Nuclear Power Related Media Thread, page-2431

How do you explain the recent university of Queensland study which concluded that using the current AEMO for an:all "renewable" strategy on the NEM will lead to an 85% cost penalty against a mixed renewables (~50%) strategy alongside using the nuscale SMR for "firming"/ A major problem of an "all renewables" strategy (with about 4 hrs battery storage - all that's economically viable for diurnal swings) is that we get wind droughts - are we going to allow the lights to go off for these which can go on for about 3 days and happen about 4 times a year? The slides from the Univ of Queensland study show the whole system costs as against just the generation costs (only about 34% of your electricity bill -(retail about 15%)

https://www.nuclearaustralia.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/**riel_Rioseco_EA-NuclearPanel-2022-07-20.pdf

see slide "Results: Comparing Nuclear SMR vs No Nuclear cases" for the punch line penalty for the net zero case

The fact is that renewables are cheaper/Kwh than nuclear (including the nuscale SMR) but due to the variability of renewables and their lack of "inertia" (necessary for frequency stability) and renewables being in the wrong places leads to a big blow out in network costs (which are about 42% of your electricity bill). The stupidity of the "all renewable" case is that it leads to a big blow out in network costs and you still need the "firming" capacity on standby (running about 4 times a year- just in case the wind goes "pear shaped" with a drought - this is a very expensive insurance policy (but necessary for all renewables)