Nuclear cost to double in Ontario

Proposed Ontario SMR

From Renew Economy

The main power utility in the Canadian province of Ontario has put in a request to nearly double the price of payments its receives for nuclear power, in order to cover the cost of maintenance, upgrades and new projects.

Ontario Power Generation has asked the local regulator – the Ontario Energy Board – to increase the payments for nuclear power to $C207 a megawatt hour ($A222/MWh) [$US150/MWh] from January, 2027, nearly double what it received ($C111.61/MWh) in 2025.

Nuclear accounts for more than half of the generation in Ontario, which is often held up by nuclear advocates as a shining light for Australia to follow, but it faces massive expenses in coming years as it refurbishes its aging nuclear fleet, and embarks on a program to build four small modular reactors.

The first of these SMRS are expected to be delivered in the early 2030s, and the total cost is currently put at more than $C21 billion. But more money, nearly $C27 billion, is to be spent on refurbishing four existing reactors at Pickering, and yet more on other nuclear upkeep costs.

The huge investment in nuclear is raising concerns among environmental groups and also major energy users, which include steel makers and car companies such as Ford and Toyota.

The Association of Major Power Consumers in Ontario, says its members are facing “skyrocketing” electricity prices, including a 165 per cent rise in the next three years.

AMPCO president Brad Duguid blames the rising cost of nuclear, and also the heavy price of gas generation which is being used to fill the gap caused by the refurbishment of the old nuclear plants, some of which are scheduled to be offline for three years.

“Over the next seven to 10 years, we’re seeing significant increases in the market energy rates to make up that difference,” he told the Globe and Mail.

“We’re talking about increases in the range of 165 per cent for the market rate over the next three years alone. That’s untenable. That’s an absolute threat to the competitiveness of our industrial sector and the hundreds of thousands of jobs it supports.”

Retail customers are also suffering. Residential power prices jumped 29 per cent in October, although they were partially offset by an increase in government rebates.

The cost of those rebates – which are used by the government in Ontario, as they are in nuclear dependent France, to hide the true cost of nuclear – have jumped to $C8.5 billion a year. Other costs are incorporated in general government debt, critics note.

“This application really confirms that these projects are among the most expensive ways to meet our need for electricity,” said the Ontario Clean Air Alliance, which supports renewables and opposes the nuclear expansion.

“We could expand solar, wind and storage at a fraction of the cost and avoid seeing our power bills go through the roof.

“The Premier’s buddies in the nuclear and gas industries may like his plan for an old school electricity system built around eye-wateringly expensive mega projects. But the people of Ontario are now in for some serious sticker shock.

See also First SMR in a G7 country 

Politicians favouring fossil fuels are idiots

 From Professor Ray Wills:

Only excuse for politicians who

• continue subsidies on costly fossil fuels
• think nuclear power is cheap
• claim clean energy is expensive
• want to end decarbonisation?

Idiots

Only idiots ignore the data

My model projections from 2018, and updated 2025:

Prof Wills wasn't 100% correct in his forecasts back in 2018 (nearly 8 years ago).  On the other hand, he was among the least wrong.  The IEA (International Energy Agency), for example, consistently, year after year, underestimated the growth in renewables, and overestimated the growth in demand for fossil fuels.  I myself thought that emissions from coal peaked in 2018, and instead there was a surge in electricity generation from coal in China.  You can read about my latest forecast that emissions have peaked, here.

2018 forecasts

Wills sees oil peaking in 2027, and coal and gas peaking now.

2025 forecasts

Note that the two charts below show primary energy consumption, which is much more than, say, electricity production, because three-quarters of the fuel burnt to generate electricity or to power an ICEV is wasted as heat.

2018 forecasts

2025 forecasts

You'll notice that Wills doesn't think nuclear will grow:

Most important reason nuclear isn't viable in one graph

Apart from long build, it's expensive electricity, [and] if it's really hot, you need to turn them off

Not to mention that all the lethal by-products. 

Global solar output overtook nuclear output 2025

Global wind output will pass nuclear output early 2028

Now here's where some peeps lose it and call me a loony:

[In] my model projection, renewable[s] will pass fossil fuel primary energy consumption in 2035 

Does that mean that we will have halved emissions by then?  No, because there is still growth in demand.  But each year that the share of renewables rises means that demand growth will be increasingly supplied by renewables.  

The Ozzie Right's nuclear plans are nonsense

Sizewell C in the middle of the image with the existing Sizewell B in the top right.
Source: Wikipedia

From IEEFA

 

The UK’s Financial Times has recently reported that the 3,260 megawatt Sizewell C project – expected to be the UK’s next nuclear power plant – is now likely to cost around GBP40 billion, or $80 billion in Australian dollars, to construct. That equates to $24,540 per kilowatt of capacity.

Sizewell C’s latest cost blow-out offers further confirmation that the opposition Liberal-National Coalition’s costing for its proposal to build nuclear power plants in Australia is far too low at $10,000 per kilowatt, and completely unrealistic. It supports IEEFA’s findings on the cost of construction for other nuclear power plants, detailed in our September 2024 report Nuclear in Australia would increase household power bills. The Sizewell C reactor’s newly estimated capital cost is about 2.5 times the capital cost used in the Frontier Economics modelling that has underpinned the Coalition’s plans.

At present the UK Government is yet to commit to construction of Sizewell C and an official costing for the project is yet to be released. But the latest information in Financial Times, which has reportedly come from government and industry sources close to the project, reinforces the findings from our prior report: that for nuclear power to be viable in Australia, large increases in power prices would be required.

If the reported $80 billion cost only covers the plant’s construction and doesn’t account for the substantial debt interest costs likely to be accumulated over the targeted nine-year construction period, then Sizewell C would need the wholesale power price to rise to average out at around $300 per megawatt-hour to be commercially viable. Even if this debt interest cost is accounted for in the $80 billion cited by the Financial Times, then it would still need the wholesale power price to rise to around $230 per megawatt-hour.

By comparison, according to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC), over the 2023-24 financial year electricity retailers across Australia’s National Electricity Market needed to pay $132 per megawatt-hour on average for wholesale energy to service their household customers.

Shadow Treasurer Angus Taylor has asserted on repeated occasions that any government investment in nuclear power plants would be made on the requirement that they were “commercially viable”, with no subsidies provided that would hit the Government’s budget. So, for a nuclear plant with similar costs to those reported for Sizewell C to be commercially viable in Australia, wholesale energy prices would need to rise by $98 to $168 per megawatt-hour, relative to 2023-24 levels, to enable cost recovery. This equates to a 74% to 127% rise in wholesale prices, which would be charged on to household electricity consumers.

Such wholesale prices would mean that average household power bills across the states in the National Electricity Market would increase by between $510 and $874 per year prior to application of GST. Once GST is added then the increase will be between $561 and $961 – assuming electricity retailers don’t add a margin on top. This is based on ACCC data, which indicates average household annual consumption is 5.2 megawatt-hours.

Over the last year, utility-scale solar cots $52/MWh, and wind $79/MWh.  These Sizewell C costings imply that nuclear will cost at least 4.5 times as much as utility-scale solar, 8 times as much as rooftop solar, and  3 times as much as wind.  So why is the LNP fixated on nuclear as a "cure" for whatever is supposed to ail the Australian electricity market, when it's so expensive?   Well, it'll take 15 years, at least, for any nuclear power station to be built.  And in the meantime we'll have to go on using coal and gas.  In fact, the LNP proposes to stop all new renewables construction if it wins the upcoming election.

What about the "unreliability" and "variability" of renewables?  Wind and solar are so cheap we could have double the capacity we need, and throw away the surplus, and it would still be much cheaper than nuclear.  And that's ignoring battery farms and the huge storage capacity of EVs when the car/light truck fleet has transitioned to fully electric.

Pan-Europe wind & solar = stable output

 A most interesting thread from Sarastro on Bluesky.

The past two days we [have] seen something interesting in the European power market: continent wide balancing that is providing security of supply at the lowest prices driven by commercial incentives…

We know that solar and wind and inverse output characteristics. A system that contains both is more secure than one or other alone. This chart from @ember-energy.org makes the point on a European wide scale

 

You can see that on a European wide scale the combined output of wind and solar is less intermittent than solar and wind alone. These charts do not show the risk of hourly balancing though so you still need a source of flexible generation. [Or storage]

This morning we can see that in action. The French grid is importing power from Spain and exporting it to other markets across the French grid in Northern Europe. That’s how you get solar from southern Europe to Northern Europe and wind from the north to the south

 

But take a look at the output of the French nukes: the French have reduced nuclear output in response: they are not just wheeling power across the French system they are managing the French system for cost and using the nukes as a battery

It’s a revelation for those (like me) who have thought of nuclear has inflexible. EDF is showing us that at the heart of the European grid is a huge battery, its nuclear park, capable of firming both south solar and northern wind.

Yesterday we saw something similar with wind from the uk being imported into France and French exports to other European countries

But critically the nukes modulating output…

A couple of points:

1.  I've talked before about how wind and solar tend to balance each other, not just daily, but also seasonally.  It's not perfect, but on a continent-wide grid (as in Europe) the necessary storage/dispatchable power needed (such as gas) is significantly reduced from what would be needed if just wind or just solar was used.
2. Like Sarastro, I also did not know that nuclear could be ramped up and down.  Notice that the percentage moves are small --- roughly 20% --- but because nuclear is so large in European generation, that's enough to go a long way to balancing total grid output.  From the top chart, I estimate the seasonal variability of wind and solar together as ~10% of total output.
3. New nuclear is still much more expensive than new wind+solar combined with 5 hours of storage.  In Australia (without nuclear), 5 hours of storage with 20% overcapacity of wind and solar is enough to provide a stable grid for 99% of the time.    The tricky period seems to occur in July (mid-winter in Australia), when periods of little wind combine with low insolation and high demand for heating, a situation which is called dunkelflaute.  Even though this is a problem only 1% of the time, it would be unacceptable to close down the grid.
4. The solution, until we get better methods of long-term storage, is gas.  Currently, natural gas, but plausibly, in future, synthetic natural gas via the Sabatier process, produced using surplus green electricity.  
5. Alternatively, concentrated solar power (CSP) may do the trick.  Vast Solar, an Australian company, is busy constructing a CSP plant at Port Augusta in South Australia (on the edge of the desert, with lots of sunshine and heat --- CSP doesn't just use light, as solar panels do, it also uses infra-red, otherwise known as heat.)  CSP provides much more storage than batteries (1 hours compared with 4), so is much cheaper for long duration storage.  (Now called Vast Energy, the 30 MW CSP plant is yet to be started, with start-up now planned for Q2/2025.  However, they will now be co-producing green methanol at the plant as well)

2024's true colours

 By Fiona Katauskas

Why "baseload" is so antiquated

Hazelwood big battery. Source: Engie

Back in the 50s, electric grids everywhere had coal power stations backed up with peaking gas. Since coal power stations couldn't ramp up quickly (or economically) they tended to provide what was called "baseload". This was designed to provide a fixed supply of electricity to the grid, the level set at the point of lowest demand. The fluctuations in demand above that tended to be provided by gas, which can ramp up or down quickly.

Then along came wind and solar. Their output is driven by the weather. Peaks in supply didn't necessarily coincide with peaks in demand, although in hot places, the surge in demand because of a heatwave is now routinely met by a surge in output from solar. This required changes in how we run our grids. Most likely, we will end up with some over-capacity in wind and solar (estimates vary, but, say, around 20%) along with 4 to 6 hours of grid-wide storage.

Many still hanker for the old simplicities. The "Liberal"/National Party Coalition in Australia is very keen on nuclear. It doesn't matter that it's at least 50% more expensive even than new coal; or that new nuclear power stations in Australia won't start operating for, probably, at least another 15 years, which is a bit of a problem given that aging coal power stations will have closed down by then; or that even with 8 hours of storage with batteries (at current prices), wind and solar are 1/4 the cost of nuclear. But there is another problem with nuclear. It's even harder to ramp up or down than coal. And given the penetration of rooftop solar, the net demand on the grid (i.e., after rooftop solar) in east coast Australia now falls so low at midday that there simply is no space for GW-level baseload. (A situation already driving coal power stations to bankruptcy).

From Renew Economy

On Monday at around 5 pm (AEST), Victoria posted a new high for operational demand for the state’s grid of 9,581 megawatts (MW) in the midst of a record-breaking December heatwave.

Despite having two of its coal generation units off line, the state had little trouble dealing with the surge in demand because renewables were also delivering a record level of output.

Within 24 hours, however, the Australian Energy Market Operator, having spent much of the day issuing lack of reserve warnings for NSW and elsewhere, was back on line issuing a market notice of a different kind: warning not of a lack of reserve but of a lack of demand (minimum system load) for Victoria for Saturday, December 21.

The sudden switch from nearly too much demand to nearly too little demand is symptomatic of the dramatic changes that are occurring on the grid, and one of the fundamental reasons why most energy experts thing the idea of shoe-horning gigawatts of inflexible nuclear power capacity into the grid would be nuts.

The best to deal with such fluctuations, the experts say, is with flexibility – both in demand and supply – and most of that can be delivered by providing incentives to change the times when electricity is consumed, and ensuring fast reaction and flexible power sources, such as big batteries, can be deployed.

The warning for minimum system load cited potentially insufficient demand for Victoria at around 1pm on Saturday, with sunny conditions, high rooftop solar output, mild temperatures and the lack of business activity contributing to low operational demand.

The MSL notices are issued so that the markets can prepare a response. There are various options, but at the last resort AEMO can issue instructions to big batteries in that state (like the Hazelwood battery pictured above) to stand by on empty and get ready to charge – i.e. creating demand – if conditions warrant.

If that fails, there is a solar switch off mechanism, although that has limited application and is not popular, with either households or politicians and is seen as very much a last resort.

The MSL notice from AEMO – like another that was issued in early December – cited a forecast minimum demand of around 1,643 MW. The one issued for December 8 expected minimum load of around 1,250 MW.

This fits in with Tesla’s observations, in a submission to the federal nuclear inquiry, that most states in Australia, including Victoria, would struggle to support even 1 GW of baseload, or “always on” power because of the growing impact of renewables, and rooftop solar in particular.

It has warned that the federal Coalition’s nuclear power plan would result in “severe” constraints on rooftop solar – not just the occasional partial switch off in events like those cited above, but almost on a daily basis to accommodate nuclear power that does not like to ramp up and down.

“Given Australia’s world-leading solar and wind resources, and leading rates of rooftop solar PV, the power system’s minimum operating demand threshold becomes an upper ceiling for baseload supply to operate the power system in a secure and reliable state,” Tesla wrote in its submission.

“Increasing renewable penetration at these times further displaces baseload generation, reducing capacity factors and increasing the cost of supplying energy to consumers.

“The practical sizing of baseload generation is now significantly less than the minimum operating load.”

Thorium

 Here's an interesting video about using thorium instead of uranium to provide nuclear power.  Thorium is much, much cheaper than uranium, because there is more of it in the earth's crust and because it is 200 times more productive than uranium.  It is safer, and its waste is radioactive for only a few decades compared to 10,000 years or more for the waste from conventional reactors.  

The video gives no estimates of cost per MWh of output, so it's not clear whether it would be cheaper than conventional uranium-fired nuclear.  Demonstration power stations are due to start running next year (2025) and in 2026, so we shall see.  But don't expect it to make a difference over the next ten years, which is when we need to slash emissions as much as we can to prevent a 2.5 to 3 degrees rise in global temperatures by 2100.

Rubbery nuclear cost estimates

The world’s largest crane lifts a steel dome onto Hinkley Point C’s first reactor building. The cost of building the UK’s latest power plant has soared. Photograph: Ben Birchall/PA

In Australia, the right-wing Coalition ("Liberal"/National Party) opposition, in government when Australia became the first country in the world to abolish a carbon tax, is enthusiastically spruiking nuclear power. Their numbers defy belief.

Here's part of an article from The Guardian:

The primary reason the world is not embracing nuclear energy on a grand scale is simple: cost (although in Japan’s case, it’s also about safety).

The Frontier Economics report, which the Coalition is using to make its case, is written in an opaque way that makes direct comparisons difficult. Essentially, the report admits that the capital cost of nuclear is $10,000/kW, while solar and wind are $1,800 and $2,500 respectively.

So how is it that the Coalition’s modelling suggests that a world where nuclear makes up more than a third of the east coast energy grid could possibly be cheaper?

It’s easy to come up with the answer you want when you base your modelling on rubbery assumptions.

Firstly, we should appreciate that even a $10,000/kW estimate for nuclear is considerably optimistic if we look at the experience of comparable countries over the past decade. The cost at the off-cited Hinkley C plant in the UK has, to date, risen to $27,515/kW. Three others – France (Flamanville 3), Finland (Olkilutoto 3) and the US (Vogtle) – are between $15,000 and $16,900. [In other words, nuclear in the West is a minimum of 7 times as expensive as wind and solar]

Delays have been a key factor in driving up the cost of nuclear power. The longer it takes to build and operate a plant, the higher the cost of finance. The Coalition believes we can overturn national and state legislation and acquire land and planning approvals virtually overnight. And then we’ll just install an ‘off-the-shelf’ nuclear power plant, ready to run.

By its own admission, having to tweak nuclear power plants so they operate at maximum safety and efficiency can blow out build times and costs. It beggars belief that the Coalition claims Australia, which has no nuclear energy capability, could ship, build and integrate into the grid with no challenges, with a 50,000-strong nuclear workforce appearing by magic.

There is no mention of the costs of extending the life of existing ageing coal-fired power stations, or the likelihood that these plants will increasingly fail as they reach end-of-life, raising energy costs as supply falls short and, increasingly, the likelihood of blackouts. And, apparently, nuclear waste can be transported and stored without cost.

The Coalition also argues that, because wind and solar energy are not always “on”, we’ll need to build a lot more capacity, along with transmission and storage. It calls this “overbuild”, but its assumptions have overegged what that need might realistically look like, especially as battery storage becomes cheaper over time (unlike the experience of nuclear) and of longer duration. [Battery pack prices have halved this year]

Finally, to arrive at these rose-tinted costs, the Coalition has had to cut back on estimates of the amount of energy we will demand over the next two decades by almost half what the Australian Energy Market Operator says we need. That’s because it’s assumed we won’t worry about EVs or electrification. [This has led the Coalition to claim that this will cut electricity costs by 44%.  They have deliberately confused capital cost with cost per kWh of output. Of course capital costs are 44% lower if you are going to produce 44% less electricity!] This is why the Coalition will undo Australia’s 2030 43% emissions reduction target, which we are set to get very close to, taking us back to our Morrison-era status of global climate pariah. [The Coalition plans to abolish Labor's 43% target] 

And this is the kicker. Under the Coalition’s plan, our modelling shows Australia’s domestic emissions will rise by around one billion – yes billion – tonnes, at a cost of $240bn to the economy, society and environment, based on Infrastructure Australia’s cost of carbon methodology.

Most commentators who are not creatures of the Murdoch media think that this is just a ploy to prolong the use of coal and gas.   If it will take at least 15 years to build out a nuclear fleet, in the meantime we will need to extend the lives of our coal power stations.   Since they are already long in the tooth, and will be very expensive to refurbish, that will mean building new coal power stations.  But new coal in Australia costs 3 times as much per MWh of output as new wind and solar backed up by 4 hours of storage.  Which is why no utility is interested in building new coal power stations.  

In addition, the Coalition hasn't said what they're going to do about rooftop solar.  Rooftop solar, in summer, contributes 16% of total electricity supply, beating out all other sources except black coal.  Since old-fashioned nuclear power stations can't easily be ramped up or down, i.e., they're always "on", rooftop solar output will have to be curtailed to allow nuclear to keep running.  In other words, the money millions of people have spent installing rooftop solar to save on electricity bills will be wasted.  Not a winning proposition, for sure.

Peter Dutton's nuclear "plan" is just a hoax

(Peter Dutton is the head of the so-called Liberal Party, which has basically sold out to fossil fuel interests)

From RenewEconomy

Outside, in Martin Place, the voices were clear – unions and environmental groups holding placards and denouncing Coalition leader Peter Dutton’s nuclear “fantasy:” A combination of denial and delay they said: “Dutton wants gas, Dutton wants coal, nuclear is just a troll,” they chorused.

Inside the Fullerton Hotel, in the basement where Ballroom B is located, it was expected to be the moment for the nuclear true believers, but the numbers just weren’t there.

Unusually for a CEDA event, there was only a scattering of corporate table sponsors – ANZ, KPMG, and Clayton Utz – and most of the ballroom was partitioned off. Among the 160 attending, quite small for a CEDA event, there was the usual Dutton entourage, including energy spokesman Ted O’Brien, Warren Mundine, and a lot of media.

Bizarrely, many of the rest were from the clean energy industry, curious to know what they might be dealing with should the Coalition return to power next year. Did they like what they heard? Not really. Did they learn anything? No.

This was supposed to be Dutton’s occasion to spell out his nuclear power plan: “A nuclear powered Australia – could it work” was the title of the event. But we left little the wiser. The question about how many nuclear power plants, how much would they cost, when they would be built, and which technology, were not answered.

Instead, the event got a re-run of the Coalition’s renewable scare campaign. Dutton’s thesis is that wind and solar won’t work, even with storage and dispatchable back-up. Renewables, says Dutton, are dangerous and will lead to blackouts and the destruction of industry.

We’ve heard this before. It’s the common refrain of the fossil fuel and nuclear industries. They’ve gone from attacking the climate science to ignoring it, and have focused their attacks on the technology solutions. The ones that threaten their legacy and vested interests.

The Coalition uses “baseload” as if it’s another word for “reliability”. It’s not, as AEMO boss Daniel Westerman explains in this week’s Energy Insiders podcast.

Dutton did at least concede that building nuclear power stations at the seven sites identified by the Coalition will cost a lot, even if he wouldn’t say how much, or how consumers are impacted. Somehow, he imagines, the cost will be amortised by their assumed 80 year timeline. Perhaps he hasn’t seen their maintenance and refurbishment bills.

Dutton is still churning out the line that renewables are accompanied by high prices and nuclear by low prices, without ever contemplating the context, local taxation, historical prices, the influence of fossil fuels, and massive government subsidies, particularly in nuclear France.

We did learn a couple of new things. One was that Dutton admitted that Aukus – the controversial deal to sign up for half a dozen nuclear submarines at horrific cost and questionable use – was as much a Trojan horse for the nuclear debate as it is an allegory for his power plans.

He also insisted that nuclear is a bed-fellow of renewables, not a competitor. But the grids he cited – Arizona, Finland, Ontario and France – have at most 18 per cent renewables.

That’s not much, and not like Australia which is already at 40 per cent renewables, going on 50 per cent with committed projects, and where solar eats up much if not all of daytime demand. Renew Economy questioned Dutton on that very point, and asked if the Coalition had a renewables cap in mind. But he fudged the answer.

There was indeed, an awful lot of fudging. Dutton pretends that his nuclear power plan can be rolled out without new transmission lines. But he’s kidding himself, and trying to fool the public.

Firstly, the seven sites he has targeted are already filling up with their owner’s own projects – mostly battery storage and renewables. There simply isn’t room on the grid.

Secondly, the sort of nuclear reactors Dutton is planning are nearly twice the size of most coal generators – which means – as a matter of course – that there has to be more infrastructure built to support them, in transmission lines, and back-up capacity in case of a trip or unexplained outage. That is grid management 101.

Thirdly, Dutton hasn’t explained what fills the gap as coal fired power plants exit the grid. Either he has to double, treble, or even quadruple his nuclear power plans – at great cost and huge new transmission requirements, or he has to rely on renewables after all, and they will also require new transmission.

Fourthly, his complaints against new transmission is largely a furphy. AEMO’s Integrated System Plan – which is little changed for when it was produced for the Coalition government – doesn’t contemplate the 28,000 kms of new transmission as Dutton claims.

That is in one scenario that imagines Australia as a renewable superpower, exporting electrons but also “green” goods such as iron, ammonia and even hydrogen. Those power lines – should they ever be built some time beyond 2040 – will be connecting remote areas with production centres. They are unlikely to be marching through population areas or even farmland.

Dutton did confirm that the Coalition’s plan was to extend the life of coal fired power stations as much as it could, and build a lot of new gas generators. Quite how he believes these investments will lower the price of power to consumers was not and has never been explained.

Like nuclear, they are the most expensive sources of power. He suggested they will all be government owned, which is inevitable as private finance won’t touch it, and Snowy Hydro is quite accustomed to projects that run well over time and budget. And that way, the true cost will already be hidden from homes and businesses.

Dutton was asked about Plant Vogtle, the first nuclear plant built in the US over the last few decades, at horrific cost (more than $US35 billion) and years late. In its first few months of production it has already been taken off the grid twice, due to various faults, and has underpinned a big rise in local consumer bills.

Dutton insisted the delays, the cost over-runs and the other hiccups were due to the fact that the AP1000 reactors were “first of the kind.” That’s not something the Coalition intended to do, he insisted, there won’t be a “kangaroo” brand reactor in Australia, he said.

A couple of problems there: The AP1000s – the technology actually helped send the Westinghouse nuclear unit broke – at Plant Vogtle were not the first of their kind. Four had been completed in China five years before these came on line.

Secondly, if Dutton is serious about switching on the first nuclear power plants in Australia by 2035 (which he clearly is not), then the Coalition is going to have to run with a technology that has barely been proven.

Which is one of the problems with the nuclear debate in Australia – it’s hard to make an assertion without having to contradict yourself before a sentence is finished.

Dutton did make one curious excursion into the Pacific Ocean, observing that Fiji, the Solomon Islands and PNG were buckling under the cost of diesel, and didn’t to have to switch off their power after 8pm or 9pm.

But this Trumpian thought diversion didn’t go very far, which is a shame, because the media table was wondering if he was thinking of an SMR for Fiji, or a sub-sea cable. Or something.

He also confirmed he doesn’t understand batteries. They can’t store energy for more than four hours he said, which is news to the project developers of more than 3,000 megawatt hours of eight-hour batteries currently under construction in NSW.

Has he heard of demand management? Dutton refuses to see or admit the solutions that are right in front of him.

Meanwhile, the general public is being led a merry dance by folksy promises, a solution that sounds vaguely plausible, but in reality has no chance of delivering.

The protestors with the placards outside the hotel were closest to the truth: This is about denial and delay, the whole policy is an elaborate troll, a political hoax, and a refuge for the climate deniers and do-littles.  Nothing more, nothing less.

Nuclear is usually late and over-budget

I found this chart in an article by Michael Barnard on CleanTechnica

The likelihood of the enormous capacities of wind and solar successfully getting built on time [in China], on budget and hitting benefits targets is immensely higher than that of this [Chinese] nuclear build out. That’s a key learning of Professor Bent Flyvbjerg and team from their global dataset of megaprojects, something that Flyvbjerg has been building since the late 1990s and is now over 16,000 strong, with over 150 nuclear generation projects.

Nuclear reactors have lots of risks that, if they trigger, cause very significant time and budget overruns. Wind and solar have very few risks that cause significant time and budget overruns if they occur. The results are clear in the data. If you want to hit targets and achieve benefits, build wind and solar. China is doing that incredibly well.

China added 274 GW of wind and solar capacity to their grid in 2023. They are on track to build a lot more than that for each of the next seven years. The chart at the top of this article is just going to get worse and worse for nuclear as its line gets flatter and flatter to allow wind, solar and water generation additions to fit into it vertically.

While China has a lot of nuclear in construction and a bunch more approved, that’s not the takeaway that other jurisdictions should learn from its energy efforts. If anything, there are three lessons: 

One, that wind and solar are the right choice for the vast majority of jurisdictions. 

Two, that China’s failures to stick to a single proven design for nuclear and build lots of it are a warning related to national and regional nuclear programs. 

Three, that unless a country is big enough and rich enough to build dozens of identical reactors as well as to achieve the rest of the conditions of success, or is able to join a bunch of other countries to achieve critical mass with a guarantee of singularity of design and the rest of the success criteria, nuclear shouldn’t be on the energy policy agenda.

[You can read the whole article here]