Four Reasons Why Nuclear is a Dumb Idea for Australia
Will nuclear power plant ever be built in Australia?
In the vibrant, renewable-rich landscape of Australia, where the symphony of wind and solar has long played the tune of progress, an unexpected blare cuts through the harmony. Like a foghorn in the calm of dawn, the sudden advocacy for nuclear power from a party that previously silenced such discussions is turning heads and raising eyebrows. It's an about-turn that could make solar panels tilt in curiosity.
The notion of nuclear energy was until recently firmly off the table. Now it has found its way back into conversation, championed by the conservative opposition party. Under the leadership of Peter Dutton, there's a push to integrate nuclear power as a backbone for Australia's renewable energy future. His vision includes swift construction timelines for large reactors, and small modular reactors once that technology matures. They are specifically targeting the sites of our retiring coal plants to take advantage of existing infrastructure.
The first obstacle that these nuclear plans face is that nuclear power is currently banned in Australia. Back in 1998, the Howard government wanted to secure a nuclear research reactor at Lucas Heights near Sydney. To do so, they needed support from the Greens party, who made a deal to support the research reactor if a nationwide ban on nuclear power plants was introduced at the same time. Therefore, it was banned and remains so today.
But what if this ban were lifted? Should we then embrace nuclear for our energy future? The answer, quite simply, is no. It's a dumb idea for Australia. There are four solid reasons behind this bold claim.
It’s too slow
The first reason that nuclear power is a dumb idea for Australia is that it is too slow. In an era where rapid change is the norm, this slow stride just doesn't cut it. Recently completed nuclear power plants have taken about 9 years on average to construct. If we step into our time machine to 2033 Australia, 90% of our electricity will come from renewables by then, which doesn’t leave a lot of space for nuclear. All of Australian brown coal power will be closed, and a decade later there will be no coal power at all.
After 2023, 90% of Australian electricity will come from renewables. Source
The nine years mentioned is only for construction. It takes years of planning before any contracts are signed. Some countries are building nuclear reactors faster than that 9-year average. China’s recent plants' constructions have taken 5-9 years. But others, like the US and UK, are taking much longer. The Vogtle plant in Georgia USA, began construction in 2013 and is still not complete. And Hinkley Point C in the UK, announced in 2017 that the reactors would power British homes by Christmas 2017. However, construction didn't even start until 2018, and the latest projections push completion to beyond 2030 with more slippage expected by most.
Those aren’t isolated examples. Nuclear projects are very prone to large overruns in construction time, worse than any other kind of energy project, and the only category of large project that performs worse than nuclear power plants is Olympic games and nuclear storage projects. According to Bent Flybjerg, who has spent his career studying cost and scheduling overruns in large projects, out of the 191 nuclear power projects he studied 93% of them took longer than expected to complete, and the mean schedule overrun was 65%.
If the construction plan spans ten years, it must follow changes in legislation to permit nuclear power, the development of a regulatory framework and the securing of funds. Therefore, on average, the process will actually take 16.5 years. Given that this would be our first reactor, likely built by foreign experts in a new market or by inexperienced locals, it would be prudent to assume we are not going to beat that average.
Therefore, by the time a nuclear reactor manages to operate in Australia, the energy transition would have mostly happened. That alone is reason enough to rule out nuclear power for Australia.
Some nuclear reactors take more than 10 years (120 months) to construct, whereas solar and wind energy projects are completed faster. Source
It doesn’t play nicely with wind and solar
Australia has a lot of wind and solar power, and more and more every day. 15 years ago, less than 1% of our electricity came from wind and solar power, and today it is over 30%, growing by about 3 or 4 percentage points every year.
Wind and solar are variable. Nuclear power plants on the other hand like to be turned on and stay operating at a nice constant output. If you don’t think very closely about it, perhaps you might think that sound nice and complementary? It’s not.
Electricity demand varies from hour to hour and season to season. Either nuclear or renewables need a dispatchable energy source like hydro, batteries or gas peakers to match generation with demand minute by minute. Combining nuclear with variable renewables turns out to not actually reduce the amount of dispatchable power needed by much, if anything.
Now, there are lots of countries that combine nuclear and renewables, but none with both a lot of nuclear and a lot of variable renewables. France gets most of its electricity from nuclear and most of the rest from renewables, but that’s nearly all hydro. Same with Switzerland, Armenia, Slovenia. The only countries with both a lot of nuclear and a lot of variable renewables are Sweden with 30% nuclear, 20% wind and Finland with 35% nuclear and 16% wind. But, crucially, both of those also have a lot of hydro. 40% and 20% respectively.
Let’s look a bit closer at what exactly this means for a country like Australia with currently 32% of its electricity from wind and solar power. Today, the amount of other generation needed varies by a factor of two from midday to evening, on average.
The amount of other types of electricity generation besides wind and solar required doubles from midday to evening, on average. Source: OpenNEM
Modern nuclear reactors can vary their output a bit, but to cycle from 50% to 100% on a daily basis is really pushing it, today that’s only done across fleets of nuclear by turning some off entirely and ramping the rest by a small amount. Which means a large number of reactors is needed, like France has.
Using the reactors intermittently like that, with a lower capacity factor, would make nuclear power more expensive. The chart below has both high and low-cost estimates for nuclear power, and in either case the difference between operating at 60% capacity factor instead of 90% capacity factor is going to add something like 30% to the cost of energy.
Levelized energy costs decrease with higher capacity factors, with nuclear showing the most significant cost reductions. Source
Ramping up and down is also hard on the equipment, which leads to higher maintenance costs. There is at least one reactor in Germany that broke down as a result of ramping, and in that case, it was only ramping up and down by about a third.
It’s too expensive
The cost of nuclear power is high. There is admittedly a lot of disagreement amongst published values for the cost of nuclear, but these are usually at least double, and probably more than triple, the cost of wind and solar in Australia. This holds true even when accounting for the additional integration costs of variable renewables, which include extra transmission and storage.
Nuclear energy costs are usually at least double or triple the cost of wind and solar. Source
Furthermore, as well as being prone to schedule overruns, nuclear projects are even more prone to cost overruns with the average nuclear project eventually costing over double its original estimate. In contrast, wind and solar projects have about 0-10% average cost overruns.
That’s new nuclear. But once it has paid for itself, it becomes very cheap, which is great for countries that already have nuclear power and might prefer to extend the lifetimes of their reactors rather than build alternative sources of low-carbon generation when they should retire. However, that's not the case in Australia, and that leads to the final reason why nuclear is a dumb choice for Australia.
It solves problems that we don’t have
There are a bunch of great things that nuclear can do that wind and solar can’t. It can provide constant baseload power, no matter the weather and no matter the season. Nuclear reactors also take up less space than renewables, and existing nuclear is cheap to run. Let’s tackle these one by one in the Australian context.
Nuclear provides firm baseload power. However, baseload power is not a thing in Australia anymore. At times, rooftop solar alone meets 100% of the demand in South Australia, the grid with the highest renewable energy capacity. his will happen more and more across larger and larger parts of the country as solar installations continue over the coming decades.
Rooftop solar supplied all of the state's total energy needs for some days in South Australia. Source
But that usually occurs only in spring and summer, and to some extent in autumn as well. What about winter? One of the benefits of nuclear power is that it is independent of weather and season. That's great for countries whose energy demand peaks in winter, when their solar power may be close to zero. However, that's not the case in Australia. For most of Australia, peak energy demand is in summer, and there is still good solar output in winter. As you can see in this chart, the balance between renewables and fossil fuels in Australian current grid doesn’t change much from month to month.
But renewables are variable, intermittent and unreliable, right? What about Dunkelflaute? That refers to periods when there is no wind and no sun for days or even weeks. While this could be a significant issue in some places, it's not the case in Australia. 42 years of weather data history show that widespread Dunkelflaute across the entire Australian grid lasts only hours, and occasionally a day, never weeks. The charts below illustrate renewable resources for each of the past 42 years. There are some winter days where renewables dip slightly below 50% of their average output. There are no weeks below 50%, and the worst ever winter month was around 70% of the yearly average.
Over 42 years, the charts show some winter days with renewables dipping below 50%, and the worst month reaching 70% of the yearly average. Source
There will be occasions every few decades when there might be a day or two of very low wind and solar output, and sometimes a few consecutive weeks of about 50% average output. For these times, we will need to use a more expensive solution to cover those shortfalls, after it has remained mostly idle for 10 or 20 years at a stretch. However, you can’t use a nuclear reactor for this purpose. It will likely be gas, hydrogen, biodiesel, or something similar.
Next advantage of nuclear: it doesn’t take up much space. That is so important for densely populated countries like Japan or Korea. However, Australia, being vast and sunny, would only need 0.1% of its land covered in solar panels to generate all its energy from solar. For onshore wind, it’s about double that. If we consider offshore wind too, the required space would be even less.
Our wind farms coexist with grazing, and our solar panels are primarily installed on roofs. They could also coexist with agriculture if desired. Therefore, even those tiny fractions of land usage are misleadingly large. In Australia, the fact that nuclear power might take up less space is irrelevant.
Conclusion
It's understandable why countries like Korea, Sweden or Canada might benefit from nuclear power. They experience long, harsh winters where solar power isn't very effective, and some have high population densities. Nuclear power helps them avoid the need for seasonal energy storage and reduces reliance on energy imports. However, even in winter, Australia's solar output is quite good. Australian Dunkelflaute events are infrequent and short. We have more than enough land to capture the energy we need.
Should nuclear power be banned here? No, it should be allowed a level playing field with other energy technologies, to allow a fair fight. Everyone wants the cheapest clean electricity possible. For any one of the reasons mentioned, nuclear would lose this fair fight. Add them all up and there is absolutely zero chance Australia will ever have nuclear power.
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