There are just better/faster options...
this post was submitted on 29 Jun 2024
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We have way more resources and production available today to achieve an absolute amount of TWh. If anything, being able to acheive the same growth with Nuclear in the 70s and 80s is a much larger achievement when considering how much larger a portion of the total supply it represented.
I don't agree with you but either way that doesn't change the fact that nuclear is just slow, expensive and a bad idea in 2024.
How is nuclear a bad idea? It's one of the best options. Sure it's slow and expensive, but once it's up and running, it's safe, and even less radioactive than coal.
Because solar and wind can be deployed much faster. You rather easily have a decade of extra coal or gas emissions, if you built nuclear today.
Two things can be built at once.
Sure, but why would you built a nuclear power plant, when you are faster in having a clean grid with wind and solar. The workers building the npp could built more wind and solar after all.
So just do both at the same time.
No. The total amount of money available for energy research and construction is a given amount. If it's better spent on solar and wind that's it.
Can be, won't be tho
We still need base load of which nuclear is the best option.
Which is exactly why they're pushing nuclear so hard. Ultimately it all boils down to selling more oil.
"""
That’s the trust cost of nuclear power in Australia, not the just the hundreds of billions of dollars in the cost of constructing the reactors more than a decade away … but the danger that another decade of denial prevents the action on climate and investment in energy we need now,” he will say.
“Australia has every resource imaginable to succeed in this decisive decade: critical minerals, rare earths, skills and space and sunlight, the trade ties to our region.The only thing our nation does not have, is time to waste.”
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I was onboard with the delay reasoning until he mentioned critical minerals, rare earth as the first 2 examples. That just makes me think he only cares about Industry and Businesses and not the pollution and ecological destruction.
Politically, you need to convince at least some of the "what about the economy/China" types. So economic and energy/manufacturing sovereignty arguments can be more convincing than "humanity is fucked if we don't act quickly enough". It's stupid, but that's democracy for you.
That's basically the case, Labor recently (as in this last week) approved new fossil fuel extraction projects to open in fucking the 2060s and 2080s... (We are meant to be at zero emissions by 2050)
They're also giving out an ungodly amount of subsidies to fossil fuel companies, to the tune of $14.5 Billion
The climate activism group I'm with arranged a bunch of snap protests around Melbourne at Labor offices. The one federal member who came out to talk to us basically just tried to distract from all of this with the increase in renewables spending, but she also implied that they had to keep opening new projects like this because of the money...
This is somewhat confusing. He's against nuclear power, a thing that would offset a considerable amount of carbon emissions... because building a plant is a lengthy process? It's not as if you can't also install solar panels in the mean time
If you install solar in the meantime you don't need the nuclear reactor anymore by the time it's finished. It's a financial sinkhole.
building nuclear power plants isn't just like putting a leg of lamb in the oven though.
it would take a gargantuan investment of money, skills, labour, et cetera. All of which ought to be directed to building out renewable facilities.
It's a long-term investment. Once it's built, nuclear outright breaks the pricing scheme on fossil fuel energy. Surely the prudent thing is to have both it and renewables? To have one to shore up the other?
I agree that nuclear is an option that ought to be considered as part of the mix.
I'm not convinced that it's right for Australia given our unique circumstances.
I disagree on cost. We've never built nuclear. We not only need a reactor, buy need to buy all the relevant skills and build all the supports to create an industry. I genuinely believe that the cost per kWh would be far greater than our other options.
The many hundreds of billions is better put to renewables, storage, and hydrogen cracking.
There are some next gen reactors being built in different places. Smaller output, less waste, salt cooled. We should let others bear the cost of development and see how it pans out.
We’ve never built nuclear. We not only need a reactor, buy need to buy all the relevant skills and build all the supports to create an industry.
Oh, that does change the calculation quite a bit. I wonder if this push has more to do with those submarines than any energy considerations.
excited to see how the thorium rock-salt reactors progress
Burning coal, what we badly need to transition off of, also produces more radioactive waste than a nuclear plant too.
God I wish all our worthless politicians weren't in the coal companies pockets
If by that you mean the liberal party that are continuing to push anything possible other than renewable energy.
We had a solution for that though. Things like the carbon tax would have had a meaningful impact. And then the libs managed to make it toxic so it can't be reintroduced
Carbon tax is the only thing that would have made "carbon capture" viable. So the one tool they are trying to rely on, they directly destroyed themselves.
There's a lot of problems with nuclear
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We know it's expensive, and it takes so long to build that if that's the only plan, it makes no sense not to install solar. So ultimately my the time it is built, it will be even less economical
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Same problems as coal. You can't simply turn it on. It can take hours. That's part of the reason for recent blackout in Vic (turbines need to sync up same speed and phase as the grid or they shit themselves, and that can take hours). Solar/batteries take 100ms and will always get the contract. Cheaper too..
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It's still centralized so power in rural areas will still be crap. If you put batteries and solar in those areas though and treat them as microgrids, everyone will have more reliable power. They can stop whining about their blackouts
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The cost of solar and batteries right now is irrelevant. In 15 years by the time this plant is built, based on the current price drops, i think I calculated that batteries and solar are 66% - 90% cheaper. It would be stupid to think this technology doesn't drop in cost, and improve in efficiency.
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We have a lot of space here in Australia for solar. So, energy density doesn't matter like many countries.
Instead of wasting all this gd money on nuclear, they should be using it to build manufacturing factories for lithium batteries and solar.
Nuclear doesn't solve any real issues here in Australia.
They have said that for so many years that at those point we could have had multiple power plants running...