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This is really exciting. I wish we had nuclear power here in Australia. I know I might get downvoted for this comment. But with advancement in technology and la

• ggm 4y ago
  We should have moved on this in the sixties when it was possible. It's impossible to get traction on this ever since. Maybe the nuclear subs will provide impetus
  • jp0d 4y ago
    I think in a way it's good that we didn't do that in the sixties. Nuclear reactors are a lot more advanced and safer these days. Probably never too late to get onto it.
    • ggm 4y ago
      You haven't been in the arguments about "why nuclear makes no sense now" much have you? the post-60s time to deploy skyrocketed, in lawsuits. By now, its a 20+ year fight to do anything with nuclear, even on federally owned land. in 20 years, the argument runs that either its too late, or the cost of PV/Wind has dropped to make it irrelevant. The problem space we're in now is multi-dimensional. Purely on economic and rational engineering grounds you are right. Bring politics to the table and no, there is no clear time now or in the future where it will "work" to propose nuclear for powergen, where if we had installed the worse, 2/3 gen stuff in the 60s we'd be arguing about replacement, but with a good investment in nuclear physics engineering, and baseload supply demands which had displaced brown coal already.
      • paranoidrobot 4y ago
        > the cost of PV/Wind has dropped to make it irrelevant The cost of PV and Wind (with Storage included) is already vastly lower than any commercially available Nuclear Power design. They're also a whole lot easier to deploy and maintain, don't come with all the risks involved in current Nuclear Power designs.
        • ggm 4y ago
          I mostly agree with this in pragmatic sense. I'm seeking coulda woulda shoulda alternate history counterfactuals here, I argue no future nuclear proposal will make sense but in deep time, 60s, we missed the boat and could have been in a radically different place. There is no future path where even SMR can arrive at price point and power rating to replace the overbuild of wind and solar with storage, which provides the same energy reliability. Overbuild sounds negative but it's not: you need more than nameplate power and more units widely dispersed to avoid outages from local weather. With that comes more for storage, more for H2 conversion, desalination, other uses. Basically, we should be further along our de-carbonisation. It's all about the past.
  • wumpus 4y ago
    Nuclear subs involve small reactors that are very expensive and dangerous to operate.
    • ggm 4y ago
      Impetus in the forms of 1) routine presence of nuclear reactors in Australia outside of lucas heights 2) trained people in nuclear physics and engineering 3) a probably high safety record, noting that nothing in life is guaranteed
• wryun 4y ago
  Takes too long to build fission plants to replace coal in the short term; easy to spin up lots of wind/solar. We've also got a ridiculous amount of renewable potential. (I'm a candidate for the Fusion Party; we'd like to remove the ban on nuclear power in Australia because it would enable research)
  • jp0d 4y ago
    I'm all for renewable power and environmentally sustainable technologies. This includes Solar, Beach, Wind power and Nuclear power. Preferably Hydrogen fuel cell cars over battery powered cars (purely for less batter and less toxic material to recycle and also logistically more feasible for long distance driving). We Australians need to raise awareness about its effectiveness. The new compact fusion reactor designs from the UK are quite exciting. It can power entire Australia and create a lot of jobs. It's sad that we aren't doing enough in that space.
    • wumpus 4y ago
      It's a shame that so many people are still pushing hydrogen for individual vehicles despite its total failure in the marketplace... despite significant subsidies.
      • ncmncm 4y ago
        Hydrogen fueled cars could be substantially more energy-efficient than battery-electric cars, but it doesn't matter much, because energy is very quickly getting cheaper, so the point where it simply doesn't matter.
        • ClumsyPilot 4y ago
          They cannot be even half as efficient - the process of electrolysis is only 40% efficient, then hydrogen must be compressed to insane pressure (which can require up to 20% of the enrgy contained withing) and transporting across the country. Only like 25% of energy you started with ever arrives to the fuel station
• Mountain_Skies 4y ago
  I'm a bit surprised that Australia has no nuclear plants while other countries along the Pacific Rim already do. Any idea why it hasn't happened? Domestic opposition or lack of need before now?
  • foolfoolz 4y ago
    probably cause the entire continent of australia is about as big as the lower 48 states but has only a few more million people than the state of florida. the cities are far more spread out. the investment would be very high and only benefit on small area
    • arcticbull 4y ago
      Australia has a few large population clusters. Most people don't live in the interior due to the sweltering heat and lack of water. They live on the east/south-east seaboard (Brisbane-Sydney-Canberra-Melbourne-Adelade, clockwise). The reactors can be colocated with the people.
      • ddeck 4y ago
        This is correct. 50% of Australia's population live in Sydney, Melbourne, and Brisbane (40% in the first two). The below image shows just how empty the vast majority of Australia really is: https://i.redd.it/9mw8ttqqu0b41.jpg https://i.redd.it/9mw8ttqqu0b41.jpg
    • s0rce 4y ago
      Canada has them. Pretty much the same situation
      • paranoidrobot 4y ago
        Apart from the whole vastly-differing-amounts-of-water thing.
        • 4y ago
• prawn 4y ago
  I also thought we should've developed a nuclear waste industry here in South Australia. There was a 'citizen's jury' on the topic a while back but obviously public opinion swayed political action to rule it out. We have a lot of "unused" and stable land well away from population centres. I imagine transport from afar is an issue though.
  • worik 4y ago
    Storing waste is too expensive to contemplate. Wherever it is put the high level waste (not much in quantity but...) is deadly and a silent killer for over a hundred thousand years. This is geologically significant time period, and we can make bets, but have no guarantee of any place on Earth being stable on those time scales. So it must be monitored. For a hundred thousand years That would be us making future generations pay for the cost of our current consumptions. I do not think they will think kindly of us.
    • Paradigma11 4y ago
      But you already have to take care of a nuclear waste depot, nevermind the nasty chemical stuff that never degrades and has to be stored forever. It does not really matter how big the caverns are where you store the waste so any additional nuclear material stored is basically free.
    • clarionbell 4y ago
      On time scales of centuries or millennia there are only three outcomes for humanity: - Extinction - We don't need to care about it, because there are no descendants. - Advancement - We will be able to handle the problem better as our technology improves. - Stagnation/regression - We don't need to care about it. Our descendants will have to worry about dysentery, crop failures and regional warfare. Some magic rocks that kill people will end up as curios in warded laden boxes after first adventurous monk opens sarcophagus and succumbs to curse.
    • Galaxeblaffer 4y ago
      I'm pretty sure they'd rather deal with a bit of entombed nuclear waste buried deep in the ground instead of a dead, polluted and depleted planet.
• jillesvangurp 4y ago
  If there's one country that does not need nuclear power it's Australia. Plenty of solar there and the sun comes out every day to the extent that in that part of the world it's a very reliable and predictable source of energy. All they need to do put down some panels and watch the meter do its thing for the next few decades. Yes nuclear is cleaner than coal. But also way more expensive than everything else even before you consider that. Note how the article carefully dodges the cost topic. That's because it probably is quite a bit of money per mwh. Nobody installs nuclear because its cheap. There's always a secondary objective; usually military. Countries like being labeled "a nuclear power". It's not about the electricity. It's a label that comes at an extreme premium. The price of the energy they sell simply does not cover the cost of the plant over the lifetime. The cheapest options in the market are solar and wind. Not by a little bit but by a wide and growing margin. That's just at current prices; they are widely predicted to continue dropping for a long time and there is very little consensus on where it will bottom out except perhaps nowhere close to current price levels. Cheap energy storage solutions are also becoming available and also dropping in price. Solar in Canada is not good enough to rely on exclusively. But wind is fine. Lots of coastal areas; lots of empty planes. Lots of wind. Electrical cars won't be that big of an impact. They will actually have a balancing impact on the grid because they can be both sources and sinks of energy. They can absorb oversupply and supply back to the grid during peak hours. A single EV can keep a house hold going for several days. With millions of EVs on the road, a large percentage of them will be plugged in and either charging or ready to discharge at any time. Even using just a small percentage of that capacity means you can pretty much permanently turn off a bunch of gas peaker plants. 1 million cars supplying 1 kw of power for 1 hour would amount to about 1GW of capacity and 1GWH of power delivered. The same as running 3 of these fancy new nuclear plants for 1 hour. Charge them with a few solar panels and they pretty much become net producers rather than consumers of energy too. The us drives about 3.2 trillion miles per year apparently. A good EV might get 4-5 miles per kwh. Lets call it 3.2 miles for the sake of easy numbers. So, that's 3.2 trillion kwh. Or 3.2 billion mwh. Or 3.2 million gwh, a common metric of the output of energy producers. The US generates about 4 trillion kwh per year. So switching overnight would cause some issues but also be a completely impossible scenario because the battery production volume wto make that happen simply does not exist to make that happen. Not even close. It will take decades to construct that. But gradually phasing in storage and renewable energy sources over say decades, would be plenty of time for the less than 2x increase in energy production. It's not an energy crisis but a healthy growth scenario for any energy company worthy of the name. That's why the investment space around renewables is so hot right now. Nuclear, not so much. Risky investments, poor ROI (if not outright negative), long lead times to plants actually coming online, politics very uncertain, high chance of budget overruns, etc.
• justatdotin 4y ago
  > Vast swathes of uninhabited land ugh ffs : mabo was 30 yrs ago last month
  • ncmncm 4y ago
    Vast swaths of uninhabited land makes plenty of room for solar panels that will not threaten to poison anybody. Build out enough of them, and they can desalinate sea water to turn the whole continent green.
  • bregma 4y ago
    "uninhabited" just means very few white settlers. Same for Canada, north Africa, etc. Gotta break a few brown eggs to make an omelet after all. If you ask the people who inhabit "uninhabited" areas they may have a different opinion. That's why we tell them and not ask them.
  • esja 4y ago
    There have always been vast swathes of uninhabited land in Australia. 7.6 million square kilometres divided by a few hundred thousand indigenous people, even allowing for movement = a lot of empty space. And that's even truer today than it was in 1770.
  • throwaway69123 4y ago
    Are you saying the aboriginal people inhabit the entire continent of Australia even if that land has no ability to sustain life ?
• markdown 4y ago
  You have more than enough sun. Isn't Australia going to be exporting sun energy to Singapore soon?
• ZeroGravitas 4y ago
  Australia is the ideal place for renewables. Canada is somewhere I'd begrudgingly admit that nuclear may have a role to play in the future energy market, but it would be downright silly for Australia.
  • yodelshady 4y ago
    "Begrudging" is a pretty telling phrase. I'm happy with whatever actually delivers carbon-free watt hours, which yes, in Australia should be solar. Clearly you want something else as well.
    • ZeroGravitas 4y ago
      Yeah, I want a global solution to global warming, which nuclear isn't. I don't think it's necessary and would happily ban nuclear to focus on renewables if I was king of the world. But I'm not, so I have to be realistic and admit that there are niche areas where nuclear is helpful in real politics even if most of the noise around nuclear is clearly climate change denial.
      • ClumsyPilot 4y ago
        "ban nuclear to focus on renewables if I was king of the world." I have seen thos banged about a lot - where does the idea that banning nuclear would somehow improve our ability to build renewables come from? What is the basis for it? 'most of the noise around nuclear is clearly climate change denial.' Again, why? Why do not believe that 90% of noise about nuclear is well intentioned people seeing an alternative solution?
        • ZeroGravitas 4y ago
          Nuclear is more expensive than renewables. If we spent the same money on renewables we'd get more done. It's not overly complicated. The vast majority of people advocating for nuclear simply cannot hold in their criticism of renewables. That's because believing lies about renewables is a basic requirement for thinking nuclear is a useful solution in a world rapidly deploying renewables.
• flgb 4y ago
  Reasons why Australia doesn't and won't have nuclear: 1. Nuclear is a more expensive sources of energy than our alternatives (uranium ore is a small proportion of the cost stack, and Australia would still need to import nuclear fuel) 2. Nuclear isn't commercially viable in energy markets with very high levels of variable renewable energy where they have to be economically curtailed on an almost daily basis (our coal plants are all closing for this reason)
  • thecopy 4y ago
    I have never understand the economics argument. Either climate change and global warming are serious issues, and then slightly more expensive electricity should not matter - or they are not serious issues and we can keep burning coal and oil.
    • BongoMcCat 4y ago
      I think that the economic argument is that it isn't viable for a private company to start a nuclear power-plant, it would require government involvement, and lots of people don't want the government to get involved in something that they think no-government entities can handle.
      • oblio 4y ago
        That's silly for electricity. Electricity will never, ever be a free market. The barriers to entry are almost insurmountable, especially capital requirements (production + distribution, especially distribution) but also the myriad safety regulations. Might as well involve the government and gain some accountability, because with corporations, there is 0 accountability.
        • emteycz 4y ago
          Electricity is a free market on a huge portion of the world, including EU, which is working hard to make it even freer market. > with corporations there is zero accountability This is not Somalia, lol. There is rule of law here and it works fairly well. The only problem is who people vote for.
• DrBazza 4y ago
  Nuclear power stations work best by the coast, rather than on rivers due to the water required for cooling, and as France discovered you can't dump hotter water back into a river and kill the wildlife when the country is "hot" - compared to Australia, a French "hot" day is 'only' 38-40C. https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/sep/07/weatherwatch-nuclear-power-plants-feel-the-heat https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/sep/07/weatherwatch-nu... So geographically, that likely means that nuclear power stations would still be close to Australian coastal cities.
  • JPLeRouzic 4y ago
    > a French "hot" day is 'only' 38-40C. In the place I live (Brittany/west part of France), a hot day is more like 25°C.
    • DrBazza 4y ago
      Yes. I was referring to the heatwave in 2018 where the temperatures hit 40C in a few places in (central?) France, vs. "typical" Australia where it's 45C+. Also Australia doesn't have anything like the number of size of major rivers that France, and continental Europe has.
  • skywal_l 4y ago
    Doesn't Australia have underground water? With a cursory search I can see that the Great Artesian Basin[0] could be a good source of cooling water. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Artesian_Basin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Artesian_Basin
    • pvaldes 4y ago
      Thus people could drink the water warm directly from the nuclear powerplant. Water is a essential resource, and in a higher level than electricity.
    • deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
  • 4y ago
• neuronic 4y ago
  Nuclear energy is great except for time and to some degree cost [1]. Other factors like waste disposal more relevant to some countries than others and are a universally ignored problem in general - but it's not as bad as climate change so let's not even talk about this. We want to avoid climate change first and foremost after all. The problem really is that time is of the essence now and it simply takes way too long to build a new plant. Cost isn't great at all, they will never be profitable and insurance is neck breaking, but it can be managed. If any of these issues currently do exist with renewables, they are continuously waning. Two recent nuclear projects: - Olkiluoto Unit 3 (EPR) in Finland. Projected cost: €3 billion / Real cost: ~€11 billion (4x) / Delay: 13 years (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olkiluoto_Nuclear_Power_Plant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olkiluoto_Nuclear_Power_Plant) - Flamanville Unit 3 (EPR) in France. Projected cost: €3.3 billion / Real cost: €19.1 billion (6x) / Delay: currently 10 years, no start in sight (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flamanville_Nuclear_Power_Plant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flamanville_Nuclear_Power_Plan...) It doesn't look much better in other countries most of the time [2], China is possibly an exception due to, let's say, different handling of safety and other topics... In any case, nuclear is quite an expensive energy source [3] on top of critical time issues in construction and commission [4]. In the time it takes to build new nuclear power (10-15 years) technology and cost of renewable energy are projected to become much more favorable and then we gain several things: - inherent safety - decentralization - stable cost (less dependence on imported resources such as uranium) [1] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-energy-nuclearpower-idUSKBN1W909J https://www.reuters.com/article/us-energy-nuclearpower-idUSK... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_commercial_nuclear_reactors https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_commercial_nuclear_rea... [3] https://www.iea.org/reports/projected-costs-of-generating-electricity-2020 https://www.iea.org/reports/projected-costs-of-generating-el... [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economics_of_nuclear_power_plants#/media/File:Nuke,_coal,_gas_generating_costs.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economics_of_nuclear_power_pla...
• tinus_hn 4y ago
  > Vast swathes of uninhabited land can absorb some of the risks/fears associated with a nuclear accident. Such a cynical take. We have a lot of land, its fine if we turn some of it into a nuclear wasteland.
  • kevincox 4y ago
    A less cynical view of this is building the first couple in uninhabited areas is a great way to prove the technology and shift public opinion without having to fight the NIMBYs.
    • tinus_hn 4y ago
      You can’t prove the technology by building a reactor and using it for a while and then saying ‘Look! This one didn’t explode’. Every reactor ever built has been guaranteed to be safe. Yet 2 of them have experienced meltdowns. This technology is safe in a sense but not in the sense that accidents will not happen. They have happened and they will happen again.
      • kevincox 4y ago
        Of course that isn't how you build the technology. But it is how you build public opinion unfortunately.
• helsinkiandrew 4y ago
  I imagine solar is a much better commercial bet in Australia than nuclear - it has lots of sun and the space for panels - it already has the highest solar production per person in the world. A solar or even solar+battery investment will likely start making a profit before a nuclear project has got approval and is much less financially risky.
• raytube 4y ago
  The vast swathes of unused land now won't necessarily be the case in the future. Incorporating solar into housing, like roof tiles seems like a no brainer. Energy stores like reservoirs, or flywheel tech or something else could help plug gaps. Then there is the whole question of energy needs. Zero energy housing. And micro generation could help. In the UK our housing and agriculture sector, uses a huge amount of energy for not a lot of gain. Given a modern country and opportunity learn from others' mistakes.
• confidantlake 4y ago
  I don't think you will be downvoted. HN is strongly pro nuclear.
• pjc50 4y ago
  The nuclear plants need to be built near water, which means they're likely to end up near habitation. Like renewables, much of the cost of nuclear is in construction - unlike renewables, this has gone up not down over the years. > Of course the coal companies won't like that. This is a fairly important reason why it's not going to happen in Australia.
  • briffle 4y ago
    the SMR reactors are designed to be created in a factory, and shipped to the site. Each one will use an identical plan for the local site construction, and should greatly reduce construction costs, and get rid of all the red tape around getting each site design approved.
    • pjc50 4y ago
      That sounds great, but it's still very much in the future tense. Australia probably ought to install a lot of solar panels in the six years until that's projected to be ready. I will believe cheap nuclear when I see it.
  • makk 4y ago
    > The nuclear plants need to be built near water, which means they're likely to end up near habitation. Does it? Article says this new reactor is helium cooled and vents heat. No mention of water cooling.
    • JshWright 4y ago
      Conventional nuke plants don't consume a ton of water for cooling. I believe (definitely not an expert) that any water used for cooling is kept in a closed loop system. The vast majority of the water consumed by a nuclear plant (or any thermal power plant) is used by being converted to steam, which is then used to spin a turbine (though some percentage of that water can also be reused by condensing it in cooling towers, as described in the article). The system described in the article punts the "how do we use the heat this system outputs" to some other facility/plant. It could use the heat directly in a variety of industrial processes, or it could be used to boil water for a steam turbine.
• kemiller 4y ago
  Australia has excellent solar availability. Northern Canada does not, half the year. Smr seems like a good way to serve those who can’t use solar, but solar is so much cheaper than nuclear that it’s mostly not worth the hassle. We just have to make enough batteries.