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The Forum > Article Comments > Compact nuclear power units may blow wind away > Comments

Compact nuclear power units may blow wind away : Comments

By Mark S. Lawson, published 4/3/2015

Unsubsidised wind power can compete, on a cost-per-output basis, with the likes of coal and gas, while the other forms of green power - photovoltaics and solar thermal - trail the field by a fair margin.

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Mikk began off-topic and then descended into farce.

Anybody who is even slightly familiar with small modular reactors (SMR's) knows that the radioactive components are extremely well secured. Anybody trying to gain entry will be dead long before he reaches his objective. The chance of an SMR somehow wiping out a suburb is way below that of an asteroid doing the same... approximately zero, zip, nada.

This kind of apocalyptic vision is faulty - as faulty as the fossil fuel industry's tendency to ignore the global annual death count that is a consequence of their businesses. These deaths are real, happening now and are arguably in the hundreds of thousands.
Posted by JohnBennetts, Wednesday, 4 March 2015 12:11:20 PM
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Rhrosty, it has nothing to do with thorium vs coal, but with distributed vs central distribution.

I have no problem with the idea of nuclear, especially in the short term, but ultimately we need to decouple from the fossil sources, whether organic or metallic.

JohnBennet, I'm not interested in having a silly renewables vs fossil fuels quasi-religious discussion. All I'm interested in is how to create the most efficient system that will be sustainable into the future on as many vectors as possible.

On that basis, the central generation model fails, whatever the source of power for the generators is.

PV and other photosensitive technologies will become ubiquitous and by ubiquitous I mean that there will be almost no part of the built environment that does not generate electricity via a coating or as part of its structure.

Nuclear or any other generation mode will be a relatively short-term stop-gap and perhaps a needed adjunct in areas of especially poor suitability for PV.
Posted by Craig Minns, Wednesday, 4 March 2015 12:11:43 PM
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Readers wanting to dig a little deeper into this topic, plus a spirited discussion string may wish to do so at http://bravenewclimate.com/2015/02/25/the-argument-for-nuclear-energy-in-australia/#more-6598.

Brave New Climate is a well-known climate/nuclear/environmental Australian site with an international readership.
Posted by JohnBennetts, Wednesday, 4 March 2015 12:19:42 PM
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Mark Lawson here

Craig Minns - where did you get the idea that the central general model is dead? Sorry, it isn't. You point to mainly micro-generation, renewable technologies backed by small gas turbines as an alternative.. now that might work, if anyone is going to do it that way and they have enough small gas turbines (and a gas supply), but it would be very expensive. One reason you have the big base-load plants is because they're cost effective.

You also say PVs are now cost competitive with other technologies. Sorry but that's also wrong. You must be quoting activist material. The material I quote in the story is clear. On a levelised cost basis PVs lag way behind, even before you take intermittency into account.

I saw last year a newspaper article claiming that PVs had a similar cost per installed megawatt to coal in NSW. If that's true then it actually means that PVs are five times more expensive than coal power on a capital basis, once you take capacity factors (average output) into account.

Mikk - so you want to get rid of toxic material by introducing more toxic material - PVs and batteries, which have to be recycled eventually. Interesting approach.
Posted by Curmudgeon, Wednesday, 4 March 2015 12:38:38 PM
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Those who think solar and batteries will save us should look at some near realtime electricity consumption data for the eastern states
http://empowerme.org.au/market.html#
The lowest consumption is typically around 2-4 a.m. when the sun doesn't shine. When I add today's minimum demand for Qld, NSW, Vic, SA and Tas it comes to 17,000 MW. Given that Australia's total solar generation is thought to be 4,000 MW which works bests in the middle of sunny days and not at night I'd say we have a way to go. That's before even considering the battery requirement. Think harder about how we can replace coal and gas for electricity and oil for transport.
Posted by Taswegian, Wednesday, 4 March 2015 1:12:14 PM
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Mark,
I attended a very good seminar given by Engineers Australia on precisely that among some other things only a week or so ago.

The consensus view, among electricity generating firms and among engineers generally, is that within 10 years we will see the last central generation plant built in the West. I could look up the references if you're interested. They include the power generation and distribution companies themselves. Government organisations are not good sources, because they use lagging data, which is simply not much use in a field which is experiencing rapid and even exponential change.

For a really clear example of the impact of efficiencies, bear in mind that the UK has closed several central power plants over the past couple of years as demand has dropped and will not be replacing them. We here have seen declining demand as well.

PV costs are rapidly dropping and will see a step change with the commercialisation of dye-sensitised and organic cells. Even silicon is becoming competitive with new coal on a lifetime cost basis. Old coal plants, which are already fully amortised are in a different position, but this will rapidly change, especially in a political regime that properly treats waste emissions, whatever the nucleotide.

Battery storage will become widespread with the adoption of electric vehicle technologies and with really ubiquitous PV generation the impact of weather variability is readily mitigated by adoption of an efficient HV DC "ring main" system.

The point I have been making is that there are a number of sources that will become important, possibly including nuclear, but by no means necessarily. Gas turbines and other on-site "instant-on" systems will be much more likely.
Posted by Craig Minns, Wednesday, 4 March 2015 1:26:24 PM
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