Nuclear

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Originally Posted by 1984V8110

Afternoon All

I am a little surprised that anyone could say no to the proposal that Australia considers nuclear power as an option. Even if you are strongly oposed to the idea surely we should consider it, and if you really think it is a bad idea for economic or environmental reasons then following due consideration one would assume that we would decide not to go down this path.

I must admit to some amazement about some comments about intermittent renewables such as wind and solar since we have yet to see (as far as I am aware) an economically defensible means of storing energy on the scale required to manage grid scale renewables - and this problem becomes greater as intermittent renewables increase as a proportion of grid generation capacity. What is apparent is that as regards wind that there are periods when the capacity factors of the entire constelation of wind farms drops to below 10% for extended periods of time (days). To manage such intermittency, storage capacities several orders of magnitude greater than are currently envisaged will be needed as intermittent renewables penetrate the market.

It is now 5 PM. Wind capacity factors have averaged around 20% of installed capacity for the last 24 hours (Wind Energy in Australia | Aneroid). Solar generation will have pretty well diminished to zero. If you really want to transition from fossil fuels (coal and gas) you either have to go nuclear or you have to produce a properly costed storage solution with storage capacities of the order of 100s of gigawatt hours. Batteries like Elon Musk's in SA cost around 1 billion AUD/GWh (it is reported to have cost around 90 million and has a storage capacity of 130 MWh - which I have rounded down to 100 MWh as I doubt it can be repeatedly driven to zero capacity without serious damage). Right now electricity demand in Eastern Australia sits at 25 GW. If we assume a largely solar/wind system with little fossile fuel input, then at the very least you need to be able to store 25 GW for (say) 16 hours of energy to handle a windless winter day. That's around 400 GWh, which at current Tesla prices requires a cool 300- 400 billion dollars in storage cost. And yes, battery prices will decrease, but how fast? Pumped storage is a possibility (I argued many years ago for pumped storage to be part of the aborthed Tully Millstream proposal) but again, at what cost?

So there are no easy solutions, and to ignore one option that could be part of the solution seems strange to me, assuming of course that the electricity grid does have to transition away from coal and gas.

Michael

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You need to stop thinking about centralised power through a small number of power stations. The future is numerous decentralised power stations.
One day every building will be a power station, making, using and storing it's own power first.
The grid will become redundant. This will be a new Industrial Revolution, based on self-sufficient energy sources.
It's a whole way of thinking.
First, more and more people will install their own solar and wind. They are already wiring it to meet their own needs first, and only export the surplus to the grid. This is happening now. Our youngest son did it to his house renovation only a week ago, for example.
Then, as battery prices fall, more people will install battery banks to store their own power to use when needed. Some have already done this.
Then more people will realise the grid is redundant and disconnect from it. Some have already done this, including some businesses.
Then the grid will become redundant and wither. We won't need it.
This is a whole new way of thinking about energy generation, usage and storage.
It's hard for people raised in the old ways to consider, but technology is freeing us from centralised control. It's not pie in the sky, it's already happening.
It will be great. Our plans are already formed to go that way. Bring it on!

Or, every building could have its own nuclear power source. Yes, I think that could work. It will be great.

A Huge percentage of Australians don't own their own home so they wont be installing an off grid setup anytime soon and many that do cannot afford to install a solar/wind setup to be able to disconnect from the grid so your dream of Everyone disconnecting from the grid is just that a "Pipe" Dream.
With Australia's population expanding at the rate it is now we don't want to remove the grid we need to expand it and make it more reliable and Nuclear power will be a huge improvement on coal and gas fired power stations.
****ing tree huggers have NO idea what they are talking about But that doesn't stop them being bucket mouths.

Simply ...NO

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Originally Posted by DiscoMick

You need to stop thinking about centralised power through a small number of power stations. The future is numerous decentralised power stations.
One day every building will be a power station, making, using and storing it's own power first.
The grid will become redundant. This will be a new Industrial Revolution, based on self-sufficient energy sources.
It's a whole way of thinking.
First, more and more people will install their own solar and wind. They are already wiring it to meet their own needs first, and only export the surplus to the grid. This is happening now. Our youngest son did it to his house renovation only a week ago, for example.
Then, as battery prices fall, more people will install battery banks to store their own power to use when needed. Some have already done this.
Then more people will realise the grid is redundant and disconnect from it. Some have already done this, including some businesses.
Then the grid will become redundant and wither. We won't need it.
This is a whole new way of thinking about energy generation, usage and storage.
It's hard for people raised in the old ways to consider, but technology is freeing us from centralised control. It's not pie in the sky, it's already happening.
It will be great. Our plans are already formed to go that way. Bring it on!

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Thanks DiscoMick for your comment on my earlier post.

Perhaps we will revert to decentralised power stations as you claim. My point is that at the moment the economics of storage make this impractical. Moreover it is not clear to me how such a scheme would allow, for example, the operation of an aluminium smelter. Perhaps you could explain this for me. My understanding is that the Gladstone smelter uses a constant 900 MW of power. So to run that off solar (ignoring the costs of the solar PV panels) will require storage capacity of around 900 MW multiplied by (say) 16 hours (for when solar is not a full capacity in winter) or around 14GWh or, based on recent costs around 12-14 billion dollars worth of battery.

You comment that your son has installed solar. That will have been subsidised by the commonwealth's RET (Renewable Energy Target) scheme. The fact that such subsidies exist indicate that, except for very remote locations, renewables still are not economic, and note that that analysis excludes the fact that the renewables costing do not include the cost of 'firming' the supply when the wind does not blow or the sun does not shine.

So while it will be great if storage costs drop by the 10-100 fold that is needed to solve the problem of intermittency of renewables, I do not think we should assume that is going to happen any time soon. Therefore alternative options to provide low Greenhouse gas emission electricity such as nuclear should be considered (and in my opinion, implemented) if we wish to 'decarbonise' the electricity generation system.


Michael

Let's pass some more pollution (nuclear in this case) for other generations to deal with. What a great idea!!! It's only for 10,000 years, so only 200 to 300 generations.

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Originally Posted by 1984V8110

Thanks DiscoMick for your comment on my earlier post.

Perhaps we will revert to decentralised power stations as you claim. My point is that at the moment the economics of storage make this impractical. Moreover it is not clear to me how such a scheme would allow, for example, the operation of an aluminium smelter. Perhaps you could explain this for me. My understanding is that the Gladstone smelter uses a constant 900 MW of power. So to run that off solar (ignoring the costs of the solar PV panels) will require storage capacity of around 900 MW multiplied by (say) 16 hours (for when solar is not a full capacity in winter) or around 14GWh or, based on recent costs around 12-14 billion dollars worth of battery.

You comment that your son has installed solar. That will have been subsidised by the commonwealth's RET (Renewable Energy Target) scheme. The fact that such subsidies exist indicate that, except for very remote locations, renewables still are not economic, and note that that analysis excludes the fact that the renewables costing do not include the cost of 'firming' the supply when the wind does not blow or the sun does not shine.

So while it will be great if storage costs drop by the 10-100 fold that is needed to solve the problem of intermittency of renewables, I do not think we should assume that is going to happen any time soon. Therefore alternative options to provide low Greenhouse gas emission electricity such as nuclear should be considered (and in my opinion, implemented) if we wish to 'decarbonise' the electricity generation system.


Michael

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You make interesting points.
My comments were about small consumers who can generate their own needs and so won't need the grid.

Large consumers will still use the grid. Many large organizations are already signing supply deals with energy farms for a reliable supply of discounted power. The farms use the supply contracts as security to raise the loans to build the energy farms. If they have battery banks they store power to sell at the highest prices during peak demand.
They sell the power into the grid on the National Energy Market at the best spot price available every day. The customers draw power from the grid.
The customers get a guaranteed supply, the energy farms get customers and the grid gets extra power. It's a win-win.
This isn't theoretical - it's already happening.

Once the power stations are built, renewable power is already cheaper than coal to generate because there is no cost to mine, transport and burn coal or gas. Sun and wind are free.
Old coal stations can only compete when renewable power is not available because the loans to build the coal stations were paid off by taxpayers a long time ago, when they were built by government energy authorites.

Nuclear is hugely expensive and takes a long time to build, so nuclear electricity would be much more expensive than renewable power.

If you want higher power bills, go nuclear or build new coal power stations.
If you want cheaper power, go renewable. It's that simple.

Re. you comment about renewable subsidies, keep in mind that all coal fired power stations in Australia were originally built by state government energy agencies, so they were 100% funded by taxpayers. Renewable subsidies only cover part of the cost - a third in my son's case. So coal was totally subsidised, but renewables are only partly subsidised.

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Originally Posted by trout1105

A Huge percentage of Australians don't own their own home so they wont be installing an off grid setup anytime soon and many that do cannot afford to install a solar/wind setup to be able to disconnect from the grid so your dream of Everyone disconnecting from the grid is just that a "Pipe" Dream.
With Australia's population expanding at the rate it is now we don't want to remove the grid we need to expand it and make it more reliable and Nuclear power will be a huge improvement on coal and gas fired power stations.
****ing tree huggers have NO idea what they are talking about But that doesn't stop them being bucket mouths.

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Rental renewables is a current gap. There needs to be a system to encourage landlords or body corporates to install solar power, to benefit tenants. It can be done, it just needs a government willing to rewrite the rules.
Having solar is already an advantage when selling a property. Buyers want solar.

If you expect a government to "Rewrite the rules" or in other words cover the cost of the solar installations then don't be at all surprised when that same government initiates a solar Tax to recover the costs and as with all taxes once it is in there is No chance of it going away.[bigwhistle]