Question asked of chatGPT:
”If 50% of all of Australia’s electricity demand was supplied by nuclear power, how many reactors would it take and how much space would the high level waste take?”
answer:
Australia’s Electricity DemandAccording to Enerdata, Australia’s total electricity consumption reached approximately 245 TWh in 2023 (https://www.enerdata.net/estore/energy-market/australia/; Confidence: high) . Fifty percent of that demand corresponds to about 122.5 TWh per year.
Number of Reactors Required
- A typical commercial nuclear reactor has a net capacity of 1 GWe and operates at an average capacity factor of 81.5 percent (2023 global average) (https://www.ans.org/news/article-6319/wna-report-nuclear-power-generation-increased-globally-in-2023/; Confidence: high) .
- At full power (1 GW) over 8,760 hours and 81.5 % availability, each reactor produces about 7.14 TWh per year.
- Dividing 122.5 TWh by 7.14 TWh gives ≈17.1 reactors, so you’d need on the order of 18 standard 1 GWe reactors to supply half of Australia’s annual electricity (Confidence: medium).
High‑Level Waste Volume
- Vitrified (reprocessed) HLW
- If spent fuel is reprocessed and immobilized in borosilicate glass, the high‑level waste volume is about 3 m³ per reactor‑year (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-level_waste; Confidence: high) .
- For 18 reactors, that amounts to roughly 54 m³ of vitrified HLW annually—a cube about 3.8 m on each side (Confidence: medium).
Unreprocessed spent fuel (as HLW)
- If spent fuel assemblies themselves are classified as HLW (i.e., no reprocessing), each reactor generates about 10 m³ of spent fuel per year (https://antinuclear.net/2024/10/27/drink-up-peter-dutton-needs-one-billion-empty-coke-cans-to-store-his-nuclear-waste/; Confidence: medium) .
- For 18 reactors, this equals roughly 180 m³ per year—a cube about 5.6 m per side (Confidence: medium).
Summary
- Reactors: ~18 × 1 GWe units
- HLW (vitrified): ~54 m³/year
- HLW (raw spent fuel): ~180 m³/year
