “Nuclear energy in the mix with renewables reduces cost by 25%“. I’ve investigated this claim and found it to be false. Hopefully, this will prompt all groups that have made unrealistic claims about nuclear affordability to take them back and spark a chain retraction.
“Mums for Nuclear” has made variants of this claim on multiple occasions, citing Frontier Economics as the source.
Here’s an example from March 6th:
Another claim that sounds very similar but which is potentially very different depending on how it’s interpreted is:
“Nuclear energy reduces energy costs by at least 25%.”
I’m guessing they mean electricity, which is not the same as “energy”. Their source is the same — Frontier Economics.
I don’t know why they left a gap after the word “least”. Maybe they needed time to remember the percentage figure.
The person who posted the above newspaper ad on unsocial media asked if the lobby group Nuclear for Australia, which is behind this supposed grassroots band of mums, should authorise it. Apparently, the Australian Electoral Commission was wondering the same thing because they had a chat with Mums for Nuclear.
I’m not going to concern myself with whether or not they’re correctly following election advertising law. I’m just going to fact check the claim itself — the one about nuclear energy reducing costs by 25%. But I do want people to be clear they are spending large amounts of money to spread their message and aren’t just a group of mums with a Facebook page.
My Verdict: False
First off, I should tell you I’m not Doctor Who. Due to this personal shortcoming, it’s not possible for me to make absolute statements about events that haven’t yet come to pass. I’m unable to say with absolute certainty that building nuclear power stations in Australia won’t reduce costs because we’ve never tried it and been able to say, “Yep, that didn’t work”.
What I can do is say whether it’s reasonable to conclude that building nuclear power will lower costs: it absolutely is not.
The Frontier Economics Report
The source Mums for Nuclear give for their claims is a pair of reports by Frontier Economics, also used by the Coalition to cost its nuclear policies. It’s not exciting reading, so luckily there’s a Renew Economy article by Alan Rai that summarises a lot of the claims and debunks some. One key issue is that despite the mums claiming that nuclear in the mix “alongside renewables” reduces costs, these reports don’t actually factor in the true cost to the people responsible for much of Australia’s renewables output — owners of rooftop solar.
Nuclear Needs More Curtailment Of Rooftop Solar
The reports assume there’ll be no change in rooftop solar or home and business battery uptake, despite the assumption that nuclear power will often curtail renewables. Something that’s unrealistic if rooftop solar and batteries will often be shut down to benefit nuclear.
On page 15 of report 2, section 3.1, it says…
“It is important to note the modelling does not include any behind the meter supply or storage options. It’s assumed that this is likely to be roughly constant across the scenarios.”
This means they’ve assumed people will install the same amount of solar and battery capacity for their homes and businesses if nuclear energy is used. The reports rely on this occurring for Australia’s electricity demand to be met. But if people are often required to shut down their solar systems, and likely home batteries, it’s not reasonable to expect them to install just as much.
Nuclear could be ramped up and down as needed, but can’t do it economically. A nuclear power station operating at 50% capacity has almost identical costs to one run at 100%. This makes it a poor partner for solar. Because curtailing nuclear instead of solar would be awful for the economics of nuclear, every report in favour of nuclear power in Australia, including the Frontier Economics ones, assumes that renewables will be shut down, and not the other way around.
You Can’t Shut Down The Sun
Curtailing rooftop solar to favour nuclear won’t only be intolerable to many Australians — enforcing it will be next to impossible. The planned curtailing of solar doesn’t only involve preventing homes and businesses from exporting surplus solar power to the grid. It also requires maintaining demand for grid electricity by having rooftop solar shut down completely and stop supplying power to its home or business. Additionally, once there’s enough home and business battery storage — which there will be well before any nuclear power stations are built — it will also involve preventing batteries from supplying power at these times.
It’s 3am and I’m still writing, so I have to start quoting Meatloaf. I don’t make the rules — I just get disturbing amounts of enjoyment from them.
This will not only piss off people who have invested in solar and batteries, it will be almost impossible to enforce, as most with batteries could simply go off-grid at these times and remove the electricity demand that nuclear is relying on to control its costs. Without draconian enforcement that voters are unlikely to stand for, this curtailment won’t happen. As it will be worse in regions close to nuclear power stations, it gives locals an excellent reason to block their construction.
How often home solar and batteries would need to shut down depends on how much is installed before the first nuclear power plant becomes operational. But rooftop solar can already meet all demand at times in South Australia, and all other states are heading in that direction. Even if Frontier Economics is right and we’ll have nuclear power within 11 years, a massive amount of rooftop solar and home battery capacity will be installed in that time. Eleven years ago, rooftop solar supplied under o.1% of Australia’s electricity, while over the past 12 months it supplied 13.3%. This could easily more than double by the time 2036 rolls around. So for Frontier Economics’ figures to work, solar and potentially home batteries would need to be curtailed on most days.
Extending Coal Power Is Costly
The Frontier Economics reports assume coal power stations will operate well past their currently planned retirements until nuclear is ready to replace them, but makes no allowances for the extra costs of keeping them going. Australia’s coal fleet is old and worn out and can’t be reasonably expected to keep going without additional spending on either refurbishment or extra firming from batteries/open cycle turbines. If these costs aren’t paid, we will simply pay in another way through random blackouts when coal power stations break down.
This alone is enough to reasonably conclude that the Mums for Nuclear statement is unlikely to be correct. But I also think it’s reasonable for me to keep going and point out other issues that push “unlikely” into “not bloody likely” and beyond.
I should bloody well hope so! If you ever receive any amount of radiation from a nearby nuclear power plant, it means something has gone disastrously wrong inside the nuclear plant.
Transmission Savings Likely Less
Depending on which of their two scenarios are considered, Frontier Economics says either 15% or 17% of the savings from using nuclear will come from reduced transmission costs. But some of the transmission lines counted as savings are already under construction, and because we’re unlikely to get money back for work done, this is likely to reduce savings. Renewables also aren’t the only reasons for increasing transmission capacity. Even if we had zero solar and wind generation, we’d still need additional long-distance transmission to deal with a growing population and increased demand, as well as to shore up existing interconnectors as they grow older and less reliable.
Only 11 Years To Build Nuclear
Frontier Economics assumes Australia’s first nuclear power station will be fully operational by 2036, which is less than 11 years away. Another will be completed the year after that, the next in a couple more years, and so on.
Given that Australia hasn’t even decided to build nuclear power stations yet, this assumption is almost, but not quite, completely unreasonable. Here are some examples of recent construction times in countries I consider reasonably comparable to Australia:
- UK Hinkley Point C: Planning began in 2010 with approval in 2016. Construction began in 2017 with completion expected in 2025, but it’s still going and the earliest one of the two reactors will be operational is 2029 if there are no further delays. This would make it 19 years from the start of planning.
- France Flamanville 3: Construction started in 2007 with planned completion in 2012, but it’s only entering normal operation this year. So France, a country with extensive nuclear experience, took 18 years to construct their latest reactor.
- US Vogtle 3 & 4: Planning began in 2006 and construction in 2009. One reactor entered service in 2023 and the other in 2024, giving construction periods of 14 and 15 years.
- Finland Olkiluoto 3: Construction started in 2005 and it entered operation in 2023, giving a construction period of 18 years.
So, reasonably comparable countries with experience in building nuclear capacity took around 13-18 years to construct their latest reactors. As we haven’t even entered the planning stage and have no experience with nuclear generation, it’s not reasonable to expect Australia’s first nuclear power station to be operating inside of 11 years.
While things went wrong with the construction of all the above reactors, we don’t have the ability to decide not to have things go wrong. If we had magic pixie dust we could sprinkle on large complex projects to make them go without a hitch, we would have used it on Snowy 2.0.
I’m happy to acknowledge it’s possible to build reactors faster than this. Americans, plus immigrants fleeing persecution, built one in two months. But I’m willing to bet one million dollars we won’t have an operational nuclear power station in 2036.
A nuclear power plant in Germany, with water vapour rising from the cooling towers. Any Australian inland nuclear power station would likely require at least some air cooling to reduce water losses, which increases costs.
Operating Costs Will Be Over 3c/kWh
On page 7 of report 2, Frontier Economics gives its assumption for the running costs of nuclear power:
“variable and non-capital fixed costs of $30 per megawatt-hour, including decommissioning costs.”
This is 3c per kWh, which is very low. The only place this figure could have come from that I can think of is if they took the United States’ best year for operations and maintenance, while leaving out a number of costs. It’s not reasonable to assume Australia, a country with no nuclear experience, will exceed the best results of the Americans, who took decades to reach their operating costs.
Nuclear Won’t Be Cheaper Than Overseas
It costs a lot of money to build nuclear power and Frontier Economics’ figure isn’t high enough. On page 7 of report 2, they give their assumptions for nuclear’s capital cost…
“Capital costs are $10,000 per kilowatt of capacity”
This means a 1 gigawatt nuclear power station would cost $10 billion in Australia. But countries I consider reasonably comparable to Australia, with existing nuclear industries, haven’t been able to build them that cheaply this century. Here are examples of overseas nuclear costs in today’s dollars:
- UK Hinkley Point C: $94 billion for 3.26GW or around $28,800/kW.
- France Flamanville 3: $25 billion for 1.6GW or around $15,600/kW
- US Vogtle 3 & 4: $38 billion for 2.23GWor around $17,000/kW
- Finland Olkiluoto 3: $21 billion for 1.6GW or around $13,100/kW
As you can see, they’re all considerably over $10,000 per kW.
In case you think the figures above are all bizarre aberrations and the next nuclear plants these countries build will be far cheaper, then I’ll point out the Sizewell C nuclear power station in the UK that has just begun construction and is the same design as Hinkley C, may cost around $83 billion. That’s $25,500 per kW. This is only 11% less than Hinkley Point C before even having a chance to rack up cost overruns.
If the capital costs are around $13,000 then even if all of Frontier Economics other assumptions are true, it would wipe out their predicted savings from lower transmission costs. Even if we can build nuclear here at the same cost Finland did, and everything else in the Frontier Economics reports turns out to be right, it would only likely increase electricity costs.
In Australia, wholesale electricity now averages around 8c/kWh. Electricity from the UK Hinkley Point C reactors will receive a minimum wholesale price of ~27c/kWh. This figure was fixed before their massive cost overruns. I don’t call that “affordable”.
Nuclear Will Be Even More Expensive Here
The countries above all had experience with nuclear, and the new capacity was built at existing nuclear power sites. But because Australia does not have a nuclear power industry and will have to decide on and develop new nuclear sites, it will cost more here.
Another factor that will have a much larger effect is Australia’s high labour costs. While the US has us beat, on average we’re paid much more than the Brits, French, and Finns. This will unavoidably raise costs because Australian workers will demand Australian-level compensation. Also, bringing in foreign nationals to do the work while paying them less than Australians is not a realistic option. It’s exactly the sort of thing that results in industrial action.
What About Less Comparable Countries?
There are also countries I consider less comparable to Australia with nuclear industries. Three of them are:
- South Korea
- China
- India
It’s difficult to work out exactly how much nuclear costs in these countries, but as all three still import large amounts of thermal coal from Australia, it’s clearly not cheap. I’d expect a much faster nuclear buildout for all three if it was saving them money.
What is clear is they’re building nuclear for less than in Europe or the US. But this doesn’t mean we can get them to build it for the same price here. Just because you can buy a curry for 50c from a street vendor in Bengaluru doesn’t mean you can get the same thing in Australia. The last time I bought a street curry in Adelaide it cost me $21.95. You won’t get Indian prices in Australia for anything with a significant labour component.
There’s No Reasonable Way Nuclear Will Reduce Costs
According to the Frontier Economics reports, many ducks have to be in a row for this statement by Mums for Nuclear…
“Nuclear energy in the mix with renewables reduces cost by 25%“
…to be correct.
I’m going to list all the duckies that will have to turn out in their favour and state whether or not I consider them reasonable:
- Solar curtailed in favour of nuclear — not bloody likely
- No extra cost for coal power extensions: not reasonable
- Transmission cost savings: Not reasonable — any savings likely less than figures given.
- Nuclear operational inside 11 years — just short of impossible
- Nuclear non-capital costs of 3c/kWh — not going to happen, almost impossible
- Nuclear capital costs of $10,000 — far from reasonable
That’s way too many ducks for a linear formation to be realistic. For this reason, I have no problem at all saying the Mums for Nuclear statement that there’s a 25% cost reduction from including nuclear in the mix is false. I will also say it’s not reasonable to expect any savings at all from building nuclear. It’s only likely to increase costs, no matter what your nuclear mum tells you.
For energy solutions that do actually slash your bills, take a look at our guides on solar panels and home battery storage instead.
About Ronald Brakels
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Thank you for examining these wildly unfactual claims by ” Mums for nuclear “. Honestly this pretend, thinly front group for nuclear and fossil fuel industry are a pure utter embarrassment. I really dislike these ignorant attempts at disinformation.They offer nothing to any reasonable person evaluating the necessary steps our economic system requires to avoid a climate disaster.
I’m surprised that it’s not ‘Moms for nuclear’. The whole thing sounds like hokey, right wing GOP Americanism.
I’m not disagreeing with the primary point of the article, but I would like to point out that nuclear can be designed to work well with solar. The Natrium SMR is designed with larger generators than the reactor requires. The idea is to run the reactor at 100% capacity, but to match generation to demand. During the day, the reactor’s excess energy is stored as heat – during the evening, as solar shuts down and demand peaks, this stored heat is used to augment the reactor’s output to run the generators.
Building nuclear capacity with thermal storage is an option. But that thermal storage is playing the role of a battery. Thanks to their rapidly falling cost, we’ve found that it’s cheaper to use actual batteries rather than thermal storage. So rather than nuclear plus storage, solar plus batteries can be used instead. Or not just solar, but what we are currently heading for which is solar + wind, with batteries, hydro, and open cycle turbines.
JN, it’s incomparably cheaper to just overnight store nuclear *fusion* energy, currently wireless-delivered daily for free – dirty nuclear fission is just *so* last century.
Renewables & battery storage do it all – no nukes needed. And even cheaper cryogenic gridscale storage is being built in UK, soon in Australia:
https://highviewpower.com/projects/#uk-projects
One plant in Manchester is to supply 480,000 homes. One going in in Scotland is said to supply ¼ of its homes. (Perhaps for the evening peak, for starters, I’m guessing, as it takes a while to build nation-scale infrastructure – though perhaps not as long as a nuke power station.)
Nuke is dead – only its stink shows it’s not quite buried yet. Even current 21st century technology has bypassed that old junk. It is the economies of scale in gridscale storage which may save the grid from an off-gridding exodus in the next decade.
Grids in 2050 will be unrecognisable – no coal, no nuke, no gas, no diesel.
The Nuclear reactors proposed by coalition at a cost to taxpayers of $600 billion are only going to supply 11% of Australia’s electrify needs when built (sic)
Hi Rod,
It’s worth noting that as far as I can ascertain, the Frontier Economics modelling also predicts total electricity demand will be much smaller too.
Mmmm even as someone who is relatively pro solar I think it’s a fallacy to believe we can meet all of our peak power demands with weather dependant renewables. I wish we did invest In nuclear in the 80s or 90s and fear it’s far too late.
You definitely still need a source of energy that isn’t weather dependant, batteries at their best will only be able to supplement very short time windows where weather hinders renewable generation. I think we should be exploring both renewables and nuclear in tandem a lot more than we are instead of making it an argument against each other. An economy can’t be built based on inconsistent power generation. We so should have been having this argument 10-35 years ago.
Hi Luke,
You make it sound like sunrise is unreliable?
Solar is is already giving us the cheapest electricity ever generated, and it’s still getting cheaper.
Nuclear is just an incredibly complex way to run a steam engine, which as the Queenslanders have proven repeatedly over the last few years, isn’t reliable at all. When plants like Calide blow up, they’re the worst kind of outage, large, catastrophic and unplanned.
Whereas wind distributed wind and solar can undergo maintenance just like they paint the harbour bridge, gradual and continuous with only a percent or two offline at any time.
Aside from that we have hydropower, which is superior to just about everything else, and can be pumped back up hill when there’s lots of excess energy.
Fun Fact : If we electrify transport there will be enough batteries available to do all the storage needed on the NEM about 8 times over.
Ample domestic storage fills some serious weather holes. Off-grid, solar-only, my home & BEV serve to illustrate. We’ve yet again had only one sunny day in over a week of overcast or heavy cloud, but with just under 100 kWh of storage (51 kWh in the MG4, 46.5 kWh house battery) the very low ratio of sunny weather is no problem.
Trips to two towns, 65 km and 70 km, plus a shorter trip took the BEV down to 39% before 50.2 kWh of daily production on the one sunny day topped everything up. OK, it’s not just ten times the minimum storage, but 27 kW of panels, which end each dark cloud-occluded day with the house battery at 100%, even on 10% yield or less.
Heating with the aircon at night is off-grid profligacy, but there’s now 88% SoC just before bedtime, and I’m too lazy to light the fire. It’ll bounce back tomorrow, overcast or not. Not enough for the HWS in rain today, but water’s hot from yesterday. (Make it big too, got it?)
Panels x 5, battery x 10 = problem solved, it seems to me.
SA is going 100% solar + battery, not even a wind supplement, with 12.5 GWh going in as 5 battery farms, supplied by BYD. OK, that’s Saudi Arabia, so their achievable spend rate lets them do it faster than we will, but by 2030, even the slow learners will realise that this shit is going seriously exponential, as gridscale battery prices continue to accumulate economies of scale.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=crqYLMR7-Wo
It’ll take decades to complete the transition, but then it took a century to dig the hole we’re in, so that’s not too bad, except for low lying islands, Bangladesh, and Florida, and …
In any event, it’ll largely be done before we can settle the fission plant argument, let alone build 7 nukes for 11% of grid demand.
We do have a good bit more overcast than the middle east, I figure, so wind, especially offshore, is good for our mix, as is pumped hydro. New geothermal may yet get a gig, if Geretsried meets expectations in a couple of months.
Alea iacta est.
Lets all understand the LNP power plan for what it is:-
1) Immediately slow down/reverse renewables deployment, if you don’t then well before the first sod of dirt is turned in construction it becomes irrelevant because renewables are already doing what we need.
2) Immediately prop up coal based generation for another 20 years. Dont mistake this as a temporary step, this is the WHOLE step of the nuclear plan and it doesnt matter if we eventually get to nuclear or not.
3) Phaff round with nuclear for decades and at the same time try to legislate to prevent household renewables getting to be good enough that they can abandon the grid.
4) with the from time to time slight changes in direction introduced with 3) revisit and restart 2) all over again as many times as possible
Meanwhile many on here who know what solar and storage is capable of will do their own thing and make all of the above irrelevant until such times as an even better reneable energy source comes around cause it will!!
Exactly Ronald ! It must be exhausting to deal with disingenuous attitudes that seek to disrupt rather than contribute. Straw arguments, closed perspectives, irrational , a front for the high polluting coal and fossil fuel vested interests ….. a bit like Mums for Nuclear.
Andy, whoever gets the next term (and the next) will very much have to have coal there to bridge the gap, for some time yet.
Labour are already keeping what’s left of our coal fired power open for longer, realising their renewable plans would mean loss of industry / jobs, and unreliable power for many parts of the country.
After a couple of terms we MAY be at a stage where we can move gradually to small scale home / commercial / industrial battery type grid assistance, IF the powers that be put a plan in place to make it worthwhile for battery owners to help things with peak demand.
We have a long way to go yet.
I think you are wildly underestimating how quickly batteries are going to be deployed and the size of those batteries. Already on todays economics 4Hr grid scale batteries make economic sense. Quinbrook partners claim they can make 8 hour batteries stack up (i am dubious – i think thats another two years or so)
Its a fairly obvious progression that you will see happen – grid batteries drop in price, more solar and wind get deployed – current solar gets curtailed too much during the day – so they purchase batteries behind the meter to store their excess solar and sell into the peak
Rinse and repeat – with the cycles coming closer and closer together as new battery tech emerges.
The Evolution of DNSPs to enable them to host community level batteries and provide pole mounted EV charging points (bi-directional) and innovative tarriffing schemes (such as 4 hours free charging in the day) to provide 1 hour from the EV in the evening peak
We are on the cusp of a revolution !
Craig
Hi Andy and Team,
You wrote: “As we haven’t even entered the planning stage and have no experience with nuclear generation, it’s not reasonable to expect Australia’s first nuclear power station to be operating inside of 11 years.”
1. in 11 years at least all the currently installed solar panels and batteries and inverters will be halfway through their economic life…
2. The first rule in gaining experience is to use someone elses’ because it is cheaper – they have paid for their mistakes.
3. If we don’t make plans we can’t change them when something else comes along – look at all the ingenious “free power” inventions on U-tube.
4. For 24/7 power distribution we need a grid connecting everyone to a mix of multiple sources so the sooner the Australian DC Ring-main gets started the better.
No one has mentioned the cost and pollution created to make solar panels and batteries. The life cycle of both are most likely under a 20 year span – batteries 15 years tops from my research. If we pollute to make them, pollute to dispose or recycle them every 20 years, where are we actually gaining on reducing emissions? Nuclear – 60-80 years, base load at night and can ramp up on demand when there is no sun or no wind. You cant control the sun or the wind and the batteries are limited.
The cost of solar and batteries are far cheaper. I mentioned earlier how on kW of Hinkley Point C nuclear will pay for 20kWh of home batteries and 13+kW of rooftop solar. Because we can decarbonize rapidly using renewables + batteries pollution will be less than if we use nuclear. It is now common for solar panels to have 30 year performance warranties and you can expect the large majority of panels to last longer than that. You can also buy batteries with 20 year warranties. Nuclear is very expensive and if you operate it at half capacity so it can ramp up on demand its cost nearly doubles. Battery production is expanding rapidly and their supply is considerably less limited than for nuclear containment vessels.
Craig, time will tell re how far off we are with real industry level renewables.
As long as they don’t remove any more coal for as reliable power as we can get for the next 2, 3, or 6 years or whatever, fine.
We’ve already seen major cities where authorities have almost begged for people to not run air conds, washing machines, other appliances, and to draw blinds and curtains etc, just this past summer.
Me, I’ll be getting a battery when the time is right, it may not be for another year or so.
I know with one we can be pretty independent from grid draw, and maybe move to a wholesale type supply if retailers get too greedy with lowering FITs even more and increasing solar soak penalty.
I don’t mind doing my bit and paying a little supply charge to be on the generally reliable grid.
I reckon likely just another front for the pro coal lobby, not a genuine MIWF liberal group (W instead of L , because you know, i have taste)
Just to complete the argument, would you be able to tell us what the cost of Labor’s renewables-only scheme is going to be? It seems the government either can’t or won’t.
Thanks!
If you want information on the cost of zero net emission electricity generation, Kerry, a lot has been written about it. You can search for “GenCost 2024-25” for the latest draft document on it.
But note you can get 20 kilowatt-hours of battery storage and over 13 kilowatts of solar for cost of just 1 kilowatt of the Hinkley Point C reactors.
Unfortunately the renewables-vs-nuclear debate has become almost entirely ideological. The GenCost report has been largely discredited as having been politically driven, as with anything from the CEC, SEC and many other funded bodies, viz the SEC’s delusional $600bn costing of the Coalition’s nuclear plan.
Those who have a mindset against nuclear don’t like to recognise the huge contribution it makes to generating 24/7 electricity around the world while helping to reduce CO2 emissions.
I think a more reasonable and balanced debate is called for, but we haven’t seen much of that in the last few weeks.
Wait a minute, first you ask me for information but then you suddenly know enough to say there’s a debate and it’s almost entirely ideological?
Kerry, you need to make a choice. Are you going to be useful to people, or are you going to waste their time? I recommend the latter — Not wasting people’s time: It’s the choice of a New Generation.
“….SEC’s delusional $600bn costing of the Coalition’s nuclear plan.”
seems to be a fair bit of that going round hey….
on one side there’s a stupidly low and completely unbelievable low nuclear price…the likes of which the voting masses have never seen before from the LNP, those pillars of economic management!!
Snowy 2 was supposed to cost $2b and the latest suggestions are $14b.. let’s hope that the nuclear project doesn’t suffer the same order of magnitude cost overruns.
I mean it shouldn’t right, Snowy 2 is at the end of the day building some underground tunnels and a big pump and generator…alll things we done in AU multiple times before so pretty low risk really…Nuclear however is in our case pretty much no risk at all, we have a qualified team of potential employees (X) the technology isn’t new (X) the financial modeling is never wrong (X)….Yep no overruns likely there, “Off the planet (Frontier) Economics told us so!!!! IMHO
Wait until you hear about the blowouts in the cost of new transmission, only required to allow more privately owned, for profit, remote wind and solar to connect. PEC and Copper string are just two and Western Renewables Link is three years behind before they have even started.
Labor/AEMOs plan may be popular in urban areas, but in regions expected to host the grid expansion, the gates are locked and bolted.
Step Change as described by AEMO will never happen, but nuclear, even if later than desirable will, because no pollie wants to be responsible for the lights going off.
Thank you for your most balanced and unbiased contribution to the whole debate – which seems to be driven by vested interests rather than logic and rationale. Unfortunately I fell for all the spin and outplayed $13,000 in solar panels to find that my electricity has actually gone up in the last 2 years – not down. Biggest mistake I ever made listening to spin from what looks like a cowboy industry propped up and making money out of government policy.
Hi Ross,
Bolting 13kW(?) of solar to your house isn’t a magic bullet. If you can let us know what your loads are and more precisely -when- you’re using them we can help with advice.
With a family of 5 with all electric house plus 2½ EVs, my last power bill was $88 and I don’t have any super special retail deals, or a battery either.
Being smart about how you use power is free.
Kerry, your cover is blown. Please report to Liberal HQ immediately.
Hi Kerry,
Nuclear itself isn’t exactly balanced.
In recent years, new nuclear capacity has only slightly exceeded or just balanced out retirements, leading to minimal net growth or even a slight decline in total operable capacity.
Meanwhile;
In 2022, global renewable power capacity grew by about 295 GW.
In 2023, a record 473–510 GW of new renewable electricity capacity was added, representing a nearly 50% increase from 2022.
Total added in two years (2022 + 2023):
Approximately 770–805 GW of new renewable electricity capacity was added globally over 2022 and 2023 combined.
Fact is that nuclear advocates said they would give us “energy so cheap you wouldn’t have to meter it” and they never have.
Where nuclear has failed for 70 years, solar is now delivering on the promise.
It’s generating the cheapest electricity ever known and furnishing it behind the meter.
And to continue…The 1kw of nuclear can only produce 1kw which will likely support much less than 1 house over night. that is, the average power usage at night is probably less than 1kw/hr but the peak usage will be significantly more, probably up to 4 or 5kw peak when the oven and range and fridges freezers are all on at teh same time.
the 20kwhrs of battery and 13kw of solar, if I use Sigenergy as a solution I’m familiar with will have a 10 or 12kw inverter and 4 x 5kwhr batterys. Its capable of producing either 10 or 12kw in the day from solar and 10kw only during the night (Battery capacity/2 or inverter max what ever is lower) per hour. It can under todays rules and your DNSP rules export up to 5kw onto the grid. As such it likely can support 2 x houses all night (the one its installed on, and one other on grid)
so cost wise Nuclear per kw >> solar plus storage cost
nuclear needs 5 x per kw cost to support 1 house while solar and storage can support 2 x houses as an approximate
I have done hundreds of power station evaluations in my 40 year career in the industry and been involved in over 20 plants built for Australian and OS clients. I researched recent nuclear power capital costs and durations in Western countries and came up with the same numbers as Ronald. Nuclear power just does not make economic sense in Australia and even if we started tomorrow, we wouldn’t see one for 20 years. I agree with all Ronald’s points.
I can only assume that the LNP still has a core of anti climate change and anti renewables believers who cannot do a simple economic evaluation.
Australians have installed over 4 GW of solar PV in each of the last two years. That’s four 1000MW nuclear PS. Even if you account for solar PVs lesser annual energy output of say 17% versus 90% it is still one nuclear plant in less than 18 months. If this were to continue we’d have built the equivalent of 10 nuclear PS in 15 years.
4 GW of solar delivers about 16 GWh of intermittent energy per day which either needs storing (at extra cost) or using. 4GW of nuclear supplies 90 GWh of energy per day which can be relied on.
Solar plus storage is cheaper than nuclear. Solar + wind + hydro + open cycle turbines is far cheaper. Especially since you can put the solar on your roof and batteries in/besides your home or business.
Hi Greg,
When you say energy that “can be relied on” are you talking about steam engines? We already have quite a few of them and they’re not what any rational person would call reliable. In fact when plants like this fall over, it’s often the very worst kind of failure, large, unplanned and long duration.
Have to disagree! Steam has inherit reliability issues, but combined cycle gas turbine stations can be built quickly (144MW over 3 years) and have towards 30% efficiency. They have the added advantage of maintaining the steam part on line. Gas turbines have been used for a decade + in WA as the transition fuel an now provides base load while batteries and solar take over. Tony Abbott stopped gas pipeline( s) being built with a right wing report when huge line are being built far greater world wide. The latest GE ‘harriet’ GT is 600MW+.There is now a 3 year order wait for new power gt’s.
Gas turbine generation is the real economical solution for base load to transit to Solar, Wind and Batteries if you haven’t sold all the gas and hydro is not available.
The journalist’s don’t know and the pollies don’t want you to know.
Possibly not relevant to this forum but we somehow have to get the truth out there. Please delete if you think inappropriate.
Hi Jon,
Gas has a role certainly but as you mention the wait time to get a new turbine has blown out.
The gas cartels are pricing themselves out of business.
We’d better just get on with deploying more solar… there’s lots of idle capacity in manufacturing PV panels.
Thanks, Ken. I appreciate the confirmation that I haven’t gone off the rails!
The water consumption of Nuclear Power production needs to be factored into the costs. The reactors need to be cooled whether they are producing electricity or not. This consumes water and is evaporative cooled voa the natural draught cooling towers.
France had issues in recent years during drought where they had to curtail Nuclear production due to lack of water.
Thank you Malcolm. I think more consideration needs to be given to the water requirements of nuclear (and hydrogen generation) especially when considering sites in semi arid areas such as Whyalla in SA
Hi Ron
Always a pleasure reading your blogs!
I want to go off topic…..maybe a suggestion for a future blog?
There is a scam perpetrated daily in the off grid solar industry.
The scam is advertised in eBay and is built around hugely inflated power outputs from solar panels, destined for non technical aussie punters that just want cold beer at their campsite.
You do the maths on a beer coaster with the help of your mates and guestimate you need xxx watts of solar to keep your fridge running. You go to everybody’s fav. eBay and buy the one you need.
You set it all up and next day you have warm beer!
Simple physics and math says a panel that small cant possibly do that much
We need to let our aussie punters know they are being ripped off.
The ball is now in your court
I’ll let Anthony know. He enjoys some raw meat every now and then. Actually, he seems to like it everyday.
Ronald, if you didn’t laugh at the Coal lobby, you’d cry. But they may be telling the truth in that headline claim “Nuclear energy in the mix with renewables reduces cost by 25%“ Paraphrased to being more explicit, I understand their meaning to be:
Nuclear is so appallingly expensive that even combining the cheapest energy sources, renewables, would only reduce the financial damage by 25% … compared to all nuclear.
So I don’t think we can prove that they’re untruthful, merely as wantonly devious as Fanta-locks.
In fact, look closely; the core of that message is, quote: “renewables reduces cost “.
Well my goodness I seem to have belled the cat here! I won’t be commenting further as I’m obviously on the wrong website, except to say that those who so vehemently oppose nuclear might wish to consider (a) how many nuclear power stations China is building both at home and around the world; (b) how many dozens of coal-fired power stations China has under construction and in planning; (c) why there are hundreds of nuclear stations operating safely, reliably and economically in dozens of countries around the world; (d) why Germany has been forced to reopen some of its coal-fired (and possibly nuclear) power stations as wind and solar proved completely inadequate; and (e) why the only countries other than Australia aiming at 100 per cent renewables (Norway, Iceland) have massive alternative resources which Australia can never have such as hydro and geothermal.
Forgive me (I’m trying to be civil) but when I read the arguments of the anti-nuclear lobby the word Luddite springs to mind.
Hi Kerry,
China built more new windfarm capacity in 2020 than the whole world combined in the year before, leading to an annual record for windfarm installations despite the Covid-19 pandemic.
A study has revealed that China led the world’s biggest ever increase in wind power capacity as developers built almost 100GW worth of windfarms last year – enough to power almost three times the number of homes in the UK and a rise of nearly 60% on the previous year.
https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/chinas-wind-solar-capacity-overtake-coal-2024-industry-body-2024-01-30/
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/aug/03/more-coal-power-generation-closed-than-opened-around-the-world-this-year-research-finds
For costing you could read the plans put out by the people running the national electricity market.
https://aemo.com.au/-/media/files/major-publications/isp/2024/2024-integrated-system-plan-isp.pdf
Sorry Kerry – dont leave here – but please dont just parrot the rubbish out there that comes up against renewables without doing a bit more research
1) China is still deploying coal fired power stations – however the new ones they are building are designed to run on their low grade coal AND to be used as peaker plants (much like our plan for Gas plants) i.e. they can be turned on and off at short notice – China is doing this to give themselves energy independence from the West
2) China is indeed building more Nuclear (but the reality is that China is deploying 70x more Wind and Solar than they are Nuclear) i.e. they want to stay on top of Nuclear so if there is a breakthrough in SMR they will be the ones to commercialise it and sell it to the world
3) We are one ofthe few countries in the world with the size landmass we have and the small population density – whereby a modular power system rolled out gradually makes great economic sense i.e. VRE
Craig
Australia is among the sunniest and windiest countries in the world. Germany especially cannot compete either for sunshine or wind. If both sun and wind are available and plentiful, why wouldn’t Australia want to take advantage of them? Steam powered electricity is best left back in the 20th century.
Also, by being disingenuous you diminish your argument considerably, much like the pro-nuclear argument.
Anti nuclear lobby……Nope….much simpler than that…im Anti Stupid!!!!!
A problem needs a solution and the problem has to predate the solution. Nuclear in AU is a solution in desperate need of a problem!
How many countries of our size (i mean population not physical land area) have viable nuclear industries? It a super expensive infrastructure that has to be paid for by bugger all population…
I went and looked, the vast majority of nuclear power countries have populations that are significantly more than Australia has. But not all, there are some former USSR counties that have relatively small populations and inherited a plant from the USSR…..I mean how lucky were they!!!!
Those that do have small populations comparable or even smaller than AU almost always have a postage stamp sized land mass and when you look at what percentage of the grid power does nuclear provide its way up there….
I didn’t really see any country that has small population and large area like we have that has nuclear power, and in the wiki article I looked at no country of AU size that has no existing nuclear industry but is planning/actually building one, so if we were to do so we would be relatively unique…..lastly wouldn’t anti nuclear mean -ve for all forms of nuclear science? If so that isn’t me, I’m all for Lucas Heights and medical use of nuclear isotopes to save lives….just not power.
From memory, the Luddites opposed the rapid rollout of new, untested, untried technology that was doing them out of jobs and had the potential to destroy communities and careers. They were actually more like modern-times unions than the oft misrepresented idea that they were something like an Amish community, opposed to all modernism and technology.
So it’s probably not accurate to say that people opposed to a technology that has been around for decades (over half a century actually) and is not going to put anyone out of a job, Luddites.
Maybe they’re just opposed to an economically and environmentally nonsensical (for Australia) technology.
Really well written article! I can’t fathom how ignorant of basic science and economics people have to be gullible enough to think nuclear isn’t just a smoke screen for the fossil fuel lobby.
Temu Trump has gone very quiet on his Nuclear Brain Fart. It appears he is leaving it up to Astroturfers to fly the flag.
Yes, my main argument against Nuclear in Australia is rooftop solar. We are seeing extended periods of negative pricing across the NEM regularly now let alone in 11 years after 33GW more rooftop solar is installed.
And I expect household battery prices to fall by half in the next few years. All of that load will shift or leave the grid. No room for nukes.
And the benefit of less Transmission is hugely overblown. Transmission is currently 8% of bills. That is unlikely to change much in the future even if the 10,000km of new Transmission is built by 2050.
I had a look at Ronald’s Bio and saw this article he penned 11 years ago:
“South Australian Renewables Contribute To Negative Electricity Prices In Middle Of Day”
https://cleantechnica.com/2014/10/23/negative-electricity-prices-middle-of-day-south-australia-renewables/
That article mentions a coal fired power station in SA: which I understand is long gone. It also details the reluctance to installing wind turbines in SA: not from what you see these days.
I for one would be keen to see a take on then versus now in relation to the “need” for nuclear . . .
Back in 1970 Australia accepted tenders for a nuclear power station at Jervis Bay, 3 hours drive south of Sydney. While a some ground work was started, the project was abandoned in 1971 because it was judged too expensive. If there was a carbon price in the 70s — which we don’t even have now — maybe it would have turned out differently. Back when the SA coal Northern Power Station was about to be closed down in 2016 it was seeking a power purchase agreement of 5c per kWh. That would be 6.5c in today’s money. As nuclear in developed countries was already massively expensive at that point – the ~27c/kWh for UK’s Hinkley Point C was already fixed at that point — there’s no way it would have made economic sense back then. Given the cost of solar and wind and the time and how rapidly they were falling in price, it also didn’t make sense from an environmental point of view.
I haven’t heard of Mum’s for Nuclear before but am aware that disinformation already exists from the Teal crowd.
SQ’s ‘fact check’ of the MfN piece is fundamentally flawed – it starts out by claiming False, then later links to the Frontier Economics page which explicitly states “(u)sing a Step Change model with nuclear will garner a 25% cheaper solution than using renewable and storage alone”. Thus while SQ claims to be debunking MfN, they’re actually directly contradicting Frontier Economics, whilst also stating they relied on a Renew Economy article by Alan Rai rather than go to the original source. In terms of academic rigour etc, that’s poor form.
Of course in terms of election outcomes this will have precisely zero impact on my electorate. The odds of a change in seat here are … negligible.
Mums for Nuclear stated Frontier Economics was their source, so I went to the Frontier Economics reports and pointed out a number of things that are wrong wrong – or at least unreasonable – in it. I did this by — at three separate points in my post — by quoting directly from the Frontier Economics report while giving page and report numbers. Without using flashing HTML tags it would be hard to make it clearer that I am directly discussing what is in the reports.
You did? I understood “(i)t’s not exciting reading, so luckily there’s a Renew Economy article by Alan Rai that summarises a lot of the claims and debunks some” as meaning you read that instead and your quotes were based on that article.
Some days even flashing HTML tags probably wouldn’t be enough! 🤣
I just didn’t want anyone to suffer reading through the reports if they didn’t have to!
Hi George,
Frontier Economics have nailed their odious colours to the mast; and the ship is sinking.
“A comparison by Frontier/the Coalition of the Government’s and the Opposition’s approaches
based on two different electricity demand profiles for the economy to 2050, with Frontier/the
Coalition selecting the ‘Progressive Change’ electricity demand profile with lower rates of
electrification and uptake of green industries, rather than the higher growth Step Change scenario.
Lower demand requires a smaller system build, and a lower capital spend”
This is why Angas Taylor keep banging on about a magical “44% cheaper” figure… because his lower target is cheaper to meet.
https://cleanenergycouncil.org.au/getmedia/0d4c1b8f-3974-4ee2-a6fd-d3b043d6f1dd/cec-briefing-note_analysis-of-frontier-s-second-report-on-costs-of-nuclear-power-for-aus_dec24.pdf
Oh drat, forgot to add to my last post that France, Slovakia, and a few other countries are majority reliant on nuclear, while several others are heavily reliant on nuclear, if not for an absolute majority.
France appears to have about 10% solar + wind.
Slovakia is about 5% solar + wind.
The Czech Republic is about 40% nuclear, 10% solar + wind.
Do those nations curtail solar? Certainly the residential uptake is far less – to be fair though they tend to be closer to Tasmania in latitude than to Darwin or Queensland.
Hi George,
Climate change has curtailed nuclear output in France last summer as the rivers were too hot to properly cool the plants.
Howevwr simple economics dictates what’s being used.
If nuclear was viable, they’d be building them to meet growing demand wouldn’t they?
Guess what; In recent years, new nuclear capacity has only slightly exceeded or just balanced out retirements, leading to minimal net growth or even a slight decline in total operable capacity.
Meanwhile In 2022, global renewable power capacity grew by about 295 GW.
In 2023, a record 473–510 GW of new renewable electricity capacity was added, representing a nearly 50% increase from 2022.
Total added in two years (2022 + 2023):
Approximately 770–805 GW of new renewable electricity capacity was added globally over 2022 and 2023 combined
Supporters of nuclear power need to be reminded that Calder Hall, the world’s first civilian nuclear power station on Cumbria’s west coast was opened in 1956 at a cost of £35m and closed in 2003. Decommissioning cost more than £136bn (source The Guardian). It is not known what the cost of storing spent radioactive fuel will be for the next 10,000 years. The people of Britain will be paying for the very first Watt of electricity generated for generations into the future.
In all the debate around nuclear power, I seem never to come across discussion of where the waste will go. Who wants a radioactive dump near their home or business for the next 20,000 years?
While long term nuclear waste disposal is technically not a real issue, the economics of it are definitely an issue. Finland’s deep storage repository appears to be around 0.5c per kWh generated, while the EU average appears to be around 0.6c. That’s one reason why I’m sure the non-capital costs of nuclear in Australia will be considerably higher than the 3c per kWh given by Frontier Economics.
Hi CJ,
I think Finland is the only place that has a high level nuclear waste facility anything like completed and they won’t accept waste from abroad.
Bob Hawke once floated an idea to use the Pilbara rock formations(?) in WA, geology that’s been stable for 3.6 billion years, to create a new Australian industry. Namely to have a dedicated shipping line, port, rail line & waste repository, where Australia could basically name the price for the world’s nuclear waste disposal.
Fun Fact. The UK has 31 nuclear submarines. Only 9 are in use, but the others cost millions of pounds per year to maintain, as they’re still devising how to dispose of them. The first to be scrapped might be finished by 2026. HMS Swiftsure was in service for 19 years (1973–1992) and has been retired for 33 years as of 2025
Nobody wants this in their back yard.
I agree entirely agree CJ. I have been making this argument for many years.
Our society is profoundly disabled by myopia and cognitive dissonance.
But why should we concern ourselves about the world we leave to our decendants?
After all, what have they ever done for us?
Meanwhile, the nuclear power industry is designing & building very small modular reactors (SMR), with output of less than a third of conventional nuclear power stations – up to 300 MW per unit, intended for use in small applications, such as factories, and it small communities.
I’d be interested to hear more about them, and their associated costs when compared to the much larger scale power stations under discussion here.
Hi Will,
I think the consensus is something like this:
1 – SMRs are vapourware. They don’t exist.
There isn’t even a demonstration plant for a commercial reactor.
First approvals for Rolls Royce are slated for 2029 but NuScale in the US have given up.
2 – Even those promoting SMRs acknowledge they’ll be more expensive due to economies of scale that help large plants.
The large generators we have now are obviously much larger than the local powerhouses we had 100 years ago.
3 – Nuke advocates assert “production line” assembly will make them fast and cheap, but the volume required would need something like wartime rates of uptake & deployment
SMRs are more expensive per kW than large reactors. Or at least they are for designs that are far enough along to be costed. Their advantage is their cost overruns may not be as great, which isn’t exactly a great sales pitch. “It’s expensive, but it may not be even more expensive!” So they have the same problems as conventional reactors mentioned mentioned above and are additionally hampered by extra cost and not actually existing yet.
I’ll also mention that – while I’m sure the actual designs don’t make this mistake – I find it amusing how promotional pictures often show SMRs and “microreactors” without shielding, which means they would kill everyone in the power station.
The (Un) Economics of it doesn’t out weigh the biggest uncertainty, failures! Look at 3 Mile Island, Chernobyl, Fukushima etc. Once you let the Genie out of the bottle, there’s no way you’re going to get that little “Mum” back in there. There are also plenty of spectacular fossil fuel disasters all over the world over the last 100 years or more, to show the limitations of man made structures, even with the best manufacturing practices used.
I don’t know whether nuclear power would ever have made sense for Australia (maybe better than brown coal stations in Victoria?) but it isn’t going to be worth trying to go to that party as late as we are. So we need to build out the VRE grid. It’s a pity that we seem unable to do it at more modest speed without inflated expectations of build rates and transition timings becuase this is going to make it more expensive. Old maxim: you can have it good, you can have it fast, you can have it cheap: pick two becasue you can’t have all three
Great article. Hopefully the key points of this can make it into mainstream.
I’m interested in the smaller nuclear options like those being developed and built by TerraPower in the US. They seem quite interesting. https://www.terrapower.com
Can you also do an assessment of geothermal? 🙂
I think the worst decision ever made was to privatise such a critical infrastructure as the power grid. Maybe that would be the best thing for a government to do it put the grid back under public ownership and upgrade the whole damn thing.
One study suggested geothermal could cost 8c/kWh on a small scale and 4c large scale. In today’s money that might be 12c and 6c. It would have much lower operating costs than nuclear – limited waste disposal issues, no big decommissioning costs, potential lower ancillary grid costs, lower insurance, etc. It could all be done with drilling expertise and manufacturing capability that we mostly already have in Australia, so you’d think it would appeal to politicians more than nuclear which would be completely reliant on overseas components and expertise.
But the problem is it’s too expensive. No one will want to build a power station that requires at least 12c/kWh to make a profit and even assuming it could get down to 6c in the future, solar+wind+batteries will also fall in cost. So it’s likely to go nowhere. But it’s a better bet than nuclear.
Interesting Trivia: Geothermal releases more radioactivity than a properly functioning nuclear reactor.
Until we see how Geretsried pans out, we won’t know for sure how new geothermal will do. OK, they’re optimising the process on the fly, so cost and build time may improve from the current 2 – 3 years. The EU was keen enough to throw millions into it, and they’ll profit by heating two towns in addition to the modest 8.2 MW electrical output of the pilot commercial plant.
They claim a bunch of follow-on projects in planning and approval stages, so cost does not seem to be a problem cf nuke.
Cheapest is daytime solar, then battery time-shift, but we only do 4 hrs now. Consumption after the evening peak should be more expensive, as an incentive to bake your bread in daytime. Geothermal is that bit more expensive without trying – a perfect fit! 😉 Average your modest night-time consumption with heaps at cheaper daytime rates, and it’ll be a lot like now – just no coal or nuke. It’s dispatchable = compatible.
The cost of all the km of drilling may come down & deeper yields better.
I find it so sad your blog has become so political.
I am agnostic to all forms of power generation (disclosure..I have maxed out on solar panels and a big home battery).
I am witnessing the degradation of our landscape as I tour Australia. I do wonder how many of the contributors here live in the cities or suburbs.
I just follow the money. In this regard, the future most energy intensive industry, AI, are all investing in SMRs. Real world, no politics.
SMRs haven’t been built yet. Once they are built overseas, we’ll be able to see how much they cost. Note the ones with designs that are advanced enough to be costed cost more per kW than large reactors.
Thanks Ronald.
My key point was follow the money.
btw, Sometimes one’s politics get in the way of facts.
ANSTO is THE body charged with supplying our government with current facts nuclear.
Quoting ANSTO : “The OECD’s NEA recognises three SMRs as operational, with over 50 SMR technologies currently still under development as identified in their latest SMR Dashboard report.”
Please, read the ANSTO website.
The reactors referred to as SMRs are a 250MW Chinese pebble bed test reactor that’s not ready for production. The next pebble bed unit planned is apparently 600MW. The Chinese Linglong one is a 125MW demonstration reactor that may be completed next year. The Russian reactors are simply small bespoke reactors. They could be produced as small modular reactors in the future, but Russian nuclear power development is more or less on hold at the moment because they invaded Ukraine.
….Chinese Pebble Bed reactor……. which has been operational and successfully connected to the China power grid since 2021!
Russia has two operational SMRs.
Ronald, PLEASE read the current data. It is not fair to followers to propagate false information. Healthy debate survives on facts, not cancel culture.
Again, Ronald, my key point is follow the money…..there are over 80 active SMR development projects globally and that’s where smart money is going.
Sorry to rain on your parade, but we will not, unfortunately, get to net zero by 2050 without nuclear. ..(and I’m a huge supporter of battery technology!)
Generally speaking, to be an SMR, it has to have its main components built in a factory and transported to where it will be used. But that’s not enough. One of the most important parts of SMR is the M in the middle. It has to be modular. If they are still making major changes with each iteration rather than tweaks they haven’t actually settled on a module. As far as I’m concerned, nothing completed yet meets the criteria, but I’m happy with you using a different definition. You could count India’s dozen or so 200MW reactors as SMRs if you like.
If SMRs are a smart investment then they will be built overseas. If they are somehow cost competitive then we can use them here. But it’s not reasonable to expect them to be cost competitive as their costings are more per kW than large reactors and it’s not reasonable to expect them to be available and built here within 11 years.
G’day Ronald… Excellent article. Just one very small niggle… You state “I’m happy to acknowledge it’s possible to build reactors faster than this.
Americans, plus immigrants fleeing prosecution, built one in two months.”
“Fleeing prosecution”? Shouldn’t that read “fleeing persecution”? Actually it was probably both, given that many of them were Jewish. Also thanks for including the link to the Wikipedia page. I thought I already knew most of the story, but that page filled in a lot of holes in my knowledge.
So much for Hitler’s reputed dismissal of Nuclear Physics as “Jewish Physics”.
Good pickup thanks Les, have fixed.
Good point. While some prosecution would have been involved in some cases, I definitely should have used the word persecution. I’ll change it to that.
I would be concerned about building a Fission Nuclear power plant when it appears actual Fusion power is almost within reach with both China and France maintaining longer duration Fusion in 2025 and places like GeneralFusion.com looking at strategies to generate power from the heat.
For current solar I think one needs to build roofs at 30 year rainproof roofs giving them dual purpose. We added a Gallera patio roof above using 4 x 8 = 32 panels. The 4 panels vertically were glued together using Polyurethane and beneath the 8 spaced panel groups used PVC troughs made from PVC drain pipe.
An alternative to above may be to use a “Window and door expanding Polyurethane foam along with using Aviation Aluminum duct tape above.
Another alternative may be to use the bolt holes on the panels to screw to Aluminum C Channel with the Channel acting as rain gutter.
Video of our coastal hotel setup https://www.facebook.com/ken.graham.714/videos/1163761351819610
Time for some devil’s advocacy. As solar grows to constitute an ever larger fraction of the grid, isn’t it high time it regulated its own output rather than expecting other generators to swing to accommodate it? Which means, inevitably, either coupled storage, or curtailment. Solar no longer deserves its free ride. Its true costs should factor in whatever is needed to modulate its output and so be a responsible player in the grid.
Solar and wind have zero fuel cost. Solar also has basically no running costs while they are trivial for wind. Coal, gas, and nuclear all have fuels costs. Nuclear’s fuel cost is low and comparable to brown coal. These forms of generation also have higher operations and maintenance costs than solar and wind. So curtailing solar in favour of generation with fuel costs would mean not using the cheapest electricity available. This would raise electricity prices and result in more coal and gas being burned which would increase pollution. This would result in us paying more and harm us for no benefit — unless you own a fossil fuel generator.
Hi Michael,
The term you’re looking for is “flexible exports” and it’s been pioneered by SAPN in South Australia.
The real driver of expense in the grid has for decades been refrigerative air conditioning and the poorly built houses they’re bolted to.
Solar is counteracting this peaky load and reducing the need for further network spending.
I don’t understand “Nuclear Needs More Curtailment Of Rooftop Solar”…
“if people are often required to shut down their solar systems”
1) More curtailment, compared to what? Coal? Wind? Hydro?
Is nuclear baseload generation harder to ramp down at mid-day than others?
2) Won’t solar always need to be shut down in the middle of the day if there is too much generation and not enough load. The grid will always be unstable if there is nothing for the inverters to “push against” 🙂
(ignoring houses with DC coupled batteries, or possible community flywheel load balancers)
Running nuclear at half output nearly doubles the cost of electricity produced. To make its economics look as good as possible, it’s generally assumed nuclear will operate at high capacity. But throughout the country, generation is becoming more like in South Australia…
https://explore.openelectricity.org.au/energy/sa1/?range=7d&interval=30m&view=discrete-time&group=Detailed
As you can see, there’s no way a nuclear power station can operate continuously without renewables being curtailed. To get results typically assumed there would have to be a requirement for renewables, including rooftop solar, to be curtailed. This will have to include home and business battery storage once there is enough of it.
Nuclear could instead be treated the same as any other type of generation and not given the advantage of being able to shut down competing generation in its favour, but this would cause it to go from very expensive to crazy expensive.
My sister had a solar system installed to suit her needs 12 months ago and has had zero power bills ever since so why can’t everyone just get on board and we don’t have to have that Nuclear disscussion at all.
Love my panels and battery. But the article is just wrong – the best partner for panels and wind is gas, which is why all major gas producers and plant owners heavily promote rooftop solar.
Here’s what has happened with gas generation as South Australia’s renewable capacity – including rooftop solar – has increased:
https://explore.openelectricity.org.au/energy/sa1/?range=all&interval=1y&view=discrete-time&group=Detailed
At one point gas supplied 60% of generation and coal the rest. Now the state has now coal generation and last year gas supplied 23.6% of generation. Half as many kWh were generated from gas last year as in 2009. So solar and wind and batteries are great for reducing gas generation.
Sorry, Rookie question: why does residential solar have to be curtailed in order to also use Nuclear?
Hi Victoria,
Nuclear power is just an obscenely expensive and complex way to boil water to run a steam engine.
Where we currently have coal and gas fired boilers what can, to some extent, be stoked up and down to deliver energy to changing demands, the nature of all these steam plants is they’re slow to respond, like steering a ship.
None of them play very well with a diverse grid of distributed renewables where the whim of wind and cloud cover can cause variations in supply.
Now solar is easy to curtail, it costs nothing to turn off the tap so to speak when there’s lots of sun. As we build out more solar, we’ll need to throttle it from time to time anyway.
However, keeping a nuclear plant online, busy & economically viable means it has to run all the time at a constant rate.
So rooftop solar will be turned off every day to keep the nukes happy.