Antinuclear

Opposition eyeing off six sites for nuclear reactors

New Daily, Poppy Johnston, Mar 12, 2024

Households and businesses close to the six nuclear power reactors the opposition hopes to see built could have their energy bills subsidised.

Teasing the coalition’s yet-to-be-unveiled energy policy at the Australian Financial Review Business Summit in Sydney on Tuesday, opposition leader Peter Dutton said the plan would likely include six nuclear plant sites.

Tasmania has been ruled out as a potential host state.

Dutton said the coalition would seek a social licence by incentivising close-by communities with subsided energy, a model he said was used in the United States.

“It provides incentive for industry to establish jobs,” he told the audience.

The opposition is expected to release its energy policy ahead of the federal budget in May, with the plan likely to include overturning the moratorium on nuclear technology and possible sites for reactors on old coal station locations to take advantage of existing transmission infrastructure…………….

The Albanese government has dismissed nuclear as an unsuitable technology for Australia that has a high price tag and will take too long to roll out.

Energy experts also say it’s difficult to estimate the cost of transitioning to nuclear given the technology is not currently commercially available.

Dutton addressed a number of what he described as “straw man arguments” against nuclear, including cost.

He used other regions with nuclear in the energy mix – South Korea and the Ontario region of Canada – to make his case for the system-wide cost of the energy source and its influence on power bills.

Reactors also produce a “small amount of waste” and Dutton said the government had already signed up to deal with nuclear waste via the AUKUS agreement……………………………. https://www.thenewdaily.com.au/news/politics/australian-politics/2024/03/12/dutton-six-sites-nuclear-reactors

March 15, 2024 Posted by Christina Macpherson | politics | Leave a comment

Cold turkeys: The demise of nuclear power

Jim Green, Mar 12, 2024,  https://reneweconomy.com.au/cold-turkeys-the-demise-of-nuclear-power-in-australias-aukus-partner-countries/

When announcing the AUKUS agreement in 2021, then Prime Minister (and secret energy minister) Scott Morrison said: “Let me be clear: Australia is not seeking to establish … a civil nuclear capability.” He also said that “a civil nuclear energy industry is not a requirement for us to go through the submarine program.”

However, Coalition Senators argued in a report last year that Australia’s “national security” would be put at risk by retaining federal legislation banning nuclear power and that the “decision to purchase nuclear submarines makes it imperative for Australia to drop its ban on nuclear energy.”

So, let’s see how nuclear power is faring in our AUKUS partners, the UK and the US.

This is a story about conventional, large reactors. All that needs to be said about ‘small modular reactors’ in the UK and the US is that none exist and none are under construction.

This is a story about conventional, large reactors. All that needs to be said about ‘small modular reactors’ in the UK and the US is that none exist and none are under construction.

The UK

The last power reactor start-up in the UK was 29 years ago — Sizewell B in 1995.

Over the past decade, several proposed new nuclear power plants have been abandoned (Moorside, Wylfa, Oldbury) and the only project to reach the construction stage is Hinkley Point C, comprising two French-designed EPR reactors.

In the late 2000s, the estimated construction cost for one EPR reactor in the UK was £2 billion (A$3.9 billion). When construction of two EPR reactors at Hinkley Point commenced in 2018 and 2019, the cost estimate for the two reactors was £19.6 billion. 

The current cost estimate for the two reactors has ballooned to £46 billion (A$89 billion) or £23 billion (A$44.5 billion) per reactor. That is 11.5 times higher than the estimate in the late 2000s. Further cost overruns are certain. This is an example of the Golden Rule of Nuclear Economics: Add a Zero to Nuclear Industry Estimates.

The UK National Audit Office estimates that taxpayer subsidies for Hinkley Point — primarily in the form of a guaranteed payment of £92.50 (A$180) per megawatt-hour (2012 prices), indexed for inflation, for 35 years — could amount to £30 billion (A$58 billion) while other credible estimates put the figure as high as £48.3 billion (A$94 billion).

Delays

The delays associated with Hinkley Point have been as shocking as the cost overruns. In 2007, French utility EDF boasted that Britons would be using electricity from an EPR reactor at Hinkley Point to cook their Christmas turkeys in 2017. In 2008, the UK government said the reactors would be complete “well before 2020”. 

But construction of the two reactors didn’t even begin until 2018 and 2019, respectively, at which time completion was expected in 2026. Now, completion is expected in 2030 or 2031. 

Undoubtedly there will be further delays and if the reactors are completed, it will be more than a quarter of a century after the 2007 EDF boast that Britons would finally be using electricity from Hinkley Point to cook their Christmas turkeys.

Construction will take well over 10 years; planning and construction over 25 years. Yet in Australia, the Coalition argues that Australians could be cooking Christmas turkeys with nuclear power 10 years from now.

‘Something of a crisis’

Nuclear industry lobbyist Tim Yeo said in 2017 that the UK’s nuclear power program faced “something of a crisis”. The following year, Toshiba abandoned the planned Moorside nuclear power project near Sellafield despite generous offers of government support — a “crushing blow” according to Yeo. 

Then in 2019, Hitachi abandoned the planned Wylfa reactor project in Wales after the estimated cost of the twin-reactor project had risen by 50 percent.

Hitachi abandoned the project despite an offer from the UK government to take a one-third equity stake in the project; to consider providing all of the required debt financing; and to consider providing a guarantee of a generous minimum payment per unit of electricity.

Long gone was the 2006 assertion from then UK industry secretary Alistair Darling that the private sector would have to “initiate, fund, construct and operate” nuclear power plants.

The UK Nuclear Free Local Authorities noted that Hitachi joined a growing list of companies and utilities backing out of the UK nuclear new-build program:

“Let’s not forget that Hitachi are not the first energy utility to come to the conclusion that new nuclear build in the UK is not a particularly viable prospect. The German utilities RWE Npower and E-on previously tried to develop the site before they sold it on Hitachi in order to protect their own vulnerable energy market share in the UK and Germany.

“British Gas owner Centrica pulled out of supporting Hinkley Point C, as did GDF Suez and Iberdrola at Moorside, before Toshiba almost collapsed after unwise new nuclear investments in the United States forced it to pull out of the Sellafield Moorside development just a couple of months ago.”

Sizewell C

The UK government hopes to progress the Sizewell C project in Suffolk, comprising two EPR reactors, and is once again offering very generous support including taking an equity stake in the project and using a ‘regulated asset base‘ model which foists financial risks onto taxpayers and could result in taxpayers paying billions for failed projects — as it has in the US. 

If recent experience is any guide, the government will struggle to find corporations or utilities willing to invest in Sizewell regardless of generous government support.

(The same could be said for plans for small modular reactors or mid-sized reactors envisaged by Rolls-Royce — it is doubtful whether private finance can be secured despite generous taxpayer subsidies.)

Many reactors have been permanently shut down in the UK: the IAEA lists 36 such reactors. Since the Sizewell B reactor startup in 1995, there have been 24 permanent reactors shut-downs and zero startups. 

Repeat: since the last reactor startup in the UK, there have been 24 shut-downs!

The capacity of the nine remaining reactors (5.9 gigawatts — GW) is less than half of the peak of 13 GW in the late 1990s. Nuclear power’s contribution to electricity supply has fallen from 22 percent in the early 2000s to 14.2 percent. 

Meanwhile, the UK government reports that renewable power sources accounted for 44.5 percent of total UK generation in the third quarter of 2023, a higher share than fossil fuels and around three times more than nuclear’s share.

What to make of the conservative UK government’s goal of quadrupling nuclear capacity to 24 GW by 2050? It is deeply implausible. The facts speak for themselves. Two dozen reactor shutdowns and zero startups since 1995.

The Hinkley Point project has been extremely slow and extremely expensive. The Sizewell C project is uncertain. Other proposals — including proposals for small modular reactors — are even more uncertain and distant.

Unsurprisingly, the extraordinary cost overruns and delays associated with Hinkley Point have complicated plans to advance the proposed Sizewell C project.

In 2010, the UK government announced that Sizewell was one of the locations slated for new reactors. Fourteen years later, construction is some years away and it remains uncertain if the project will reach the construction stage. EDF and the UK government are seeking to raise a further £20 billion from new investors. All reasonable offers considered.

France

The Sizewell C project is equally complicated across the channel due to EDF’s massive debts and its plan to replace the EPR design with an EPR2 design, about which little is known except that safety will be sacrificed on the altar of economics. EDF’s debt as of early 2023 was €64.5 billion (A$107 billion) and it was fully nationalised later in 2023 due to its crushing debts. 

In addition to its adventures across the channel, EDF has a “colossal maintenance and investment programme to fund” in France as the Financial Times noted in October 2021.

As in the UK, there has not been a single reactor startup in France since the last millennium. The only current reactor construction project is one EPR reactor under construction at Flamanville. The current cost estimate of €19.1 billion (A$31.6 billion) is nearly six times higher than the original estimate of €3.3 billion (A$5.5 billion). 

Construction of the Flamanville reactor began in 2007 and it remains incomplete 17 years later. Planning plus construction have taken over a quarter of a century. Yet the Coalition argues that Australians could be cooking Christmas turkeys with nuclear power 10 years from now.

France’s nuclear industry was in its “worst situation ever“, a former EDF director said in 2016 — and the situation has worsened since then. Another former EDF director said in early 2024 that the French nuclear industry is “on a slow descent to hell” and he has “fierce doubts about EDF’s ability to build more reactors.”

The US

The V.C. Summer project in South Carolina (two AP1000 reactors) was abandoned in 2017 after the expenditure of around US$9 billion (A$13.6 billion). Construction began in 2013 and the project was abandoned in 2017.

The project was initially estimated to cost US$11.5 billion; when it was abandoned, the estimate was US$25 billion (A$38 billion). 

Largely as a result of the V.C. Summer disaster, Westinghouse filed for bankruptcy in 2017 and its parent company Toshiba only avoided bankruptcy by selling its most profitable assets. Both companies decided that they would no longer take on the huge risks associated with reactor construction projects. A year earlier, Westinghouse said its goal was to win overseas orders for at least 45 AP1000 reactors by 2030. 

Criminal investigations and prosecutions related to the V.C. Summer project are ongoing: the fiasco is known as the ‘nukegate’ scandal.

Vogtle

With the abandonment of the V.C. Summer project in South Carolina, the only remaining reactor construction project in the US was the Vogtle project in Georgia (two AP1000 reactors).

Construction of the Vogtle reactors began in 2013 and the expected completion dates of 2016 and 2017 were pushed back seven years to 2023 and 2024. In 2014, Westinghouse claimed a three-year construction schedule for AP1000 reactors but the Vogtle reactors took 10 and 11 years to complete. 

The first licence application for the Vogtle project was submitted in 2006 so planning and construction took 17 years in addition to the time spent before the 2006 application.

The latest cost estimate for the Vogtle project is $34 billion (A$51 billion), more than twice the estimate when construction began (US$14–15.5 billion). The project only survived because of multi-billion-dollar taxpayer bailouts.

In 2006, Westinghouse said it could build an AP1000 reactor for as little as US$1.4 billion (A$2.1 billion) — 12 times lower than the latest Vogtle estimate of US$17 billion (A$25.5 billion) per reactor. Another example of the Golden Rule of Nuclear Economics: Add a Zero to Nuclear Industry Estimates.

Corruption scandals

In 2005, the US Nuclear Energy Institute claimed that Westinghouse’s estimate of US$1,365 per kilowatt “has a solid analytical basis, has been peer-reviewed, and reflects a rigorous design, engineering and constructability assessment.”

In fact, the estimate was out by an order of magnitude and the Institute’s involvement in a raft of corruption scandals has been exposed. No doubt the Dutton Coalition would happily parrot whatever lies the Institute chose to feed them, and no doubt the Murdoch/Sky/AFR echo-chamber would happily amplify those lies.

During the ill-fated ‘nuclear renaissance’, the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission received applications to build 31 reactors, but only the Vogtle and V.C. Summer projects reached the construction stage and only the twin-reactor Vogtle project was completed. Two out of 31 ain’t bad. Well it is, actually.

Thirteen reactors have been permanently shut down since 2013 with many more closures in the pipeline. The US has one of the oldest reactor fleets in the world with a mean age of 42.1 years. The mean age of the 29 reactors closed worldwide from 2018‒2022 was 43.5 years.

Around 20 unprofitable, ageing reactors have been saved by nuclear bailout funding but their future is precarious. In addition to the V.C. Summer corruption scandal, nuclear bailout programs are mired in corruption scandals (see here, here, here and here and if you’re still not convinced see here, here, and here).

Dr. Jim Green is the national nuclear campaigner with Friends of the Earth Australia and a member of the Nuclear Consulting Group.

March 12, 2024 Posted by Christina Macpherson | politics | Leave a comment

Coalition will seek a social licence for nuclear: Dutton

AFR, Phillip Coorey, 12 Mar 24

Communities will be consulted and “incentivised” to adopt nuclear power, Opposition Leader Peter Dutton says as he amplifies his case for the energy source to play a central role in Australia reducing its emissions.

Mr Dutton will also pledge to “ramp up” the domestic production of gas to help firm renewable energy, in his keynote speech to be delivered to The Australian Financial Review Business Summit on Tuesday.

He will also hint at an expansion of rooftop solar, as already flagged by Nationals leader David Littleproud, as an alternative to large-scale renewable energy projects and the thousands of kilometres of transmission infrastructure that those will require……………………….

In setting the scene for his nuclear announcement, Mr Dutton will outline three principles that will guide the policy.

“First and foremost, we want to get the highest yield of energy using the smallest amount of land,” he will say.

“We want to maximise the amount of energy we can obtain per square metre and minimise our environmental footprint.”

This will be achieved by putting reactors on or near the sites of old coal-fired power stations so they can use the existing transmission grid.

The second principle will involve seeking a “social licence” for the policy “by listening to and incentivising communities to adopt nuclear power”.

A third principle is that the Coalition will put people at the centre of our energy policy by making lower energy bills a key consideration.

Mr Dutton dared the government to lift the nuclear power moratorium and let the market decide.

‘Does not make sense’

But energy experts appearing at the Summit continued to cast doubt on the feasibility of the Coalition’s approach.

Carbon Market Institute chair Kerry Schott said she was technology neutral but nuclear “really does not make sense for Australia”.

“Nuclear by far, like daylight by far, [is] the most expensive,” she said.

“It really doesn’t make sense for Australia because we have so much renewable energy resources.”

She said firming wind and solar with hydro and “a little bit of gas” until hydrogen was commercially available was “by far the cheapest and easiest”.

She did, however, agree, that putting solar panels on every rooftop would alleviate the need for Labor’s thousands of kilometres of transmission infrastructure……………………………… https://www.afr.com/business-summit/coalition-will-seek-a-social-licence-for-nuclear-dutton-20240311-p5fbby

March 12, 2024 Posted by Christina Macpherson | politics | Leave a comment

Dutton’s nuclear plan will require huge subsidies

AFR 12 Mar 24

So the two prongs of Peter Dutton’s energy plan are to adopt nuclear power and to ramp up production of gas? (“Coalition to seek ‘social licence’ for nuclear power,” March 11)

Well, we know which of the two prongs will actually happen, and it won’t be the nuclear one.

To go down the nuclear path would require massive government subsidies – not just in the construction phase, but over their entire life of the power stations.

This is what is happening in France, where nuclear supplies 70 per cent of the nation’s electricity, and in Ontario, where the figure is 59 per cent.

Otherwise, the government would have to set electricity prices at a level that would underwrite the power companies’ profitability – irrespective of whether those prices were competitive with other forms of energy.

Either way, nuclear is not viable in Australia – at least, not on economic grounds.

Ken Enderby, Concord, NSW

Coalition must consider nuclear cost

Peter Dutton’s nuclear ideas (“Coalition to seek ‘social licence’ for nuclear power,” March 11) fly in the face of evidence.

The cost to build, the huge subsidies, the intellectual capital required, the siting, the water use, the lead-up time for power generation, the cost to consumers, the decommissioning costs, the half-life of plutonium 239 – none of this will deter him. He will continue to juxtapose the idea of nuclear against the reality of renewables.

He and his party will continue to stymie, mock and disparage our transition efforts. The Coalition’s “all of the above” approach sounds open-minded but disguises the fact that “all” does not include the necessary all-out push for renewables.

Nuclear has no chance of getting us to where we need to be, either in terms of emissions or in developing our crucial renewables industries.

Fiona Colin, Malvern East, Victoria……………………. https://www.afr.com/policy/economy/dutton-s-nuclear-plan-will-require-huge-subsidies-20240311-p5fbhj

March 12, 2024 Posted by Christina Macpherson | politics | Leave a comment

Tell him he’s dreaming’: Bowen rubbishes Coalition claim Australia could have nuclear power in a decade

Energy minister says average build time for a nuclear plant in US is 19 years and giving up on renewables would be a ‘massive economic own goal’

Josh Butler, 10 Mar 24, Guardian

The federal energy minister, Chris Bowen, has dismissed Coalition MP Ted O’Brien’s claim that Australia could develop a nuclear power industry within a decade, stating: “Tell him he’s dreaming.”

The mocking comment on Sunday came as the government continued to pour scorn on the opposition’s speculative alternative plan to renewable energy. O’Brien said the Coalition was in the “advanced stages” of finalising its policy, which is not expected to be unveiled for several weeks.

Bowen also told ABC TV that the government was open to amending its fuel

The federal energy minister, Chris Bowen, has dismissed Coalition MP Ted O’Brien’s claim that Australia could develop a nuclear power industry within a decade, stating: “Tell him he’s dreaming.”

The mocking comment on Sunday came as the government continued to pour scorn on the opposition’s speculative alternative plan to renewable energy. O’Brien said the Coalition was in the “advanced stages” of finalising its policy, which is not expected to be unveiled for several weeks.

Bowen also told ABC TV that the government was open to amending its fuel efficiency standards for motor vehicles while again denying claims from the Coalition and some manufacturers that it would increase car prices.

The Coalition’s push for nuclear energy in Australia has been derided by the government and experts. The opposition leader, Peter Dutton, has not specified where the potential nuclear facilities would be located, nor how much they could contribute to the nation’s energy mix.

Sky News reported on Sunday that a 2020 paper from the NSW chief scientist found a nuclear power industry would require tens of thousands of trained staff and at least two decades to become operational.

Responding to the report, O’Brien – the opposition’s energy spokesman – claimed the Coalition had received different advice.

“The best experts around the world with whom we’ve been engaging are saying Australia could have nuclear up and running within a 10-year period,” O’Brien said.

O’Brien did not reveal which experts the Coalition had talked to. Guardian Australia asked his office for more information.

The shadow minister said nuclear could be part of a “balanced mix” of other power types and he criticised Labor for being “negative”.

Bowen was asked about O’Brien’s claim that nuclear could be developed in Australia within a decade.

“Tell him he’s dreaming,” Bowen said on the ABC’s Insiders program, referencing the Australian comedy movie The Castle. “I don’t know what experts he’s talking to.”

Bowen said the average build time for a nuclear plant in the US – a country he called “the nuclear leader of the world” – was 19 years.

“Ted O’Brien thinks he can do it in Australia in 10 with a standing start, no regulations, banned not only nationally but in the three most populous states,” Bowen said.

The minister rubbished arguments that Australia should scrap its ban on nuclear energy to allow private industry to investigate options, claiming that establishing a nuclear industry would require “eye-watering amounts of government taxpayer subsid[ies].”

“I’ve had no one knock on my door to say ‘I want to build a nuclear power plant in Australia’ but I had plenty of the world’s biggest renewables companies through my door,” Bowen said on Sunday.

“There’s a myth this is happening elsewhere in the world. It’s not. Australia has the best renewable resources in the world. It would be a massive economic own goal to give up utilising those resources and go down this nuclear fantasy.”

Beyond suggesting nuclear plants be built at former coal-powered facilities, the Coalition has not confirmed details of their policy – including costs, timeframes, how local opposition would be overcome and the amount of power to be generated.

Dutton could fill in some of the blanks in his budget reply speech in May. He is under pressure to announce details.

Coalition MPs have been agitating for the opposition leader to outline new policies they can spruik ahead of the federal election, which could be held this year………….  https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2024/mar/10/tell-him-hes-dreaming-bowen-rubbishes-coalition-claim-australia-could-have-nuclear-power-in-a-decade

March 11, 2024 Posted by Christina Macpherson | politics | Leave a comment

Coalition’s nuclear red herring is a betrayal of the Australian people.

Coalition’s nuclear red herring is a betrayal of the Australian people

March 9, 2024 | Canberra Times
Tim Buckley, Annemarie Jonson
https://www.canberratimes.com.au/story/8547521/peter-duttons-nuclear-red-herring-is-a-coalition-betrayal-of-australians/

The sudden enthusiasm of the LNP for nuclear energy is another divisive, cynical and damaging ploy to ignite Climate Wars 2.0 and disrupt and delay Australia’s accelerating renewables transition on behalf of the fossil fuel cartel. The LNP’s climate and energy luddites burned a decade when they were in office. We can’t afford more of the same policy lunacy.

Policy confusion, disinformation and chaos around the nuclear furphy is exactly the solution if you are looking to destroy renewable energy investor confidence, deter investment, and set back our accelerating pathway to decarbonisation – the bedrock of our nation’s economic future. Investors need credible and stable policy and regulation.

The Coalition’s nuclear red herring, and its related threat to pull strategic public capital investment from utility-scale renewables, increases sovereign risk, and is a betrayal of the Australian people.

Nothing about nuclear power makes sense in Australia.

As former Chief Scientist Dr Alan Finkel has said, it would be 20 years or more before the first operation of small modular reactor (SMR) technology in Australia. We need to decarbonise our energy system and economy this critical decade to address the concurrent climate, energy and cost-of-living crises.

SMR technology is not commercial. There are no SMRs in operation outside of Russia and China. In November, the only SMR development in the US was terminated.

There are no private companies worldwide who can build and operate nuclear power plants without massive government underwriting, because they can’t get insurance.

Tokyo Electric Power Company went bankrupt overnight due to its Fukushima nuclear disaster, requiring a US$200 billion taxpayer bailout of the cleanup costs, which will still be being funded beyond 2050.

In promoting nuclear, the LNP is essentially calling for a massive multi-decade subsidy fest that would make the LNP’s Snowy 2.0 and NBN white elephants look like value for money by comparison. Where has the LNP’s staunch preference for free markets gone?

The LNP nuclear shills say they will soon announce sites for reactors. It is not clear in what universe they think they can secure social licence from impacted communities. Legal challenges and civic protest are inevitable.

How they propose to manage the financial cost of multi-centuries of waste storage and rehabilitation to mitigate risk remains a mystery. It is worth noting the unfunded £260 billion liability this decade UK taxpayers face for decommissioning its nuclear waste. Does the LNP suggest leaving this massive cost to future generations?

The economics simply don’t stack up. Firmed renewables are the cheapest form of energy. The cost of nuclear power generation is much higher than its low-cost clean energy alternatives.

But don’t take our word for it. The CSIRO and the Australian Energy Market Operator said in May 2023 that nuclear is “not an economically competitive solution in Australia”, and that we lack the “frameworks for its consideration and operation within the timeframe required.”

The 2022 World Nuclear Industry Status Report said that between 2009 and 2021, costs for solar declined from US$359 to US$36 per megawatt hour (MWh), a fall of 90 per cent, and for wind from US$135 to US$38 per MWh, a 72 per cent fall, while nuclear power costs rose from US$123 to US$167 per MWh, up 36 per cent in the same period.

Battery storage costs are falling double digits each year, and Goldman Sachs just forecast another 40 per cent decline by 2025. Massive ongoing deflation is a feature of renewables, nuclear is the opposite; massive ongoing inflation of costs, externalised onto the public (as highlighted by the World Nuclear News).

The Investor Group on Climate Change, representing investors with $30 trillion in assets, said there is no interest among investors in nuclear.

The IGCC notes nuclear has “project time blowouts of anything from seven to 15+ years and cost blowouts in the tens of billions, and lowest-cost technologies, renewables, batteries and so on, are available to deploy now”.

At last, we are seeing a huge influx of capital into Australia’s renewables transition, triggered by the enabling policy architecture of the Albanese federal government such as Energy Minister Chris Bowen’s federal Capacity Investment Scheme announced in late 2023. Our $3.6 trillion super industry has flagged this policy framework as key to crowding in private capital into renewables infrastructure.

Just last month Rio Tinto inked landmark world-scale 25-year power purchasing agreements worth billions that will underwrite the nation’s biggest yet wind and solar developments, powering the processing of its alumina and aluminium in central QLD with green energy.

The Investor Group on Climate Change, representing investors with $30 trillion in assets, said there is no interest among investors in nuclear.

The IGCC notes nuclear has “project time blowouts of anything from seven to 15+ years and cost blowouts in the tens of billions, and lowest-cost technologies, renewables, batteries and so on, are available to deploy now”.

At last, we are seeing a huge influx of capital into Australia’s renewables transition, triggered by the enabling policy architecture of the Albanese federal government such as Energy Minister Chris Bowen’s federal Capacity Investment Scheme announced in late 2023. Our $3.6 trillion super industry has flagged this policy framework as key to crowding in private capital into renewables infrastructure.

Just last month Rio Tinto inked landmark world-scale 25-year power purchasing agreements worth billions that will underwrite the nation’s biggest yet wind and solar developments, powering the processing of its alumina and aluminium in central QLD with green energy.

March 11, 2024 Posted by Christina Macpherson | politics | Leave a comment

Peter Dutton’s nuclear implosion after Dunkley byelection loss

The Saturday Paper, 9 Mar 24 Paul Bongiorno

Anthony Albanese had a good week, thank you very much. His opponent, Peter Dutton, not so much. In fact, you could say the Dunkley byelection blew the opposition leader’s credibility out of the water and left him stranded for a reset.

Not that anyone who bothered to watch the byelection night on the news channels would get the impression from the Liberals they had fallen miserably short of stalling Albanese’s new year momentum. Nor did their performance demonstrate that their strategy was on target to recapture the outer suburban seats they need to offset the loss of 19 seats at the 2022 election………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

a lesson for Advance and Dutton is that winning an election is a very different challenge to disrupting a referendum……………………………………………………………………………………………….

 We now have the framework for the Coalition’s “energy plan” – although whether this policy to build large-scale and yet to be commercially viable nuclear small modular reactors (SMRs) is a winner is questionable to say the least.

Albanese took time out from hosting the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) summit in Melbourne to say he looked forward to Dutton announcing the locations for nuclear reactors and where the financing would come from.

Dutton is in the same denial mode his colleagues showed in their reactions to the byelection loss. When he finally put up his head on Tuesday, the opposition leader ducked questions on who would pay for his nuclear “fantasy”, as Albanese calls it, and kept talking about a cheaper, firmer option. His spiel could only be viewed as unbelievable.

The GenCost report from the CSIRO and the Australian Energy Market Operator estimates by 2030 the cost of power from an SMR would be between $200 and $350 per megawatt hour, compared with between $60 and $100 per megawatt hour for wind and solar.

Treasurer Jim Chalmers said Dutton “is always on the hunt for cheap politics, not cheap electricity”.

It’s hard to see this as the winning reset the Liberals crave. https://www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au/comment/topic/2024/03/09/peter-duttons-nuclear-implosion#mtr

March 10, 2024 Posted by Christina Macpherson | politics | Leave a comment

Coalition must come clean on how its nuclear vision would work

 https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/coalition-must-come-clean-on-how-its-nuclear-vision-would-work-20240308-p5fb0k.html 9 Mar 24

NUCLEAR QUESTIONS

Simon Holmes a Court is right, “Australia’s climate wars will not end until the Coalition chooses engineering and economics over ideology and idiocy”, (“Nuclear option scorns our natural advantage”, 7/3).
Shadow minister for climate change and energy, Ted O’Brien has said, “The world is embracing zero-emissions nuclear energy because it solves the energy trilemma of affordability, reliability and emissions reduction”.
Does the Coalition honestly believe, in the face of successive GenCost reports and overwhelming overseas experience, that nuclear would provide Australian consumers with cheaper-than-renewables electricity? What then of the huge government subsidies propping up nuclear, for instance the $4 billion for the failed US NuScale SMR experiment?
If we, as David Littleproud suggests, allowed “the marketplace to decide”, how much would Australians subsidise such ventures? How does the Coalition propose to create reliability in our energy grid with nuclear, when it would not be available until at least around 2040?
Finally, in what year does the Coalition propose reaching net zero emissions? Some in its ranks want to renege on our 2050 international commitments, so any commitment is sounding hollow.
The Coalition needs to come clean with the electorate.
Fiona Colin, Malvern East

Nuclear numbers don’t add up
Nuclear power plants take six to eight years to construct. They have an expected working life of 20 to 40 years, but decommissioning takes 20 to 30 years. The numbers just don’t stack up. However, the building and decommissioning phases would provide substantial employment opportunities.
Louise Zattelman, Box Hill

What does Dutton know that we don’t?
Peter Dutton must believe the nuclear option for the provision of power is a vote winner at the next federal election. This seems to fly in the face of public opinion, experts who claim it is not feasible, practical, proven or economical.
So what does he know that we don’t? An election is looming. It’s time for the Coalition to think of practical policies that at least give them a chance.
Bruce MacKenzie, South Kingsville

March 10, 2024 Posted by Christina Macpherson | politics | Leave a comment