Sorry old boy but nuclear generated electricity for Australia is never going to happen.
Here's why:
1.We have no nuclear support industry. You can't just buy a nuclear power station off the shelf, plug it in and call Jim's Nuclear Servicing to come and look at once in a while. lt takes a huge amount of time money and expertise to establish one. Why would we do that for something we don't have and don't need ? lt's not like we have an unlimited budget .
2. Nuclear can't compete on price with renewables plus storage in 2024. Not even close. The costs of renewables plus storage continues to fall while the cost of nuclear continues to rise. The price gap is growing bigger all the time. That doesn't include the cost of establishing a nuclear support industry or finding a way to deal with the waste.
3. Nuclear has very long build times . One can only imagine how long that would take given our history with other construction projects . Our coal fired power stations are on their last legs and need to be replaced asap. Not in 2 or 3 decades time. We will be flat out building enough renewables and storage in time and they are many times quicker to build.
4. Renewables are decentralizing grid load and generation . While we will need the grid for a very long time, we won't need it in the way we did in the past . Households are already generating their own electricity. They are already storing their own electricity. They are already adjusting their energy use to maximise their renewable generation. Use electricity more during the day when it's generated . E.g. charge the ev. Use much less at night. Automatically collect and store electricity when it is in surplus. ln 20 years or so , almost no detached household in Australia will be a grid electricity user. At best they will be a net electricity generator. Many businesses and communities will be the same . So even if you built a large baseload nuclear generator, you would have no customers to sell power to. The ship is leaving the port now . lt will be long gone in 20 years time and it's not coming back. Even if you were to get nuclear fusion to the point where it was easy cheap safe and commercially available, you will have very few customers. The customers will all be powering themselves and sharing excess generation for next to nothing. All automated.
5. Coal uses a shed load of water. So does nuclear . Not hard to work out in a country like Australia that's a big issue. Renewables free up lots of water.
6. What about using nuclear for desalination you say ? Coal fired desalination is very, very expensive . Nuclear desalination is even more so. Not only do renewables free up water which means less need for desalination, it also means that we can run it with super low cost electricity . We are already experiencing duck curve issues in 2024. We are already curtailing renewables in 2024. Why would you build a nuclear plant to make super expensive water when you've got more renewable electricity than you can use ?
l could go on but l think that's enough for one post. Let all that sink in for a while.
