Peter Dutton’s bid to politicise top science agency is ‘absurd’, former CSIRO energy director says.
Glenn Platt says opposition leader’s ‘lazy’ response to report undermines science.
Graham Readfearn, Guardian, 11 Dec 24
A former CSIRO energy director has said Peter Dutton’s attempt to politicise the national science agency’s work on the likely costs of nuclear reactors is “incredibly disappointing” and “absurd”.
The opposition leader attacked the CSIRO after its latest GenCost report reaffirmed that electricity from nuclear energy in Australia would be at least 50% more expensive than power from solar and wind, backed up with storage.
Dutton claimed: “It just looks to me like there’s a heavy hand of Chris Bowen in all of this.”
Prof Glenn Platt, of the University of Sydney and an energy industry entrepreneur, was research director on energy at CSIRO before leaving the national science agency in 2021.
He said instead of debating the substance of the CSIRO’s report, Dutton’s response was “lazy” and undermined the scientific process.
“It’s incredibly disappointing. It’s lazy just to say that you must have been politicised because the answer isn’t what you like,” said Platt, a fellow of the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences & Engineering.
The Coalition is expected to reveal details this week on the costs of building taxpayer-funded nuclear reactors at seven sites of coal-fired power stations around the country.
CSIRO’s annual GenCost report details the likely costs of different electricity generation technologies in Australia.
Bowen, the energy minister, said GenCost was “an independent report with no role by any member of parliament or minister”, and said Dutton should apologise to the agency.
Dutton has previously claimed the agency’s GenCost report had been “discredited”, prompting the agency’s chief executive, Doug Hilton, to hit back, saying the criticism was unfounded.
The latest report said evidence from other western democracies suggested it would take at least 15 years to plan, develop and build a nuclear reactor in Australia. A future Coalition government would have to repeal federal laws banning nuclear energy and negotiate on several state bans…………………………..more https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2024/dec/11/peter-duttons-bid-to-politicise-top-science-agency-is-absurd-former-csiro-energy-director-says
How anger at Australia’s rollout of renewables is being hijacked by a new pro-nuclear network
Facebook groups opposing renewables projects are now increasingly full of pro-nuclear content, and groups such as Nuclear for Australia have set up dedicated social media accounts targeting specific sections of the community – such as an Instagram account titled “Mums for Nuclear” – as they gear up for the election campaign.
Facebook groups opposing renewables projects are now increasingly full of pro-nuclear content, and groups such as Nuclear for Australia have set up dedicated social media accounts targeting specific sections of the community – such as an Instagram account titled “Mums for Nuclear” – as they gear up for the election campaign.
An alliance of political groups is harnessing real fears about the local impact of wind and solar farms – and using them to spruik nuclear power.
By Ariel Bogle and Graham Readfearn
The entrance is marked by an AI-generated image of a dead whale, floating among wind turbines. On the first floor of the East Maitland bowling club, dire warnings are being shared about how offshore wind may impact the Hunter region – alongside a feeling of not being consulted, of being steamrolled.
“Environment and energy forums” like this one in late November have been held up and down the east of Australia, aiming to build a resistance to the country’s renewable energy transition.
Today’s event is being cohosted by No Offshore Turbines Port Stephens (NOTPS) and the National Rational Energy Network (NREN), a group with informal National party links that was behind February’s Reckless Renewables rally in Canberra. The advocacy group Nuclear for Australia is also here.
“We’re not a political group,” the NOTPS secretary and a Port Stephens resident, Leonie Hamilton, tells Guardian Australia.
“We’re not there to push [politicians] into parliament, but we are going to listen to what they have to say.”
Hamilton says she’s undecided on the issue of nuclear power.
The coastline of the Hunter was declared a potential area for offshore wind in mid-2023 after “extensive community consultation”, according to the federal government. But some, such as NOTPS’ Ben Abbott, are still angry about a perceived lack of detail about the project.
Today’s forum is about raising awareness across the Hunter, Hamilton says. “We think it’s important it happens before the election, so that people understand what the costs are.
“[The coast] belongs to everyone and they should have the opportunity to understand what’s going on.”
There are local groups like NOTPS around Australia that want their broad concerns about the rollout of renewable energy to be heard but say they do not want to be used for a political agenda and do not advocate for particular energy sources.
But working alongside those groups is an increasingly coordinated alliance of conservative thinktanks, political lobby groups and politicians who are flatly opposed to the clean energy transition.
Fears about the environmental and social impact of renewables projects are finding purchase in an information gap critics say has been ceded by the government, the industry and environmental groups – and there are plenty of interested parties willing to step in.
An earlier NREN event in Sydney was sponsored by the Institute of Public Affairs.
Sandra Bourke, a cohost of the Maitland event, is an NREN member but also a spokesperson for the conservative lobby group Advance – which was a key player in the defeat of the Indigenous voice to parliament and is now fundraising on a “lies of renewables” campaign.
A Facebook account under Bourke’s name is present in almost 20 community Facebook groups and pages opposing renewable projects, from Kilkivan, Queensland, to Bunbury, Western Australia, regularly sharing Advance clips and links to Sky News.
The upcoming election is a “crossroads”, she tells the crowd, while declining an interview with Guardian Australia. There’s an Advance sign-up form on every seat.
Up the back of the room are “Where’s Meryl?” posters, referring to the Labor incumbent MP Meryl Swanson, who holds the local electorate of Paterson.
The Liberal candidate Laurence Antcliff is here, along with three men in T-shirts bearing his name. He tells the room he is opposed to the offshore wind project in Port Stephens and will “fight every single day” to ensure it does not go ahead.
Swanson, who has said “many, many meetings” were held with local groups about the proposal, was not invited.
The nuclear energy wedge
In June the Coalition announced it would lift the bans on nuclear energy if it won next year’s election, then build nine publicly owned reactors at sites around the country.
The announcement gave extra fodder to advocacy groups and conservative thinktanks that have long opposed the shift to renewables.
Last week the opposition leader, Peter Dutton, appeared in Port Stephens alongside Antcliff. “It’s in this community’s best interest that [the windfarm] project does not proceed,” he said, as he spruiked the alternative of nuclear power.
Facebook groups opposing renewables projects are now increasingly full of pro-nuclear content, and groups such as Nuclear for Australia have set up dedicated social media accounts targeting specific sections of the community – such as an Instagram account titled “Mums for Nuclear” – as they gear up for the election campaign.
A new report looking at the pro-nuclear information ecosystem, funded by the progressive campaign group GetUp, found a “likely-coordinated and sophisticated ecosystem” of thinktanks, not-for-profits and political operatives engaged in pro-nuclear messaging.
For these interests, the focus on nuclear energy is a chance to “present a solutions-based response to climate change, and divert attention from their pro-coal and gas positions”, the report concluded.
“Nuclear energy provides a wedge for the environmental movement, climate independents, the Labor party and Greens, because it stokes division and can bog them down in technical explanations of why nuclear is neither desirable nor viable in Australia.”
Ed Coper, who is the chief executive of the communications agency Populares and has worked on teal campaigns, says the volume of noisy opposition to renewables is disproportionate to community attitudes. Nevertheless, he predicts nuclear will be an effective election campaign wedge.
For parties opposed to the clean energy transition, this is an opportunity to “peel off” environmental support from renewables support. The message to this cohort is broadly that “renewable energy generation is ruining pristine farming land and is not a good use of land and destroys the habitats of protected species and pristine views”, he says.
“That gives [the Coalition] a whole new constituency. If Labor goes into the election assuming everyone is against nuclear energy, they’ll be in for a shock.
“Energy transition requires an enormous amount of social licence.”
Solar plans discovered by chance
About 200km north-east of Melbourne, John Conroy and his family have been producing beef in Bobinawarrah since the 1960s. In a neighbouring paddock are plans for the large Meadow Creek solar farm and battery – plans he discovered by chance in September 2022 after a visit from the electricity distribution company AusNet.
“We alerted the community,” he says. “The project had been in the process for 12 months before we even knew about it
He says the main concerns of the community surround fire risk – both from the project but also the liability of landholders if fires on their properties spread to the solar farm.
In April the Victorian government removed the rights of landholders to appeal against planning decisions made on renewables projects.
“That is a real slap in the face,” Conroy says. “We’re a community of working-class people, producing food, doing our best to keep footy clubs going, and then the government takes away your rights to have a say.”
The independent federal MP for Indi, Helen Haines, says questions about insurance liability “should have been answered long ago”.
“We should be having these conversations long before a project is up for a planning permit.”
Families like the Conroys in her electorate are spending hundreds of hours getting across technical details of projects and government rules. “It shouldn’t be that way,” she says.
Haines says communities are operating in a “vacuum” and she wants to see information hubs in regional centres where people can go for trusted information and support.
The MP, with Senator David Pocock, last year successfully pushed for a government review into the way communities were being asked to host major renewables projects.
More than 700 people attended 75 meetings, with the review making nine recommendations the government said it would implement in collaboration with the states.
Governments needed to allow only reputable developers to build projects, the review said, and zones should be identified to avoid projects targeting inappropriate land areas.
“There is pushback – this is real and the concerns that communities have are existential,” Haines says. “We have to stop trying to generate social licence after a decision has been made.”
Instead, she says, the transformation should be about regional development and making sure communities have genuine long-term benefits from any projects.
“I want to look back and see better roads, better healthcare and internet, better childcare services, and see that the renewable energy transformation helped us get there. But communities are just not seeing that.”
Locals want ‘some control and influence’
“The fundamental issue here is there’s an assumption that there is no time to properly talk to people and give them not just a tokenistic say, but give them some control and influence in managing their local environment,” says Georgina Woods, who has 25 years of climate change activism and advocacy behind her.
Woods is head of research and investigations at the campaign group Lock the Gate, an organisation that emerged from the unrest among farmers and landholders at the coal seam gas boom in Queensland in the 2000s.
Governments have failed to clearly articulate why the transformation is needed and the urgency of climate action, she says. “We are getting further away from a broad consensus on why these projects are being done in the first place.”
“Until we put people and landscapes and nature at the centre, we’re at risk of repeating the same mistakes with renewable energy that we made with mining.”
West of the Blue Mountains in New South Wales are the gently rolling hills of Oberon. Outside town are plans for a 250-turbine windfarm on pine plantations owned by the state government.
Chris Muldoon, a committee member of Oberon Against Wind Towers, says that would mean local landholders would miss out on any financial benefits of hosting turbines while the town would have to live with the sight of turbines almost 300 metres tall in an area known for its postcard aesthetic.
“They’re chasing the wind and the towers, but there’s no consideration of the economic or social impact,” says Muldoon, who manages Mayfield Garden in Oberon, a tourist attraction owned by the wealthy Sydney-based businessman Garrick Hawkins.
Hawkins has contributed to the campaign to block the windfarm, says Muldoon, as have many locals.
In September the group put up nine candidates for the Oberon council elections, with two elected. Their pitch was uncompromising. “Oberon First are the only candidates who have committed to slamming the door in the face of greedy, arrogant wind tower developers,” the group said.
Oberon has a lot of hobby farmers and second homes for people in Sydney, says Muldoon, which means they have “city skills” that have mobilised against the development, something other communities do not have.
The group is not against windfarms or renewable energy, insists Muldoon, but “you just need to make less invasive decisions about the rollout”.
He points to people living in renewable energy zones, where surveys have shown broad support among farmers for renewables projects.
Outside those areas, he says, projects often come as a surprise to communities that are ill-prepared to navigate the technicalities of dealing with planning regulations, or wading through environmental impact statements “that can be 1,000 pages long”.
“Outside the renewable energy zones, the framework isn’t working,” he says. “It’s the wild west.”
Oberon is in the federal electorate of Calare, where the independent Kate Hook is trying to unseat Andrew Gee, who quit the Nationals to sit on the crossbench in 2022 over the party’s opposition to an Indigenous voice to parliament.
Hook left her job in September working for a not-for-profit to help communities negotiate with governments and renewable energy companies to get the most benefit from projects.
She says the “missing piece” causing communities to push back is a lack of understanding of why the transition away from fossil fuels is needed and how it could benefit them.
“People shouldn’t have to rely on Google, but this is why people are anxious,” she says. “There’s a tsunami of misinformation.”
“People might not like the look of windfarms, but do they want farmers to be able to stay on their land? Because these projects can help them do that.
“What we need is discussion, not division.”
A spokesperson for the climate change and energy minister, Chris Bowen, said the government was “working with local communities to secure regional jobs and provide energy security”.
“Unfortunately, the former Coalition government spent 10 years failing to make the necessary reforms to improve community engagement in a rapidly changing energy market,” she said.
The government was implementing the community engagement review “to enhance community support and ensure that electricity transmission and renewable energy developments deliver for communities, landholders and traditional owners”.
Will Donald Trump kill US-UK-Aussie sub defense deal?
The landmark defense agreement between the U.S, U.K. and Australia could be in jeopardy with the maverick Republican back in the White House.
Politico, December 9, 2024, By Stefan Boscia and Caroline Hug
LONDON — There are few issues on which we do not know Donald Trump’s opinion.
After thousands of hours of interviews and speeches over the past eight years, the president-elect has enlightened us on what he thinks on almost any topic which enters his brain at any given moment.
But in the key area of defense, there are some gaps — and that’s leading global military chiefs to pore over the statements of the president’s allies and appointees to attempt to glean some clues, specifically over the $369 billion trilateral submarine program known as AUKUS he will inherit from Joe Biden.
Trump does not appear to have publicly commented on the AUKUS pact — named for its contingent parts Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States — which would see the U.S. share technology with its partners to allow both countries to build state-of-the-art nuclear submarines by the 2040s.
This uncertainty has left ministers and government officials in London and Canberra scrambling to discover how the Republican is likely to view the Biden-era deal when he returns to the White House in January.
Two defense industry figures told POLITICO there were serious concerns in the British government that Trump might seek to renegotiate the deal or alter the timelines.
This is because the pact likely requires the U.S. to temporarily downsize its own naval fleet as a part of the agreement — something Trump may interpret as an affront to his “America First” ideology.
Looking east
There is hope in Westminster that Trump would be in favor of a military project which is an obvious, if unspoken, challenge to China.
The deal would see American-designed nuclear submarines right on China’s doorstep and would form a part of Australia’s attempts to bolster its military might in the Indo-Pacific.
When former U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson said in September 2021 that the deal was not “intended to be adversarial toward China,” President Xi Jinping simply did not believe him.
The Chinese leader said AUKUS would “undermine peace” and accused the Western nations of stoking a Cold War mentality.
Mary Kissel, a former senior adviser to Trump’s ex-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, said “you can assume Trump two will look a lot like Trump one” when it comes to building alliances with other Western countries against China.
“We revivified the Quad [Australia, India, Japan and the U.S.], got our allies to bolster NATO funding and worked to prevent China from dominating international institutions,” she said.
However, the deal also forces the U.S. government to sell Australia three to five active Virginia attack submarines, the best in the U.S. Navy’s fleet, by the early 2030s as a stopgap until the new AUKUS subs are built.
Is America first?
This coincides with a time where there is a widely recognized crunch on America’s industrial defense capacity.
In layman’s terms, the U.S. is currently struggling to build enough submarines or military equipment for its own needs.
One U.K. defense industry figure, granted anonymity to speak freely, said there was “a lot of queasiness” in the U.K. government and a “huge amount of queasiness in Australia” about whether Trump would allow this to happen.
“There is a world in which the Americans can’t scale up their domestic submarine capacity for their own needs and don’t have spare to meet Australia’s needs,” they said.
“If you started pulling on one thread of the deal, then the rest could easily fall away.”
One U.K. government official played down how much London and Canberra are worried about the future of the deal, however.
They said the U.K. government was confident Trump is positive about the deal and that the U.S. was “well equipped with the number of submarines for their fleet.”………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
‘Everyone’s a winner
This attempted U.K.-China reset will likely be high on the list of talking points when Healey meets with his Australian counterpart Richard Marles next month in London for an “AUKMIN” summit.
The Australian Labor government, after all, has conducted a similar reset with the Chinese government since coming to power in 2022 after relations hit a nadir during COVID.
Also at the top of the agenda will be how to sell the incoming president on the AUKUS deal in a positive way.
A second defense industry insider said the British and Australian governments should try to badge the deal in terms that make it look like Trump has personally won from the deal.
“Everybody is worried about America’s lack of industrial capacity and how it affects AUKUS,” they said.
“He is also instinctively against the idea of America being the world’s police and so he may not see the value in AUKUS at all, but they need to let him own it and make him think he’s won by doing it.”………………………………………………………………………..
Pillar II
While the core nuclear submarine deal will get most of the headlines in the coming months, progress on the lesser-known Pillar II of AUKUS also remains somewhat elusive.
Launched alongside the submarine pact, Pillar II was designed to codevelop a range of military technologies, such as quantum-enabled navigation, artificial intelligence-enhanced artillery, and electronic warfare capabilities.
One Pillar II technology-sharing deal was struck on hypersonic missiles just last month, but expected progress on a range of other areas has not transpired.
Ambitions to admit Japan to the Pillar II partnership this year have also gone unfulfilled……………………………………………………………
https://www.politico.eu/article/donald-trump-aukus-kill-us-uk-aussie-sub-defense-deal/
The Coalition told the CSIRO to redo its nuclear report. It’s bad news for Dutton
Mike Foley, December 9, 2024 , https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/the-coalition-told-the-csiro-to-re-do-its-nuclear-report-it-s-bad-news-for-dutton-20241205-p5kw6t.html
Nuclear power is still about 50 per cent more expensive than renewables, the CSIRO has found, even after the science organisation changed its modelling to accommodate criticism from the Peter Dutton-led Coalition that it had unfairly favoured wind and solar energy sources.
The report found the lowest cost projections for nuclear power would only match the highest projections for renewable energy, a major challenge to Dutton’s claim that nuclear is needed to cut electricity bills.
Dutton is preparing to release the long-anticipated costings of his party’s nuclear policy this week.
Dutton has fiercely criticised the government’s plan to boost the share of renewables to 82 per cent of the grid by 2030, claiming it is making electricity supply less reliable and more expensive.
He has instead pledged to create a “coal-to-nuclear transition” if elected, overturning state and federal bans on nuclear energy and building seven plants across the country.
“When you look at 19 of the top 20 economies in the world, they all have nuclear, or they’ve signed up to the latest generation nuclear technology. Australia is the only outlier,” Dutton told reporters in Tasmania on Sunday.
Highlighting the significance of the CSIRO’s findings, opposition energy spokesperson Ted O’Brien met with the science agency after its previous GenCost report in May found renewables were the cheapest form of energy and asked it to redo the modelling with key assumptions changed.
O’Brien declared that CSIRO should acknowledge a nuclear plant would be in near-constant use – generating power 93 per cent of the time – while also extending the assumed lifespan from 30 years to 80 years.
Proponents consider these factors crucial to reflect the real-world benefits of nuclear power plants and have argued that renewables get an unfair advantage when they are not adequately reflected in modelling.
CSIRO accommodated these requests and still found the cost of nuclear energy was significantly higher than “variable renewables”, namely wind and solar power backed up with batteries and a major transmission-line rollout.
“The cost range for variable renewables with integration costs is the lowest of all new-build technology capable of supplying reliable electricity in 2024 and 2030,” GenCost said.
The ratio of how long an energy generator is operational compared with sitting idle, known as the capacity factor, is key to the cost of its energy.
O’Brien claimed in May that CSIRO modelling should use the United States’ average capacity factor for a nuclear plant of 93 per cent.
In responding to O’Brien, CSIRO said it was appropriate to use a range of capacity factors, given the 15 coal plants in eastern Australia ran on average 60 per cent of the time and a nuclear plant would slot into the grid as a replacement for coal.
CSIRO’s modelling showed that, adjusted for Australian conditions, a traditional large-scale nuclear plant that was operational 90 per cent of the time would generate electricity at $155 a megawatt hour. With a utilisation rate of 53 per cent, it would cost $252 a megawatt hour.
In contrast, wind farms would generate power at $56 to $96 a megawatt hour, using a conservative range of capacity factors based on how often they were expected to run. Under a similar calculation, solar farms would generate power for between $35 and $62 a megawatt hour.
O’Brien’s second contention, that CSIRO should factor in an 80-year life span for a nuclear plant, rather than the 30-year life it assumed, made the economics more favourable because there was more time to repay loans.
CSIRO ran the numbers for a plant over 60 years. It found this would deliver a discount of 11 per cent on the original cost. However, most of this saving would be gobbled up by refurbishment costs, typically about $3 billion, needed when a plant was 40 years old.
The figures would be similar for a 100-year-old plant because it would need several refurbishments.
“Long-term operation of nuclear is not costless,” GenCost said. “Extension costs are incurred and are significant.”
CSIRO found a grid with 90 per cent renewables would produce electricity for between $106 and $150 a megawatt hour, including $40 billion in expenditure on the rollout, with new transmission lines as well as batteries and gas plants to back up wind and solar farms.
While GenCost provided a range of projections, the above costs were calculated in today’s dollars and assumed the current price of construction.
GenCost uses a levelised cost of energy calculation to price energy from various technologies. This represents the price needed for an electricity generation plant to earn back the cost of its construction and running costs over its lifespan.
CSIRO will update its GenCost report based on further feedback from stakeholders.
CSIRO patiently and methodically slaps down Peter Dutton’s nuclear nonsense.
nuclear power does not ‘back up” wind and solar as Dutton and O’Brien often claim, it must displace it. And in Australia, that’s likely to mean household solar first and foremost.
Giles Parkinson, Dec 9, 2024
Australia’s premier scientific organisation, the CSIRO, has patiently and methodically slapped down the major nuclear talking points promoted by Coalition leader Peter Dutton in its latest GenCost report, which confirms – yet again – that integrated wind and solar are easily the cheapest option.
The CSIRO first published the GenCost report in 2018, under the then Coalition government, and its conclusions have been consistent – integrated wind and solar are by far the best and lowest cost options. The new draft of the 24/25 version, which notes ongoing cost reductions in solar PV and battery storage, confirm this.
In short, it finds that firmed renewables, including transmission and storage costs, will cost between $80 a megawatt hour and $122/MWh in 2030, should they account for 80 per cent of variable generation, which is the federal government target.
That compares to between $145 and $238/MWh for large scale nuclear, and up to an eye-watering $487/MWh for so-called small modular nuclear reactors, which are part of the Coalition’s energy proposals, but which don’t exist in commercial form. The CSIRO says neither could be deployed before 2040.
See more details here: GenCost: Falling costs of solar and batteries confirm integrated renewables are cheapest option
The CSIRO, however, has also faced extraordinary and relentless attacks from the Coalition over its analysis, amplified by right wing so-called “think tanks” and the Murdoch media, and given a largely uncritical run in much of mainstream media.
Dutton’s and the nuclear lobby’s main beef with the CSIRO calculations is that it makes nuclear power look very expensive. Which it clearly is.
They argue the CSIRO report gives their favoured technology no credit for being long life (they say 60- 100 years), for having high capacity factors, and they insist that the CSIRO has got it wrong on its estimated build times.
The CSIRO has addressed each of these claims in its draft 2025 GenCost report. In fact, it is remarkable just how much of the report is devoted to a technology that it notes could not possibly be delivered in Australia before 2040 – and it forensically debunks the lot of them.
Benefits of longer life
Let’s go to the life time issue first, because it has been a particular focus of Dutton and his energy spokesman Ted O’Brien as they promote their nuclear campaign around the country.
They say that because nuclear power plants can last 60 or even 100 years, their huge up front capital costs should be smeared across the period, rather than the 30 years calculated by the CSIRO.
That sounds plausible, but the CSIRO makes a number of important points. Firstly, the 30-year calculation is standard practice for the energy industry because no financial institution will lend for longer.
And if loans were to be spread over a 60 year or 100 year period, the interest payments would be crippling. It means that the benefits of such calculations would be just 11 to 15 per cent – and not be experienced by Australian consumers until at least 45 years – or around 2070.
“It’s not a magical halving of costs or anything like that. The savings are relatively modest,” CSIRO chief energy economist Paul Graham says in the latest episode of Renew Economy’s weekly Energy Insiders podcast (to be published on Monday).
But there is another problem. The CSIRO also points out that if nuclear power plants are to last that long then they need regular refurbishment. Based on overseas experience, it puts the capital cost of those refurbishments at nearly one third of the original capital cost of the plants.
And it also puts a large hole in another linked Coalition argument, which is that wind and solar power must cost more because their facilities have to be replaced after 25 or 30 years.
The CSIRO says yes, they do need to be replaced. But when they are rebuilt, they will be rebuilt at considerably lower cost, and that’s not even taking into account the fact that wind and solar will be built where current facilities already exist, with connection points, land deals and other important infrastructure already in place.
“What we concluded from that was, actually it’s hard to identify any real unique benefit that nuclear delivers from having a long life,” Graham tells Energy Insiders.
“You can get the same benefit from shorter lived technologies, even when you have to build them twice, because both things essentially involve a reinvestment step. And when you look at the savings, they’re pretty similar.”
Indeed, the CSIRO puts the cost of rebuilt wind and solar at a considerable discount to refurbished nuclear – The experience in Ontario, the Australian nuclear lobby’s poster market, confirms this. (See table above -on original).
Each of Ontario’s main reactors will be off line for around three years – the cost is huge – and some of the world’s biggest batteries are being built to help fill in the gap, which torpedoes another nuclear lobbyist fantasy that somewhere these power plants do not need back up.
“It’s not a magical halving of costs or anything like that. The savings are relatively modest.
Capacity factors
The second issue is also critical. The nuclear lobby and the Coalition have told the CSIRO that it must calculate nuclear costs based on a 93 per cent capacity factor, and only at that rate.
This is important to them because – at such a high capacity factor – the nuclear plants are rarely switched off or even dialled down, and that gives the technology the best chance to recoup its high costs more quickly.
The CSIRO says that while such high capacity factors exist in the US, it is not the reality in the rest of the world, and is unlikely to be the case in Australia, particularly with the growth of rooftop solar and large scale renewables.
It says the global average capacity factor for nuclear plants is 80 per cent, and 10 per cent of nuclear power plant have capacity factors of less than 60 per cent. “On international data alone, the proposition of only considering 93% is not supported by the evidence,” Graham says.
And in Australia the experience of baseload power plants – in this case coal – is that they run at a capacity factor of around 59 per cent.
“In Australia we have more than 100 years of experience with operating baseload generation, not nuclear but coal,” Graham says,
“The average for black coal in the past decade is 59%. On this basis we cannot support the proposal that 93% adequately captures market conditions in Australia.”
It is interesting to note here that nuclear power does not ‘back up” wind and solar as Dutton and O’Brien often claim, it must displace it. And in Australia, that’s likely to mean household solar first and foremost.
Development lead times
The third argument that CSIRO addresses is that of the time it takes to build a nuclear power plant. This is important because the Coalition insists it can deliver its first nuclear power plant by 2035, although no one outside the Coalition and the nuclear lobbyists actually believe that.
“Many stakeholders have agreed with the GenCost estimate of at least 15 years lead time for nuclear generation,” the CSIRO report says. “Nuclear has no projects in the Australian development pipeline, has additional safety and security steps and needs new legislation and regulations.”
Where the nuclear lobby points to projects with faster lead times, CSIRO has looked at that too, and makes the interesting and relevant observation that these occur in countries where the democracy score is low, and where labour costs and protections are also low.
When it comes to small modular reactors, the Coalition argument makes no sense. They don’t actually exist in commercial form and it is unlikely any will be built before the end of the decade.
Dutton and O’Brien says they will only build an “nth of a kind”, meaning they will wait for the tech ology to be established and lower costs,.
But that is not going to happen in the timeframe that would allow the first power to be delivered by 2035.
The CSIRO, kindly, assesses its nuclear costs on an “nth of a kind” basis.
“We have been seeing all these big cost blowouts overseas, in countries like the UK and the US, and mostly it’s because these countries have come back (to building nuclear after a gap of several decades) and they’d lost all their knowledge about how to build nuclear,” Graham says.
So – after all that – and working through all the Coalition and nuclear lobby talking points – where does that put nuclear in comparison to other technologies?
“So large scale renewal, large scale nuclear, is sitting at a position one and a half to two and a half times the cost of firmed renewables,” Graham says on Energy Insiders.
“And if we look at small modular reactors …. that’s between about four to six times higher. And that’s because that’s really a pre commercial technology.
“We don’t really have any any sort of commercial deployment of that technology globally. So it’s still carrying some very high costs at the moment, which will come down once it’s once they successfully build a few more of them. But at the moment, it’s a very high cost.”
The report released on Monday is just a draft, and will go out to consultation until February, before a final report is prepared. In the meantime, the Coalition will release its own costings, and the CSIRO can expect some more blowback from the lobbyists.
“You do have to have a bit of a thick skin,” Graham tells Energy Insiders.
“But that’s the way we sort of improve things. And what’s been, I guess, unique about the last two years of GenCost is that the discussion that’s been had around it isn’t just a sort of energy insiders conversation, to forgive the pun, but it’s, it’s blown out into a sort of a, yeah, it’s much more of a public conversation.
“It’s not always at the level of sort of the sort of scientific and engineering discussion that we tend to have inside the industry, but that’s fine.
“We’ve adapted, and we’ve it’s given us a big opportunity to sort of deep dive into some of these topics, like nuclear that people want to hear about. So we’re sort of glad to do it. And we think we’ve, we hope people think that we’ve done a reasonable job of presenting fair and balanced information.”
Nuclear energy questioned again as new CSIRO report finds it will push up power prices
By Daniel Jeffrey Dec 9, 2024, https://www.9news.com.au/national/csiro-gen-cost-report-nuclear-twice-expensive-renewables/53b37f54-ad6e-4542-9ab0-35fdf48dec96
Experts have once again cast serious doubt on the viability of nuclear energy in Australia, with a new CSIRO report finding it would likely be more than twice as expensive than using renewables.
The latest version of the GenCost report, published this morning, concluded a mix of solar and wind power with firming is the cheapest form of energy production, and will remain so well into the future.
It found nuclear presents “no unique cost advantage over other technologies”.
[Excellent table here – on original]
“Similar cost savings can be achieved with shorter-lived technologies, including renewables, even when accounting for the need to build them twice,” CSIRO chief energy economist and report lead author Paul Graham said.
“The lack of an economic advantage is due to the substantial nuclear re-investment costs required to achieve long operational life.”
The report found renewables with firming produced power at a cost of $98-$150 per megawatt-hour (MWh) this year, and is set to drop to between $67-$137 in 2030.
Large-scale nuclear generation has a cost, on the other hand, of between $155-$252, which is set to only drop to $150-$245, while the respective figures for nuclear small modular reactors are more expensive again at $400-$663 and $285-$487.
The findings come as the federal opposition prepares to release the long-awaited costings for its proposal to build seven nuclear power plants.
Asked about the report, Opposition Leader Peter Dutton didn’t answer whether his party’s plan would push up power prices, instead questioning the methodology used by the CSIRO.
“The assumptions and the methodology have been disputed before… they were disputed before, and do you know what? They haven’t even seen our plan yet, and yet they’re out bagging it,” he said.
The national science agency has changed its methodology used to assess nuclear power costs, to the point it gives the technology “extremely generous” assumptions, emeritus professor Ian Lowe said.
“The study confirms the view of the electricity industry that solar and wind with storage are much cheaper than any nuclear power station would generate, even with extremely generous assumptions about the costs and operating life of nuclear reactors,” he said.
Western Sydney University’s Dr Thomas Longden said there are a number of issues facing nuclear power.
“For nuclear to achieve the lowest levelized cost of electricity, it needs to be built big and operate all the time and for a long time,” he said.
“Yet, the bigger it gets; the more upfront cost needs to be paid. And if it isn’t used as often or as long as expected, then it gets more costly.
“The true cost of nuclear will be revealed over a long time and is subject to construction costs, plus there’s also the issue of operational, fuel, and waste costs, which will be higher for nuclear.”
Energy expert Ken Baldwin noted the report showed the cost of solar and battery storage has significantly decreased, while wind, coal and particularly gas have increased.
“Solar and wind remain the cheapest form of electricity generation, even when taking into account the additional cost of firming with storage, and the additional transmission costs,” he said.
“This cost advantage over nuclear is projected to widen over the coming decades – especially by the earliest date that nuclear could foreseeably be expected to operate in Australia in the late 2030s, given the projected lead time of around 15 years.”
Dutton promised to unveil the Coalition’s nuclear costings later this week.
Policy bum Dutton has two big ideas. They’re both in bad trouble
Peter Dutton has two big ideas: cut migration and build nuclear power plants. He’s now abandoned one, and we know the other will be a disaster.
Bernard Keane, Crikey.com Dec 09, 2024
This opposition caper is pretty easy, Peter Dutton must have been thinking throughout the year. Just bag the government, disappear from the media cycle if things ever get hectic, and let the Reserve Bank’s smashing of the economy do the job of undermining government support.
At some point, however, he was going to have to produce at least some policy. Not too soon, and not too much — just enough to look like he has some sort of plan. It should have been doable. After all, he has the entirety of News Corp on his side to praise his policy offerings, and the fencesitters and bothsiders of the press gallery in other outlets won’t criticise Dutton without making sure they offer equal criticism of the government.
But that overlooks the fact that Dutton is, to use a term made famous by Paul Keating, a policy bum. There is nothing in his political history that indicates either ministerial competence or policy nous. He was an indifferent health minister who failed to push through a Medicare copayment. As immigration and then home affairs minister, he lost control of borders to organised crime and failed to fix the many basic problems of the Immigration Department. His shorter time at Defence was of a Marlesian quality — a blithe indifference to the department’s many failings, while shrilly yelling at China.
Dutton’s limited forays into policy as leader have been characterised by confusion. It’s still not clear exactly what the Coalition’s tax policy is, with the initial opposition confusion in the aftermath of Labor’s changes to the stage three tax cuts — remember those — lasting to this very day: when even your mates at News Corp say you’re “kicking the can down the road“, it’s not a good sign.
………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. But the confusion has now gotten worse…………………………………………………………………………
Dutton’s other signature policy, an unprecedented, fiscally devastating entry of the government into power generation, will receive some time in the spotlight this week with Dutton having promised for the umpteenth time he’ll release details of it. That the Coalition is busy trying to invent numbers for Labor’s policy to argue that the hundred-billion-plus cost of nuclear reactors is the cheap option suggests no amount of fake “independent modelling” or Panglossian assumptions have been able to get the costing down to anything reasonable.
In that context, it’s worth reading the CSIRO’s latest GenCost report, which sets out to address the complaints of nuclear power fans and the Coalition that the assumptions behind its 2023 demolition of the economic case for nuclear power (and, it shouldn’t be forgotten, Labor’s carbon capture and storage scam) were unfair.
The opposition complained that the lives of nuclear reactors are much longer than modelled. GenCost notes that nuclear power plants can indeed run for many decades, but they need refurbishment to do so, and renewables plants can run for similar lives at a much lower refurbishment cost.
The opposition complained the CSIRO should have used a US power capacity figure of 93%, not the global nuclear industry average of 80% or the Australian coal-fired power plant average of 59%. GenCost pointed out it uses the same capacity range for all power sources, and it’s not prudent financially to assume the best-case scenario.
The opposition complained that nuclear power plants could be up and running in 10-15 years and not 15 years as GenCost assumed. Gencost points out that nuclear construction times have now blown out by 2.2 years recently, and that the only countries building reactors quickly are non-democracies that don’t have to worry about public consultation.
But what about changing costs for different power sources? Well:
The capital costs of onshore wind generation technology increased by a further 8% in 2023-24 and another 2% in 2024-25 while large-scale solar PV has fallen by 8% in consecutive years. Large-scale battery costs improved the most in 2024-25 falling by 20% in 2024-25.
Even with some of the tweaks demanded by the Coalition, the latest GenCost report shows large-scale nuclear is significantly more expensive than coal, gas and solar or wind with firming capacity. The only things large-scale nuclear is cheaper than is carbon capture and storage, and small modular reactors — which are at least twice the cost of any other energy source and three times the cost of the cheaper ones.
Dutton might be better off abandoning any policy and simply going to the election with nothing more than incessant criticism of Labor. He’s a policy bum, and any time he opens his mouth on his own policies, he confirms it. https://www.crikey.com.au/2024/12/09/peter-dutton-immigration-nuclear-energy/
Renewable energy trounces nuclear on generation costs
By Marion Rae, December 9 2024 – https://www.newcastleherald.com.au/story/8841115/renewable-energy-trounces-nuclear-on-generation-costs/
Power planners have found nuclear energy does not stack up for Australia even after considering new parameters, with large-scale solar and big batteries still the lowest-cost option.
In an official update released on Monday, as the federal opposition prepares to release its costings, scientists warn taxpayers will need deep pockets and a lead time of at least 15 years to develop nuclear energy generation.
For the seventh straight year, renewables were the lowest-cost of any new-build electricity-generating technology.
After a global energy crisis and equipment supply crunch several years ago, large-scale solar and lithium battery storage have weathered the inflationary period the best of all technologies.
The cost of batteries recorded the largest annual reduction, with capital costs down by one-fifth. Rooftop solar costs are also coming down.
Australian Conservation Foundation nuclear policy analyst Dave Sweeney said four million households with rooftop solar, energy producers and retailers have already voted with their feet and wallets.
“Nuclear is not right for Australia, which has some of the best renewable energy resources on the planet,” he said.
The GenCost 2024-25 Report released for consultation comes as the coalition pushes for an end to Australia’s nuclear ban and promises to have reactors online in as soon as 10 years if elected in 2025.
Opposition Leader Peter Dutton, eyeing sites in seven regional centres, has pledged to release the coalition’s nuclear costings “this week”.
But nuclear energy generation would be 1.5 to two times more expensive than large-scale solar, according to the analysis by the national science agency CSIRO and the Australian Energy Market Operator.
A one-gigawatt nuclear plant has a price tag of roughly $9 billion, but the bill would double to $18 billion as the first of its kind.
Operators would also need to establish new connection points to safely supply the national electricity grid, experts warn.
Advocates have demanded greater recognition of the potential cost advantages of nuclear’s long operating life compared to solar panels and wind turbines, but CSIRO chief energy economist and GenCost lead author Paul Graham said he found none.
“Similar cost savings can be achieved with shorter-lived technologies including renewables, even when accounting for the need to build them twice,” Mr Graham said.
Nuclear’s capacity factor – referring to how much of a year a reactor could operate at full tilt – remains unaltered at 53-89 per cent based on verifiable data and consideration of Australia’s unique electricity generation needs.
Nor would the often-touted United Arab Emirates example of a relatively quick 12-year nuclear construction time-frame be achievable here, the report found, because Australians require consultation.
“The facts are laid out very clearly in the GenCost report, and our government respects the work of CSIRO scientists and researchers and listens to that advice,” Industry and Science Minister Ed Husic said.
“Peter Dutton’s nuclear fantasy not only threatens to blow out the budget, it also threatens jobs and household power bills,” he said.
Energy Minister Chris Bowen said renewables remain the cheapest new-build electricity generation in Australia to 2050, as standalone assets and when also accounting for the required storage, transmission and firming.
The report is open for industry, community and political feedback until February 11.
Counteracting the nuclear-military-corporate-media – week to 9 December
Some bits of good news:China completes its own version of a Great Green Wall. Christian institutions divest from fossil fuels. Incredible progress on AIDS for Africa and India .
TOP STORIES. Amnesty International investigation concludes Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza .
Gender and radiation: New report shows girls most at-risk group.
Biden’s Nuclear Going Out of Business Sale.
Climate . Just listen to Radio Ecoshock – it is way ahead of everyone else in climate information. Just Shut Up about Climate. Countdown to an ice-free Arctic:New research warns of accelerated timelines. Younger people at greater risk of heat-related deaths this century – study.
Plastic pollution. ‘Big Oil must be dancing for joy‘: Anger builds at failure to deliver Global Plastics Treaty. ‘The process is broken’: Major oil producing countries kill UN plastics treaty over cap on production.
Noel’s notes. Misplaced jubilation as UK’s old brittle nuclear reactors allowed to crack on Surprise ! surprise! – the nuclear lobby has co-opted an ex-politician with a dubious history – Tony Blair.
Plastic pollution. International talks on curbing plastic pollution fail to reach agreement.
**********************************
AUSTRALIA.
The question of nuclear in Australia’s electricity sector
. Nuclear energy questioned again as new CSIRO report finds it will push up power prices. A sneak preview of Peter Dutton’s nuclear costings.
Peter Dutton cops backlash over push to build seven nuclear power stations in Australia. The seven ways the Federal Coalition could cook the books on nuclear costings
Nuclear energy debate draws stark gender split in Australia ahead of next year’s election.
Nuclear energy inquiry draws emotional response in Port Augusta.
Senior Netanyahu Adviser Served in Victorian Court facing Genocide Charges. ‘Nothing to see here’ says Australia as third Thales corruption case starts globally. More Australian nuclear news headlines at https://antinuclear.net/2024/12/03/australian-nuclear-news-2-9th-december/
NUCLEAR ITEMS.
| ATROCITIES. Gaza’s Civil Defense Says Nearly 100 Killed by Israeli Attacks Over 24 Hours |
| ECONOMICS. Tony Blair is wrong to love nuclear energy -ALSO AT …. Why NuScale Power Stock Slumped Today. Key partner quits EDF’s Nuward small nuclear reactor project- ALSO AT https://nuclear-news.net/2024/12/06/1-b1-tony-blair-is-wrong-to-love-nuclear-energy/ UK Seeks More Investors as Sizewell Funding Talks Drag On. Starmer to court United Arab Emirates for British nuclear power investment. |
| EDUCATION. Midlands Regional Hub for Nuclear Skills officially launched. |
| ENERGY.The LA Times Makes the Case for Shutting the Diablo Canyon Nukes.Meta misguided in calling for massive nuclear energy scale-up.Baseload power generators not needed to guarantee supply, say science and engineering academies.Cost of switching off UK wind farms soars to ‘absurd’ £1bn. |
| ENVIRONMENT. Radioactive sea spray is dosing communities. |
| ETHICS and RELIGION. What happened to integrity and honor in the age of Technocracy? |
| HEALTH. Cancer mortality in the USA and atmospheric nuclear weapons test fallout ratio – Identifying the principal origin of the global cancer epidemic.Relationship Between Urinary Uranium and Cardiac Geometry and Left Ventricular Function: The Strong Heart Study. |
| INDIGENOUS ISSUES. Nuclear industry selects site in northwestern Ontario for waste disposal amidst regional opposition. |
| LEGAL. Campaigners lose bid to challenge Sizewell C licence decision in High Court. |
| POLITICS. The First Seven Billionaires Trump Has Tapped for Top Jobs. Gabbard has more intelligence than entire Intelligence Service she’s slated to head. Trump’s Pro-Israel Dream Team: Patel Nomination Caps Hawkish Cabinet. Britain’s Energy Secretary Follows Tech Giants In Pursuit Of New Nuclear Power Stations |
| POLITICS INTERNATIONAL and DIPLOMACY.Assad Is Out, Woke Al-Qaeda Is In. Zelensky Says He’s Willing To Cede Territory in Exchange for NATO Protection. Biden to Zelensky: ‘Our $210 billion not enough…send 18 year olds to die in our Russian proxy war. Iran’s uranium enrichment ‘worrisome’ – nuclear watchdog. |
| SAFETY. EDF set to extend life of UK nuclear plants as Government replacement plans falter. EDF Brings Sizewell Back Online, Balancing UK’s Nuclear Grid. Delays to nuclear plants giving Sizewell B a new lease of life – ALSO AThttps://nuclear-news.net/?s=Delays+to+nuclear+plants UK underestimates threat of cyber-attacks from hostile states and gangs, says security chief.Drugs found in control room at Dungeness Nuclear Power Station. NRC Finds Apparent SecurityViolations at Pilgrim. |
| SPINBUSTER. Tony Blair think tank says UK needs to build new nuclear ‘at pace’ -ALSO AT https://nuclear-news.net/2024/12/06/1-a-tony-blair-think-tank-says-uk-needs-to-build-new-nuclear-at-pace/ . TONY BLAIR: STILL A NUCLEAR NUTTER! |
| TECHNOLOGY. Hinkley update: mixed reaction as first reactor drops into place. The Moltex Reactor and used CANDU Fuel. |
| URANIUM. Niger takes control of French nuclear firm’s uranium mining operations. Green Group Sounds Alarm Over Meta’s Nuclear Power Plans |
| WASTES.Backfilling of Gorleben salt mine (former German nuclear waste dump) starts.Putin’s huge, rusting nuclear battlecruisers symbolise Russian naval decline.Lincolnshire county councillors demand answers on Nuclear Waste Services’ (NWS) proposed Geological Disposal Facility (GDF) at Theddlethorpe. Canada’s nuclear waste problem is not solved . Licensing of Finnish repository further delayed.Decommissioning: Explosives speed Sizewell A turbine hall decommissioning. |
| WEAPONS and WEAPONS SALES. These Billionaires Subsidize the Israeli Military Through a US Nonprofit. We used to laugh at North Korean nuclear submarine boasts- Not any more. The growing arsenals. |
WAR and CONFLICT. Netanyahu Takes Credit for Assad’s Overthrow, Israel Seizes Golan Heights ‘Buffer Zone’
The question of nuclear in Australia’s electricity sector
https://www.csiro.au/en/news/All/Articles/2024/December/Nuclear-explainer 9 Dec 24
In Australia’s transition to net zero emissions, the electricity sector has a major role to play. But does nuclear power have a place in our future grid?
Key points
While nuclear technologies have a long operational life, this factor provides no unique cost advantage over shorter-lived technologies.
Nuclear power does not currently provide the most cost competitive solution for low emission electricity in Australia.
Long development lead times mean nuclear won’t be able to make a significant contribution to achieving net zero emissions by 2050.
This explainer was updated on 09 December 2024 to reflect costings included in the draft GenCost 2024-25 Report.
As Australia works towards emissions reduction targets in the transition to net zero, we know the electricity sector has a major role to play. We also know it makes sense to assess a full range of technologies: some new and emerging, some established and proven.
In this context some proponents want nuclear to be considered as an option for decarbonising the electricity sector.
Despite nuclear power being a component of electricity generation for 16 per cent of the world’s countries, it does not currently represent a timely or efficient solution for meeting Australia’s net zero target.
Here’s why:
- Nuclear is not economically competitive with solar PV and wind and the total development time in Australia for large or small-scale nuclear is at least 15 years.
- Small modular reactors (SMRs) are potentially faster to build but are commercially immature at present.
- The total development lead time needed for nuclear means it cannot play a major role in electricity sector emission abatement, which is more urgent than abatement in other sectors.
Understanding GenCost calculations
GenCost is a leading economic report by CSIRO in collaboration with the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) to estimate the cost of building future electricity generation and storage, as well as hydrogen production in Australia.
It is a policy and technology neutral report and the annual process involves close collaboration with electricity industry experts. There are opportunities for stakeholders to provide pre-publication feedback, ensuring the accuracy of available evidence.
Paul Graham, our Chief Energy Economist and lead author of the report, said GenCost is an open and public process.
“The report’s data is not just for AEMO planning and forecasting; it’s also used by government policymakers and electricity strategists who require a clear, simple metric to inform their decisions,” Paul said.
“To facilitate a straightforward comparison across different technologies, the GenCost report conducts a levelised cost of electricity analysis. This method calculates a dollar cost per megawatt hour (MWh) over the economic life of the asset, incorporating initial capital expenses and any ongoing fuel, operation, and maintenance costs.”
The draft GenCost 2024-25 Report released on 09 December 2024 found renewables continue to have the lowest cost range of any new build electricity generation technologies.
[Excellent table here -on original]
One of the factors that impacts the high and low cost range is the capacity factor. The capacity factor is the percentage of time on average that the technology generates to its full capacity throughout the year. Costs are lowest if technologies. such as nuclear, can operate at full capacity for as long as possible so they have more generation revenue over which to recover their capital costs.
Nuclear technology is capable of high capacity factor operation but globally its capacity factor ranges from below 60% to above 90% with an average of 80%. Australia operates a similar steam turbine based technology in coal generation for which the average capacity factor over the last decade was 59% with a maximum of 89%.
The shape of the electricity load and competition from other sources is very different between countries and so our preference is to always use Australian data where it is available. Consequently, we apply the historical coal capacity factors when considering the potential future capacity factors of Australian nuclear generation.
Capital cost assumptions
While nuclear generation is well established globally, it has never been deployed in Australia.
Applying overseas costs to large-scale nuclear projects in Australia is not straightforward due to significant variations in labour costs, workforce expertise, governance and standards. As a result, the source country for large-scale nuclear data must be carefully selected.
GenCost estimates of the cost large-scale nuclear are based on South Korea’s successful continuous nuclear building program and adjusted for differences in Australian and South Korean deployment costs by investigating the ratio of new coal generation costs in each country.
The large-scale nuclear costs it reported could only be achieved if Australia commits to a continuous building program, following the construction of an initial higher-cost unit or units. Initial units of all first-of-a-kind technologies in Australia are expected to be impacted by higher costs. A first-of-a-kind cost premium of up to 100 per cent cannot be ruled out. These assumptions remain for the draft GenCost 2024-25 Report.
Life of the investment
GenCost recognises the difference between the period over which the capital cost is recovered (the economic life) and operational life of an asset.
GenCost assumes a 30-year economic life for large-scale nuclear plants, even though they can operate for a longer period. It is standard practice in private financing that the capital recovery period for an asset is less than its full operational life, similar to a car or house loan. For power stations, warranties expire and refurbishment costs may begin to fall around the 30-year mark. As a result, we use a 30-year lifespan in our cost calculations.
After the final GenCost 23-24 Report was released in May 2024, nuclear proponents clarified they will seek to achieve longer capital recovery periods, closer to the operational life, by using public financing to realise potential cost advantages.
The draft GenCost 2024-25 Report has calculated those cost advantages for the first time (using a 60-year period), finding that there are no unique cost advantages arising from nuclear technology’s long operational life. Similar cost savings are achievable from shorter-lived technologies, even accounting for the fact that shorter lived technologies need to be built twice. This is because shorter-lived technologies such as solar PV and wind are typically available at a lower cost over time, making the second build less costly.
The lack of an economic advantage for long-lived nuclear is due to substantial nuclear refurbishment costs to achieve long operational life safely. Without new investment it cannot achieve long operational life. Also, because of the long lead time in nuclear deployment, cost reductions in the second half of their operational life are not available until around 45 years into the future, significantly reducing their value to consumers compared to other options.
Current figures for Small Modular Reactors (SMRs)
The Carbon Free Power Project was a nuclear SMR project in the United States established in 2015 and planned for full operation by 2030. It was the first project to receive design certification from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, an essential step before construction can commence. In November 2023, the project was cancelled following a 56 per cent increase in reported costs.
Despite being cancelled, this project was the first and currently remains the only project to have provided cost estimates for a real commercial venture with detailed data. Until now, most sources were for theoretical projects only.
“The main area of uncertainty with nuclear SMR has been around capital costs,” Paul said.
“The Carbon Free Power Project provided more confidence about the capital costs of nuclear SMR and the data confirms it is currently a very high-cost technology.”
“We don’t disagree with the principle of SMRs. They attempt to speed up the building process of nuclear plants using standardised components in a modular system and may achieve cost reductions over time. However, the lack of commercial deployment has meant that these potential savings are not yet verified or realised,” Paul said.
Time is running out for the energy transition
Nuclear power has an empty development pipeline in Australia. Given the state and federal legal restrictions, this is not surprising.
But even if nuclear power was more economically feasible, its slow construction and its additional pre-construction steps, particularly around safety and security, limit its potential to play a serious role in reducing emissions within the required timeframe.
In the last five years, the global median construction time for nuclear has been 8.2 years. Furthermore, in the last ten years, no country with a similar level of democracy to Australia have been able to complete construction in less than 10 years. Overall, it will take at least 15 years before first nuclear generation could be achieved in Australia.
“The electricity sector is one of our largest sources of emissions and delaying the transition will make the cost of addressing climate change higher for all Australians,” Paul said
The electricity sector must rapidly lead the transition to net zero, so other sectors like transport, building and manufacturing can adopt electrification and cut their emissions.”
CSIRO reaffirms nuclear power likely to cost twice as much as renewables
By energy reporter Daniel Mercer and National Regional Affairs Reporter Jane Norman, ABC News, 9 Dec 24
In short:
The CSIRO’s new GenCost report again says a nuclear power plant for Australia would likely cost twice as much as renewable energy.
Australia’s leading science agency also said nuclear power plants enjoyed relatively little financial advantage from their long lives and would run at a capacity similar to coal.
What’s next?
Opposition Leader Peter Dutton prepares to release the much-anticipated costings of the Coalition’s nuclear power policy this week.
Building a nuclear power plant in Australia would likely cost twice as much as renewable energy even accounting for the much longer life-span of reactors, according to a new report from Australia’s leading science agency.
In its latest economic analysis of the cost of building various energy projects, the CSIRO found nuclear plants enjoyed relatively little financial advantage from their long lives, which could be double a solar or wind farm.
It comes as the Opposition Leader Peter Dutton prepares to release the much-anticipated costings of the Coalition’s nuclear power policy this week. Mr Dutton has repeatedly said the policy would help bring down power bills, a claim challenged in this latest report.
The CSIRO regularly releases the GenCost report, which looks at the cost of Australia’s energy sources. It has consistently found renewable to be the cheapest option, despite a run of inclusions at the request of critics to make changes to the modelling — the latest being the life span of a nuclear plant.
And the agency said there was little evidence to suggest nuclear reactors in Australia would be able to benefit from running flat-out around the clock, noting they would face the same forces that are hollowing out the business case for coal.
The conclusions come after the CSIRO copped heavy criticism over a report in May that found Australia’s first nuclear power plant would cost up to $17 billion in today’s dollars and not be operational until 2040.
At the time, critics including opposition energy spokesman Ted O’Brien, who is spearheading the Coalition’s case for nuclear power, said the CSIRO analysis was flawed.
………………….an update of its GenCost report — which it carries out annually alongside the Australian Energy Market Operator — the CSIRO has largely stood by its earlier findings.
Nuclear’s long life ‘no advantage’
………………….CSIRO chief economist Paul Graham said even if a nuclear project could get a loan with a 60-year term, higher interest payments would wipe out many of the supposed gains.
……………………… low costs would be short-lived because nuclear reactors faced substantial refurbishment costs running into billions of dollars after about 40 years of operation.
For these reasons, Mr Graham said there was no “unique” cost advantage offered by nuclear compared with renewable energy projects backed by transmission lines and so-called firming technologies such as batteries and gas plants.
…………………………………………………………………………… No plant likely until 2040
On the subject of lead times to build nuclear, Mr Graham was steadfast.
He said suggestions Australia would be able to build its first nuclear reactor in sooner than 15 years seemed to stretch plausibility.
Nuclear proponents have pointed as an example to the United Arab Emirates, which went from having no reactors to commissioning its first project in 12 years.
Mr Graham said the UAE was, in many ways, a best-case scenario for the nuclear industry but the country was hardly comparable to Australia.
The UAE was an absolute monarchy with an autocratic style of government but Mr Graham said Australia was a democracy where policies were subject to many checks and balances.
Accordingly, he said overturning Australia’s ban on nuclear power, “planning, permitting and financing” a reactor would be a daunting task that took a lot of time.
……………………… “After we evaluated these three topics, potential for longer life, how often nuclear generates throughout the year, when we applied those numbers, we are still finding that large-scale nuclear would be 1.5 to 2.5 times the cost of generating from firmed solar and wind,” Mr Graham said.
……………………………….In line with its earlier findings, the CSIRO concluded renewable energy and the technologies required to back it up would be the cheapest way of meeting Australia’s future energy needs.
Energy Minister Chris Bowen said the CSIRO had accommodated the Coalition’s concerns and still found that Labor’s renewables-led approach was the cheapest way of overhauling the electricity grid.
He described the nuclear policy as “wildly optimistic”, in light of the report’s findings.
“[It] thought about those criticisms, analysed those criticisms and found that those criticisms don’t stack up,” Mr Bowen said.
………………………………..In what Mr Graham described as an “amazing achievement” in an inflationary environment, the CSIRO found battery costs had tumbled 20 per cent in the 12 months to June 30, while there had been back-to-back decreases of 8 per cent for large-scale solar.
Wind projects, by contrast, increased by 2 per cent last year following a whopping jump of 35 per cent in 2022-23 and an 8 per cent hike in 2023-24.
Cost estimates for miniature nuclear plants called small modular reactors (SMRs), meanwhile, were still by far and away considered the most expensive type of new energy project……https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-12-09/nuclear-power-plant-twice-as-costly-as-renewables/104691114
If you don’t know, vote no on nuclear
Paul SEKFY,
Yarranbella. News Of The Area – Modern Media – , https://www.newsofthearea.com.au/letter-to-the-editor-if-you-dont-know-vote-no-on-nuclear?fbclid=IwY2xjawHCJhpleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHfZmi7k4NSrBSYSgCBdH1DMvb4qmQAyFkXq6z6NPT1O3fwFestYaRYCKdg_aem_Ce9U6F-WQb71jMpXOintCw
THE fatuous debate about potential nuclear power options for Australia cannot be taken seriously.
There is no credible evidence supporting any such proposal either economically or environmentally in the Australian context.
The most recent Royal Commission, in 2016 in South Australia, into the nuclear fuel cycle concluded as much.
The history of nuclear power plant accidents and disasters should sound enough warning.
There is an increasing level of radioactive pollution due to the nuclear fuel cycle more generally and the ongoing release of radioactive material continues.
We now have a nuclear waste storage facility in South Australia due to our AUKUS agenda, but we have not been able to locate a necessary more permanent nuclear waste storage facility anywhere.
Sensible people do not want one to be anywhere.
This should signal game over but sadly not.
The economics do not add up and the time taken to build reactors will not assist in meeting our essential carbon reduction targets.
Further concentration of power generation capital in the hands of a wealthy few, regardless of suggested initial taxpayer investment is clearly not desirable or justifiable.
Just look at the coal and oil industries in terms of their dominant power and influence.
Owned by an elite few, they continue to pollute and expect subsidies to do so.
We now recently have seen how this folly grows.
Locally we have proponents of nuclear power promoting that it is somehow in our interests to pay them our money to hear these paid proponents spruik their theories.
Creative and clever solutions to energy and climate are needed, not this dangerous misdirection.
If you don’t know, vote no is the most appropriate advice with regard to the nuclear issue.
Surely a more sensible nuclear agenda for humanity and us Australians is a ban on nuclear weapons.
What happened to integrity and honor in the age of Technocracy?
Charles Hugh Smith, oftwominds.com, Fri, 06 Dec 2024, https://www.sott.net/article/496524-What-happened-to-integrity-and-honor-in-the-age-of-Technocracy
The hope here is that facing the reality of moral collapse frees us of the delusion that fiddling with technocratic financial abstractions and policy tweaks can reverse moral collapse.
Ours is a technocratic culture with a short attention span, and so problems and solutions are understood to be 1) technocratic and 2) instant. The problem is something that can be distilled down to a spreadsheet, formula, algorithm or legalistic policy, and the solution is some modification of spreadsheet, formula, algorithm or legalistic policy: all our problems will go away if we just end the Fed, switch to cryptocurrency, tweak some laws, get rid of the bankers, eliminate an agency, and so on.
These solutions will offer immediate relief. The problems will start melting away the minute we modify the spreadsheet, algorithm, financial settings or legal code.
But what if the problem is the collapse of integrity and honor, a moral rot that has consumed the foundations of our social order? If this is the root problem, then technocratic-financial solutions are the equivalent of excising a wart from the big toe and declaring that as a result of this procedure, the brain cancer has been cured.
What if the problem is that everything we’re cheering as Progress is actually the opposite–it’s Anti-Progress? What if all the technocratic “advances” that are constantly being hyped as wondrous are actually harming our physical and mental health?
So a product labeled as a “veggie snack” that’s nothing more than fat-soaked, sugary potato starch is lauded because it’s immensely profitable, a virtue gained by deceiving parents into thinking a “veggie snack” is a healthy snack.
That this is a culture in moral collapse is obvious, but we dare not admit it. That integrity and honor have decayed to the point of parody is equally obvious, but that too doesn’t register in a culture attuned to novelty, profit, gadgets, legalese, techno-fantasies and technocratic “solutions” to problems that aren’t even visible to technocrats.
Integrity and honor have, along with everything else, been commoditized into something we sell as a “product” or “enhancement.” Virtue-signaling has replaced actual integrity, and as the host of my latest podcast observed, the job of corporate CEOs is not to make quality products; their job is to elevate the corporation’s stock price by whatever means are available–including hollowing out quality, reliability and durability.
Seeking a Culture of Honor and Integrity with Emerson Fersch and Amy LeNoble (59 min)
In this state of moral collapse, we look to centralized authorities to solve all our problems. But the collapse of integrity and honor does not have a legal, financial or technocratic solution. We have to reverse that collapse ourselves rather than rely on centralized diktats from on high to fix what’s broken.
Before we get to the hope, let’s first review reality. Here is loneliness–soaring. – [excellent graphics here, on original]
And we all know how positive online interactions are for our collective mental health:
Every one of these graphics depicts a social order in collapse, yet this truth is greeted with silence or delusional misdirections and self-referential parodies being passed off as “solutions.”
Let’s say we want a lifestyle stripped of denial, moral rot, techno-fantasies and technocratic delusions, a lifestyle of responsibility, accountability, integrity and honor. Oops, sorry, that lifestyle is out of stock and we don’t anticipate any reordering.
The hope here is that facing the reality of moral collapse frees us of the delusion that fiddling with technocratic financial abstractions and policy tweaks can reverse moral collapse and Anti-Progress. We are then free to see the problem is spiritual and cultural, realms that we change in our own lives, not by waiting around for central authorities–the state, Big Tech, etc.–to fix for us.
We need a new way of living, not more gadgets and financial “innovations.” A restoration of basic integrity and honor cannot be achieved by technocratic “solutions”–policies, crypto, apps, algos, AI–for the belief that these are solutions has blinded us to the decay and collapse of the foundations of the social order.
Yes, it’s understandable that we all want a solution to the collapse of integrity and honor to be done for us by some new app or a new law, but that’s like thinking the wart on the big toe is the source of the brain cancer. Real social change comes from the ground up, not the top down. I explore these themes in my new book The Mythology of Progress, Anti-Progress and a Mythology for the 21st Century.
(free sample chapter)
New podcast:Seeking a Culture of Honor and Integrity with Emerson Fersch and Amy LeNoble (59 min)
‘Nothing to see here’ says Australia as third Thales corruption case starts globally
the NACC did not appear to have placed sufficient weight on the seriousness of the matter, particularly as Thales is linked to several international corruption matters, operates in one of the most corrupt industries in the world, and currently manages Australian Government contracts worth billions of dollars.
the Defence Department hired an external negotiator with a conflict of interest to lead its billion-dollar negotiations with Thales……………………………………Defence’s two lead negotiators together owned 55% of Scotwork, and would benefit financially.
Defence Industry Minister Pat Conroy turns a blind eye to “unethical conduct” between Thales and the Defence Department despite national audit office warning of “capture” by weapons giants
Michelle Fahy, Dec 08, 2024, https://undueinfluence.substack.com/p/nothing-to-see-here-says-australia?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=297295&post_id=152750589&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
Part 3 of 3 (read part 1 and part 2)
The number of corruption investigations into the Thales Group continues to mount internationally with another announced two weeks ago.
The UK’s Serious Fraud Office and its French equivalent, Parquet National Financier, are jointly investigating suspected bribery and corruption by Thales on a contract in Asia. Thales has denied the allegations.
This followed news in June that police in France, the Netherlands and Spain had raided Thales’ offices in those countries as part of two separate additional corruption investigations into arms deals involving the Thales Group, as we reported in part 2.
In Australia, however, the Albanese government has swept aside a key integrity agency’s reports of “unethical conduct” between Thales and the Defence Department, appointing Thales as the fourth “strategic partner” in the new domestic missile-making enterprise.
Minister for Defence Industry Pat Conroy dismissed as an “unsubstantiated allegation” that was “flying around” the documented concerns of the Australian National Audit Office about a former defence official sharing confidential information with Thales and later soliciting a bottle of champagne from the company.
In a televised address at the National Press Club on October 30, where Conroy announced the government’s appointment of Thales as a Guided Weapons and Explosive Ordnance (GWEO) “Strategic Partner”, the minister was asked whether he remained confident in Thales and its integrity.
Said Conroy: “Let’s be very frank about this thing that’s flying around. There’s an allegation of an incident that occurred in 2017. 2017 – seven years ago – under the last government.
“Defence has thoroughly investigated it and I’m advised that’s there’s been no evidence to substantiate the allegation. It’s important to note that there is one allegation, unsubstantiated.”
But Conroy was wrong to claim the Thales deal has been “thoroughly investigated”, said Chris Douglas, a Perth-based international financial crime consultant.
“It has not been. The Defence Department does not have the capability to investigate allegations that could involve corruption.”
Douglas said that a thorough investigation could only be undertaken by a law enforcement agency, particularly the National Anti-Corruption Commission, “using a full suite of investigation powers including electronic evidence gathering”.
“There might be evidence at the person’s home, Defence isn’t going to find that, or in premises occupied by Thales, Defence won’t find that either. That is why we have a NACC.”
Following the audit office’s scathing June report on the 2020 Thales munitions deal, the Defence Department referred the matter to the NACC.
According to the ABC, after receiving the referral the NACC instructed the Defence Department to conduct the preliminary investigation. The department later said it was unable to substantiate the allegation. (See part 1.)
Douglas said the NACC did not appear to have placed sufficient weight on the seriousness of the matter, particularly as Thales is linked to several international corruption matters, operates in one of the most corrupt industries in the world, and currently manages Australian Government contracts worth billions of dollars.
He added that if Thales was an individual, “based on its past behaviour it would not be given a security clearance, and therefore no employment”.
Following the ABC’s report, Minister Conroy was asked whether he was concerned that the investigation into the unethical conduct appeared “to have hit a dead‑end, with the Anti‑Corruption Commission referring it back to the department, which then found no evidence”.
Conroy responded: “I think the important thing there is all due process was followed… All the organisations involved have investigated this matter.”
GWEO Chief, Air Marshal Leon Phillips, added: “The department has investigated that matter and cannot substantiate what was alleged. So we’ve concluded those matters.”
It is a long way from Defence Minister Richard Marles’ promise on 30 June that the matter would be “fully investigated” in a way which is “completely robust, which people have total confidence in”.
Champagne bottle “least of the concerns” about Defence probity
At a hearing of the parliament’s powerful Joint Committee on Public Accounts and Audit in November, Senator Linda Reynolds, deputy chair of the committee and a former defence minister, raised strong concerns about the 2020 Thales munitions deal.
Reynolds alluded to discrepancies between what she had been told as minister in briefings by the Defence Department and the facts contained in the report.
“When I read this audit report and remembered what had actually come up to me in the [ministerial] brief, it almost made me feel ill … and that is very consistent with the advice that is in this report that went to a different minister in 2017.”
Reynolds’ remarks corroborated the auditor-general’s report: “Defence’s advice to ministers on the tender and contract negotiations did not inform them of the extent of tender non-compliance [by Thales], [the] basis of the decision to proceed to negotiations, or [the] ‘very high risk’ nature of the negotiation schedule.” (p9)
The report also said the department’s advice in mid-2017 to then minister for defence industry Christopher Pyne was incomplete regarding the Department’s decision to proceed with Thales as sole tenderer: “The advice did not address the legal basis for the procurement method, the risks associated with a sole source procurement approach, or value for money issues — including how Defence expected to achieve value for money and maintain commercial leverage in the context of a sole source procurement.” (p10)
We’ve had a history of ANAO reports and [Defence Department] mea culpas… It’s like groundhog day
Reynolds told defence officials at the hearing: “These are not the first appalling findings by the ANAO… We’ve had a history of ANAO reports and [Defence Department] mea culpas… It’s like groundhog day… I think the bottle of champagne was the least of the concerns in relation to probity.”
She said the fact that the government was continuing to award new contracts to Thales was a concern: “You’ve inherited a smell, a big smell.”
Defence appointed a lead negotiator that was providing training to Thales at the same time
In a repeat of the future frigate contract negotiation with BAE Systems (see our Sinking Billions series), the audit report revealed (p87) that the Defence Department hired an external negotiator with a conflict of interest to lead its billion-dollar negotiations with Thales.
The joint negotiation training was provided by Scotwork to both the Thales and the Commonwealth negotiation teams at the same time and location, with no segregation. It was fully paid for by Defence.
Furthermore, in November 2019, Defence was advised by one of its lead negotiators that Thales had engaged Scotwork to deliver a negotiation course (separate to the above training). Defence’s two lead negotiators together owned 55% of Scotwork, and would benefit financially. They said they were not involved with that Thales training, that Scotwork had strict ethical walls in place, and that the revenue was “not material”. Defence accepted this and did not enquire into the dollar value of the revenue.
Defence conducted its contract negotiations with Thales from 5 December 2019 to 19 February 2020.
These are just a few of the many serious issues documented in the audit report.
“Strategic partners” or state capture?
Thales Australia’s CEO, Jeff Connolly, said the announcement of its appointment as Guided Weapons and Explosive Ordnance “Strategic Partner” was “proof of the enduring trust between Thales Australia and the Commonwealth”.
In her evidence to the audit committee, deputy auditor-general Rona Mellor was forthright about the use of such language by government and industry: “One of the big issues is this…nomenclature of ‘strategic partnership’. You’re actually not in partnership. You have a contract… you need to hold them to account.”
On the Thales deal, Mellor told the committee that while big international weapons contractors did “important heavy lifting in defence specialist military equipment and munitions”, keeping an “appropriate distance in our relationships” was important.
She said the audit office had “ongoing concern” about the implementation of the recommendations it issued to Defence, particularly for long-term contracts involving “strategic partners”.
The current report focused on the munitions group, “but next week we’ll go into the shipbuilding group and we’ll see the same thing, or the week after we’ll go into the Air Force and see the same thing”, Mellor said.
“There’s a really big challenge ahead for Defence. The biggest challenge, [as] this one shows, is that there is a culture in these very long-term contracts… There’s a real risk that you get captured by the provider, whether it’s in incumbency in turning contracts over, or in the nature of relationships that you form.”
Thales Australia has managed the Mulwala and Benalla munitions factories for the Commonwealth since the late 1990s. The company has consistently ranked in the Defence Department’s top three contractors, earning more than $1 billion a year from taxpayers. It has $7 billion in current contracts with the department, Austender shows.
Senator Reynolds was defence minister for the final year of the more than decade-long procurement process for the management of the munitions factories. She was the last of seven ministers to oversee the process, which began in 2009. Reynolds became defence minister in May 2019. She approved the deal, along with then finance minister Mathias Cormann, in May 2020. The now $1.4 billion contract expires in 2030.
Dutton axes third wind farm ahead of nuclear pitch
AFR Phillip Coorey, Dec 5, 2024
Peter Dutton has upped the ante on energy ahead of the release of his nuclear power policy, vowing to scrap plans for a massive wind farm off the NSW central coast if elected.
The opposition leader’s pledge to not proceed with a wind farm off the coast of the Hunter, north of Sydney, takes to three of the six wind farms proposed by the Albanese government the Coalition would abolish.
The others are off the NSW Illawarra coast and the West Australian coast. The remaining three off the Victorian and South Australian coasts are likely to be spared.
Mr Dutton made the announcement in the Labor seat of Paterson, in the Hunter Valley, where the wind farm proposal has polarised the community and which the Coalition is targeting at the next election……………………………………………………………………. more https://www.afr.com/politics/federal/dutton-axes-third-wind-farm-ahead-of-nuclear-pitch-20241205-p5kvzv
1 This month
of the week – Disrupting War & Militarism in Oceania. Active solidarity. Radical practice.
Antinuclear 