Nuclear energy is more expensive than renewables, CSIRO report finds

Comments

• CrimeDad@lemmy.crimedad.work ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Just read the article again and it’s kind of suspicious the way the article ends by saying that natural gas will have to be part of the future energy mix. Seems like there might be some co-optation going on, or at least a failure to consider the costs of trying to eliminate greenhouse gas emissions from the power supply using just wind and solar.

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  • Tibert@jlai.lu ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    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.

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    • Wilzax@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      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.

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  • chitak166@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    There is no shortage of bullshit from budding energy companies.

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  • IchNichtenLichten@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    “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.

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    • CrimeDad@lemmy.crimedad.work ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      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.

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  • dangblingus@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    The only people writing articles about energy are lobby groups.

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• cyd@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  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.

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  • IchNichtenLichten@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    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 pissing money away.

    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.

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    • Sasha@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      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.

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• CybranM@feddit.nu ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  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.

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  • SkybreakerEngineer@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    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.

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    • CybranM@feddit.nu ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Yeah, I don’t disagree but it’s a proven technology that can provide a baseline load for the grid. Something we can’t yet do reliably with renewables

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  • prototyperspective@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    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.

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    • CybranM@feddit.nu ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Hydo is limited in where it can be used and where it can be used if often already is. Batteries can’t yet provide a grid level base load. I don’t know much about green hydrogen but there’s usually a loss of energy when converting from one medium to another.

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• terminhell@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  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.

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  • reddig33@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    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.

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    • wewbull@feddit.uk ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      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.

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    • sorghum@sh.itjust.works ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      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).

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  • assassin_aragorn@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    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.

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    • IchNichtenLichten@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      They’re going with older designs for cost reasons. Per the article, you’re taking something that is already not cost effecting and proposing to make it even more expensive.

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• CrimeDad@lemmy.crimedad.work ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Okay, but which power sources divert the most wealth to the working class (ie, which one provides more higher paying long term jobs)?

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  • saltesc@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Despite what you learned from The Simpsons, jobs at powerplants of any kind make up an insignificant percentage of overall jobs and wouldn’t be an issue raised when considering much larger issues such as economies, environmental health, and the climate.

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    • CrimeDad@lemmy.crimedad.work ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      I was thinking of all the manhours needed to engineer and build a nuclear power plant (and all of its subcomponents) in the first place as well as maintenance and refueling.

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• Antitoxic9087@slrpnk.net ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  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.

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• Rooskie91@discuss.online ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Renewables cannot main grid frequency, which is crucial in America. We transmit AC power. You either accept nuclear or accept no electricity. This is fear mongering propaganda to keep us dependent on fossil fuels because that’s the only other way to maintain grid frequency.

  This article also specifically says IN AUSTRALIA. So it isn’t even a comprehensive statement. We need nuclear. Get over it.

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• deegeese@sopuli.xyz ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  I eagerly await all the Nuclear fanboys to explain why this unfairly overestimates the cost of nuclear or was put out by the fossil fuel industry to <checks notes>… make renewables look good.

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• autotldr@lemmings.world [bot] ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  This is the best summary I could come up with:

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  The report says electricity generated by solar and on-shore wind projects is the cheapest for Australia, even when accounting for the costs of keeping the power grid reliable while they’re integrated into the system in greater proportions over time.

  It estimates the changing costs of electricity produced by coal, gas, solar, wind, nuclear, bioenergy, hydrogen electrolysers, and storage such as pumped hydro and batteries.

  CSIRO’s scientists say until recently, discussions about the potential cost of using nuclear energy in Australia have remained theoretical, with a lack of data from completed commercial projects hindering attempts to make worthwhile calculations.

  This year’s draft GenCost report also provides more data on the estimated “integration costs” for variable renewable technologies.

  It says most new-build technologies, like renewables, can enter an electricity system and provide reliable power by relying on existing capacity already deployed, but as their share increases, which forces the retirement of existing flexible capacity, the system will find it increasingly difficult to provide reliable power supply without additional investment.

  "Mind you, the integrated system plan was released last week and it did emphasise that although it is likely to be a renewable future, we’ll still need gas as a supporting technology.

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  The original article contains 754 words, the summary contains 199 words. Saved 74%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!

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