South Australia has become a running joke where the pursuit of renewable energy has led to consumers paying nearly 3x the wholesale price of electricity, with regular power failures. The threats by industries employing 1000s to close up shop in SA is not posturing, but a consequence of businesses no longer being viable without reliable and competitively priced power.

Next SA's premier holds a citizen's jury over a business proposal to create a nuclear waste facility that will create jobs and add up to $6bn p.a. to SA's coffers, where 90% of "jurors" have no clue about radiation or nuclear power, and unsurprisingly after being exposed to a scare campaign vote not to consider the proposal under any circumstances, even though they would be 10 000 times more likely to get cancer from the bacon they eat than from the nuclear waste disposal.

Next, with the closure of Hazelwood power station, the cost of power in Victoria, Tasmania and SA is likely to rise further by up to 10% and become less stable.

The problem that Aus faces is that as the country starts reaching the practical limits of network stability at roughly 30% renewable power, the laws of diminishing returns begins to kick in, as wind and solar power temporarily produces excess power and it has to be cut back, and back up gas generators need to be built for standby.

The only countries that have successfully reduced CO2 emissions and keep energy costs low rely on nuclear power, which is statistically still by far the safest generator of electricity, and today with new technologies that are capable of burning the waste as fuel, and reprocessing technologies that produce life saving medical isotopes from the waste, there is no logical reason not to replace aging coal fired generators with nuclear ones.

Dear Shadow Minister,

You might find the following link of some interest:

http://www.reneweconomy.com.au/nuclear-priced-out-of-australias-future-energy-in-new-report-67465/

cont'd ...

My apologies for the error:

http://www.reneweconomy.com.au/nuclear-priced-out-of-australias-future-energy-equation-in-new-report-67465/

Foxy,

Note way down the article that you linked is the paragraph:

"Similarly, the eFuture study by CSIRO showed that the inclusion of nuclear power as an option caused wholesale prices to be 34-37 per cent lower, and led to a 53 per cent nuclear share in 2050." i.e. The lowest cost mix of zero emission technology would be 53% nuclear.

The actual report summary.
http://www.co2crc.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/LCOE_Executive_Summary.pdf

Remember what I said about biased blogs? This article conveniently leaves out the three factors that increase the total LCOE of wind and solar but not nuclear, which if you read the actual report is included.

1. Because wind and solar are spread geographically and intermittent, the cost of building and maintaining the networks is far higher.

"A levelised cost does not capture the total cost of
operating an electricity grid. For that reason, the LCOE
and current electricity pool prices are not comparable,
as LCOE covers long-run costs but pool prices often
do not."

2. Because wind and solar are intermittent, once one exceeds about 30% standby gas generators have to be built and stand available at a hour's notice to kick in for the windless nights. These cost nearly as much to build and maintain as the wind turbines. Which is why Germany is now building coal power stations for base load to replace the nuclear plants they are closing.

3. Above about 35% there will be times when the wind and solar generate more than required, meaning that the turbines have to power down increasing the LCOE as happens in Spain and Germany.

The cost of nuclear will fall dramatically with layers upon redundant layers of regulation removed.

What happened in Fukushima and the aftermath has become the latest 'reason' to ratchet up on nuclear. A look at this and what did 'not' happen is explored at http://www.nuclear4life.com/ . See Chapter 1 and expand to full page for easiest reading.

I'd lay London to a brick that the cost of storage to make renewables dispatchable is not brought into calculations, and perhaps not even the subsidies wasted on them, such as is the RET.

However cheap a renewables non-solution to CAGW is, it is still a non-solution. Renewables plus fossil-fuelled base-load will not solve the problem. Renewables are redundant on the same grid as nuclear.

Renewablistas simply presume that magical breakthroughs in storage technology, scalability and cost will come. Dreamers, pied-pipers leading us up a dead-end. They misinform about nuclear and don't mind playing the nuclear panic card to prosecute their wafty cause. Of course, most like to say they have open minds, but scratch just below the surface and you see their hair-shirts they would have us all wear. If you're South Australian you already understand this.

Realists look at what has already worked in France and elsewhere for over half a century.

SM, we need our Chief-Scientist to lead this discussion but he's not up to it, being a starry-eyed renewablista himself. How we get some sense on this through our political system is a challenge while renewablistas continue to run interference as they did in SA.

Dear SM,

The following link explains Australia's energy options:

http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/scienceshow/your-guide-to-australia's-renewable-energy-options/6569874