WHY AUSTRALIA MUST GO NUCLEAR

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If we want to have a cleaner environment, we will need to address a few fundamental issues: The source of electricity and the baseload power generation infrastructure must be upgraded. And that means we need to migrate to nuclear fission. If the goal is to stop using coal and natural gas, then this is the only logical way to power economies and cleanly “fuel” EVs. The power distribution grid needs to be completely upgraded. If we all had EVs today, the power grids would collapse. It couldn’t carry the load. And our aging power grids tend to lose between 7–15% of the electricity between the source of production and your EV. This is what is referred to as transmission and distribution losses (T&D losses). That means we have to burn extra amounts of fossil fuels for each unit of electricity delivered to an end user. The power generation of major developing economies like China and India must be addressed. These countries continue to increase their use of coal, especially China, despite developed countries around the world reducing the use of coal. The U.S. private sector continues to lead the world in terms of investment and technological innovation on both next-generation forms of nuclear fission (small modular reactors, or SMRs) and nuclear fusion technology. Sadly, nuclear fusion is not even close.

U.S. energy technologies are aggressively “doing something about it” rather than just talking about it over tea parties. Fortunately, the Trump administration is very pro-nuclear as a source of energy, which has not been the case in the U.S. for decades. We can also expect to see some major regulatory changes that will safely streamline the regulatory process for developing and commissioning nuclear fission reactors.

In summary, we need to follow America’s lead. Dutton has seen the light, and we should give him the reigns at the next election. What he proposes is the best and least expensive power generation option for Australia, particularly using the existing transmission lines by converting coal-fired plants to nuclear. Labour’s renewables with solar and wind are not a viable option, and from my standpoint, wind turbines are an eyesore.

PROPOSED NUCLEAR POWER PLANTS IN AUSTRALIA

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Half of the nuclear power stations under construction in the world are in China. Eleven more were signed off by Premier Li Qiang at a single meeting in Aug­ust. Many analysts forecast that China will likely approve and construct them at that rate – 10 or so a year — for the next three decades. It must also be remembered that China is the world’s biggest carbon emitter and it is approving two new coal plants per week. You read that correctly, two new coal plants are approved each week.

Dutton’s nuclear power plan calls for building seven nuclear power ­stations over the same three-decade period.

An important part of Dutton’s plan is to have its nuclear plants located at or near existing power plant sites. This eliminates the need for a huge new transmission grid. Also, nuclear provides ‘always-on’ power needed to back up renewables, stabilising the grid and keeping energy affordable.

The Coalition’s approach integrates zero-emissions nuclear energy alongside renewables and gas, delivering a total system cost significantly lower than Labor’s. This means reduced power bills for households, lower operating costs for small businesses, and a stronger, more resilient economy.

AUSTRALIA: NUCLEAR POWER IS THE ONLY SOLUTION TO OUR ENERGY DILEMMA

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Article by Chris Kenny in The Australian, November, 16th 2024.

Anthony Albanese and Chris Bowen have long argued that renewable energy is the cheapest form of electricity. However, while tens of billions of dollars in subsidies and investments flow into renewables, prices keep going up. A reckoning must come, and it will be ugly.

Not only is Labor’s plan to reach its net-zero goal by switching the electricity grid to 90 percent renewable energy physically impossible (it has committed to get to 82 percent within 6 years), but the attempt is sending us a broke. At some stage, the facts will break through the delusion.

The unavoidable logic behind firming up a renewable energy grid makes additional costs unavoidable – a renewables grid demands two grids. You need to construct an expansive network of wind and solar generation plants, enough to cover about three times peak demand spread across vastly different microclimates in the hope that wind or sun will be available somewhere when you need it.

On Friday, the Coalition released estimates from Frontier Economics putting the total requited spend for the renewables transition at $642bn – that is $500bn more than Labor has estimated, and about five times what we have already spent. All of this must be recouped with profit, so our power price pain can only ­increase.

The catch with renewables is that they will always require backup, in effect another electricity grid, perhaps using much of the same transmission lines, but capable of generating peak demand without wind or solar. Most likely this backup grid would be powered by gas.

Once we know there is enough backup to supply peak demand, we can understand that the entirety of the renewable asset build is an additional and unnecessary energy cost we have chosen to impose on ourselves. It alienates land, increases complexity, and escalates costs without providing additional power, all so we can meet emissions reduction targets that other countries are not meeting, and which will make no discernible difference to global emissions or, therefore, the climate, anyway.

And whenever gas is needed to firm up the grid, the price the gas generators can charge will determine the cost of electricity. Two grids, a vast and inefficient renewable grid we could well do without, and an effective and reliable fossil-fuel grid are needed to guarantee the energy that underpins our society.

The lies being told on renewables costs have been brilliantly exposed by simple observations and arguments run by entrepreneur Dick Smith in an, until now, private debate with The Guardian Australia. Smith responded after The Guardian ran a piece slamming him for running “ill-informed claims” about renewable energy costs and practicality.

Smith does not contest the need to reduce emissions. His arguments are about whether renewables can power a modern economy and whether nuclear might not be a crucial part of the energy mix. In his letter, Smith says the underestimates from the CSIRO allow it to “falsely claim that renewables with storage is the cheapest form of energy”.

The electronics entrepreneur, adventurer, and environmentalist made a killer observation that exposes the ruse. “No doubt you have noticed all the wind and solar farms that exist around our country,” Smith wrote to The Guardian. “If the CSIRO claim that wind, solar, and storage is the cheapest form of energy is correct, these facilities would include batteries to supply power 24/7 – or at least for five hours. None of them do.”

This connects to a point I have made for a decade or more – instead of subsidising the installation of unreliable renewable energy, we should have made any subsidies or targets contingent on generators firming up their own supplies, either with batteries or dispatchable generation. Smith provides a clear explanation for why this is impossible: “That is, the cost of even limited storage results in solar and wind power being so expensive it is unaffordable.”

Dick Smith has also pointed out that when Broken Hill went dark last month because the main transmission line from Victoria was taken out in a storm, neither the nearby solar factory, wind farm, or big battery were able to keep the Silver City in power. He cites the real-world example of Lord Howe Island where despite a $12m grant for a renewables grid with storage, they have ended up with higher power prices and a reliance on diesel generators for 100 percent of their electricity at times.

This is just the reality. No developed country has even attempted to run on a 90 percent renewables model, and unless there is a watershed development in energy storage no country ever will – so what is Australia playing at?

A clue for a secure, prosperous, and clean energy future comes from our defense force—not the inane net-zero strategy but their plan to run nuclear-propelled ­submarines.

Instead of wasting government subsidies and burdening consumers with the investment costs of unproven renewable models and other “green energy superpowers” hyperbole like green hydrogen and pumped hydro, the time is ripe for nuclear power. It is dense power with a small land footprint that can use existing transmission infrastructure,

Remember the Whyalla wipeout? A decade or more on, it is still on the way with grave doubts about the future of the steelworks, delayed only by taxpayer subsidies and green energy posturing.

A steel manufacturing centre established with the advantage of cheap and reliable coal power is struggling again, as it awaits some kind of “green hydrogen” saviour. Yet a couple of hours up the road is one of the world’s largest uranium mines, and Whyalla and Port Augusta are linked to the national transmission grid because of the now-demolished coal-fired power plants in the region.

A nuclear power station near Port Augusta would buttress power supplies for Whyalla, South Australia and the national grid. Any excess power at times of low demand could be used for desalination or hydrogen production.

It is a much more logical and efficient solution, with proven technology, than our current renewables-plus-storage experiment. The only thing stopping the nuclear option is an honest and truthful appraisal of our options – and the political will.

GOOGLE TURNS TO NUCLEAR ENERGY

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Alphabet’s Google is plugging into nuclear power for its artificial intelligence (AI) operations. The tech giant inked a deal with Kairos Power to purchase electricity from small modular reactors (SMRs).

  • The plan: Bring the first SMR online by 2030, with more to follow through 2035.
  • The bigger picture: This move highlights the surging energy demands of AI, with U.S. data center power consumption projected to triple between 2023 and 2030.

In a deal that marks the first corporate agreement to deploy multiple small modular reactors (SMRs) in the U.S., Kairos Power, and Google have signed a Master Plant Development Agreement to facilitate the development of a 500-MW fleet of molten salt nuclear reactors by 2035 to power Google’s data centers.

Momentum for a nuclear revival driven by data center power demand is already beginning to crop up. As POWER reported earlier this month, Microsoft and Constellation Energy committed $1.6 billion to restart the Unit 1 reactor of the shuttered Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania by 2028. The facility, known as the Crane Clean Energy Center, could supply Microsoft’s AI-driven data centers for at least 20 years. Amazon Web Services, similarly, last year bought a 960-MW data center campus powered by the 2,500-MW Susquehanna nuclear plant.

Also, the Strategic Capabilities Office of the US Department of Defense (DOD) has selected BWXT Advanced Technologies and X-energy LLC to develop a final design for a prototype mobile microreactor under the Project Pele initiative. The two teams have been selected through a preliminary design competition which began in April 2019. Three companies – BWX Technologies, Westinghouse Government Services, and X-energy – were selected last year to begin preliminary design work for a prototype reactor. One of the remaining two companies may be selected to build and demonstrate a prototype after a final design review early next year, and the completion of an environmental analysis under the US National Environmental Protection Act, DOD said.

Australia has realized the need for nuclear submarines, so we are committed to nuclear energy and need to develop expertise with small nuclear reactors. We have also had a nuclear reactor in Sydney since the 1950s without incident. Hence, it makes good business sense to bring nuclear energy into our energy mix as well.

ALBANESE HAS BEEN WARNED BY DR ADRIAN PATERSON: HE SAYS, NUCLEAR WILL PROVIDE THE LOWEST ENERGY COST

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Why is Dr Adrian Paterson, the former chief executive of the Australian Nuclear ­Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO), which operates the Lucas Heights reactor in Sydney being ignored.

Dr Paterson has written to Prime Minister Anthony Albanese demanding urgent action to keep the nation’s lights on.

Paterson asks: “Why are we as a modern democracy banning nuclear at the federal and state level when low-carbon nuclear provides the cheapest consumer costs? Nuclear would transform an electricity grid which is getting … less reliable plus getting very, very expensive.

“Your electricity plan, for a massive expansion of the grid with wind and solar sources is deeply flawed and expensive. It will fail to deliver quality, 24-hour electricity,” Dr Paterson warned.

Dr Paterson said nuclear energy production stands apart from wind and solar because it doesn’t require a “massive expansion” of the grid – the cost of which would easily fund the first nuclear power plants.

Regarding a CSIRO report that claims nuclear will be too expensive, Paterson says: “CSIRO has no expertise in the cost of generation.

“What they do is take publicly available figures of the construction costs of nuclear power plants – usually in countries that have got regulatory environments that are kind of designed to stop nuclear – and convert them into a generation cost using an algorithm which is provided to them by a private sector firm that is not an expert in the nuclear industry,” he says.

“I’ve engaged the CSIRO for several years both directly and also through the press to say that we can work together to sort this out and they have no inclination to do it. People don’t know that to build all of the planned solar panels and wind turbines we’re going to have to double the size of the grid, which is 40 percent of electricity bills.

“The eastern grid in Australia is the most complex machine in the southern hemisphere. The policy of this government is to make it twice as big as it is and twice as complex if you have to integrate intermittent sources into it.

“How do people believe that we can create a grid that’s double the size with lower energy density and still have the current quality of life?

“The current policy is based on a failure to get proper engineers in the room. Engineers are being banned from giving talks as we speak,” Paterson says.

Commenting on his letter to the PM, Dr Paterson said Australians should be given a choice in how their electricity is generated.

“We shouldn’t be making decisions based on the personal preference of Anthony Albanese. This ‘Captain’s Pick’ mindset is stuck in the 80s when he was an antinuclear campaigner at Sydney University.

“It’s time Australia had the option to join the rest of the world, who are already using nuclear to stabilise the grid and power their economies.

“Why should Australia miss out on cheap, clean fuel? Why should Australians pay more to keep the lights on at home? Why not keep businesses doors open and unemployment low?”

Dr Paterson served as chief executive of ANSTO for 12 years, has degrees in chemistry and engineering, sits on the board of HB11 Energy, a company developing laser hydrogen fusion technology, and is now the principal and founder of energy advisory Siyeva Consulting.

NUCLEAR POWER IS ALREADY POWERING ONTARIO CANADA & THEY ARE LEADING THE WAY WITH SMR’S

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Why aren’t our politicians following what is happening in Canada specifically in Ontario. Watch the video below and hear from Ontario politicians on what they believe about nuclear power.

(CAMBRIDGE, Ontario – April 19, 2024) – BWX Technologies, Inc. (NYSE: BWXT) announced today an investment to expand its Cambridge manufacturing plant. Already one of the largest nuclear commercial manufacturing facilities in North America, the site’s increased footprint will enable greater capacity to support ongoing and anticipated customers’ investments in Small Modular Reactors, traditional large-scale nuclear, and advanced reactors, in Canada and around the world.

The expansion, estimated to cost C$50 million, will increase the facility’s footprint 25 percent to 280,000 square feet. Additionally, over the next few years, BWXT will invest approximately C$30 million in advanced manufacturing equipment for the facility that has designed and manufactured hundreds of large nuclear components. This total estimated C$80 million investment will increase capacity significantly, improve productivity and create more than 200 long-term jobs for skilled workers, engineers and support staff in the area. 

John MacQuarrie, president of Commercial Operations, BWXT, stated, “Our expansion comes at a time when we’re supporting our customers in the successful execution of some of the largest clean nuclear energy projects in the world. At the same time, the global nuclear industry is increasingly being called upon to mitigate the impacts of climate change and increase energy security and independence. By investing significantly in our Cambridge manufacturing facility, BWXT is further positioning our business to serve our customers to produce more safe, clean, and reliable electricity in Canada and abroad.” 

Mike Rencheck, president and CEO of Bruce Power said, “The nuclear industry is powering Ontario’s economy, by supplying clean, reliable electricity, life-saving medical isotopes, and creating thousands of good jobs. We are supporting advanced manufacturing while providing a deeply decarbonized grid to attract new businesses to our province. The expansion at the BWXT facility in Cambridge is another great example of the positive impact our industry can have in communities all across the province. Clean air, cancer-fighting medical treatments, and economic expansion leading Ontario to a better future.”

Ken Hartwick, president and CEO of Ontario Power Generation (OPG), said, “As we refurbish our existing nuclear facilities and build new, OPG is also generating jobs and economic activity in Ontario’s robust nuclear supply chain. BWXT’s planned expansion is a great example of how building out a system to meet Ontario’s increasing clean energy needs is also paying dividends for our province’s economy.” 

Recent announcements by provincial governments to increase emissions-free power generation have reinvigorated the nuclear industry in Canada. Within the last year, the Government of Ontario has announced support for building a total of four small modular reactors (SMRs) for Ontario Power Generation’s (OPG) Darlington New Nuclear Project; refurbishing OPG Pickering Nuclear Generating Station; and initiating pre-development work for siting up to 4,800 MWs of new nuclear power generation at Bruce Power.  

Premier of Ontario Doug Ford said, “We’re thrilled to see BWXT expand its footprint and create hundreds of new jobs in Cambridge. As our province continues to lead the future of nuclear energy, the company’s investment will help provide Ontario families and businesses with access to clean, reliable, and affordable power.