Peter Dutton’s nuclear plan is just terrible public policy.

The truth is that, in an Australian context, with nuclear power more expensive per kilowatt hour than either grid scale solar & storage or coal, nuclear just doesn’t make economic sense.

The UK has a mature nuclear industry. Its new Hinkley Point C plant, started in 2016, is now expected to not be complete until 2031, and costs £35bn.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/jan/23/hinkley-point-c-could-be-delayed-to-2031-and-cost-up-to-35bn-says-edf

So how much would it cost to replace all of Australia’s coal power plants with nuclear ones?

We’ll, at current exchange rates, £35bn — that’s the cost of just one Hinkley Point C sized reactors — works out to A$67.6 billion.

So building just 10 nuclear reactors the size of Hinkley Point C costs $A676bn, making the AUKUS subs look like Home Brand corn flakes in comparison.

(Just for comparison, ScoMo’s AUKUS subs cost $368bn, and Daniel Andrew’s Suburban Rail loop is estimated at around $100bn.)

That’s assuming Australia, starting from scratch, could build nuclear plants as quickly and cheaply as the UK, which was one of the first nations on Earth to split the atom.

So is it debt & deficit to fund this? Big new taxes? Even by the LNP’s own measuring sticks, it’s a crap policy!

The Australian Federal Government has previously examined the prospect of building nuclear power plants in the Switkowski report: https://webarchive.nla.gov.au/awa/20080117214749/http://pandora.nla.gov.au/pan/79623/20080117-2207/dpmc.gov.au/umpner/docs/nuclear_report.pdf

The big thing that’s changed since it was published is that grid solar + storage is now cheaper than coal or nuclear power.

So would you support holding up the closure of coal plants for 15 years until nuclear plants are completed, then paying substantially more on your power bills, while the federal government pays hundreds of billions of dollars in government subsidies, while also hiring thousands of additional public servants to regulate it all?

#auspol #nuclear #ClimateChange #australia @australianpolitics

  • Old_IT_geek I voted Yes@techhub.social
    161·
    10 months ago

    @ajsadauskas @australianpolitics The key purpose of this policy is NOT to build nuclear power plants. It is to block solar/wind, storage and pumped hydro and to drain all investment in them. Investors will hold off funding renewables because nuclear is coming (in 15 years or more). In the meantime Gina will be selling coal as fast as she can to all the aging inefficient coal plants in the country.

    The NEM is 5,000 kilometres long, from Cairns to Hobart and from Sydney to Adelaide. Renewable power anywhere along that line will feed the grid. So the wind not blowing anywhere between Cains and Hobart is ludicrous. What we need is much more solar/wind attached to the NEM so local shortages can be smoothed out. Baseload is last century thinking. This century is all about distributed power generation. Why have one power station with 4 boilers when for the same money you can have 20 wind farms each with 50-80 wind turbines and no single point of failure.

    • zurohkiEnglish
      8·
      10 months ago

      The key purpose of this policy is NOT to build nuclear power plants. It is to block solar/wind, storage and pumped hydro and to drain all investment in them.

      It’s not a coincidence that they started pushing for nuclear after they lost government and wouldn’t be expected to actually implement it. While they were in government and able to act, they were pushing for government funded coal plants.