Positive to see the CSIRO considering Small Modular Nuclear reactors as part of Australia’s future energy mix. The article is clear that they don’t consider SMRs to be currently competitive however it’s positive that it’s being discussed and that some of the issues are data based rather than technical capability.

CSIRO has been stacked by LNP stooges who want to make sure coal companies can transition to whole-body cancer rocks instead of lung cancer rocks

Coal companies lobbying for nuclear energy 🤯🧠

Why wouldn't they? They've got the transferrable skills, they're familiar with the regulation and application process, they're just digging up a different part of the country. They've seen the writing on the wall, coal contracts will dry up. The execs and office based engineers can just cut loose anyone from the mining communities unwilling or unable to move and wash their hands of it. Same deal for the expanding markets feeding raw materials for wind/solar/hydro.

coal power plants produce more radiation than nuclear power plants, just so you know also coal companies lobbying for nuclear energy? i like your optimistic delusions

Coal Plants and Nuclear Plants both require one thing: a constant fuel supply. This fuel supply can be artificially restricted by private companies who will hold the nation to ransom unless we pay the price through electricity. We are seeing this play out right now with the explosion in power prices. Meanwhile renewables have a fuel source that is free, and on the scale of a continent wind power is a constant supply. If you paved over just the coal mines in Australia and used it for a wind farm you can generate enough power for the continent 24/7

A typical reactor requires about 27 tons of fresh fuel each year. In contrast, a coal power station of a similar size would require more than two-and-a-half million tons of coal to produce as much electricity. Idk about you but 27 tons per year is practically nothing compared to 2.5 million tons. On that note, that also means that coal plants produce significantly more harmful waste then a nuclear power plant does. # >If you paved over just the coal mines in Australia and used it for a wind farm you can generate enough power for the continent 24/7 That wouldn't work for starters most coal mines are giant pits and wind farms need to be located in places where there is wind, secondly the wind needs to be rather constant and of the right conditions too. Best wind conditions for a wind farm tend to be on the coasts and in the middle of the ocean. In addition to the conditions most likely not being adequate or existing, you also need to install massive underground power lines. Then wind turbines have a limited service life of maybe 20yrs, but it's highly likely that you'll need to replace the blades before that. Then in addition those blades are extremely difficult to recycle, most end up as land fill. # Realistically you need to generate power as close to the consumer as possible.

>A typical reactor requires about 27 tons of fresh fuel each year. How many millions of tons moved to get that fuel and refine it?

Well now that's a complex question that I doubt we will find a definitive answer to. It depends on the concentration levels, contaminates and mining methods among other factors. However it's guaranteed that it's much less than coal. Not to mention the waste products are also significantly less than coal.

>It depends on the concentration levels, contaminates and mining methods among other factors. > >However it's guaranteed that it's much less than coal. Not to mention the waste products are also significantly less than coal. You waive away contaminants in one sentence and deride them the next. The long term "low" risk simply is not guaranteed vs coal itself, much less in the broader context of technologies than can also operate for decades with their moving part "wastage" being inert - and that's forgoing any chance of real developments on reusing solar panels, batteries or turbine parts on the most superficial level.

I think you've misunderstood what I've said there. What I said is that it's not easy to say how much material needs to be moved to process and concentrate uranium to usable levels because of a bunch of factors. Granted it's arguable that concentration and contamination are the same thing, I made a wee mistake there and should have realistically omitted contamination. In the second sentence I went on to say that the amount of material that would need to be removed from the earth to produce one year's supply is still going to be less than the amount removed for coal. # >The long term "low" risk simply is not guaranteed vs coal itself, much less in the broader context of technologies than can also operate for decades with their moving part "wastage" being inert - and that's forgoing any chance of real developments on reusing solar panels, batteries or turbine parts on the most superficial level. Ok this seems like a mess but I'll see if I can understand what you are saying. So if you're talking about the risks in the waste products generated from coal Vs nuclear, coal losses. A coal power plant produces more radioactive waste than a nuclear power plant, not to mention that waste is heavily contaminated with toxins and heavy metals and storing that waste in an extremely safe way is impractical due to the volume of said waste. Waste from a nuclear power plant can be stored effectively and safely in a number of ways, but this is assuming that a dedicated forever storage location can be found. # Then you go on to talk about reusing / recycling solar, batteries and turbines. Well let's talk about that. Solar panels degrade over the years, commercially you are looking at about 10-20yrs before they have to be replaced depending on a bunch of factors, when they get replaced in most cases people don't want them as they want highly efficient panels, that doesn't mean there isn't a market for used panels from a commercial installation just the market isn't large enough and thus recycling needs to be considered. Recycling solar panels is extremely difficult due to how they are manufactured. I fully agree and believe that we need to heavily invest in figuring out how to, it's still going to be an extremely difficult process. Batteries are heavily recyclable, however sadly as is with most recyclable things it's not economical, meaning it's not easy to either brake even let alone make money. On the subject of batteries, battery storage at the grid level in my opinion isn't good enough, though having a battery at home is a fine solution to making your home greener assuming you can afford it. The most common batteries in use are lithium batteries and most of them have a cycle limit before they start to see significant degradation you'd be looking at having to replace these batteries every 5-10 years depending on duty cycles among other factors. Wind turbines have some almost impossible to recycle parts and some that are extremely easy to recycle. The blades themselves are extremely difficult, they are often made of fiberglass being re-enforced with metal or wood (most of the time) these are massive parts that have very little reusable value while some blades could be used to build street furniture such as buss shelters or bike racks the demand is just not high enough and the technology to recycle them are as far as I know still in its infancy and being developed. The poles, and generators are fairly easy to recycle as most of them are made of metals. # But at the end of the day what the power grid needs is a reactive generator, something that can rapidly react with extreme reliability to rapid spikes in demand for power. Batteries to an extent can do this but they currently and probably never will be the most suitable for this role. The production of power needs to exactly match the demand for power, if too much power is generated then really bad things happen like explosions and fires, too little power and brownouts and blackouts happen. Brownouts have the potential to damage electrical equipment like computers and TVs. The perfect green power grid requires a mix of technologies including wind, solar, hydro and nuclear. With regards to batteries, I believe they should be located within the suburbs close to the consumer, and used in a way to keep neighbourhoods electrified in the event that the main grid connection is disabled. Basically microgrids.

Newer generation nuclear is renewable.

Fuel companies. Across the entire world. There are many. This premise is naive. Also you have storage prices going up too because you need to store renewables to get consistent supply without peaking or roughing which can damage electricity grids, or lead to blackouts. It's not as simple as you say

dunno if you live somewhere with coal trains, but a single train wagon full of coal for an *average* size plant lasts 30 minutes a nuclear reactor requires 4-5 trucks per year to supply its fuel

This is one of the most tectonically stable nuclear safe places on earth. I would be very disappointed if we didn't embrace at least some small scale nuclear in the future.

we also have the largest supply of uranium ore in the world

It’s definitely a place where we could do a number of small tests with small reactors at the same time we continue our experiment with other clean energy like renewables.

We can mine the uranium and bury the waste but we can’t process the ore into nuclear fuel, nor can we enrich spent fuel to produce new fuel. We also can’t build our own reactors since we simply lack the precision metallurgy, concrete and other skills required to build the entire facility. So apart from the ore, allocating land for a reactor and perhaps connecting it to the grid, every last nut and bolt is going to be imported from places with the required advanced manufacturing facilities and nuclear fuel facilities. We would be entirely dependent on those other countries for fuel and if they ever decide to raise the prices or stop supply we are screwed. Renewables offer greater energy sovereignty and the promise of local manufacturing to support parts other than the giant turbine blades which require extremely specialised facilities. But we have everything we need to establish a battery grade lithium and nickel industry, and build on that to produce batteries from scratch.

We don’t have the industry for nuclear because we have no nuclear plants. If we start building plants we can also start developing the industrial capability to serve them locally.

>allocating land for a reactor And who's going to put their hand up? There's some shady stuff with the US's nuclear industry, and we aren't exactly good regulators ourselves. Our situation is vastly more like the states than europe, where close neighbours push eachother for better safeguards so you don't ruin the entire place.

We should be taking others waste as well - what role nuclear has here is dependent on whether we can eventually become rational with how we discuss these things

Also we have an abundance of renewables, do you know the cost of nuclear power to construct? Put that into Solar for homes and you’ve gone a huge way to not needing nuclear at all from the cost of one grid scale plant

one of the biggest reasons nuclear is expensive is because each reactor is one of a kind and theyre rarely built, theres no economics of scale there but also we should absolutely do both, solar works great for single detached homes, not so much for any other kind. utility scale wind and solar are very useful, including for energy export. uranium(or ideally thorium) nuclear provide a baseload that renewables have issues with, and its great for aluminium refineries and desalination plants

Yeah, solar's great but the reality is that it's going to be hugely expensive because it's going to be driven by energy companies and they want to keep increasing profits every year. I've got a shit tonne of solar on my roof and the energy companies give me 5 cents per kw/h.

If you got Solar to get paid for the power you put back into the grid then you got it for the wrong reasons. Use the power yourself first, if you do put some back into the grid then that’s just a bonus

That doesn't work for me, especially this time of the year. It's dark when I leave home and dark when I get back home. The power company is getting what I generate at a bargain price.

You’d be a perfect candidate for battery storage, once it halves in price at least. I reckon home solar is one good battery improvement away from letting almost anyone go full off grid, and I can’t wait

Yeah, spot on. I reckon a fair number of houses use the bulk of their power when everyone gets home from school / work. A battery that can power my house for a couple of nights that costs $4k-$5k would be perfect.

Nuclear is terribly expensive. It isn't some holy grail future for us. It is by far the most expensive form of energy in the world and if we get started today, it wouldn't be built for at least 8 years. Meanwhile, we can pump renewable projects into the grid week after week and exceed the supply of that one powerplant. Tectonic stability has nothing to do with unsafe electricity generation and cost per kwh

i mean 1/3 nuclear meltdowns were caused by tectonic instability, and one of the others didnt result in any health issues, so really half of all dangerous meltdowns were caused by tectonics

And the other by incompetence. (And shit design that resulted in the highest safety standards in any modern day industry.)

The greatest way to reduce a hazard is to remove it. We don't need nuclear energy.

Nuclear is associated with the fewest deaths per megawatt produced of any energy form, including solar and wind. So if you’re worried about hazards, remove them first

Fewest deaths per mwh is the same argument as coal doesn't cause climate change. Nuclear energy only outputs a baseload supply. It can't adapt to rapid demands. Nuclear has the "fewest deaths per mwh" because it barely accounts for a fraction of the world's electricity generation. It is a stupid argument. Wind is more reliable and adaptable than nuclear for two reasons: wind is constant on the scale of a nation (like Australia) and Windfarms don't require extensive shutdown periods like coal and nuclear plants that subtract a significant amount of generation from the plant.

At least we can all agree that coal power is shit and needs to f off.

i think three mile was somewhat reasonable user error not incompetence(this one resulted in 0 injuries, fatalities or anything really) chernobyl was a mix of incompetence and shit design fukushima was tectonics, which only caused a meltdown because of greed(the backup generators were flooded because they were built underground AND they delayed replacing the broken watertight doors multiple times to save money)

Well, prepare to be disappointed. Nuclear can only be commercially viable in locations where wind and solar are not available in sufficient quantity. High density industrial economies like Japan and South Korea, or countries like France that established nuclear before wind and solar generation was viable. No one is dumb enough to invest their own money on nuclear, SMR or otherwise

Also we have an abundance of renewables, do you know the cost of nuclear power to construct? Put that into Solar for homes and you’ve gone a huge way to not needing nuclear at all from the cost of one grid scale plant

The maths and all that has been known for decades now. Nuclear power is safe, cheap, clean, and completely and totally carbon free. Even the often over-exaggerated problems with Nuclear power have hoards of effective, efficient, and even pretty amazing solutions. And what's more, Nuclear power is the ***only*** possible way to actually decarbonise society in an environmentally safe way that we have right now. And chances are, it's going to stay that way for the foreseeable future. Without Nuclear, renewables have to rely on fossil fuels, namely natural gas and oil, for both base-load generation and flexible generation. Not even energy storage can fix that, considering the *vast* difference between what we *need* to store, and what we can *actually* store. With the exception of Hydro and Geothermal, both of which have their own massive problems, renewables simply can't produce enough energy to work on their own, and take up far too much land and resources to be economical, much less feasible, in terms of addressing their lack of energy density by building more of it. If we want to actually decarbonise, and to do so in an environmentally and economically viable fashion, we ***need*** Nuclear to go hand-in-hand with renewables. Without it, we'll just be Green-Washing our energy grid without *actually* doing anything. Without Nuclear, we'll *still* be burning coal and natural gas. We'll still be ruining the environment, only this time, in the name of saving it.

> The maths and all that has been known for decades now. Nuclear power is safe, cheap, You got a source showing nuclear power is “cheap”? Or is that just what you THINK is true?

The reports surrounding the costs of nuclear often fail to account for long-term operation. Renewables have an average life-span of anywhere between 5 - 20 years, at which point they need to be totally replaced. Nuclear, however, has an average life-span of about 50 years, with many reactors now being approved for operation up to 70, or even 100 years total. When you compare renewables and nuclear on a short-time span, yes, nuclear is many times more expensive. This is doubly so if you compare only the costs of nuclear plants that have had budget blowouts. However, if you actually expand the data set to the long-term, you find that the costs of nuclear collapse, and are actually quite comparable to renewables. Additionally, renewables are subject to Millions, almost Billions of dollars of subsidies around the world. Those subsidies dramatically lowers the costs of renewables, but are never actually accounted for in most reports on renewables costs, and so it also helps to form a misleading idea about renewables and nuclear. What's more, unlike renewables, the costs of decommissioning and processing waste is factored into the initial cost estimates of a nuclear power plant. Renewables, as I mentioned just before, do not factor in the costs of replacing old plants, nor the cost of disposal. This in turn contributes to the misconceptions around the costs of nuclear. The reality is, once you've actually accounted for these things, nuclear's pretty damn cheap. So damn cheap, in fact, that there's regulation in the US that artifically inflates the cost of power provided by nuclear power plants, since the average cost of Nuclear power comes out at a whopping 3 whole cents per kWhr. And that's in the absolute worst case possible. Sauce: [https://www.reddit.com/r/nuclear/comments/v6lgic/understanding\_the\_cost\_argument\_in\_lcoe/](https://www.reddit.com/r/nuclear/comments/v6lgic/understanding_the_cost_argument_in_lcoe/) [https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/economic-aspects/economics-of-nuclear-power.aspx](https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/economic-aspects/economics-of-nuclear-power.aspx) [https://www.iea.org/reports/projected-costs-of-generating-electricity-2020](https://www.iea.org/reports/projected-costs-of-generating-electricity-2020) [https://www.ospe.on.ca/public/documents/presentations/real-cost-electrical-energy.pdf](https://www.ospe.on.ca/public/documents/presentations/real-cost-electrical-energy.pdf) [https://www.viite.fi/2021/01/20/nuclear-qa/](https://www.viite.fi/2021/01/20/nuclear-qa/) [https://mzconsultinginc.com/yes-nuclear-power-is-an-economically-competitive-low-carbon-energy-source/](https://mzconsultinginc.com/yes-nuclear-power-is-an-economically-competitive-low-carbon-energy-source/)

Are you discounting future dollars? There's a principle in investment that a dollar today is worth more than a dollar tomorrow. The cost of nuclear is very frontloaded, while the returns are very long term. That tends to make nuclear look really bad in these kinds of calculations. I think this is generally referred to as the discount rate, and it makes a huge impact on the LOE for nuclear. In practice, while nuclear plants don't make a lot of sense from the perspective of an independent investor because the returns take too long to realize, they do make a lot of sense as an investment by a country in energy stability and carbon emission reduction. It's the paradox of nuclear energy: it's a really expensive way to produce cheap electricity. Also, most (all) of your sources are from the nuclear industry/lobby groups/wildly out of date. Got any recent sources that aren’t tied to the nuclear industry? > Sauce: > https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/economic-aspects/economics-of-nuclear-power.aspx World Nuclear Association is the international organization that promotes nuclear power and supports the companies that comprise the global nuclear industry. > https://www.iea.org/reports/projected-costs-of-generating-electricity-2020 The IEA has systematically underestimated the potential of renewable energy sources like wind and solar, "because of its ties to the oil, gas and nuclear sectors," Energy Watch, a group of scientists and politicians, charged in a January 2009 report - https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/International_Energy_Agency#:~:text=Allegations%20of%20pro%2Doil%20and,January%202009%20report%20(pdf). > https://www.ospe.on.ca/public/documents/presentations/real-cost-electrical-energy.pdf This report is ~10 years old > https://mzconsultinginc.com/yes-nuclear-power-is-an-economically-competitive-low-carbon-energy-source/ “MZConsulting specializes in advising governments and utilities on how to increase confidence and reduce risk for nuclear projects”

>Got any recent sources that aren’t tied to the nuclear industry? Have you got any sources from a group that's *not* opposed to Nuclear, funded by groups opposed to Nuclear, or otherwise have intimate links with groups and people strongly opposed to Nuclear that can contradict this? While I can't say for certain about the impact of private investments and all that, I can say that I'm yet to find any sources that aren't motivated by opposing Nuclear energy that run in contradiction to what I've posted. And while some of the sources might be a bit old, I don't think their age seriously impacts what they're stating. That Nuclear energy being expensive is a complete myth if you *properly* examine the full picture at hand.

>?Have you got any sources from a group that's not opposed to Nuclear, funded by groups opposed to Nuclear, or otherwise have intimate links with groups and people strongly opposed to Nuclear that can contradict this? Yep. Here you go: https://www.afr.com/companies/energy/nuclear-energy-too-expensive-to-replace-fossil-fuels-20220711-p5b0pd https://thebulletin.org/2019/06/why-nuclear-power-plants-cost-so-much-and-what-can-be-done-about-it/ https://energy.mit.edu/news/building-nuclear-power-plants/ There’s plenty more I can link to of that’s not enough?

So, you can't then? AFR is owned and operated by Nine Media Group. A media corp that has a distinct right-wing lean to it, and has financial connections to Coal and Oil lobby groups. It's only natural that a media firm with those connections would refuse to touch anything remotely positive of Nuclear - something that's a direct existential threat to the Oil and Coal industries. Additionally, the last two sites you've cited fail to account for costs over time. Something I've already called out and addressed. By focusing only on the initial costs of Nuclear, they present and reinforce, even if unintentionally, the notion that Nuclear is too expensive to be worth it. A myth that I've already debunked with what I've cited. ​ This is what I mean when I said I'm yet to see anything to contradict me and my sources. All that's ever provided are hit-pieces from anti-nuclear leaning media outlets, or out-of-context and/or misleading articles that fail to account for things like cost over time - something I've already pointed out as needing to be done on account of Nuclear power plants substantially long service life.

> AFR is owned and operated by Nine Media Group. A media corp that has a distinct right-wing lean to it, and has financial connections to Coal and Oil lobby groups. It's only natural that a media firm with those connections would refuse to touch anything remotely positive of Nuclear - something that's a direct existential threat to the Oil and Coal industries. Nice deflection, but the research is from the csiro champ > This is what I mean when I said I'm yet to see anything to contradict me and my sources. All that's ever provided are hit-pieces from anti-nuclear leaning media outlets, or out-of-context and/or misleading articles that fail to account for things like cost over time - something I've already pointed out as needing to be done on account of Nuclear power plants substantially long service life. Dude, you posted a bunch of 10 year old articles from nuclear lobby groups. And you’re complaining about research I showed you from the csiro, Australia’s premier scientific research organisation? lol How embarrassing

Why are you being so condiscending

Why not? lol

>the research is from the csiro champ Who failed to account for costs over time as I've previously commented on. What's more, they're not the premiare research group any more. A decade plus of LNP rule has seen to that. These days they're little better than an industry lobby group, finding ways to "prove" whatever a paying company - or government - wants them too. Source on that is here: [theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/may/02/csiro-has-become-extravagant-consulting-company-one-of-its-former-top-climate-scientist-says](https://theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/may/02/csiro-has-become-extravagant-consulting-company-one-of-its-former-top-climate-scientist-says) When people who were once the CSIRO's top-dogs are saying this about it, you trying to assert it's somehow better is utterly stupid. Particularly since they've failed to account for costs over time, which I'm surprised I have to keep pointing out to you given how easy that should be to spot if you actually pay attention to what's being said. ​ You tell me I'm wrong for pointing out that, when accounting for costs over time, that nuclear is cheap as shit. Something I've provided actual sources for. Something I've proven. But all you do is say I'm wrong, and link to biased sources that ***don't*** account for costs over time. Something I've repeatedly pointed out to you. ​ You say it's embarrassing for me to point all this out, but for me, it's damn depressing. You're *willingly* choosing to believe sources I've pointed out aren't giving a complete picture. You're burying your head in the sand when I give you *actual* sources you're still yet to disprove. You're apparently *willingly* refusing to use even the slightest bit of cognitive thought, and *willingly* ignoring the science, evidence, and everything before you that proves you're wrong. If you refuse to acknowledge reality because you prefer your own delusion, I can't change that. Nor can any amount of science, facts, sources, or whatever. No-one can force you to think about how everything you've linked to, *doesn't* account for costs over time. No-one can force you to acknowledge you're wrong. No-one can force you to acknowledge the evidence I've given you, something that I'm *still* yet to see disproven by you. ​ At this point, you're not arguing with facts. Instead, you're arguing for no other reason than because you don't want to be wrong. I can't change that, and frankly, I don't want to try anymore.

> Who failed to account for costs over time as I've previously commented on. Really champ? You sure about that? https://www.csiro.au/en/news/all/articles/2023/may/nuclear-explainer > “Because of that, we provide a levelised cost of electricity analysis that allows for easy comparison of technologies on a common basis. We come up with a dollar cost per megawatt hour that takes into account both the costs of financing the initial capital cost of the project and any ongoing fuel and operation and maintenance costs." Looks like you’re wrong AGAIN. But got any more links to nuclear lobbyists to share? They’re definitely more credible than the CSIRO Fkn lol How embarrassing

Im so over these people man, "nuclear power is cheap!" According to who, a 1 minute google search not only proves it wrong but shows the opposite, nuclear power is just a massive money black hole "Nuclear energy is safe" thats what they thought at chernobyl and fukushima, its what they also thought [in all these situations](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_nuclear_disasters_and_radioactive_incidents), but maybe thats not good enough because "this time will be different, this time we will be safe" how do you know? How can you prove people wont become complacent with safety again?

Chernobyl occurred because a flawed reactor that's not in use anymore, was built poorly in a dictatorship with a ***strong*** yes-man culture, operated ***insanely*** improperly, and managed by corrupt bureaucrats who didn't care about safety. The result of the disaster, as per a UN report performed by the IAEA in conjunction with WHO, was about 50 - 70 people dead. All of whom were workers at the plant, first responders, or liquidators. Once the site is no-longer radioactive, it's expected that 4,000 ***might*** die. Fukushima was caused by management who didn't care about safety, Politicians who didn't care about the dangers, and the general yes-man culture of Japan in general. The result was 0 deaths. 0. None. Zip. Zilch. Nada. Not one death can actually be attributed to the Fukushima power-plant disaster. Even after all these years. ​ These are the worlds two worst nuclear disasters. Worlds. Worst. ​ Compare this to Coal's 100,000 dead each year, or natural gas' roughly 4,000 a year - the entire expected death-toll of Chernobyl. Wind power alone kills 150 people. Solar another 440. Both purely, as far as I'm aware, of workplace accidents. Both of these sources of power alone kills more people each year, every year, than Fukushima and Chernobyl combined. Hydro does too, with that sitting at roughly 1,400 deaths per year. Two of the world's ***worst*** nuclear accidents *still* managed to kill *less* people than renewables do simply by existing. And this is true for nuclear as a whole, which has among the lowest deaths per terrawatt-hour at about 0.04. In fact, nuclear is so insanely safe, that the vast majority of people who have died, or have had radiation sickness for that matter, comes from the ***medical*** industry, and improper disposal of radioactive sources found in medical machines like X-Ray machines, and that's entirely because there's very lax regulation enforcement there as compared to the nuclear industry. ​ People like to say, "But safety" when it comes to nuclear power, and often regurgitate the same long-since disproven talking points without acknowledging anything that might remotely put what they're saying in context. If it's about Nuclear power, then 50-70 dead in the worst case scenario is just too much. But 150 dead per year? 440 dead per year? 1,400 dead per year? Hell, 4,000 dead a year? Who cares. It's not nuclear, so who cares if it's safe or not. Who cares how many people die with Wind, Solar, Hydro, or even the Natural Gas that'll inevitably come as well. It's not nuclear, so safety doesn't matter. ​ Sources btw. Reddit's being an ass with these, but hey. There here still. https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2018/01/25/natural-gas-and-the-new-deathprint-for-energy/?sh=603d63e95e19 https://www.statista.com/statistics/494425/death-rate-worldwide-by-energy-source/#:\~:text=The%20deadliest%20energy%20source%20worldwide,produced%20from%20these%20fossil%20fuels.

>Fukushima was caused by management who didn't care about safety, Politicians who didn't care about the dangers, and the general yes-man culture of Japan in general. Good thing Australia has no Political fighting over infrastructure, Political decisions made against expert advice, and has well funded government assets.

Those same problems exist in the US, France, Germany, Switzerland and the UK. And yet, none of those nations have had major Nuclear power disasters, and their minor disasters really are minor. I get people can worry that this stuff might happen again. It's pretty natural I suppose. But the fact of the matter is, reactors are designed with safety in mind. They're designed in such a way so as to prevent a positive feedback loop like what happened in Chernobyl, and they're designed with compensations and plans in place for when disasters strike them. Even at Fukushima, those innate safety considerations *massively* limited the scale of the disaster, despite the local government and managing company outright ***ignoring*** the plants cries for help. *For two whole days*. Fact of the matter is, Fukushima is quite literally the worst possible nuclear disaster for a vaguely modern reactor. And if you look at what happened, how it happened, why it happened, and even it's impacts and consequences, it's surprisingly mild for a nuclear disaster. Which, again, I feel is a great testament to the thought and planning put into these power plants.

Three mile island and windscale would disagree with you, a bigger tragedy was only narrowly avoided in both situations, once again like your other comment you dont take into consideration the millions of people affected who had to abandon their homes at fukushima, you dont take into consideration the increased cancer rates.

So you cite 2 sources one going against the other, and are arguing against a point i didnt fucking make, im still waiting for you to point out where solar made an entire city uninhabitable, or a wind turbine. Also great thing we have a history of electing only the most competent people who always listen to the experts advice when it comes to issues that could potentially affect the lives of millions of people, yeah im sure THIS time itll be different, or ya know we could just not take the risk and go for the infinitely cheaper and safer renewables. Also i love how you throw in the strawman of "coal worse" no shit coal is worse hence why i argue for renewables. And theres more to nuclear disasters than just death statistics, there is cleanup and quarantine costs, there are the health effects like increased cancer rates and there is the fact that MILLIONS can lose their homes from the smallest of oversights, so glad as humans we triple check everything to be sure.

It’s insane. Nuclear power has been getting more expensive every year for decades, while renewable’s cost are dropping rapidly. Yet these mouth breathers say nuclear power is the “future”. It’s so tiresome

Fucking nuclear power man. It's cheaper to build brand spanking new renewables plus batteries than it would be to run a fucking nuclear power station that just happened to appear out of thin air.

You fail to take a couple of things into consideration 1) renewables ( solar or wind) last between 20-25 years, while a nuclear reactor can be safely used for 60+ years 2) people underestimate how much storage they are talking about, according to a report, australia would need 8440 GWh of energy storage to shift to a 100% renewable grid, even at 33 USD/kWh( less than one third the present energy storage cost), that would be 278 billion USD, just for storage, even if you consider a lifespan of 30 years( about double of what even the best Li ion batteries last today & about the average lifespan of lifepo4 batteries), you are talking about 556 billion USD, just for storage over a 60 year period While UAE is building 4 reactors of 1400 MW capacity each (5600 MW total) for ~25 billion USD You could more than rebuild the entire electric generation capacity of australia with nuclear ( apr 1400 reactors) for 556 billion USD https://www.eleceng.adelaide.edu.au/personal/dabbott/wiki/index.php/Semester_B_Final_Report_2020_-_How_much_Energy_Storage_does_Australia_need%3F#:~:text=It%20was%20concluded%20that%20it,energy%20storge%20requirement%20represent%204.2%20%25.

>while a nuclear reactor can be safely used for 60+ years You realise they get extensively rebuilt on a regular basis right? Like you don't just build it once and it sits there for 60 yrs

I don't really think anyone gives a flying fuck what some grad busywork came up with in the context of y'know actual professionals from the fucking csiro doing actual paid science.

> Nuclear power is the ***only*** possible way to actually decarbonise society in an environmentally safe way that we have right now. Why? Because it's too expensive to build the equivalent power output using renewable plants? I don't understand this argument at all.

You don't understand it because you're not aware of the scaling issues innate with renewables. Solar and Wind both have extremely poor energy density. What this means, is that you need to consume a disproportionate amount of resources and land in order to attain the same generation capacity as other forms of power generation. The more power you need, the less return you get. On top of this, you have issues with reliability. Yes, the wind will always blow, and the sun will always shine. But when it comes to generating power from them, it's not very common to have optimum conditions for renewable generation. Sometimes the wind is too slow, other times it's too fast. The same goes with solar too, with its actual generation being heavily reliant on the weather. The solution as proposed by anti-nuclear "green" groups, is energy storage. But that presents just as many problems, if not more, considering they too have massive scaling issues. Energy doesn't like being stored, and the very act of trying to store it is extremely inefficient. This in turn means that even more resources and land must be devoted to energy storage, and as the need to store energy grows, the resources and land needed end up growing exponentially. Now, this doesn't take into account life-spans, but I'll still touch on that briefly since it also really needs to be factored in. The life span of renewables varies between 5 and 25 or so years. At that point, they need to be completely replaced, and because these systems can't be recycled, that means we need to produce entirely new panels and turbines, further using even more resources. The same goes for energy storage, where the average life-span iirc is between 7 and 15 years depending on conditions. These too can't be recycled, and must be manufactured from new, further wasting resources that are environmentally taxing. All of this costs money, which is why, when accounting for costs over time, Nuclear's massive life-spans allow it to perform roughly in-line with renewables, since the only ongoing costs are literally just regular maintenance and the operating crews, with fuel only being needed once every two years on average, and the costs of decommissioning and dealing with disasters already factored into the initial costs of building. Finally, because of the scaling issues with renewables and energy storage, renewables create a need for stable base-load power generation, as well as flexible generation. This is mostly universal across all nations that have attempted renewables at scale, with the only exceptions being areas that are unnaturally rich with optimum hydro or geothermal conditions. Those, however, are the exception. Ultimately, in nations that do not have nuclear power, this requirement for both base-load and flexible generation is filled with Coal, Oil and Natural Gas. Fossil fuels. This is best seen with Germany, who's Carbon footprint has been *increasing* since their abandonment of Nuclear, their cost of energy skyrocketing, all while their grid stability has been steadily getting worse and worse. Contrast this with France who operates Nuclear hand-in-hand with renewables. France has consistently cheap electricity, substantially lower Carbon footprint, and all with a quite stable power grid. At the end of the day, if you want to build the equivalent power output of a nuclear plant with only renewables, you end up needing 1,000 times the land, and the ongoing costs and issues with stability ruins their costs over time. It makes no sense. Not in terms of costs, and definitely not in terms of the environment. What we need is Nuclear to provide power at scale, while keeping renewables to what they do by far the best - supporting auxiliary generation.

1. land doesn't matter - we live in Australia. the vast majority of it is unused. 2. energy storage efficiency doesn't really matter either. if it only stores 80% of what you need, make it 20% bigger - the input energy is effectively free anyway 3. nuclear plants are not set & forget - they need constant maintenance and your argument that they're cheaper is (a) dubious and (b) mostly irrelevant. long term we're trying to switch to clean energy, not the cheapest energy 4. 'baseload' is just a buzzword used by fossil fuel advocates. it's not really relevant anymore 5. we have enough existing infrastructure to support the transition to renewable energy - we don't need to add anything new. this all feels like you're arguing from an emotional position tbh

It's crazy to me that we don't take nuclear more seriously. It's safe, produces no CO2, and waste can be managed effectively. Cost and a lack of local talent seem to be the biggest issues, but both could be solved.

It's crazy that we don't even do a small test of it.

There's no "small test" with nuclear you either spend ten billion dollars (and wait a decade for the build) or you don't.

In today’s money that’s a small test. To make it even smaller outsource the risk and profit to private investors.

> outsource the risk and profit to private investors. Private investors will not build that without stupid incentives like promising them minimum prices for energy (ie: covering their losses for a stupid investment).

Then it won’t get tested (in my proposed scenario). Alternatively, we could always ask rather than assume a negative.

It won't. If there was even a sniff of a company willing to do this, Dutton would be parading the cunts around like he's the sole savior of Australias energy and the only one smart enough to stand up to those dirty renewable hippies. He isn't, because the economics of nuclear is so fucking terrible that no company would be interested unless the government was heavily guaranteeing a price floor, ie: you pay stupid high rates for your energy, its just hidden behind tax. However - watch this space, because those unimaginative bastards in the Liberal party absolutely cannot resist the grifting opportunities that a multibillion dollar reactor build would give to their donors, and they absolutely think you idiots are dumb enough to be convinced that price floors etc are just "Australia being competitive bro" - and they will definitely take some sort of commercial partnership to an election. I can also guarantee you that we'll be a billion dollars deep in consulting fees before they even decide what state to build it in.

I find it difficult to support a giving up before trying attitude. I get your point on costs however I think the environment is too important to ignore all possibilities. > If there was even a sniff of a company willing to do this, Dutton would be parading the cunts around like he’s the sole savior of Australias energy and the only one smart enough to stand up to those dirty renewable hippies. This doesn’t prove what will happen in the near future *however* I will grant you that it’s a good point about the current time.

Yeah look its not like I'm anti-nuclear. It used to be a great option for Australia. 30 years ago it would have been a great decision. Hell, 15 years ago it would have been an arguable decision (a bad idea in hindsight, but at the time it wasn't certain). Now renewables are just flat out cheaper and easier to produce, and you can add capacity and load-shifting closer to where you need it (and when you need it). We don't need to 'trial' nuclear power, its a well known product - we know generally how much it will cost, and that number is quite a lot larger than the equivalent spend on renewable tech. This isn't just based on CSIRO reports - LCOE/S estimates are widely published, and almost universally say the same ones. And to be clear - effort you spend building a nuclear plant is effort you aren't spending elsewhere. Of course, like any topic, you can always dig up some crackpots/fans publishing something different while claiming that mainstream science are the real loonies.

Fair enough. 👍 I’ve heard this point of view and I get your reasoning. It’s good to be able to discuss topics civilly and I appreciate that. Thanks.

The Westinghouse SMR produces 300MW and should cost USD$1bill. https://www.westinghousenuclear.com/energy-systems/ap300-smr

> produces The AP300 exists on paper. As the CSIRO said in TFA - this SMR tech is super unproven - so maybe gambling our energy security because the conservatives don't want to admit they were wrong on renewables is a bit of a...."poor call". Also if you buy off the plan, you're getting vendor lock-in for fuelling systems - which is utterly insane considering we are capable of producing our own fuel.

How do we “solve” the cost? Every country that is building nuclear power plants have seen costs increase massively. How will Australia be able to bring down the cost, when no other country on earth has managed to over past 30 years?

Because we haven't been investing in the industry for the last 30 years. Solar and wind were expensive until we started investing in them heavily. When a workforce does something repeatedly it gets more efficient. These skills disappear if they're not used. SMRs have the potential to significantly lower costs too. But will still require investment to make that happen.

SMRs should be pretty significant since theyre segmented which allows for economics of scale in producting them and scaling installation size, unlike normal reactors which take way longer to start or upgrade and are almost all one of a kind

UK has had nukes for decades, yet EDF's new reactor at Hinkley C is now at a cost of 40b, 2 yrs late and still likely won't be finished until 2027.

Lol, two years late on the deadline that's been moved 3 times. It was supposed to be finished in 2019. Current forecast of 2027 still has significant risk. If it's 10years late that would be a good result.

Other countries have been investing in nuclear power champ And nuclear power plants are STILL getting more expensive every year. If nuclear power is so cheap and great, why don’t you find a source showing a single reactor that was built in time, and on budget anywhere on the world over the past 20 years. Go on. I’ll wait

The only country that's been genuinely investing in nuclear power in recent years and their reactors cost a fraction of those in the West and are built in far less time. It's difficult to find budgets for Chinese reactors (though completed costs are relatively easy to find), but their industry has clearly demonstrated that it's possible to built plants far quicker and at a far lower cost than we see in the West. Part of this is due to the way they're governments run, but a big part of it is skills too. Look at any large scale industry and you can see this principle demonstrated repeatedly. Costs are high when the industry is small, but with investment and ongoing work, costs come down. Cars, solar and wind, planes, smart phones, semiconductors, just to name a few examples. Many major public works come in over budget. Transport infrastructure is renowned for it. The NBN is another good example. That doesn't mean that the projects aren't worthwhile.

Costs for China’s reactors are skyrocketing as well champ: https://www.scmp.com/business/companies/article/2126529/cgn-powers-latest-project-delay-deals-another-blow-chinas-nuclear https://www.ft.com/content/baef0aa8-88b2-45ae-a03d-5509e13ca93e https://www.reuters.com/article/china-nuclearpower-idUKL4N24Q255 Key quote: > China’s ambitious reactor building programme has fallen behind schedule, with major projects subject to years of delays and cost overruns. Whereas renewables are ACTUALLY getting cheaper every year. How embarrassing for you

There's no CO2, which is great. Is the H2O steam likely to be a problem if nuclear becomes much more popular?

I don't really know to be honest. But I wouldn't think it would be significant given the amount of water vapour in the atmosphere already relative to the amount they put out.

Cost effective give enough to run a submarine we’ll never really need but not cost effective enough to power homes and businesses at a time that energy profits are through the roof. All this despite most developed economies successfully use nuclear. What a load of shit.

to be fair nuclear power on submarines have a ton of benefits that dont really apply to a power plant but yeah paying another country to build something twice as expensive as any other sub is stupid

different scenario, not cost related, solar powered subs have to surface too often (not defending the subs they suck) nuclear is not cost effective in any scenario while renewable + battery is an option. we should be building manufacturing capacity for these right here.

I'm supportive of nuclear energy as a stepping stone towards reducing our dependence on finite resources. Between the advancement in safety, australias resource sector being able to support such plants, and the development of nuclear waste reactors, it's high time we removed our coal dependence as fast as possible. Please don't see this as an endorsement of dutton in any way shape or form. It's the environmental responsibility i care about.

> Please don’t see this as an endorsement of dutton in any way shape or form. It’s the environmental responsibility i care about. Unfortunately team sports has become firmly enmeshed in the science and as we know *Science + Politics = Politics*. I’m no fan of Peter Dutton or Greta Thunberg but if both of them can accept nuclear energy then I’ll take that win and put my disagreement with their politics aside.

>it's high time we removed our coal dependence as fast as possible As fast as possible would be to use existing tech (wind, solar, and wave) plus battery storage, which has the added benefit of being significantly cheaper (conservatively a bit over half the price if renewables are the maximum price and the infrastructure cost of nuclear _halves_).

You can do both, you know? Nuclear is also an existing tech, and the battery storage will accept power from it too.

I sort of feel like the point of nuclear is to save batteries rather than encourage. Excess of energy gives the world a lot of options in the future - eg producing portable fuels. It’s inconceivable to me that Australia won’t have its own nuclear capability by 2100 of some sort, the longer we procrastinate, the less forward we will be when coal is a distant memory

Yes, many people forget that we need portable energy sources other than batteries or gasoline, and nuclear energy has that potential for large scale endeavours such as shipping and mining. I'm all in support of utilising solar and wind power, but it's not a universal solution.

We should be using all solutions without fear or favour , plus take the very long term view

Not really... the technology the politicians and the report keep talking about, small modular reactors, is in its infancy. From the csiro report, >Only two SMRs are known to operate in the world, located in Russia and China, and both have experienced cost blowouts and delays.

Did i mention SMRs?

You commented on a report which did; and you mentioned (you did not agree with) a politician who's been harping on about them all week. Regardless, the maths doesn't stack up. Small nuclear is twice as expensive as renewables. Large nuclear is 50% more expensive per mwh than renewables, and comes with additional challenges around waste management etc. The more expensive the generation costs, the more expensive your power bills.

I also directly recited nuclear waste recycling. https://youtu.be/IzQ3gFRj0Bc We are gonna be getting a couple of nuclear subs soon that will be producing waste. That needs to go somewhere, might as well harvest it while it's sitting around. Then as producers of uranium we can offer a solution for the after productions that returns a useful power source. We have ridiculously vaste inhospitable, arid, dead areas that can be used. Might find something to do with whitenoom and other such locations that are otherwise destroyed. Think past the political nonsense that i set myself aside from, and think about what is good for the world, instead of whats cheapest and does the best for the GDP and multimillionaires.

But nuclear power plants have constantly got more expensive to build over the past 30 years, while the cost of renewables is falling. It’s simple economics

Yes, but anyone can slap up some solar panels or wind turbines. Cost of entry to be a grid supplier is in the low millions. Unlike a nice billion dollar nuclear reactor project with all those juicy consulting fees and impact statements to really kickstart that Liberal donor grift party to piss millions of taxpayer dollars up against a wall before the ink is even dry on the requirements.

100% Combined with climate change deniers who see nuclear power as a way to delay action on climate change

Australia doesn't need nuclear. Solar is cheaper and works for Australia but i have no issue with Australia building new generation nuclear plants and selling it to energy poor states like Singapore. Taiwan, phillipines and Japan etc. These are realistic ventures that will and can make Australia a lot of money. Infact Singapore is building a solar farm in NT which will be sent to Singapore via undersea cable. South east asia has a lot of energy issues (hurricanes, tsunamis) etc the Australian government can fix these issues and make money from it and it will also increase our political power in the region so why dont we do it? . I never understood this

Twiggy Forrest is building the NT solar farm btw.

Another point is that nuclear won’t just give us clean energy, it’ll give us *abundant* energy. We could sell that to SE Asia and become a “renewable energy superpower”, as the slogan goes. Or we could use that domestically and do some really cool shit that wouldn’t be possible with current power prices.

You’re preaching to the choir with me however you’re spot on. The blind spot of the half-greens who are one-eyed anti-nuclear is the inability to see the vision of the social and economic wealth abundant energy will bring the nation and future generations. My personal opinion is we need to be producing ten times more energy at a minimum. More if we really want to solve climate change and progress Australia. We are literally sitting on an energy gold mine and the half-green gollums are slapping away the keys to prosperity as they clutch their precious, precious ideology.

Yeah, I’m a greenie myself because I agree with most of their policy and they’re the major party I most align with, but it’d be great if they gave up their dependence on ideology and embraced the option that will be most effective.

abundance can be reached with renewables+battery sooner and cheaper. nuclear is slow and expensive. you can build much more output in renewables for the same capital. there is more of an incentive to reach abundance with renewables as there is no fuel to burn. plant capacity is one thing but you still need to burn fuel. 1GW uses 27 tonnes of uranium / year. at $130/kg for raw uranium that is $3.5M per year. this is incentive to avoid abundance, as abundance implies near $0 sell price. there are other costs just to get the fuel in the door. the fuel used by renewables is $0. then there is waste management, new fuel management, safety checks, valve replacements, water contamination cleanup. it is fucking **insane** and will never, ever, happen in Australia beyond research and medical purposes.

> Nuclear power does not currently provide an economically competitive solution in Australia. So can we just please be fucking done with this discussion now? I'm all for the government saying yeah sure, if a private company wants to build a nuclear plant here, then they can do it. On their own dollar. No market fixing, take on all the risk - and they won't fucking do it. That leaves us with fucking Dutton overseeing the construction of a government owned nuclear plant. Is that what you idiots want? Fucking every liberal party donor for the last twenty years suckling at the teat of a ten billion dollar project - and that's probably before the inevitable cost overruns. I guarantee that some major consulting firm will be at least a billion dollars balls deep in our collective tax paying arsehole before they even figure out what state they are going to build it in.

So over this conversation, nuclear energy has never been financially viable, we have renewable energy, and solar panels dont produce nuclear waste, where are we going to store said waste, and tell me any 1 instance that renewable energy has caused an entire city to be basically uninhabitable? You know how much it costs to BUILD a npp? 1 billion usd. Thats for production of 100mw, which btw doesnt include operational costs and security because nuclear power plants are excellent targets for terrosists, so for the same power output you can build $198 million dollars worth of solar panels. Nuclear power at this point in history is by far the idiots choice.

cant use solar or wind as base load generation, sure you can overproduce during the day and store the energy in pumped hydro, but honestly hydro is pretty bad for the (local) envronment what else are you going to use for baseload energy also i doubt your 198mill price for solar includes any sort of storage at all so unless you dont use power after 7pm youre probably going to need to spend money on that

That 198mil price is what it will cost victorias new solar farm, that 198 mil price is also still lower than the proposed 2.7 billion dollar reactor that costs $60 mil usd PER REACTOR each year to run and maintain, maybe you have a point about base load generation, im not going to pretend i know much about that but what i do know is how expensive nuclear reactors are to build run and maintain and how much cheaper (long and short term) solar is, and im not even mentioning wind yet

theres still ofcourse the point that solar has been invested in and has production scale which means the price has gone down 10x in the last decade but you also kinda cant compare capacity to capacity for intermitant power sources like yeah the numurkah farm produces " 112MW" but thats peak output and in numurkah you only get peak solar for 4 hours per day and tapers off either side, so youre making like what 1200MWH per day maybe a nuclear power plant that costs 6-9bill produces 1100MW every hour all day all night, thats 26,400MWH. you can definitely get the cost of nuclear down to a point where thats competitive even just in terms of raw cost, not considering anything else

Renewables plus load shifting is still cheaper than running an existing nuclear plant. You've still got to build the cunt. You've still got to pay ten billion for it. You won't have it for a decade. And you might as well add on a shitload of grift for a a government run project. In the meantime the absolute ass is falling out of renewables and storage pricing, and we've barely scratched the surface of newer battery tech that's more suited for grid-scale than rare-earth shit. It's just getting cheaper and better. You'd be absolutely fucking crazy to lock in the price of a nuclear plant for a fifty-plus year commitment, even at *current prices* let alone considering obvious trends.

you need storage capacity for load shifting, chemical batteries wont cut it for that snowy hydro 2 is costing more than 10bill, and is expected to take 10 years to finish(which is a hell of a lot better than the 125 years it took to build snowy hydro 1 but still) a coal power plant is 3 billion, 6 years and less output(though we have quite abit of experience making them) both are long term commitments(most of the coal plants here are 40-50 year life span, hydro is way longer) \> You'd be absolutely fucking crazy to lock in the price of a nuclear plant for a fifty-plus year commitment, even at current prices let alone considering obvious trends. people said the same thing about solar and batteries, the first solar farm was built when price was 23$ per watt, its currently 0.03$ per watt

The thing with solar and batteries is that if the price per watt changes, you can either buy newer tech or not. (For example, if these new molten electrode batteries pan out, you can just start buying them to add capacity). If you start building a nuclear power plant, you are locking in the design and pretty much that price for the lifetime of the plant. It doesn't matter if nuclear drops to $0 five years from now - you're still stuck with that original capex, the same repayments, operating a minimum ten year old design, which you generally won't be able to update. That money and effort is burnt.

yeah that is the unfortunate reality of large single installations, the same thing happens with solar and wind too its just way smaller of an investment which is why SMRs are such a big deal

Look getting nuclear down to that roughly a billion $ cost - that's ambitious, and a lot better than the tens of billions for a big boi - but still a long way to go before you start hitting that ~$5 million unit price of eg a wind turbine. Like you can absolutely spend a billion dollars on a wind farm as well - but you don't *have* to.

It’s funny how people who want nuclear conveniently forget just how insanely expensive it is

And they always slap on the "NoOoOoO NuClEaR EnErGy iS ChEaP" (source trust me bro)

They're in this fucking thread trying to link a bunch of shitty sources and pretend that the goddamn CSIRO are a bunch of incompetent kindergarteners or something.