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I wonder if they could be floated on storage dams or lakes. Keep the evaporation down.
I wonder if they could be floated on storage dams or lakes. Keep the evaporation down.Why build Nuclear Power Stations, when we can create jobs by clearing the land and laying down solar panels?
Doesn't that look pretty -
View attachment 185346
Why build Nuclear Power Stations, when we can create jobs by clearing the land and laying down solar panels?
Doesn't that look pretty -
View attachment 185346
Got a better view from the other end of the above shot (Korean owned Sun Metals zinc refinery at Townsville) one showing the setting ponds... a beautiful thing.
View attachment 185362
I wonder if they could be floated on storage dams or lakes. Keep the evaporation down.
Yeah, and I guess windmills and power lines can get blown over too.Like most power generating plants, no matter what the variety might be, its important to place them in the safest place possible.
Floating solar farms has some attractions, as well as drawbacks.
View attachment 185413
mick
Thing is, there's absolutely no reason why the panels need to go next to the smelter.Got a better view from the other end of the above shot (Korean owned Sun Metals zinc refinery at Townsville) one showing the setting ponds... a beautiful thing.
Not the case in every country but in Australia we're not even slightly short on land and that's the cheapest and easiest place to locate solar panels.Like most power generating plants, no matter what the variety might be, its important to place them in the safest place possible.
Floating solar farms has some attractions, as well as drawbacks.
Big tech is bringing nuclear power back to life
Artificial intelligence needs clean and reliable energy sources
“Nuclear nightmare”, screamed the headline in Time magazine on April 9th 1979. One of the two reactors at a nuclear-power plant at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania had suffered an accident. The governor ordered an evacuation of all vulnerable people within five miles of the plant as radioactive gas escaped.
In the end, the accident resulted in no injuries or loss of life. Two decades later, The Economist visited the Pennsylvania hinterlands and found the second, unproblematic reactor still running well and enjoying strong local support. It cranked out power until it was mothballed in 2019 owing not to safety concerns but to competition from cheap shale gas.
Now Three Mile Island is coming back from the dead. On September 20th Microsoft, a tech giant, and Constellation Energy, the utility that decommissioned the trouble-free reactor, signed a deal to return it to service. The utility will spend about $1.6bn to restore the plant by 2028. Microsoft will then buy its carbon-free power for the next 20 years.
Having plunged through the 1990s and 2000s, the share of global nuclear power generated by new plants is now rising again (see chart 1). Although America is home to 94 conventional nuclear reactors, about a fifth of the world’s total, it has built few in recent decades. There are, however, over five dozen nuclear reactors under construction worldwide, mostly in China and Russia but increasingly in other places, too (see chart 2). In July, for instance, the Czech Republic finalised plans for a $17bn nuclear project. And interest in small modular reactors (smrs), which are cheaper and quicker to build, is surging everywhere. A new age for nuclear power may be dawning.
Demand from tech giants such as Microsoft, Amazon and Google, all of which are racing to find sufficient clean power to feed the data centres underpinning the artificial-intelligence (AI) boom, is turbocharging the nuclear revival. Brad Smith, president of Microsoft, explains that even before AI came along, his firm’s promise to remove more greenhouse gases from the atmosphere than it has contributed during its entire history was ambitious. Now, thanks to AI, he reckons Microsoft will consume five to six times as much electricity by 2030 as it anticipated when it set the goal in 2020.
Nuclear power is well suited to data centres because it provides a reliable source of clean energy around the clock, unlike wind and solar, notes David Victor of the University of California at San Diego. The vast scale of nuclear-power plants also makes them attractive: running an AI data centre can require as much as a gigawatt (GW) of power. That could be provided by millions of solar panels—or just a single nuclear-power plant.
Unfortunately, there are few decommissioned nuclear reactors in America, Europe and Japan that would be suitable for big tech to resurrect. New plants will therefore need to be built. These projects absorb enormous amounts of capital and are sensitive to interest-rate fluctuations and long delays. What is more, the risk of overruns is higher today because the supply chains and expertise needed to build nuclear power have atrophied, at least outside China and Russia. A case in point is the recently opened Vogtle nuclear plant in Georgia, America’s first in decades. It cost $35bn, more than double the initial estimate, and was completed seven years late.
One way for tech giants to mitigate the risk is to bring in outside investors. Last month Microsoft teamed up with BlackRock, an asset manager, and other investors to launch a $30bn infrastructure fund devoted to AI. Mr Smith, who says the fund’s firepower could rise to $100bn once debt is added, expects it to finance nuclear projects, among other things. He also expects three or four such funds led by other tech firms to emerge, and suggests that Microsoft “may participate in all of them”.
At the same time, tech titans have taken a growing interest in SMRs. Currently there are only two in operation, in China and Russia. But Western manufacturers of power equipment such as GE Vernova and Rolls Royce have been busily developing models of them, as have numerous startups. TerraPower, an SMR startup backed by Bill Gates, broke ground on its first plant in Wyoming in August. Oklo, another startup which counts Sam Altman, the boss of OpenAI, among its backers, intends to deploy several small nuclear plants by 2030. Earlier this year it signed an agreement to provide Equinix, a data-centre operator, with 500 megawatts of nuclear power that includes a prepayment that should help it fund construction.
There are more SMRs planned or under construction in America than anywhere else in the world, thanks in large part to enthusiasm from the tech industry. Last month Oracle, a software giant, unveiled plans for a GW-scale data centre to be powered by three SMRs for which the firm has already secured permits. On October 3rd Sundar Pichai, the boss of Google, confirmed that his firm is also looking into SMRs to power its data centres.
Chain reaction
Still, the technology behind SMRs remains unproven at scale. Meanwhile, the hefty and uncertain price tag of building conventional nuclear-power plants will continue to weigh on the industry’s growth—and big tech’s hopes of powering the AI revolution without spewing vast amounts of carbon into the atmosphere. Chris Womack, the chief executive of the Southern Company, which owns the nuclear plant in Georgia, reckons that public support would help. “The government must provide some cost-overrun insurance,” he argues. Streamlining lengthy permitting processes would be even better.
Governments certainly seem to be warming towards nuclear power, after decades of frostiness. At an event held during UN Climate Week in New York last month, officials lined up to reaffirm a commitment made by over 20 countries at the cop climate summit in Dubai last year to triple the global output of nuclear power by 2050. Fourteen big banks also said they are ready to finance new nuclear projects. Pointing to the surge in demand from AI, Mohamed Al Hammadi, head of the Emirates Nuclear Energy Corporation, declared: “We have witnessed a step change in momentum across the nuclear sector.” For it to continue, a mix of technical ingenuity, financial wizardry and supportive policy will be needed. ■
I tend to think China, or the U.K will be the ones to make a breakthrough with nuclear.Competition is increasing, quite a few manufacturers starting to build Small Modular Reactors.
tech titans have taken a growing interest in small modular reactors (SMRs). Currently there are only two in operation, in China and Russia. But Western manufacturers of power equipment such as GE Vernova and Rolls Royce have been busily developing models of them, as have numerous startups. TerraPower, an SMR startup backed by Bill Gates, broke ground on its first plant in Wyoming in August. Oklo, another startup which counts Sam Altman, the boss of OpenAI, among its backers, intends to deploy several small nuclear plants by 2030. Earlier this year it signed an agreement to provide Equinix, a data-centre operator, with 500 megawatts of nuclear power that includes a prepayment that should help it fund construction.
Having plunged through the 1990s and 2000s, the share of global nuclear power generated by new plants is now rising again (see chart 1). Although America is home to 94 conventional nuclear reactors, about a fifth of the world’s total, it has built few in recent decades. There are, however, over five dozen nuclear reactors under construction worldwide, mostly in China and Russia but increasingly in other places, too (see chart 2). In July, for instance, the Czech Republic finalised plans for a $17bn nuclear project. And interest in small modular reactors (smrs), which are cheaper and quicker to build, is surging everywhere. A new age for nuclear power may be dawning.
Whilst true, ultimately the US is doing it not because they had a debate but the opposite, it's happening because experts are able to get on with it.Meanwhile in Aust we can't even have a commonsense debate about nuclear energy. We'll build data-centres though,that will drain our grid and raise elec prices.
never a truer word spoken.Whilst true, ultimately the US is doing it not because they had a debate but the opposite, it's happening because experts are able to get on with it.
Biggest problem in Australia is the whole subject's become political to a ridiculous extent.
One consequence of that is it's driven practically the people who should be in the public debate away from it. Listen to who's talking these days and you'll find the engineers, scientists and others have at this point practically all walked away. Anyone who hasn't is only saying what they need to say to keep their job. In their place, it's constant shouting by politicians both actual MP's and others playing politics.
Big Tech puts final nail in ALP’s anti-nuclear coffin
Who do you think would be smarter and more experienced in matters of energy and economics: Microsoft founder Bill Gates and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, or lifelong ALP operatives Chris Bowen and Anthony Albanese? Because not everyone can be right.
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and Microsoft founder Bill Gates v lifelong ALP operatives Chris Bowen and Anthony Albanese: who is right on nuclear?
Who do you think would be smarter and more experienced in matters of energy and economics, Microsoft founder Bill Gates and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, or lifelong ALP operatives Chris Bowen and Anthony Albanese? How would the smarts of our Prime Minister and his Climate and Energy Minister shape up against Google chief executive Sundar Pichai or Oracle chairman and co-founder Larry Ellison?
These are pertinent questions given the four tech companies have recently announced decisions to invest hundreds of millions of dollars in nuclear energy, while Albanese and Bowen claim nuclear power does not stack up. Not everyone can be right; one side of the argument must be wrong.
If Gates, Bezos, Pichai and Ellison are wrong, their companies will be devalued and shareholders will revolt. If Albanese and Bowen are wrong, we will weaken our country in economic, technological and social terms for decades to come.
If you argue nuclear energy is uneconomic then the United States, UK, France, Finland, South Korea, UAE, China, Taiwan, Russia, India, Canada, Pakistan, Japan, Argentina, South Africa, Spain and others must have it wrong. You contend that only Australia has it right with a nuclear-energy ban.
Last year, 22 countries, including our AUKUS partners the US and UK, pledged to triple global nuclear energy output by 2050. Google has announced a deal with Kairos Power to deploy several small modular reactors (SMRs) to power AI data centres, with the first reactor to be in place within six years; Amazon announced a $US500m ($750m) deal for SMRs; Microsoft has underwritten the reopening of a reactor at the infamous Three Mile Island plant in Pennsylvania; and Oracle is building a data centre requiring a gigawatt of power supplied by three small reactors.
Yet here in Australia Albanese and Bowen talk about becoming a “green energy superpower”as they ignore uncapped renewable costs and regional battles against solar, wind and transmission projects.
Anthony Albanese and Chris Bowen claim nuclear power does not stack up. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman
All the while, our descent from a plentiful cheap energy economy to an electricity basket case continues.
This is a grand exercise in national self-harm driven by climate catastrophism and ideological zeal. Labor seems incapable of reconsidering it.
This week we heard two astonishing admissions from the Australian Energy Market Operator – one of the bodies the Albanese government uses to buttress claims its renewables-plus-storage plan will lead to cheaper prices. In a parliamentary hearing, AEMO chief executive Daniel Westerman was asked by LNP senator Matt Canavan whether he could “guarantee” current government policy would deliver lower prices. “I can’t guarantee that, no,” Westerman replied.
AEMO limits its goal to delivering the “lowest-cost path” to the government’s emissions reduction targets. Even then, its calculations are confined by the government’s chosen model.
AEMO chief executive Daniel Westerman. Picture: Arsineh Houspian
The Integrated System Plan is AEMO’s road map for the electricity grid, and Albanese and Bowen rely on it to promise lower prices. Renewables proponents also use the GenCost report (where AEMO and the CSIRO calculate comparative generation costs) to argue renewables are the cheapest form of energy, but critics point to major flaws in both reports.
“Since coal plants are not considered a long-term option because of emissions targets, and nuclear energy is off the table because of federal legislation, the ISP has effectively omitted the modelling of the only credible alternatives to renewables, storage and gas that could be used as a baseline for comparison,” declares Aidan Morrison, director of energy research at the Centre for Independent Studies.
Morrison says the GenCost conclusions are “incorrect and misleading” and he pinpoints holes in the ISP and GenCost costings because they fail to include the full expense of transmission, storage, household solar and batteries, subsidies to keep coal generators going, and Snowy 2.0.
Governments and their authorities are underestimating the cost of their renewables-plus-storage model by hundreds of millions of dollars. And in assessing the costs of nuclear they fail to factor in the 75+ years of reactor lifespan compared to 15 or 20 years for renewables kit.
At this week’s hearing, Westerman also revealed AEMO does not even calculate the electricity cost to consumers. “We don’t model power prices,” he said.
This is scandalous. Despite promises of cheaper power (remember the $275 pledge?) there is no analysis from the market operator to either confirm the government’s undertakings or ensure the country is adopting the best option.
The facade is crumbling. It has long been clear to anyone prepared to examine the facts that the renewables-plus-storage model is not only expensive but might not even be possible – no comparable country has even tried it.
Now we see the advice and modelling cited by government is so deeply flawed that it exposes Bowen and Albanese as frauds. Voters have been told that AEMO and the CSIRO have considered various generation and distribution models to arrive at a system to deliver reliable, low-emissions power at the cheapest cost to consumers – but nothing of the kind has occurred.
Albanese and Bowen have been flying blind. And the teals, the Greens and most of the media have happily gone along for the ride.
We will all wear the consequences. This world-first renewable energy experiment risks our money and economic future – the government gets to grandstand, but consumers invariably will pay.
When the Coalition raised the nuclear alternative, Labor’s kneejerk response was to demonise nuclear as unsafe, trotting out Simpson-esque three-eyed fish. When they saw how ridiculous this made them look, the critics switched to cost – but that didn’t stack up either (the cost of the renewables-plus-storage model is at least $122bn on the government’s own numbers).
So now the critics have started to focus on timing, claiming we cannot get nuclear in place before our coal generators shut down, leaving an energy gap. This is a bit like a starving man rejecting a meal because it won’t be delivered until tomorrow. It also makes the grand assumption that there will be enough wind, solar and storage in time.
Green hydrogen is already falling by the wayside, with major investors Origin Energy and Fortescue withdrawing. Offshore wind is hitting stormy waters too, with Norwegian firm Equinor and local partner Oceanex pulling out of the Illawarra zone in NSW.
Yet with nuclear expanding overseas and going from plans to power-points in the UAE over just 10 years, we are told this technology is beyond Australia. Talk about the energy harm of low expectations.
On Thursday, the Australian Energy Regulator chair Clare Savage told the nuclear energy select committee that it will take a decade just to get the regulatory framework in place. “By the time you do licensing, safety, environmental, technical, commercial and you do legislation, rules, guidelines, consultation”, Savage said, “for us, just to do a guideline takes 12 to 18 months because you have to do an issues paper, a draft decision, a final decision.”
What a pathetically sad assessment – a modern economy faces an energy crisis and bureaucrats warn against the most promising option because bureaucracy will stifle it. This is bureaucracy as a weapon against progress.
Anyway, it is bunkum. Because we do not have to reinvent the wheel.
We already have a modern research and medical reactor at Lucas Heights on Sydney’s southern fringes, the second reactor on that site over 70 years. It is operated by the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation under regulation from the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency.
Australian nuclear industry lawyer Helen Cook has worked on nuclear regulation around the world and says we can do the required work in good time.
“We have in place today an agency that covers nuclear security and nuclear safeguards,” says Cook.
“We have an established nuclear regulatory authority that oversees nuclear safety, and these regulatory bodies have international reputations, highly credible ones, and if we were to move down a nuclear power plant path yes, we would need to adapt these frameworks to make sure they are fit for purpose for nuclear power, but we would be adapting and building on what we have.”
Such logical and experienced views are not prominent in the current debate. The nuclear option has become a hyper-partisan battleground.
Apart from the vested interests of the renewable energy sector, the Coalition’s nuclear plan is attacked by the ALP and its union masters. There will be a scare campaign at the election – already the ABC has weighed in with a deceptive Four Corners piece decrying nuclear energy.
Yet on the opposite side of the ledger are the facts, and the reality of countries and companies latching on to reliable, affordable, emissions-free electricity from proven technology.
At the same time, right around our country, communities are being torn apart by wind, solar and transmission projects. And consumers are being hit by ever-rising electricity bills.
Whatever path we choose for a zero-emissions power grid, the truth is it will be expensive, and the evidence suggests nuclear is at least competitive, if not much cheaper. And the critical fact is we know it will work – on a small footprint with existing transmission infrastructure.
The renewables-plus-storage option demands the largest machine ever constructed across vast areas, alienating agriculture, clearing bushland, ruining views, and interfering with marine environments. And even still, it might not give us the power we need, when we need it.
Energy economics are highly location specific.The article fails to address issues around nuclear that pertain to Australia.
Energy economics are highly location specific.
Some random examples to make the point:
Prior to discovery of the NW Shelf natural gas fields, BHP, Rio Tinto and others were looking at how to provide power to the mines in the Pilbara. Noting there's more co-operation between the rival mining companies on technical matters than you might think, there are mines owned by one company powered through transmission lines owned by a rival and so on.
Long story short coal was ruled out as uneconomic. Nuclear was also ruled out and there's no substantial hydro to consider. That left oil or gas, so no surprise that historically the main power source used was oil, then switched to gas when that became available.
Another is Tasmania looked at coal on multiple occasions, even went as far as identifying exact sites, drawing up the plans and so on. Bottom line though it just wasn't economic, even just building a direct clone of a plant that already exists in another state couldn't be done economically in Tas.
Tas can however build pumped hydro at less than half the price any other state can do it per unit of capacity. Hence even with the added cost of (rather expensive) transmission across Bass Strait, Tasmania's still at least plausibly cheaper.
That the initial rush to build wind and solar was in SA wasn't really due to wind and solar resources but something more fundamental, SA couldn't generate electricity from coal as cheaply as the other states and that being so, there was more to be gained putting wind and solar there than putting them somewhere else.
There's rather a lot of brown coal within 10km of the Melbourne CBD. Hence they went 150km away to the Latrobe Valley to mine it, and built transmission lines and a railway to make that work. Because that was actually cheaper than mining the coal in Melbourne.
Saudi Arabia generates rather a lot of electricity from oil and that probably doesn't come as a surprise. What will surprise most however is when I point out they import that oil. Business is business, and they're importing fuel oil at a lower price per barrel than the crude oil they sell.
And so on. Energy's a situation where the economics do vary considerably due to local factors, what works in one place doesn't work in others. Key reasons generally coming down to natural resources, scale of economy and the system load profile.
Scale's a big one in all of that, there's a very strong inverse relationship between scale and unit costs. That's the actual reason for building nuclear or coal on such a large scale - technically well 50MW nuclear units have certainly been built, and we had plenty of 30MW coal units in Australia indeed we had considerably smaller than that if you go back far enough. For economics though, nobody would really consider doing nuclear much below 1000MW new. That's per unit, not for the power station or total fleet.
Now where that becomes a problem is with the engineering. Long story short, in round figures the limit on unit size would be circa:
NSW = 1250MW
Qld = 900 MW
Vic = 850 MW
SA = 300 MW
WA (SWIS) = 350MW
Those are rough "back of envelope" calculations but they won't be far out.
What happens if larger units are used? Kills the economics through having to have a lot more spinning reserve on at all times.
What happens if smaller are used? Nothing other than it kills the economics due to lack of economies of scale.
With the trouble being that outside NSW, any nuclear units are going to be economically sub-optimal, extremely so for WA and SA.
That said, from a technical perspective well if we're going to throw money at nuclear well WA is the most obvious place for it followed by Vic. That's based purely on the practicality of making renewables work - it's not impossible to do it in those states, just harder hence the nuclear has more value than elsewhere.
So if the coalition wants some big reactors and some small ones, put the big ones in Vic and the small in WA. It makes more sense there than elsewhere.
What happens if larger units are used? Kills the economics through having to have a lot more spinning reserve on at all times.
What that sort of thing ends up with is having to run below capacity and the machines themselves, across the fleet, provide the reserve.Could be wrong but don't think the turndown ratio on the Coalitions proposed type is enough to run spinning reserve using nuclear (depending unit size) suspect its a big reason for the US only having 18% of the total being nuclear.
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