Essay by Eric Worrall
“Firmed renewables are quicker to build and cheaper to operate. Those who say otherwise are either dangerously ignorant or simply seeking to perpetuate the climate wars.”
Climate change minister says nuclear is too slow and expensive
By Anna Macdonald Tuesday June 21, 2022
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At the Investor Group on Climate Change Investment and Finance Summit, Bowen also called nuclear energy the slowest and most expensive form of alternative energy.
“Its adoption in Australia would push up power prices and crowd out cheaper and cleaner technologies,” Bowen said.
“Firmed renewables are quicker to build and cheaper to operate. Those who say otherwise are either dangerously ignorant or simply seeking to perpetuate the climate wars.”
Bowen’s comments come after Nationals leader David Littleproud said he wrote to prime minister Anthony Albanese about considering nuclear power in Australia.
“Can we make it safe, affordable and reliable in Australia? We need to have this conversation and if opportunities exist – back ourselves,” Littleproud tweeted earlier this month.
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“We have a world-class Integrated System Plan for the transformation of the electricity grid,” he said.
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Read more: https://www.themandarin.com.au/192758-bowen-climate-change-minister-nuclear-slow-expensive/
Nuclear power has the advantage that it works. Unlike renewables, which have a 100% failure rate when it comes to replacing fossil fuel.
There are no comparable renewable success stories, despite trillions of taxpayer dollars expended over the last few decades, by politicians who desperately wanted to please voters by making renewable energy work.
Even green Germany is going back to coal.
You might think decades of incontrovertible evidence that renewables are not a viable replacement for dispatchable power should have an impact on political thinking. But Aussie Energy Minister Bowen thinks all you need to store electricity is a little money. “the rain doesn’t always fall either, but we manage to store the water – we can store the renewable energy if we have the investment” (h/t Jo Nova).
I think we can be confident Energy Minister Bowen simply isn’t listening to advice which contradicts his firmly held but technically naive opinions. The fact the energy storage solution required to affordably cure intermittency does not exist, and will likely never exist, means nothing to him. Bowen himself told us what he thinks of those who contradict his ideas:- “… Those who say otherwise are either dangerously ignorant or simply seeking to perpetuate the climate wars.”.
Bowen will discover the hard way, like all his predecessors, that the real obstacle to his dream of a green energy future was never political, the problem is technological. But it is ordinary Australians who will pay the price for Bowen’s inability to listen, and the folly of his doomed taxpayer subsidised attempt to do the impossible.
Update (EW): h/t Surrr – No word yet on what France thinks of being called “dangerously ignorant”. President Macron made a speech advocating France’s nuclear solution to climate change in February. You would have thought Australian politicians would have eased off insulting France, after the cancelled submarine contract diplomatic crisis.
He is not wrong to say nuclear is too slow and expensive to build. Solutions to those issues are partly technical and partly regulatory. But the best solution is to keep the currently operating reactors running. (Hello, Germany). This doesn’t help Australia of course.
On the other hand, the so-called renewables are unreliable, have relatively short service lifetimes, are very much location-constrained, and don’t scale.
Nuclear issues are overwhelmingly the result of excessive regulatory requirements which add enormously to delays and cost. Time = money. Moreover, the nuclear waste issue is 100% political.
The question I do not see addressed has to do with the energy invested v.s. the energy returned for the system, on a replacement, on-going basis compared with the energy invested. The EROEI. It is said (without reference to a source) that in order to be worthwhile, any generating technology has to produce 9 times the energy it takes to make and replace it. If we take the whole system needed to make a technology, and sum the energy inputs, we get the replacement energy input as well – i.e. how to make the replacement when that one is retired.
Some people want the decommissioning energy to be included. OK, fair enough, that energy has to come from somewhere.
So from my investigations I find that a hydro power station returns 75 times the energy needed to build it. Nuclear power stations return about 40-50 times their energy cost. Wind returns 1.333 and solar PV returns 0.85-0.88. In other words solar panels never produce enough energy to make a replacement solar panel of all the precursor mining and manufacturing operations have to be covered.
When it comes to storing wind energy, the EROEI goes drastically negative. The energy cost of producing megawatt level storage is astronomical. No wind turbine is ever going to produce enough energy to build the tower, foundation, mechanicals and generate enough excess to create its portion of a battery storage system, and have anything left over to power a home lighting system. It is energetically unfeasible.
Imagine a national economy running on wind and PV power, trying to build replacement wind and PV systems. Essentially all the power generated will be diverted to these replacements. There is no viable future society that does not include water, wave, nuclear and I suggest methanol based economy.
All organic waste can be transformed into methanol and everything we need that is petroleum based can be made from it, given enough reliable energy. Google “methanol based economy” and you will be surprised how much support this idea has, because its promise is real, not imaginary.
Weisbach et al 2013 calculated the following eROI figures:
Nuclear: 75
Coal and gas: Around 30
Solar and biomass in Northern Europe: 2 to 4.
(As a comparison, they indicated that the Roman civilisation reached an eROI of around 2.)
But as they advised, much uncertainty remains about actual eROI values.
I have posted this information on a number a blog posts. Why are people ignoring South Korea’s expansion of nuclear plant exports. South Korea just completed two nuclear power plants in Dubai and is expected to complete two more within the next two years. It is on track to complete the four plants on time and on budget (roughly five years and $5.0 billion each). It is now bidding on plants in Saudi Arabia, Czech Republic, and Poland. We need to wake up or we will find ourselves way behind in the nuclear energy industry.
Now that’s interesting.
Australia and South Korea entered a Free Trade Agreement in 2014, so there should be no problems getting materials, know-how and manufactured parts from SK.
Barakah in the UAE, being built by KEPCO, is estimated to cost around US$24.4bn when complete. Still good value for a 5.6GW power station that will run for a very long time. Meanwhile, Australia continues to waste around US$5bn every year subsidising useless unreliable renewables.
Dear Minister Bowen, I would heed this advice:
“Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt” — A. Lincoln
You would have to go a long way to find a group of people more ignorant about the Climate and Technology than Chris Bowen and the rest of the crew of the present ALP government of Australia.
Looks like another flight for Jumbo Albo to shore up support for changing the weather-
Japan’s JERA prepares to revive a second aged power unit at Anegasaki (msn.com)
then off to the Netherlands to help hold the fort-
Dutch farmers protest against govt plans | 7NEWS
To presume ignorance is being kind. Bowen, like Gore and Turnbull, want what they want for their own reasons. Anything they say is verbal camouflage. Discussion is pointless.
The subs deal collapsed as DCN was trying to design oceanic class non nuke subs.
True France has designed and made many diesel subs… but of that class? They don’t say so.
France could have sold nuclear subs…
But I think there is a lot more to it that can’t be said. China dependency?
Renewables are definitely quicker to build as all environmental considerations are pushed aside for them, while they pile them onto nuclear ever deeper trying to ki!! them.
Nothing to see here skeptics, move along-
Third-party connection to power grid causes lights to flicker across South Australia (msn.com)
Australian politicians can’t do basic maths. Nor can they learn from the experience of other nations. I am so embaressed to call myself an Australian with leaders like this.