Nuclear vs Renewable In Australia

This video is to get some other views on what Australia should be doing for our electricity supply. This country is the envy of most for renewables, so that is the way I think we should go. If more individuals can generate their own power at home without the grid, that's even better and getting more achievable every day.

Let me know what you think from either nuclear, renewable, or coal.

[notathome]

Next generation nuclear reactors have almost no waste, small and have good safe guards. We have better batteries coming but the letdown is solar capacity installed on the roof and panel restrictions.

[joeltyler]

I've got solar setup on my roof but they're have been on the roof for a while now.

But I don't don't have any storage (Batteries / fuel cell).

[jinnantonix]

Sorry, but you are wrong about nuclear waste. The solution is to store the spent fuel for a few decades, then recycle it in advanced reactors. The remaining tiny amount waste decays in a short time, and is relatively easy to permanently bury in a solid granite pluton. The waste problem is SOLVED.

Generating power at home is irrelevant. What about generating power for industry and commerce, 80% of energy consumed. Then add full electrification of transport. Renewables cannot possibly replace coal and gas. A mix of nuclear and renewables is the answer.

[ojuleko]

To me, the main argument for nuclear is indeed that waste. I’d like to remind you, while yes you have to store that waste somewhere, digging a deep hole in the ground and leaving it there is generally fine with how little waste is produced. I read somewhere that the entirety of the US nuclear waste would fit in a meter deep hole the size of an American football field. That’s 70ish years of nuclear waste. I think that waste, in comparison to the amount of chemical rubbish necessary/made as a side product during manufacturing of batteries and solar panels for example, is far less overall. We need to take into account the environmental factors when it comes to production of said energy production media. Just a thought.

[axiomatik]

Power generation is only a fraction of emissions. How u going to make cement, fertiliser, steel, plastics, lubricants for your windturbines, ect.

[paidoluca]

I want to believe that the government has access to privileged information compared to an average citizen. We all should learn the lessons from the past to not repeat. I think you're talking about the recent agreement to build a nuclear submarine - I understood that is related to the expansion of China and their predominance in the region. I'm not an engineer but I'm not aware of any other power source that can sustain a submarine for several weeks in the sea. I agreed with everything you said about nuclear waste and having more sustainable methods but we should never forget the past. One of the reasons some countries are taking care of their own business started with others ability to defend themselves.

[lmaoroflcopter]

You're in a place where it's ridiculously sunny for a majority of the time, and have vast expanses of land which are not exactly arable. It makes zero sense to not use renewable.

In the UK for example, nuclear makes sense. Its hugely efficient for land use and current breeder reactors can be effectively considered renewable, we have varying inclement weather which screws renewables.

Nuclear has developed over the last 60 years, if it didn't, we'd still be using things like air cooled piles, etc Your comments regarding this seem a little misplaced and the same could be said if we look at wind or hydro, what's new there? They're using the same tech that used to grind grain before electricity was discovered. It's just silly thinking any energy generation tech has not progressed. Hell even coal plants have improvements, higher pressure steam, more efficient turbines, etc.

Re: nuclear waste... much of the improvements in nuclear is in handling the waste. Many of the byproducts are being used in scientific, industrial and medical fields. What's left is buried sure, but less of it is now than 60 years ago.

Does nuclear make any sense in Australia, nah not really.

Does it make sense in densely populated Western Europe, mostly yeah.

[otrab]

For me, the main problem with nuclear is that we needed it yesterday. Now there's no point going nuclear since nuclear plants take 10+ years to build and there's just no way around it due to safety factors. How much renewable generation can we build in that time and how much will it progress?

The market is heading towards renewables and coal is going away whether we want it to or not. Whenever there's a new coal mine is proposed, nobody asks whether other countries will be buying our coal in 30 years. We've already pissed off China enough that they'd rather deal with power shortages than buy more coal from us.

[DanielSMatthews]

The one thing that kills solar as a genuinely sustainable option is the word sustainable, and I am not talking about the scaling issue which is a problem too, but the long term aspect of sustainability. There is a real long term risk of two natural events that can't be predicted or stopped, but have happened repeatedly over long time scales, large scale solar storms and volcanic winters. The solar storm problem is a messy one because in theory you can make the grid reasonably robust and able to survive a Carrington Event scale storm, but it would cost a lot of money and we are not even close to doing that with the tech already in place. The other issue is far more clearcut, we risk multiple years where even in summer the light levels are lower than in winter and it will be the sort of diffuse light that PV arrays are useless in. If you run your civilization on solar PV and batteries the next volcanic winter will wipe you out. The only way to survive is to have enough power to switch as much agriculture to greenhouses and grow lights so you will need even more electricity! Oh and if you don't think that food production is an issue, we can just live off stores for a few years then you would be wrong, the Earth doesn't even have 6 months of food supply surplus, we are surviving off the seasonal alternation between the northern and southern hemispheres, but in a volcanic winter the entire planet freezes for multiple years in a row. So tell me how is solar energy sustainable?

[benhouse]

If you are concerned about waste, realize that solar panels have a lifespan of 20-30 years and, batteries used at utility scale storage will last ~1500 cycles or probably about 5-8ish years, at which point they will become moderately toxic e-waste. Both of these sources will be in a much greater volume for how much energy they produce versus the nuclear waste.

In addition, those panels and battery systems are certainly not without a decent amount of bookend energy and environmental costs in the form of manufacture and recycling.

I'll try to keep it limited to that topic but the last thing is that the amount of battery storage you need using primarily solar and wind is huge if you have no base load coming from a nuclear plant or similar. You need enough capacity to store the overnight energy need but also for weather yielding low output over a couple days. You have to take that into account on your capacity design, or face energy shortages and grid instability.

That nuclear waste is also highly concentrated.

[MrGeekGamer]

I'm in Norway and have an electric car, but I only bought it for the tax and cost benefits.

Most of the power here is from hydro (at least, that's what I'm told) but power is traded on a market, so we really can't be sure where it's coming from even though you can be sold a "green power guarantee" and the like.

It's also tremendously expensive in the south of the country compared to the north, ten times as much per kWh. This is apparently because of a lack of network interconnectivity between the different areas of the country.

[TheMadMagician]

EDIT: Good on you by the way, for airing this discussion in a reasonable manner.

Yeah, so....I think nuclear isn't a bad option, simply because peoples consumption habits aren't changing and they won't tolerate the inconvenience of pure RE supply systems (i.e. imagine them going back to brown outs and rolling blackouts...the out cry would be tedious as fuck). If people got off their asses and spent money on what matters like actually making energy efficient houses and putting in good PV setups, we could dodge nuclear, but the average mug punter seems more concerned about buying new shoes to impress people that don't like them anyway, whilst moaning about how terrible climate change is....

Batteries, really, are still pretty shit in terms of energy density (volume and mass wise) too. I'm largely pinning my hopes on grid scale production of hydrogen from solar/wind when there is an excess of input energy, and then using the hydrogen to fire electricity supply when the RE output is low or use it directly for thermal applications (heating, cooking etc, presumably distributed via ammonia solution for transport....time will tell there). Pumped hydro is a good option too, where topography and environment allow, it's not efficient but it's storage potential is massive (you need a lot of batteries to get the same potential power as a hydro dam!). Grid loss by the way isn't so bad, it's ~7% in Aus overall, but with significant variation by area due to distance and infrastructure quality. For that reason, hot rock geothermal is another good option in Aus. Again, the greenies shoot their own feet full of holes by moaning that 'fracking is bad, same can be said on the climate change front of the green movement by the way, think how much coal Australia has burnt since the 60's because the green's opposed nuclear...Most of them don't have the first clue about nuclear power station designs, safety, fuel cycles and the ways that can be managed. There is indeed inevitably some waste, but it's not the glowing green heap that many think you get. And you have to be pragmatic, filling our climate with green house gases and particular emissions, and our water ways with plastics are significantly greater existential threats to life (all forms, not just humans), than nuclear waste currently is. Pretending we can crack these other problems within a sufficient timeframe is inane, if one also takes the position that we couldn't possibly conceive of and engineer better solutions for nuclear waste management in a century or two. Sometimes shooting for the ideal solution does more harm by delay, than taking progressive steps in an imperfect reality.

For reference, I'm no solar hater, I put in a 30kw 3 phase solar array and 60kWh battery bank in for my house. It's a serious expense, and I did it because I'm an engineernerd, and acting early in the sense of climate change counts for a fuck load more than any amount of extended whining about politicians making noises with respect to different targets. What matters is the outcome...just get the fuck on with it, and do what we can - now. The house here was oriented and designed many decades ago with actual regard to solar aspect for both thermal and potential PV generation (which back then was wishful thinking really). Most houses don't start with those basics, so that's a problem. Then there is tree shading. I also had to re-roof and re-insulate the entire house as part of that project, because you aren't going to be doing that once you have covered the entire roof in panels (which is the sort of capital cost that sneaks up on people when you are talking about array's big enough to actually provide most of your power needs). The setup here is grid tied, but effectively we are easily self-sufficient for the majority of days per year, but it's 100% not a proposition for most people. Also, trying to find residential solar installers that have the vaguest clue what they are actually doing is basically impossible, they just want to sell you some pre-packaged 'about right for the average house, most of the time solution' and whack that on as quickly as possible and piss off. Which is a rather sad state of affairs, as it means those buyers with good intentions - but lacking technical knowledge - rarely end up with a well thought out and optimised system. So there is that problem (and you can't legally do anything without the signoff of these guys in Aus - which I also understand, having seen the kind of stupidity that some people do with cabling and home electrical systems, seriously if you are the crayon munching type, know enough about yourself to not try to DIY your household wiring...particularly with PV systems and anti-islanding concerns....grid workers shouldn't be killed by crayon munchers).

The panels cost very little compared to the two 3P solar string inverters and the three 1P battery charger/inverters. Ditto the batteries themselves. Working from home, the concept was that most of the time the excess capacity can go into charging an electric car, so I buried 25mm2 3P cable between the house and garage to support at least the maximum charge rate that the inverters can do. Still don't have an electric car though, so currently export about 4-5kw per phase instead most of the time (limited by voltage rise on the long run on the conductors to the street).

Even with the ludicrous overkill of the array, there are days where it will only output 0W to 500W. This place burns base load of about 1.5kw all the time at a minimum (due to servers and network gear) etc, and some intermittent large loads (electric heat pump system for hot water, pool pump etc). That means that during really poor conditions (say 5 days of terribly bad weather) we still hit the grid, for up to a couple of days at a time. That energy has to come from somewhere, and it's doesn't just instantly get spun up. If everyone got on with rooftop PV + batteries and Australia moved a lot of grid supply to fast spin up gas systems for the times the grid needs support, then that would be a nice stop gap solution that let us ditch coal whilst PV/batteries/Hydrogen/Other RE, continues to develop. The other option under that scenario is just keep burning coal. Not quite as 'green' as gas, but cradle to grave, might be better depending on the timeframe since the production assets already exist and still have a fair bit of service life. Sure you are still burning coal, but progressively it's for a reduced load demand, and also progressively less often.

Sorry, I can rant about all this for hours. I will cease and desist.

[stephenbrickwood]

Allan Fells advised the AEMO and the government that a 100% electric world means 5 times more electricity demand.
Because fossil fuels are very high DENSITY energy.

Do understand ?
Do you agree ?

[davocc]

Thanks firstly for pronouncing "nuclear" properly (unlike most Americans?). FWIW I think Oz will end up with a combination of small nuclear and solar/wind in the end to service types of demand; I can see solar best for your rooftops in residential areas (cuts transmission costs quite a lot too) and for super high demand areas (e.g. steel manufacture, etc.) you could locate some small or micro reactors to service that demand cluster. As for the reactors and waste...



Rougly a decade (or more) ago an MIT team spun off a company to develop and promote the WAMSR - waste annihilating molten salt reactor. It uses the old but quite effective molten salt model (which was shit-canned for a mixture of political and materials reasons) from the 1950's and 1960's. The molten salt reactor had the corrosion problem to deal with (materials science research would have responded in time to counter this but has actually countered it now so it's now viable). The other two factors were the preference by the Navy for the light water reactor tech being fitted to the Nautilus (the first nuclear powered sub) and a host of state political issues to do with senators pushing R&D coin to be spent in their respective states at the time.



The WAMSR revives that salt reactor idea but with one monumental improvement which addresses your concern about waste - it's actually powered by expended rods from the existing reactors. They contain I think 96% of their viable energy but the casing has broken down so the rods can't be handled or used properly any more in the existing reactors. The WAMSR dissolves the fissile material in the molten salt bath where the pool generates the heat and is contained by a salt 'freeze valve' connected to a lower antechamber below the reaction chamber. The freeze valve is powered and maintained and gives the plant meltdown response in a walk-away scenario - if the power is cut to the freeze valve it melts and the fissile bath pours into the much larger antechamber below and cools gradually becoming stable (non-critical). WAMSRs burn the output of a conventional reactor (20 tonnes) down to about 3-4kg of material which has a half life of roughly 400 years or so they claim.... Much easier to handle, they'll probably turn it into bricks in public housing (what could possibly go wrong?).



I believe variations of this model and concept are making their way into 4th generation reactor designs - I've not heard that much consistently yet but the notion of using that waste material in this way is immensely practical for cost, safety, defence (you don't have to protect the store of waste from theft) and national energy security reasons (especially for nations that have to import their uranium). The MIT team estimated that even counting for growth in power demand WAMSRs could power the entire planet's energy requirements for around 70 years based on the nuclear waste stored at present (I presume this estimate is based on declared stores of the time).



Also there are two new programmes for "mini" and "micro" reactors - the former has government funding and a green light from the UK government and is being developed by Rolls Royce, they will allow factory built reactors to be placed in locations (I'm not sure if they are sealed fuel or fuelled like a large reactor). The Yanks are building micro reactors which I believe are more like those found on subs and carriers (I'm not 100% on that) but I do know one is being installed on a USAF base to give it independence from the grid and also to test the concept (given that they would have security around the base already). Securing these things always is going to be an issue but I'd imagine we'll see some of these mini and micro reactors going into existing sites, perhaps even a molten salt design at some point which would be interesting.



"Renewable" tech has huge environmental impact such as the inability to recycle blades from wind farms, the environmental costs of making panels, etc. I know much of this has improved over the past few decades but there are still issues galore; though environmental concerns aren't the only factor (energy security and local reliance are crucial especially if we're edging closer to war as we seem to all be).

[drjubierre]

Here, in Bavaria, Germany, most of the countryside houses have the roofs covered by solar panels. I am also on the opinion that self-contained energy-balanced communities are the solution. Large high-voltage networks are just not efficient enough. I guess, big cities still will need them for a while.

[adammcleod]

Solar requires a heap of energy to manufacture the panels. Do they ever become carbon neutral or positive? The ingredients for the batteries have to be mined and are limited. Battery life is limited. Problems with battery waste when they are done with. Rolling out solar and batteries to every household would be diabolical to the environment I would think.

[Cameronsutubes]

I was living in Adelaide when we had the big power outage, Someone in Victoria kick the plug out of the socket .
1/2 the reason why I moved out of S.A

[gertvanwerven]

Hydrogen conversion (to and from, round-trip) is at the moment only 50% efficient. Hydrogen is just an energy store. If not needed then probably avoid it. As intermediate replacement for natural gas or powering trucks or plains it might be ok for the next decades. Home storage probably isn't one of them. And I agree modern nuclear plants are inherently save and the waste ( to be stored in the caverns in Finland for example) from the modern plant will be save after ( only) 300 years in comparison to the current 70's plant mainly where it's about 250.000 years. Btw. New nuclear plant will be factory build and come containerised and are "stackable".

[vizionthing]

Imagine every car while not in use being a solution to the renewables fluctuation problem, the makers are already moving in this direction, it wont work for a small number of vehicles that are actually used throughout the day but for the rest there will be a cheap and easy solution to smooth out the load. I think the biggest problem is the fossil fuel industry are working frantically behinds the scenes to keep the status quo.

[misteragony]

First off: full solar&wind are not an option in every country simply because the lack of space. Then you have the intermittency, when there is no sun or wind, there is no power (for smaller countries definitely a problem). In my country, even when there is wind, they need to shut down a lot of windmills at night so people can sleep, they have no other option than to build them close to residential areas. You need expensive energy storage systems and you still need a capacity to secure your base energy production. Nuclear waste is not a problem: it's tiny volume wise and can be stored safely and cost effectively. Renewables on their own look cheap, but you need to calculate the total system cost, including energy storage, base load capacity, relatively short lifecycle, ...For every windmill/solar panel you still need to calculate your baseload. And renewables have their waste problem as well: windmill blades that can't be recycled, solar panels as well only recycable to a certain degree. And you know more people die from renewables each year than from nuclear right? (Fukushima caused a single death). Windmills kill a few million birds each year (mostly rare birds), their vibrations cause havoc to fish populations when places in sea. That being said: for me a healthy mix nuclear and renewables is the only way forward.