this post was submitted on 18 Jun 2024
38 points (100.0% liked)
Australia
3488 readers
131 users here now
A place to discuss Australia and important Australian issues.
Before you post:
If you're posting anything related to:
- The Environment, post it to Aussie Environment
- Politics, post it to Australian Politics
- World News/Events, post it to World News
- A question to Australians (from outside) post it to Ask an Australian
If you're posting Australian News (not opinion or discussion pieces) post it to Australian News
Rules
This community is run under the rules of aussie.zone. In addition to those rules:
- When posting news articles use the source headline and place your commentary in a separate comment
Banner Photo
Congratulations to @[email protected] who had the most upvoted submission to our banner photo competition
Recommended and Related Communities
Be sure to check out and subscribe to our related communities on aussie.zone:
- Australian News
- World News (from an Australian Perspective)
- Australian Politics
- Aussie Environment
- Ask an Australian
- AusFinance
- Pictures
- AusLegal
- Aussie Frugal Living
- Cars (Australia)
- Coffee
- Chat
- Aussie Zone Meta
- bapcsalesaustralia
- Food Australia
- Aussie Memes
Plus other communities for sport and major cities.
https://aussie.zone/communities
Moderation
Since Kbin doesn't show Lemmy Moderators, I'll list them here. Also note that Kbin does not distinguish moderator comments.
Additionally, we have our instance admins: @[email protected] and @[email protected]
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
You have, that $1.8B would get 14GWh, not 1.
So 450 / 14 = 32.2
32.2 * 1.8 = $57.96B
These are all back of the envelope numbers of course, but 58 is ~ 14 times less than 810.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-05-22/nuclear-power-double-the-cost-of-renewables/103868728
CSIRO has cranked these numbers out in a whole bunch of configurations.
8.5 * 7 = $59.5B
So it's within the ballpark to build 7 nuclear powerplants, compared to 33 (more likely less but bigger) off river pumped hydro locations.
Which don't cost as much to run, have no "scary" nuclear and can be operable much sooner, integrating with the existing infrastructure (instead of replacing it, as Nuclear effectively would have to).
If we build even one Nuclear power plant, we're going to see continuing solar and wind curtailment, exactly like they do with coal right now - which will effectively set an expensive floor on power prices.
Nuclear isn't happening if we follow the science, the money and the NIMBY sentiment.
Edit to add:
The BIGGEST difference in my mind is where the money will come from.
No financial institution will touch Nuclear, it would have to be tax dollars.
Whilst private companies are always angling for government subsidy, they are also clamouring to invest in this themselves.
A quick google search gives me a private example that is projected to come online this year: https://genexpower.com.au/250mw-kidston-pumped-storage-hydro-project/
It's only 2GWh, but it's going to start contributing to the end of coal by the end of this year, which ignoring the environmental benefit, is going to reduce wholesale power prices.
Waiting for Nuclear will make power prices worse, as the interim calls for continuing to run the coal and gas, which isn't going to make it 15 years, so new coal (or more likely a buttload more gas) will have to be built.
Which is going to RAISE prices, as it's no longer just running costs on paid off installations, it's repaying loans on new constructions.