Dutton’s nuclear plan a “con job” and a recipe for blackouts, says Bowen
Giles Parkinson, Dec 19, 2024, https://reneweconomy.com.au/duttons-nuclear-plan-a-con-job-and-a-recipe-for-blackouts-says-bowen/
Federal energy and climate minister Chris Bowen has lambasted the federal Coalition’s nuclear power plans, describing them as a recipe for blackouts and a “con job”, and has expressed astonishment at Peter Dutton’s assumption of a grid that will use 40 per cent less power than forecast.
Dutton’s nuclear costings – revealed last Friday – and some of its major assumptions have been widely dismissed, even mocked, by the energy industry, although the proposal has garnered support from some with strong connections to the fossil fuel industry.
The reason for that is the Coalition’s focus on extending the life of the country’s ageing coal fired power generators, increasing the dependence on gas, and the implications for renewables, which will largely be stopped in their tracks, and climate targets, which will be ripped up and ignored.
The Coalition says it can get the first nuclear power plant running by the mid 2030s – a target most in the industry find laughable. But its own modelling confirms that most of the planned 14 GW will not be delivered until the mid 2040s, which means it must run ageing coal generators for another two decades.
“This is a recipe for blackouts and unreliability,” Bowen says in the latest episode of Renew Economy’s weekly Energy Insiders podcast. “Sweating the coal assets for longer, I mean, these coal fired power stations are not getting younger. None of us are.
“Just this week, we’ve had 3.4 gigawatts of coal out in the NEM (National Electricity Market, the main grid) and three gigawatts of that was unplanned, ie breakdowns, unexpected breakdowns, three gigawatts out this week.
“Now, the grid’s coped okay, even though it’s been very hot, but you’d still rather not have three gigawatts out, and that’s only going to get worse the longer you rely on coal.”
Indeed, the Australian Energy Market Operator has made it abundantly clear, and even the coal plant owners agree, that the biggest threat to reliability on the grid is the unplanned and sudden losses of big fossil fuel generators, particularly coal.
Over the last two weeks, AEMO has managed the heatwaves and the multiple outages and has turned to more demand and supply flexibility to help manage the situation, including putting several big batteries on standby – a protocol it is now using when the grid faces demand highs, and demand lows.
It is this focus on flexibility that is undermining the case for existing, let alone new even larger “always on” baseload power stations.
Many analysts say there is simply not enough room in the grid. In a submission released this week, Tesla said there was room for barely 1 GW of “baseload” without severe curtailment of household solar.
The Coalition, however, says it is determined to power on, but its costings have also come under heavy criticism – both on the assumed price and timeline of building new nuclear from a standing start, but also its assumption that electricity demand would fall more than 40 per cent below forecasts.
In the energy world, it is generally assumed that less primary energy will be used in an electrified world. But that’s because inefficient fossil fuel engines and generators (in cars, homes and on the grid) are replaced by more efficient inverter based technologies – wind, solar and battery storage.
That means less energy is needed overall (because around two thirds of energy from fossil fuels is lost as waste heat), but more electricity will produced on the world’s grids. The Coalition modelling shuts its eyes to that evolution, and assumes that electrification does not happen and fossil fuels are still burned in huge quantities.
“I spent a fair bit of time thinking about how they (the Coalition) might try and make nuclear look cheaper, and I’ve got a confession to make,” Bowen tells Energy Insiders.
“Not in my wildest dreams did I suspect that they would just assume we need less electricity. So they’ve said we’re going to need 40% less electricity than AEMO’s Step Change scenario.
“And guess what? Who knew if you make 40% less electricity, it’s roughly 40% cheaper. I mean, who would have figured? I mean, what a con job. We all know that nuclear is the most expensive. They had to find a way of pretending it isn’t.”
On Labor’s own policies, Bowen says that the Capacity Investment Scheme, which released the winners of the first major generation tender last week, is working better than expected, with 6.4 GW of capacity awarded rather than the planned 6 GW, and all representing new projects that have not begun construction.
“It’s working better than I thought it would,” Bowen says.
“And that’s a very encouraging thing. The value and the quality of the projects we’re having coming forward means that we can award more than we were intending.
“No, I won’t be giving tenderers an opportunity to know what our reserve price is. That’s not how an auction works, but (the result) meant that I could also announce for the next round that we’re going to target, in effect, 10 gigawatts, four gigawatts of dispatchable and six gigawatts of generation for tenders three and four.
“That’s huge, and that really means that those projects will get into the planning system faster and the emos connection process faster and help us get to our target.
“The only disappointing thing about this round, from my point of view, was the lack of projects that we could award in Tasmania.
“I want to see more Tasmanian projects come forward, and … we have provided feedback to Tasmanian bidders about that …. we’ve got to ensure that we might get more Tasmanian projects into the future.”
However, Bowen says there is more to do, and he is hopeful – should Labor be re-elected and he remains in the portfolio – to make more reforms.
“We’ve made good progress in the first three years, but not yet good enough, in my view, and you really need a good long stretch in a job like this to, you know, bed down the reforms and make them work properly, and keep the momentum growing going and and learn as you go,” he says.
“Obviously, you know, you just get, you just get more proficient on things like the CIS, etc, as you build the experience collectively in the department.
“I would say the next term … should we get one, as I hope and expect we will, is that it’s a combination of consolidation, so a whole bunch of things that are well underway just need to be bedded down and consolidated, including the CIS, including the new vehicle efficiency standards that … have been in the too hard basket for so long, but don’t actually come in until the first of January.
“So they haven’t had any impact yet, to be honest, but they will. Same with the safeguards reforms, again, big and huge and difficult to do, but it has got to be bedded down and continued with and so there’s so much at stake.
“And then there’s the what’s next? And of course, we’ll go through the process of the 2035 target, the climate change authority advice to sector plans. All that process is underway, but I really see it now as a bit of a continuum.
“Having made good progress in the first two and a half to three years, got to build on it, bed it down, continue it. And it’s just unthinkable to me that we would, you know, having made this good progress, then stop, rip some of it up and go backwards, as the alternative would suggest.”
To hear more from Bowen on those plans and more, you can listen to the full episode here once its published later today.
‘Don’t want nuclear power’: Wild scenes as protestors storm Perth’s CBD during inquiry into nuclear energy.
Wild scenes have erupted in one Aussie city’s CBD as protestors stormed the area during an inquiry into nuclear energy – with one protest leader calling it a “front” for the “fossil fuel industry”.
Emma Kirk, news.com.au December 18, 2024 -NewsWire
Wild scenes have erupted in Perth’s CBD after protestors attempted to crash an inquiry into nuclear power being held in the city.
Members from Nuclear Free WA, community groups and the public provided evidence to the inquiry on Tuesday, but it was not open to everyone.
Nuclear Free WA convener Liam Lilly said the Perth protest was an opportunity for people who could not attend the inquiry to have their voices heard in opposition to nuclear power in Australia.
Protestors were allegedly blocked from entering an inquiry held in the southwest town of Collie earlier this year, where a nuclear energy power station has been proposed.
Mr Lilly said it showed how much of a democratic process and the type of democratic values the proponents of the proposal were trying to push.
“They are just trying to bury opposition to these proposals and not have a fair democratic process in that regard,” he said.
“We do not want nuclear power in WA, we have better options in renewables.
“We also have great concerns about the longevity of waste products which remain radioactive for tens of thousands of years, if not hundred thousands.
“Unfortunately, the Coalition want to go ahead with nuclear.” Mr Lilly said in the time it would take Australia to move towards nuclear energy the climate crisis would be exacerbated.
“This is just a front for the coalition to extend the life of the fossil fuel industry,” he said……………………………………..
Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen said Australia needed new, cheap power now, not expensive power in 20 years.
“Ageing, expensive and unreliable coal plants are closing and we have to fill the gap. Dutton’s nuclear scheme would have us short on power for two decades – a sure-fire recipe for rolling and expensive blackouts,” he said. https://www.news.com.au/national/western-australia/dont-want-nuclear-power-wild-scenes-as-protestors-storm-perths-cbd-during-inquiry-into-nuclear-energy/news-story/4ac311659be07d70160723983dc08b0b
World’s largest iceberg on the move again after months spinning on the spot
The iceberg is about three times the size of New York City and more than twice the size of Greater London
Rituparna Chatterjee, Independent 15th Dec 2024, https://www.independent.co.uk/climate-change/news/world-largest-iceberg-a23a-moving-antarctic-b2664564.html
The world’s largest iceberg is on the move again after decades of being grounded on the seafloor and more recently spinning on the spot, according to the British Antarctic Survey (BAS).
The mega A23a iceberg has broken free from its position north of the South Orkney Islands and is now drifting in the Southern Ocean, scientists said.
“It’s exciting to see A23a on the move again after periods of being stuck. We are interested to see if it will take the same route the other large icebergs that have calved off Antarctica have taken. And more importantly what impact this will have on the local ecosystem,” Dr Andrew Meijers, an oceanographer at the BAS, said.
The iceberg, known as A23a, split from the Antarctic’s Filchner Ice Shelf in 1986. But it became stuck to the ocean floor and had remained for many years in the Weddell Sea.
Scientists anticipate that A23a will continue its journey into the Southern Ocean following the Antarctic Circumpolar Current, which is likely to drive it towards the sub-Antarctic island of South Georgia. In that region it will encounter warmer water and is expected to break up into smaller icebergs and eventually melt.
Less power, more climate pollution: Four ways Dutton is cooking the books on nuclear
Climate Council , 13 Dec 24
“PETER DUTTON’S NUCLEAR numbers have more holes than Swiss cheese, leaving out big ticket items like the costs of dealing with radioactive waste,” says the Climate Council CEO Amanda McKenzie, slamming the Federal Coalition’s misleading modelling.
“Dutton must be honest with the Australian people. CSIRO tells us nuclear is double the cost of renewables, no amount of dodgy accounting can change the facts.”
Nicki Hutley, Climate Councillor and economist, said: “It’s shocking to see the Federal Coalition knowingly mislead Australians on the true costs of nuclear. If we’re going to debate the economics of energy it must be based. on real-world evidence – not dodgy modelling that obscures the real price tag.”
The Climate Council has identified four ways that the Federal Coalition appear to be cooking the books with their dodgy nuclear numbers:
1) Ignoring the costs of keeping our ageing coal-fired generators operating for longer, which would cost a bomb in constant maintenance and fault repairs, and produce far more climate pollution.
2) Failing to account for Australia’s growing electricity needs, producing up to 45% less power than our current plan by 2050. The Australian Electricity Market Operator expects power generation to double by 2050, and assuming any less is inaccurate.1
3) Underestimating the cost and timeline of building nuclear reactors, which international experience has shown cost on average 2.2 times more to build than their initial estimate, and take at least 15 years for construction alone.
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4) Excluding significant and certain costs from their estimates, including the costs of managing highly radioactive nuclear waste.
Nicki Hutley, Climate Councillor and economist, said: “Nuclear doesn’t add up for Australia. The CSIRO tells us that nuclear energy will cost twice as much as renewables, and the risks of further budget and bill blowouts are simply not worth it. International experience has proven that nuclear is a financial black hole, with the average project costing more than double its original estimate, and projects like the UK’s Hinkley Point C costing triple. We’re already seeing renewables deliver power faster and at lower cost today.”
Amanda McKenzie, CEO of the Climate Council, said: “The Federal Coalition’s nuclear scheme would send our kids’ future up in smoke. Waiting up to 20 years for nuclear reactors means burning coal and fossil gas longer—adding 1.5 billion tonnes of climate pollution by 2050. That means more deadly bushfires, floods, and heatwaves.”
Greg Bourne, energy expert and Climate Councillor, said: “Australians can’t afford to wait 20 years for nuclear. All our coal-fired generators are due to close before even the first nuclear reactor could be built, and keeping our old coal clunkers running past their use-by-date presents a critical risk to our energy security. We need more renewables backed by storage now so it’s online before more coal is retired.”
Amanda McKenzie, CEO of the Climate Council, said: “Investing in renewable power backed by storage is the only way we can tackle climate change and replace our ageing coal fleet this decade. More than four million Australian households have already put solar panels on their roofs, saving $3 billion a year on electricity bills. Expanding access to rooftop solar will cut bills further, reduce climate pollution, and drive a cleaner, safer energy future. Let’s focus on what’s already working.”
1 Based on total generation implied by 14 GW of nuclear capacity, providing 38% of total generation at an 89% capacity factor.
Inquiry into Nuclear Power Generation in Australia travels to Collie for public hearing
- By Bridget McArthur
- Anthony Pancia
- ABC South West WA 17 Dec 24, https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-12-16/collie-inquiry-into-nuclear-power-generation-in-australia-/104732722
In short:
The South West town of Collie is in the spotlight once again as the federal government hosted an inquiry into nuclear energy.
The WA government is in the middle of transitioning the town away from coal by 2030.
What’s next?
The federal Opposition wants to turn the site of one of Collie’s coal fired stations into a small modular reactor if elected.
Usually the domain of the blue collar worker, the small town of Collie has played host to numerous federal politicians in tailored suits in recent months.
Both parties have sent their leaders and a steady stream of federal and state MPs to talk about their respective energy plans to the community, which is expecting to transition away from coal by 2030.
On Monday, the federal parliament’s Inquiry into Nuclear Power Generation in Australia travelled to the town, 200km south of Perth, to hear the views of local experts and residents on the prospect of having a nuclear power plant in their backyard.
The proposal
The Coalition has identified Collie’s coal fired power station as one of seven sites where it would like to build a nuclear plant if elected.
Under the proposed policy, Collie would host a small modular reactor (SMR).
Small modular reactors have a capacity of up to 300 megawatts per unit — about a third of traditional plants.
Currently none are in commercial operation in any Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) country.
Several are in planning stages but they remain largely theoretical and the lack of completed projects makes it difficult to accurately project costs.
On Friday, the Opposition released a report detailing cost and time estimates for rolling out its nuclear plan.
However, it did not include reference to Collie or SMRs.
Coalition says there’s support for nuclear
The gap in existing commercially operational SMR projects internationally was a central sticking point in the Collie hearing.
Shadow Assistant Minister for Trade and Federal Member for O’Connor Rick Wilson said more than two-thirds of respondents he had surveyed supported the Coalition’s nuclear plan.
He said he had sent a hard copy survey to every house in Collie and followed it up with a targeted social media survey.
Traditional owners at hearing
Noongar elder Phillip Ugle said at the hearing he held concerns about the impact a nuclear reactor could have on local waterways, which he said were central to cultural ceremonies.
He also said traditional owners should have been the first group the Opposition spoke to about the proposal.
The deputy chair of the hearing, Liberal MP Ted O’Brien, said there would be a two-and-a-half year consultation process in each location.
He asked the panel of traditional owners if they had any advice for how they would like to see those consultations run.
Noongar elder Karim Khan said he felt it was late in the game to be asking this question.
South West Aboriginal Corporation Gnaala Karla Booja CEO Bruce Jorgensen said the group had not yet asked its more than 1,000 members for their opinions as they felt they did not have enough information.
Workers confused
Representatives from WA’s Electrical Trades Union (ETU) and Australian Manufacturing Workers Union (AMWU) said workers had been thrown back into uncertainty over their futures.
AMWU WA branch secretary Steve McCartney said workers had just made peace with and begun to embrace the Just Transition plan, focused on renewable energy and battery storage.
“There’s been a lot of consultation with the whole public. Everyone knows what’s happening here,” he said.
ETU WA branch organiser Simon Brezovnik said the “nuclear fantasy” had sewn chaos and uncertainty among workers.
Edith Cowan University Associate Professor Naomi Joy Godden said the community had the right to continuing consent over what happens to their community.
“This dialogue around nuclear has not happened yet and certainly the proposal was launched onto the community [without] any level of dialogue that is required,” she said.
The last hearing of the parliamentary inquiry will happen on Tuesday in Perth.
A final report is due by the end of April 2025.
Solar switch off: Dutton’s nuclear plan amounts to declaration of war against household energy systems
Giles Parkinson, Dec 16, 2024, https://reneweconomy.com.au/solar-switch-off-duttons-nuclear-plan-is-a-declaration-of-war-against-household-energy-systems/
Did you notice the headlines when Australia’s energy regulators gave notice of new protocols that would allow rooftop solar systems to be switched off – maybe once a year in an emergency to ensure that the lights stay on?
Imagine, then, the potential response to news that rooftop solar system might have to be switched off, or curtailed, on an almost daily basis – just to accommodate the 14 gigawatts of nuclear power that the Coalition says it intends to jam into the Australian grid should it be returned to government.
That is the reality from Peter Dutton’s focus on large centralised, baseload power systems, which, to be successful, must put a stop of the switch towards distributed and flexible consumer energy resources, much of it owned and operated by households and small businesses.
The Dutton nuclear plan has already shocked many with its cavalier disregard for climate science, grid engineering, energy reliability, and the costs to the country and consumers.
It says it is unable to say if or when its power plan might deliver a reduction in energy prices, but the biggest shock of all might be what it means for households, and the consumer energy resources (CER) that they might want to own – rooftop PV, home batteries and electric vehicles.
Basically, it assumes that the growth of CER and the electrification of home heating, cooling and other gas use is stopped.
The dominance of the grid is retained, initially by the big utilities who have so comprehensively screwed consumers in recent years, and then by big government, who will have to be the owners of the nuclear plants because no private investor will risk its money on the technology.
Some in the industry are describing this as an effective declaration of war against household solar and consumer resources on behalf of the fossil fuel industry and nuclear ideologues – a triumph of big government over the rights and opportunities of individual households and businesses.
Federal energy minister Chris Bowen has seized on this, and held a press conference over the weekend with the head of the Smart Energy Council to underline the fact that rooftop solar systems may have to be heavily curtailed – switched off, in effect, on a daily basis to accommodate Dutton’s nuclear plans.
This is supported by the likes of Tesla, which in a late submission to the federal nuclear inquiry sent on Friday says that rooftop PV will have to “severely curtailed” to accomodate nuclear power. Tesla says there is no room on the main grid for more than 2 gigawatts of “baseload power”.
But, first, a recap on what the Coalition has said it will do to accommodate its proposed fleet of 14 gigawatts of nuclear power capacity.
It has made clear it will scrap Australia’s near term Paris climate target, and delay any meaningful emission cuts until the 2040s because it wants to keep burning coal and gas, rather than installing wind, solar and storage.
It has vowed to cancel at least half of the proposed offshore wind zones, and rip up contracts signed by the government.
The Coalition’s own modelling suggests that the roll out of large scale wind and solar will be slowed to a crawl, but it offers no explanation as to how energy reliability will be maintained when it seeks to force two thirds of the country’s ageing and increasingly decrepit coal fired power station to stay on line until the 2040s.
We now know it will cost NSW up to $450 million to keep half of the 42-year-old Eraring coal generator on line for an extra two years – so how much will it cost to extend the life of an entire fleet of similarly aged generators, some even older, for another decade? The Coalition doesn’t say.
The Coalition claims nuclear will cost $264 billion less than Labor’s renewable focused plan. But its own modelling makes clear this is not the case, and that number comes from comparing two completely different scenarios.
And on a like for like basis, the difference is much smaller, just $64 billion, and that number is rubbery at best is only because it models 13.2 GW of new nuclear built at a cost of just $140 billion, even though it is costing the UK, with a nuclear arsenal and long established civilian nuclear industry, $92 billion to build a single 3.2 GW nuclear plant.
The Coalition has refused to say how, or even if, consumer prices will fall given the greater dependence on expensive and polluting fossil fuel generation over the next two decades, followed by the construction of the most expensive source of generation, nuclear.
But its own modelling depicts a dystopian future that should concern all households. It assumes significantly less electricity production, suggests a much smaller economy and a slow take up of electrification and electric vehicles.
This is critically important. Almost every energy expert in the country predicts that more than half of all electricity production by the 1940s will come from consumers themselves – through rooftop solar, smart appliances and supported by household batteries and EVs that will provide crucial support for the grid.
In the Coalition’s plan, this does not exist.
And the reason for that is quire simple: If the Coalition’s fleet of nuclear power plants are to deliver the modelled 38 per cent of all power generation, they will need to be operating at very high capacity factors, meaning they will seek to be “always on”.
That means generating at or near 13 GW at all times. Even in the middle of the day, when rooftop solar has been eating into demand to such an extent that minimum “operating” demand levels – the demand that must be met by large scale energy sources – has already fallen to 10 GW.9
Another 50 GW of rooftop solar is predicted by the time that the Coalition’s nuclear power plants are built.
Federal energy and climate minister Chris Bowen says this would result in rooftop solar being curtailed about 67 per cent of the time – or several hours a day, every day, on average, and a lot not being installed.
“What we would see is solar, Australia’s booming solar industry stopped in its tracks,” Bowen said.
“Analysis shows that more than 60% of the rooftop solar operating during the day would have to be switched off in that circumstance, couldn’t feed into the grid.
“More than 60% on a regular basis, would just not be able to operate and feed into the grid at any particular time.
“Now that undermines the fundamental economics of the rooftop solar industry, which is developed in Australia in no small part due to the Renewable Energy Target the previous Labor government put in place, which the Liberal Party opposed, which Tony Abbott tried to abolish, and which they still don’t believe in.”
SEC chief executive John Grimes agreed, noting that there are 4 million households and small business owners saving money with rooftop solar.
“This is a solar stopper policy. Peter Dutton wants to take that away from Australians, and worse than that, he wants to take away the pathway for the 4 million more who want to get solar on their rooftop.
“What we should be doing is backing in the government scheme to make solar cheaper for all Australians. We should be putting solar on every rooftop, because that is the pathway to cost of living reductions.”
Others agree. Tesla, the Australian market leader in electric vehicles and household batteries, says rooftop solar will have to be “severely curtailed” if nuclear is jammed into the grid. It says there is barely room for 1 GW of baseload in big grids such as NSW and Queensland, and no room at all in South Australia and Western Australia.
“Any large-scale build out of this type of inflexible baseload supply will therefore be impacted by minimum generation levels, resulting in either low-capacity factors for the nuclear plants and/or unit decommitment (bidding out of the market), or severe curtailment of cheaper rooftop solar and renewables,” Tesla writes
Dutton’s obsession with baseload, and his failure to understand the flexibility and advantages of consumer resources and new technologies, was revealed on Friday when he sought to demonise rooftop solar by claiming it could not charge an EV and a household battery at the same time.
Of course, that is complete nonsense. But it continues a disturbing theme among the Coalition front bench, who have taken turns to mock EVs, big batteries, and in Duttons’s case even make fun of the fact that climate change is threatening the very existence of low-lying Pacific nations.
Clean Energy Council chief Kane Thornton says Dutton’s plan will be a massive shock and concern to investors who have invested $40 billion into large-sale renewable energy in Australia since 2020.
“A nuclear-powered energy grid would also be a disaster for the four million Australian homes that have already installed a rooftop solar system as a way to lower their power bills,” Thornton said in a statement.
“These systems would have to be switched off regularly if Australia was to move to inflexible nuclear power.
“This would be absurd, forcing the cheapest form of generation on people’s homes to turn off so that the most expensive could continue to operate around the clock.”
Folly of Fission Impossible exposed by the fiscal facts
The Age 15th Dec 2024 , Ian Walker, Leonay
I worked in the nuclear energy business in England in the 1960s and I have monitored disappointment after disappointment for the past 50 years (“Coalition nuclear plan a risk to growth”, December 14). The Fast Breeder reactors haven’t worked. The Tokamak “Donut” fission reactor was abandoned by Harwell (in Britain) in the 60s only to be “invented” by the Russians in the 70s. It’s still failing to make progress. There have been many proposals to improve reactor efficiency, none of which have won universal acceptance. Small modular nuclear power plants are still in development, by fewer participants. They might work one day; let’s hope it’s before Earth’s supply of uranium runs out in 80 years’ time.
Tony Lewis, Mount Victoria, I have an array of solar panels on my roof, rated at 13,000 watts. The total cost of such panels, including all wiring and electronics, is $10,000 in today’s prices. That is $800 per kilowatt. The CSIRO estimates the capital costs of a 2200Mwe nuclear power station, in the range of one of Peter Dutton’s nuclear power stations, is $7675 to $12,500 per kilowatt. That is a minimum of a 10-fold increase in costs over what Australians will now pay for their rooftop solar panels. I pay no electricity bills and the 13,000 watts of panels also charges my EV for free.
Nuclear power stations have huge running costs. Rooftop solar panels have zero running costs for a life span of at least 25 years. We can now run not only our homes but our cars for zilch. Will Chris Bowen stop telling the public the costs of nuclear power are twice as expensive than solar? For domestic purposes nuclear power is at least 10 times more expensive.
Wind, solar, and hydro energy are cheap and proven and they are being adopted on a worldwide scale. Cost reductions continue to happen. These investments should last, with maintenance, for four billion years. A good battery changes everything. Put your money on the vast amount of research achieving a battery breakthrough.
Margaret McDonald, Deakin (ACT), Australia is one of the driest places on earth, with erratic or inadequate rainfall and devastating droughts. Nuclear power plants require enormous amounts of water to function. The examples that are being talked about at the moment are all located in the northern hemisphere in countries like Canada and Britain, where lack of water is not an issue. Where is the water going to come from? Which farmers are going to lose their water allocation? Which towns are going to have their water supply reduced? None of these issues are being addressed.
Robyn Lewis, Raglan, Dutton predicts Australia will need less electricity in 2050 than the government is planning for. If the nuclear plan goes ahead, Australians will be using candles because they will not be able to afford to turn the lights on. The exorbitant cost will probably mean higher taxes and bigger power bills.
Paul Fletcher, Berowra, We know the installation of solar-generated electricity is accelerating as we head towards 2030. What will be the financial impact of the Coalition’s nuclear energy plan on the 4 million (or so) domestic homeowners with existing solar generation systems? A nuclear power generation plant has to be operational about 90 per cent of the time. Which I presume means that 90 per cent of the operational time, each nuclear plant must be able to sell all of its electricity to paying consumers. Does the Coalition propose to block our solar-generated electricity exports to the grid during the day and take away the rebates we currently get from our exports to the grid? It appears quite clear the Coalition is proposing that all solar from households will be switched off by the grid operators in each state during the peak solar generation hours during the day. That will affect our solar investments. https://www.theage.com.au/national/nsw/folly-of-fission-impossible-exposed-by-the-fiscal-facts-20241215-p5kygj.html
Dutton says nuclear will cost $331 billion. Chalmers adds $4 trillion to that
The Age, By Shane Wright and Mike Foley, December 17, 2024
A nuclear Australia would grow 12 per cent slower every year until 2050, according to government analysis of Opposition Leader Peter Dutton’s power plan, with economists warning that less energy for the country will lead to a smaller economy.
The long-awaited economic costings of Dutton’s nuclear energy policy, released last week, revealed the opposition is banking on an electricity grid that ends up 40 per cent smaller by 2050 than the government’s plan, which predicts the country to be almost entirely powered by renewables.
Government figures revealed to this masthead project that under Labor’s energy plan the economy would grow at 2.12 per cent a year. But under the opposition’s plan for a smaller grid, the figures state the economy would grow at 1.89 per cent a year.
That equates to a 12 per cent difference in annual economic growth, compounding each year.
The government has not provided this masthead with the analysis used to produce these figures.
Treasurer Jim Chalmers, while not revealing his expectation of how large the economy will be, said the cost to Australia under the opposition’s proposal would equate to $4 trillion by 2050.
“What these characters are proposing is a recipe for less growth in a smaller economy, with less energy at higher prices,” Chalmers said, referring to CSIRO findings from earlier this month that nuclear energy is at least 50 per cent more expensive than renewables.
“It means an economy which is $294 billion smaller by 2050, and the lost output between now and then would be about $4 trillion.”
………………………………………………………..Treasurer Jim Chalmers, while not revealing his expectation of how large the economy will be, said the cost to Australia under the opposition’s proposal would equate to $4 trillion by 2050.
“What these characters are proposing is a recipe for less growth in a smaller economy, with less energy at higher prices,” Chalmers said, referring to CSIRO findings from earlier this month that nuclear energy is at least 50 per cent more expensive than renewables.
“It means an economy which is $294 billion smaller by 2050, and the lost output between now and then would be about $4 trillion.”
…………………………………………….One key reason the Coalition’s plan forecasts lower demand is it predicts fewer people will be driving electric vehicles.
The government’s ambitious renewable plan is based on a scenario identified by the Australian Energy Grid Operator that assumes the capacity of the country’s electricity grid will need to nearly quadruple in the next 25 years.
However, the opposition’s model assumes the grid will only grow just over half as much and also assumes some existing energy-intensive businesses will either reduce their power usage or disappear.
The opposition’s forecast for the energy grid, based on energy market operator modelling of a scenario where electricity grows more modestly than forecast by the government, assumes electricity demand from heavy industry drops about a third between 2027 and 2030.
That could spell bad news for aluminium smelters like those located in NSW’s Hunter Valley and Portland, in Victoria, which are the largest individual electricity customers in the grid and major regional employers.
Australian Aluminium Council chief executive Marghanita Johnson said smelters used about 10 per cent of all the electricity in the grid, and the industry may have to shut if power costs become internationally uncompetitive.
“The next five years are critical for Australia’s aluminium sector,” Johnson said. “High energy costs, regulatory uncertainty, and more attractive policies in competitor nations make the future of our industry far from certain.”
……………………………………………Grattan Institute energy and climate change deputy program director Alison Reeve said the issue of electricity grid planning hinged on assumptions about economic growth.
“If you choose to have a larger economy, you will need a larger electricity grid,” Reeve said.
Independent economist and member of the advocacy group Climate Council Nicki Hutley said it was illogical to argue that power supply can be reduced as much as the opposition plans to do without also reducing economic growth.
“You can’t curtail the supply side to the degree that the nuclear plan does while using the most expensive form of energy without it increasing energy costs,” Hutley said.
The Australian Industry Group, which represents big energy users like manufacturers and smelters, said its members depended on the delivery of reliable and affordable power.
“Energy-intensive industries like aluminium, steel and ammonia are vital and should be able to make an even bigger contribution to our national economy if Australia delivers on our potential for energy advantage,” said AIG principal national adviser Tennant Reed.
“But they could shrink or exit altogether if they can’t secure energy that is internationally competitive, sufficiently reliable and clean enough to meet expectations from investors, customers and policymakers.” https://www.theage.com.au/politics/federal/dutton-says-nuclear-will-cost-331-billion-chalmers-adds-4-trillion-to-that-20241216-p5kymd.html
Netanyahu and Australia
By Peter Henning, Dec 13, 2024, https://johnmenadue.com/netanyahu-and-australia/?fbclid=IwY2xjawHIojtleHRuA2FlbQIxMAABHUWJqNvizL8WHJZxYN7U779UH03pCltHRtwXoRrjUiF8YZ4f9tCoCURbqQ_aem_ZfzYMXvnUoiUkusIlGg3lANetanyahu has demonstrated that he has the complete measure of the Labor-Coalition political class, that he only has to snap his fingers and bark an order and they will all do his bidding and follow his instructions with alacrity.
Netanyahu’s direct intervention into the Australian political scene has been a complete success for him. He now knows that he can control the political agenda in Australia whenever he feels like it. He gained control of the narrative of the synagogue fire almost as soon as it occurred, all Labor-Coalition politicians hastily falling into genuflection at his command, some only being briefly tardy by suggesting maybe the police should investigate before conclusions were finalised.
No Australian prime minister has ever been subject to such a public attack by the head of a foreign government as that delivered by Netanyahu on 6 December, so it’s somewhat unprecedented to watch Albanese so wretchedly buckle at the knees and capitulate like he was a little boy pleading sorry for doing something wrong.
To briefly summarise Netanyahu’s success. It was interestingly a very rapid response to the destruction by fire of two of three buildings of the Adass Israel synagogue in Melbourne, a synagogue by the way whose congregants are decidedly apolitical, not actively Zionist in any way.
Not with standing this, Netanyahu brazenly excoriated “the federal government’s extreme anti-Israeli position” for “the reprehensible arson attack”, linking the synagogue fire to what he described as Australia’s “scandalous decision to support the UN resolution calling on Israel ‘to bring an end to its unlawful presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, as rapidly as possible’, and preventing a former Israeli minister from entering the country”.
Netanyahu was immediately accepted by the pro-Likud Australian mainstream media as the man who should be in charge of Australian decisions, the vitriolic attack against the Albanese government reported as if Netanyahu was entitled to force his interpretation of events and allocation of responsibility as his essential unchallengeable prerogative, beyond question and to be endorsed as a matter of course.
Such is the level of grotesque obsequiousness now entrenched in the Australian political and media culture, that the direct intervention of Netanyahu in Australian affairs for his own political purposes is regarded not merely as acceptable but welcomed wholeheartedly, even by those he attacks, especially the increasingly out-of-depth, embarrassingly ignorant and easily manipulated prime minister.
Irrespective of the identity and motives of those who lit the fire, which are not known, the investigation has been quickly transformed into a “terrorism” incident by the police, which is exactly what Netanyahu sought to achieve, for it opened the door like magic to labelling any opposition to Israeli policies in relation to Palestinians anywhere, however criminal, as promoting “terrorism”.
It went like clockwork. We can expect to see bans against anti-genocide protests legislated post-haste, further clamps imposed on reliable information about Israeli atrocities, a strengthening of censorship and a McCarthyist-style “taskforce against antisemitism” designed to silence and destroy opposition to the annihilation of Palestinian society.
The extreme inability of Albanese to assert a strong voice as an Australian prime minister even against a man like Netanyahu, wanted for war crimes, is no longer surprising, but it is also not the right way to frame the terms of the relationship which now exists between the Australian political establishment – including the Dutton-led Coalition, not just Labor – and Netanyahu’s Likud party regime in Israel.
Consider that not once throughout the daily slaughter of Palestinians for more than a year have Albanese and Dutton spoken against it. Not once have they mentioned the wanton destruction of all places of worship in Gaza, whether Christian or Muslim, even when those places have been destroyed while (and because) civilian women and children in large numbers were seeking refuge in those places.
Their silence about massive atrocities contrasts sharply with their zeal to smear anti-genocide protesters as responsible for the synagogue fire, as abettors of “terrorism”. Even while Netanyahu was successfully imposing his will on Australia his own forces were killing Palestinians in Gaza in refugee camps, in tents and food-lines, as well as killing patients and staff in the Kamal Adwan hospital, not things that Albanese and Dutton regard as worthy of comment.
Netanyahu’s interference was notable for revealing his utter contempt for the Albanese government. With an Australian election not far away it could be said that he seeks to influence the outcome in favour of the more Trump-aligned, and more hard-right Dutton, who he probably sees as more amenable to the Likud party project now in full swing to eliminate any possibility of the creation of a Palestinian state.
As Israeli finance minister Smotrich said after the fall of the Assad government in Syria, it is an opportune time for the Netanyahu government to “create facts on the ground that prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state and remove this possibility from the agenda once and for all”, something which a Dutton administration in Australia would fully support.
The abject failure of the Australian political class to take a principled stance in full support of international law and conventions, and its failure to comply with directives from the ICJ and its distinct lack of support for the ICC’s arrest warrant of Netanyahu, due to its obsequious servility to the US, has now come full circle.
Just as Washington is the boss that actually allows Australia a little room to pretend to be an “independent nation” within its “rules-based order”, now it has been fully exposed that Tel Aviv is also the boss. And it’s a boss which won’t tolerate its Australian political pawns from deviating from the Likud Party agenda to silence all opposition to the creation of Eretz Israel encompassing all of Palestine, south Lebanon, the Golan Heights and other parts of Syria (as a minimum), which means the utter and complete destruction of Palestinian society in Gaza by any means whatsoever.
The Labor-Coalition political class will most certainly comply. The Asia-Pacific, including everyone from Indonesia to China, won’t forget or forgive. That’s Australia’s future. That’s the legacy of the Albanese-Dutton political class, whatever they might do in Canberra during the rest of their political careers.
Biggest losers from Coalition’s nuclear plan will be Australia’s 4 million solar households, industry says
Sophie Vorrath, Dec 14, 2024, https://reneweconomy.com.au/biggest-losers-from-coalitions-nuclear-plan-will-be-australias-4-million-solar-households-industry-says/
Introducing nuclear power into Australia’s energy mix would be a disaster for the climate and for electricity prices and for renewable energy investors – but the biggest loser would likely be Australia’s four million-and-counting solar households.
Reactions to the release of the Coalition’s long awaited nuclear power policy costings have flooded Renew Economy’s inbox on Friday, ranging from disbelief and astonishment to anger, frustration and dismay.
“Promising Australians a doubling of their power bills in a cost of living crisis is the worst Christmas present ever,” Smart Energy Council chief John Grimes said.
Introducing nuclear power into Australia’s energy mix would be a disaster for the climate and for electricity prices and for renewable energy investors – but the biggest loser would likely be Australia’s four million-and-counting solar households.
Reactions to the release of the Coalition’s long awaited nuclear power policy costings have flooded Renew Economy’s inbox on Friday, ranging from disbelief and astonishment to anger, frustration and dismay.
“Promising Australians a doubling of their power bills in a cost of living crisis is the worst Christmas present ever,” Smart Energy Council chief John Grimes said.
“To create space for inflexible nuclear power plants ramming energy into the grid, millions of household solar systems will be the first casualty,” Grimes said in September when the analysis was released, noting that solar is already being switched off in South Australia when it exceeds demand.
“Nuclear reactors cannot be switched off, meaning they continue forcing power into the grid even when solar is literally producing free electricity for 4 million Australians,” he added on Friday.
“Nuclear and solar do not mix, and it will be Australians who have to pay the price for that.”
The Smart Energy Council has also slammed the Coalition’s costings of its nuclear plans, describing every single line as contestable.
“The renewable energy transition will cost a fraction of the real world cost of nuclear, is largely being paid for by private capital, and is forming the cheapest, cleanest and most reliable power grid,” Grimes says.
“The renewable energy transition will cost a fraction of the real world cost of nuclear, is largely being paid for by private capital, and is forming the cheapest, cleanest and most reliable power grid.”
It’s a common criticism.
“Peter Dutton’s nuclear numbers have more holes than Swiss cheese, leaving out big ticket items like the costs of dealing with radioactive waste,” says the Climate Council CEO Amanda McKenzie.
Nicki Hutley, Climate Councillor and esteemed economist, said on Friday that it was “shocking” to see the the LNP “knowingly mislead Australians on the true costs of nuclear.”
“If we’re going to debate the economics of energy it must be based on real-world evidence–not dodgy modelling that obscures the real price tag.”
“Nuclear doesn’t add up for Australia. …International experience has proven that nuclear is a financial black hole, with the average project costing more than double its original estimate, and projects like the UK’s Hinkley Point C costing triple. We’re already seeing renewables deliver power faster and at lower cost today.”
Clean Energy Council chief Kane Thornton says Dutton’s plan will cap renewable energy at 54 per cent by 2050, despite the nation being on track to hit 48 per cent by the end of next year.
“This new target would represent a dramatic slowdown in the installation and investment of renewable energy across Australia and will be a massive shock and concern to investors who have invested $40 billion into large-sale renewable energy in Australia since 2020,” Thornton said on Friday.
“A nuclear-powered energy grid would also be a disaster for the four million Australian homes that have already installed a rooftop solar system as a way to lower their power bills. These systems would have to be switched off regularly if Australia was to move to inflexible nuclear power.”
“This would be absurd, forcing the cheapest form of generation on people’s homes to turn off so that the most expensive could continue to operate around the clock,” Thornton said.
Guillame Roger, an Associate Professor of Economics at Monash University, says the Coalition’s plan “objectively hovers between fantasy and hopeful naivete.”
“First, SMR do NOT exist today. There is not even a prototype of them. So we have absolutely no idea what they really cost. Second, the cost figures are hopelessly understated.
“The last nuclear plant built in the Western world today (Flamanville 3 in France) is 10 billion Euros over budget (at 13.2 billion euros, so A$20 billion total) and 12 years behind schedule; construction started in 2007.
“There is no mention of the maintenance costs of these nuclear plants. The refurbishment cost of the nuclear fleet in France (58 units) is estimated to cost 50 billion Euros over a decade (over A$75 billion), and is likely an understatement.
“Last, there is no actual model of the interaction of nuclear baseload and renewables in the wholesale market. Nuclear is even more rigid in its operation than coal.
“Today we routinely see negative prices in the NEM when renewables produce. Old coal-fired power plants that are already written off eat these intraday losses. But how will nuclear pay for itself then?,” Roger asks.
John Quiggan, a professor of economics at the University of Queensland, says the nuclear part of Dutton’s energy strategy is just a distraction, and will probably never be built.
“What matters is the disastrous decision to abandon our Paris commitments, keep coal going as long as possible and then rely on gas. A Dutton government can and will take immediate steps to implement this decision,” Quiggan says.
Associate Professor Roger Dargaville from Monash University says the biggest flaw in the coalition’s is that it completely fails in the primary objective to reduce carbon emissions quickly.
“For nuclear to be part of the mix, coal-fired generators need to be kept going well beyond their current scheduled shut down timetable, resulting in carbon emissions for the electricity sector way above the target set by the current government (i.e. 82% renewables by 2030),” Dargaville said on Friday.
“To meet Australia’s UNFCCC Paris commitments, the electricity sector must do most of the heavy lifting in the next decade while transport and industry will take longer to decarbonise.
“The plan presented by the coalition fails to acknowledge this simple fact, and therefore any costings which it comes up with are not a relevant or useful comparison.”
The Queensland Conservation Council says its concern is the impact on industry, regional communities and solar households in the state.
“Queensland industry is already turning to renewable energy backed by storage to remain globally competitive. Rio Tinto is tendering for firmed renewables to power their Gladstone smelter,” said QCC deputy director Anthony Gough.
“This nuclear fantasy is designed to delay the renewable roll out, and in doing so it could devastate regional communities if industry closes shop because they can’t access the affordable clean energy they need now.
“Our research found that just building one nuclear power plant in Queensland would mean we have to switch off 45,000 rooftop solar systems every day to make room in the grid.”
Sophie is editor of One Step Off The Grid and deputy editor of its sister site, Renew Economy. She is the co-host of the Solar Insiders Podcast. Sophie has been writing about clean energy for more than a decade.
Dutton’s nuclear plan stops decarbonisation, punishes consumers and hurts the economy.
Matt Kean, Climate Change Authority Chair, 17 Dec 24 https://www.theage.com.au/politics/federal/dutton-s-nuclear-plan-stops-decarbonisation-punishes-consumers-and-hurts-the-economy-20241216-p5kyru.html
Achieving net zero by 2050 is non-negotiable. Australia and our global partners have agreed to targets that limit warming and maximise the chance to avoid the worst impacts of climate change, such as more natural disasters, rising sea levels, and species and habitat loss.
But the pathway to decarbonisation matters too. Cutting greenhouse gas emissions as far and fast as possible now can reduce the amount of temperature rise experienced in the years ahead and help curb the risks to our economy, communities and way of life.
That’s one reason why accelerating work to create a new electricity network built on renewables such as wind and solar – backed by storage, firming and peaking gas – is essential.
It’s the biggest abatement opportunity available in the short term and the most cost-effective form of new energy generation needed to underpin progress on decarbonisation across the rest of the economy. And the race to pull forward investment in renewable energy generation is on because the owners of existing coal-fired power stations have begun to close them.
The first shutdown occurred at Lake Munmorah, NSW, in 2012, and more have since exited the system. It’s now expected that 90 per cent of the existing coal-fired generation capacity will depart the system by 2035.
Against this backdrop, the Climate Change Authority will undertake analysis of the Coalition’s
nuclear proposal. We want to give the Australian people an economic and science-based
understanding of the impacts on the grid, the climate and their energy bills. But at first glance,
Peter Dutton’s nuclear policy stops decarbonisation, blows the carbon budget, punishes
consumers and harms the economy.
Under any scenario contemplated, Australia will be more dependent on coal-fired power stations for longer. The CSIRO says the best case for delivery of a single new nuclear facility in Australia is 15 years. And that assumes the legislative, regulatory, workforce and other issues can be resolved – and the cost blowouts and time delays witnessed overseas aren’t repeated.
Yet to replace all of Australia’s confirmed retiring generation capacity with nuclear as a zero-emission alternative would require deploying at least 15 to 17 large-scale nuclear facilities, or more than 50 proposed small modular reactors, by 2040. In the meantime, Australia will need to depend on coal-fired power that is increasingly unreliable and the cause of price spikes and blackouts. It would be strange to subsidise the ongoing operation of plants that can’t be guaranteed to actually keep the lights on.
It also compounds the challenge of reducing our emissions in the short and long term. Relying primarily on electricity from fossil fuels for longer would also delay necessary and achievable cuts to emissions in other sectors such as transport and industry, which depend on the availability of zero emission energy for their own decarbonisation pathways
The authority has calculated that for every percentage point that Australia falls short of achieving 82 per cent by renewables by 2030, about 2 million tonnes of harmful emissions will be added to the atmosphere.
The other element the authority will consider is cost – to the economy, taxpayers and consumers. For example, the proposal doesn’t just appear to slow decarbonisation, but the economy too. Some initial forecasts have already suggested it assumes an economy 40 per cent smaller than the alternative.
Assuming there will be far less demand for electricity means assuming far fewer Australians take up EVs or electrify their homes. It means assuming fewer industrial and manufacturing businesses switch to efficient, electric production processes.
The sensitivities are heightened given the proposal involves taxpayers funding nuclear power stations, which risks sending private investment now attracted to renewables offshore in pursuit of better returns.
The CSIRO, AEMO and the authority have all also made the point – a system built on renewables will lead to lower power prices for households and businesses compared with nuclear. It would take an astonishing leap of faith to suggest otherwise, but the modelling published last week in support of nuclear seemed to take that path.
The debate over Australia’s energy transition should be based on sober analysis, rooted in economics and engineering. It’s why markets, scientists and experts keep defaulting to a system based on renewables.
Alternatives that place faith in a technology that does not exist in Australia, risks slowing our economy, undermining energy security and stalling our bid to reduce emissions deserve scrutiny. That’s what the Climate Change Authority will do.
Matt Kean is chair of the Climate Change Authority. He previously served as a NSW minister for energy.
The Coalition is playing voters for mugs once again with its nuclear costings
the Coalition documents released on Friday don’t seem to get around to mentioning is that its proposal for nuclear power involves taxpayers taking on all the massive financial risks (apart from the other sorts) and costs.
By Laura Tingle, 7.30 ABC 17 Dec 24
The August 2010 federal election campaign was conducted amid continuing shock waves from the Julia Gillard coup against Kevin Rudd a little less than two months earlier.
So, you may be forgiven for forgetting much that happened in the actual campaign, and specifically, how the federal Coalition didn’t bother releasing the costings of its election promises until just 48 hours before voters went to the polls.
It had already refused to submit the policy promises for independent analysis — which in those days was done by Treasury and the Department of Finance rather than the Parliamentary Budget Office.
That refusal might not have mattered too much to the broad sweep of history if the election result had been different. But a knife-edge result left three crossbench House of Representatives MPs to make the call on which side of politics would get their support and, therefore, be able to form government.
In making their decision the “Three Amigos” — Tony Windsor, Bob Katter and the subsequently infamously loquacious Rob Oakeshott — relied heavily on a Treasury and Finance analysis requested by them post-election.
Its findings? That the Coalition’s claimed budget savings were out by almost $11 billion. In the current age of announcements measured in the hundreds of billions of dollars, that might not sound like a lot.
But given that the claimed cost of Coalition policies was originally only $31.5 billion, that’s a rather spectacular …. miscalculation.
It felt for all the world like the work of an ill-prepared, lazy opposition that thought it could coast to office amid the chaos of a dysfunctional government. And it almost did.
A perfectly timed announcement
There’s something spookily familiar about the circumstances now, as the opposition finally unveiled its much-promised nuclear energy costings on a Friday one week before the country closes down entirely for Christmas.
There may be a lot more detailed modelling in the document prepared by Frontier Economics for the Coalition than there was in 2010.
But the modelling, and more importantly the Coalition’s political message wrapped around it, doesn’t answer the myriad of questions raised by the idea of nuclear energy. And this belated release of what we are led to believe is a signature policy for the election comes as the Coalition still hasn’t released details of most of its other key policies — from tax to immigration.
The decision to release the costing on December 13 feels like the Coalition is once again playing voters for mugs at a time when it is up against a federal government that has spent the year apparently determined to prove it is not very good at politics, or persuading voters that it knows what it is doing.
The Frontier modelling does implicitly raise important questions about the government’s own energy plans: just how much coal-fired power will the system need as we move towards a system that is dominated by renewables, and for how long?; how much gas will be needed (and is it in the right place) to be used to “firm” or underwrite the system?; how much can we really rely on battery technology that is still evolving to store renewables? and just how much transmission infrastructure do we need (and where) for a mostly renewables future?
The government has “sort of” answered these questions. Most analysts will tell you that it is almost impossible to answer them precisely because the wheel is still in spin. Prices and technologies are changing.
But, up against an opposition leader who is better at cut-through messages, it will need to do a lot better than that.
Crucial to the political debate is the fact that much of the uncertainty around these decisions arises because they are being made by individual investors who are taking on all the risks in building new energy capacity.
And this must surely be the threshold point of difference with what the federal Coalition is proposing.
For the one thing that the Coalition documents released on Friday don’t seem to get around to mentioning is that its proposal for nuclear power involves taxpayers taking on all the massive financial risks (apart from the other sorts) and costs.
The Coalition wants this big shift to be overseen by a public sector which it usually loves to point out is notoriously bad at running big projects, either directly or via massive subsidies.
The nuclear divide
The electorate is a lot more disengaged than it was in 2010, but the politically dangerous part of the nuclear policy from the government’s perspective is how it plays to regional Australia and, a bit like Brexit, likely divides the country into two very different blocks of voters.
Many regional voters, most pollsters will tell you, are worried about job losses as coal mining disappears, are unconvinced renewables offer job replacements, and are very exercised about the proliferation of wind and solar farms, and by the transmission lines to link them to the grid.
Earlier talk of small nuclear reactors has disappeared from the model set out using the Frontier modelling, and that modelling doesn’t seem to make provision for the fact that there are usually high costs for a first build, or that most expert opinion says it will take until at least 2040 to have the regulatory system and build in place for a first nuclear reactor to be functional, not 2036………………………………………………………………..
The Coalition has been pledging all year that its plans would lead to lower energy prices for stressed households.
But Peter Dutton had to sidestep on that issue on Friday because there is no clear mechanism for his plans to bring down those costs any time soon.
All the energy experts will be poring over the details for days. One could say they would be poring over them for weeks but (almost as if it was planned that way) the media coverage and the debate seem likely to come to a screeching stop in a week’s time as everything shuts down for Christmas.
Like the 2010 election costings, not many voters may remember the details of any analysis.
But the Coalition will have to be hoping there is no political equivalent of the Three Amigos to answer to this side of the 2025 election.
Laura Tingle is 7.30’s chief political correspondent. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-12-14/politics-dutton-release-nuclear-costings/104723416
6 million have solar and will vote
The signature [nuclear] Coalition policy for the 2025 election will be a huge government-owned energy monolith.
The overall costs will be borne by taxpayers because the publicly owned reactors will bear them. But the overall profits will be made by the private sector which will queue up for the construction contracts and whose profits will balloon as the costs of construction inevitably and uncontrollably blow out.
the real aim of the exercise is not to produce the cleanest energy at the lowest cost, but to keep the profits of the fossil industry flowing for as long as possible.
Crispin Hull, 17 Dec 24
Opposition Leader Peter Dutton’s announcement on nuclear energy last week contained a welcome development. For the first time since about 1989, the Coalition has acknowledged that only governments can do some of the really big-ticket items.
Since about 1990, the Coalition has said, Private Sector Good, Public Sector Bad. But with the program to build seven nuclear power stations, the Coalition acknowledges that only the public sector can do it.
The publication of Fightback! by then Opposition Leader John Hewson in 1992 was the touchstone of conservative policy: the private sector was more efficient and could do things quicker and better than the great big bloated public sector full of lazy, box-ticking public servants. Taxpayers and consumers would be much better off, they argued.
If you can find it in the Yellow Pages, they said, buy it there. Or these days, Google it. Don’t let the Government do it, they said. The Government is not the solution to the problem. The Government is the problem, as Ronald Reagan said. Get government out of the way, and the private sector will provide the solution.
So, what has happened now? The signature Coalition policy for the 2025 election will be a huge government-owned energy monolith.
Gulp.
That will require the unlearning of three decades of conservative policy.As it happens, though, much of that policy was a cruel hoax. Far from being cheaper and more efficient, the neo-liberal conservatives did not – to use market parlance – factor in two critical elements of private-sector contracting: fraud and profit gouging.
Since about 1990 in Australia we have seen, through privatisation, a major shift of wealth and income up to the top two percentiles at the cost of people on middle income. From employees and small business to the managers and shareholders of big business.
In the 1990s, the neo-liberals (read, the Coalition) harped on about reducing the role of government, particularly government spending. It did not happen. Government spending remained at 38 percent throughout the 1990s’ privatisations and downsizing. All that happened was that the spending went from public health, education, and welfare into subsidies and tax breaks for the fossil-fuel industry, other big corporates, and private health, education and other providers.
Public spending remained stubbornly the same.
It will be the same with the nuclear reactors. The overall costs will be borne by taxpayers because the publicly owned reactors will bear them. But the overall profits will be made by the private sector which will queue up for the construction contracts and whose profits will balloon as the costs of construction inevitably and uncontrollably blow out.
Importantly, even though the Coalition is going for a massive program of government spending and ownership for its nuclear reactors, it has relied on a private firm of economists to do the costings. Surely, if such a massive spend and risk is to be undertaken by the public sector, you would want the public sector to do the costings.
As it happens, we have that. The CSIRO has costed and re-costed nuclear energy and come up with the same result: higher electricity bills and greater dangerous carbon emissions.
The private-sector costings, on the other hand, look like an exercise in: “These are the conclusions upon which we have based our facts.”
This is because the real aim of the exercise is not to produce the cleanest energy at the lowest cost, but to keep the profits of the fossil industry flowing for as long as possible.
However, it is an electorally risky exercise. Not because a generally financially illiterate electorate will see nuclear as a white elephant, but rather because an ever-growing portion of the electorate has rooftop solar and know it pays off.
Further, in the unlikely event that nuclear goes ahead there will be times when the grid has too much power and domestic solar generators will be blocked from exporting their product to the grid because nuclear power stations cannot be turned on and off without enormous cost and difficulty.
That is going to annoy the owners of four million rooftop solar systems. It would be about as popular as taking away Medicare.
The electoral dynamics for nuclear are made worse for the Coalition because more than three million of those solar systems are on the roofs of stand-alone houses – in the very suburbs and regions which the Coalition hopes to take from Labor. That is about six million voters in an electorate of 18 million.
Moreover, those six million voters are proselytising about the value of solar, and lots of tenants and unit holders – hitherto shut out of solar – want to get a slice of the action sooner rather than later.
The big trouble with nuclear is spending vast amounts of public money with no electricity generation for at least a decade, more likely a lot more. Whereas every bit of renewable infrastructure generates from Day 1 and every battery stores from Day 1. Voters prefer the here-and-now to spending on something they might never see.
Nuclear is a matured industry. It not going to get much more efficient, if at all. Whereas the efficiency of solar, wind, and batteries continues on an upward trajectory well beyond previous expectations.
When you add electric vehicles, the renewables pay for themselves very quickly.
The task for Australia now is to reduce our reliance on our $30 billion a year of imported oil. And to reduce our reliance on $30 billion a year of thermal coal exports before the world does it for us. These are energy and national-security issues.
The Coalition’s decades-long nuclear program and Labor’s continued approval of coal mines fail to meet the urgency and magnitude of the national-security risks arising from climate change and fossil-fuel reliance.
A government’s first priority should be national security: not just from the threat of arms but the threats of disasters and supply-chain disruption.
We need politicians who think about the long-term security of their people not the short-term profits of big corporations and the donations which come from them.
Peter Dutton in his ignorance is pushing nuclear reactors in Australia – including small nuclear reactors
Helen Caldicott, 16 Dec 24
Here are the facts re SMRs.
Basically there are three types which generate less than 300 megawatts of electricity compared with
current day 1000 megawatt reactors.
- Light water reactors designs – these will be smaller versions of present-day pressurized water
reactors using water as the moderator and coolant but with the same attendant problems as
Fukushima and Three Mile Island. Built underground, they will be difficult to access in the event
of an accident or malfunction. - SMRs will be expensive because the cost per unit capacity increases with decrease in reactor size. Billions of dollars of government subsidies will be required because Wall Street is allergic to nuclear power. To alleviate costs, it is suggested that safety rules be relaxed including reducing security requirements and a reduction in the 10 mile emergency planning zone to 1000 feet.
SMRs will be expensive because the cost per unit capacity increases with decrease in reactor size.
Billions of dollars of government subsidies will be required because Wall Street is allergic to nuclear
power. To alleviate costs, it is suggested that safety rules be relaxed including reducing security
requirements and a reduction in the 10 mile emergency planning zone to 1000 feet.
- High-temperature gas cooled reactors HTGR or pebble bed reactors. Five billion tiny fuel kernels
consisting of high-enriched uranium or plutonium will be encased in tennis-ball-sized graphite
spheres which must be made without cracks or imperfections –or they could lead to an
accident. A total of 450,000 such spheres will slowly and continuously be released from a fuel
silo, passing through the reactor core, and then re-circulated ten times. These reactors will be
cooled by helium gas operating at high very temperatures (900 C).
A reactor complex consisting of four HTGR modules will be located underground, to be run by just two
operators in a central control room. Claims are that HTGRs will be so safe that a containment building
will be unnecessary and operators can even leave the site – “walk away safe” reactors.
However should temperatures unexpectedly exceed 1600 C the carbon coating will release dangerous
radioactive isotopes into the helium gas, and at 2000C the carbon would ignite creating a fierce graphite
Chernobyl-type fire.
If a crack develops in the piping or building, radioactive helium would escape, and air would rush in, also
igniting the graphite.
Although HTGRs produce small amounts of low level waste they create larger volumes of high level
waste than conventional reactors.
Despite these obvious safety problems and despite the fact that South Africa has abandoned plans for
HTGRs, the US Department of Energy has unwisely chosen the HTGR as the “Next Generation Nuclear
Plant”.
- Liquid metal fast reactors (PRISM)
It is claimed by proponents that fast reactors will be safe, economically competitive, proliferation
resistant, and sustainable.
Fueled by plutonium or highly enriched uranium, and cooled by either liquid sodium, or a lead-bismuth
molten coolant. Liquid sodium burns or explodes when exposed to air or water and lead-bismuth is
extremely corrosive producing very volatile radioactive elements when irradiated.
Should a crack occur in the reactor complex, liquid sodium would escape, burning or exploding. Without
coolant, the plutonium fuel could reach critical mass, triggering a massive nuclear explosion scattering
plutonium to the four winds. One millionth of a gram of plutonium induces cancer and it lasts for
500,000 years. Extraordinarily, claims are that fast reactors will be so safe they will require no
emergency sirens and emergency planning zones can be decreased from 10 miles to 1300 ft.
There are two types of fast reactors, a simple plutonium fueled reactor and a “breeder” in which the
plutonium reactor core is surrounded by a blanket of uranium 238 which captures neutrons and
converts to plutonium.
The plutonium fuel, obtained from spent reactor fuel will be fissioned and converted to shorter lived
isotopes – cesium and strontium which last 600 years instead of 500,000. Called “transmutation”, the
industry claims that this is an excellent way to get rid of plutonium waste. But this is fallacious, because
only 10% fissions leaving 90% of the plutonium for bomb making etc.
Construction. Three small plutonium fast reactors will be grouped together to form a module and three
of these modules will be buried underground. All nine reactors will then be connected to a fully
automated central control room operated by only three operators. Potentially then, one operator could
simultaneously face a catastrophic situation triggered by loss of off-site power to one unit at full power,
in another shut down for refueling and one in start-up mode. There are to be no emergency core cooling
systems.
Fast reactors require a massive infrastructure including a reprocessing plant to dissolve radioactive
waste fuel rods in nitric acid, chemically removing the plutonium and a fuel fabrication facility to create
new fuel rods. A total of 10,160 kilos of plutonium is required to operate a fuel cycle at a fast reactor
and just 2.5 kilos is fuel for a nuclear weapon.
Thus fast reactors and breeders will provide extraordinary long-term medical dangers and the perfect
situation for nuclear weapons proliferation. Despite this, the industry is clearly trying to market them to
many countries including it seems, Australia.
The Coalition’s nuclear costings and their rubbery assumptions take us back to being a climate pariah
Nicki Hutley, Guardian 14th Dec 2024, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/dec/15/the-coalitions-nuclear-costings-and-their-rubbery-assumptions-take-us-back-to-being-a-climate-pariah
Despite a clever comms strategy, there are significant credibility issues around the assumptions on which the cost estimates are based.
The Coalition has moved a considerable way on climate and energy since Scott Morrisson brought a lump of coal into the parliament and told us not to be afraid. On Friday, the Coalition finally released the long-awaited details of the nuclear plan it will take to the election and, once again, asks us not to be afraid – of the price tag, the higher climate pollution and a range of other variables.
However, despite a clever comms strategy, there are significant credibility issues around the assumptions on which the cost estimates are based, and there are other critical issues that have been left unanswered. Australians have a right to consider all the issues they are being asked to vote on, with facts rather than political rhetoric. These issues can be broadly listed under three headings: the economics, the environment and the law.
The Coalition makes the point that many countries use nuclear power. It is true that 9% of global energy capacity comes from nuclear power, which the International Energy Agency (IEA) estimates could increase to about 11% if and when planned projects come online. But the world is voting with its feet, with the IEA reporting that around the world 560GW of new renewable power was installed in 2023, compared with 7.1GW of new nuclear. At COP29 in Baku this year, the conversations were not about whether to invest in renewables, but how to roll them out faster.
The primary reason the world is not embracing nuclear energy on a grand scale is simple: cost (although in Japan’s case, it’s also about safety).
The Frontier Economics report, which the Coalition is using to make its case, is written in an opaque way that makes direct comparisons difficult. Essentially, the report admits that the capital cost of nuclear is $10,000/kW, while solar and wind are $1,800 and $2,500 respectively.
So how is it that the Coalition’s modelling suggests that a world where nuclear makes up more than a third of the east coast energy grid could possibly be cheaper?
It’s easy to come up with the answer you want when you base your modelling on rubbery assumptions.
Firstly, we should appreciate that even a $10,000/kW estimate for nuclear is considerably optimistic if we look at the experience of comparable countries over the past decade. The cost at the off-cited Hinkley C plant in the UK has, to date, risen to $27,515/kW. Three others – France (Flamanville 3), Finland (Olkilutoto 3) and the US (Vogtle) – are between $15,000 and $16,900.
Delays have been a key factor in driving up the cost of nuclear power. The longer it takes to build and operate a plant, the higher the cost of finance. The Coalition believes we can overturn national and state legislation and acquire land and planning approvals virtually overnight. And then we’ll just install an ‘off-the-shelf’ nuclear power plant, ready to run.
By its own admission, having to tweak nuclear power plants so they operate at maximum safety and efficiency can blow out build times and costs. It beggars belief that the Coalition claims Australia, which has no nuclear energy capability, could ship, build and integrate into the grid with no challenges, with a 50,000-strong nuclear workforce appearing by magic.
There is no mention of the costs of extending the life of existing ageing coal-fired power stations, or the likelihood that these plants will increasingly fail as they reach end-of-life, raising energy costs as supply falls short and, increasingly, the likelihood of blackouts. And, apparently, nuclear waste can be transported and stored without cost
The Coalition also argues that, because wind and solar energy are not always “on”, we’ll need to build a lot more capacity, along with transmission and storage. It calls this “overbuild”, but its assumptions have overegged what that need might realistically look like, especially as battery storage becomes cheaper over time (unlike the experience of nuclear) and of longer duration.
Finally, to arrive at these rose-tinted costs, the Coalition has had to cut back on estimates of the amount of energy we will demand over the next two decades by almost half what the Australian Energy Market Operator says we need. That’s because it’s assumed we won’t worry about EVs or electrification. This is why the Coalition will undo Australia’s 2030 43% emissions reduction target, which we are set to get very close to, taking us back to our Morrison-era status of global climate pariah.
And this is the kicker. Under the Coalition’s plan, our modelling shows Australia’s domestic emissions will rise by around one billion – yes billion – tonnes, at a cost of $240bn to the economy, society and environment, based on Infrastructure Australia’s cost of carbon methodology.
The Coalition’s track record on climate and energy has always been poor. In this latest iteration supporting nuclear power, its credentials have been further diminished on climate, energy and the economy.
- Nicki Hutley is an independent economist and councillor with the Climate Council
1 This month
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