The head of the Australian energy market operator AEMO, Daniel Westerman, has rejected nuclear power as a way to replace Australia’s ageing coal-fired power stations, arguing that it is too slow and too expensive. In addition, baseload power sources are not competitive in a grid dominated by wind and solar energy anyway.
Even if we started to build nuclear plants like crazy right now, it would be decades for them to make a real impact. Building a single nuclear plant is very expensive and time consuming. Building up the necessary supply chain to build a lot of them would take much longer. In the meantime, you can build huge amounts of renewables in just a few years for a fraction of the cost, even if you factor in storage.
Not only that but the cost of renewables and storage is still coming down rapidly. You’d better hope that you’re not priced out of the energy market before your construction time plus payback period is up if you start building nuclear.
Lemmy most of the time: Makes fun of people always bringin up “the economy” as if that’s what’s really important
Also Lemmy when it comes to nuclear: “But the economy!”
What happens in case of a sudden abnormal weather event that blocks out most of the sunlight? Picture a super volcano eruption covering the sky in ashes for thousands of miles. Or think back to the extinction of dinosaurs, where after a meteorite crashed into earth the sun was blocked by dust for several years. Or just think about northern European countries that barely get any light in winter; Portugal is a very sunny country, we have invested a lot into solar, and sometimes we still get energy from Spain (who use nuclear btw).
Also, I’ve been hearing this whole “it takes too long to build nuclear plants” since at least early 2010s; imagine where we’d be if we’d just started building plants then. I can picture the same thing being said in 2035-2040, while fossil fuels still have not been completely dropped.
I’m not sure what kind of sudden weather event covers all the sun for Australia. Seems a little farcical
I don’t think anyone mentioned the economy here in this thread, so I’m not sure what the relevance of that is unless I’m misunderstanding your criticism there.
For my comment specifically I’m not worried about the economy, but the unit cost of energy. Simply put if nuclear has a higher unit cost that means we can’t replace as much fossil fuel generation vs other lower unit cost sources of energy for the same price.
I agree with your criticism of folks complaining about the build time, back in 2010 it was probably worth building nuclear. That’s no longer the case and the fact that people (imo incorrectly) used this criticism in 2010 doesn’t mean that it’s invalid now in the mid 2020s.
Disasters is an interesting perspective to take and to be honest I haven’t really thought much about it before. You have, however, picked a very specific and unlikely event here and I’m wondering why you went with that. There are a great many potential disasters that can impact a power grid from earthquakes, extreme weather and even deliberate attacks or acts of sabotage. I think for most of these, having a more distributed grid is likely more resilient and these are much more realistic scenarios than a civilization ending level event like you described.
At the end of the day, we need to decarbonise immediately using the whatever technology is at hand. My criticism of nuclear is that it’s no longer the cheapest or fastest way to achieve that, but I’m open to being wrong. Your disaster scenario wasn’t particularly convincing though at least for me.
Or think back to the extinction of dinosaurs, where after a meteorite crashed into earth
We now have the technology to alter the trajectories of asteroids (tested on the DART mission), and have a fairly comprehensive catalogue of the big ones. I don’t expect this to be an issue.
What happens in case of a sudden abnormal weather event that blocks out most of the sunlight
The neighbor has sun then. Buy it there. Or store the power.
Always the same old platitudes.
Exactly. Sure, shutting down existing plants is dumb af (looking at you, Germany). But building new plants now with the aim of having an impact on climate change just isn’t the most effective decision.
That’s not precise. A nuclear plant can be built in like 5 years. And the supply chain is not the issue when you have lots of orders. But there are not many. It’s also not precise to say you can build huge amounts of renewables instead. Probably Spain doesn’t need nuclear, since it’s got plenty of sun. On the other hand many countries don’t have areas that have enough sun and consistent wind.
Id also say that the part you said that cost of renewables combined with storage would be a fraction of the cost, that is completely false.
A nuclear plant can be built in like 5 years.
Can you point to any nuclear plant in a Western country that was built in five years in the past thirty years or so?
And the supply chain is not the issue when you have lots of orders.
Seriously? Building reactor vessels is a very specialized task that only few suppliers are even capable of. Add to that uranium mining, fuel rod production, fuel logistics and a host of other components - and all that will just fall from the sky once enough orders are signed?
On the other hand many countries don’t have areas that have enough sun and consistent wind.
Germany is already at over 50%, many other countries are far ahead of that. Your point has no factual basis.
Id also say that the part you said that cost of renewables combined with storage would be a fraction of the cost, that is completely false.
Here’s a source
Can you point to any nuclear plant in a Western country that was built in five years in the past thirty years or so?
what about the rogue boyscout one
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why did you specify in the west :)? You know why you did that, because nuclear plants do get built in 5 years elsewhere.
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emm, yes very much so. Like you said, they’re are even a few suppliers who can do that. They just need enough orders for it to make sense.
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you should check that data again. Renewables are great, but some countries have better access than others. Right now Germany is building gas plants and burning coal and there is no end in sight for that.
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I might check that file later thanks, but what I’m taking about is just plain physics. You can not store enough energy today to make a big difference at any cost. And the cost is really high and can not be close to what a power plant can generate on the fly. It’s just can’t. Especially if you are taking lithium batteries.
yup, and no waste issues that have to be held on site in cooling pools for decades (assuming a final storage point is ever resolved in your country).
we already know that we must improve transmission infrastructure across the board, if we’re going to have to do that either way, might as well embrace grid storage and go with as much renewable generation. AU, your Great Australian desert could power most of the southern pacific if you want to get wild :D
