The title of a piece in Inside Story on nuclear power in Australia. Readers won’t be surprised to learn that I don’t think it’s feasible in any relevant time frame (say, before 2040). I don’t expect nuclear devotees to be convinced by this (I can’t think of any evidence that would have this effect), but I’d be interested to see someone lay out a plausible timetable to get nuclear built here sooner than my suggested date.
To clarify this, feel free to assume a conversion of both major parties and the majority of the public to a pro-nuclear position, but not to assume away the time needed to generate a legislative and regulatory framework, take proper account of concerns about siting, licensing and so on.
John Quiggin 
Will: If you look back you’ll find that my suggested timetable referenced the Korean APR1400, which is a Gen III design.
While you mention it, how many APR1400s are currently in operation around the world?
http://www.irrawaddy.org/asia/nuclear-waste-piles-south-korea-faces-storage-crisis.html
Of academic interest in Australia only. The coal-generators will be kept in operation for a long, long time, way beyond what used to be the “economic lifetime” of such generators. The “economic lifetime” of coal generators used to be based on the cost of financing new, replacement coal generators that used to be financeable with cheap capital. Such cheap capital for new coal generators is no longer available because of the higher perceived risk of such generation. Such previous standards for coal-generator economic life no longer apply. Now they may have a far longer economic life, so Australia’s CO2 emissions from such sources may extend far into the future without some added operating cost such as a Carbon price.
@ Nick p. 2 #1,
–The first two APR1400s are due online next year in Korea.
–You referenced an article about the nuclear waste “crisis” in South Korea. The article says SK has 9,000 tons of waste in cooling pools. That sounds like a lot, but it’s worth remembering that if they just put it in concrete dry casks the entirety of it would fit in a medium-sized parking lot. So it’s not clear why it’s a crisis. (The U. S. ‘s 70,000 tons of nuclear waste would fit in a football stadium at a depth of about 10 feet.) Press reports like to grab eyeballs with stories about nuclear crisis, but when you crunch the numbers you often find there’s nothing to it.
–Speaking of crunching numbers, upthread you estimated that Australia had 2 GW of solar pv in 2012-13. Assuming that’s June-to-June fiscal, I rate the average capacity at about 2.49 GW for that period, based on the January 2013 figure. That makes a difference because, with 3,817 GWh generation for the period, it gives us a capacity factor of 17.5 percent.
In turn, that means your proposed 20-year buildout of solar pv to 25 GW would produce on average 4.25 GW, somewhat less than a Barakah-sized nuclear plant’s 5 GW average power. So even if we followed your estimate of a 20-year timeline for bringing an Australian nuclear plant on line, it would still bring more capacity on line faster than a solar pv buildout at current rates. Of course, the solar would begin partial generation sooner, but the nukes would last longer and be more reliable. (And to be honest, I still don’t see why it would take 20 years; the only answer I’m seeing to that question here is “politics demands it.”)
People don’t really register how feeble solar’s contribution to energy production has been, and how slow its actual rather than relative rate of increase. Anyway, nuclear has advantages that make it worth considering.
At noon today feeble solar was supplying 22% of South Australia’s total electricity use and 8.5% of Queensland’s. And it did so at a lower cost than utility scale nuclear could even if the cost of nuclear power was zero cents a kilowatt-hour. Yesterday in South Australia, along with wind power, a coal plant, an inability to export more electricity to Victoria, and a little gas capacity operating as spinning reserve, solar power contributed to a negative price event in the middle of the day in South Australia. This is not good for the economics of coal power and it is certainly not good for any nuclear plants over enthusiastic people might build. And Australia’s rooftop solar capacity is still expanding.
Is industrial policy a code for implicit or explicit subsidies funded by government? If not what does it mean?
Problem solved then. Except that those dry caskets only last 100 years. And, as the article says, it would cost $2.6 billion to do it.
Including all the new reactors they have under construction and in planning, how many medium-sized parking lots will Korea have filled by 2115?
How many billions of dollars will Korea have spent over that time constructing and filling them with radioactive waste?
And how many billions of dollars will it cost to replace all those dry caskets once they’ve passed their use by date?
Who picks up the tab for all of that?
I was using: http://pv-map.apvi.org.au/analyses
Looking more closely I get a rough average of 2.44 GW for the period, so yep I was off by a fair bit. Thanks for the correction.
I think you’re missing the point though: I was being very conservative with my estimates, whereas yours were relying on a best-case scenario.
The rate of PV rollout in Australia during the 2012-2013 period wasn’t even nearly close to the maximum possible.
Perhaps I should allow myself the same assumptions as the OP:
– bipartisan support for increased rollout of PV in Australia (imagine that!!)
– a government willing to commit the >$50 billion it would have hypothetically spent getting a nuclear power station up and running, subsidising PV installations instead
And redo the sums.
According to Kepco, they were originally scheduled to be online September 2013. What happened?
…and this current government has sent very strong political signals that it will not tolerate expansion of renewable energy generation. On the other hand, the very same government has sent incredibly strong political signals that it is determined to see increased expansion of coal for energy generation.
You can bet that in a few years time, there will be people using this period’s data as demonstrating that renewables are uneconomic.
@Moz of Yarramulla
Moz, OK, I’ve been watching for years. Thanks for the connection.
@Will Boisvert
Wow.Your first paragraph is really crazy sh*t. Good ganja, huh?
@ Doug,
“Is industrial policy a code for implicit or explicit subsidies funded by government? If not what does it mean?”
That’s exactly what it means, no code about it. It could also include explicit state planning of new builds, promotion of standardized designs, and a coherent regulatory regime. Renewables need industrial policy and so does nuclear.
@ Nick,
“Including all the new reactors they have under construction and in planning, how many medium-sized parking lots will Korea have filled by 2115?
How many billions of dollars will Korea have spent over that time constructing and filling them with radioactive waste?
And how many billions of dollars will it cost to replace all those dry caskets once they’ve passed their use by date?
Who picks up the tab for all of that?”
–I think dry cask storage will cost about 0.1 to 0.2 cents per kwh of nuclear power generation per year, which is what existing nuclear plants actually do pay for it.
Back of the envelope:
South Korea has accumulated 9,000 tons of waste over roughly 30 years. It has capacity of about 21 GW now, and is planning for 33 by 2035 or so. Let’s assume they keep that capacity in perpetuity. The US has accumulated 70,000 tons over 50 years with about 100 GW current capacity. I’m just going to guesstimate that by 2115 Korea will accumulate 90,000 tons, probably an overestimate.
How much would it cost to store that waste over 100 years as a per-kwh charge? Well, to simplify the math I’ll overestimate by assuming that all 90,000 tons have to be dry-casked starting in 2015. That will cost $26 billion, per your source. Spread over 100 years that comes out to $260 million per year. A fleet of 33 GW will produce 260 terrawatt-hours per year, so the cost of storage comes out to 0.1 cents per kwh.
But then in 2115 the system has to gird for another batch of 90,000 tons of waste to store, for a total of 180,000 tons. A fleet of 33 GW would then have to pay 0.2 cents per kwh for storage of all the waste through 2215.
Obviously very rough; I’m ignoring discounting, and there are other costs of guard shacks and maintenance—but those should be pretty small. The costs should actually go down over time because the waste gets less radioactive and easier to handle. In 300 years the radiocesium and radio-strontium, will decay away to insignificance. In 1000 years the waste will be about as radioactive as high-grade uranium ore.
So, I’m seeing dry cask costs maybe becoming a significant issue hundreds of years from now. At that point some more permanent solution could be found. Best would be to burn the waste in fast reactors or reprocess it for LWR fuel. Or build a permanent repository–bury it in a glorified mine shaft. The US Department of Energy estimated that waste could be stored permanently at Yucca Mountain, paid for in perpetuity with an endowment built up by a 0.1 cent per kwh fee on the reactors that produced it.
Waste from civilian nuclear plants is not the apocalyptic blight people make it out to be. It’s a tractable problem.
@ Nick,
” I think you’re missing the point though: I was being very conservative with my estimates, whereas yours were relying on a best-case scenario.
The rate of PV rollout in Australia during the 2012-2013 period wasn’t even nearly close to the maximum possible.
Maybe, but then 5.6 GW of nuclear in 14 years is nowhere close to the maximum possible rate of nuclear construction. France built about 55 GW of nuclear in 20 years from the 1970s through the 1990s, decarbonizing 75 percent of the grid. Given supportive industrial policy, nuclear buildouts are very fast and very cheap.
@Will Boisvert
A question about NIMBYism. In the UK, there is a marked contrast between attitudes to wind development in Scotland and England. The simplest explanation is Margaret Thatcher’s nationalisation of business rates. This removed the normal financial incentive for English and Welsh local authorities to approve development, leaving amenity objections the main weight in the political scales. The reform did not affect Scotland, which kept locally-set business rates. Local planning authorities there balance the financial benefit from wind farms against amenity objections. The results are markedly different.
I see from this that Australia has municipal rates, but these are not levied on a uniform base. In Queensland the base is unimproved land value, in South Australia and NSW the base is improved land value or annual rental value. Do these differences correlate with NIMBYism?
Will, thanks for the lengthy reply.
So – the answer is roughly $26 billion * 2 = an extra $52 billion just to store the waste?
Or: roughly $500 million a year.
But – remember you pulled me up on this a while ago regarding the present cost of battery storage – you forgot to include any opportunity cost.
Maybe a country doesn’t want to waste all that money on simply storing waste. Maybe they’d prefer not to go nuclear, and instead save it, Norway style, in some kind of pension or “future fund”?
Do you want to have another ago at it, and add in the cumulative interest from an annual deposit of $260 million a year over the next 100 years?
(We’ll treat the other $26 billion as a ‘balloon payment’, even though in reality those payments would drag on for decades into the second century as well)
“Maybe, but then 5.6 GW of nuclear in 14 years is nowhere close to the maximum possible rate of nuclear construction.”
Of course not. But it is in Australia to get the thing off the ground. We’re not France in the 1970s, and we never will be. Neither are we the UAE. You seem to be having some trouble accepting that.
@Will Boisvert
That should be to James Wimberley
@rog
Test.
Ronald Brak I like to check things and from this report
http://www.aemo.com.au/Electricity/Planning/South-Australian-Advisory-Functions/South-Australian-Fuel-and-Technology-Report
I find on Figure 2-2 that solar accounted for just 4% of SA electricity in 2013, noting that nationally peak PV installation was around 2010-2011.
The report also talks of new coal resources and geothermal but both major geothermal projects (Geodynamics and Petratherm) have since been cancelled. A word search of the report found no instances of the term ‘nuclear’. Kinda weird to talk about new coal mines when SA has all that uranium. AEMO must have been told to stick to the script.
An indication of the shall8w thinking can be seen in this article from gizmag
http://www.gizmag.com/shipping-pollution/11526/
There is this glaring opportunity for the Nuclear industry to power the cornerstone of global trade, but amazingly the subject never comes up. At the end of the article the question is raised again. The only mention of Nuclear power for shipping was in a quote a few years ago from the CEO of Cosco when he suggested that his company was contemplating this option for the future. The price break for Nuclear occurs at around $500 per bunker oil tonne.
But the glaring question must be that if Nuclear power is so spectacularly cheap and the equipment can on the doorstep in a few years, why are the largest container ships ever built stil being powered by fossil fuels??? Are shipping companies just really bad business people who cannot make obvious choices, or are there hidden parameters that make Nuclear a far less satisfactory solution?
@ James Wimberley,
Yes, bribing the locals to accept clean energy projects is a good idea. We could do that with nuclear plants as well.
@ Nick, on dry cask storage costs and discounting.
No, the cost isn’t $52 billion, it’s $78 billion over 200 years. Works out to an average of 0.15 cents per kwh of nuclear electricity, (initially 0.1, rising to 0.2 in the second century). That’s about 1-2 percent of retail electricity prices in the U.S. So in no conceivable sense is dry cask storage cost a crisis, or even a noticeable financial burden for centuries.
As far as discounting, I confess my procedure was a bit murky, but I simplified the math by frontloading the century’s dry cask costs right at the beginning of the accounting period. In other words, I imagined, counterfactually, that the 90,000 tons of waste that would be accumulated by 2115 actually exists in 2015 and had to be stored then for a cost of $26 billion. That procedure probably exaggerates costs. In any case, dry cask costs under the scenario you outlined of a permanent nuclear establishment should be treated as operations and maintenance expenses, not as capital costs with interest charges.
Remember, in reality we would only move a little waste to dry cask every year, to make room in the pools for fresh waste. So if we move 900 tons per year to dry cask (to accommodate 90,000 tons over a century), that would cost $260 million per year. But that money would not have to be borrowed; it could be fully funded on a pay-as-you-go basis at a rate of 0.1 cents per kwh (assuming a 33 GW fleet) charged to rate-payers. (Rising to 0.2 cents per kwh in century 2 when old waste must be recasked as well.) Costs and accumulation rates are low enough that the storage expense should be treated not as a capital expense with financing costs, as you have, but as an operations and maintenance expense that’s funded out of revenue. (Which is how it is treated now by nuclear utilities.)
If you want, you could impute opportunity costs to O and M spending and then compound the interest for hundreds or thousands of years, but that’s kind of silly. What matters is the ongoing cost burden of waste storage on the economy, and that’s laughably small by any reckoning. If it becomes large, the government can terminate it by burying the waste at a modest cost (or, more constructively, using it as reactor fuel). If you’re worried about funding permanent disposal, you can have the reactors pay an additional 0.1 cent per kwh into an endowment to fund construction and expenses in perpetuity of a permanent waste repository. (American reactors did that for decades until Yucca Mountain was cancelled.)
No matter how you do the math, nuclear waste is just not a significant financial problem.
Joke, folks–I mean, revenue-sharing with locals is a good idea for clean energy projects–shared burdens, shared benefits.
“that would cost $260 million per year. But that money would not have to be borrowed; it could be fully funded on a pay-as-you-go basis at a rate of 0.1 cents per kwh”
I like the way you take a really big figure, and convert it into a smaller figure. It is *$260 million a year* that would not have to be spent otherwise. Not 0.1c/kWh a year.
I mean, why not work it out per Wh? Then you could say $260 million is only equal to 0.0001c…
Opportunity cost is highly relevant. A criticism often directed at PV panels is that they need to be replaced and upgraded every 25 years.
A country willing to save *$260 million a year* instead of completely wasting it on storing nuclear waste, could easily afford to run a new renewable subsidy scheme every 25 years.
With the medium level N-waste repository for Australia I think the proposed fee for the landowner was $12m per year. IIR that is largely hospital waste and ex-Lucas Heights material sent to France for vitrification yet to be returned. The Muckaty NT indigenous community rejected it so a private NT land owner near Katherine has offered a site as has Leonora Shire WA. I think when they see the money others will wish they had offered.
A problem with nuclear ships may be some countries like NZ won’t let them dock. Recall the USS Carl Vinson (with a 194 MW reactor) was invaluable in providing desalinated water to the people of Haiti after the 2010 earthquake.
@ Nick,
“A country willing to save *$260 million a year* instead of completely wasting it on storing nuclear waste, could easily afford to run a new renewable subsidy scheme every 25 years.”
Hmm. That’s $6.5 billion every 25 years. Germany spends about $30 billion every single year on its renewables subsidies. So you won’t get much renewable energy subsidized by saving on nuclear waste storage. And 33 Gw of nuclear would produce 1.7 times as much clean electricity as the entirety of Germany’s current renewable electricity.
Nick, I just think you’re barking up the wrong tree here. We’ve really established that waste storage is a tiny cost that has almost no impact on electricity prices. It costs just 0.1 to 0.2 cents per kwh. (I use that metric because per-kwh rates are what show up on electric bills, so it’s a familiar benchmark.) That’s just 1-2 percent of electricity prices. Construction is by far the major cost driver for nuclear power.
Anti-nukes imagine that waste storage costs are vast, hidden, deferred and subsidized, but that is definitely not true. Waste storage costs are in fact very small and easily paid out of operating revenue. They will not cause an economic crisis.
At 5% interest, as opposed to zero interest, it’s >$13 billion.
I shouldn’t have mentioned ‘renewables’, as we’ve been sticking to PV vs nuclear comparisons only in this thread.
Germany is a special case, of course, but let’s run with it. What was the total amount spent by the German government, out of public funds, on PV subsidies in 2013 (or any other year you care to name)?
I use $260 million – or $2.6 billion – because that’s precisely how will it appear in South Korea’s budget expenditure when it finally make a decision what to do with all that waste.
If you think electricity bills are relevant, feel free to provide one from anywhere in the world which itemises to the customer that nuclear waste surcharge per kwH you mention.
I never said it wasn’t. There’s not much argument that nuclear power plants aren’t exorbitantly expensive to engineer and construct, and only ever becoming more so.
Really? Why is then that so many countries have completely failed to deal with their waste problems to date? Why are South Korea looking at $2.6 billion problem 30 years down the track, instead of regularly and more sensibly and manageably dealing with their nuclear waste year by year? “Vast, hidden, deferred and subsidized” sounds pretty much spot onto me. Thankyou for the definition.
And yet – quite evidently – they aren’t being paid out of operating revenue. Otherwise there would be no $2.6 billion problem.
I don’t remember asserting it would cause an economic crisis. I asserted it was a waste of money.
That is one country that you have cited with a Nuclear issue, but the ban is on nuclear explosives not nuclear powered ships, now that I look at it. The confusion is that the US policy is not to declare if a ship is carrying nuclear explosives or not, so their ships are excluded for that reason, not whether they are nuclear powered or not.
@Hermit
Hermit, I really don’t think having the world’s largest uranium deposit in South Australia is going to save enough on transport costs to make nuclear power economical. In fact Australia wouldn’t even process its own nuclear fuel. The uranium would be sent to France, or Japan, or the US, or Russia, or somewhere, to be processed into fuel and then sent back. So really the transportation costs of Australian nuclear fuel is going to be high. But looking on the bright side, the cost of nuclear fuel transportation will be completely insignificant compared to say the cost of insuring nuclear power. And Australia will never process it’s own nucler fuel for two reasons, the first is the decline in nuclear power generation will be far advanced before Australia could build even a single nuclear power station and so there will be plenty of spare processing capacity overseas making it pointless for Australia to build its own. And secondly, Australia will never build a nuclear power station because it makes no economic sense. It’s solar noon in South Australia and the electricity spot price is 2.8 cents a kilowatt-hour. That’s about 2.3 US cents at current exchange rates. The highest it’s been all day is 4.1 Australian cents for about five minutes and it’s predicted to be below that for the rest of the day. That’s not enough to get a nuclear plant to pay for itself. Or a new coal plant either these days. And South Australia’s renewable capacity is still increasing which will put further downward presure on wholesale electricity prices. And while it would still be a little below at this point, it is close enough for me to comfortably say that South Australia now has about 600 megawatts of rooftop solar capacity. Nuclear power could not pay for itself in South Australia before the state started generating electricity equal to 40% of its consumption from wind and solar and it certainly can’t pay for itself now.
Also, Will, according to here, Kepco’s operating income before interest and tax in 2013 was $1.73 billion, and its net income was $54 million.
So, surely you can see it doesn’t actually have enough money to just cough up $2.6 billion (and growing by $130 million every year they put it off) whenever it chooses. Hence, why there’s a problem.
The issue on nuclear power that has not been discussed is the security issues that arise – costs associated with security against terrorism attack and contingency planning. Renewable technologies seem to have an advantage here in that they are distributed and therefore more resilient and less vulnerable due to their wide distribution. Is there a way of costing this dimension?
@Doug
Doug, including the cost of insurance against such events should cover terrorism related costs. For nuclear power where no private insurance will cover such things since one disaster could easily wipe out an insurance company, commercial reactors could be required to have private cover for say 5% of the possible total cost of such attacks and disasters and then pay 19 times that amount to the government so the government could provide the rest of the insurance. If enough private ensurers can’t be found to cover 5% the percentage could be lowered, or it could be taken as a subtle hint.
Of course routine security measures such as fences, security guards, dogs (regardless of number or heads/eyes), and inspections would probably come under normal operations and maintenance costs.
And we just had another negative price event in South Australia in the daytime. It was only 10 minutes this time and it only went down to -1 cent a kilowatt-hour, but it must be tough for the Northern Power Station. Not only do they have to pay for the cost of the coal they are burning but they have to pay for the electricity they are producing. Two days in a row in the middle of summer, which is normally the prime money making time for power stations. Clearly we are in new territory here. And clearly building a new coal plant or a nuclear power plant in South Australia with these prices is completely nuts. Maybe next summer Northern Power Station will only run one unit instead of two. Or at least wait before switching the second one on since our most hideous heat waves are usually in January and February.
“Also, Will, according to here, Kepco’s operating income before interest and tax in 2013 was $1.73 billion, and its net income was $54 million.
So, surely you can see it doesn’t actually have enough money to just cough up $2.6 billion (and growing by $130 million every year they put it off) whenever it chooses. Hence, why there’s a problem.”
Nick, when Kepco starts filling dry casks–not all of them at once, mind you, just 900 tons per year–then they can raise the price of nuclear electricity by 0.1 cents per kwh to cover the cost of dry casking.
Try to think things through, Nick.
Nick, if you really have nothing better to do you could ask Will to name a developed country that actually has disposed of nuclear waste for 0.1 cents a kilowatt-hour and you could also ask him to describe what what happened to the 0.1 cents a kilowatt-hour that the United States collected to pay for nuclear waste disposal. In a way it’s really quite fascinating, although possibly only to the sort of people who enjoy train wrecks.
Hermit, Will Boisvert, Others,
So what is the answer? With up to 4000 gigawatt of potential nuclear power plant capacity for shipping transportation, yes…43,000 ships, how is that there is not a single non military nuclear powered vessel in operation in the world?
I’ll say it again, if Nuclear power is so cheap, Nuclear power plants are so stable safe and affordable, why are they not used in shipping where the production volume would guarantee economies of scale if that was in fact possible?
These back of the envelope calc are fine, just small change I hear you say, until reality hits eg Fukushima. Now we are talking serious money.
@Ronald Brak
Not paying attention. I’ve already given you a link that says just 4% of SA electricity comes from solar. Think of it this way…
-7 am central standard time most of 1.71m people want coffee and toast but the inverters have just switched on
-midday heat is still bearable for those at home run the aircon a bit panels help but most people are in offices and shopping malls that do not have PV
-6 pm get home cool the house drats the PV output is dropping as the sun heads west
-8 pm muggy heat lingers on the inverter has switched off but still unbearable without aircon.
This is why PV’s annual contribution to SA electricity is just 4%. Continuing to praise transient high solar output is like marvelling at a stopped clock giving the right time twice a day.. .it’s not doing the job it is supposed to.
@Hermit
You are cherry-picking. The real position is this;
“… the South Australia government has already exceeded its target of generating 33 per cent of the state’s electricity needs from renewables (over a full year), and has now set a 50 per cent target by 2025. In reality, it will likely reach that mark well before that, particularly if the Ceres wind farm and the Hornsdale wind farm are built.”
One third of all electrical energy from renewables is very significant.
And if you think the 4% from solar is pointless (I am just accepting your figure) then would you give me 4% of your annual income in perpetuity please? (But only if your annual income is positive.) I suspect that solar hot water adds more useful energy to the entire state too but not as electricity.
Since storing the waste on-site in casks isn’t conceivable or permissible for them, when Kepco eventually finds a location with no public opposition to building your medium car park sized CISF (South Korea has a population density of 500 people per square kilometre, twice that of the UK, fifteen times that of the US), will they construct it at the gentle easy rate of 900 tonnes a year too?
Ronald, if I’m ever commenting too much, you can rest assured it means I have many better things to do, and am doing my darnedest to put them off! 😉
@BilB
Ships use so-called bunker fuel which is more viscous than diesel and requires heating pads in the fuel lines to get it to flow. Oil refineries can adjust the heavy and light fractions but some heavy stuff is optimal so refiners can sell it cheap as 30-40c per litre. From memory the sequence is bitumen, bunker fuel, naptha, diesel, jet fuel, petrol, solvents and propane/LPG. Strangely some inter island ferries now use LNG liquefied natgas which merely has to evaporate to fuel the engines, the opposite of sticky bunker oil.
Until bunker oil goes up in price marine diesels will have a huge running cost advantage over nuclear propulsion plus a simpler safety regime. To those who say Peak Oil is off the radar I question how a temporary 2% increase in oil output due to US fracking can cause a 40% drop in the world price. Expect a comparable back swing I reckon.
SA solar is 6.5%
Ikonoclast, in the past rooftop solar provided 4% of South Australia’s electricity use. Now it provides about 6%. South Australia achieved this by cheating and installing more rooftop solar. But since there is some concern we can quickly check. By the end of the year South Australia will have about 590 megawatts of rooftop solar and we’re nearly there so I’m happy to use that figure. An optimal panel in Adelaide will produce about 4.9 kilowatt-hours per kilowatt of capacity. In actual practice rooftop solar averages around 77% of that. And while the bulk of the state’s PV is in Adelaide, that which is outside the area will tend to have a higher capacity factor, so using Adelaide’s insolation should be a slight under estimate. So that comes to about 812 gigawatt-hours a year. The 2012-13 grid electricity consumption for the state was 13,330 gigawatt-hours. Presuming that hasn’t changed much then rooftop solar is producing electricity equal to about 6.1% of grid electricity consumption or about 5.7% of total electricity consumption. Not quite as high as I’d hoped, but still about 6%.
@Nick
Nick, as odd as it may sound, I am actually familiar with that situation.
Hermit,
Bunker fuel is measured by the tonne, not the litre. The economic break point for nuclear viability has been stated as being $500 per tonne bunker oil. Bunker fuel has been consistently above that point since 2009, more than long enough for Nuclear to become an economically attractive option, if it were attractive in any way.
A tonne of bunker c is equivalent to 12,000 kwhrs which converts to 6,000 kwhrs usable energy from the massive diesel engines in ships. This engine uses 14,000 tonnes of fuel per hour to produce 80,000 kilowatts.
It should be a no brainer. $7000 per hour for bunker fuel versus the cost of Nuclear energy at the oft quoted 2 cents per nuclear kilowatt hour being just $1600 per hour ($.02 times 80,000).
So tell me again, Hermit/Will Boisvert/Barry Brookes/others, why are there not thousands of Nuclear powered bulk freighters, fuel tankers, or container ships plying the oceans of the planet?
http://www.amusingplanet.com/2013/03/the-largest-and-most-powerful-diesel.html
Could it be that your “facts” are fictitious?
That should have been 14 tonnes per hour, but by accident the $7000 fuel price per hour is correct. Same question.