9mo ago

Nuclear too slow to replace coal, and baseload “simply can’t compete” with wind and solar, AEMO boss says

reneweconomy.com.au

The head of the Australian energy market operator AEMO, Daniel Westerman, has rejected nuclear power as a way to replace Australia's ageing coal-fired power stations, arguing that it is too slow and too expensive. In addition, baseload power sources are not competitive in a grid dominated by wind and solar energy anyway.

128 comments

- Exactly. Building nuclear power plants in the 80s should've been the way humanity went. Now, advancements in batteries (Sodium ion for example) and established supply chains means that solar/wind + batteries is the way to go.
  I don't agree with ur safety take on nuclear energy though. All nuclear energy accidents were the result of shitty operational management who were warned waaaay before. It's like airlines in the 60s, where safety standards were hilariously bad. Now, with extremely stringent regulations, we can solve the safety issues.
  
  Shitty operational management is systemic in organisations that operate huge centralized systems though. see: normal accidents accidents
  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normal_Accidents
  
  I would disagree. Take a look at airplanes for instance. Good safety policy measures and enforcement can make seemingly high risk operations incredibly safe. Take a look at French nuclear reactors for example. Good nuclear safety policies, hence no accidents.
  
  Take a look at airplanes for instance.
  Those things that Boeing builds?
  
  Less people die on airplanes than other modes of transport. So yeah, that's the level of safety despite Boeing's bullshit.
  
  Less people travel by planes than other modes of transport.
  If you look unitary numbers, planes in general are safer than most things, not by any absurd margin. And Boeing has more than one model that just isn't safer than most things.
  That should show you how bad management can destroy any kind of safety policy. But I guess it won't, not by fault of the facts.
  
  Just wanna add that storing energy can also be done in other forms than electricity. For example, pump water up a hill with solar energy during daytime, and use turbines and gravity during the night
  
  Those forms of energy storage r very location dependent and also quite cost inefficient. Chemical batteries make sense almost everywhere. The only problem is shitty Lithium. Replacing it with sodium ion kinda solves all problems.
  
  Japan has high safety standards
  
  Nobody died at Fukushima and it was an outdated designed reactor that needed to be retrofitted.
  
  You stated that all nuclear a accidents were the fault of lax standards. I gave you a counter example.
- harness it,
  Getting more efficient and cost effective at a rapid pace. Still some environmental concerns over manufacturing, raw materials acquisition, and disposal of old equipment.
  store it,
  Getting more efficient and cost effective at a less rapid pace. Still significant environmental concerns over manufacturing, raw materials acquisition, and disposal of old equipment.
  then distribute it.
  Lots of effort and resources needed for this part. Need to subsidize consumer appliance conversion better.
- Nuclear waste is incredibly safe and disasters simply don't happen anymore because of how strict safety protocols are
  
  I certainly agree that we've gotten much better at safely producing and storing. However, with climate change worsening, we continue to have unprecedented natural disasters in unexpected areas which concerns me the most.
  
  What kind of climate change disaster do you think would cause problems with nuclear waste storage?
  
  It's all very well claiming that nuclear waste storage is safe but you can't guarantee anything can be kept safe for 10000 years. Humans haven't managed that for anything, ever.
  
  You can't really guarantee anything. What we do is play the odds. And the odds are pretty good.
  
  Except you have no emperical basis for judging the accuracy of those odds.
  
  Actually I do. Simply look at injured people because of nuclear power and compare them to injured people because of any alternative.
  
  Irrelevant to storing nuclear waste for 10000 years, which was what I was talking avout
  
  well we’ve been storing nuclear waste for decades so we can extrapolate
  
  That's like saying we don't know if the sun will come up tomorrow, because we can't see in the future.
  
  Yes, you can.
  It’s been stored in the ground since the earth was formed.
  
  Not in a highly refined form
  
  It’s been stored in the ground since the earth was formed.
  
  "not in a highly refined form"
  
  This getting heavily downvoted with no replies shows just how much of anti-nuclear is simply based on propaganda and fearmongering, not science. Nuclear is the second safest energy source in the world, nearly tied with solar for first, and actually was the first until not too long ago. And that is despite the heavy investment into renewables and disinvestment into nuclear. If anyone is that worried about the dangers of nuclear to people and the environment, they should turn their attention to hydro-energy (not to speak of fossil fuels, obviously).
  What are even the major disasters regarding nuclear? One, Chernobyl, was in the USSR in the 80s; does anyone remember what phones looked like in the 80s? The other was in Fukushima, which is located in a country known for earthquakes and tsunamis, and it was not build to handle such events; and it still was nowhere near as bad as Chernobyl. I think I've also heard about one in the UK, but that was in the fucking 50s, and even smaller than Fukushima.
  
  The US had the 3 mile island disaster in the 70s. But I think the actual radioactive release was negligible.
  
  Fukushima was not a nuclear waste storage site
- Some countries have sun, some don't. They might need nuclear. That is the reality.
  
  Which countries? The UK is famous for its cloudy weather, yet solar is feasible there. Finland and Sweden are building more and more solar. Not sure where you're talking about.
  
  UK has wind.
  I'm taking east Europe for instance.
  
  FWIW, Baltic countries are going hard for solar, see https://lemmy.world/post/17098210
  
  Baltics powered by Finnish and Swedish nuclear.
  
  Well, that's a bald-faced lie. Maybe if we were only talking about Lithuania, which does import big chunk of its energy budget from Sweden, but Estonia and Latvia generate most of their energy on their own - and according to the linked article, plan to generate even more in near future.
  
  Context is everyting. Here's some cold hard facts for you:
  As of 00:00 on 19/07/2024:
  Country From % MW
  
  Estonia Finland 37% 358
  Latvia Estonia 33% 325
  Lithuania Sweden 40% 733
  % being the overall percentage of electricity consumption.
  So >1GW imported from SE/FI out of ~4GW total in the Baltics is imported from countries with 40-50% nuclear baseload.
  source https://electricitymaps.com/
  
  Everyone is or at least tries to portray they are. Your article could be written for almost any country in the world.
  But that doesn't mean a country can be run on solar alone.
  
  Who is suggesting solar alone?
  
  Many people seem to think that's the idea. I don't know about you, but when you frame the discussion as solar vs nuclear, that is what you are suggesting.
  
  I mean, it's fair to compare the two techs but that's different from suggesting that you need a single approach to generation. No one is seriously suggesting that only solar for generation is sensible
  
  I'm not sure if this is your first conversation on the topic but the debate is almost entirely on renewables vs nuclear.
  
  There are many other types of renewables than just solar.
  
  Did you notice yourself using the word "solar" in this conversation rather than "renewables"?
  
  No, the article definitely could not be written for any country in the world, because it lists concrete actions, numbers for past few years, and concrete plans for next few years.
  But judging from your comments here and elsewhere in the thread, you do not care about discussion, and will move goalposts whenever it suits you. You are not a nice person. So, PLONK.
  
  Not true. You don't seem to know much about energy policies in EU.
  But well... Bye
  
  Why does eastern Europe get less sunlight?
  
  It’s like 3 am there
  
  Less than Spain. There is a winter. Geography and suitable areas less common. Distribution network made for power plants.
  Nuclear plants can be a better cost effective fit.
  
  Darkovia has zero sun
  
  Until a weather event blocks out most of the sunlight. An extreme scenario would be what happened to the dinosaurs, however smaller scale versions or that, such as large volcano eruptions, seem entirely possible and could heavily restrict the amount of sunlight you have access to for long periods of time.
  Portugal lies in Southern Europe, we get plenty of sun, and we make heavy use of solar, but that still isn't enough sometimes, and I'm pretty sure we sometimes get our energy from Spain, who themselves use nuclear.

Country	From	%	MW
Estonia	Finland	37%	358
Latvia	Estonia	33%	325
Lithuania	Sweden	40%	733

128 comments