Submitted 6 months ago by MHLoppy@fedia.io to australianpolitics@aussie.zone
As the shift away from fossil fuels gathers pace, the Coalition has turned to an emissions-free technology with a long and contentious history — nuclear fission. These are the numbers you should keep in mind when thinking about its place in Australia’s energy transition.
I encourage you to at least glance through the article before you leave a comment that other commenters will dunk on you for.
I’m sure I have also heard on radio national that Australia would have a lot of trouble running on nuclear because
We only have ~26 million people. We could only support about two or three normal sized reactors
If we only had three, taking one down for months for maintenance would knock out a third of our supply, half if we had only two
We really would want to use small reactors and have dozens of them, but they’re even more expensive, and we probably couldn’t support the expertise to run them due to the small population
Solar and wind and batteries is cheaper. Solar and wind and pumped hydro is cheaper.
It looks like the largest effect of an attempt to go nuclear would be to extend the lives of coal plants under a promise that the new reactors are only five years away for the next two decades
…pumped hydro is cheaper.
It might be cheaper financially, but we’ve known about the huge environmental cost of dams for decades now. It boggles my mind that people suggest it in the same sentence as renewables.
Let alone that the immediate risk to life and property if a dam bursts can be similar to that of a nuclear meltdown.
We are talking in the Australian context where the dams were built in the '50s for hydro power.
Though I wonder what the environmental impacts are of mining Lithium to produce batteries on massive scales vs pumped hydro batteries to support solar whens it’s dark or not very windy. There’s plenty of other options as well like an elevator battery thing, but pumped hydro is probably more cost effective and safer to run as it’s something we already know how to operate locally, the impact will just need to be managed.
Pumped hydro is not exactly a dam. There’s a hole and 2 water reservoirs. Yes there’s a cost but so does anything.
You also can’t just turn nuclear on or off. You’d need to also get rid of existing solar. Ie: get people to disconnect rooftop solar to make nuclear work.
If you told people they weren’t allowed to export solar anymore, so many would disconnect from the electricity grid, starting the grid death spiral where wealthy individual subscribers unsubscribe, poorer people get higher bills and it gets relatively cheaper to get solar and go off the grid, etc
You end up with only the poorest buying electricity with government or charity money and industry using the grid
That would be really bad for nuclear, losing the bulk of the home market
What if I’m in the mood for being dunked on though?
You may well be predisposed for politics, congratulations!!
Your opinions are invalid, and you should be ashamed of yourself!
(Did that help?)
Feels good!
BadlyDrawnRhino@aussie.zone 6 months ago
I think those quotes at the bottom are a really great summary of the problem with the Coalition’s nuclear plan:
I could see the merits of beginning to invest in nuclear now, given the time required to get it up and running, but only so long as the shift to renewables isn’t interrupted. Unfortunately, I think the LNP see this as a way to seem like they give a shit about climate change, but really it’s just a way to buy them another decade or two to line their pockets with coal.
LovesTha@floss.social 6 months ago
@BadlyDrawnRhino @MHLoppy Yeah, investing in nuclear is okay, but only in addition to adequately funding the faster to market options.
But as we apparently don't have the money do invest in enough cheaper and faster options we clearly don't have the money for nuclear.
And governments shouldn't be subsidising distractions.
zik@aussie.zone 6 months ago
Nuclear power is already much more expensive than every other mainstream option, and the gap is widening every year. In twenty years time it’s going to be so much more expensive it’ll be ridiculous. No one’s going to want to buy power for several times the cost of other options.
The idea’s not only dumb - it’s completely commercially unviable.
psud@aussie.zone 6 months ago
Remember it’s not really about building nuclear, it’s about promising nuclear in a short enough timeframe to prevent investment in renewables, and then keeping the date moving steadily into the future until maybe 20 years later a reactor is built. It’s about giving 20 more years to coal
unionagainstdhmo@aussie.zone 6 months ago
But I thought they were supposed to be good economic managers
Emmy@lemmy.nz 6 months ago
Unviable, unless they subsidise their nuclear mates.
zurohki@aussie.zone 6 months ago
Are there merits to investing in nuclear now?
A nuclear plant would take the best part of 20 years to build and has at least a 40 year lifespan. It’d be competing not against today’s solar and batteries but against 2040’s solar and batteries on day one. And it’d need to be profitable until 2070.
It would have been great to have invested in nuclear in the 80s, but we didn’t. Like hydrogen cars, it could have been great but we’ve moved past it already.
psud@aussie.zone 6 months ago
Nuclear is difficult in Australia because of our low population. I agree it would have been nice to have some 40 year old reactors now (Lucas Heights doesn’t count as it isn’t a power reactor) but we don’t because we don’t and didn’t have the population to support enough reactors for maintenance of one to not cripple the grid until small reactors were invented recently
Weirdmusic@lemmy.world 6 months ago
The time to invest in nuclear was ten years ago which (checks diary) was right about the time the last coalition government was in power and did ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. Now they’re attempting to upend the inevitable transition to renewables by sprouting bullshit about nuclear.
Let me be clear: there are compelling reasons to go nuclear but the time and cost mean that this option is largely moot.