Nuclear energy is more expensive than renewables, CSIRO report finds::Renewable energy provides the cheapest source of new energy for Australia, a new draft report from the CSIRO and energy market operator has found.
Well the issue with renewable power like wind and solar, is that they are not stable.
Having a battery in order to store the energy and release it when the demand is higher than production is one part of the solution.
But what happens when there wasn’t enough solar and wind to replenish the batteries if those batteries aren’t enough for the demand? Power shortages, which are pretty bad to get.
One of the solutions to this is natural gas for a simple reason : it’s very fast to start generating power or to stop. It’s also not very expensive, at least when there isn’t a war… The co2 equivalent emissions aren’t as high as coal either.
Nuclear power on the other hand is very hard to stop. Having a surplus of power on the grid is also very bad. Some of it could be used to recharge the batteries, but there would be some loss at some point.
Except that H2 can be electrolyzed from water and is an emerging carbon-free fuel source. The nuclear power can just stay on all the time and we let H2 production drop a little when the wind is low and the sky is dark.
It’s another solution, now there is also issues with costs. However with time the costs can be reduced.
For hydrogen based on this video : https://youtu.be/M0fnEsz4Ks0 there could be some hope for large hydrogen storage for a smaller cost (not used in cars tho, due to the weight).
Hydrogen production however is/was very ineficient. However there is also some hope for this https://youtu.be/m0d6iljzzEI
So with this, maybe it could be an interesting solution to store energy.
Tho I’m not sure how efficient it would be to produce energy from that stored hydrogen, and how efficient it could be for the entire hydrogen production/storing/electricity production chain.
“It’s a good technology for filling in the gaps around renewables, as well as storage and other methods for making sure that power’s still reliable…”
This does make some sense, like having a diesel generator in your home for the few times a year the power goes out. It’s also useful for shutting up the, “sometimes the wind doesn’t blow and there’s no sun at night” crowd.
It’s also kind of a slight of hand. Fossil fuels shouldn’t be part of the mix at all, but the article just accepts the premise that they must. If natural gas or other fossil fuels aren’t allowed, then then the economic case for nuclear power is stronger.
As for needing needing natural gas to “fill in the gaps”, that’s just fossil fuel industry propaganda. It’s a non-issue with nuclear power. Whenever electrical demand drops you can just divert the power to make hydrogen/ammonia to store the extra energy or produce zero-emission fertilizer.
The article says “gas”, not “natural gas”. Australia already has plenty of gas infrastructure including pipelines so the situation might be similar as to Germany: First, use natural gas as the one fossil fuel that you’re using precisely because gas plants regulate fast and natural gas can be replaced by synthesised gas, then, once you have enough renewable capacity, actually do the switch. And boy oh boy has Australia potential for renewable generation, they’ll also want to produce tons of hydrogen anyway to smelt (and stop being a 3rd-world style economy that’s exporting raw ore).
There is a propaganda campaign going on in Australia at the moment from the natural gas lobbyists with ads on the TV where they’re pimping themself out as “partners in the transition to renewable energy”.
Also this report is being used by both sides of politics here, one saying it rightfully justifies focusing on renewables and the other claiming it’s being “used unfairly as a weapon” against nuclear energy. Also, the latter is pimping nuclear instead largely because they’re controled by mining companies who have a lot of political influence here oh and we also happen to dig that shit out of the ground.
Let’s not nickel-and-dime the green transition. Nuclear energy has a role to play, and so do renewables. The most urgent thing now is to get as much electricity generation off fossil fuels as possible. Building nuclear power plants is an important part of this, especially in countries like China and India which would otherwise default to burning coal.
Let’s not nickel-and-dime the green transition
Nobody is suggesting we should.
Nuclear energy has a role to play
Did you read the article? It only has a role to play if you’re into wasting money.
The most urgent thing now is to get as much electricity generation off fossil fuels as possible. Building nuclear power plants is an important part of this
Can you explain why nuclear would be a part given how long it takes to deploy in comparison to renewables? Nuclear also has a habit of being behind schedule and costing more than projected.
especially in countries like China and India which would otherwise default to burning coal.
The article is about Australia.
It really seems like people can’t get past the fact that while nuclear did have an unfair reputation, it’s just too late to make use of it.
Like yeah, it sucks that people blocked it and we built tons of fossil fuel power instead, but now we just have a better option and we can give up that fight.
Nuclear power and cognitive dissonance. That’s why people are still touting SMRs as the future, except they cost even more than traditional nuclear. Also, they don’t exist.
For the love of God, look up the importance of maintaining grid frequency and which energy sources are reliable enough to do it.
Because renewables cannot. Our other option is to build insane infrastructure that can transmit DC long distances, which China has done. However, most countrie do not have the wealth or resources to do this.
There are literally countries that went all in on nuclear power (france and switzerland come to mind), that now regret that play and are trying to transition away from them. Not for safety reasons, just because they are extremely expensive to operate and they become a money pit when renewables eat away at the base load that they were built to supply. You have nuclear plants paying people to take their power during the afternoons because they cant shut down quickly when the sun comes out.
Energy generation that works most of the time is more expensive than energy generation that only works some of the time, big surprise. Mason problem is that we need energy all the time and currently can’t store it on a grid level.
More like fission requires massive shielding, tight control of procedures, waste storage sites that don’t exist, and in-depth inspections in order to remain safe.
There are tons of options for that, mainly energy storage such as batteries, hydro, and green hydrogen. Nuclear is not needed and too expensive among other things.
If you didn’t have sun or wind or whatever for weeks at a time, you’d need such an absurdly sized battery so as to be untenable. What do you do if you mainly have solar but it’s cloudy most of the winter? For these kind of things you will always need a certain amount of baseload power.
Look, I’m all for renewable energy, where it makes sense. When I lived in southern California, BLM had so many wildlife restrictions in place, even for off-roading it was kinda nuts. A lot of it dealt with tortoises. Shortly after moving out of state, they started building solar farms all over the place. They’re massive multi dozens to hundreds of acres in size. Many of them in the same areas they got all worked up about for the tortoises…
Generating the power is only a third the battle. Still need to store and distribute that power. Factor in power demands etc.
What I’m trying to say is, as a species we need to get better. This is a good step. However, the power output of a single nuclear plant to the size shouldn’t be overlooked. We should stop fossil fuel reliance. Nuclear is at this point very understood. Yes some bad accidents happened in the past.
Storing energy isn’t as difficult as it’s made out to be. There’s molten salt, water pumps, boiling/heated water, discarded batteries, even hauling weights up a tall tower.
I’d like to see every building with solar panels and a backup battery to decentralize the grid.
I have a feeling this is where the suburban and rural grids are going. Dense urban areas are likely still going to need power produced off site.
What I’m more interested in will be farms in whether they’ll stay traditional producing food or convert solar farms where food production is not the main focus (see the hops farming solar panels for example).
Please do the maths on "lifting weights up a tall tower.
Actually no, I’ll do it for you.
Let’s raise a metric ton 10 storeys. A storey is about 3 meters, making that 1000kg going 30 meters up. Mass (1000kg) x g (9.81m/s² ≈ 10m/s²) x height (30m) is about 300,000 joules of energy. We don’t use joules much, but they are the amount of energy you use is you draw 1w for 1 second. 300,000Ws. 3,600 seconds in an hour, so 83Wh.
Not kWh, Wh. You might run your TV for an hour.
You’d need to lift 100 tons 100 storeys to get it to kWh. 83kWh. A car battery worth of storage.
This is the reason pumped-hydro storage is a thing. To make lifting a mass a decent energy storage solution, you need a lot of mass. About the order of one lake of water. One plant I visited in Scotland has a reservoir of 10 million tons of water elevated 400 meters, to give it 7GWh of storage. That’s a fairly small one, and 36 men died building it back in the 50s/60s.
Gravity storage needs BIG numbers.
It’s not difficult, but it is expensive and inefficient. There are very few financially viable battery technologies on the market currently, and although incremental improvements are happening on that front, there are also roadblocks (lack of raw materials like cobalt, toxic metals, thermal runaway fire risks), we really need a big breakthrough before we’ll see large adoption of batteries.
It’s worth pointing out too that we aren’t using newer designs as much, which incorporate inherently safe features.
It’s actually ironic. If we built new reactors we could build breeder tractors to generate fuel for them from nuclear waste. This fear mongering of nuclear energy prevents us from reducing that number.
This is basically common knowledge now. CSIRO report pointed to similar conclusions for several years, at least since 2021 when I started to notice.
What is relevant to real life (since Australia probably never will get nukes) is that even assignning system costs only onto VRE, they are still almost the same LCoE in a 90% VRE system. This is again consistent with previous reports.
After Australia pass 100% VRE, exporting green hydrogen in the regional market will probably handle the last remaining flexibility needs. Exporting electricity directly to SE Asia is less likely but still a possibility.
