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Nuclear too slow to replace coal, and baseload “simply can’t compete” with wind and solar, AEMO boss says (reneweconomy.com.au)

submitted 4 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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The head of the Australian energy market operator AEMO, Daniel Westerman, has rejected nuclear power as a way to replace Australia's ageing coal-fired power stations, arguing that it is too slow and too expensive. In addition, baseload power sources are not competitive in a grid dominated by wind and solar energy anyway.

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[–] Aurenkin 6 points 4 months ago (1 children)

I don't think anyone mentioned the economy here in this thread, so I'm not sure what the relevance of that is unless I'm misunderstanding your criticism there.

For my comment specifically I'm not worried about the economy, but the unit cost of energy. Simply put if nuclear has a higher unit cost that means we can't replace as much fossil fuel generation vs other lower unit cost sources of energy for the same price.

I agree with your criticism of folks complaining about the build time, back in 2010 it was probably worth building nuclear. That's no longer the case and the fact that people (imo incorrectly) used this criticism in 2010 doesn't mean that it's invalid now in the mid 2020s.

Disasters is an interesting perspective to take and to be honest I haven't really thought much about it before. You have, however, picked a very specific and unlikely event here and I'm wondering why you went with that. There are a great many potential disasters that can impact a power grid from earthquakes, extreme weather and even deliberate attacks or acts of sabotage. I think for most of these, having a more distributed grid is likely more resilient and these are much more realistic scenarios than a civilization ending level event like you described.

At the end of the day, we need to decarbonise immediately using the whatever technology is at hand. My criticism of nuclear is that it's no longer the cheapest or fastest way to achieve that, but I'm open to being wrong. Your disaster scenario wasn't particularly convincing though at least for me.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

For my comment specifically I’m not worried about the economy, but the unit cost of energy. Simply put if nuclear has a higher unit cost that means we can’t replace as much fossil fuel generation vs other lower unit cost sources of energy for the same price.

I'll put it another way so you might better understand my point: what would you have said 10 or 15 years ago when someone mentions that solar is a bad idea because it would cost more? Because up until recently it did cost more, and people did use it as an argument against it. And now your (and other people's) main criticism of nuclear is that it's not as cheap as an energy source that we've been heavily investing into for a decade.

You have, however, picked a very specific and unlikely event here

I showed several examples. The ones you mentioned, such as earthquakes, are not likely to affect one source more than another, but events which block out the sun obviously disproportionately affect the production of solar energy.

it’s no longer the cheapest or fastest way to achieve that

Neither was solar when we started to invest in it, as I mentioned earlier. That came from improving and investing in the technology - which also bumped solar into the safest energy source, right after nuclear, which used to be the safest.

[–] Aurenkin 6 points 4 months ago (1 children)

I'm not sure I understand what you're getting at here to be honest. When nuclear was the fastest, cheapest option we should have been deploying that. Now that it's not, we should still be deploying the fastest cheapest thing. Solar, wind and batteries continue to be on a rapidly declining cost curve, even back in 2010 but it was still too early to roll them out at huge scale. It's unlikely nuclear will be catching up any time soon barring major breakthroughs like fusion.

I also strongly disagree with your statement that disasters would impact nuclear and renewables equally. One of these things is certainly much harder to clean up and recover than the other if there is significant damage from an environmental disaster.

We should be rolling out the best available technology at the current time and continuing to improve our generation technologies, including nuclear, as we always do. I'm not sure why we would do anything else.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago (1 children)

I think I understand what he is getting at.

Your argument is that we should build the fastest, cheapest option.

Up until recently, fossil fuels were the fastest, cheapest option. He is getting at the point that by your logic, we never should have moved off of coal and gas and started investing in solar because it wasn't fast and cheap.

People didn't follow your logic and instead heavily invested in solar and wind until it actually became the fastest, cheapest option that it is today.

Nuclear could have a similar rise in fiscal efficiency if we invested in it.

But his original point is that you are focusing on "the fastest and cheapest" (i.e. what is best for "the economy") which is the entire reason we are in this mess to begin with, because everyone wanted what was best for "the economy" and always kept the profitability of the energy companies as a high priority. This is the same thing you are repeating now.

We should not care what is the fastest and cheapest. We should be spending a metric fuck ton of all of our collective money to switch 100% over to green energy both in nuclear AND renewables . The worst thing that will happen with that plan is we overbuild and energy becomes very cheap and energy companies don't get their precious profits. Again, "oh no the economy." Nationalize energy. It doesn't need to make a great profit, it needs to be severely regulated and it is a basic human utility in the modern day.

As for nuclear disasters, I would watch this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jzfpyo-q-RM&t=545s How many nuclear disasters has France had who has run on 70-90% nuclear power for many decades? As for spent nuclear fuel, spent coal ash is literally radioactive for longer than spent nuclear fuel and per unit energy it produces more radioactive waste and we have no qualms about that. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/coal-ash-is-more-radioactive-than-nuclear-waste/ https://www.youtube.com/shorts/Kn2l3MoisDs We don't even test for radioactivity around the extreme majority of coal plants in the world.

[–] Aurenkin 4 points 4 months ago

Oh yeah I see what you mean, that's my bad then for not being clear. We should build the fastest, cheapest green option. Yes we should keep investing in nuclear generation research, if it becomes the best option in the future we should build it. Right now it's not so we should build the best thing right now, is basically my view for the previously mentioned points.

I agree nuclear is safe, I'm not worried about that. The only reason we were discussing disasters was because it was brought up against solar. I think nuclear is a clean, safe option that should be on the table but it's not the best option anymore.