Antinuclear

Dick Smith enters nuclear debate but CSIRO analysis shows his argument in meltdown

Graham Readfearn,  https://www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/jul/03/dick-smith-enters-nuclear-debate-but-csiro-analysis-shows-his-argument-in-meltdown

The entrepreneur claims agency exaggerated the costs of the Coalition plan despite it using best-case scenario South Korea as the benchmark

High-profile entrepreneur Dick Smith entered the ongoing radioactive debate on nuclear energy this week, accusing government agencies of misleading ministers over the costs of reactors and the practicalities of renewables.

But Smith’s complaints about what the Australian Energy Market Operator’s plan for the future of the grid says, or how CSIRO calculated the costs of nuclear, are themselves misleading.
Smith placed an advert in the Australian and gave an interview to the newspaper, saying: “What you would have to do if you wanted to try and use wind and solar, you’d need the most incredible expenditure in batteries. “But if you have a wind drought or unusual cloud cover, the batteries go flat. You have no power.”

Except, Aemo’s plan for the future development of the electricity grid does not rely only on wind, solar and batteries, but also includes major pumped hydro storage projects, (think Snowy 2.0 or Queensland’s Borumba project) and an increase in the amount of electricity available from gas for times when solar and wind output is low.

This increase in the capacity of gas (up to 15GW in the future, compared with 11.5GW now, according to AEMO) does not actually mean more electricity being generated by gas.

Dr Dylan McConnell, an energy systems analyst at the University of NSW, says the future scenario that Aemo thinks is most likely sees the amount of gas generation electricity roughly at today’s levels by the late 2040s.

Aemo’s latest blueprint for the electricity system says: “This gas generation is a strategic reserve for power system reliability and security, so is not forecast to run frequently.”

Exaggerated costs?

Smith claimed CSIRO had exaggerated the costs of nuclear “by looking at the worst-case scenarios everywhere” – but did it?

CSIRO produces an annual report on the costs of different generation technologies, called GenCost, and for the first time this year included both large-scale nuclear reactors and small modular reactors, which are not yet commercially available.

For smaller reactors, CSIRO based its numbers on one of the only detailed set of costings available anywhere – a project in Utah that published detailed figures before it folded in November due to the high price of the electricity it would produce.

For larger reactors, GenCost benchmarked potential costs in Australia to one of the most successful and lowest cost nuclear builders anywhere – South Korea. This is, arguably, the opposite of choosing a “worst-case scenario”.

Tennant Reed, the climate and energy director at Ai Group and an energy systems expert, said the GenCost report was “very clearly not taking a worst case approach.”

Rather than look at South Korean nuclear costs, Reed said it would have been defensible for CSIRO to consider much higher nuclear costs in the US, UK, France or Finland – countries that had restarted nuclear building after a long pause, and therefore more similar to Australia’s situation.

He said: “A fair reading of GenCost makes clear that CSIRO have been pretty careful, if not generous, to avoid any overestimation of nuclear capital costs.”

July 5, 2024 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | Uncategorized