Nuclear energy in Australia was until recently off the table. But it’s now found its way back into conversation, championed by the conservative opposition party. Under the leadership of Peter Dutton, there’s a push to integrate nuclear power as a backbone for Australia’s renewable energy future. His vision includes swift construction timelines for large reactors, and small modular reactors once that technology matures. And they are specifically targeting the sites of our retiring coal plants to take advantage of existing infrastructure.
The first obstacle that these nuclear plans face is that nuclear power is currently banned in Australia. Back in 1998, the Howard government wanted to secure a nuclear research reactor at Lucas Heights near Sydney. To do so, they needed support from the Greens party, who made a deal to support the research reactor if a nationwide ban on nuclear power plants was introduced at the same time. So it was banned and remains so today.
But what if this ban were lifted? Should we then embrace nuclear for our energy future? The answer, quite simply, is no. It’s a dumb idea for Australia. And I’m not just throwing around words here; there are solid reasons behind this bold claim. Four, to be precise: it’s too slow, it doesn’t play nicely with wind and solar, it’s too expensive and it solves problems that we don’t have in Australia.
Do I think nuclear power should be banned here? No, I think it should be allowed a level playing field with other energy technologies, to allow a fair fight. Like most people, I want the cheapest clean electricity possible. And for any one of the reasons I’ve mentioned, nuclear would lose this fair fight. Add them all up and there is absolutely zero chance we’ll ever have nuclear power in Australia.
I’m not a nuclear hater, I think nuclear makes a lot of sense in countries that have the kinds of problems I mentioned in the last part of this video. I’m working on a longer nuclear video with a more global perspective currently, so please feel free to leave your angry comments about how I was unfair to nuclear in this video in the comments so I can make sure that one is nicely rounded.
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00:00 Intro
00:33 Petter Dutton’s push for nuclear
01:36 Nuclear is too slow
03:50 Nuclear does not play nicely with solar & wind
06:12 Nuclear is too expensive
07:09 Nuclear solves problems that Australia doesn’t have
09:50 Should nuclear power be banned in Australia?
10:31 Outro
Sources:
For data, images & graphs
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-07-07/peter-dutton-david-littleproud-coalition-nuclear-reactors/102574782
https://theconversation.com/peter-dutton-says-labor-is-pushing-australia-over-an-energy-cliff-as-he-talks-up-nuclear-226965
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_commercial_nuclear_reactors
https://www.modernpowersystems.com/features/featurevogtle-ap1000-project-the-end-is-in-sight-at-last-11194974/
https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/EDF-announces-Hinkley-Point-C-delay-and-big-rise-i
Here's #nuclear #costoverrun compared with 23 other project types. Only #Olympics perform worse. #Delays look similar
Note the contrast with #solar and #wind
The table is from p. 192 in #HowBigThingsGetDone, https://t.co/PkrAh81NYa@dgardner @nytclimate https://t.co/EcFibeRrfW pic.twitter.com/8bp7zzLQK6
— Prof Bent Flyvbjerg (@BentFlyvbjerg) May 26, 2023
https://opennem.org.au/
… you might like this one I prepared a few years (for Vic Parliamentary Inquiry) that aimed to make a similar point.
(From 2020 – with some more and less optimistic version of Nuke costs..) pic.twitter.com/SfIeRp4Y4t
— Dylan McConnell (@dylanjmcconnell) March 19, 2024
https://ifp.org/nuclear-power-plant-construction-costs/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunkelflaute#:~:text=In%20the%20renewable%20energy%20sector,is%20neither%20wind%20nor%20sunlight.
A 42-year study shows wind and solar droughts in 100% renewable grid not as bad as thought
https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7185789632985358336/
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/population-density?tab=chart&country=AUS~JPN~KOR
The Sky’s the Limit: Solar and wind energy potential is 100 times as much as global energy demand
Reports and Scientific Papers
https://aemo.com.au/en/energy-systems/major-publications/integrated-system-plan-isp/2022-integrated-system-plan-isp
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41560-020-00696-3
https://publications.iass-potsdam.de/rest/items/item_2949898_4/component/file_2949901/content
https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/aeo/pdf/electricity_generation.pdf
The Engineering with Rosie team is:
Rosemary Barnes: Presenter, producer, writer
Javi Diez: Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/javierdiezsuarez/
Fatini Nur: Research and production assistant https://www.linkedin.com/in/fatinin
In the vibrant, renewable-rich landscape of Australia the symphony of wind and solar has long played the tune of progress, an unexpected blare cuts through the harmony. Like a foghorn in the calm of dawn, the sudden advocacy for nuclear power from a party that previously silenced such discussions is turning heads and raising eyebrows. It’s an about-turn that could make solar panels tilt in Curiosity. I’m Rosie Barnes, and with 20 years in the trenches of clean energy development, I’ve seen firsthand the evolution of Australia’s energy landscape. Does Australia need nuclear power? The notion of nuclear energy was, until recently, firmly off the table for Australia. But now it’s found its way back into conversation championed by the Conservative opposition party Under the leadership of Peter Dutton, there’s a push to integrate nuclear power as a backbone for Australia’s clean energy future. His vision includes swift construction timelines for large reactors and small modular reactors once that technology matures. And they are specifically targeting the sites of our retiring coal plants to take advantage of existing infrastructure, The first obstacle that these nuclear plans face is that nuclear power is currently banned in Australia. Back in 1998, the Conservative Howard government wanted to secure a nuclear research reactor at Lucas Heights near Sydney. To do so, they needed support from the Greens Party, who made a deal to support the research reactor if a nationwide ban on nuclear power plants was introduced at the same time. so it was banned and remains so today. But what if this ban were lifted? Should we then embrace nuclear for our energy future? Nah, it’s a dumb idea for Australia. And I’m not just throwing around words here. There are some solid reasons behind this bold claim. four to be precise. Let’s start with the first one. The sluggish pace of bringing nuclear power online. In an era where rapid change is the norm. this slow stride just doesn’t cut it. Ready on to find out why. Let’s dive in. the first reason that nuclear power is a dumb idea for Australia is that it is too slow. Recently completed nuclear power plants have taken about nine years on average to construct. If we step into our time machine to 2033 Australia, 90% of our electricity will come from renewables by then. Which doesn’t leave a lot of space for nuclear. All of our brown coal power will be closed and a decade later there’ll be no coal power at all. And that nine years I mentioned is only for construction. It takes years of planning before any contracts are signed. Some countries are building nuclear reactors faster than that nine year average. some of China’s recent plant constructions have taken more like five years. But others, like the US and the UK, are taking much longer. The Vogtle plant in Georgia, USA, began construction in 2013 and it’s still not complete. And Hinkley Point C in the UK announced in 2007 that the reactors would power British homes by Christmas 2017. However, construction didn’t even start until 2018, and the latest projections push completion to beyond 2030, with more slippage expected by most people. Those aren’t isolated examples. Nuclear projects are very prone to large overruns and construction time. Worse than any other kind of energy project. And the only other category of large projects that performs worse than nuclear power plants is Olympic Games and nuclear storage projects. according to Bent Flyvbjerg, who has spent his career studying cost and scheduling overruns in large projects out of the 191 nuclear power projects he studied, 93% of them took longer than expected to complete. And the mean schedule overrun was 65%. so if the plan for Australia is ten years construction and remember, that needs to come after we change the law to allow it and develop a regulatory environment for nuclear power funding, etc., then we could expect that on average instead of ten years, it’ll actually take 16.5 years. And this would be our very first reactor built presumably by foreign experts in a new market and or by inexperienced locals. I think it would be prudent to assume we’re not going to beat that average. All that is to say that by the time we managed to get a nuclear reactor operating in Australia, the energy transition would have mostly happened. That alone is reason enough to rule out nuclear power for Australia. I’m going to go through three more reasons. The next one is that it doesn’t play nicely with wind and solar power. Australia has a lot of wind and solar power and more and more every day. 15 years ago, less than 1% of our electricity came from wind and solar power. And today it’s over 30%, growing by about three or four percentage points every year. Of course, the thing about wind and solar is that they are variable, nuclear power plants on the other hand, like to be turned on and stay operating at a nice constant output. If you don’t think very closely about it, perhaps you might think that sounds nice and complementary. Actually, it’s not. Electricity demand varies from hour to hour and season to season. Either nuclear or renewables need a dispatchable energy source like hydro, batteries or gas peakers to match generation with demand minute by minute. Combining nuclear with variable renewables, turns out to not actually reduce that amount of dispatchable power that’s needed by much, if anything. Now, there are lots of countries that combine nuclear with renewables, but none with both a lot of nuclear and a lot of variable renewables. France gets most of its electricity from nuclear and most of the rest from renewables, but that’s nearly all hydro. which can be turned on and off when you want. Same with Switzerland, Armenia and Slovenia. the only countries with both a lot of nuclear and a lot of variable renewables are Sweden, with 30% nuclear at 20% wind and Finland with 35% nuclear and 16% wind. But crucially, both of these also have a lot of hydro. 40% and 20% respectively. Let’s look a bit closer at what exactly this means for a country like Australia with currently 32% of our electricity from wind and solar power. Today, the amount of other generation needed varies by a factor of two. From midday to evening, on average, modern nuclear reactors can vary that output a bit, but to cycle from 50% to 100% on a daily basis is really pushing it. Today, that’s only done across fleets of nuclear by turning some off entirely and ramping the rest by a smaller amount, which means you need a large number of reactors like France has. and using their reactors intermittently like that with a lower capacity factor would make nuclear power more expensive. This chart shows both high and low cost estimates for nuclear power, and you can say that in either case, the difference between operating at 60% capacity factor instead of 90% capacity factor is going to add something like 30% to the cost of energy. Ramping up and down is also hard on the equipment, which leads to higher maintenance costs. There is at least one example of a reactor in Germany that broke down as a result of ramping and in that case it was only ramping up and down by about a third. Which leads me to the cost of nuclear power. It is expensive. There is admittedly a lot of disagreement amongst published values for the cost of nuclear, but the ones that I’ve seen are at least double and probably more than triple the cost of wind and solar in Australia. And that’s true even when you account for the extra integration costs that variable renewables need. That means extra transmission and more storage. Furthermore, as well as being prone to schedule overruns, nuclear projects are even more prone to cost overruns. With the average nuclear project eventually costing over double its original estimate. in contrast, wind and solar projects have about 0 to 10% average cost overruns. those are costs for new nuclear, but after it’s paid for itself, it is very cheap and that’s great for countries that already have nuclear who might rather extend the lifetimes of their reactors than build new alternative sources of low carbon generation when those reactors were supposed to retire. But that’s not us in Australia. And that leads me to the last reason that nuclear is a dumb idea for Australia. It solves problems we don’t have. There are a bunch of great things that nuclear can do, that wind and solar can’t. It can provide constant baseload power no matter the weather and no matter the season. nuclear reactors also take up less space than renewables, and existing nuclear is cheap to run. Let’s tackle those one by one in the Australian context. first, nuclear provides firm baseload power. Well, there’s no such thing as baseload in Australia anymore. At times, rooftop solar on its own covers 100% of the demand in the highest renewable energy grid. South Australia. That means there is no space for anything else at that time. This is going to happen more and more across larger and larger parts of the country as solar installations continue over the coming decades. but that’s usually only in spring and summer and probably a bit in autumn, too. What about winter? One of the benefits of nuclear is that it is weather and season independent and that is great for countries whose energy demand peaks in winter when the solar power may be close to zero. But that’s not Australia for most of Australia. Energy demand is in summer and there is still good solar output in the winter. You can see on this chart that the balance between renewables and fossil fuels in our current grid doesn’t change that much from month to month. But renewables are variable, intermittent, unreliable, right? What about dunkelflaute? That’s periods when there’s no wind and no sun for days or weeks at a time. Potentially a huge problem in some places, but again, not in Australia. 42 years of weather data history show that widespread dunkelflaute across the whole Australian grid last hours and occasionally a day, never weeks. These charts show renewable resources for every one of the last 42 years. There are some winter days where renewables dip a little under 50% of the average output. There are no weeks below 50% and the worst ever winter month was around 70% of the whole year average. There will be occasions every few decades where there will be a day or maybe two of very low wind and solar and on occasion, a few weeks in a row of something like 50% average output. And for those we will need to use something more expensive to cover those shortfalls after sitting around mostly idle for ten or 20 years at a stretch. But you can’t do that with a nuclear reactor. you can’t just turn on a nuclear reactor that’s been sitting idle for ten years. It’s going to be gas or hydrogen or biodiesel or something like that. The next advantage of nuclear. It doesn’t take up much space. that is so important for countries like Japan, Korea, that have a lot of people packed in a small area. Well, guess what we are not short of in Australia? space. Australia is so big and so sunny that we would only need 0.1% of our land covered in solar panels to generate all our energy from solar. For wind, it’s about double that. And that’s just sticking to onshore wind. if we consider offshore wind too, it’s going to be even less. And our wind farms coexist with grazing. Our solar panels mostly go on roofs and could co-exist with agriculture if we so wished. So even these tiny fractions are misleadingly large. in Australia, It does not matter that nuclear power might take up less space. I can understand why countries like Korea, Sweden or Canada feel like they would benefit from nuclear power. They have long, hard winters that solar power can’t help much with, and some of them have high population density. They can use nuclear to avoid seasonal storage and avoid needing energy imports But even in winter Australia, solar is pretty good. And our dunkelflaute are infrequent and short. We have more than enough land to capture what we need. Do I think nuclear power should be banned in Australia? No. I think it should be allowed a level playing field with other energy technologies to allow a fair fight. Like most people, I want the cheapest clean electricity possible and for any one of the reasons I’ve mentioned, nuclear would lose that fair fight. Add them all up and there is absolutely zero chance we’ll ever have nuclear power in Australia. I am not a nuclear hater. I think that nuclear makes a lot of sense in countries that have the kinds of problems that I mentioned in the last part of this video. I’m working on another nuclear video with a more global perspective currently, So please feel free to leave your angry comments about how I was unfair to nuclear in the comment section so I can make sure that the next one includes that rounded perspective. Thanks for tuning in. A special shout out to the Engineering with Rosie Patreon team for your ongoing support and engagement. Your contributions make this content possible and better. if you’re not a member yet, but would like to join our community, then check out this link to see how you can get involved. I’ll see you in the next video.
25 Comments
Update: Between recording and releasing Vogtle Unit 4 began operation, about twice as slow and twice as expensive as planned, but at least completed! https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=61963
And at 02:29:00 I should have said 2007 (not 2017) was the date that EDF announced people would be cooking their 2017 Christmas turkeys with Hinkley-sourced electricity.
What a terrific video. And I didn't realize that there were countries without Dunkelflaute. Here in austria in the middle of europe we banned nuclear as well.
We have lot of hydro – yet. And are increasing wind and solar.
No ond need that. This is the problem with people born after all the crap with nuckear power 1970’s and 80’s… and American republicans that do not care about the people living on the planet.
Hi Rosie, thank you for the video. I have a couple of thoughts on the Australian power grids with the primary one being that while there is an outline of how to get to net zero there is no actual plan. By that I mean there is no defined what, where, and when, along with the minor issue that the "what" bit of grid storage doesn't yet exist and may never exist. Equally as we increase the saturation of solar and wind there are diminishing returns (for example there is no point adding any more solar to the SA grid as it is already saturated).
The next minor issue is longevity… wind, solar, and existing battery technologies have a life expectancy of 10 to 25 years after which they will need to be replaced. Perhaps we should begin looking at nuclear now as we may be able to build nuclear power plants to be operational when some of the wind and solar are in need of replacement. The advantage of nuclear at that time is that the material intensity of nuclear power stations is significantly lower than that of wind and solar installations and will last at least twice as long. Worth a thought!
Thanks for your informative video
I wonder how the analysis would evolve over a longer period, say 25+years, to factor the need to retrofit/replace solar and wind while a nuclear power plant may be design for a much longer operating life.
Please could you share the references where the cost of energy were taken from? They might shed some light about the consideration of the design life for the different power plants.
Thanks a lot for the mind teasing video.
Omg the only way Australia or the world can ever reach net zero and halt climate change is through Nuclear fission or hopefully fusion energy .There is no other option .
we literally have ached emic institutes teaching nuclear science ontop of that solar panels and wind turbines are really terible when it comes to effeciency mining, storage of electricity and genraly are unreliable + plus who you going to pay to clean the solar panels. ontop of that you have batteries to store electricity which only last 10-25 year something not needed for nuclear so is building a reactor for 10 years a problem when every 10 years you have to replace you batteries in your array. furthermore power consumption is typicaly at a low during a the mid day and at a high at night as every start using lights and other electronics for entertainment. infact its recommended to use your washing machine between 10pm to 6am so most of the night. something solar particulary struggles to deal with. furthermore wind makes areas of living unbearably having negative affects on people living even remotley close to the sights which is land that could be used for housing or expantion.
furthermore 10 years ago solar was expensive until people invested money into its development and refinement and started getting more demand. same with nuclear
finally the base load power still exsits as technology develops so does the power demand. that base load isnt going to last long especialy with the introduction of renewable cars such as ev's and the question is. is it cheaper to make a huge solar farm provide batteries and keep all our power or is it simpler to build a nuclear reactor which can provide more power
I love your YouTube clips but you left out one big point, toxicity of waste and the cost to maintain that waste over a very long time.
Oh Rosie – Dumping your good reputation for who?
Nuclear in the UAE was pretty much on time and within budget – You are cherry picking your way. Building new infrastructure as in continental power distribution – that takes a long time.
Think you have a point with cons #2 and #4 but going to disagree with you on 1 and 3 and not just for Australia. IMHO, nuclear is slow and expensive because we choose to have it that way. It wasn’t always that way but 40 years of self-inflicted wounds have tilted the economics against it–just like high speed rail in the US.
Your dreaming, without a proper power supply we'll be in the dark before you know it. Wind and Solar are unreliable, expensive to maintain and have poor power outputs even when they take up vast areas of land. Land which should be used for farming and producing an economical food supply for the entire population. Nuclear and Gas are the current way to secure the energy needs of a country as large and spread out as ours. Many nations around the world employ Nuclear and Gas, ironically, Australia provides an enormous amount of fuel to them but it's restricted for our own use thats Stupid. Its time to stop burying our heads in the sand. We need to get on with securing a future that provides our nation with plentiful amounts of energy this will allow our industries to be able to grow and be more competitive on the world stage, providing more work for Australians that is also of great importance. There is no progress without Energy third world countries are a testament to it, let's not become one.
This will not age well. 1. It takes time is not a reason to not start. In fact that means start building sooner. 2. It's expensive. So is building grid lines to connect wind and solar. Now how long does wind turbines last? When do solar panels require replacement? There's lots of research but no one has solved recycling of these energy systems. Lab bench and bulk scale are too different. I reckon 20% nuclear makes sense.
1 – nonsense. No coal only solar =- bs. Sun does not shine at nights. So there will be no coal, no nuclear… and no power
2 yes. Means uncontrolable pv and wind goes to hell.
3. Gooooovernment is the biggest cost, yes.
4. Again – pv goes to hell. Cant provide guaranteed supply at night, when storm and so on? Out of the line, not to the first place. Or go offgrid and enjoy, but do not come for network power ever, even if very neeeeeed.
Yea for Australië…indeed..
Great video. Perspective is something a lot of advocates are missing. There is no 1 cure all for energy demands. It's about what works best for what situation.
You are dreaming.
The CIS report on the total cost of wind and solar puts your claims to shame. Sorry but you’re miles off the mark. I want to watch real facts without bias.
Would you be open to debate?
Attempting to rely on 80%+ renewables is equally a dumb idea. No other industrialised country would attempt such folly. Plus the massive infrastructure (transmissions lines, inverters, rectifiers and batteries) to hook up and stabilise remote solar and wind turbine arrays, leads to huge service charges being generated even when these areas are not producing energy. These charges cannot be ameliorated so it is erroneous to say that the more renewables in the system, the cheaper the price for business and consumers when exactly the opposite is really the case.
So all those countries that have nuclear or want nuclear (approx 50) have it all wrong according to Rosie. Let me guess, Rosie thinks intermittent unreliable power that never works when the wind stops and the sun sets is better than power that does not care about what the weather is doing and its total footprint is a fraction of the landscape ruining renewables. Here’s a fact Rosie will not like. A modern nuclear plant lasts at least 80 years. In this time every solar panel and wind turbine is replaced 4 times over AND NUCLEAR CAN USE THE EXISTING TRANSMISSION NETWORK saving hundreds of billions. Nuclear is therefore a fraction of the cost of renewables and even Bowen knows this.
Your ideas are wrong – take a look at Australia's Nuclear Future | Chris Uhlmann, Helen Cook, Adi Paterson and Aidan Morrison
Yes, sure, but how do you convince a bull he has no tits if the bull is determined that he does? Certainly not with reasonable argument.
And then theres the decomission costs of nuclear power plants, plus the very small risk of something going wrong,which is a worry for some people.
Speaking of dumb.