Siso

I do believe in climate change and something needs to be done about. I also believe Australia's contribution is so little we should address it in a sensible way instead of sending the country broke. Being able to mine and process material as close to the mining operation is good for climate change. Sending the raw material overseas on dirty bunker oil burning ships for processing because of the unreliability and cost of the electricity here helps nobody. Australia has some of the best environmental and workplace laws anywhere. Unfortunately that increase cost so we need an abundant source of low carbon, cheap reliable electricity. Intermittent generation is cheap to produce when it is there but extremely expensive when its not. before you say it, Is NP expensive in the long term. Have a look at open Nem. If we could smash the black and brown line at the bottom, the Intermittents and conventional hydro can handle the rest with minimal extra transmission than what we have now, minimal artificial inertia, and some decent pumped hydro. Win win. Why is NP expected to be self sufficient when the current plan is getting subsidised continually. LGC's, CIS, etc etc. Open Electricity: NEM https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/australia-needs-to-quadruple-its-number-of-wind-farms-this-year-none-have-been-funded-20250919-p5mwfc.html

We are already subsidising intermittent generation, GT's running for inetia, syn cons, transmission for the dispersed generation and loss of industry(jobs for our kids)

NP has pretty well the same water use as a coal plant. Used fuel can be managed and it will get easier as technology improves. Tidal has been tries in Australia and has not been very successful a tide power generator sunk off the coast of adelaide https://adelaideaz.com/articles/wave-energy-generator-becomes-an-artificial-reef-after-sinking-off-carrickalinga--south-of-adelaide_copy Solar is good during the day, gets really expensive at night-storage artificial inertia. We import battery, solar panels, wind turbines. One thing about NP is we pretty well know the supply chains for the fuel and you need so little you can keep years in a small storage area. Unused nuclear fuel is harmless (would not eat it) and a fuel pellet can be held in your hand. we know some of the supply chains for minerals needed in weather dependent renewables is not really ideal, both environmentally and worker safety. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-02-24/cobalt-mining-in-the-congo-green-energy/100802588

Reneweconomy isn't really an unbiased source when it comes to NP. Its like getting Coal Australia to comment on Renewables. Building NPP has come to a bit of a standstill because of the bad publicity of Chernobyl and Fukushima but as more information is becoming available more is starting to happen. China are developing new NP which will be a large step forward. UK have started the process of building Sizewell C which is going to comprise 2 x 1750MW EPR reactors. Surprising as it is the same type as Hinkley. Canada have started building some 300MW BWRs. France is planning to build more to replace their aging fleet. Sweden are in the process of lifting their as is Denmark. Sweden is sick of Germany affecting the price in the south of country especially since they shut down all their low carbon synchronous generation The remaining unit at Three Mile island is looking at restarting and there is talk of Indian Point in New York restarting as well. Momentum is building. Australia use to have some of the cheapest electricity in the world and know it is getting towards the most expensive. This is not including the billions of dollars the government is throwing at it. Some more last weekend for the capacity investment scheme. We may or may not be being left behind. Do we really want all our eggs in one basket with weather dependent intermittent generation when no-one in the world has done it? .

Love pumped hydro. Unfortunately the one planned for SA wasn't profitable enough https://arena.gov.au/knowledge-bank/cultana-pumped-hydro-energy-storage-project-phase-2/

Unfortunately the ABC's concern is to keep LNP out and the worst thing is they are funded by the tax payer. I think the ABC needs some more political diversity.

No one has said do nothing. There is just other ways of doing things that more is known about. Obviously the whole intermittent thing is proving to be very expensive and nowhere as easy as the people who are making a lot of money out of it will tell us.

Tassie has the easiest path with their hydro, good wind resource, small grid demand and population. They still use gas and imports from Victoria. My source is openNem, accessible to anyone. Albo and Chris Bowen will be happy to see some people believe them. Maybe it is possible at a huge cost but if it doesn't work Australia will be stuffed. Aircraft have redundant systems, we are going into this with none. Humans started with fire and increased technology with more and more dense energy sources. What we are trying is now heading in the opposite direction. Attached below is from SA in June this year, supposed to be doing really well. We could double the intermittent generation in this example and it would still wouldn't be enough. This is the problem, we need a lot more generation and storage to get through times like this. It goes the other way sometimes, but which ever way it goes there is always a lot of underutilised plant. Underutilised plant cost dollars, no-one has actually told us how much. You don't see airlines with many extra aircraft laying around or earthmovers with the odd dozer just sitting in a yard to often. Marked is how much grid size battery SA has, doesn't displace much gas Open nem.pdf

Creative accounting, look at the link, real world generation. All the planning for net 0 has been done by modelling which isn't always accurate. CSIRO won't release the modelling. Open Electricity: Tasmania

Open Electricity: Tasmania Tassies energy profile last 12 months. gas is orange, purple imports from Victoria. In the real physical world, Tassie isn't 100% renewable. Using creative accounting, maybe.

Pumped hydro and battery's don't generate electricity. Not a loaded description, just describes Australia's situation, only about 7% traditional hydro available, the rest is weather depended intermittent generation. Any country in the world that has decarbonised their electricity grid has large amounts of traditional hydro or/and NP. No one really knows how much it will cost, but the government will just keep throwing OUR money at it as it looks like they did on the Weekend. Not sure Matt Keanes opinion would be non biased. It is just as easy to find someone who does not agree with him. Tassie also use Victoria's Brown coal through the Bass Link and run there gas turbines regularly so not really even 100% renewable. Last time gas turbines ran August 2025

We are only at about 40%? after 15 years or so which has been the easy part. If we are going to continue down the weather dependent intermittents path it is going to get a lot harder because we need to build all the supporting infrastructure, a lot which will be underutilised anyway.- batterys, syncons some more gas turbines to replace the older ones and transmission as well as the extra generation. Pipe Dream! Has anybody heard the cost to the tax payer and electricity consumer?

Used fuel can be managed safely and will only get better. Only problem is uninformed public and politicians. People are getting cancers from badly manage chemicals all the time from houses built on contaminated sites, bad ground water, asbestos etc. Radiation is easily detected.

Decommissioning cost can be added to the electricity cost, part of a cent/kW. I believe this is how it is done in the US. Newer nuclear plants are built with decommissioning in mind. The spent fuel is no more hazardous than many other chemicals that we use that are dangerous forever, just gets a lot more publicity. The nasty stuff decays in 300 or 500 years depending who you ask. Most of the rest can be recycled and reused-France. Pretty well all can be used if fast reactors become main stream. It was found that the waste products in the natural reactor in Oklo Gambon didn't migrate far from the reactor. (energyprof -youtube.) Nuclear can be ramped up and down. Frances reactors do this pretty well every day. Traditionally it wasn't a priority in the design as they just ran flat out. There are newer reactors that have this in mind and are being usd to heat a salt like the coal plant does in Ireland with pumped hydro. The generator runs flat out, fills the dam at night and then get extra capacity. New design of reactor, some of which have been built have passive cooling. The whole war thing is the only thing I have reservations about. France exporting about 12GWs at the moment 2.16 into industrial basket case Germany. Unfortunately Australia has no France or Sweden. https://app.electricitymaps.com/zone/FR/72h/hourly

Can you list problems with nuclear that are not political or public perception, not Chernobyl or Fukushima

China are leading the world with nuclear gen 4 development. Another tool in the fight against global warming.

We are still waiting for an honest cost of the intermittents plan!

Lets start putting some CEO's in prison. We were always told they get their good salaries because the buck stops with them. Corporates are always pushing the boundary. Banks have form as we found out from the royal commission a few years ago. I think the worst that was happened was one of them lost his job with a big payout. Qantas is the same, Woolworths ect. If any of us deliberately did what they try to get away with the consequences would be different. They have lawyers to supposedly keep them compliant.

We don't know if private investors won't touch it. NP is currently banned in Australia so no company has ever looked at it seriously. LIFT THE BAN! The problem is the large cost out lay initially. If governments wanted to finance it they could build and sell later if they wanted to. I personally would rather they didn't. There a several companies that are designing small NPP for mine sites and small isolated communities. Approx. up to 20MWe that only need refueling every 20 years or so. Maybe cheaper than diesel in the long run, the problem is you have to pay for all the fuel you need for that 20 years upfront.

$600B for the nuclear plan-lie. Government owned would be great, privatisation hasn't really worked.

Sunlight is free, converting it to electricity certainly isn't

The later ones don't go through as much testing as the company's are trying to get them on the market quicker hence have more silly breakdowns eg broken blades etc. Needing larger cranes for access. Batterys are a good thing for there demand response and should be a small part of any grid system. Nuclear is expensive but by the time you add in storage, syn cons , transmission, 3 times overbuild for the capacity factor, 2 maybe 3 rebuilds for the lifetime limits, is it really more expensive especially if you build multiple units? We don't know because the current government lied about the price of nuclear and won't or can't tell us the total price of 90% intermittents grid. A lot of this infrastructure is going to be underutilised (batterys, transmission etc) Underutilised equipment is expensive, ask any business. If you still need it , you charge a lot for it. Basic economics. Hydrogen is supposed to be a big part of the plan but plants in Australia are falling over all the time. But we will just keep pouring tax payers money into it. Windfarms in the north UK are getting paid when they are curtailed because the grid can't handle the power. Wander when that will happen here. Windy in Europe at the moment, France only exporting about 10GWs at the moment at 17grams CO2/kWh. https://app.electricitymaps.com/zone/FR/72h/hourly

No one is saying we should keep burning coal. There are other alternatives, just need some people to get out of cold war thinking and get on with it. I like to think that the reactors we are using know are like aircraft were in the 1930's. Considering it is less then 70 years since the first commercial reactor came online, development and research pretty well stopped fpr several years and there was no world wars to accelerate more development. Imagine what we could have if we had put as much developement into NP as we did for aircraft. No vested interests. I worked in the wind industry for over 10 years and could see how good it was at the start when it was just supplementing the current grid at about 30%and how it was making prices more volatile and the amount extra infrastructure that is needed as penetration increased.. We are putting all our eggs in one basket on a plan that has never been done before. The current governments plan as I understand it is to have 82% renewable energy by 2030. We have about 40% Australia wide at the moment, so we have 5 years to to double it. The first 30 was the easy part, now we have to build more generation plus the extras that we haven't really needed previously. (Batterys, syncons, transmission etc.) Some of the first MW size turbines are also starting to approach end of life as well so we will have to start replacing as well as building new.

While we can carry on about Gina, we need to remember she employs a lot of Australians and pay them very well for the most part. These companies they run are competing on the world stage with companies that don't have the stringent environmental and workplace laws. She as far as I know working within the law, so if you have any problems with them, contact your local politician to have the laws change. We should be supporting successful Australians, not trying to take them down. Owing to the energy debacle we are not really going to have much else happening in Australia for a while. I see BHP is looking at opening a copper in the US. We should be doing more here to keep the jobs in Australia. I don't work in mining. Don't really know about Clive.

No body is goin to be fair dinkum. Politicians are involved.