Thread: Nuclear

Originally Posted by DiscoMick

It's amazing how little wind is actually needed to make a wind generator turn. I have stood unable to feel any wind, no sign of leaves even moving, yet the wind generator is turning. Of course, it is up higher than ground level, but it's still interesting.
The wind is always blowing somewhere in Australia.

It’s also amazing how much power is lost in Transmission. Perfect the superconductor and we’re in business, until then it’s a pipe dream.

Hi

If the poll here is representative of the wider Australia population I hope the Libs don't run a federal pol to get a mandate :-)

Mike

Yeah, I'm not sure why people are so keen on a power source which would be hugely expensive, costing far more than any other option, would be guaranteed to send electricity prices sky-high and produce plutonium waste with a half-life of 24,000 years, posing a real risk, particularly if stored in a mine subject to earthquakes and release into the water table.

Because no one wants a coal fired station to be built. Costs are going to skyrocket anyway as renewables take over - again, I urge you to watch the video from that Engineer on this - switching to 100% renewables will cost orders of magnitude more than what it currently costs to supply power to the grid - we can't do it the way people think we can - there needs to be more than solar, wind and batteries to make a large scale supply 100% renewable.

Originally Posted by DoubleChevron

I know nothing of this, but I think we need big power sources to stablise the grid. ie: big alternators running at exacting frequencies/voltages that works as a filter/stabliser for all of the smaller power generators.

If the sole benefit of large scale power generators is to "stabilise the grid", then I would argue there are clearly better ways to do this. Australia has the world's second largest deposits of lithium, so we should be making batteries like crazy.

Tesla’s big South Australian battery: Documents show cost
How the Tesla big battery kept the lights on in South Australia | RenewEconomy
By every measure, the giant Tesla battery is a winner for South Australia | Business Insider
South Australia's Tesla battery on track to make back a third of cost in a year | Technology | The Guardian

Things we have tons of here in Australia:
Coal
Uranium
Lithium
Sun
Open space
NIMBYs

The last one basically rules out the first two as power sources into the future.

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

Originally Posted by solmanic

Australia has the world's second largest deposits of lithium, so we should be making batteries like crazy.
.

wages are too high to make it profitable

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

A thousand likes. Maybe a million.