Accelerate the World's Transition to Sustainable Energy - to fight Anthropogenic Climate Change, page-35519

I think there is quite a lot of blissful ignorance here.

• You wrote: "Steam turbines , generators , boilers , controls systems , pumps etc are constantly repaired or replaced to keep the power station running . Baseload power stations require 24/7/365 operation and maintenance crews other wise they would grind to a halt very quickly. So , the claim that a nuclear power station would " last 80 years " is not accurate at all." (74718228).

First of all, no-one is claiming that it would last 80years without maintenance. Secondly, with maintenance it could last 80years... maintenance and "economic life" are not mutually exclusive. Essentially you are misunderstanding the phrase "economic life". It is quite clear you have never performed a life cycle analysis, for example look at this:

source: Giordano R, Gallina F, Quaglio B. Analysis and Assessment of the Building Life Cycle. Indicators and Tools for the Early Design Stage. Sustainability. 2021; 13(11):6467. https://doi.org/10.3390/su13116467

Notice how "repair" and "replacement" is in the "USE" phase? Well... lo' and behold the "USE" phase is the phase in which the "economic life" exists.

• You said: "The video also fails to mention the cleanup cost of a nuclear power station site"

Lol.. that is an argument I would like to have, as the life cycle cost of renewables from construction to deconstruction would be eaten alive by nuclear's comparables. Just how many wind turbines or solar panels would be needed in the 30-100years as opposed to the maintenance cost of the nuclear facility? Also... you are forgetting one big part of that life cycle equation, solar and wind renewables have a degradation of efficiency problem, that being wind turbines in particular are notorious for bad end of life efficiency, for example, the leading edge of the wind turbine blades can be degraded with exposure to the weather from "particles in the wind" (listen to the engineering problems here: https://youtu.be/og2H7ZxkiMA?si=Rq-XPyLkJEeydjOg) It was previously thought the life cycle of wind and solar was pretty good 25years+ ... however in reality, this is not true at all, "The claimed 25-year life span of wind turbines has in reality been just 7-10 years before having to be replaced along with their enormous blades. That has significantly increased the operating costs of the wind farms and created a huge waste disposal issue that neither the industry nor state regulators were prepared to deal with." (source: https://www.instituteforenergyresearch.org/renewable/wind-turbines-and-solar-panels-are-aging-prematurely)

Don't even mention what happens when there is no sunshine or wind, which would then require batteries or stored potential energy in hydro.... so you must add together the cost for the life cycle analysis of storage + renewables when you compare them to nuclear.

The bottom line is if you are going to talk about a full life cycle, why not just look at the evidence? And furthermore if this is all in the name of the climate change gods, why not see which is better for climate change? "For example, in terms of global warming potential, wind power produces 28.6 ± 3.2 g CO2-eq/kWh of GWP100 throughout its life cycle, which is higher than that of nuclear power (12.4 ± 1.5 g CO2-eq/kWh) and hydropower (3.5 ± 0.4 g CO2-eq/kWh)" source: Like Wang et. al. A comparative life-cycle assessment of hydro-, nuclear and wind power: A China study, Applied Energy,Volume 249,2019,Pages 37-45,ISSN 0306-2619,https://doi.org/10.1016/j.apenergy.2019.04.099.

Note: hydro appears to be lower than nuclear for CO2-eq/kWh... I am not sure if that is true... I have seen studies likening hydro CO2-eq/kWh to coal/gas (maybe they are discounting the "dam") regardless, hydro is geographically highly specific [you can't just build hydro-electricity wherever you want].

• You said: "The 60 to 90% capacity range is actually generous"

source: https://www.energy.gov.au/energy-data/australian-energy-statistics/data-charts/australian-electricity-generation-fuel-mix

If Nuclear replaces coal + gas, that is ~60-80% of the mix in 2016-2022 according to the above graph.

I doubt renewable projects would continue their trend after Nuclear was commissioned. In fact, that is exactly what the Government were worried about recently: "Anthony Albanese has accused the Coalition of hampering power price reductions in the short term by pursuing a nuclear power “fantasy” and “disrupting certainty” of investment in renewable energy." source: https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/article/2024/jun/20/coalition-peter-dutton-nuclear-plan-anthony-albanese-power-electricity-prices-renewable-investment

• You wrote: "Price of uranium?"

Australia has large Uranium deposits, no-one should be concerned about this. Also the amount of fuel in terms of kWh/kg is ridiculously efficient compared to the long list of materials required to keep building new wind turbines and solar panels over 30-100years (the real economic life of a nuclear power plant).

You wrote: "Dutton nuclear plan will only produce 10% of the grid's electricity . 90% will come from renewables. So the investment into new infrastructure is still required" Some of it, yes, agreed. However... we need reliable power in our cities for manufacturing and hospitals etc, the South Australian battery for example could only power all of Adelaide for 7mins lol... this is unacceptable.


source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hornsdale_Power_Reserve

• You wrote: "Conveniently forgetting to mention that those prices continue to fall"

Economy of scale was the reason it was falling, this will not last forever. For example, you will not one day be able to buy renewables for free lol...

• You wrote: "forgets to mention the many decades that we would have to wait for the " clean " nuclear roll out"

Compared to what? The fast roll out of renewables? lol... How long exactly would it take for the storage + transmission + renewables to be built?

The bottom line is... you were just wrong about almost everything.