I thought I should respond to the latest suggestions from Department of Industry and others that nuclear power is an option worth considering for Australia. While I’m at it, I’ll add some updates on global developments.
* The most striking feature of recent Australian discussion, beginning with the Australian Energy Technology Assessment from 2011 is the claim that “small modular reactors” represent an appealing option for Australia. AETA listed these as being one of the cheapest options for 2020. with an estimated levelised cost of between $75 and $125/MWh. That’s both ambitious and remarkably precise for a technology that does not yet exist, even in prototype form. Leaving aside niche technologies like the Russian proposal to adapt nuclear sub reactors as floating platforms, the only serious contender in this field is the US, where the Department of Energy has provided grants for the development of two pilot plants. The target date (almost certainly over-optimistic) for these to begin operation is 2022. To get any idea of economic feasibility, it would be necessary both to undertake commercial deployment (in the US, obviously) and to to accumulate some years of operating experience. To get this done by 2030, or even 2035 would be an ambitious goal, to put it mildly. Again assuming everything goes well, Australia might be in a position to undertake deployment of SMRs by, say, 2040. But obviously, if we are going to reduce emissions on anything like the scale we need (80 per cent by 2050), we need to phase out most fossil fuel electricity well before that. Obviously, all these points apply in spades to proposals that exist only as designs, with no active proposals even for prototype development, such as the Integral Fusion Reactor. As I’ve argued before, to the extent that nuclear power makes any contribution to reducing CO2 emissions on a relevant time scale, it will have to be with current technology, most likely the AP1000.
* Talking of the AP1000, the builders four plants under construction at two sites in the US have just announced another 6 months delay, pushing the operations date out to 2017 or 2018 (release from FoE, but links to originals)
* Most interesting of all are projections released by the International Atomic Energy Agency last year for the period to 2050. Currently nuclear power accounts for around 11 per cent of global electricity. The IAEA “low’ projection has that falling to 10 per cent by 2030 and 5 per cent by 2050. The “high” projection, which includes steady growth in both North America and Western Europe as well as spectacular growth in Asia, has the share remaining roughly stable. So, even on the most optimistic projections of the world’s leading nuclear agency, nuclear power won’t play any significant role in decarbonising the electricity sector, let alone the economy as a whole.
I’ve come to the conclusion that nuclear power advocates, like climate delusionists (virtually all climate delusionists are nuclear fans, though not vice versa) are essentially immune to empirical evidence. So, I’d prefer no comments from our usual advocates (hermit, Will B etc) unless they have something genuinely new to say.
John Quiggin 
The problem with nuclear electric power is that if unattended the recently spent fuel rods will boil off their cooling water and release vast amounts of ionising radiation and deadly isotopes, that and the geologic time scale for neutralisation of isotopes even if everything operates according to plan, plus the stations are about as sensible for reducing greenhouse gas concentrations as putting a dog collar on a tiger snake and just imagine what would happen with an even limited nuclear conflict with standard electromagnetic pulse weapons taking down civilian infrastructure that supply water and electric power and labour to nuclear electric power plants globally times 100s and you begin to get the picture.
It’s easy to deride the denialist delusionists as they are clearly either misinformed, stupid, lying or crazy but I detect in those that supposedly accept the science a sort of complacent inability to comprehend either intellectually or emotionally the real state of the science and its implications for the future of our species and the other life with which we share this planet or should I say from whom we have taken so much of this planet from. Accepting anthropogenic global warming is seen as something that you do in polite society in a not dissimilar way to not stating that you are not in favour of slavery. That is to say that proclaiming a belief in global warming is a fashionable opinion with not much depth for most people.
The most harmful delusionists ultimately are in fact those that are in an influential position with a public profile who understand the science and its implications but who soften and dilute the message out of fear for their own position or because they tell themselves that people won’t understand or for whatever reason they fail to tell the full unvarnished truth of catastrophic ecosystem and climate collapse. If you read the work of Clive Hamilton for instance and accept it then the contemporary understanding of anthropogenic global warming is understated and as delusional as the denialists.
I think we should take the position of the doctor in a consultation with a patient who is ill. It is the responsibility of the doctor both morally and professionally to tell patient the truth that they have a disease and how they handle that knowledge is ultimately up to them.
However the 1st thing to remember about politics or life in general is that people are full of it which isn’t necessarily a bad thing as this is caused by people conforming to social norms to not be overtly selfish.
And the reason why people are full of it is as every 6 year child with a brain learns that you are more likely to get what you want if you couch your selfish needs in social terms, so that instead of saying “I want that box of lollies” they learn to say and think lines such as “well if I get those lollies everyone else in the family will be happy too” and “it will help the economy” and so forth but of course the most convincing lies are those you convince yourself you believe.
Who cares if in 300 years there will be 1000 km band around the equator where temperatures and humidity will be consistently so high that many higher forms of life including humans will be unable to survive due to heat stress.
So pretending that we are going to cope by adapting is another form of lie. For a whole host of reasons technical, societal, political, economic, business, psychological, oh and let’s not forget physics, preventing catastrophic climate change is simply impossible and the best we can hope for is to reduce its severity slightly. And who’s to say anyway that global warming is a bad thing, If you were to the ask the more than 99% of other species on this planet about our stewardship of this beautiful little blue green ball that’s just floating around the sun what do you think they would say? And what about the countless species that have become extinct or endangered or had their range restricted due to our activities? Can you just sense how keen they are to have us around? And we actually believe that we are somehow special or superior or something because of our intelligence (try explaining this to the highly educated and academics whose sense of self is derived in large measure by the competitive assessment of their own intelligence compared to others). Don’t people understand that science and technology are the problem, increasing our efficiency and productivity so that we can breed even more humans to pollute even more. Or as Ernst Mayer said ” Intelligence is an a fatal mutation”
To use contemporary speak, we are unsustainable as far as we know, in any form other than a pre-civilisation hunter gatherer society.
It’s time to face reality. From a systems viewpoint the human species or specifically human civilisation is a disease, a disease that needs to be, must be, and will be eliminated by natural forces beyond our control and no amount of wishful thinking or intellectual defence is going to change that.
Carbon dioxide is a component of the self regulatory mechanisms of the planet that has evolved over deep geologic time which have a ‘wisdom’ of their own. Do these people, these hubrististic temporal blow ins, these self-important miscreant intellectuals actually presume to know better than the planet itself manifested through its feedback mechanisms.
In life if you have integrity you have to choose which side you’re on. Are you really with the 1% or the 99%? Me? Personally I’m on the side of 99%. Truly, honestly. I love people individually and can see the universe in their eyes but the sooner the human species is exterminated collectively the better. And this is not a new idea by the way. As Alfred Russell Wallace wrote in 1869 in his widely popular, proclaimed and influential book ‘The Malay Archipelago’ in reference to Birds of Paradise species of New Guinea.
“I thought of the long ages of the past, during which the successive generations of this little creature had run their course — year by year being born, and living and dying amid these dark and gloomy woods, with no intelligent eye to gaze upon their loveliness; to all appearance such a wanton waste of beauty. Such ideas excite a feeling of melancholy. It seems sad that on the one hand such exquisite creatures should live out their lives and exhibit their charms only in these wild inhospitable regions, doomed for ages yet to come to hopeless barbarism; while, on the other hand, should civilized man ever reach these distant lands, and bring moral, intellectual, and physical light into the recesses of these virgin forests, we may be sure that he will so disturb the nicely-balanced relations of organic and inorganic nature as to cause the disappearance, and finally the extinction, of these very beings whose wonderful structure and beauty he alone is fitted to appreciate and enjoy. This consideration must surely tell us that all living things were not made for man. Many of them have no relation to him. The cycle of their existence has gone on independently of his, and is disturbed or broken by every advance in man’s intellectual development; and their happiness and enjoyments, their loves and hates, their struggles for existence, their vigorous life and early death, would seem to be immediately related to their own well-being and perpetuation alone, limited only by the equal well-being and perpetuation of the numberless other organisms with which each is more or less intimately connected.”
Indeed.
And also as last words, addendum to later editions
Substitute the word animal for human in the following.
“We permit absolute possession of the soil of our country, with no legal rights of existence on the soil to the vast majority who do not possess it. A great landholder may legally convert his whole property into a forest or a hunting-ground, and expel every human being who has hitherto lived upon it. In a thickly-populated country like England, where every acre has its owner and its occupier, this is a power of legally destroying his fellow-creatures; and that such a power should exist, and be exercised by individuals, in however small a degree, indicates that, as regards true social science, we are still in a state of barbarism.”
Oh! and have a happy New Year everyone,
Look after yourself and look after someone else.
Have a good time, have a good time.
It’s a cheap hit but am taking it anyway, the unintentional comparison between the latest reactors and the Joint Strike fighter…dates again pushed back, expenses up again.
This seems to be where the energy argument goes wrong, where corporate capitalism steps in and seems to corrupt a process in the way it does also in examples in other sectors, say defence, mining/fracking, big pharma and chemicals; also use of rivers and forests in a sustainable manner of use.
The term, “bolt-on” keeps circulating in the back of my head, but the amount of conflict over projected cost and returns figures for different alternatives and varying estimates from different advocates on a given process, has me suspicious that at least someone is trying to sell me a pup.
I wonder how things will go, if the US ever invents a flying nuclear reactor?
Chris O’Neil, I’ve given the values I’ve used to calculate that at $600 a kilowatt-hour home storage will save many Australians money. Where are yours? What values have you used? Do they differ from mine? Have I overlooked something? Have I made a mistake? If you don’t understand the calculation I used I can go through it with you. Can you help me to think better? Do you have anything to contribute?
But if you are going to tell us that home energy storage is a waste of money simply because you say so, then that’s not good enough. This is not Sunday school. This is not a sports match. This is not a schoolyard fight over whether or not Batman could beat Superman. There is an objective reality out there. Or at least my life goes better when I assume that there is one. A reality that can be investigated, measured, and discussed. It’s this outside reality that I’m intersted in talking about and not your internal one, no matter how personally important your own feelings, thoughts, and beliefs may be to you. So I’ll ask you again. Do you have any reasons to believe that home energy storage at under $600 a kilowatt-hour is a waste of money?
I’ve given you my figures. Where are yours?
Fran, I’ve thought of another use for a 65% efficient solar inverter. It could be used as an oven. It would be great for people who like to do big lunches. At anytime during the day they wanted to cook the oven would be preheated and ready to go.
@Val
I’ve had PV since 2005 but I’ve failed..I had to pay the power company $11 last year. Sometimes I drive a car for months just powered with modified chip oil. I’m working on a couple of other energy projects. Clearly I’ve gone wrong somewhere.
@alfred venison
And you forgot the period maintenance costs that typically have large cost overruns and late delivery times. Bruce in Ontario was a nightmare.
@Ronald Brak
Better than a microwave!
@Hermit
Apologies Hermit, my reply to you was less than civil – I had people round for tea and had a few glasses of wine, and much as I try to remember not to make comments in those circumstances, sometimes I forget. Glad that you are doing so much on the energy front, though if we’re getting into a competition, I don’t even own a car!
But given that, I still fail to understand why you make some of the comments you do. Pardon me if I’m paranoid, but I’ve had a previous bad experience with a pseudo-environmentalist pro-nuclear advocate who actually turned out to be a right wing climate change denier, as discussed in my comment to Fran above. Also I have been doing a lot of reading about climate change denial and there are staggering amounts of money being poured into it, so I am somewhat suspicious of the motivation of people who disrupt discussion on renewables by saying it will never work, we have to go nuclear, etc.
Above I wrote:
The 5.88 cents per person per year is clearly wrong. Should be $5.88 per person per year. Assuming average 8 kWh per person per year electricity consumption in the US over that period that’s a spend of 0.0735 cents per kWh of supplied electricity on nuclear development.
The arithmetic might have been lousy, but the comparison with the renewables levy on all domestic electricity consumption in Germany of over 5 euro cents / kWh remains telling.
I’d like to say I’m surprised that nobody pointed out the error, but I’m not surprised.
Quokka
I’m not quite sure why you’re comparing long run (since 1948) subsidy figures for the USA to much more recent figures for Germany. Surely it’s more germane (sorry, couldn’t resist the pun) to compare similar time periods in each jurisdiction. One also needs to keep context in mind. The subsidies for nuclear power in the US were designed not for abatement but for the supply of cheap power.
Now personally I’ve never been a huge fan of bantering about subsidies from the government for infrastructure. Yes, one needs to keep this in mind when considering the actual cost of one solution or another so that one can evaluate which at any given moment, is likely to prove better value for money over its likely commercial life. The resort by anti-nuclear folk, who tend to be left-of-centre to the “nuclear power got/gets a leg up through government subsidy” is really the flip side to the right saying that renewables are about if government and not letting the market sort it out, or trying to argue that if we were true environmentalists we’d be cheering on nukes. It’s an attempted wedge. The right figures most on the environmental left hate nukes and the left hears the right complain about big government and subsidy. The right raise nuclear power to disrupt the push for decarbonisation, and the left raises subsidies to stop the right wedging it with nuclear advocacy and to use it to split away their backing by the fossil HC crowd.
There’s nothing wrong in principle with subsidies. Sometimes, subsidies from the state can be a good thing. As always, it depends on whether a given subsidy offers adequate benefit to he community as a whole.
It may well be that people aren’t following your posts as closely as you’d like. People who are hostile to nuclear power and/or time-poor might not read your posts or do the maths needed to show that you were out by orders of magnitude.
Val is failng to think globally. Yes, grid-connected solar pays off for her. But that is partly because it is subsidised at the expense of non-solar users but mostly because the incremental addition to grid power from people like her does not yet have to be stored, because it is currently not large in relation to other forms of grid power. Those subsides, BTW, are an incredibly expensive way to reduce CO2 emissions – simple conservation measures (eg the much maligned Pink Batts program) can reduce emissions by more at a tiny fraction of the cost.
The argument is not about whether solar power is currently worth it to individuals (yes it is) or even whether it will be, like wind, a modest but handy supplement to other forms of electricity generation (yes it will) but whether it will ever be feasible as the principal way of meeting population electricity needs.
In turn that last question is ALL about the costs of storage, whether at the household or grid level. And I’m with the sceptics here who think that storage on the required scale will always be far more expensive (and, surprisingly, more ecologically damaging and more lethal too – have a look on YouTube at some battery fires) than nuclear ever could be.
Which doesn’t make me a nuclear fanatic – yes it does have its own problems, even if opponents overstate them (especially the radiation safety ones). But if we want to keep an industrial civilisation without baking the planet then nuclear might do a Bradbury and end up as the best option. My view is that the first priority is to get a decent price on carbon and then we will be in a position to let the best renewable technology win. Get the prices right and it really is amazing how well markets can work.
@derrida derider
These claims don’t stand up to scrutiny
The subsidy from the absence of time-of-day pricing is equally applicable to people who use energy conservation at times when the social cost of electricity is low, and turn on their aircond when the cost is high. (The PC just estimated that non air-cond owners, as a group, pay around $300 a year to subsidise aircond owners
With the exception of aircond, which has clearly driven most of the increased cost, it’s essentially impossible, in the absence of cost-reflective pricing, to tell who is subsidising whom, and also impossible to predict the economics of storage. For example, as I mentioned a while back, storage can be achieved by such simple measures as remotely turning on central heating in the late afternoon of winter days, rather than waiting until you get home after dark and then cranking it up: the house itself acts as a store of heat and cool. But with a uniform price, there’s no reason to bother.
@paul walter
I think the defence industrial establishment should get involved with the nuclear industry particularly in SA. When the air warfare destroyer program is completed the contractors should turn their attention to a new project like SMR assembly. Some propose re-employing car industry workers for example building new diesel subs at the ASC using ex Holden staff. The military connections run deep, for example one proposed mine that includes uranium ore is Carapateena inside the Woomera rocket range.
Derrida
I agree that a robust and ubiquitous price on emissions that reflects their likely anticipated community cost is key. Given that this is unlikely any time soon however, I don’t accept that we should be leery of building low footprint technology out of state funds or regulating emitters or engaging in value for money subsidies for those willing to contribute to the low carbon mix.
I agree that programs that would shield those unable to participate in solar energy and other renewables should be devised. While a tenant can’t in practice put solar panels on his or her roof, if the state funded the capex needed for a co-op to build on the roof of a shopping centre or industrial complex and sell the power to the grid, and allowed low income tenants to get a share by chipping into the co-op for the recurrent costs and repayments to the state of capex then that gets around any inequitable cross subsidy.
@Fran Barlow
Yes Fran and as I’ve noted on my blog, there are a number of community solar projects, most operating on a coop model I think. However they face great administrative difficulties due to existing legal and regulatory systems. That is another way the state could get involved in supporting such projects, by setting up a better regulatory regime.
Also people on Centrelink benefits may currently be eligible for No Interest Loans Scheme Loans under the Home Energy Savers Scheme, which they could use to invest in solar. Unfortunately the federal government is ending the HESS scheme in June this year, a year early, an outrageous decision given the known issues around vulnerable groups and the cost of heating and cooling. I intend to write to the minister, when I find time, and would urge others to do so also
@derrida derider
Actually you are wrong, not just generically, but specifically. I am very low user of electricity, so most of the power I generate, for most of the year, will feed into the grid. Because I installed the panels recently (as I live in an apartment, this involved a lengthy and complex process of getting approval) I will only receive an FIT of 8c per kWh, which is much less than my energy retailer charges. So yes, I got the RET subsidy, but over the longer term the benefit is to the retailer, which is selling my energy for considerably more than it is paying me.
If you would like to know more about this, I suggest you look at John Davidson’s blog – I don’t have the link to hand but I’m sure you can google it.
See http://www.ironcorebatteries.com.au/page2.php for data from an Australian supplier.
Nickel-Iron batteries will cost you approx $700 for 1.2Kwh so Ronald Braks calculations are within bounds. However, these batteries last for 30 years. They are just too heavy to use in cars but for static home use who cares? Also, they are not affected by deep discharge. I would suggest these are currently a superior solution to batteries using Lithium. Given their long life, they would last as long as the solar panels and the economics becomes much better.
If I need to offset my evening use of peak electricity, about 5Kwh would be enough. Then, I only need to pay the off-peak tarriff for night-time use – about 20-25 cents/Kwh. So I end up getting about 40 X 0.8 (efficency loss) = 32c for each Kwh generated in excess of my day-time requirement, and used for charging the batteries.
As for owners of aircon being subsidised by others, this may not apply if those owners who have solar panels. By cooling the home all day while the sun is shining, no extra load is placed on the grid, if the solar generation more or less covers the extra consumption.
In fact, such solar owners are helping to reduce the daytime peak. So solar subsidies are actually helping to keep electricity costs down. Of course detailed analysis is required to work out just how much this effect is.
@Ronald Brak
Ronald I can only feel for you. I don’t know what the answer is, but it seems to be a waste of time arguing with people who produce calcs that they simply don’t understand (more accurately, they don’t understand how to do the calcs or what they mean, they just pull calcs out of the air). It’s just too easy for them to pick a few random word or figures you have put up and make up some more or less random calcs in response. You have the disadvantage in that you have to think to answer them.
(Getting off topic, but we’ve gotten close to it in this article:) The fact that most discussions as to whether wind farm ratings are peak of avg seem to not have a conclusive answer is testimony to the fact that technically apt people are in the minority and that proper calcs, and more importantly properly defined figures/ratings, are of little use in arguments.
(FN. I assume that wind farm ratings are annual avg’s but turbine ratings are output in the wind speed range they are designed for which only occurs about 30% of the time. That would be reasonable.)
Some proposals may be stymied by the gradual demise of the quarter acre block 0.1ha. This applies to heavy battery packs, off-street electric car charging, rainwater tanks and vegie gardens. Nickel iron or lead acid batteries will need a ventilated safe room or secure corner of a garage on a concrete floor, not wall mounting. There is a parallel between rainwater tanks and batteries apart from space requirements; I know of one council which does piped water ‘top ups’ for rainwater tanks, the tanks getting a capex subsidy. Either way the homeowner hopefully gets to store some useful stuff acquired cheaply thereby avoiding high prices later.
The problem is when that store of value runs out, drought in the case of rainwater tanks and ironically a rainy week in the case of home batteries. The centralised facility (water supply, power station) sells fewer units to spread its fixed costs so user charges may increase. In Europe some peaking plant operators are asking to be paid standby fees, the so called ‘capacity market’. Google it. The overall savings may not be as great as supposed.
Iron-nickel batteries could certainly be used for home and business energy storage. However, I think they’ll have trouble competing with lithium batteries. While I’m certain their cost would come down with increased production I doubt they would be as ammenable to rapid price decreases as lithium batteries. Also, their charge/discharge efficiency is considerably lower, although it may be possible to increase this with careful electronic monitoring. But I think that one of the biggest problems for on grid acceptance is that unlike lithium, iron-nickel batteries aren’t maintenance free. I think the ability to install and forget will be an important selling point, especially for people who might only be buying a few kilowatt-hours of storage. But I don’t know which battery chemistry will end up the most popular and iron-nickel is one possibility. It certainly could be the best choice for off grid home storage.
@Hermit
I don’t think the demise of the quarter acre block necessarily leads to these consequences. Good examples of sustainable apartment blocks near me in inner Melbourne are being built with inbuilt (structural) rainwater tanks, which I assume also provide an insulating effect. Often they have small vegie gardens, but there are also an increasing number of community gardens.
The car situation is mixed in that the most radical developments which are aiming for really high sustainability may provide very little car parking, assuming that not all owners or tenants will have cars (this is actually a trend amongst young people in Melbourne, driving or owning a car does not appear to have the social cachet it once did) and/or encouraging car share schemes. However most new blocks I think do still have some off street parking.
I don’t imagine anyone has looked at the issue of space for batteries yet but there is no reason why it should not be included in future.
Definitely I agree there can be some real losses with the loss of suburban blocks – loss of safe and accessible outdoor space, loss of contact with nature, loss of garden etc – but good urban planning and design can overcome many of the issues you mentioned and provide other amenities that the suburban block may not. The trouble is more that we don’t have enough good urban planning, I think.
I have written quite a bit on my own blog about the issue of solar panels and apartments, which is very challenging, but as Fran has noted above there are also ways of responding to this. We have loads of un-utilised roof space in this country, much of which could be used for communal purposes, hopefully with a strong equity consideration.
Another problem with home batteries is the replacement cost problem. A homeowner may be flush with funds or working full time when the batteries are acquired. Less than a decade later that may have turned around. I know some bush block people barely getting by with casual work but who now need to replace a lead acid battery bank. I think they are using a straight through diesel generator to run appliances at night. God forbid that could happen in the suburbs.
Fortunately nickel, lead, lithium, acid etc are all toxic or expensive so batteries can be traded in for recycling. As I’ve said before what’s so bad about the centralised French system where electricity is reliable, low carbon and affordable?
Hermit
Nothing, except for the fact that
a) it’s not available for reproduction here on anything like a reasonable timeline
b) most people (or at any rate enough people who are not Greens) don’t like the idea of it, and in a system where one side can wedge the other, that’s fatal to policy.
Retrying.
There actually are already small modular reactors, used for research purposes and isotope production. It’s unlikely that these particular ones that already exist can be scaled up for power production, but these and existing power reactor designs do provide some basis for extrapolating like this. Frankly, in engineering terms it shouldn’t be too hard to get power reactors on the proven CANDU principle up and going on a two to five year time scale, regulatory environment permitting, even if the design had to be adapted to fit within the submersible barge concept (the most practical “modular” approach I’ve seen, in that the modules don’t have to be small so much as readily installed and removed for servicing). It may be practical to modify the CANDU approach to have lower set up costs and faster deployment by using a supercritical carbon dioxide moderator or a carbon monoxide fluidised sugar charcoal moderator instead of a heavy water moderator, perhaps with (suspension?) homogeneous fuel rather than distinct fuel rods, possibly at the price of lower efficiency, but only the heavy water/fuel rod CANDU approach is currently proven (by the way, cutting the uranium with thorium in the right proportion can stretch the life of CANDU fuel).
Ronald Brak accurately stated at January 21st, 2014 at 17:31 that “Currently there is no realistic way to make a nuclear plant cost less to construct than a coal plant”, but that is misleading since his “But the need to safely contain radioactive material in practice makes a nuclear plant much more expensive than a coal plant” isn’t an inherent issue so much as a consequence of current regulatory compliance. With submersible barge design allowing all such work to be done at sites with more natural safety, and the sharing of overheads between modules, the inherent costs ought to be much lower. See also Brian’s remarks about this of January 19th, 2014 at 05:39 – and he is right about some modular kinds already being around (and no, the lack of cost effectiveness of nuclear submarine modular designs doesn’t discredit modular designs in general, since the criteria used in those particular ones were different again).
Fred Struth stated at January 21st, 2014 at 21:56 that “The problem with nuclear electric power is that if unattended the recently spent fuel rods will boil off their cooling water and release vast amounts of ionising radiation and deadly isotopes…”.
What fuel rods, and what cooling water? Only certain designs use those. Even CANDU reactors don’t precisely use single fuel rods so much as horizontal feeding of (short) rod sections, each of which is far more manageable. Placed in fusible salt baths, they can be left unattended with no risk of boiling whatever.
@Chris O’Neill
I forgot to mention, global warming from business as usual, here we come.
@Ronald Brak
I wish you would pay attention. I wrote my figures in comment #40: https://johnquiggin.com/2014/01/18/a-few-more-observations-on-nuclear-power/comment-page-3/#comment-219779
“Or in my case, 28 cents per day or $102 a year and pay for themselves in 11.74 years, i.e. long after the lithium-ion batteries have failed.”
You then tried to claim there would be significant battery storage in existence at 11.74 years (your figures assume 100% battery efficiency by the way) but you still haven’t shown that there will be enough battery life remaining at 11.74 years and beyond to break even. What is your battery capacity vs age model? Until you have one, your assertions are worthless.
No, I said it (Lithium-ion) was a waste of money based on the capacity vs age model I was using. You are claiming it’s worthwhile because you say so.
Your figures are garbage because you assume the weighted average lifetime of your batteries exceeds 11.74 years (along with your assumed peak electricity price, which I’ve already pointed out).
@Ronald Brak
I wish you would pay attention. I wrote my figures in comment #40:
“Or in my case, 28 cents per day or $102 a year and pay for themselves in 11.74 years, i.e. long after the lithium-ion batteries have failed.”
You then tried to claim there would be significant battery storage in existence at 11.74 years (your figures assume 100% battery efficiency by the way) but you still haven’t shown that there will be enough battery life remaining at 11.74 years and beyond to break even. What is your battery capacity vs age model? Until you have one, your assertions are worthless.
No, I said it (Lithium-ion) was a waste of money based on the capacity vs age model I was assuming. You are claiming it’s worthwhile because you say so.
Your figures are garbage because you assume the weighted average lifetime of your batteries exceeds 11.74 years (along with your assumed peak electricity price, which I’ve already pointed out).
Chris O’Neil, I didn’t work out how much $600 a kilowatt-hour storage would save you, I worked it out for an Australian paying a marginal rate of 30 cents a kilowatt-hour for grid electricity, a 5% discount rate, a ten year system lifespan, receiving an 8 cent a kilowatt-hour feed-in tariff, and an assumed average of one kilowatt-hour being drawn from from storage for each kilowatt-hour of capacity per day with some occuring during daylit hours and most after sunset. Do you agree that using these figures that $600 a kilowatt-hour would save money? Now maybe the figures I’ve used are too optimistic. Maybe I’ve overlooked something or gotten something wrong. If you think one or more of these things are true, please point it out. But with the values I’ve used do you agree that it is a money saver?
Hermit, I’m going to tell you straight out that nuclear power plants will never be built in Australia. This is because there is no realistic prospect of them being cheaper than coal plants and coal plants cannot compete with wind and solar in Australia. We will never see a new coal plant built in Australia because they simply cannot pay for themselves given the competition from renewables and so we will never see a nuclear power plant built. And nuclear power has no ability to economically meet peak demand, or provide electricity in remote areas, or otherwise play a cost effective role in suppling electricity to this continent.
@Ronald Brak
Because you say so. Have you bothered googling “lithium-ion battery cost” images yet?
” As I’ve said before what’s so bad about the centralised French system where electricity is reliable, low carbon and affordable? ” – Hermit @24, 16:59
not as reliable as you imply.
hot river / lake water in heat waves forces shutdown of nuclear reactors
some cases of nuclear power plants shut down during heat waves due to cooling water being too hot, not complete:-
(1) france – 2003
gov’t considered rationing when “engineers warned that they can no longer guarantee the safety of the country’s 58 nuclear power reactors because the heatwave is defeating efforts to cool them. ”
” temperatures of reactor casings in some plants [approached] the 50C safety limit and attempts to cool them by spraying water from the outside … largely failed. ” [from the independent, uk]
(2) illinois, minnesota – 2006 – river / lake water too hot
(3) alabama (browns ferry) – 2007 – tennessee river too hot
(4) germany – 2009 – 8 reactors shut down at the same time, river water too hot
(5) france – 2009 – had to buy electricity from england after national plants were shut down due to river water too hot to cool the reactors
(6) connecticut – 2012 – river water too hot
(7) new york, pennsylvania, north carolina, maryland – 2012 – rivers / lakes too hot
(8) massachusetts (cape cod bay) – 2013 – water in bay too hot
all shut down during heatwaves due to overheated river or lake water normally used to cool them.
in 2012:-
(1) 40% of the fresh water in the usa went to cool 104 nuclear plants that supply 25% of electricity used.
(2) 62.46% of the usa land area was classed as experiencing moderate to exceptional drought conditions (us drought monitor).
australia is hot and dry, can’t buy power from england, where’s the juice going to come from when it gets too hot to safely run the reactors? -a.v.
@Ronald Brak
So it was purely hypothetical.
I didn’t see anything about 5% discount rate in your statement:
Is it somewhere else? I don’t see anything in your figures about lost opportunity cost of capital.
The best number of cycles I’ve seen is 3,000 (in a “1,000 to 3,000” statement) which is just over 8 years worth. 10 years does not appear realistic for maximum charge-discharge every day for 10 years.
for 3,652 days. Suspect assumption.
I did already but it didn’t seem to achieve much. By the way, I’m not particularly interested in unrealistic hypotheticals.
@Ronald Brak
while the wind’s blowing or the Sun’s shining. Unfortunately they often don’t do these things.
Maybe but the question is, are any of the existing ones going to be closed any time soon?
At least nuclear power could be relied upon to supply part of peak demand, unlike wind and solar. Not that Australia will have nuclear power stations anyway.
RBrak
I don’t see how this can be right. The marginal cost of operating a nuclear power plant is fairly trivial. One might as well operate it at or near its maximum thermal efficiency and sell as much as one can at the prevailing price. It may well be that it can’t supply power economically at any level, but whatever cost that is isn’t going to vary much.
Fran, let’s say a small country wants to meet all electricity demand with nuclear power. First they build enough nuclear capacity to cover baseload supply. They get the same deal as for Hinkely C which means the minimum wholesale price is 15 cents a kilowatt-hour which is roughly three times as much as the average wholesale price in Australia, but it’s not too bad. They buy a little less Justin Bieber merchandise than they would otherwise and economise a little on power and get by. Also, everyone in this country has the mutant X gene so they don’t need to pay for insurance. If there is a nuclear disaster they just get new superpowers. Anyway, so baseload is covered for a wholesale price of 15+ cents a kilowatt-hour, but they want to meet all demand with nuclear so the next plant they build only operates half the time because there is simply no need for its power during periods of low demand. And since its fuel cost is low this means it saves very little money when its switched off. This means this nuclear plant will be producing electricity at about twice the cost of the baseload plants or about 30 cents a kilowatt-hour. Then the next plant is less a load following plant like the previous one and more a peaker and only operates one quarter of the time and the electricity it produces costs about four times as much for a wholesale price of about 60 cents a kilowatt-hour. Then the next nuclear plant operates 10% of the time and its electricity is about $1.50 a kilowatt-hour and then you get the real peaker nuclear plants that only switch on a few days a year and the cost of their electricity is about 100 times as much or a minimum wholesale price of about $15 a kilowatt-hour. So as you can see, nuclear power doesn’t work very well for suppling peak demand. The most cost effective way to run a nuclear plant is to run it as continuously as possible in a baseload mode. And the best deal the UK could get for that is around three times as much as the average wholesale price of electricity in Australia before the cost of insurance is included when they have existing nuclear experience and expertise and an existing nuclear site with support facilities to build it on. So it’s not good for baseload either, but its absolutely ridiculous for meeting peak demand. And I’ll mention that a fully paid off nuclear plant in the US that only had to meet its marginal costs of production recently shutdown (or is shutting down) because it could not make money given the low wholesale cost of electricity on its grid, so the marginal cost of nuclear power isn’t necessarily that good either.
People keep putting up the strawman that nuclear power is no good for peaking generation. Of course it’s not meant for peaking generation. And neither are wind or solar. But wind and solar INCREASE the need the need for peaking generation compared with nuclear power stations because they can’t be relied upon for their average power during peaks but nuclear can. So wind and solar have a need for greater associated peaking generation than nuclear.
@ Ronald Brak as far as I can see all the big coal stations in the Hunter and Latrobe valleys will need replacing by 2030 or so. Are you saying we will have solved the intermittency problem by then? That is to say Australia’s electricity needs can be met 24/7 without fossil fuels in a rainy overcast week or when a continent wide high pressure system becalms the wind.
@ alfred venison some SMR models in development allow for air cooling like a car radiator or the Kogan Ck and Milmerran coal stations in Qld. The efficiency penalty could be as high as 20%. Logically new nukes should be on the coast for seawater cooling, with seawalls to protect against tsunami which we don’t seem to get anyway. We’ve got more coastline than NIMBYs.
oh come on Hermit
that’s:-
(1) cape cod BAY – had to close the plant (pilgrim) because the north atlantic ocean – at cape cod BAY – got too hot to cool it – 2012
(2) long island SOUND – had to close the plant (millstone) becuase the north atlantic ocean – at long island SOUND – got too hot to cool it – 2013
they’re going to cool reactors with air during a heat wave? water can get too hot but air will not get too hot?
so while its not ok during heat waves to return overheated water to river and ocean ecosystems, it would be ok during heat waves to return overheated air to the atmosphere of the poor people suffering in the heat wave? -a.v.
@Hermit
“with seawalls to protect against tsunami which we don’t seem to get anyway.” – says Hermit.
Whereas the scientists say;
http://www.news.com.au/national/powerful-tsunami-on-australian-east-coast-is-inevitable-australian-tsunami-research-centre/story-e6frfkvr-1226087395095
RBrak
Putting aside the improbability of the regulatory environment changing enough by tomorrow to permit nuclear plants to be built here, and the reality that there’s not going to be any space for them in the market for power for probably at least 15 years when some of the oldest coal capacity starts to be retired …
One suspects that nuclear plants here that were not load following would be scaled to cope with the maximum likely demand. A series of units within each facility could be built so as to “cover” scheduled maintenance time when another unit or units might be offline. By slightly tweaking the output of several units operating at once, one could mimic the load-following of open cycle gas plants. As the presence of solar is beginning to prejudice the economics of coal plants by pushing the high price period late into the afternoons it’s probable that nuke plants would be chosen for their ability to supply this load while pushing the remaining coal plants into redundancy.
On a side note, I was listening to Peter Martin speaking on ABC radio last night and he was making the point that the system we have is scaled to meet maximum demand durning heatwaves which occur in NSW for about 40/8760 hours per year. The cost of this provision works out at about $7000 per customer and adds about 25% to the typical consumer’s bill. Apparently, each new air conditioner (excluding those replacing old air conditioners) adds about $300 to the bill of every customer each year, whether you have an air conditioner or not, so there’s a massive cross-subsidy from those of us choosing not to have them to those running them whenever they feel a little put upon or even keeping them running when they are on holidays some place else. Apparently, even those who do have air conditioners and run them cross subsidise those with ducted systems chilling the entire premises. This rather puts cross-subsidies for solar panels in the shade especially since it seems that large swathes of rooftop PV have gone into fairly plebeian postcodes.
Hermit, you may have noticed that Australia’s grid performed very well in the recent heatwave. Why was this? What is the main reason there was very little in the way of power interuption? The main reason is that in Australia we pay people to meet the demand for electricity. As long as we continue to pay people to meet demand it will continue to be met. If we want demand to be met without greenhouse gas emissions then we need to have a high enough carbon price to make sure this happens. But it doesn’t matter if the carbon price is high or if there is no carbon price at all, nuclear power is still too expensive to use. If there is no carbon price then wind and solar will continue to expand and put downward pressure on wholesale prices as they are cheaper than new fossil fuel capacity but existing fossil fuel plants will continue to be used. If the carbon price is high then a lot of new wind and solar capacity will be built and this will keep the average wholesale price of electricity low. Too low for nuclear power and in fact lower than if there were no carbon price. So we have the funny situation where a high carbon price actually makes things worse for a low emission source of electricity. Not that nuclear had a chance in the first place. Now I don’t know exactly how Australia’s electricity demand will be met in the future, but it won’t include nuclear because the average wholesale electricity price will be too low for it to make a buck.
Fran, nuclear power plants can’t be tweaked to provide peak power. They have their maximum safe output and that’s what they operate at whenever possible. Whenever they go below their normal output they lose money because the fuel cost is only a fraction of a cent. So nuclear plants can’t suddenly provide more power to meet an increase in demand when operating at normal output and they can’t sit around operating at reduced output ready to meet an increase in demand without losing money. Because the fuel cost of nuclear power is low it only makes sense for a nuclear plant to shut down or reduce output once wholesale cost of electricity drops to or close to zero.
Chris, thank you for you critique of the numbers I used. What I am wondering is do you agree that with my numbers $600 a kilowatt-hour storage will save money for people paying a marginal cost of 30 cents a kilowatt-hour for grid electricity? I’d like to see if we are both on the same page or if you used a different process to arrive at your conclusion than I did and if you are using a different process I’d be interested to know what it was. I know you wrote you’re, “…not particularly interested in unrealistic hypotheticals.” But this particular hypothetical certainly seems to have got your blood up.
Chris O’Neil, with regards to Australian coal plants you asked, “Maybe but the question is, are any of the existing ones going to be closed any time soon?” Coal power capacity that has been shut down and not replaced in the last few years in Australia include half of Tarong (700 megawatts), Playford B (250 megawatts), Swanbank B (125 megawatts), Munmorrah (600 megawatts), and Yallourn (360 megawatts) for a total of over 2 gigawatts. And if you want to throw in half of Northern power station’s capacity as it is now a seasonal load following plant and only operates half the year, that brings it to 2,295 megawatts. South Australia now only has one operating coal plant and spends half the year completely coal free. And I may have missed some closures so the actual reduction could be higher. Did you stop paying attention for a few years? I’ve done that myself at times.
@alfred venison
Funny how the Habanero geothermal plant in the outback implies that it can cope with 50C ambient heat. Mind they weren’t operating a week or two ago so we don’t know. According to Wiki pressured water thermal plant likes 550C steam outlet temp and 30C condenser temp. Most open ocean frontages in Australia should be able to get cooling water under 25C in the height of summer. If not suck in deeper water from further out.
I do recall that nukes on the R. Loire in France were asked to get cooling towers, reason presumably hot fish. OTOH certain species of fish seek thermal plant water outlets. Evaporation could be an issue with cooling towers. Our ABC likes to show steam arising from towers as an example of uncontained radiation. They could be right if there is a coal ash dump nearby.
Ronald, Its not that nuclear plants can not run load following. After all a nuclear submarine gives you instantaneously more power. That’s why they like it so much. you want more steam you take it. This reduces the moderation of the fuel and gives you more power instantaneously. The reason that you would not load follow is because you have a billion dollar plant sitting there. Typically they like to run them 90% of the time. The cost of power ( at least at the Columbia power station) is .05 us per kWh. So its capital expense that is the difference. In a good wind site the wind turbine is generating power 30% of the time. A solar site is 20%. So your capital use in wind and solar is terrible. add to that a storage system of some kind and the costs add up. Really the only economical storage for the grid right now is pumped hydro which is only about 17% efficient. Usually they have to add a gas turbine instead of storage.
Those that say how expensive nuclear power is and yet ignore the capital of wind and solar that are idle most of the time are not being honest in the math. They think nothing about idling a billion dollars worth of solar and wind turbine capital equipment.
That being said, I do not believe nuclear power will come to Australia soon. The regulation,political will and other support institutions are not there.
But if they develop molten salt reactors or small modular reactor which promise to be cheaper to build the whole game could change.
Brent: The Hinkely C minimum wholesale price is about 15 cents per kilowatt-hour.
At a 5% discount rate new wind in Australia can produce electricity at under 5 cents a kilowatt-hour and point of use solar in Australia outcompetes any grid supplied electricity even if it somehow had a wholesale price of zero cents per kilowatt-hour. Anyone who pretends that electricity from wind and solar is not much less than the cost of electricity from new nuclear is not being honest. And I’ll also mention that anyone who pretends that the cost of insurance for nuclear disasters does not need to be included in the cost of nuclear power is also not being honest.
And again we have the repeated lie that pumped storage is 17% efficient. Where did you get thit lie from Brent? You are being deceived. But I’m probably being too hard on you. You obviously don’t know what you’re talking about otherwise you wouldn’t have written down that figure. Anyone who knows what they were talking about would know that that pumps and generators are more or less around 90% efficient and that friction of water in large bore pipes is fairly negligible and so would know that 17% is nowhere near a realisitic figure for pumped storage efficiency.
Hermit, air cooling could be used for nuclear reactors, however it is less efficient than it is for say the Kogan Creek coal plant because of nuclear power’s lower operating temperature. While Kogan Creek is a modern coal plant and a low cost producer of electricity its cost per kilowatt-hour is higher than it would be if it didn’t have to rely on air cooling and the cost of air cooling for a nuclear plant would be even greater per kilowatt-hour produced. But this is irrelevant. Nuclear power simply will not be built in Australia because it simply cannot compete with other generating capacity no matter what the carbon price is. There is simply no way it will not lose money. Australia’s average wholesale electricity price is around 5.6 cents a kilowatt-hour and it is not possible to build a nuclear plant that can produce electricity for less than that. Hinkely C in the UK has a minimum wholesale price of 15 cents a kilowatt-hour and that doesn’t include insurance. Even for a modern nuclear plant the cost of insurance alone could be much more than 5.6 cents a kilowatt-hour.
According to the latest pdf version of Australian Energy Technology Assessments (AETA) on the BREE website it shows on Table 5.2.1
Gen 3+ nuclear $94-99 per Mwh
onshore wind $111-122 per Mwh
PV solar $212-264 per Mwh
solar thermal various techs $295-402 per Mwh
Check this yourself. Therefore I’m mystified how nuclear can’t compete. Even more so if we divide by capacity factors like 0.9 for nuclear, .25-.35 for onshore wind and say 0.4 for different forms of solar thermal.
When Hazelwood and Bayswater have rusted away, all the gas has been sold to Asia and when only intermittents are allowed things will be crook. I imagine a still frosty night in Melbourne with people burning the floorboards for warmth.
Hermit, I am of the opinion that reality trumps the Bree asessments. Hinkely C has a minimum price of 15 cents a kilowatt hour before the cost of insurance is included. Olkiluoto, Flammenville, Vogtle are all massively over budget and behind schedule and without the cost of insurance factored into what will already be highly expensive electricity.
Meanwhile at a 5% discount rate, which is a rate generally used for nuclear power estimates, Macarthur wind farm produces electricity at about 6 cents a kilowatt-hour. Snowtown II will produce electricity for under 5 cents a kilowatt-hour. Rooftop solar produces electricity at a lower cost to consumers than any grid supplied electricity. The BREE assessments do not have reality changing magic that alters that. I went through the cost of electricity for the Macarthur wind farm with you step by step. You must have forgotten. Also note that increasing the discount rate doesn’t help nuclear as it is a high capital source of electricity with an extremely long start up time. So I think the only charitable reason you can be mystified is because you have forgotten these things that have been brought to your attention in the past.