Peter Dutton’s nuclear plan is just terrible public policy.
The truth is that, in an Australian context, with nuclear power more expensive per kilowatt hour than either grid scale solar & storage or coal, nuclear just doesn’t make economic sense.
The UK has a mature nuclear industry. Its new Hinkley Point C plant, started in 2016, is now expected to not be complete until 2031, and costs £35bn.
So how much would it cost to replace all of Australia’s coal power plants with nuclear ones?
We’ll, at current exchange rates, £35bn — that’s the cost of just one Hinkley Point C sized reactors — works out to A$67.6 billion.
So building just 10 nuclear reactors the size of Hinkley Point C costs $A676bn, making the AUKUS subs look like Home Brand corn flakes in comparison.
(Just for comparison, ScoMo’s AUKUS subs cost $368bn, and Daniel Andrew’s Suburban Rail loop is estimated at around $100bn.)
That’s assuming Australia, starting from scratch, could build nuclear plants as quickly and cheaply as the UK, which was one of the first nations on Earth to split the atom.
So is it debt & deficit to fund this? Big new taxes? Even by the LNP’s own measuring sticks, it’s a crap policy!
The Australian Federal Government has previously examined the prospect of building nuclear power plants in the Switkowski report: https://webarchive.nla.gov.au/awa/20080117214749/http://pandora.nla.gov.au/pan/79623/20080117-2207/dpmc.gov.au/umpner/docs/nuclear_report.pdf
The big thing that’s changed since it was published is that grid solar + storage is now cheaper than coal or nuclear power.
So would you support holding up the closure of coal plants for 15 years until nuclear plants are completed, then paying substantially more on your power bills, while the federal government pays hundreds of billions of dollars in government subsidies, while also hiring thousands of additional public servants to regulate it all?
#auspol #nuclear #ClimateChange #australia @australianpolitics
@Ardubal @ajsadauskas @australianpolitics I think the issue with nuclear reactors in the Australian context is that we have no nuclear power construction industry, we don’t have a workforce, we don’t have the education system geared to produce a workforce nor are there standardised proven working designs that we can cookie cutter. The NIMBY battles haven’t started yet nor the court challenges. We need to replace coal in the next 10 years and to do it the nuclear way will take 20 to 30 years if at all. All the while power produced by nuclear reactors will become even more expensive than renewables and is certainly not economic.
Other than that, there isn’t a problem with nuclear reactors. The LNP approach of pivoting to nuclear by defunding renewables is really ludicrous as we can’t afford to wait.
#nuclear #nuclearenergy #renewables #renewableenergy
@Lats @ajsadauskas @australianpolitics The problem as I see it is that solar+wind+storage alone will not get you there ever. It will go up to 40% solar+wind, then maybe 10—30% with storage+solar+wind (depending on your technooptimism). And then you start replacing everything built every 20 to 30 years. Buys time, but not sustainable.
What you say is true: you need to build up the entire nuclear industry. International cooperation for bootstrapping will be important. Better get started.
@Ardubal @ajsadauskas @australianpolitics the key to this is that it’s not an either or situation. If we want to do nuclear then it can’t be by defunding renewables like that LNP and many populist pundits want. We need to decarbonise our economy as quickly as we can. Stuffing around trying to derail renewables really is a recipe for disaster.
@Lats @ajsadauskas @australianpolitics
Well, right now there is much more derailing of nuclear in the hope of solving storage than derailing solar+wind in the hope of re-enacting a nuclear buildup (like in France, Japan, Germany (1970s-80s), Ontario, China, India…) going on.
Get both on the road, they do not much compete for resources. It will be faster than only one.
@Ardubal @Lats @australianpolitics We are explicitly discussing the situation in Australia here.
(For what it’s worth, I do think nuclear power has an important role to play in some countries, especially those with an established nuclear power sector. Australia is not among them.)
And in Australia, the right-wing federal opposition (led by Peter Dutton) has put forward nuclear quite explicitly instead of more renewables and storage (as proposed by the current government).
That’s the context here, and why it’s an either/or discussion in an Australian political context:
"The federal Coalition has declared at the Cop28 climate summit that it will back a global pledge to triple nuclear energy if the opposition leader, Peter Dutton, becomes prime minister, but will not support Australia tripling its renewable energy.
…
“Some observers questioned how the Coalition’s plan to slow renewable energy expansion would avoid power blackouts as old and increasingly failing coal-fired power plants closed over the next decade. O’Brien acknowledged in his speech that 80% of Australia’s “baseload power” was expected to leave the grid by 2035.”
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/dec/10/coalition-tells-cop28-it-will-tback-tripling-of-nuclear-energy-if-peter-dutton-becomes-prime-minister
There’s a much broader context to all this.
Dutton’s party has a long history of promoting climate scepticism, and accepting donations from coal mining firms.
And as for Peter himself, well…
"Immigration Minister Peter Dutton has been overheard quipping about the plight of Pacific Island nations facing rising seas from climate change.
"Noting that today’s meeting on Syrian refugees was running a bit late, Mr Dutton remarked that it was running to “Cape York time”, to which Mr Abbott replied, “we had a bit of that up in Port Moresby”.
“Mr Dutton then added, “time doesn’t mean anything when you’re about to have water lapping at your door”.”
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-09-11/dutton-overheard-joking-about-sea-levels-in-pacific-islands/6768324