If we went nuclear a couple of decades ago, maybe it would make sense to continue.
But we’re at the point where renewables are cheaper anyway.
Why does the nuclear conversation keep happening? There’s no new information being brought to the table, except every fresh costing just shows that renewables have gotten even cheaper since last time.
Nuclear is just steam with radioactivity, why not push for steam with molten salt? That way we can combine our renewables and the same generating principles and everyone is happy.
It is a political strategy. It isn’t intended to solve our problems or the worlds problems. It solves problems for the coalition (getting the teal vote) and the fossil fuel industry (increases life of their assets by diverting investment and attention from more competitive alternatives). People will vote for it based on the feels and their echo chamber. It isn’t supposed to make hard headed intellectual sense. It is supposed to win votes and it probably will.
Only way it works is if they use it to counter the “turning off solar at peak times” threat.
Why does the nuclear conversation keep happening? T
Appeal to stupidity.
This was they can continue with fossil fuels (gas) while they “plan” for nuclear and the current government is well gone by the time the entire charade comes crashing down and everything is worse.
Because batteries aren’t getting good enough fast enough to handle base load. Molten salt works… The same way all solar power works. By day, and even then only on ridiculously sunny days.
Without dedicating the majority of all batteries that have ever been or will ever be made out of accessible materials on earth to renewable energy storage, you will not have enough reserve power to ever move to renewable-only energy.
Base load power is a myth. It’s a dinosaur that does not apply to today’s energy market (and never applied in the way people try to use the term anyway). This is a fact that people who study energy have known for over a decade. The only people repeating the idea that renewables can’t work because “base load power” are climate denialists hoping to stall a transition away from fossil fuels, and useful idiots who believe the former group’s propaganda.
With diverse renewable types spread out over diverse geographic regions, combined with diverse energy storage solutions, you can absolutely run our entire energy grid using 2024 technology, and it can be cheaper by far than nuclear. This is what every expert in the field has been telling us for a long time.
Molten salt works… The same way all solar power works. By day, and even then only on ridiculously sunny days.
And at night, that’s kind of the point of it.
During the summer. Even then it doesn’t scale and is an ecological nightmare given its footprint. Best designs give 10 hrs of operation per 12 hours of strong daylight. This means less than 8 hours during the winter anywhere except the equator.
Why do you keep translating “renewables” to “solar, just solar, literally only solar considered, no other sources of renewable energy whatsoever”?
I don’t, but that doesn’t matter. Geothermal is limited in use case. Hydro is worse for the environment than coal unless you make it a hydro battery, and then you only have so many places you can build it, and wind is naturally unreliable by definition. Solar is the most consistent renewable, and the cheapest, and it’s useless on average half of a day.
Renewables are great, and eventually when we figure out perfect energy storage using hydrogen or other super common material based battery they’ll be almost good enough for most use cases on earth.
Until then, though, and for all future applications, fission and fusion are going to be needed.
Edit: also lol if you think wave generators are anything but an express way to shed micro plastics into the ocean.
Out of interest, would you care to share with us your PhD thesis? I have to assume it’s in a field like energy grid engineering, given how confidently you’re disagreeing with CSIRO and the scientists who work for it.
The full report (and an executive summary) can be found here: https://www.csiro.au/en/research/technology-space/energy/GenCost
It won’t make a difference. All the experts said Malcolm Turnbull’s NBN MTM bullshit didn’t make sense either and journos were suppressed for factual reporting. Over a decade later I still am stuck on decaying copper with no upgrade in sight. Takes hours to upload any content and everything dies with a Steam update. Safe Liberal seat, never any consequences. Its all about tribalism, identity politics, and biased media influence. Nobody gives a rats about facts.
Current nuclear policy is a calculated dual pronged attack sourced from the fossil fuel lobby. It isn’t genius but then neither are voters.
It is supposed to wedge the climate change vote. Many environmentalists have historically been anti-nuclear technology and that stance makes no sense given the scale of the climate change threat. This presents a responsible adult alternative to the impractical tree huggers. You can save the environment and vote for a party owned by fossil fuel interests. Heaps will fall for it. It is solid emotionally. Unfortunately the economics are complete bullshit because it would be fantastic if nuclear was a real option here.
It also serves to delay alternatives. It directs investment and government support away from renewables which are increasingly just a bit too competitive with stranded fossil fuel assets. You can say you are combating climate change by referring nuclear to committee and planning that takes decades by which time you have retired to your advisory position with a fossil fuel company.
Very transparent, manipulative politics playing the electorate for fools but it will probably work.
yeah but thats like a good quality american or french style reactor. But I hear the soviet designs are ALMOST as good, for a 1/4 of the price. And second hand we can have them for a steal, just gotta ago pick them up ourselves.
A user called “VZPrez_putinsucks” listed a couple on Gumtree just gotta go grab 'em from somewhere near pripyat. Apparently one of 'em is already disassembled!
Pfff, but who are you gonna trust? The CSIRO, or Peter Dutton?
Let’s just try doing nothing for another 15 years, see if that works.
More coal please! Make the tax payers pay foe the consequences, and the increased radiation and emissions.
Actually, no. Screw the fossil fuel billionaires that can’t innovate.
If you read your own article, this is a plug for continued development of gas-fired power plants which are better than coal but still are burning fossil fuels and are heavy polluters.
And if you do the math at worst, you’d be paying a few extra cents for nuclear power than for renewables supplemented by gas fired peaker plants. And those are not carbon capture gas fire beaker plants. Those are just straight up gas plants belching sulfur dioxide directly into the atmosphere…
Large-Scale nuclear would be $0.16 per hour versus gas with CCS at $0.19 per hour. But they’re claiming that they can do solar for $0.10 per hour and that if they combine solar and gas it’ll be $0.13 per hour
The issue is you can’t just have gas without having CCS. If you’re planning on fixing the environment so the cost for solar plus gas and CCS comes up to roughly $0.18 per hour per kilowatt
This is all based off of the numbers provided in the article
It’s not a plug. It’s reporting on a costing study. It’s true gas is cheap, because the costs are externalised.
The interesting finding is that wind and solar, with solar thermal, are almost as cheap and much less bad.
Exactly this, I don’t see many sources in the article. Which plants were studied? What fuel is being sourced?
Heavy water and fresh uranium? Yeah gonna cost you.
Thorium salt reactor using Heavy Water spent fuel? It’s on par with Wind without the need for battery storage.
We can use spent fuel we’re burying to generate power for centuries with the right tech. Low pressure, no steam vents, no complicated cooling. I could go on and on.
Assuming this is what they based this off of they’re talking about heavy water with mined uranium. https://www.csiro.au/-/media/Energy/GenCost/GenCost24-25-Executive.pdf
You can find the report here: https://www.csiro.au/en/research/technology-space/energy/GenCost
Ah, thank you
Correct. ;)
Do the math with what? Where are the numbers? Last week the libs were calling out renewables costings being x3 what we are being told. When asked if nuclear would be on par or cheaper, crickets. “Costings will come soon”…
From The Article
How much renewable capacity and storage can we build in 15 years for the price of one nuclear plant? And mind you, after fifteen years you have only one. Building enough of them to reality make a difference is going to take decades longer. You nuke fanboys are simply delusional.
It is not. Don’t be disingenuous.
To convert the cost per megawatt hour (MWh) to cost per kilowatt hour (kWh), you can divide the cost per MWh by 1,000. I’m an American. Don’t let me out metric you. And don’t forget to add the extra $0.05 onto the renewable with peakers number because their calculation excludes the carbon capture. It’s almost as if this infographic was made to be purposefully misleading. Pikachu.jpg
Corrected typo from $0.50 to $0.05
Large-Scale nuclear would be $0.16 per hour versus gas with CCS at $0.19 per hour. But they’re claiming that they can do solar for $0.10 per hour and that if they combine solar and gas it’ll be $0.13 per hour
The issue is you can’t just have gas without having CCS. If you’re planning on fixing the environment so the cost for solar plus gas and CCS comes up to roughly $0.18 per hour per kilowatt
This is all based off of the numbers provided in the article
There’s an important bit of context for this that you probably aren’t aware of, being from America, and that is that Australia doesn’t currently have any nuclear power capabilities whatsoever. We have zero reactors currently, and zero expertise.
While I can’t be sure because I’m not from the CSIRO, I imagine their projections take the significant cost of introducing brand new technology into account.
Another bit of context, our conservative party is currently pushing for nuclear as the only option, claiming that it’ll be the cheapest. They want to gut spending on renewables because a lot of their funding comes from the mining sector. That’s why the CSIRO has done a report on the projected costs on the various options, because that’s how the conservative party is framing things. Is nuclear better than gas from an environmental perspective? Yes. But that’s irrelevant to the conversation that is happening over here.
Just my two American cents.
The Australian Royal Navy to my understanding maintains roughly somewhere between 7 and 14 nuclear-powered submarines. Your country has the technology, and the expertise to run nuclear programs but you would need to e to develope implement and import more workers in field .
I am 100% for renewables.
I am 100% against greenwashing gas powered stations with solar panels.
If I was omnipowerful and could dictate what humanity does as a whole for the next few decades to fix our current power problems. I would convert at least 1/3 of the current coal and gas-fired turbines into nuclear-powered turbines. I would continuously and ruthlessly continue to develop solar wind and hydrogen based tech.
Ideally I’d want to cover the base load with nuclear and then use renewables to desalinate and split water into hydrogen during the day and then to burn that hydrogen during the peak load at night.
The Australian Royal Navy to my understanding maintains roughly somewhere between 7 and 14 nuclear-powered submarines.
Say what now? Are you human or a LLM?
I do not follow Australian politics closely but I was under the impression you guys were in the middle of an arms build up because of China doing China things in the South China Sea. From what I can see on a cursory Google, you guys definitely do have strong plans to acquire nuclear-powered subs.
For some reason I thought you guys had just purchased a bunch from France, but I’m guessing that must be someone else in the region.
Look at my post history. I’m definitely an autistic as fuck human avoiding his desk job, alternating between typing on my phone and using googles shitty auto dictation.
We ordered a bunch of subs from France, using a nuclear design as the base, but our government had them rip out the nuclear reactors from the design and stuff diesel engines in their place instead.
Then they walked away from that agreement entirely and joined up with the US and UK instead.
Edit: Oh, and the subs we’re now buying from the US, we’re getting the US to maintain them because we’ve got no capability to do so here.
Fancy that you did the math and downvoted me but you didn’t reply. I’m an asshole but I’m correct and you’re killing the planet.
