New nuclear power is now significantly more expensive than renewables, and almost any other form of grid-scale electricity.
It’s also far, far, far too slow to build. If you started the consents process now, you might see it operational in 15 years.
Gigawatt-class units really don’t scale well in smaller power grids. It’s a pretty common rule in power engineering that you need enough spinning/fast reserves to cover the unexpected, instant loss of your largest generator or transmission line. That’s fine if you have a 100MW grid; not so great when there’s 10MW of load.
Small modular/meme reactors have thus far been rather disappointing.
Throw more solar, storage, and demand response at it with a side of synchronous condensers.
Yep. The latest CSIRO/AEMO report published this week addresses exactly this, with various levels of renewables penetration modelled, including associated firming costs (additional transmission & storage) Here’s an overview (spoiler: renewables are still cheaper by far.) https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-12-21/nuclear-energy-most-expensive-csiro-gencost-report-draft/103253678?utm_source=abc_news_app&utm_medium=content_shared&utm_campaign=abc_news_app&utm_content=link
If u go look at the spurce document and not a report on the document i found a couple interesting things.
- Risk profiles have not been considered due to renewables variation etc
- The nuclear costs are all based on one reactor from a single startup and overlooked the multitude of other reactors around the world at significantly better prices
- Renewables where assumed to go down in cost but we have seen that the cost of storage has actualy been rising recently
- Why does the IEA think nuclear is still cheaper?
15 years
why is Australian construction this fucking slow?
the largest nuclear plant (built in Japan in the 1980s) was commissioned 5 years after the start of construction. I can’t imagine safety improvements since the 1980s would triple the time alone.
It’s not Australian construction, it would seem to to be a Western country issue, or one potentially affecting any nuclear construction.
See Flamanville 3 ( https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-profiles/countries-a-f/france.aspx Under “new nuclear capacity”). It was started in 2007, and was estimated to be completed in 2012, but it’s still not completed. It’s currently scheduled to begin operating in 2024.
Oma powerplant in Japan was started in 2010, and is currently scheduled to be completed in 2026. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ōma_Nuclear_Power_Plant
South Korea’s new Hanul reactors look like they’ve taken about 10 years each. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanul_Nuclear_Power_Plant (The table in section “Reactors” might be interesting, as it shows the pre-2000 reactors taking only about 5 years to complete)
