The answer is likely to be the opposite of whatever Blackout Bowen says the cost is.

Dutton is on the right track, as was a 17 year old kid who made a fool of Bowen on Q&A, and advised that the best way to go was to lift restrictions on nuclear, and let the market decide the cost.

In my opinion, we should just go back to coal, the cheapest of the lot.

Curb the worst emission, stupidity !
After that there'll be no more environment threatening pollution !

The first hint that the 80% renewables scenario was wishful thinking was when power prices shot up, contrary to election promises. Then they went up again the next year. Enthusiasts say wind and solar can get down to $50 per MWh, omitting to mention there are substantial add-on costs for frequency correction, gas backup, new transmission and subsidies as well as generous retail margins. As for storage Snowy 2 went from $2bn to over $10bn now some say we need 10 such schemes. We're not told but battery energy seems likely to cost $150 or more per MWh, that's opex not capex. Combine that with supposedly cheap wind and solar costs plus add-ons to get a more realistic figure for 24/7 electricity.

Notice how there are no commercial hydrogen plants yet despite being a fave of Bowen, AEMO, CSIRO etc. Perhaps they won't go prime time after all. I suspect SMRs after a few have been made will have a capex closer to $10 per installed watt. I paid $8/w for PV in 2005. Wholesale power will more like $100 per MWh but available 90% of the time when needed not 20% or 40% at random times like wind and solar. SMRs built at former coal sites won't require new transmission, frequency correction or newly impose themselves on the landscape. They will also provide comparable jobs to coal. I reckon Australia needs a dozen or more SMRs to replace the grid stability of coal and underpin heavy industry like smelting.

I was sitting out the cyclone season in Gladstone in 1974, as were many other yachties. Quite a few found work on the then under construction Gladstone power house, built mainly to supply power to the alumina works on the harbor.

It was recognised that our coal reserves were our natural advantage for metal production, with fuel from our near by 400 year coal reserves. It takes an idiot to ignore this happy fact.

So is Bowen an idiot, or an idiot who along with Albo wants to destroy our industry. Anyone other than another idiot knows the answer to that. They have to destroy our prosperity to enable full communism to take over the country.

Now for the useful idiots.

Indeed Graham, the whole situation is in a complate shambles and Bowen
should be out of cabinet immediately.
I have had an idea that in a large power station there is room to
remove the boiler and coal handling equipment and then in its physical place install an SMR reactor and equipment up to the point where it produces the heat, perhaps hot water to a heat exchanger that
produces the steam to be fed into the turbine.
Then each turbine system could be converted one at a time so a lot
less that a complete power station is lost.
BTW, Renewables does not mean what people seem to assume;
It means you renew them every twenty years !
BTW, Telstra says I should be receiving notifications !

I forgot to add, the quickest way to get a handle on the price of
nuclear is to call for tenders.
They would come in with provisos that the price could change as they
work through the approval process of their respective countries.
At least four of them are building SMAs for nuclear submarines so
there is already considerable experience.
Oh yes, the Raindow serpent has probably never heard of a nuclear reactor.

Here's the thing.

Our system of power reticulation comes with transmission line losses of around 11% and distribution losses around 64%. that's a grand total of 75%. 75% which the mug consumer, i.e., you, pays for.

And equally applicable to wind and solar farms. Which by the way, to be applicable as domestic or industrial supply will need ginormous battery or pumped hydro backup.

The very least economies of scale solar farms can reticulate power to the user is not less than 6 cents PKWH! And with battery or pumped hydro backup Not less than 24 cents PKWH!

And that's before one factors in the operator's markup, the wholesaler's markup and the reticulator's markup. The latter, whatever the market can bear!

If you can afford a rooftop solar array and battery backup. The savings to you make currently viable and more reliable.

That said, nothing comes close to locally placed SMR, because folks, if one is 200 feet under your road most if not all powerline and distribution losses that you pay for are eliminated.

Even more so (6 cents PKWH) if it's a MSR thorium (3 cents PKWH) or better yet nuclear waste burning MSRs, burning nuclear waste we are paid annual millions to take! and in the process reduce the half-life to around 300 years!

The last option would create virtually free power for any and all industrial applications and if accompanied by genuine and logical tax reform, i.e., a flat tax of around 15% and no tax compliance costs, which averages 7%.

Tax reform and compliance costs as proffered saves, industry/business around 5% on the lowest tax with attached compliance costs by around 5% in actual money currently returned annually to the ATO.

If we do all the above? We'd likely be killed in the stampede to relocate manufacturing facilities/business operations here! TBC
Alan B.

ttbn. Coal (3 cents PKWH) was cheaper than nuclear (6 cents PKWH) by half. That's not the case today. Coal fired power is as high as 58 cents PKWH and rising?

PKWH currently and nuclear as locally placed SMR can get power to you for as little as 7-8 cents PKWH, if one assumes it would via a cooperative or smart local council venture.

Or if it's MSR thorium as low as 3cents PKWH, again as a cooperative or council venture. Who if intelligentially managed, would also sell on easy as, terms to you, air conditioners, electric heaters and all conceivable labour-saving electric appliances!

Suggest you try talking from a little higher up next time or on a topic you have some actual knowledge of!
Alan B. Former power authority science assistant employee.

Decisions based on an ideological imperative are usually the very worst and for labor/woke left, comparable to opting for, coalfired or solar panel powered submarines?

Well, who thinks they're thinking with their heads rather than their dicks/vacuum between the ears?
Alan B.

Just realised that when Bowen talks of renewables, he means just that;
You renew them every 20 years or so.
It will take 25 years to implement his "plan" by which time it will
be time to renew them all.

Bezza: Exactly! Whereas nuclear can run for 100 years as MSR thorium before needing decommissioning and replacing.

Just 8 grams of thorium has enough realizable energy to power your house your car and all your other needs, for 100 years.

The cost of mining and refining 8 grams of thorium? Around $100.00. That my friend is just $1.00 a year!

No renewable or coal or gas fired energy comes within a mile/a bull's roar of thorium's true, but deliberately unrealised potential.

Because, if we used the brains we were born with, our economy would already be a thorium fired one. And the world's largest!

And were that the case, no renewable or coal or gas would get a look in and all the energy barons and Putin's Russia would go bankrupt. As would big nuclear.

Moreover, big pharma would find most of its profits from the cancer industry would all but disappear!

So, we have all three of these ultrapowerful industry heavyweights lined up with their political lobbyists, lined up against thorium.

Our own government has for years treated thorium as a waste product of mining and have allegedly tried dumping it offshore/Malaysia.?

Forest Gump would have summarized our government's actions as, stupid is as stupid does.
Alan B.

Albanese Labor is taking down the economy by imposing higher renewable requirements and increasing power prices.

Albanese Labor has made an unremitting assault on the settings that drive increased productivity levels. The electorate has been bribed into accepting - or they are just not noticing - the damage Albanese Labor is doing to them and Australia.

If the west wanted Putin to pull his horns in?

All they need do is develop thorium energy!

This would have a threefold effect, 1/ It would kill energy created inflation dead in its tracks and 2/have Putin, the M. E./the energy barons and China back peddling for all they're worth. And 3/ give their respective energy dependant economies a humongous boost the like of which we never ever seen.

Yes, there would be some losers or "rich" folk not wise enough to see the writing on the wall, cop their losses and reinvest in something better than oil, gas and or coal, e.g., thorium powered hydrogen production and a world market wide open for the first hydrogen energy baron!

Which by the way includes Tweedle dumb and Tweedle dumber/most Australian governments/current labor and Howard's, dumbest of all, a reflection of an ideologically driven, co-op dismantling "leader"?
Alan B.

Well, with around 40% of the world's thorium reserves we could've, and sill could be a producer of liquid hydrogen that dramatically undercuts current petrol prices.

Most petrol engines can be re-tuned to run nearly as well on compressed hydrogen or compressed methane/biogas or methanol.

Every Australia family produces enough organic waste that converted via a biological on site digestor, produce enough methane/biogas to power their house and car.

The current price of skyrocketing energy makes retrofitting such a system, an economical exercise.
Alan B.

Hi Allen,

The domestic biodigesters I have seen look very rustic, so I would guess the economic incentive is not great. What should be realised is that if you make energy cheap enough, all manner of recycling can become profitable. According to stats collected by the Nuclear Energy Agency, nuclear power provides the cheapest dispatchable energy.

https://www.oecd-nea.org/lcoe/

The main problem with nuclear is the lack of government support, primarily because of the renewable energy con. Hopefully the focus will shift quickly to nuclear as the shortcomings of pursuing renewable energy become apparent. There is lots of support for nuclear, but governments need to get serious about it.

https://www.google.com/search?channel=fs&client=ubuntu-sn&q=msr+thorium+copenhagen#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:9e0d7d92,vid:HUue5-QjT_o,st:0

Fester: The locally invented two tank system is a smell free, closed cycle system that maximises the methane production. [And retrofitting the nation, a huge boost for the steel industry, which would go gangbusters if powered by nuclear waste burning MSRs.]

Byproducts include reusable nutrient loaded water suitable for underground taped irrigation and carbon rich soil improver.

In a land as arid and dry as Australia, it's economic madness to pump millions of litres of water/effluent out to sea, given pumping inland as reusable irrigation water is out of the question given current humongous industrial energy costs.

However, if we had nuclear waste powered MSRs using fuel we are paid annual millions to take, it'd be a completely different story! Incidentally, MSR can also burn weapons grade plutonium.

[And some nuclear waste can be encrusted with manmade blue diamonds that convert radiation into usable electrical energy. They're called, nuclear batteries (AAAAA) that can pump out power for literal centuries.]

We could export raw MSR waste burning MSR produced electrical energy to an energy starved world, via cables, for more money than we get for selling rocks, hydrocarbons and our surplus food production.

And thereby do our bit towards saving our planet as opposed to contributing to runaway climate change with our hydrocarbon exports!

The latter could be trebled if we used recyclable water/effluent as envisaged! There are no downsides in this suggestion, just win, win outcomes all round!

Much of this food production could be cryovaced then safely exposed to nuclear radiation the product of a nuclear reactor. And as raw unprocessed food. Meat, fruit and veges, as fresh as the day they were picked or processed, for refrigeration free decades!

And sold to the world when premium prices were available? Or conversely, gifted as food aid to the starving poor as goodwill building diplomacy?

What prevents such outcomes? Answer: Canberra and a dumbed down sports addicted electorate!
Alan B.

Which is cheaper?

I'd argue candles for lights around the house and wood fireplaces for cooking and staying warm.

It time to go back to the good old days.

Alan,

Conventional nuclear power would be a good start, but there are still many people with a strong ideological objection to it.

If energy gets more expensive, living standards will drop. That is guaranteed with the moronic approach of the federal government.

Nathan

"It time to go back to the good old days."

Yes, when a far smaller population wiped out vast areas of forest and other natural resources. Like the hunter gatherer existence it would kill human beings orders of magnitude more quickly than Pol Pot. Think about that next time you light a candle, and be mindful that candles are a significant cause of house fires. But I wish you well and hope you live the life you'd like to live.

The only 'old days' we need to get back to are they days of coal, gas and oil and cheap electricity.

There is no 'climate emergency', and there is no proof that carbon dioxide, which makes up a mere 0.04% of the atmosphere, has any effect on the climate.

With all this BS going on in Western countries, China and India are laughing themselves silly at our stupidity.

The knuckle draggers in Canberra are the worst of the lot, completely ignoring what is happening Europe, as the authorities there (belatedly) find out what a horse's arse the entire climate con has been.

This article highlights many of the difficulties associated with the energy debate. Typically we only consider the costs associated with commisioning and running the plant. The so-called externalities are largely ignored - yet the community as a whole picks up the tab for includes a condition that the company is responsible for some of these costs it is rarely enforces.)
This article is no different - there is no comparison between the costs of the externalities of various forms of energy. One reason for that is the literature dealing with this aspect of energy is complex and opaque - different standards and different assumptions are applied so that makes the exercise of making claims about what source of energy is cheaper an exercise in futility.
What is reasonably well documented is that if we want to make the transition to a zero-carbon future there is no technology that can achieve this unless we are prepared to change our lifestyles.
There is some interesting work being done in transition engineering this you tube video is worth looking at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eSPVBbIztWk
It will be cold comfort to most and of course our politicians are a long way from achieving this.

Hi Baygon,

There is no difficulty, just ideologically driven stupidity and a bunch of con-artist renewable energy companies replete with highly optimistic claims about costs making a fortune from taxpayer subsidies.

What seems to be causing problems are the rising electricity costs and spiraling cost estimates for powering Australia with renewable energy (wind/solar with hydro/battery storage). The irony is that nuclear energy has been repeatedly dismissed as being too expensive, then Chris Bowen releases a cost estimate to prove the point but instead his cost estimate suggests that nuclear power would cost a fraction of a renewable Nirvana.

Now we are in a bind with aborigines objecting to a far off shore
gas well being planned. The objection is that the Rainbow Serpent
might be inconvenienced.
Well, as it appears that it can go a long way away, perhaps anywhere
in the world why doesn't China's work on the reefs in the Sth China
sea bother it ?
Frankly, I will say it out loud !
The Rainbow Serpent does not exist !
It is old mythology and perhaps should die because of man's discovery
of other idols.
Captain Cook jerked the aborigines 60.000 years ahead, so it is about
time that they brought their beliefs up to date.
The world has moved on.

On another matter, there is a lot of objections to the chains of
transmission towers being built.
Why can't the power be sent on underground cables ?
Oh too expensive the cry out !
Well it is not too expensive to run then under Bass Strait.
I will bet that is more expensive than underground.
Don't even need a cable layer ship for starters.
Then there is that proposed cable from Darwin to Singapore.
Someone is being taken for a ride !
Perhaps they just like the look of the towers.

One more thing;
They say the coal stations are clapped out etc etc.
It can only be the boilers and coal handling equipment that would need
the most upkeep.
Some might remember the 600 volt DC power station in Clarence St Sydney.
It had an AC motor driving a DC generator for all the DC lifts etc
in the Sydney CBD.
Well when it was finally shut down, not because it was clapped out,
it was about 100 years old !
We are being lied to by both government and generators.

Bowen and Albozo are lying again. What a shocker.

Surely the key point is that if nuclear is not economically viable then there is no reason to ban it. I have not heard a retort to this.

To Boffin
You are right - if it is not economically viable then logically there should be no reason to ban it. The problem is that the pro-nuclear lobby is seeking government funding for nuclear power - governments do not have to demonstrate a technology is economically viable.
It highlights a major problem with neo-liberalism. There is an acceptable path to the market - government funds the r & d private enterprise picks it and the profits that go with it up. We have seen this with pharmaceuticals, transport, energy and so on. (It also applies to many renewables) Therefore what tends to happen an ideological case is made for a particular technology, government underwrites it and then that technology is pursued. Governments are not particularly good at long term thinking about the implications of adopting a particular set of technologies. The market is more cautious but if governments subsidise a particular initiative then they may just about be prepared to take the risk.
So we do need to think carefully about the long term implications of going down the rabbit holes of these many new ideas that people lobby for.

"So we do need to think carefully about the long term implications of going down the rabbit holes of these many new ideas that people lobby for."

Well they jumped into the renewable energy fiasco without any consideration as to whether it would work and how much it would cost. With nuclear there is ample real world evidence of it being a low cost, safe and viable source of dispatchable low carbon energy.

There is no complexity or problem with nuclear power, just con artist renewable energy spivs sending Australia into the abyss and a Labor party infested with pathologically anti-nuclear supporters.