The future of energy generation and storage

basilio said:

Thanks... Nah. Your previous post did you no favours SP. Good idea to retract it .

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Ok i'll bite and re post it, it does show that several countries are actually in the process of building nuclear power stations.

Maybe you can explain the problem with SMR a bit more thoroughly, rather than just the standard spiel that the media pumps out and also is there any other types of nuclear reactors that may be more suitable for Australia currently in development?

Anyway here is the pertinent part of the post I deleted:
How come we are so smart and everyone else in the World is so stupid, they must just stare in awe at our brilliance.





And from the left leaning CNBC:

My comments about nuclear power and the appropriateness of pushing it for Australia NOW still stand. That is why I posted the CSIRO review comparing the costs of various power options.

I also posed the question of the status of the current nuclear power builds, the cost and who is bearing that cost. I have attached a history of the recent Nuclear Power plant builds in US and UK. Short story. Massive cost blowouts. Huge government subsidies.

SMR's ? The other link outlines the costs of attempting to build such units in Australia. And this comes with no firm knowledge of final design or construction costs.

As I said earlier. If SMR's are finally sorted out and become cost effective lets look at them. Will that ever happen ? The last attachment goes through the engineering issues and suggest that may never occur.

I just thought you had some understanding of the problems with SMR's and the issues regarding efficiency, obviously you are just going to go with whatever the media tells you, which is fair enough.
What does need sorting with SMR's by the way?

Why do you think so many other countries disagree and are moving along with nuclear development?

SirRumpole said:

FFS, turn the whole thing over to someone like Alan Finkle or other engineers, it's time for politicians to get out of the way.

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If I were to pick anyone to put in charge then I'll nominate Kate Summers.


An extremely competent engineer who's pretty decent when it comes to public speaking and who doesn't hold back telling it how it is. Bonus points that at a personal level she's a somewhat difficult target for the media etc. In principle that ought not matter even slightly, professional skills are all that ought to matter, but reality is what it is and if it helps win the war then so be it.

Whether she'd actually be interested is another matter but as potential people to put in charge goes, Kate does come immediately to mind and I doubt I'd be the only one with that thought.

sptrawler said:

Totally agree, hydro is definitely the goto solution at the moment and as you say the only issue is backlash, also hydro will be the eventual backbone of most renewable systems around the World that's a given.

Even the left including Labor are talking about having fossil fuel as firming, that IMO is where the debate comes into play, cost aside what is the most sensible long term avenue to take.

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In short that's where the real debate lies.

Hydro versus gas turbines.

There's somewhat of a standoff at the moment. That is there's a pretty decent list of gas turbine projects "shovel ready' but business is reluctant to build them without confidence that government's happy to see fossil fuels play a role into the 2070's.

The alternative is hydro, but pretty much everyone who could do it is too scared to put the idea forward because they know full well there'll be a backlash.

As per my post in the climate hysteria thread, what really needs to happen is for society to be able to have calm, intelligent, rational public debate about all this that acknowledges there's no perfect solution then hands it to proper science to determine what's least bad.

basilio said:

As I said earlier. If SMR's are finally sorted out and become cost effective lets look at them. Will that ever happen ? The last attachment goes through the engineering issues and suggest that may never occur.

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The last attachment from the friends of the earth, pretty well sums up the problem, they want to hang on to old beliefs and don't realise just as many advances are happening in nuclear as are happening in renewables.

From your PDF:

Always decades away
Notwithstanding the history of (mostly failed) R&D projects, much work would need to be done to bring Generation IV concepts to commercial deployment.
The World Nuclear Association noted in 2009 that "progress is seen as slow, and several potential designs have been undergoing evaluation on paper for many years." 130
The same could be said in 2022. The Generation IV International Forum states: "It will take at least two or three decades before the deployment of commercial Gen IV systems.
In the meantime, a number of prototypes will need to be built and operated.
The Gen IV concepts currently under investigation are not all on the same timeline and some might not even reach the stage of commercial exploitation." 131
It could be argued that most or all of them are unlikely to reach commercial-scale deployment.
It should not be understood from the above statement that Generation IV systems will be commercialised in 2‒3 decades.
The point is that they are always 2‒3 decades away. In general, R&D has not been promising and has been abandoned (either in the early stages or following the failure of prototype reactors). R&D budgets are far too small to commercialise the concepts and the pursuit of alternative energy sources has rightly been prioritised.


Apparently:

Smurf1976 said:

As per my post in the climate hysteria thread, what really needs to happen is for society to be able to have calm, intelligent, rational public debate about all this that acknowledges there's no perfect solution then hands it to proper science to determine what's least bad.

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That would be extremely novel, sensible debate without the tribalism seems to be a thing of the past.

let's be honest I doubt the coalition has much of an idea or plan regarding the complexity of deploying nuclear, let alone which type.

Then you have Labor going full tilt to get renewables up and running and halve the Marinus link, I mean are they dinkum, it doesn't sound like it.

Sounds like the plan, is to have no plan, at the moment.

sptrawler said:

I just thought you had some understanding of the problems with SMR's and the issues regarding efficiency, obviously you are just going to go with whatever the media tells you, which is fair enough.
What does need sorting with SMR's by the way?

Why do you think so many other countries disagree and are moving along with nuclear development?

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I can't read their minds . However the nuclear industry has a very strong lobby/promotion element. If they can sell the vision and get governments to finance or underwrite the development and construction of plants they will do so.

I pointed to the current and recent history of nuclear power developments. The facts on the ground. They present a very sorry sight of huge cost blowouts and massive subsidies. I also noted the current cost benefit analysis presented by CSIRO of nuclear vs other energy options. It is clear that the economics don't stack up.

With regard to developments in the SMR field. At one stage the Nu Scale SMR was touted as one of the most promising designs for a Gen 1V SMR. How has that worked out ?

In 2020 the company announced , with great fanfare, that it had made history with Government approval of its extensively tested design for an SMR. So on that basis with $1.4Billion of US Government support the company started building an SMR for Utah power systems at a US Department of Energy site.

In 2022 there was serious criticism of the SMR proposal in terms of its engineering and cost blow outs. You can check the analysis below. Interestingly enough these issues are at the core of CSIRO analysis of the cost benefit of this technology.

In 2024 ? The SMR pilot project was killed by NuScale. Why ? The most obvious reason was that the cost of delivering the promised power had jumped from $58/mWH to $89/mWH and they still hadn't built the unit ! Other reports highlighted continuing issues with the plant itself.

basilio said:

I also noted the current cost benefit analysis presented by CSIRO of nuclear vs other energy options.

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Something that needs to always be considered is that cost comparisons of energy sources are always unique to a time and place.

As one well known example, Tasmania's cost to develop pumped hydro is no more than half that of the mainland states.

When it comes to wind and solar, SA stacks up pretty well in terms of costs compared to NSW especially.

Etc. Economics vary considerably by location.

Smurf1976 said:

Something that needs to always be considered is that cost comparisons of energy sources are always unique to a time and place.

As one well known example, Tasmania's cost to develop pumped hydro is no more than half that of the mainland states.

When it comes to wind and solar, SA stacks up pretty well in terms of costs compared to NSW especially.

Etc. Economics vary considerably by location.

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Also in Australia I doubt very much that nuclear generation would be in private hands, the cost wouldn't make it viable, therefore any nuclear installation would have to be done by a Government body like Snowy for example. Just my opinion.

I will add to that, it is probably why China is leading the U.S in the development, the U.S is relying on the private sector funding model and really there isn't any money in nuclear generation, therefore there would be a lack of real commitment.

Whereas China being State funded it is getting huge funding and looks like it is well ahead of the Western countries in the development, as one would expect.

This Opinion piece by Chris Bowen was published in The Australian

Opinion piece: Proponents of nuclear power are peddling hot air​

24 February 2024

Opponents of cleaner, cheaper renewables have used a particularly spectacular contortion of logic to claim the recent catastrophic storms in Victoria and the resulting power outages as evidence of the folly of acting on climate change and boosting renewables.

Predictably, nuclear energy advocates seized on the Victorian events and temporary power outage to re-energise their campaign for Australia to start a nuclear energy industry.

Let's be clear upfront. Nuclear is not being pushed as a genuine alternative to renewables. It's being used as a distraction and a delaying tactic.

It's also quite the feat to assert that had it been nuclear rather than renewables, a coal-fired electricity generator in Victoria wouldn't have shut itself down as protection against surges from storm-damaged transmission. It's an even greater leap essentially to assert that a grid under the LNP would involve no distribution - given the vast majority of outages were caused by extreme damage to the distribution network - including from the half a million lightning strikes in eight hours.

Will nuclear powered electricity be transmitted by osmosis? By Bluetooth? By a vibe? Whether your energy comes from coal, nuclear, gas or renewables, if poles and wires are down, electricity won't get where it needs to go.

The pro-nuclear argument is two-pronged. That the world has realised the perils of renewables and is experiencing a nuclear renaissance, and Australia is missing out.

And that nuclear is much cheaper than renewable energy, once upgrading and expanding the grid is factored in.

Both these arguments collapse faster than a tree in a lightning strike when exposed to the facts.

Global investment in renewable energy sources constitutes three quarters of all power generation investment.

Take just solar, for example. Last year, the world installed 440GW of renewable capacity. This is more than the world's entire existing nuclear capacity built up through decades of investment. By early 2025, renewable energy will surpass coal as the planet's largest source of energy, while coal, gas and nuclear will all shrink their market share.

Nuclear and coal combined, however, account for only 16 per cent of new global power investment. In 2005, electricity companies in the US pledged to build more than 30 reactors. Only four ever commenced construction. Two were abandoned due to massive cost and time delays.

The alleged boom in Small Modular Reactors is also a mirage. China and Russia are the only two countries to have installed them. The US has now abandoned its “flagship” commercial-scale pilot SMR (promised back in 2008), wearing 70 per cent cost blowouts without having started construction on a single reactor.

We know the Russian SMRs have extraordinarily low load factors and that nuclear waste from the SMR process is disproportionate to their output. The Chinese data is more opaque, but given SMRs generate about 300MW (compared to a coal-fired power station at 2000MW), we have no reason to believe there is anything approaching a serious contribution to China's energy demand from their two units.

My shadow minister predicted that last year's Dubai COP would be remembered as the “nuclear COP”. Not so much. Twenty three countries have pledged to triple nuclear energy by 2050, while 124 countries pledged to triple renewable energy investment within the next six years, before the nuclear dream even gets started.

Then there is cost. Contrary to myth, GenCost does include the cost of transmission and storage, and the CSIRO-AEMO GenCost conclusions about the chasm between nuclear and renewables costs could not be clearer.

But if you don't want to accept eminent and independent practitioners at those organisations, then you can have a look at the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, which estimates it will cost $US15 trillion to triple nuclear capacity. Or University College London, which recently found that “new nuclear capacity is only cost effective if ambitious cost and construction times are assumed”.

And if you don't like University College London's research, ask the merchant bank Lazard, which shows levelised cost of nuclear to be four times higher than utilityscale solar and wind.

Then look at how many nuclear projects are falling over because of cost and time overruns. The UK's Hinkley C nuclear plant was promised to be “cooking Christmas turkeys by 2017”. It's yet to warm a single drumstick, with latest costings at more than $86bn. Who in Australia does the opposition energy spokesman expect will be footing those kind of bills?

Like many things in the climate debate, the push for nuclear power has taken on a singular importance in the culture wars. It's striking that a party that once prided itself on economic rationalism could embrace a frolic so spectacularly uneconomic. This is the triumph of culture wars over climate pragmatism in the alternative government.

The LNP has been promising to reveal the details of its long nuclear fairytales soon. It can't come soon enough.

No plan for nuclear power in Australia will survive contact with reality. The Australian people deserve more than hot air to power their homes and businesses.

This opinion piece was first published in the Australian on Saturday, 24 February 2024.

basilio said:

With regard to developments in the SMR field. At one stage the Nu Scale SMR was touted as one of the most promising designs for a Gen 1V SMR. How has that worked out ?

In 2020 the company announced , with great fanfare, that it had made history with Government approval of its extensively tested design for an SMR. So on that basis with $1.4Billion of US Government support the company started building an SMR for Utah power systems at a US Department of Energy site.

In 2022 there was serious criticism of the SMR proposal in terms of its engineering and cost blow outs. You can check the analysis below. Interestingly enough these issues are at the core of CSIRO analysis of the cost benefit of this technology.

In 2024 ? The SMR pilot project was killed by NuScale. Why ? The most obvious reason was that the cost of delivering the promised power had jumped from $58/mWH to $89/mWH and they still hadn't built the unit ! Other reports highlighted continuing issues with the plant itself.

NuScale Power Makes History as the First Ever Small Modular Reactor to Receive U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission Design Approval | NuScale Power

A significant regulatory milestone accomplished as NuScale readies to bring its SMR technology to market this decade.

nuscale-prod-pbpdt9uqe-nuscale-power.vercel.app

Report claims ‘serious problems’ with proposed NuScale SMR

“Too late, too expensive, too risky and too uncertain” is how a new report by the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA) described NuScale’s proposed small modular reactor (SMR) project.

www.power-eng.com

https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/cancelled-nuscale-contract-weighs-heavy-new-nuclear-2024-01-10/

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As I said a while back a lot of the U.S SMR development from what I've read, have been based on gen2 designed reactors, similar to what the military use in the submarines and warships, these due to the operating temperature just can't achieve the thermal efficiency required to make them commercially viable.

The gen4 model operates at a temp where it not only has the thermal efficiency, the production of H2 can be incorporated into the process and then H2 basically becomes a by product of the production of electricity through thermochemical methods.

if that can be achieved it would certainly accelerate the transition to renewables and clean energy through the reduction in cost of hydrogen production, of which we will need a huge amount.

Anyway as I've said being open minded to all forms of clean energy production will be the key to achieving it in the shortest possible time, it seems strange to in one breath say it is imperative we stop global warming and in the next try and stop all discussion and debate on nuclear basing a lot of the argument on cost.

Global warming is either important or it's BS, if it isn't BS, then cost doesn't really matter in the scheme of things, how much will it cost if sea levels rise 1m.

IMO it is time for the Govt to either fess up, or just get on with sorting it.
As your last post #7972 from Chris Bowen highlights hot air abounds, wasn't he the one that changed the Marinus link from two cables to one halving the capacity, FFS does he even listen to himself, he is as delusional as Dutton.

That is a perfect example of why it is difficult to debate with you, why would you post up something Chris Bowen wrote, what would you say if I posted up something Dutton said? Which I wouldn't because it would highlight my personal lack of knowledge on the subject

I would guess the reason the Australian ran it is because there is no money in nuclear generation for the private sector, so why wouldn't they want it stopped, if nuclear was developed it would reduce how much generation the privates could get paid for.

sptrawler said:

That is a perfect example of why it is difficult to debate with you, why would you post up something Chris Bowen wrote, what would you say if I posted up something Dutton said? Which I wouldn't because it would highlight my personal lack of knowledge on the subject

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Yep, trust in politicians is at an all time low, few people believe them anymore when it comes to electricity and other areas.

Quoting what they say is a waste of time.

SP Yep I did post Chris Bowens opinion piece. Frankly there was nothing in there that I thought unreasonable or in error. He decided that Peter Duttons and the Nuclear Lobby efforts to derail renewable energy projects had to be called out.

If you don't like what he said or disagree with it how about discussing those elements.

The Marinus Link issue ? I'll check it out. Usually more to a story than one line

basilio said:

SP Yep I did post Chris Bowens opinion piece. Frankly there was nothing in there that I thought unreasonable or in error. He decided that Peter Duttons and the Nuclear Lobby efforts to derail renewable energy projects had to be called out.

If you don't like what he said or disagree with it how about discussing those elements.

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If you read and understood my posts, I already have addressed those elements

basilio said:

The Marinus Link issue ? I'll check it out.

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If you were up to speed you would already know about the Marinus link issue, we have talked about it on this thread for some time, it will increase the electrical power transfer capacity from Tassie to the mainland, you now "the battery of the nation" that will supply a lot of the long duration storage.
Of course you know, what am I thinking.
It's funny the coalition muppet show called for a two cable design, what the hell were they think of.
Maybe I should post up ScoMo's original announcement, I'm sure you would want to read that, him being a politician and all.

To Quote your expert:

The Marinus Link – crucial to the so-called “Battery of the Nation” project – will now comprise just one 750MW sub sea link to the mainland, instead of two, and the federal government will take a bigger stake in the project to reduce the financial burden on Tasmania.

A joint statement on Sunday from federal energy minister Chris Bowen and Tasmania’s premier Jeremy Rockliff says the scaled down project will still cost $3 billion to $3.3 billion, potentially more than the $3 billion estimate for the entire project made just two years ago.

But Bowen says the single link will still deliver two thirds of the anticipated benefit.

“This is a game changing project for both Tasmania and the mainland and this updated agreement will not only deliver the benefits of Marinus Link, it will be cheaper to Tasmanians,” Bowen said in a statement.

The two governments say Marinus will help deliver more renewable energy generation and storage to the mainland and “unlock the next wave” of renewable energy energy projects in Tasmania.

It is not immediately clear, however, just how many of the multiple large scale – some of them gigawatt scale – wind projects proposed for the island state will now be able to go ahead, given the capacity of the new link to the mainland has been cut in half from 1500MW to 750MW.

SirRumpole said:

Yep, trust in politicians is at an all time low, few people believe them anymore when it comes to electricity and other areas.

Quoting what they say is a waste of time.

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So maybe read the statements, check for logic and check the evidence ?

basilio said:

So maybe read the statements, check for logic and check the evidence ?

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The only sure thing about politicians is that they promise everything come election time and then progressively fall on their sword after they are elected.
Pity they aren't payed on performance achieved rather than bum polishing and delivering very little.

sptrawler said:

As I said a while back a lot of the U.S SMR development from what I've read, have been based on gen2 designed reactors, similar to what the military use in the submarines and warships, these due to the operating temperature just can't achieve the thermal efficiency required to make them commercially viable.

The gen4 model operates at a temp where it not only has the thermal efficiency, the production of H2 can be incorporated into the process and then H2 basically becomes a by product of the production of electricity through thermochemical methods.

if that can be achieved it would certainly accelerate the transition to renewables and clean energy through the reduction in cost of hydrogen production, of which we will need a huge amount.

Anyway as I've said being open minded to all forms of clean energy production will be the key to achieving it in the shortest possible time, it seems strange to in one breath say it is imperative we stop global warming and in the next try and stop all discussion and debate on nuclear basing a lot of the argument on cost.

Global warming is either important or it's BS, if it isn't BS, then cost doesn't really matter in the scheme of things, how much will it cost if sea levels rise 1m.

IMO it is time for the Govt to either fess up, or just get on with sorting it.
As your last post #7972 from Chris Bowen highlights hot air abounds, wasn't he the one that changed the Marinus link from two cables to one halving the capacity, FFS does he even listen to himself, he is as delusional as Dutton.

That is a perfect example of why it is difficult to debate with you, why would you post up something Chris Bowen wrote, what would you say if I posted up something Dutton said? Which I wouldn't because it would highlight my personal lack of knowledge on the subject

I would guess the reason the Australian ran it is because there is no money in nuclear generation for the private sector, so why wouldn't they want it stopped, if nuclear was developed it would reduce how much generation the privates could get paid for.

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You appear to be across all these energy generation issues don't you SP ? You clearly have deep technical knowledge and experience in the field

And yet you seem to totally misunderstand the issues around global warming/climate change when you attempt to argue for nuclear power as solution.

CC is a critical issue that requires immense near term changes to our energy system. In fact these were required 20 years ago. In the last decade the capacity of wind and solar and other renewable energy to drive that change has been proven. More importantly it is far more cost effective in comparison to Nuclear.

I can see a nuclear dream in the future. Maybe... But current reality demands immediate action as a priority. Pretending as an opposition that financing and developing SMRs sometime in the mid 2030's is dealing with global warming is just a lie. Calling it out as a lie and noting that it would be a monstrously expensive one at that needs to done.

Dissing Chris Bowen re the Marinus Link ? There is a ton of juggling in this project. This was the situation last September

Marinus Link deal reworked to keep undersea power cable project between Victoria, Tasmania alive​

By James Dunlevie and Clancy Balen
Posted Sun 3 Sep 2023 at 10:36amSunday 3 Sep 2023 at 10:36am, updated Sun 3 Sep 2023 at 3:43pmSunday 3 Sep 2023 at 3:43pm

The cost burdens to the Marinus Link project have been renegotiated.(Supplied: TasNetworks)

Link copied

• In short: The costs carve-up between the federal, Tasmanian and Victorian governments to pay for the multi-billion dollar undersea interconnector project has been renegotiated after the Tasmanian government threatened to walk away
• What's next? An industry expert warns Tasmanians "can expect bills to increase by around 10 per cent from 2028 for the next 40 years"

A new deal has been struck to keep the Victoria/Tasmania Marinus Link undersea power cable project – central to the "battery of the nation" dream – afloat.

In a joint announcement on Sunday, the federal and Tasmanian governments said they were "acting with a new deal to keep the critical Marinus Link project plugged in – driving economic growth and putting downwards pressure on prices across Tasmania and the national east coast grid".

The project, which was to deliver a connection via more than 300 kilometres of undersea and underground high voltage cable between Tasmania and Victoria's Latrobe Valley, was originally estimated to cost between $3.1 billion and $3.8 billion.

However, the financial burden of the project saw the Tasmanian government announce last month it wanted to renegotiate the terms of the deal.
Today, in a joint statement the federal and Tasmanian governments said they had "worked closely to ensure the project continues" – with amendments made to the deal including:

• The original vision of two cables downgraded to one, with "negotiations to continue on a second cable"
• Tasmania's contribution towards construction drops by almost half, with the Commonwealth's share to increase and Victoria's to stay as originally negotiated
• Tasmania to "have the option to sell its stake to the Commonwealth upon commissioning of the project"

You need to go back a few pages and get up to speed.