South Australia’s renewable triumph is stunning proof that Dutton’s nuclear plans are a folly
Giles Parkinson, Jul 12, 2024 https://reneweconomy.com.au/south-australias-renewable-triumph-is-stunning-proof-that-duttons-nuclear-plans-are-a-folly/
When the federal and state governments were deciding on a location to announce a funding deal that will underwrite South Australia’s final leap to its remarkable goal of 100 per cent net renewables within the next three years, Port Augusta was the obvious choice.
The city at the top of the Spencer Gulf, like the neighbouring Whyalla, is everything that the climate deniers, the renewable naysayers, the conservative media and the federal Coalition say is not possible.
Port Augusta once played host to the state’s ageing and incredibly dirty coal generators. Whyalla was the subject of taunts from former prime minister Tony Abbott that it would be rendered a ghost town by a carbon price.
Now the two cities are host to thriving renewable energy hubs, new green industries and technologies that will help propel the state into a clean energy future.
And it is remarkable how little is actually known about the achievements of South Australia beyond its borders. Already it is at an annual average of 70 per cent renewables, and by 2027 it intends to be the first in the world to reach 100 per cent net renewables primarily through wind, solar and storage.
Just to be clear, that does not mean that it will consume only renewables. “Net” means that the amount of power it produces from wind and solar during the year will be equivalent to the amount it consumes. But it will still export and import as needs must.
It’s a stunning achievement, and still one that the naysayers insist is not possible. The state has become a globally significant testing ground in technologies – it hosted the first Tesla big battery that helped change the thinking on future grids around the world – and it is addressing and solving complex engineering issues that many experts thought were too difficult and some still say are insurmountable.
More importantly, it is doing this as a result of bipartisan policy. Labor kicked it off more than a decade ago by making itself the most welcoming state for wind and solar.
The Liberal state government set the target of reaching 100 per cent renewables by 2030. Labor is now back in power and has accelerated that target to 2027. It is marvellous what can be achieved when the coal lobby is removed and not pulling the strings of the politicians and public mood.
Despite all this, the achievements in South Australia remain largely ignored by the rest of the country.
The announcement by federal energy minister Chris Bowen and state energy minister Tom Koutsanstonis about the funding deal for a gigawatt of new wind and solar and 600 MW (2,400 MWh) of battery storage – to ensure the 100 per cent net renewable target is met – barely rated a mention in mainstream media outside the state.
Yet it is here, in Port Augusta, that federal Opposition leader Peter Dutton has decided should be one of seven sites – along with Collie, Liddell, Mt Piper, Loy Yang, Callide and Tarong – that should play host to their nuclear power plant proposals.
They were chosen, the Coalition tells us, because they are locations that still have or once supported coal fired power generators, and – they claim – would have available transmission capacity. But as Koutsantonis pointed out during his visit this week, that is simply not the case. That capacity has already been taken up by other projects.
“This site here where the Port Augusta power station once sat is now at capacity in terms of our renewable transmission lines to Adelaide,” he told journalists. “So the idea you can just plug in a nuclear power station here is just folly.
“I haven’t seen Peter Dutton here. I haven’t seen the Commonwealth Opposition here at all talking to the state government about their pretend plans for nuclear power in South Australia.”
Indeed, it is not surprising that Dutton has not shown up: South Australia is not just shining a path to the future, it is a real life repudiation of the folly of the federal Coalition’s nuclear plans, and the sheer nonsense of its claims.
Let’s remember that the Coalition and the conservative media’s nuclear arguments are based almost entirely around the assumption that wind and solar cannot power a modern economy.
South Australia proves them wrong, emphatically so. The grid is reliable, wholesale power prices are falling, and will continue to do so as it free itself from the yolk of fossil gas. Legacy industries are being revived by the growth of wind and solar, new industries are being established, and big business with big loads are being attracted to the state.
The once broke Whyalla steelworks, for example, has based its revival around plans for “green steel” underpinned by wind and solar, and BHP will power its giant Olympic Dam mine with a unique “firmed renewables” contract sourced from the state’s biggest wind project and a big battery.
The state’s transmission operator ElectraNet reports inquiries amounting to several gigawatts of new load from industries attracted to cheaper and greener power, and apparently not the least bit concerned about the scare campaigns that the lights will surely go out.
South Australia is already at the stage where enough rooftop solar is generated in the middle of the day to meet all local demand. That will soon occur in other states too, including Western Australia, effectively eliminating grid demand and requiring storage or new load or exports to soak up the excess.
As every major utility in Australia makes clear, the era of always-on base-load power is well and truly passed in such grids. South Australia has not just shut down its last coal generators, and is closing down its remaining combined cycle gas plants, which perform a similar role. The gaps will be filled by facilities that are fast and flexible. There is simply no room in the grid for an always-on nuclear plant.
“This site is taken. So I’m not quite sure where he’s planning to build this or how he’s planning to build this,” Koutsantonis said.
“If Peter Dutton was serious about what he was talking about, he would have come to us earlier and spoken to us about it, consulted with us. For whatever reason, he hasn’t even stepped a foot on this site to actually have a look at it.”
Bowen has been taking that message across the country. “This whole precinct’s being transformed … into a renewable energy hub, a green cement hub and a critical minerals hub,” he said at Port Augusta.
The next day, Bowen popped up in Lithgow, at the site of another mooted nuclear site, the Mount Piper coal generator, where the asset owner Energy Australia also outlined plans to build pumped hydro, a giant battery and to convert its coal plant into a “flexible” asset rather than an “always on” baseload asset in the interim.
“Traditionally Mount Piper has been a full-load, continuous load power station, and today it’s becoming much more flexible,” EnergyAustralia’s head of operations and projects Sue Elliott said. “It now operates during the day and seasonally depending on renewable availability in the market.
“We are progressing planning for a Lake Lyell Pumped Hydro Project … and we’re also planning a 500 megawatt, four hour Mount Piper Battery Energy Storage System right here on site to take advantage of transmission assets.”
As Bowen pointed out, this is real investment happening now, not some time in the distant future.
“I’m not sure if Mr Dutton and (Opposition energy spokesman Ted) O’Brien have been here yet, but they have a plan for nuclear power, which is at least 30 years away,” he said.
“They admit 2035 at its earliest; even that is wildly ambitious and optimistic and unrealistic. But that doesn’t fix the problems today.
“It doesn’t create jobs today. It doesn’t create investment today and, indeed, it will chill investment. It will stop people investing in the alternative plans because of the investor uncertainty created by having a nuclear plan, which is never going to happen – it’s a fantasy.”
South Australia, and its charge towards 100 per cent renewables, is very real. And worth talking about.
Yet another huge procurement bungle has been unearthed. Guess where?
A procurement process so blatantly rotten that the beneficiary itself tried to stop it? It could only happen in Defence.
Crikey BERNARD KEANE, JUL 12, 2024
The hits keep coming for Defence. The Australian National Audit Office has just revealed another big bungled project by the department, one that was a decade in the making.
While it lacks the champagne glamour of the Defence-Thales munitions scandal and only costs hundreds of millions, not billions, the debacle over “myClearance” demonstrates that Defence’s inability to manage procurement — a core task for such an institution — is department-wide.
It’s also a likely unique case of procurement process so bad that the company that benefited objected to it.
myClearance” might sound like a colonoscopy prep, but it is in fact the notional answer to longstanding problems with the systems used by the Australian Government Security Vetting Agency within Defence to vet people for security clearances across the public sector — a process much criticised by other agencies for its glacial speed.Richard Marles takes on reality, comes off second-best in growing Thales scandalRead More
In 2014, Defence decided that its vetting platform needed to be replaced, and thus began what became the Vetting Transformation Project — given impetus, no doubt, by the Abbott government’s hysteria over the Snowden revelations and the idea of “inside threats” used to……………(Subscribers only) more https://www.crikey.com.au/2024/07/12/defence-procurement-rotten-myclearance/?utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Twitter#Echobox=1720756332
Power-hungry data centres are booming in Australia. Can the grid cope?
By Nick Toscano, July 12, 2024, https://www.theage.com.au/business/companies/power-hungry-data-centres-are-booming-in-australia-can-the-grid-cope-20240711-p5jssa.html
An explosion in the number of data centres in Australia is looming as a new test for the energy grid amid warnings they might soon require as much as electricity as two giant coal-fired power stations are capable of generating.
As cloud-based computing [nb there is no “cloud”] and artificial intelligence (AI) accelerate demand for data storage, Melbourne and Sydney have emerged as key locations for tech companies building vast industrial facilities to house their servers that send and receive data 24/7, known as data centres.
These data centres, which need huge amounts of electricity to run high-intensity computing and cooling systems, are already major power users in Australia – consuming about 5 per cent of available generation.
They are expected to drive further electricity demand growth alongside homes switching from gas to electric appliances and the growing adoption of electric cars.
However, new modelling from UBS suggests official forecasts may be underestimating the scale of the added demand that data centres could drive in the coming years.
The investment bank calculates between 3.3 gigawatts and 5 gigawatts of demand – equivalent to the combined generating potential of approximately two of Australia’s biggest coal-fired power plants – could be added to the east coast grid by 2030 on the back of growth in data centres and artificial intelligence.
At the top end of the range that could equate to up to 15 per cent of overall grid demand, which could add significant strain to supplies and push up prices unless properly managed.
The data centre boom is coming at a time of upheaval for Australia’s main grid as it transitions to cleaner energy, while the coal plants that have supplied the bulk of its power for decades increasingly bring forward their closures.
Although renewables’ share of the mix is growing, there are worries it’s not happening fast enough, with authorities fearing a shortfall of generation, storage and transmission lines to protect against the threat of price rises or blackouts once coal exits the grid.
Analysts at Morgan Stanley believe the grid will be able to accommodate extra demand from data centres’ growth, which it forecasts to rise from 5 per cent to about 8 per cent by 2030.
However, the system will face more strain next decade when the majority of the nation’s remaining coal-fired power plants are expected to have closed, they said.
“We see the power requirement for new Australian data centres as manageable for the Australian power system to 2030, but power could become a constraint in the 2030s given planned coal plant closures,” they said.
UBS said data centres may provide benefits for grid planners trying to maintain system stability, given they offer consistent minimum demand 24/7 – similar to the role of aluminium smelters. But they would add “incremental pressure” during evening peak demand periods once the sun sets and solar output recedes, Allen said.
The spread between daytime and evening wholesale prices could widen to up to 70 per cent by 2030 due to coal closures and delays to the renewable rollout, he added.
Don’t make my home a nuclear power hub- nuclear reactors in Latrobe Valley unsafe and unrealistic.
As some Coalition MPs have let slip, talk of nuclear reactors is really code language for extending the life of coal and gas for at least 20 years until nuclear reactors can be regulated, built and actually generate energy into the Australian energy grid. This is incompatible with our global commitment to limit warming to 1.5 degrees and will see Australians more vulnerable to extreme heat, fires and floods.
By Hayley Sestokas, July 10 2024, https://www.canberratimes.com.au/story/8691386/nuclear-reactors-in-latrobe-valley-unrealistic-and-unsafe/
Earlier this year the federal Coalition began spruiking their ill-conceived idea to build nuclear reactors on the land of retired coal-fired power plants as a solution to Australia’s energy future. That talk has now reached fever pitch as Peter Dutton announced his proposed sites last week – including in the Latrobe Valley.
Leaving aside for a moment the prohibitive costs and safety concerns associated with nuclear reactors – it seems clear that Peter Dutton nor his Coalition colleagues bothered doing their homework or actually speaking to local people on the ground before naming the Latrobe Valley as a potential site.
If he had conducted even a superficial survey of community attitudes to the proposition of turning the Latrobe Valley into a nuclear power hub, he would have realised quickly that the vast majority of the community can see this proposition for what it is – a dangerous distraction that ignores the more urgent need for safe mine rehabilitation.
As it currently stands, the so-called retired coal mine sites being referred to are facing ongoing issues associated with rehabilitating the existing toxic and unstable mine pits that remain full of flammable coal. It doesn’t take too much of a mental stretch to realise that mixing old unstable mine pits and nuclear reactors is not likely to end well.
The Latrobe Valley also sits in an earthquake hotspot near the fault lines of the Strzelecki Ranges. The Fukushima nuclear disaster, which led to mass evacuations, hundreds of billions of dollars of economic loss and the release of large amounts of radioactive contamination to the air and ocean, clearly showed the danger of building a nuclear reactor on a fault line.
The other glaring gap in the nuclear push is water. According to the World Nuclear Institute, one nuclear reactor requires between 1514 and 2725 litres of water per megawatt hour. That equates to billions of gallons of water per year, all of which requires intensive filtering.
So where, might we ask, is all this water going to come from? Especially at a time when it’s not clear where the millions of litres of water for rehabilitating all three mine pits are going to come from. We are already in the midst of a looming water crisis without the added intensive drain of a nuclear facility.
As recently as 2019 local MP Darren Chester already publicly stated that the government had no plans to change the moratorium in place on nuclear power – let alone that his own electorate would be the site on which it would be staged.
Mr Chester has previously said safety concerns would need to be ameliorated and the development would need to demonstrate direct “social and economic benefits”. So it sounds like having opposed the nuclear push it now seems he is prepared to support his Coalition’s nuclear pipedream, at the right price.
As the area that has powered Victoria for decades, people in the latrobe valley know better than anyone that we are now in the midst of a clean energy transition. we can’t afford to wait decades for nuclear reactors when we have clean sun and wind energy right here and right now, already powering 40 per cent of our electricity grid.
It is also disingenuous that after decades of inaction and outright climate denial from the Coalition parties, the same party are now spruiking nuclear as the fastest way to reduce emissions. Instead, the Coalition needs to get with the program and focus on the fast and fair rollout of renewable energy as we phase out burning coal and methane gas.
As some Coalition MPs have let slip, talk of nuclear reactors is really code language for extending the life of coal and gas for at least 20 years until nuclear reactors can be regulated, built and actually generate energy into the Australian energy grid. This is incompatible with our global commitment to limit warming to 1.5 degrees and will see Australians more vulnerable to extreme heat, fires and floods.
While many local people are experiencing a worsening cost-of-living crisis, the federal Coalition is proposing we transition Australia to the most expensive source of energy in the world. The current levelised cost of energy (LCOE) puts nuclear generated electricity at $US180 per megawatt hour compared to $US50 for onshore wind and $US60 for utility-scale solar.
In addition to the very high cost of electricity from nuclear reactors is the huge cost to build them. In the UK, the Hinkley Point C reactor was originally budgeted to cost £18 billion, it will now cost up to £46 billion with inflation factored in. This is in a country with an established regulatory framework and nuclear industry.
Despite the reassurances of those in the Coalition who really should know better, there is still no long-term solution for the radioactive waste from nuclear reactors that meets community expectations for safety and environmental protection. Australia currently struggles to store low-grade waste from nuclear medical facilities, let alone the more radioactive waste from nuclear power reactors.
Dating right back to when the British first tested nuclear weapons in central Australia in the 1950s and ’60s in South Australia, First Nations communities, particularly in remote areas, have borne the brunt of the harm caused by nuclear activities in Australia.
First Nations communities continue to protest and take legal action against radioactive waste burial on country. There are communities who are still unable to access their land due to radioactive waste – let’s not add to that shameful legacy. Not here, not anywhere.
In pitching this radioactive, future technology, the Coalition is ignoring the fact that the clean energy transition is already well under way – and the Latrobe Valley community is out in front with a vision for a healthy, sustainable and safe future in our region. Gippsland has more than 25 large renewable energy projects in the pipeline, worth $54 billion.
With the support of the local community, these projects are already delivering the kinds of jobs and energy solutions we need now, not two decades away.
Hayley Sestokas is the Latrobe Valley community organiser for Environment Victoria.
The dirty history of ‘Nukey Poo’, the reactor that soiled the Antarctic.
By Nick O’Malley, July 10, 2024 , https://www.theage.com.au/environment/conservation/the-dirty-history-of-nukey-poo-the-reactor-that-soiled-the-antarctic-20240708-p5jrzd.html
The rekindled nuclear debate in Australia has stirred old memories in some of a little-known chapter of our region’s history, when the US Navy quietly installed what today we might call a small modular reactor at the US Antarctic base on Ross Island.
The machine, nicknamed “Nukey Poo” by the technicians who looked after it, was installed at McMurdo base in 1961, when Antarctic exploration was expanding and nuclear energy had developed a bright futuristic sheen.
Things did not end well.
Back then, as now, Antarctic missions relied upon lifelines with distant homes. Supplies had to be carried long and sometimes dangerous distances. The US kept its Antarctic sites supplied via an ongoing supply mission called Operation Deep Freeze, which was based at the McMurdo Naval Air Facility.
According to an article on the Nukey Poo incident published in 1978 by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists – a journal concerned with the potential danger of nuclear technology, founded by Albert Einstein and veterans of the Manhattan Project – while a gallon of diesel cost the US Navy US12¢ back then, by the time the Americans shipped supplies to McMurdo, diesel cost 40¢ a gallon. At South Pole station, diesel was worth $12 a gallon.
But the then US Atomic Energy Commission had a solution to save costs on transporting supplies. What if McMurdo, and other distant US bases, were supplied by small transportable nuclear reactors? Congress agreed and soon the Martin Marietta Corporation won a contract to build them.
In an advertisement in Scientific American, the company boasted in language reminiscent of today’s debate over modular reactors that “because nuclear energy packs great power in little space, it’s extremely useful when you need electricity in remotes spots. It’s portable and gives you power that last for years …” Soon, the company said, nuclear power might be carrying us to outer space and frying our eggs.
A reactor named PM-3A (PM stood for “portable, medium powered”) was shipped out in sea crates and installed at McMurdo – which is within New Zealand-claimed Antarctic territory – over the summer of 1961 and became known on the base as Nukey Poo. Because cement would not cure in the frigid climate, the reactor was not encased in concrete, rather its four major components sat in steel tanks embedded in gravel and wrapped in a lead shield.
Admiral George Dufek described the moment as “a dramatic new era in man’s conquest of the remotest continent”. The US administration was certain the reactor did not violate the Antarctic Treaty’s declaration that “any nuclear explosions in Antarctica and the disposal there of radioactive waste material shall be prohibited”.
Within a year, Nukey Poo caused its first fuss, a hydrogen fire in a containment tank that led to a shutdown and energy shortages. Icebreakers fought to break through and fuel for generators was delivered by helicopter, which burned as much as they delivered over the course of a flight. Over the following years, Nukey Poo proved so unreliable and expensive to maintain that the military gave up hopes of using the technology to displace diesel at other remote locations.
In 1972, the navy began the three-year task of decommissioning the reactor and decontaminating the site. During that process, they discovered corrosion that technicians feared may have caused leaks of irradiated material. No detailed investigation was done. The secretary of the US National Academy of Sciences said the program was ended due to a series of malfunctions and the possibility of leaks, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists reported. The New Zealand government declared the decision was economic.
Either way, it was decided not only to remove the reactor, but half the hillside it was built into. Eventually 12,000 tonnes of irradiated gravel and soil was removed on supply ships to be buried in concrete lined pits in the United States.
The young Australian scientist, Dr Howard Dengate, who had run one of the NZ bases, hitched a lift on one those ships, the Schuyler Otis Bland, in 1977. Dengate recalls a grumpy captain who once swore at him for inviting bad luck on the ship by whistling on deck. The captain, Dengate recalled this week, blamed him for “whistling up” the storm that struck the vessel before the Australian disembarked in New Zealand and the ship sailed on to the US.
Though the reactor was little discussed in the wider world, no secret was made on the base of the reactor or its impact. Indeed, Dengate recalled finding an operating manual for the reactor in the American rubbish pits that New Zealanders had developed the habit of fossicking in.
But the story did not end there.
In 2011, an investigation by journalists of News 5 Cleveland found evidence that McMurdo personnel were exposed to long-term radiation, and in 2017 compensation was paid to some American veterans of the base. A year later, New Zealand officials announced that it was possible that New Zealand staff were also affected.
It has since been reported that four New Zealanders had raised claims about their ill health since their time in the Antarctic.
In 2020, the Waitangi Tribunal, a permanent commission in New Zealand to investigate cases against the Crown, launched inquiries. They are not yet complete.
Asked if he was concerned about travelling with the irradiated material, Dengate said he was not. “We were young and dumb and adventurous,” he told this masthead of his time in the Antarctic.
Decoded: Defence Department’s deadly deceits
After nine months of denial and disinformation, the Australian government has been forced to confirm its deadly exports to Israel
Undue Influence MICHELLE FAHY, JUL 09, 2024
After spending nine months denying any weapons were going to Israel, senior Australian government ministers are now in damage control after a Defence Department official admitted for the first time since the Hamas attack on Israel on 7 October 2023 that there are active export permits relating to Israel that cover the transfer of parts and components.
Labor MPs from Prime Minister Anthony Albanese down have spent months attacking political opponents on this issue.
This was Defence Minister Richard Marles just weeks ago on ABC Melbourne radio: ‘So, to be clear, what the Greens are alleging is that somehow we are supplying Israel with weapons which are being used in the conflict in Gaza. That is absolutely false, and that is a total lie.’
Following the revelations about active permits, senior government ministers have doubled down and introduced a perverse phrase – ‘non-lethal parts’ – to defend the continued export of key parts and components into the F-35 fighter jet supply chain.
The F-35 is being used by Israel over Gaza, and the global supply chain, of which Australia is a key part, services this combat aircraft. In June, the US agreed to sell 25 more F-35 fighter jets to Israel.
More than 70 Australian companies have been awarded over $4.13 billion in global production and sustainment contracts through the F-35 program so far.
Minister Marles and Foreign Minister Penny Wong both recently referred to Australia’s export of ‘non-lethal parts’, having spent eight months insisting: ‘Australia is not sending weapons to Israel and has not done so for the past five years.’
Israel is accused of committing genocide in Gaza in a case that is before the International Court of Justice. Israel is also accused of deliberately causing the starvation of Palestinians in Gaza, according to the International Criminal Court. Australia’s response to both cases has been muted, at best.
Non-lethal’ parts
The F-35 would not operate without all its parts and components. Australia remains the sole source of a number of them, as I reported for Declassified Australia in April.
The proposition that the Australian parts used in a lethal weapon system could be separately considered ‘non-lethal’ indicates a government intent on damage control.
‘Lethal’ is the first word that arms manufacturer Lockheed Martin uses to describe its F-35 fighter jet. It markets the aircraft as the most lethal fighter jet in the world.
In a testament to that, in March the F-35A version was operationally certified to carry a nuclear bomb – the first fighter jet or bomber to be granted nuclear-capable status since the 1990s
The UN Arms Trade Treaty (ATT) makes no mention of the lethality of the individual parts or components that comprise the weapons (“conventional arms”) it covers.
Two weeks ago, the UN published a damning report on Israel’s extensive use of heavy bombs with wide area effects in densely populated areas in Gaza since 7 October: ‘The scale of human death and destruction wrought by Israel’s bombing of Gaza…has been immense.’
High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk said: ‘The requirement to select means and methods of warfare that avoid or at the very least minimise to every extent civilian harm appears to have been consistently violated in Israel’s bombing campaign.’
Last December, the head of the F-35 joint program office, Lieutenant General Michael Schmidt, gave evidence at a US Congressional hearing that confirmed Israel was using its F-35s in the bombing attacks.
Lt-Gen Schmidt said the F-35 program office had been moving ‘at a breakneck speed to support…Israel…by increasing spare part supply rates’.
Lockheed Martin has acknowledged that ‘every F-35 built contains some Australian parts and components’.
The government’s ‘non-lethal parts’ messaging is at odds with a significant UN statement issued on 20 June, which included and named multinational arms companies in its call to cease supplying Israel with arms, ‘even if [the arms transfers] are executed under existing export licenses’.
Under the headline ‘States and companies must end arms transfers to Israel immediately or risk responsibility for human rights violations’, the statement named 11 multinationals – including Lockheed Martin, BAE Systems, Boeing, Northrop Grumman, Rheinmetall and RTX/Raytheon – which all have significant operations in Australia.
These companies, by sending weapons, parts, components, and ammunition to Israeli forces, risk being complicit in serious violations of international human rights and international humanitarian laws,’ the statement said.
Government in damage control
The Albanese government was forced to employ new language following evidence given by a Defence Department official in a recent Senate Estimates hearing………………………………………………..
What is a ‘weapon’?
The senior ministers were forced to change tack because the favoured line of all Labor MPs since Israel launched its newest and deadliest war against Palestine has cracked under sustained scrutiny.
The carefully crafted statement that ‘Australia is not sending weapons to Israel and has not done so for the past five years’ contains two elements designed to mislead: ‘weapons’ and ‘to Israel’.
All Labor MPs, including the Prime Minister, use the word ‘weapons’ repeatedly without defining it, knowing the vast majority of Australians will assume it means ‘weapons’ in the usual broad sense.
However, the government is cynically relying on a narrow military definition.
The Defence Department’s Hugh Jeffrey, in a previous Senate hearing, said the Department’s chosen definition of ‘weapon’ was ‘derived from’ definitions in the UN Arms Trade Treaty (ATT), ‘which classifies what weapons are’.
‘Under the UN definition, weapons are defined as whole systems, like armoured vehicles, tanks and combat helicopters,’ he said……………………………………………..
UN experts referred to the Geneva Conventions when warning countries that any transfer of weapons or ammunition to Israel that would be used in Gaza was likely to violate international humanitarian law:
‘States must accordingly refrain from transferring any weapon or ammunition – or parts for them – if it is expected…that they would be used to violate international law.
Such transfers are prohibited even if the exporting State does not intend the arms to be used in violation of the law…as long as there is a clear risk.’
This article was first published at Declassified Australia on 1 July 2024, https://undueinfluence.substack.com/p/decoded-defence-departments-deadly?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=297295&post_id=146424013&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
Squadron Energy says innovation needed to overcome jump in wind costs, but nuclear not the answer
ReNewEconomy, Sophie Vorrath, Jul 10, 2024
The CEO of the Andrew Forrest owned renewables developer Squadron Energy says the cost of developing onshore wind energy projects has jumped by up to 50 per cent over the past four years, presenting industry with a “very big challenge” as it works to deliver tens of gigawatts of new capacity in Australia.
Speaking at Australia Wind Energy 2024 in Melbourne on Wednesday, Squadron chief Rob Wheals said industry would need to act swiftly to overcome the jump in wind costs that, alongside other roadblocks, are getting in the way of scaling up development.
Wheals says about two-thirds of the cost of delivering an onshore wind project are made up of construction and installation costs and that, since 2020, developers have seen those costs increase by as much as 50 per cent
……………………………………………………………………………………………………… Esposito, Wheals and various other global wind energy executives including from RES, Goldwind and RWE, also noted that the grid connection situation, at least, is improving, with network companies, market bodies and governments joining forces to boost visibility and speed up critical project connection processes.
Cost problems – and the impacts of Australia’s predictably unpredictable energy politics – still need some nutting out.
“My message to us as an industry is that we … need to do the heavy lifting. We need to do that heavy lifting now,” Wheals told the conference.
“We’re looking at a four- to five-fold increase from today through to 2050. …We can’t afford to be distracted by the nuclear debate and, in fact, nuclear won’t be there in time for us anyway…………. https://reneweconomy.com.au/squadron-says-innovation-needed-to-overcome-jump-in-wind-costs-but-nuclear-not-the-answer/—
How would a switch to nuclear affect electricity prices?
The Conversation, 10 July 2024, Roger Dargaville, Monash University
Peter Dutton has announced that under a Coalition government, seven nuclear power stations would be built around the country over the next 15 years.
Experts have declared nuclear power would be expensive and slow to build.
But what might happen to energy prices if the Coalition were to win government and implement this plan?
How might we estimate the cost of nuclear?
By 2035, 50–60% of the existing coal-fired fleet will very likely have been retired, including Vales Point B, Gladstone, Yallourn, Bayswater and Eraring – all of which will have passed 50 years old.
These five generators contribute just over 10 gigawatts of capacity. It’s probably not a coincidence that the seven nuclear plants proposed by Dutton would also contribute roughly 10 gigawatts in total if built.
Neither my team at Monash University nor the Australian Energy Market Operator has run modelling scenarios to delve into the details of what might happen to electricity prices under a high-uptake nuclear scenario such as the one proposed by the Coalition. That said, we can make some broad assumptions based on a metric known as the “levelised cost of electricity”.
This value takes into account:
- how much it costs to build a particular technology
- how long it takes to build
- the cost to operate the plant
- its lifetime
- and very importantly, its capacity factor.
Capacity factor is how much electricity a technology produces in real life, compared with its theoretical maximum output.
……………………………………………………….CSIRO’s GenCost report assumed a value of $8,655 per kilowatt for nuclear, so the true levelised cost of electricity of nuclear power in Australia may end up being twice as expensive as CSIRO has calculated.
………….Other factors play a role, too
Another factor not accounted for in the GenCost assumptions is that Australia does not have a nuclear industry. Virtually all the niche expertise would need to be imported.
And very large infrastructure projects have a nasty habit of blowing out in cost –
……………………………………………………………………………………………. A likely increase in energy costs
In summary, in a free market, it is very unlikely nuclear could be competitive.
But if a future Coalition government were to bring nuclear into the mix, energy costs for residential and especially industrial customers would very likely increase. https://www.firstlinks.com.au/switch-nuclear-affect-electricity-prices
1 This month
of the week – Disrupting War & Militarism in Oceania. Active solidarity. Radical practice.
Antinuclear 