Nuclear too slow to replace coal, and baseload “simply can’t compete” with wind and solar, AEMO boss says
Nuclear too slow to replace coal, and baseload “simply can’t compete” with wind and solar, AEMO boss says
AEMO boss says nuclear too slow to replace coal, and confirms that “notion of baseload” will not compete with grid powered by cheaper renewables.
The head of the Australian energy market operator AEMO, Daniel Westerman, has rejected nuclear power as a way to replace Australia's ageing coal-fired power stations, arguing that it is too slow and too expensive. In addition, baseload power sources are not competitive in a grid dominated by wind and solar energy anyway.
Even if we started to build nuclear plants like crazy right now, it would be decades for them to make a real impact. Building a single nuclear plant is very expensive and time consuming. Building up the necessary supply chain to build a lot of them would take much longer. In the meantime, you can build huge amounts of renewables in just a few years for a fraction of the cost, even if you factor in storage.
Also, let’s not forget Uranium has a finite supply. A few years ago the IAEA estimated that at high usage scenarios (which might actually be happening now), by 2040 28% of remaining supplies would be used. Depending on different factors, that could either accelerate and run out not too long after, which is even for us a pretty short time. Other estimates were thinking up to about 200 years left, at current rates, 10 years ago so indeed not taking AI etc into account.
Can Nuclear plant electricity production be run in a decentralised way? No?! Not yet!?
Do we have alternatives to nuclear? Yes!?
We should avoid nuclear then.
The time for nuclear was decades ago.
Now it's being pushed by fossil fuel shills, who'd love nothing more than a gratuitously expensive 20 year boondoggle to let them have free reign over power generation for all that time, and to simultaneously nix any green plans with "but the nuclear is on its way!"
For a country with a huge amount of land and shore, that makes sense for them. But some form of nuclear (uranium fission, thorium fission, fusion?!) continues to be an important part of the world's weaning off of fossil fuels
Who would have thought a political appointment is political.
The political context here is that the Australian conservatives (the liberal coalition I suppose), who have been vividly against climate policies and renewables, are now trying to propose nuke projects on coal power plant sites. Many of these coal power plants are soon to be phased out with renewables plus storage in the queue for the freed transmission capacity, so there isn't really any advantages these sites can offer for nuke projects decades from now.
Of course, any realistic realization of nukes in Australia would be no earlier than 2040 (some even suggest 2050), by then they could already get 100% renewable in energy system easily.