Love the man, he believes in man made climate change, ( I don't, I believe in climate change, not that we can fix it) However he talks absolute sense about energy, and the need for it for the humanity to advance.
1) There is no room for base load power in the future grid. We are already at the point where the wholesale price is negative, paid for the coal generators going out of business, Nuclear will have to suffer the same costs. 2) Comment on the introduction, debate by the ill-informed adds nothing.
@@politics102 Please Charles tell me what experience you have operating national interconnection and manging regional Grids? Australia seems to be the only country with this idea that they can create inertia from electronics without massive voltage and harmonic issues.
When they talk about renewables they never talk about all the rare earth and critical minerals that are needed to build these renewables and what a toxic process it is.
Just as the Nuclear Power proponents never talk about their waste, And/or the strategic danger in war times. Imagine a small tactical nuke hitting a Powerplant, and that "Small warhead" suddenly turns into a Bomb with 10x or even 1000x the fissile material.
Well done Robert. This is the sort of presentation that can inform the basis of a sensible debate on nuclear energy in Australia. I am a Fellow of IEAust., and shocked and embarrassed by the organisation's treatment of you. During my first 8 years of professional career, I worked for EDI (now Downer) and was trained for 12 months intensively in Switzerland in the design of various types of power stations (coal, gas, nuclear). I visited a nuclear station in Switzerland (in 1986) and was amazed at the control systems, security provisions, excellence of design and quality of construction. I am a total supporter of nuclear in Australia. All the best.
Are you saying no fossil fuels and all electric, 100% clean electric Australia. No CO2 emissions.? We agree no fossil fuels, no imported petroleum except for road building and the petrochemical industry.
Many mixed ideas in the central nuclear electric generation industry. New grid is too expensive so use existing grid. New distant renewables' new grid transmission, is too expensive to be economical (or reliable. ) Nuclear must have 24/7 cashflow for decades and decades and decades and renewables break its UTILIZATION FACTOR No petroleum imports for ICE vehicles or generation plant. No gas heating. No gas cooking and hotwater. No coal fired electricity generators. No CO2 emissions. 15% to 100% electric energy use in the economy means more electricity generation construction and more grid capacity construction. We know the economic answer to nuclear replacing existing grid electricity, is nuclears' grid centric location, as the first step. My concern is if renewables replace all the other non electric energy then the renewables will be 7 times bigger and will destroy the nuclear UTILIZATION FACTOR of the new nuclear generation plant. Cashflow and ROI is economically dangerous to nuclear plant owners and more dangerous to grid owners, the superannuation funds, and other investors. Most new renewables will be customer financed from the customer's savings from self generation and storage. Millions and millions and millions of customers. Rooftop PV will shade hot rooftops and power air-conditioning. More benefits. Rooftop PV is cheaper than windows $/m². More benefits as it is cheaper to expand. BVs, battery vehicles, oversized battery parked 23hrs every day can have it's UTILIZATION FACTOR improved by having V2G at home or at work or at the shopping centres or railway parking or ... Westfield's shopping centres VPP can trade electricity for money and top up customers BVs if required. I have worked for Westfield's construction. Nuclear was correct to point out how small it is compared to distant renewables. Nuclear just NEEDS an electric grid. Nuclear was correct to point out how expensive the transmission and distribution grid is.
Many mixed ideas in the central nuclear electric generation industry. New grid is too expensive so use existing grid. New distant renewables' new grid transmission, is too expensive to be economical (or reliable. ) Nuclear must have 24/7 cashflow for decades and decades and decades and renewables break its UTILIZATION FACTOR No petroleum imports for ICE vehicles or generation plant. No gas heating. No gas cooking and hotwater. No coal fired electricity generators. No CO2 emissions. 15% to 100% electric energy use in the economy means more electricity generation construction and more grid capacity construction. We know the economic answer to nuclear replacing existing grid electricity, is nuclears' grid centric location, as the first step. My concern is if renewables replace all the other non electric energy then the renewables will be 7 times bigger and will destroy the nuclear UTILIZATION FACTOR of the new nuclear generation plant. Cashflow and ROI is economically dangerous to nuclear plant owners and more dangerous to grid owners, the superannuation funds, and other investors. Most new renewables will be customer financed from the customer's savings from self generation and storage. Just 3phase supply is impossible now to many customers. Millions and millions and millions of customers. Large building developments are waiting on grid electricity supply and new transformers. Rooftop PV will shade hot rooftops and power air-conditioning. More benefits. Rooftop PV is cheaper than windows $/m². More benefits as it is cheaper to expand. BVs, battery vehicles, oversized battery parked 23hrs every day can have it's UTILIZATION FACTOR improved by having V2G at home or at work or at the shopping centres or railway parking or ... Westfield's shopping centres VPP can trade electricity for money and top up customers BVs if required. I have worked for Westfield's construction. Nuclear was correct to point out how small it is compared to distant renewables. Nuclear just NEEDS an electric grid. Nuclear was correct to point out how expensive the transmission and distribution grid is. Nuclear was pointing 👉 to its limitations in the new technology world.
But where are the facts, what's the cost, where and how do we dispose of the waist, how many reactors per site. It's all just empty rhetoric so far. The big question is how are nuclear plants in 2040 going to bring down power bills now. So far all I've seen is lies about renewables particularly from Littleproud and Dutton.
What facts, not even Dutton knows what the price per MWH is until he has a final cost of nuclear power, including maintenance, construction, waist management, staffing, security etc etc. Remember folks this is all taxpayers money and publicly owned.
@@TheSilmarillian c'mon ...... the green economy just makes absolute sense ;) Don't worry you ..... will own nothing and be happy ! How could there be anything wrong with that ? The carbon footprint will be our yoke to wear over our entire lives so its all fine !
Mr. Parker has provided me with a good explanation of nuclear energy and it all makes sense. I applaud his erudite commentary. As an engineer of a different persuasion, I have concluded that nuclear energy is the best way forward for base power. Unreliability and transmission costs will destroy renewables, and who wants these ugly wind turbines and solar farms impacting on our environment?
Australia should have taken up nuclear power 20 years ago? But, how do we educate the zealots and skeptics? The bottom line is if we don't go nuclear the whole country will not only suffer but will go backward to the point there will be no future for the manufacturing industry or for our children. Vote out Greens, Teals, and Labour.
The northeast of England was the powerhouse manufacturer for the world for nuclear power. The UK joined the EU, Strangely the nuclear power station manufacturing capability was quite quickly closed down and shipped abroad. Then the buildings were demolished and the area is a shopping mall, large car park for busses and a few other shops at the other end. That's what the UK government calls progress.
You're right Brian! The sky will fall! THE SKY WILL FALL! You need to think long-term Ontario was forward-thinking in the 1920s & 30s through 50s: committed to building massive hydro capacity. Ontario obtained the lowest energy rates in N America, built a manufacturing industrial base on it that produces 1/3 of Canada's GDP. Ontario learned from that to think long-term In the 1960s & 70s we invested in Nuclear: built the largest nuclear generating capacity per capita in the world. Results: absolutely assured reliable electricity costs. Reliably HIGH costs. We're paying through the nose for nuclear at rates that DO NOT drop, while renewable costs reliably HAVE dropped, continue to drop. Renewables now produce at 1/3 to 1/4 the cost of nuclear, and we haven't even begun to factor in the coming cost of decommissioning (horrific) or nuclear waste storage & protection for a thousand years (who knows? No one's found a place to do it). Thank god our right-wing Conservative Party has been able to learn from this We've rejected renewables offering electricity at 4 cents/kwHr to be delivered within a few years with minimal decommissioning costs (built into the contract price), no long-term waste storage costs, and no massive risk. Instead we've committed to buying new (unproven anywhere) SMRs contracted to deliver electricity at 16 cents/kwHr (maybe - or maybe more; they've refused to release the contract details so we know they think they're publicly defensible...). Oh, and renewables continue to drop at 8% p.a. (wind) or over 12% p.a. (solar). Nuclear already 3x the cost per kwHr delivered, keeps going up. I do agree with your last comment though "Energy drives the economy and lifestyle." - for nuclear development firms & nuclear employees. But hey! - someone benefits.
Brit here. Take a look at progress on Hinckley Point C. Look at its guaranteed power price, the schedule and the budget. Look at the insolvency (and subsequent renationalisation) of the company building it. Go and read "How Big Things Get Done". If you don't, you'll make the same mistakes. To be clear, I don't think that building new nuclear on budget and quickly is impossible. It's just very, very, very difficult. I back limited nuclear expansion in the UK. I don't think it makes any sense at all in Australia.
A bit too late, to invest when all the surplus was squandered over 13 years ago. Paying for nuclear now raises the question where the money comes from without a strong back bone industry. The the industrial capacity to make big things here is long gone. Know how and master degrees are not doers. Cities, stadiums, railways, round abouts, hand rails, lavish traffic islands, excessive road markings, wind and solar and all sorts of nice items had been prioritized. This nation or lets say place built absolutely anything what needs energy and ongoing maintenance, on the back of Australia the way it was 20 years ago. This disconnect is not a catchup situation.
It’s too expensive from what I watched yesterday, only 10% of the rods get used and then it’s practically waste after 2yrs, it’s recycled in France but when you see what’s involved it ain’t cheap, the space needed to store the waste what a joke, coal is way safer cheaper and this country is full of it. I honestly thought nuclear was worth it but after learning bout the waste and storage I thought we were all bout not wasting in the this modern time and the future.
@@FreeAsABirdSydneyAustralia The 'its cheaper argument' has created massive know how setbacks and energy supply dependencies. Foreign cars were cheaper too. On cost alone the energy mix does not work anymore. Coal should be there because we have it right there, but we had sailing ships too. The nuclear live cycle +know how with storage in open space and out of reach is ideal. Taking on submarine waste because of our defence alignment makes sense. That is happening anyway in Rockingham. I don't like the alignments at all, but they exist. The way Australia has agreed to per capita emission targets is another industry killer we dont need. If all this is half way implemented with greens in government we loose all remaining industry first, because its cheaper to get all good shipped here, and eventually this continenet is one step closer to the planet of the apes.
disappointing that Engineering Australia folded like a house of cards. It makes me angry that i am forced to register with Engineering Australia and hand money over to these fools
So, so, true Robert. Great to hear some clear, concise and evidence-based arguments versus the emotional, myth-based claptrap trotted out by the Greens and Labour. We enjoy our current lifestyles based on reasonably priced energy. Energy drives the economy and lifestyle.
Same here in Canada. Ontario was forward-thinking in the 1920s & 30s through 50s: committed to building massive hydro capacity. Ontario obtained the lowest energy rates in N America, built a manufacturing industrial base on it that produces 1/3 of Canada's GDP. Ontario learned from that to think long-term. In the 1960s & 70s we invested in Nuclear: built the largest nuclear generating capacity per capita in the world. Results: absolutely assured reliable electricity costs. Reliably HIGH costs. We're paying through the nose for nuclear at rates that DO NOT drop, while renewable costs reliably HAVE dropped, continue to drop. Renewables now produce at 1/3 to 1/4 the cost of nuclear, and we haven't even begun to factor in the coming cost of decommissioning (horrific) or nuclear waste storage & protection for a thousand years (who knows? No one's found a place to do it). Thank god our right-wing Conservative Party has been able to learn from this. We've rejected renewables offering electricity at 4 cents/kwHr to be delivered within a few years with minimal decommissioning costs (built into the contract price), no long-term waste storage costs, and no massive risk. Instead we've committed to buying new (unproven anywhere) SMRs contracted to deliver electricity at 16 cents/kwHr (maybe - or maybe more; they've refused to release the contract details so we know they think they're publicly defensible...). Oh, and renewables continue to drop at 8% p.a. (wind) or over 12% p.a. (solar). Nuclear already 3x the cost per kwHr delivered, keeps going up. I do agree with your last comment though: "Energy drives the economy and lifestyle." - for nuclear development firms & nuclear employees. But hey! - someone benefits.
@@bencoad8492massive government subsidies are required. Frances reactors are at the end of their lifespan and will not be replaced because renewables are so much cheaper and so much faster to build and don't melt down.
@@Poorlineforeva well that's wrong, Germany retail power is still more expensive then Frances so...also nuclear is the safest power source by power produced, and no need to worry about fear mongering of "melt downs"
@@Poorlineforeva Yup, AFTER you subtract German taxes and fees (which mostly go to support VRE and the nuclear-free Energiewende), then sure, German electricity is slightly cheaper than French electricity.
Thank you Robert for an excellent presentation. I had been doubtful of the operational and economic aspects of nuclear in the Australian marketplace, however this presentation adds a great deal of perspective to all the issues. $17M/km for lines puts a lot of projects in doubt, particularly in WA where 1000km between places is nothing. As a 30+ year member of the Institution of Engineers Australia, it was disappointing to see the goings on. But then again, as a long time observer to the changes in the organisation over the years it wasn't such a shock.
So from what i understood. It cheaper, significantly more efficient and environmentally better, in EVERY way. EG. tailpipe emissions. But glad he spoke about troubles with cooling which could be a problem. And we dont get Tsunami's here so. Convincing Greens and money grubbing pollies is the problem...
@@utubenoob2.095 it is the grubby elites whom control the politics there has been a free energy for years they just keep killing the inventors and their families.look up zero point energy dr Steven greer
only problem he only talked about water cooling, not using molten salt or CO2 cooling :/ prob be a non issue if you moved away from water based and would be safer overall too, no H explosions or pressure explosions that you have with water based cooling.
@@bencoad8492 Water cooling is still needed for MSR and gas-cooled reactors, which need to transfer heat from their primary cooling circuit to a secondary (water) circuit.
Nuclear is a great technology, but it's important to consider Australia's unique context. This talk heavily references data from Europe and Texas - places with existing nuclear industries and very different energy markets. The latest GenCost report from CSIRO and AEMO (which curiously Robert ignores) provides Australia-specific insights. It shows that renewables with integration costs (transmission & storage) remain the lowest-cost option for new electricity generation here. It also suggests nuclear wouldn't be operational until around 2038 if started today. Concerns about wind and solar intermittency are valid, but that's where storage comes in. Pumped hydro acts like a giant battery, and Australia has great potential for this. Other storage technologies are developing rapidly too. Australia's diverse renewable resources could actually improve our innovation ranking and economic complexity by leveraging our natural advantages. For a different perspective on Australia's energy future, Saul Griffith's book "The Big Switch" is worth a read. It explains why nuclear might not be the optimal choice for our specific situation.
Not to mention Texas is now the highest producer of renewable energy of all the US states - even beating California, and they are continuing their build out at a fast pace. It's almost as though "oil country" knows something....
@@JGalegria Not really. There are 13 GW of coal plants forecast to retire by 2035/36. We need a solution before that. Have a look at the work of David Osmond.
That’s incorrect the CSIRO has no expertise in generational cost, or expertise in nuclear generation, they have repeatedly refused consultation with Australias leading nuclear experts. 2030 Renewable analysis in Gencost excludes : Transmission $15.9 billion Storage $22.9 billion Peaking Gas $1 billion etc .. Also Nuclear is not considered by AEMO ISP because it is not in legislation, so the consumer is relying on the expertise of the CSIRO in Nuclear - they have none.. Final quote to consider from the senate enquirer into energy planning and regulation: The ISP is not a cost benefit analysis of the decision to impose certain carbon budgets, net zero targets, renewable energy targets or other energy policy settings, that are used as an input into their (ISP) modeling ..’
Snowy hydro 2.0 cost blow out was largely over transmission .. to meet the needs of renewables for 2030 target we would have to double the size of the grid, Australias transmission grid is around 5000KMs, longest in the world, currently around 40% of consumers electric bills come from the grid.. all the data suggests that transmission infrastructure costs are wildly underestimated..
Nuclear energy should have started 15 years ago . We are liviing in a time, when governments are in a reactive mode. Not proactive mode....as they are scared a futuristic plan, may see them out of a job. If Govts of many years ago did this....we would not have dams where they are... Fix things, not fwd looking... that is our demise
@@PoorlineforevaProve it's uneconomical. You can't. You don't know the full cost of renewables to compare. Don't forget the transmission lines either, lol.
Can I, for one, recognize Simon for making this fine recording possible for anyone worldwide who has a mind to watch it? Nothing like the Streisand Effect in full force, eh.
There is a need of nuclear energy as part of energy mix in Australia. One of the major hurdles for Australians to overcome is the Not In My Back Yard(NIMBY) syndrome. Without a stable and constant energy supply for businesses and residences, Prosperity for all Australians is Not Assured.
@@Poorlineforeva Waiting for the current government to be upfront and honest about the total system costs for wind/solar and how many endangered species will be made extinct to deploy wind/solar.
There is no power company that wants to touch nuclear. No one is screaming for it. No accountant has made it add up. The only viable thing for us it to concentrate on uranium mining and enrichment, so that we can replace out coal exports with something - cause they're going to die. The LNP decided not to pursue nuclear back in 2006 (when Dutton was minister for jobs)
There is an interesting "debate" from the CIS in which all speakers talk about the need to go nuclear. There is not a single word about the cost nor the fact that, yes, not a single organisation thinks its worth their while investing in nuclear power. Hmmm.
@@hogey74 > nor the fact that, yes, not a single organisation thinks its worth their while investing in nuclear power. Would you make an investment in an enterprise which you know will not receive the necessary permits? Remove the ban, and then see if any company is interested in the investment.
No matter how much I want renewables I cannot see how it will ever viably meet our energy needs in the medium term. I also think renewables come with a whole new array of environmental issues that really aren't being addressed. The electricity grid is so complex and it certainly seems to me most countries have absolutely realised that renewables are not the sole answer.
The most obvious problem with quasi-renewables is their sheer scale and blight on the last remnants of natural scenery. This angers many people who remember when environmentalists like John Muir fought to preserve such places, and they needn't be in official parks to be appealing. Look at this depressing future map: kleinmanenergy.upenn.edu/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/Fig-2-JEsse-Event-2-1536x950.png
The presentation starts around 6:35. I hope IOPA considers how many viewers might drop-off during that first 6m35s when a video is padded-out-in-the-front like that? Anyway great presentation, great video. Important stuff.
And yet. It's a critical peice of information when I find out that the organisation that's supposed to support my cohort, is now resorting to silencing a fairly valid opinion and discussion. I knew EA was already borderline irrelevant. Won't get another dollar from me again.
Excellent Teaching Presentation. What should be common knowledge but is severely lacking in Actuality, thank you for taking the risk to defy the nasties. The strange thing about Submarines, nuclear powered, is the extremes of reliability and safety dedicated to keeping the concept of Mutually Assumed Destruction consequence of misused Nuclear Energy, clear in the ideas of appropriate Defence strategies, that is, the appropriate use of nuclear power is central to the defence of civilization, mutually assumed.
For the numbers to stack up, only large scale nuclear may be used (per the nice graphs). This comes (a handful of large reactors across the country) with the same transmission costs as renewables (in fact, whichever way we go, many transmission lines will be built to interconnect grids - like Basslink - to ensure stability, not purely as a requirement of renewables), and must run at 100% load most of the time to maintain "cheap" power. This is fine for Europe where you have the option of dumping excess power to other countries - but this is not the case for Australia - our neighbors are all across the ocean (perhaps the abandoned Brooks "Suncable" could be repurposed?).... Pointing out that renewables "failed" when only a tiny fraction has been built out is utterly contemptible - pretending it can't work, or that the existing infrastructure represents anything like the cost of any nuclear proposal doesn't do his argument any favours. "Let's model 75% nuclear". I'm sorry but the guy has no idea. To iterate, only a country like France, with neighbors to dump excess nuclear to is able to run to that level of nuclear in their mix. We cannot. His whole argument is nonsensical..... Now I'm 47 minutes into the video and he is abandoning large nuclear so he can mangle small nuclear into our grid, but conveniently ignores the vastly increased cost per kWh. At this point, this is a joke. It is also worth remembering that significantly more battery and hydro storage will be built (even if we went to the impossible 100% nuclear) in the future. Battery (lithium) systems will be installed to manage demand and support grid frequency. Given that, installing a little more to ensure a higher mix of solar can be utilized just makes sense. I agree (apart from waste cost/management) that nuclear power isn't "the devil", but bringing it into our energy mix at this point in history makes no sense. It would ONLY be having nuclear for the sake of having nuclear. And the "if I burn one atom of coal or one atom of carbon" really grates on me.
Nuclear promoters are talking about base load only because they know it is limited. Nuclear is limited by the cost of a bigger grid. Grid capacity increase is seen in the multiple lines of towers that each transmit the same amount of energy but need multiple lines to transmit multiple amounts of energy. More amounts of electricity energy can only be done with more transmission lines. Nuclear promoters themselves TELL YOU new transmission lines at $1million km to $10million km is extremely costly. The Australian national electricity grid is 1million km. You can do ezi maths, nuclear promoters are TELLING YOU, and the entire world, the truth. 1million km x $1million per km is $1TRILLION. Minimum value of the national electrical grid is $1TRILLION. Asset value to the grid owners who need dirt cheap electricity to access millions and millions and millions of customer's cash at 50cents kWh. ROI, return on investment and maintenance and emergency manpower. Nuclear promoters are TELLING YOU steady base load 247 is the only economic way for nuclear electricity to be economical. Nuclear promoters are TELLING YOU steady 247 cashflow is critical to nuclear generators economic value. 5cents kWh. I would say that Base load demand is only 10% of full maximum demand. Electric energy is only 10% of the entire energy Australia uses. 10% × 10% = 1% of AUSTRALIA'S ENERGY used. These are all simple Australian facts. My concern is the same as Robert Parker and Professor Robert Barr and Aidan Morrison concerns for worldwide CO2 emissions impacts on climate change or worse climate destabilisation. Australia is in the Sahara Desert latitudes of the southern hemisphere and all latitudes are warming. Australia will be the first continent to burn. Decade long droughts, national bushfires, flooding rains, and topsoil and fertility washed into the oceans. So yes we are all in the 'same boat'. My observation is renewable technology and battery technologies and recycling technology are advancing rapidly. Sodium batteries and Sulfur batteries and .... My observation is that 20million rooftops in Australia are grid connected and are the main load on the national grid, 74% of grid demand. My observation is 20million vehicles can become 20million battery vehicles in 20years, 2decades. Most vehicles are parked 23hrs every day and drive building carpark space to building carpark space. And parked all night long. 10,000 miles per year (8,760 hrs) 1.14 mph. Avg. 27 miles per day. That's a lot of parking. My observation is that hot sunny rooftops shaded with 33m² of PV panels, 7kw, and 20million over 5hr came GENERATE MORE electricity energy than Australia's fossil fueled 25gW over 24hrs. My observation is that 20million V2G BVs oversized battery, say 100kwh, can be FREE STORAGE with 2,000gWh dispatchable electricity daily. My observation is that the home robotic vacuum cleaner can teach the selfparking EV or BV to selfplug-in to a $60 wall outlet at bumper height. My thoughts are that the millions and millions of customers can self supply electricity and self store in batteries and can over generate with a few more PV rooftop panels and supply dirt cheap electricity to the national grid. The national grid can remain connected to the millions and millions of customers and be their emergency backup and take dirt cheap electricity, feed-in 5cents kWh electricity. The national electrical grid can now supply the heavy industrial customers moving away from fossil fuels to clean electricity. Grid cashflow can be maintained 247 and no new extremely expensive grid capacity construction costs are needed. New grid transmission costs and all nuclear are not needed. Happy days for millions and millions and millions of Australians. Millions of customers can Remain grid connected. Emergency backup. Feed-in 5cents kWh electricity income. Need no grid electricity, tax free savings. No imported petroleum, tax free savings. No gas heating, cooking, hot water, tax free saving. Have shaded rooftops. Energy saving tax free. Rooftop PV is cheaper than windows $m² installed. Australia can show a warming world that nuclear industries that would need millions of tonnes of uranium yellowcake and new transmission lines and raw materials, iron ore and coal and copper and zinc and aluminium and petroleum to mine and.... is not needed. Australia can show that exploding military defence budgets in a nuclear powered world is not needed. Australia will not need to buy more AUKUS USA nuclear submarines and massive USA weapons systems. Australian national savings would be $TRILLIONS. Robotic vehicles and robotic factories working 247 can be 5 times more productive per m². Batteries and rooftop PV panels and vehicles can be mass produced and recycled. Recycled aluminium is dirt cheap new aluminium. Recycled glass is dirt cheap glass. Recycled rare earth and lithium and cobalt and other valuable materials can all be dirt cheap. This all started from the nuclear promoters explaining their dream and concerns on national TV. This is because I have the same Civil Engineer degree from University of NSW as the nuclear promoter, but decades in construction and building in fossil fueled generation power stations and 1,700 transmission line towers and buildings substations and suburban streets infrastructure and greenfield sites. Estimating and tendering on fixed dollar projects. Thank you for asking a good question. 👍
I ve known since grade six we’ve needed a new power.I’ve watched many a program where they have not been nice to people who fix this problem .😢so when someone speaks on this subject there words are very telling…as to what they are about.
especially if the load following nuclear can also produce other needed chemicals like fuel/ferz with the excess power! aka high heat nuclear reactors usually molten salt not solid fueled water cooled ones(they sux overall)
@@benchapple1583 Mainly to look ‘Green’. It’s not that you can’t reduce and increase power in a reactor, the problem is they don’t like if you try to do it quickly. If you reduce power it takes a while before you can bring the power back up again due to xenon poisoning of the reactor. There is a place for wind and solar particularly in Australia where you have lots of sunshine but wind is totally unreliable. You still need conventional power when conditions for renewables are poor. That simply means that you have the build and maintenance costs of parallel systems. You can’t simply have renewables without a backup and that has to be included in the costs, the fact that you now have two systems.
A great sensible presentation neatly balancing an overview of nuclear technology with the economics of the grid. All Australian politicians should watch this and learn.
@@grannyannie2948keep voting for one nation. Each vote they get , They get paid for at election time ,which gives one nation a bigger war chest for the next election . A snow ball effect.
Ironically the biggest issue facing the rapid adoption of nuclear power is the efforts of the fossil fuel companies to protect their own plans. The only way to arrive at a point where it is politically palatable to the voting public is by backing a science based consensus that they can understand is to their benefit. Cut out all of the FUD.
Thankyou, good paper. I did i🎉ndependent analysis in 2019, that came to broadly similar conclusion. At the time I thought the nuclear component might best be met by about 14 high temperature SMRs. I now think considering all factors the nuclear component should be met by four Darlington scale base load CANDU9 nuclear power stations and three smaller gas cooled SMR power plants optimised for 'industrial' heat and power. The CANDU9 plants would be two each in Victoria and New South Wales. The high temperature SMR power plants would be located in WA, SA and QLD and come a bit later. Australia should immediately seek to partner with Canada in the CANDU program with a focus on developing an Ozzie fuel load incorporating Th and adapting the plants for Australian environmental conditions. It should also seek to partner with countries developing high temperature SMRs including UK, US, Canada and China. As for renewables, Marinus link, and Snowy Hydro two must be completed as well as two more large scale pumped hydro (200GWhr@2GW). Roof top solar needs to be built out to 80% of roofs. All the environmentally acceptable, cost effective on and off shore wind sites need to be fully built out. There is of course a lot more in the detail but thats the outline. It will happen because firstly a renewables only program will fail and secondly because the majority of Australians support nuclear energy, any government with a sensible nuclear program is certain to be elected with a mandate to get it done.
Very grateful for the presentation. What I would have like to see is modelling of the costs of when nuclear power share rises from 75% to 100%. The problem with renewables is the redundancy of having extra base-load on top. Yet, for 100 years or so, we only had base-load with much smaller distribution networks.
The Teals are just grown up girls previously playing kitchen to now playing parliament. They would be better off playing Desperate Housewives on Our ABC.
Fantastic talk, full of interesting and mostly novel facts. Best of luck getting Chris Bowen to sit down and listen to it from start to finish. Your siting for Victoria is missing a Nuclear plant in Toorak cause that’s where the Teals live!
James Lindsay spoke of this some time ago. Under net zero there will be no shipping, electric rail will be the only way of transporting freight. People will be permitted one item of new clothing a year. There will be no driving including EVs.
The elephant in the room is the carbon foot print EV's cause about 8 tonnes from memory and mostly renewables last for around 20 and mostly cant be recycled. Australia needs to go nuclear we are one of the greatest suppliers of uranium in the world. WE need nuclear look at the submarines we are buying and that's just catching up with the rest of the world. We have had a nuclear reactor at Lucas Heights just outside Sydney for decades its a research reactor and produces medical materials. Also we now have the technology to take spent fuel rods and recycle them Sweden and a few places in Europe have been doing it for the past few decades and the resultant material is formed into new fuel rods with the residue of unclaimable material down to a half life of 20 years . In the US they are certain interests that are creating lomg term storage of hot waste , its like putting money in the bank for them as it can be brought back out reprocessed ect ect ect follow the money. But I digress I do that , I worked at Bayswater coal fired power station ( outside Newcastle near Singleton) many years ago the CO2 is scrubbed by filter towers , love the way the greens show all that smoke coming out of coal power stations its actually steam from the cooling towers that actually creates its own weather system above the plant , water is also recycled and comes out of the lake returned to the lake and no contamination , I actually fished at Bayswater wasn't supposed 2 by the way its a high sec area , the whole plant is but I wasn't the only employee to do so we did catch and release and as the water going back in is slightly warm the fish thrive. May I add the fly ash from the filters was sold to a certified and approved contractor that on sold it to cement companies among other people in the industry in assorted industries so even that was added to the local economy. Was over fifteen years ago and my comment does not reflect in any way the views of the owners or management of Bayswater power station.
If Albanese, Bowen and Wong love the UN so much about Israel why don’t they believe the UN about nuclear power being the best form of power for Australia.
Excellent presentation, we need as a first step is a change of government, second is to get rid of the restriction on use of nuclear energy. The self interest groups should acknowledge their conflicts of interest.
Yup. 'Cause there are no special interest groups pushing nuclear. Except maybe nuclear developers They get to sign massive contracts with risk-protection & outrageous margins. Nuclear engineering firms They get the same, plus they can lock in forever contracts to decommission at the end of it all... Funds management companies THEY see guaranteed multi-decade guaranteed profits at levels no other industry provides! Oh, and utilities They get vastly more pay at all levels: executives & managers are paid obscenely over-market standard salaries; managers make out like bandits; even hourly employees all the way down make bank at WAY over market rates. How do I know this? I'm a head hunter - a trouble-shooter for the Executive Search trade, actually. Have re-staffed senior executive ranks for all divisions of a major N American power utility, and in the process interviewed executives of EVERY major power utility in N America. None of them carries the costs borne by Ontario & New Brunswick for nuclear. And similar costs at US nuclear operators. I've documented pay scales all the way up: they're beyond obscene. So know that committing to nuclear means you'll be hosed on operating costs. I've interviewed the executive managers of major engineering & construction firms, can tell you the same story applies to nuclear builds & bids. I've interviewed the executive management of major funds management companies such as Brookfield, the biggest investor in the nuclear market at present. They're not doing it because they're a charity: they see obscene profits with locked-in contracts, forever. And they're salivating over it. It was worth the risk & cost they took on to buy AECL (Atomic Energy of Canada) & partner with SNC Lavalin (now called Atkins Realis) which gave them a monopoly on Canada's nuclear talent & AECLs patents, so they can lock up decommissioning contracts. Risk free of course - they're not taking THAT on. And they bought a major piece of Cameco, the nuclear fuel monopoly supplier in Canada (maybe N America). And they bought Westinghouse's nuclear business, which had gone bankrupt while the market eschewed nuclear. And which had already bought Toshiba's nuclear business out of bankruptcy. Brookfield now has a vertically-integrated nuclear monopoly on nuclear talent, fuel & engineering. All they need is a promising sales pitch - SMR's are the future! They're cheap! They're 'Plug & Play': you just drive one up on a transport & plug it in! [Dammit Robert blew their cover in the video: that's ALL a lie!] And Brookfield needs a motivated buyer: Ontario needs to avoid decommissioning costs by simply mothballing existing end-of-life reactors by installing new SMRs on the same site, making decommissioning & waste issues someone else's problem... And Brookfield needs a gullible buyer: Ontario is run by a right-wing Conservative government that's ideologically pro-business, already willing to write 100-year leases on public assets, and susceptible to, um... financial incentives. Maybe off-the-books incentives? We'll not know for decades. But the government has become WAY too cozy with developers for other infrastructure of late, and things look... let's just say, the next government had better do a very thorough audit. Maybe everything's on the up-&-up. Hard to know at this point, but the contracts are mind-boggling. What we know of them - they're mostly being kept rather secret. And forgetting any of those concerns if we stick to worries about sophistication, this government is headed by a guy who is very clever, street-smart, a very accomplished politician. With a high-school education. Does he rely on the smarts of the people selling to him? We'll find out I guess. But Brookfield sees enough opportunity here to invest BILLIONS in buying all those firms, creating a vertically-integrated player. That cost, plus the risk involved (Toshiba & Westinghouse had already gone bust) suggests they see the opportunity for a jackpot. But sure, other than that, there aren't any special interests on the nuclear side...
It is a tough sell for any politician to expound any nuance to the public, let alone explain a multivariable distribution of risks and rewards. Unfortunately this talk makes me think the public policy becomes...trust us: its better in every way, except the obvious price tag (that is trivial when placed into context) but generally it is (resorting to the tactic of: you can;t know so shut up)...too good to be true, followed with a seeming technocratic authoritarianism...if its so obviously better why cant the argument be reduced to a one liner/three worder like "Stop the boats". I LOVE the idea of Australia building our own nuclear industry! And I'm so glad this speech has taken place and made publicly available. Thank you for your work
Nuclear, Solar, Wind, in that order. Solar has its problems too, and Wind is a bloody eyesore. There must be better storage methods than lithium batteries. Make green hydrogen charging stations.
Just a note that even if CC is BS having a diversified network for energy is a more secure choice for the nation anyway!!! Just like we have electric and gas at home for that very reason - we can always cook a meal or heat our house if the grid goes down!!!
@@factnotfiction5915 nuclear would require more subsidization - there is not economic case for it as there is for renewables - mostly because solar or wind farms can be thrown up and giving a return in a few years whereas for nuclear it's decades. It's just too long to have that many billions of dollars waving in the wind.
Succinct and easy to understand, this is a wonderful presentation. Will be sharing it far and wide to try to help those I know that only support the fear driven ideology of 100% renewables.
Volume of water. Volume of what is left after it is distilled and how dose it get disposed of. How often does the yellow cake get renewed and what volumes. How long or does it ever break down and become safe? Thank you 1st conversation I have had it explained to me in anyway. Not just told yes or no. Will look forward to listening more.
So before we started adding CO2 with fossil fuels in the industrial revolution we were in a balanced system and now the oxygen we breathe has been bound to carbon. There are seven billion more people but a lot less oxygen to breathe. The plants have fifty percent more of what they need but thanks to deforestation there are less plants now. The system needs to be restored to a balanced system to slow down,then stop and finally reverse global warming. The most rapid way to achieve that goal is to use nuclear energy as soon as possible. The only way to get to do that is political. The only way to do that is to restore trust through honest and accurate education of the people.
@@Poorlineforeva man your an actual troll right lol, THE Earth is actually GREENER then it was a 100 years ago, you know with the extra 100ppm of CO2 in the atmosphere making it easier on plants to grow and need less water. Studies have been done on it ha
I think you should bring New Zealand along for this. We also should have nuclear energy. If we can build enough of it we can probably get rid of all the gas and we will totally get rid of our only coal fired power station.
How about we remove the almost $20 billion in subsidies to the renewable industry, and remove all the penalties on using coal and see which way the cost goes?
Read a story recently about living in a third world country. The writer's 0:03 9 year old daughter was having an operation and they were praying that the power stays on. And it goes off mid operation. They had diesel generator backup but it would not start and the daughter died . I think we live in such privilege in a world where everything just works all the time and can afford to abstract things. We are unaware of real world problem s that have effects that are profound.
@@brianwolthers2762 all our wealth and privilege comes from cheap and plentiful energy. Who knows where the current green religion will take us but I sure don't want to end up living in any of the poverty stricken places I have visited.
In Ontario, where I grew up, CANDU reactors have been around since the 1950s, even though Ontario has hydro generation as well. As Mr. Parker says, Canada could come and start building CANDU reactors here in Australia almost instantly. It's a proven technology and Canada has built reactors in India and other countries. When people lament the cost compared to 'renewables' one must ask what price do you put on a clean future if you really want to reduce emissions and still have a reliable energy source 24/7. However, I fear the politicians will still be talking about it in 2050.
Amazing presentation of the subject matter. Looks like we have the man to work on and deliver the country at least 3 things -1. The concise timetable for the rooftop solar customer exit from the grid as grid delivery charges alone move toward being higher than producing and storing your own rooftop solar. 2. A risk assessment on the likelihood, timetable and size of the Australian humanitarian crisis caused by limited supply of energy. 3. Determine the related humanitarian aid need. Can the IPA comment on the prevalence of a comment like this in the Australian community. Thanks in advance.
That life cycle - does that consider the extremely slow breakdown of nuclear toxins??? And how safe IS this storage when we're heading towards another ice age, which science shows we are, with or without human activity????
The waste products can be recycled down to what is called minimum storage with half lives of around 12 years , the recovered product can be repacked into fuel rods and reused by the same reactor that produced them. Sweden and a few places in Europe run their reactors on recovered materials.
99% of the waste is filters, gloves and aprons, the so-called low-level waste, it’s considered a low radioactive hazard for ~50 years and is typically isolated in a basement room in a hospital. It’s not particular dangerous, but it would be desirable to limit exposure to it. The high-level radioactive waste, the partially spent fuel rods, which you could measure in cartons of beer per year, could remain a radioactive hazard for hundreds of thousands of years. We've been managing this waste safely since the dawn of the nuclear age and it doesn’t harm people’s health nor the environment, and we've no reason to believe it ever will. We also choose to recycle it. We already send Lucas Heights waste to France to be recycled and the ultimate waste stream can be reduced to ~300 years of radiotoxicity. And the economics of recycling will only improve with generation 4 reactors and beyond. In contrast, the global annual output of solar panel waste is set to overtake the global annual output plastic waste as early as 2030. You would measure solar panel waste in train cars per day. Solar panels contain toxic heavy metals, lead, cadmium, and others that are toxic forever and therefore it must be treated as hazardous waste. Solar panels ‘can’ be recycled, but it is more expensive and more difficult to recycle solar panels than plastic, hence, this is why Australia recycles our nuclear waste but doesn't recycle our solar panel waste. Because solar panels are hazardous, we need to be careful of how we dispose of this waste, because, after all, the authorities tell us not to eat too much fish because of their heavy metal mercury content (0.01 ppb in seawater), and not because of their uranium or radiotoxicity content, even though seawater contains a non-insignificant quantity of dissolved uranium (3.3 ppb in sea water). If you think plastic waste is a problem today? You just wait… If we had an ice age and were worried about nuclear waste entering the environment, we’d just get a few trucks, pick it up and move it. But if we had an ice age and were worried about our solar panel waste entering the environment, we're completely boned.
Robert’s error. He thought he had been invited by a scientific organisation. Engineers Australia is, in fact, Social Engineers Australia. Indeed, his values do not fit with SEA!😅
Excellent presentation, many thanks for going to the effort to share. I'm hoping the conversation nationally moves to generation targets and loaded cost of consumption as consumers / industry. China published some goals in this space and would think these are probably good baselines for us to consider.
and this nuclear costing is for trad nuclear, built on site with solid fueled water based...image the shift if it was liquid fueled(molten salt ect), build as a standardized design in a factory or shipyard not using water base cooling so no need for a pressurized containment.
There is so much engineering wise that is wrong, it would take another hour to correct. How many 'experts outside their expertise' give 'professional' opinion ?????? Grid electricity includes grid construction engineering economics. You need a knowledgeable critic from the distribution and transmission construction industry. Who has recent capacity upgrade projects to illustrate the reality. If 99% of electricity is non nuclear in a fossil fuel free world then you do not need nuclear electricity.
19:33 Does it for me as well. In the 70's; a school mate (late primary) related the available energy from a sewing thimble of uranium to that available from tonnes of coal or gallons of diesel. One of the things I didn't forget.
Solar on all rooftops, charge batteries in your car, bus, truck, at work & home. Bypass the middle men. eg. Transmission lines are aluminium & efficient. Cost est $3M/km/500kw. Big industries want to socialise their 'overheads' like electricity, gas & diesel costs to the majority of taxpayers in Oz.
If our gov does not change course, the average person will be stuffed when it comes to bills, it's already so expensive, when we export our fossil fuels to lower costs elsewhere, it's insane.
7:20 America actually doesn't quite "get this," with over 74,000 wind turbines, and companies like NuScale struggling to get the same subsidies (though that recently changed in Congress). Climate scientist James Hansen is on board with nuclear, as he's done the math that quasi-renewables pushers won't get into. They have a strange disdain for natural looking scenery on land or sea. A sad turnabout of what environmentalism used to be.
Here in SA, I have just gone to a solar max feed in plan ...Total 27kw panels on the roof etc ...about 4kw for off grid heating and cooling and about 25kw on grid with feedin ... I have gone somewhat crazy because I can I did this because of the stupid rates here for the leccy I realise that sadly the vast majority of people would find this a cost prohibitive thing to do for their home The latest market rate with Energy Australia is over 55c / kwh in peak times This situation certainly makes that nuclear mix option very very attractive Nuclear is sooooo late coming to the party here in australia .. soooo much paranoia here I see from your presentation that we are 10-15 years away from some sort of change if things were done according to logic and requirement rather than to political knee jerk reactions etc Unfortunately the reality is that so many people are going to stampede to solar when they can afford it in an attempt to kill the bill ... which is only going to exacerbate things :/
They appeared from nowhere created by the powers that be to stay in power , remember labor only got 33 percent of the national vote they scraped across the line with the teals and the greens, just a thought .
Many people who have never done anything really hazardous have suddenly become experts. Domestic violence is a serious issue and is affected by economic conditions, but we should not empower women ? - I am a silly man - I believe in women. No woman can ever afford to fail the sisterhood. When I was a manager, I was always aware of that and made my judgements accordingly.
All sounds great but if a nuclear reactor is not owned and operated by Australia we will constantly be screwed over on pricing, share holders are always the priority that is so clear to see how Australians have been screwed over by every thing that has been privatized.
Thank you Robert for a very well considered presentation. One issue with nuclear that I have actually discussed with Scott also is the relatively poor turn-down ratio of nuclear. Turn-down ratio = (minimum load)/CMR which for nuclear, I understand, is only 85-90% compared with coal-fired plant TDR = 40% approx. A poor TDR affects the ability of the nuclear to back off load during the night. Is Robert able to give some idea what he believes is a reasonable TDR to assume for nuclear generation?
is that for solid fueled reactors or liquid fueled reactors? , last i heard liquid fueled can easily load follow, or if the are high heat can just make other chemicals with the excess heat
www.oecd-nea.org/nea-news/2011/29-2/nea-news-29-2-load-following-e.pdf "a rate of change of electric output of 3-5% Pr/minute." So presumably a NPP cut from 100% to 50% in about 17 minutes, when designed for load-following. However, this is better when a LOT of NPPs are run as a fleet, so a fleet of 10 reactors each cutting 1% of their power output, can lower total output by 10%. With storage, you can keep the NPP running at full, but put the excess into storage sized for a 24h cycle. This is very efficient, because demand load is predictable, and unlike VRE, nuclear power is also predictable, so your storage charging cycle is predictable!
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Worked in electric operations over 20 years supporting grid control systems. He’s got it right. Excellent presentation. Much appreciated.
You still keeping up with the changes?
@@JasonLowderTheRanga I don't think electrical physics changes
Love the man, he believes in man made climate change, ( I don't, I believe in climate change, not that we can fix it) However he talks absolute sense about energy, and the need for it for the humanity to advance.
1) There is no room for base load power in the future grid. We are already at the point where the wholesale price is negative, paid for the coal generators going out of business, Nuclear will have to suffer the same costs.
2) Comment on the introduction, debate by the ill-informed adds nothing.
@@politics102 Please Charles tell me what experience you have operating national interconnection and manging regional Grids? Australia seems to be the only country with this idea that they can create inertia from electronics without massive voltage and harmonic issues.
When they talk about renewables they never talk about all the rare earth and critical minerals that are needed to build these renewables and what a toxic process it is.
Don't use term renewables instead use term intermittent power
They also ignore the full lifecycle costs - how much does it cost to dispose of it in a responsible manner.
And when they say environment they don't care how much Forrest or animals are destroyed building unrenewables.
I agree, cancelled on my first comment, what a joke.
Just as the Nuclear Power proponents never talk about their waste, And/or the strategic danger in war times. Imagine a small tactical nuke hitting a Powerplant, and that "Small warhead" suddenly turns into a Bomb with 10x or even 1000x the fissile material.
Well done Robert.
This is the sort of presentation that can inform the basis of a sensible debate on nuclear energy in Australia.
I am a Fellow of IEAust., and shocked and embarrassed by the organisation's treatment of you.
During my first 8 years of professional career, I worked for EDI (now Downer) and was trained for 12 months intensively in Switzerland in the design of various types of power stations (coal, gas, nuclear). I visited a nuclear station in Switzerland (in 1986) and was amazed at the control systems, security provisions, excellence of design and quality of construction. I am a total supporter of nuclear in Australia. All the best.
Are you saying no fossil fuels and all electric, 100% clean electric Australia. No CO2 emissions.?
We agree no fossil fuels, no imported petroleum except for road building and the petrochemical industry.
Many mixed ideas in the central nuclear electric generation industry.
New grid is too expensive so use existing grid.
New distant renewables' new grid transmission, is too expensive to be economical (or reliable. )
Nuclear must have 24/7 cashflow for decades and decades and decades and renewables break its UTILIZATION FACTOR
No petroleum imports for ICE vehicles or generation plant.
No gas heating.
No gas cooking and hotwater.
No coal fired electricity generators.
No CO2 emissions.
15% to 100% electric energy use in the economy means more electricity generation construction and more grid capacity construction.
We know the economic answer to nuclear replacing existing grid electricity, is nuclears' grid centric location, as the first step.
My concern is if renewables replace all the other non electric energy then the renewables will be 7 times bigger and will destroy the nuclear UTILIZATION FACTOR of the new nuclear generation plant.
Cashflow and ROI is economically dangerous to nuclear plant owners and more dangerous to grid owners, the superannuation funds, and other investors.
Most new renewables will be customer financed from the customer's savings from self generation and storage.
Millions and millions and millions of customers.
Rooftop PV will shade hot rooftops and power air-conditioning. More benefits.
Rooftop PV is cheaper than windows $/m².
More benefits as it is cheaper to expand.
BVs, battery vehicles, oversized battery parked 23hrs every day can have it's UTILIZATION FACTOR improved by having V2G at home or at work or at the shopping centres or railway parking or ...
Westfield's shopping centres VPP can trade electricity for money and top up customers BVs if required.
I have worked for Westfield's construction.
Nuclear was correct to point out how small it is compared to distant renewables.
Nuclear just NEEDS an electric grid.
Nuclear was correct to point out how expensive the transmission and distribution grid is.
Many mixed ideas in the central nuclear electric generation industry.
New grid is too expensive so use existing grid.
New distant renewables' new grid transmission, is too expensive to be economical (or reliable. )
Nuclear must have 24/7 cashflow for decades and decades and decades and renewables break its UTILIZATION FACTOR
No petroleum imports for ICE vehicles or generation plant.
No gas heating.
No gas cooking and hotwater.
No coal fired electricity generators.
No CO2 emissions.
15% to 100% electric energy use in the economy means more electricity generation construction and more grid capacity construction.
We know the economic answer to nuclear replacing existing grid electricity, is nuclears' grid centric location, as the first step.
My concern is if renewables replace all the other non electric energy then the renewables will be 7 times bigger and will destroy the nuclear UTILIZATION FACTOR of the new nuclear generation plant.
Cashflow and ROI is economically dangerous to nuclear plant owners and more dangerous to grid owners, the superannuation funds, and other investors.
Most new renewables will be customer financed from the customer's savings from self generation and storage.
Just 3phase supply is impossible now to many customers.
Millions and millions and millions of customers.
Large building developments are waiting on grid electricity supply and new transformers.
Rooftop PV will shade hot rooftops and power air-conditioning. More benefits.
Rooftop PV is cheaper than windows $/m².
More benefits as it is cheaper to expand.
BVs, battery vehicles, oversized battery parked 23hrs every day can have it's UTILIZATION FACTOR improved by having V2G at home or at work or at the shopping centres or railway parking or ...
Westfield's shopping centres VPP can trade electricity for money and top up customers BVs if required.
I have worked for Westfield's construction.
Nuclear was correct to point out how small it is compared to distant renewables.
Nuclear just NEEDS an electric grid.
Nuclear was correct to point out how expensive the transmission and distribution grid is.
Nuclear was pointing 👉 to its limitations in the new technology world.
Facts are Kryptonite to the Teals and Labor.
But where are the facts, what's the cost, where and how do we dispose of the waist, how many reactors per site. It's all just empty rhetoric so far. The big question is how are nuclear plants in 2040 going to bring down power bills now. So far all I've seen is lies about renewables particularly from Littleproud and Dutton.
You forget the greens also. Facts and truth hurts them the most
What facts, not even Dutton knows what the price per MWH is until he has a final cost of nuclear power, including maintenance, construction, waist management, staffing, security etc etc. Remember folks this is all taxpayers money and publicly owned.
@@ianenglish123you sound stupid. It’s spelt waste.
@@ianenglish123 Nuclear reactors are very common around the world and they work successfully. They're not some untested technology.
What are the emissions given off when a lithium battery goes into thermal runaway and catches fire?
fatal emissions
Don't worry about that because .... You vill eat ze bugs !!!!
Add the carbon foot print to build just one its about 8 tonnes from memory, and they cannot be recycled in any meaningful way .
@@TheSilmarillian c'mon ...... the green economy just makes absolute sense ;) Don't worry you ..... will own nothing and be happy ! How could there be anything wrong with that ? The carbon footprint will be our yoke to wear over our entire lives so its all fine !
Highly toxic hydrogen fluoride, which combines with water vapour to form another highly toxic material, hydrofluoric acid.
Should be compulsory viewing for all Australians of voting age.
Great talk! If only politicians could be level headed and sensible and listen to someone like this.
Mr. Parker has provided me with a good explanation of nuclear energy and it all makes sense. I applaud his erudite commentary. As an engineer of a different persuasion, I have concluded that nuclear energy is the best way forward for base power. Unreliability and transmission costs will destroy renewables, and who wants these ugly wind turbines and solar farms impacting on our environment?
Australia should have taken up nuclear power 20 years ago? But, how do we educate the zealots and skeptics? The bottom line is if we don't go nuclear the whole country will not only suffer but will go backward to the point there will be no future for the manufacturing industry or for our children. Vote out Greens, Teals, and Labour.
60 years ago. How old is the one in NSW?
The northeast of England was the powerhouse manufacturer for the world for nuclear power. The UK joined the EU, Strangely the nuclear power station manufacturing capability was quite quickly closed down and shipped abroad. Then the buildings were demolished and the area is a shopping mall, large car park for busses and a few other shops at the other end. That's what the UK government calls progress.
You're right Brian! The sky will fall! THE SKY WILL FALL!
You need to think long-term
Ontario was forward-thinking in the 1920s & 30s through 50s: committed to building massive hydro capacity. Ontario obtained the lowest energy rates in N America, built a manufacturing industrial base on it that produces 1/3 of Canada's GDP.
Ontario learned from that to think long-term
In the 1960s & 70s we invested in Nuclear: built the largest nuclear generating capacity per capita in the world. Results: absolutely assured reliable electricity costs. Reliably HIGH costs. We're paying through the nose for nuclear at rates that DO NOT drop, while renewable costs reliably HAVE dropped, continue to drop. Renewables now produce at 1/3 to 1/4 the cost of nuclear, and we haven't even begun to factor in the coming cost of decommissioning (horrific) or nuclear waste storage & protection for a thousand years (who knows? No one's found a place to do it).
Thank god our right-wing Conservative Party has been able to learn from this
We've rejected renewables offering electricity at 4 cents/kwHr to be delivered within a few years with minimal decommissioning costs (built into the contract price), no long-term waste storage costs, and no massive risk. Instead we've committed to buying new (unproven anywhere) SMRs contracted to deliver electricity at 16 cents/kwHr (maybe - or maybe more; they've refused to release the contract details so we know they think they're publicly defensible...).
Oh, and renewables continue to drop at 8% p.a. (wind) or over 12% p.a. (solar). Nuclear already 3x the cost per kwHr delivered, keeps going up.
I do agree with your last comment though
"Energy drives the economy and lifestyle." - for nuclear development firms & nuclear employees. But hey! - someone benefits.
@@DavidJohnson-yg8qm And now they are descending into civil war.
@@grannyannie2948it's a research reactor not a power station. You need to get with the program and stop talking nonsense.
Any thinking person will appreciate this informative presentation.
I followed the attempted silencing of this man. He has told it as it is not as many wish or assert
Australia must develop our nuclear economy. Now.
Brit here. Take a look at progress on Hinckley Point C. Look at its guaranteed power price, the schedule and the budget. Look at the insolvency (and subsequent renationalisation) of the company building it. Go and read "How Big Things Get Done". If you don't, you'll make the same mistakes. To be clear, I don't think that building new nuclear on budget and quickly is impossible. It's just very, very, very difficult. I back limited nuclear expansion in the UK. I don't think it makes any sense at all in Australia.
A bit too late, to invest when all the surplus was squandered over 13 years ago. Paying for nuclear now raises the question where the money comes from without a strong back bone industry. The the industrial capacity to make big things here is long gone. Know how and master degrees are not doers.
Cities, stadiums, railways, round abouts, hand rails, lavish traffic islands, excessive road markings, wind and solar and all sorts of nice items had been prioritized. This nation or lets say place built absolutely anything what needs energy and ongoing maintenance, on the back of Australia the way it was 20 years ago. This disconnect is not a catchup situation.
@@Tim_Smallit's also illegal in Australia. A point that is ignored by the neutron huggers.
It’s too expensive from what I watched yesterday, only 10% of the rods get used and then it’s practically waste after 2yrs, it’s recycled in France but when you see what’s involved it ain’t cheap, the space needed to store the waste what a joke, coal is way safer cheaper and this country is full of it. I honestly thought nuclear was worth it but after learning bout the waste and storage I thought we were all bout not wasting in the this modern time and the future.
@@FreeAsABirdSydneyAustralia The 'its cheaper argument' has created massive know how setbacks and energy supply dependencies. Foreign cars were cheaper too.
On cost alone the energy mix does not work anymore. Coal should be there because we have it right there, but we had sailing ships too. The nuclear live cycle +know how with storage in open space and out of reach is ideal. Taking on submarine waste because of our defence alignment makes sense. That is happening anyway in Rockingham. I don't like the alignments at all, but they exist. The way Australia has agreed to per capita emission targets is another industry killer we dont need. If all this is half way implemented with greens in government we loose all remaining industry first, because its cheaper to get all good shipped here, and eventually this continenet is one step closer to the planet of the apes.
disappointing that Engineering Australia folded like a house of cards. It makes me angry that i am forced to register with Engineering Australia and hand money over to these fools
So, so, true Robert. Great to hear some clear, concise and evidence-based arguments versus the emotional, myth-based claptrap trotted out by the Greens and Labour. We enjoy our current lifestyles based on reasonably priced energy. Energy drives the economy and lifestyle.
Same here in Canada.
Ontario was forward-thinking in the 1920s & 30s through 50s: committed to building massive hydro capacity. Ontario obtained the lowest energy rates in N America, built a manufacturing industrial base on it that produces 1/3 of Canada's GDP.
Ontario learned from that to think long-term. In the 1960s & 70s we invested in Nuclear: built the largest nuclear generating capacity per capita in the world. Results: absolutely assured reliable electricity costs. Reliably HIGH costs. We're paying through the nose for nuclear at rates that DO NOT drop, while renewable costs reliably HAVE dropped, continue to drop. Renewables now produce at 1/3 to 1/4 the cost of nuclear, and we haven't even begun to factor in the coming cost of decommissioning (horrific) or nuclear waste storage & protection for a thousand years (who knows? No one's found a place to do it).
Thank god our right-wing Conservative Party has been able to learn from this. We've rejected renewables offering electricity at 4 cents/kwHr to be delivered within a few years with minimal decommissioning costs (built into the contract price), no long-term waste storage costs, and no massive risk. Instead we've committed to buying new (unproven anywhere) SMRs contracted to deliver electricity at 16 cents/kwHr (maybe - or maybe more; they've refused to release the contract details so we know they think they're publicly defensible...).
Oh, and renewables continue to drop at 8% p.a. (wind) or over 12% p.a. (solar). Nuclear already 3x the cost per kwHr delivered, keeps going up.
I do agree with your last comment though: "Energy drives the economy and lifestyle." - for nuclear development firms & nuclear employees. But hey! - someone benefits.
@@jamesthompson7282 dude you got it around the wrong way lol, reality here, Germany(renewables) has way higher power then France(nuclear)..
@@bencoad8492massive government subsidies are required. Frances reactors are at the end of their lifespan and will not be replaced because renewables are so much cheaper and so much faster to build and don't melt down.
@@Poorlineforeva well that's wrong, Germany retail power is still more expensive then Frances so...also nuclear is the safest power source by power produced, and no need to worry about fear mongering of "melt downs"
@@Poorlineforeva Yup, AFTER you subtract German taxes and fees (which mostly go to support VRE and the nuclear-free Energiewende), then sure, German electricity is slightly cheaper than French electricity.
Thank you Robert for an excellent presentation. I had been doubtful of the operational and economic aspects of nuclear in the Australian marketplace, however this presentation adds a great deal of perspective to all the issues. $17M/km for lines puts a lot of projects in doubt, particularly in WA where 1000km between places is nothing.
As a 30+ year member of the Institution of Engineers Australia, it was disappointing to see the goings on. But then again, as a long time observer to the changes in the organisation over the years it wasn't such a shock.
So from what i understood. It cheaper, significantly more efficient and environmentally better, in EVERY way. EG. tailpipe emissions. But glad he spoke about troubles with cooling which could be a problem. And we dont get Tsunami's here so. Convincing Greens and money grubbing pollies is the problem...
@@utubenoob2.095 it is the grubby elites whom control the politics there has been a free energy for years they just keep killing the inventors and their families.look up zero point energy dr Steven greer
only problem he only talked about water cooling, not using molten salt or CO2 cooling :/ prob be a non issue if you moved away from water based and would be safer overall too, no H explosions or pressure explosions that you have with water based cooling.
@@bencoad8492 Water cooling is still needed for MSR and gas-cooled reactors, which need to transfer heat from their primary cooling circuit to a secondary (water) circuit.
It's not cheaper.
@@Poorlineforeva how so?
Thanks. Now I have a better understanding of the issues. A great and clear proposition. Glenn
3:52 Wasn't that the old Soviet method of shutting someone up? "We've decided that you're unwell". That is something right out of 1984!
I was anti nuclear until recent times but really enjoyed watching this 👏👏👏
Nuclear is a great technology, but it's important to consider Australia's unique context. This talk heavily references data from Europe and Texas - places with existing nuclear industries and very different energy markets.
The latest GenCost report from CSIRO and AEMO (which curiously Robert ignores) provides Australia-specific insights. It shows that renewables with integration costs (transmission & storage) remain the lowest-cost option for new electricity generation here. It also suggests nuclear wouldn't be operational until around 2038 if started today.
Concerns about wind and solar intermittency are valid, but that's where storage comes in. Pumped hydro acts like a giant battery, and Australia has great potential for this. Other storage technologies are developing rapidly too.
Australia's diverse renewable resources could actually improve our innovation ranking and economic complexity by leveraging our natural advantages.
For a different perspective on Australia's energy future, Saul Griffith's book "The Big Switch" is worth a read. It explains why nuclear might not be the optimal choice for our specific situation.
Not to mention Texas is now the highest producer of renewable energy of all the US states - even beating California, and they are continuing their build out at a fast pace. It's almost as though "oil country" knows something....
@@JGalegria Not really. There are 13 GW of coal plants forecast to retire by 2035/36. We need a solution before that. Have a look at the work of David Osmond.
That’s incorrect the CSIRO has no expertise in generational cost, or expertise in nuclear generation, they have repeatedly refused consultation with Australias leading nuclear experts. 2030 Renewable analysis in Gencost excludes :
Transmission $15.9 billion
Storage $22.9 billion Peaking Gas $1 billion etc ..
Also Nuclear is not considered by AEMO ISP because it is not in legislation, so the consumer is relying on the expertise of the CSIRO in Nuclear - they have none..
Final quote to consider from the senate enquirer into energy planning and regulation:
The ISP is not a cost benefit analysis of the decision to impose certain carbon budgets, net zero targets, renewable energy targets or other energy policy settings, that are used as an input into their (ISP) modeling ..’
Snowy hydro 2.0 cost blow out was largely over transmission .. to meet the needs of renewables for 2030 target we would have to double the size of the grid, Australias transmission grid is around 5000KMs, longest in the world, currently around 40% of consumers electric bills come from the grid.. all the data suggests that transmission infrastructure costs are wildly underestimated..
Except CSIRO wasn’t the only author. It was a collaboration between the Australian Energy Market Operator, the CSIRO and other stakeholders.
Renewables need massive gas electricity generation to firm up renewables, so much for Net Zero.
Nuclear energy should have started 15 years ago . We are liviing in a time, when governments are in a reactive mode. Not proactive mode....as they are scared a futuristic plan, may see them out of a job. If Govts of many years ago did this....we would not have dams where they are...
Fix things, not fwd looking... that is our demise
It wasn't economical then and is even less so now.
@@PoorlineforevaProve it's uneconomical. You can't. You don't know the full cost of renewables to compare. Don't forget the transmission lines either, lol.
Can I, for one, recognize Simon for making this fine recording possible for anyone worldwide who has a mind to watch it?
Nothing like the Streisand Effect in full force, eh.
There is a need of nuclear energy as part of energy mix in Australia. One of the major hurdles for Australians to overcome is the Not In My Back Yard(NIMBY) syndrome. Without a stable and constant energy supply for businesses and residences, Prosperity for all Australians is Not Assured.
Australians need to know how much it will cost and where it will be located. Dutton refuses to tell us.
@@Poorlineforeva Waiting for the current government to be upfront and honest about the total system costs for wind/solar and how many endangered species will be made extinct to deploy wind/solar.
Renewables, it's a farmer replacing a trusty plough horse with a fleet of hamsters.
There is no power company that wants to touch nuclear. No one is screaming for it. No accountant has made it add up.
The only viable thing for us it to concentrate on uranium mining and enrichment, so that we can replace out coal exports with something - cause they're going to die. The LNP decided not to pursue nuclear back in 2006 (when Dutton was minister for jobs)
Then lifting the nuclear ban will be a no-op, and there should be no opposition to that.
There is an interesting "debate" from the CIS in which all speakers talk about the need to go nuclear. There is not a single word about the cost nor the fact that, yes, not a single organisation thinks its worth their while investing in nuclear power. Hmmm.
@@hogey74 > nor the fact that, yes, not a single organisation thinks its worth their while investing in nuclear power.
Would you make an investment in an enterprise which you know will not receive the necessary permits?
Remove the ban, and then see if any company is interested in the investment.
Same with Wall Street. No nukes without subsidies.
No matter how much I want renewables I cannot see how it will ever viably meet our energy needs in the medium term. I also think renewables come with a whole new array of environmental issues that really aren't being addressed. The electricity grid is so complex and it certainly seems to me most countries have absolutely realised that renewables are not the sole answer.
The most obvious problem with quasi-renewables is their sheer scale and blight on the last remnants of natural scenery. This angers many people who remember when environmentalists like John Muir fought to preserve such places, and they needn't be in official parks to be appealing. Look at this depressing future map: kleinmanenergy.upenn.edu/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/Fig-2-JEsse-Event-2-1536x950.png
The presentation starts around 6:35. I hope IOPA considers how many viewers might drop-off during that first 6m35s when a video is padded-out-in-the-front like that? Anyway great presentation, great video. Important stuff.
And yet. It's a critical peice of information when I find out that the organisation that's supposed to support my cohort, is now resorting to silencing a fairly valid opinion and discussion.
I knew EA was already borderline irrelevant. Won't get another dollar from me again.
Excellent Teaching Presentation.
What should be common knowledge but is severely lacking in Actuality, thank you for taking the risk to defy the nasties.
The strange thing about Submarines, nuclear powered, is the extremes of reliability and safety dedicated to keeping the concept of Mutually Assumed Destruction consequence of misused Nuclear Energy, clear in the ideas of appropriate Defence strategies, that is, the appropriate use of nuclear power is central to the defence of civilization, mutually assumed.
For the numbers to stack up, only large scale nuclear may be used (per the nice graphs). This comes (a handful of large reactors across the country) with the same transmission costs as renewables (in fact, whichever way we go, many transmission lines will be built to interconnect grids - like Basslink - to ensure stability, not purely as a requirement of renewables), and must run at 100% load most of the time to maintain "cheap" power. This is fine for Europe where you have the option of dumping excess power to other countries - but this is not the case for Australia - our neighbors are all across the ocean (perhaps the abandoned Brooks "Suncable" could be repurposed?)....
Pointing out that renewables "failed" when only a tiny fraction has been built out is utterly contemptible - pretending it can't work, or that the existing infrastructure represents anything like the cost of any nuclear proposal doesn't do his argument any favours.
"Let's model 75% nuclear". I'm sorry but the guy has no idea. To iterate, only a country like France, with neighbors to dump excess nuclear to is able to run to that level of nuclear in their mix. We cannot. His whole argument is nonsensical.....
Now I'm 47 minutes into the video and he is abandoning large nuclear so he can mangle small nuclear into our grid, but conveniently ignores the vastly increased cost per kWh.
At this point, this is a joke.
It is also worth remembering that significantly more battery and hydro storage will be built (even if we went to the impossible 100% nuclear) in the future. Battery (lithium) systems will be installed to manage demand and support grid frequency. Given that, installing a little more to ensure a higher mix of solar can be utilized just makes sense.
I agree (apart from waste cost/management) that nuclear power isn't "the devil", but bringing it into our energy mix at this point in history makes no sense. It would ONLY be having nuclear for the sake of having nuclear.
And the "if I burn one atom of coal or one atom of carbon" really grates on me.
Good comment.
You are seeing the faults in their own promotional efforts.
Nuclear promoters are talking about base load only because they know it is limited.
Nuclear is limited by the cost of a bigger grid.
Grid capacity increase is seen in the multiple lines of towers that each transmit the same amount of energy but need multiple lines to transmit multiple amounts of energy.
More amounts of electricity energy can only be done with more transmission lines.
Nuclear promoters themselves TELL YOU new transmission lines at $1million km to $10million km is extremely costly.
The Australian national electricity grid is 1million km.
You can do ezi maths, nuclear promoters are TELLING YOU, and the entire world, the truth.
1million km x $1million per km is $1TRILLION.
Minimum value of the national electrical grid is $1TRILLION. Asset value to the grid owners who need dirt cheap electricity to access millions and millions and millions of customer's cash at 50cents kWh. ROI, return on investment and maintenance and emergency manpower.
Nuclear promoters are TELLING YOU steady base load 247 is the only economic way for nuclear electricity to be economical.
Nuclear promoters are TELLING YOU steady 247 cashflow is critical to nuclear generators economic value. 5cents kWh.
I would say that
Base load demand is only 10% of full maximum demand.
Electric energy is only 10% of the entire energy Australia uses.
10% × 10% = 1% of AUSTRALIA'S ENERGY used.
These are all simple Australian facts.
My concern is the same as Robert Parker and Professor Robert Barr and Aidan Morrison concerns for worldwide CO2 emissions impacts on climate change or worse climate destabilisation.
Australia is in the Sahara Desert latitudes of the southern hemisphere and all latitudes are warming.
Australia will be the first continent to burn.
Decade long droughts, national bushfires, flooding rains, and topsoil and fertility washed into the oceans.
So yes we are all in the 'same boat'.
My observation is renewable technology and battery technologies and recycling technology are advancing rapidly. Sodium batteries and Sulfur batteries and ....
My observation is that 20million rooftops in Australia are grid connected and are the main load on the national grid, 74% of grid demand.
My observation is 20million vehicles can become 20million battery vehicles in 20years, 2decades.
Most vehicles are parked 23hrs every day and drive building carpark space to building carpark space. And parked all night long.
10,000 miles per year (8,760 hrs) 1.14 mph. Avg.
27 miles per day. That's a lot of parking.
My observation is that hot sunny rooftops shaded with 33m² of PV panels, 7kw, and 20million over 5hr came GENERATE MORE electricity energy than Australia's fossil fueled 25gW over 24hrs.
My observation is that 20million V2G BVs oversized battery, say 100kwh, can be FREE STORAGE with 2,000gWh dispatchable electricity daily.
My observation is that the home robotic vacuum cleaner can teach the selfparking EV or BV to selfplug-in to a $60 wall outlet at bumper height.
My thoughts are that the millions and millions of customers can self supply electricity and self store in batteries and can over generate with a few more PV rooftop panels and supply dirt cheap electricity to the national grid.
The national grid can remain connected to the millions and millions of customers and be their emergency backup and take dirt cheap electricity, feed-in 5cents kWh electricity.
The national electrical grid can now supply the heavy industrial customers moving away from fossil fuels to clean electricity.
Grid cashflow can be maintained 247 and no new extremely expensive grid capacity construction costs are needed.
New grid transmission costs and all nuclear are not needed.
Happy days for millions and millions and millions of Australians.
Millions of customers can
Remain grid connected. Emergency backup.
Feed-in 5cents kWh electricity income.
Need no grid electricity, tax free savings.
No imported petroleum, tax free savings.
No gas heating, cooking, hot water, tax free saving.
Have shaded rooftops. Energy saving tax free.
Rooftop PV is cheaper than windows $m² installed.
Australia can show a warming world that nuclear industries that would need millions of tonnes of uranium yellowcake and new transmission lines and raw materials, iron ore and coal and copper and zinc and aluminium and petroleum to mine and.... is not needed.
Australia can show that exploding military defence budgets in a nuclear powered world is not needed.
Australia will not need to buy more AUKUS USA nuclear submarines and massive USA weapons systems.
Australian national savings would be $TRILLIONS.
Robotic vehicles and robotic factories working 247 can be 5 times more productive per m².
Batteries and rooftop PV panels and vehicles can be mass produced and recycled.
Recycled aluminium is dirt cheap new aluminium.
Recycled glass is dirt cheap glass.
Recycled rare earth and lithium and cobalt and other valuable materials can all be dirt cheap.
This all started from the nuclear promoters explaining their dream and concerns on national TV.
This is because I have the same Civil Engineer degree from University of NSW as the nuclear promoter, but decades in construction and building in fossil fueled generation power stations and 1,700 transmission line towers and buildings substations and suburban streets infrastructure and greenfield sites.
Estimating and tendering on fixed dollar projects.
Thank you for asking a good question. 👍
I ve known since grade six we’ve needed a new power.I’ve watched many a program where they have not been nice to people who fix this problem .😢so when someone speaks on this subject there words are very telling…as to what they are about.
If you have built nuclear and especially load following nuclear then why would you use wind or solar at all? Why the mix?
Politically impossible to get rid of. But agreed.
especially if the load following nuclear can also produce other needed chemicals like fuel/ferz with the excess power! aka high heat nuclear reactors usually molten salt not solid fueled water cooled ones(they sux overall)
@@benchapple1583 Mainly to look ‘Green’. It’s not that you can’t reduce and increase power in a reactor, the problem is they don’t like if you try to do it quickly. If you reduce power it takes a while before you can bring the power back up again due to xenon poisoning of the reactor. There is a place for wind and solar particularly in Australia where you have lots of sunshine but wind is totally unreliable. You still need conventional power when conditions for renewables are poor. That simply means that you have the build and maintenance costs of parallel systems. You can’t simply have renewables without a backup and that has to be included in the costs, the fact that you now have two systems.
Many thanks!!❤👍🇭🇲
A great sensible presentation neatly balancing an overview of nuclear technology with the economics of the grid. All Australian politicians should watch this and learn.
The only way forward with this is to Vote One Nation and toss Labor, Liberals, Nationals and Greens out with the rubbish this election.
Been doing so for decades. It's not working though.
@@grannyannie2948
Keep it up. It will happen one day.
@@grannyannie2948keep voting for one nation. Each vote they get , They get paid for at election time ,which gives one nation a bigger war chest for the next election . A snow ball effect.
One Nation doesn’t have any seats in the lower house ?
But sadly the power of the left parties are probably unbeatable these days looking at the polls
Why the liberals are nationals are proposing nuclear?
Ironically the biggest issue facing the rapid adoption of nuclear power is the efforts of the fossil fuel companies to protect their own plans. The only way to arrive at a point where it is politically palatable to the voting public is by backing a science based consensus that they can understand is to their benefit. Cut out all of the FUD.
Thankyou, good paper.
I did i🎉ndependent analysis in 2019, that came to broadly similar conclusion.
At the time I thought the nuclear component might best be met by about 14 high temperature SMRs.
I now think considering all factors the nuclear component should be met by four Darlington scale base load CANDU9 nuclear power stations and three smaller gas cooled SMR power plants optimised for 'industrial' heat and power.
The CANDU9 plants would be two each in Victoria and New South Wales. The high temperature SMR power plants would be located in WA, SA and QLD and come a bit later.
Australia should immediately seek to partner with Canada in the CANDU program with a focus on developing an Ozzie fuel load incorporating Th and adapting the plants for Australian environmental conditions.
It should also seek to partner with countries developing high temperature SMRs including UK, US, Canada and China.
As for renewables, Marinus link, and Snowy Hydro two must be completed as well as two more large scale pumped hydro (200GWhr@2GW). Roof top solar needs to be built out to 80% of roofs. All the environmentally acceptable, cost effective on and off shore wind sites need to be fully built out.
There is of course a lot more in the detail but thats the outline.
It will happen because firstly a renewables only program will fail and secondly because the majority of Australians support nuclear energy, any government with a sensible nuclear program is certain to be elected with a mandate to get it done.
Why do we need more roof top solar and windmillx? Hugely expensive and unreliable.
Thanks for the fantastic presentation. Epic!
Excellent video thank you…😊
Pity he's a climate alarmist.....
Very grateful for the presentation. What I would have like to see is modelling of the costs of when nuclear power share rises from 75% to 100%. The problem with renewables is the redundancy of having extra base-load on top. Yet, for 100 years or so, we only had base-load with much smaller distribution networks.
When SHaC, CB & Teals/Greens become irrationally hysterical, you need to question their motivation if it's due to it hitting their hip pocket.
The Teals are just grown up girls previously playing kitchen to now playing parliament. They would be better off playing Desperate Housewives on Our ABC.
The Institute of Pubic Affairs. Happy little darlings.
great presentation, it seem to the outsider that the Australian grid is being designed by politicians not engineers!
The best of the good guys always tell people what they think they want to hear. They are amenable to applause.
Fantastic talk, full of interesting and mostly novel facts. Best of luck getting Chris Bowen to sit down and listen to it from start to finish. Your siting for Victoria is missing a Nuclear plant in Toorak cause that’s where the Teals live!
Fantastic presentation!!!
Well done Rob! Lots of hard work behind that presentation
Can seafaring/shipping run on hydrogen? If so, with nuclear baseload, use renewables for hydrogen generation. What plans currently exist for shipping?
Shipping can run on uranium.
They are talking about using ammonia. Lots of challenges I would think.
James Lindsay spoke of this some time ago. Under net zero there will be no shipping, electric rail will be the only way of transporting freight. People will be permitted one item of new clothing a year. There will be no driving including EVs.
Cars can run on water.
Thank you for an informative prestation.
Excellent presentation and I hope the current the Liberal Party are watching.
The elephant in the room is the carbon foot print EV's cause about 8 tonnes from memory and mostly renewables last for around 20 and mostly cant be recycled. Australia needs to go nuclear we are one of the greatest suppliers of uranium in the world. WE need nuclear look at the submarines we are buying and that's just catching up with the rest of the world. We have had a nuclear reactor at Lucas Heights just outside Sydney for decades its a research reactor and produces medical materials. Also we now have the technology to take spent fuel rods and recycle them Sweden and a few places in Europe have been doing it for the past few decades and the resultant material is formed into new fuel rods with the residue of unclaimable material down to a half life of 20 years . In the US they are certain interests that are creating lomg term storage of hot waste , its like putting money in the bank for them as it can be brought back out reprocessed ect ect ect follow the money. But I digress I do that , I worked at Bayswater coal fired power station ( outside Newcastle near Singleton) many years ago the CO2 is scrubbed by filter towers , love the way the greens show all that smoke coming out of coal power stations its actually steam from the cooling towers that actually creates its own weather system above the plant , water is also recycled and comes out of the lake returned to the lake and no contamination , I actually fished at Bayswater wasn't supposed 2 by the way its a high sec area , the whole plant is but I wasn't the only employee to do so we did catch and release and as the water going back in is slightly warm the fish thrive. May I add the fly ash from the filters was sold to a certified and approved contractor that on sold it to cement companies among other people in the industry in assorted industries so even that was added to the local economy. Was over fifteen years ago and my comment does not reflect in any way the views of the owners or management of Bayswater power station.
If Albanese, Bowen and Wong love the UN so much about Israel why don’t they believe the UN about nuclear power being the best form of power for Australia.
Excellent presentation, we need as a first step is a change of government, second is to get rid of the restriction on use of nuclear energy. The self interest groups should acknowledge their conflicts of interest.
Yup. 'Cause there are no special interest groups pushing nuclear.
Except maybe nuclear developers
They get to sign massive contracts with risk-protection & outrageous margins.
Nuclear engineering firms
They get the same, plus they can lock in forever contracts to decommission at the end of it all...
Funds management companies
THEY see guaranteed multi-decade guaranteed profits at levels no other industry provides!
Oh, and utilities
They get vastly more pay at all levels: executives & managers are paid obscenely over-market standard salaries; managers make out like bandits; even hourly employees all the way down make bank at WAY over market rates.
How do I know this? I'm a head hunter - a trouble-shooter for the Executive Search trade, actually. Have re-staffed senior executive ranks for all divisions of a major N American power utility, and in the process interviewed executives of EVERY major power utility in N America. None of them carries the costs borne by Ontario & New Brunswick for nuclear. And similar costs at US nuclear operators. I've documented pay scales all the way up: they're beyond obscene. So know that committing to nuclear means you'll be hosed on operating costs.
I've interviewed the executive managers of major engineering & construction firms, can tell you the same story applies to nuclear builds & bids.
I've interviewed the executive management of major funds management companies such as Brookfield, the biggest investor in the nuclear market at present. They're not doing it because they're a charity: they see obscene profits with locked-in contracts, forever. And they're salivating over it. It was worth the risk & cost they took on to buy AECL (Atomic Energy of Canada) & partner with SNC Lavalin (now called Atkins Realis) which gave them a monopoly on Canada's nuclear talent & AECLs patents, so they can lock up decommissioning contracts. Risk free of course - they're not taking THAT on. And they bought a major piece of Cameco, the nuclear fuel monopoly supplier in Canada (maybe N America). And they bought Westinghouse's nuclear business, which had gone bankrupt while the market eschewed nuclear. And which had already bought Toshiba's nuclear business out of bankruptcy.
Brookfield now has a vertically-integrated nuclear monopoly on nuclear talent, fuel & engineering. All they need is a promising sales pitch - SMR's are the future! They're cheap! They're 'Plug & Play': you just drive one up on a transport & plug it in!
[Dammit Robert blew their cover in the video: that's ALL a lie!]
And Brookfield needs a motivated buyer: Ontario needs to avoid decommissioning costs by simply mothballing existing end-of-life reactors by installing new SMRs on the same site, making decommissioning & waste issues someone else's problem...
And Brookfield needs a gullible buyer: Ontario is run by a right-wing Conservative government that's ideologically pro-business, already willing to write 100-year leases on public assets, and susceptible to, um... financial incentives. Maybe off-the-books incentives? We'll not know for decades. But the government has become WAY too cozy with developers for other infrastructure of late, and things look... let's just say, the next government had better do a very thorough audit. Maybe everything's on the up-&-up. Hard to know at this point, but the contracts are mind-boggling. What we know of them - they're mostly being kept rather secret. And forgetting any of those concerns if we stick to worries about sophistication, this government is headed by a guy who is very clever, street-smart, a very accomplished politician. With a high-school education. Does he rely on the smarts of the people selling to him? We'll find out I guess. But Brookfield sees enough opportunity here to invest BILLIONS in buying all those firms, creating a vertically-integrated player. That cost, plus the risk involved (Toshiba & Westinghouse had already gone bust) suggests they see the opportunity for a jackpot.
But sure, other than that, there aren't any special interests on the nuclear side...
Good luck.
It is a tough sell for any politician to expound any nuance to the public, let alone explain a multivariable distribution of risks and rewards. Unfortunately this talk makes me think the public policy becomes...trust us: its better in every way, except the obvious price tag (that is trivial when placed into context) but generally it is (resorting to the tactic of: you can;t know so shut up)...too good to be true, followed with a seeming technocratic authoritarianism...if its so obviously better why cant the argument be reduced to a one liner/three worder like "Stop the boats". I LOVE the idea of Australia building our own nuclear industry! And I'm so glad this speech has taken place and made publicly available. Thank you for your work
"Boil the water."
Nuclear, Solar, Wind, in that order. Solar has its problems too, and Wind is a bloody eyesore. There must be better storage methods than lithium batteries. Make green hydrogen charging stations.
Just a note that even if CC is BS having a diversified network for energy is a more secure choice for the nation anyway!!! Just like we have electric and gas at home for that very reason - we can always cook a meal or heat our house if the grid goes down!!!
The last thing we should be investing in across the world is short-term wind and solar power production.
Funny how all these big companies are investing in renewables and refuse to touch nuclear.
@@DavidJohnson-yg8qm yet that is exactly what is happening. The smart money is on renewables
@@Poorlineforeva smart money? or subsidized money?
@@factnotfiction5915 nuclear would require more subsidization - there is not economic case for it as there is for renewables - mostly because solar or wind farms can be thrown up and giving a return in a few years whereas for nuclear it's decades. It's just too long to have that many billions of dollars waving in the wind.
@@rohansprenger6902There will be an economic case for it if your lights go out.
I understand Dr. Parker is politically focused. Nuclear power is the best future for humanity.
Succinct and easy to understand, this is a wonderful presentation. Will be sharing it far and wide to try to help those I know that only support the fear driven ideology of 100% renewables.
Volume of water.
Volume of what is left after it is distilled and how dose it get disposed of.
How often does the yellow cake get renewed and what volumes.
How long or does it ever break down and become safe? Thank you 1st conversation I have had it explained to me in anyway. Not just told yes or no. Will look forward to listening more.
Can someone please tell me what do we breathe in.....what do plants eat net zero would kill us
net zero is a globalist scam. No one is complaining a bout the carbon footprint of the wars in the Ukraine and palestine which must be huge
So before we started adding CO2 with fossil fuels in the industrial revolution we were in a balanced system and now the oxygen we breathe has been bound to carbon. There are seven billion more people but a lot less oxygen to breathe. The plants have fifty percent more of what they need but thanks to deforestation there are less plants now. The system needs to be restored to a balanced system to slow down,then stop and finally reverse global warming. The most rapid way to achieve that goal is to use nuclear energy as soon as possible. The only way to get to do that is political. The only way to do that is to restore trust through honest and accurate education of the people.
@@malcolmrickarby2313 " thanks to deforestation there are less plants now" factually wrong, Earth is greener now then 100 years ago...
@bencoad8492 what absolute rubbish
@@Poorlineforeva man your an actual troll right lol, THE Earth is actually GREENER then it was a 100 years ago, you know with the extra 100ppm of CO2 in the atmosphere making it easier on plants to grow and need less water. Studies have been done on it ha
Government is there to serve and obey. Not the other way around. I'm sick of the way things are
Brilliant!!!!
I think you should bring New Zealand along for this. We also should have nuclear energy. If we can build enough of it we can probably get rid of all the gas and we will totally get rid of our only coal fired power station.
Excellent presentation.
Pathetic, Institute of Engineers.
Detective of Money Politics is following this very informative content from VK3GFS and 73s from Frank Melbourne Australia
Meanwhile the coal-fired generator's just have to keep burning and turning while the unreliables flow in,driving up the cost of purchased capacity.
How about we remove the almost $20 billion in subsidies to the renewable industry, and remove all the penalties on using coal and see which way the cost goes?
without coal we would revert to rolling blackouts, brown outs and load shedding
Read a story recently about living in a third world country. The writer's 0:03 9 year old daughter was having an operation and they were praying that the power stays on. And it goes off mid operation. They had diesel generator backup but it would not start and the daughter died . I think we live in such privilege in a world where everything just works all the time and can afford to abstract things. We are unaware of real world problem s that have effects that are profound.
@@brianwolthers2762 all our wealth and privilege comes from cheap and plentiful energy. Who knows where the current green religion will take us but I sure don't want to end up living in any of the poverty stricken places I have visited.
@@paythepiper6283🎯
Finally the truth comes out.
In Ontario, where I grew up, CANDU reactors have been around since the 1950s, even though Ontario has hydro generation as well. As Mr. Parker says, Canada could come and start building CANDU reactors here in Australia almost instantly. It's a proven technology and Canada has built reactors in India and other countries. When people lament the cost compared to 'renewables' one must ask what price do you put on a clean future if you really want to reduce emissions and still have a reliable energy source 24/7. However, I fear the politicians will still be talking about it in 2050.
Amazing presentation of the subject matter. Looks like we have the man to work on and deliver the country at least 3 things -1. The concise timetable for the rooftop solar customer exit from the grid as grid delivery charges alone move toward being higher than producing and storing your own rooftop solar. 2. A risk assessment on the likelihood, timetable and size of the Australian humanitarian crisis caused by limited supply of energy. 3. Determine the related humanitarian aid need. Can the IPA comment on the prevalence of a comment like this in the Australian community. Thanks in advance.
anyone who knows and understands science, will tell you that nuclear is better than renewables in certain settings.
but when the people which understand it, are outnumbered and or exposed to political motivated actors, nothing will be done, ever.
Australia is not one of them.
Coal is way easier safer and in abundance in this country making it way cheaper.
That life cycle - does that consider the extremely slow breakdown of nuclear toxins??? And how safe IS this storage when we're heading towards another ice age, which science shows we are, with or without human activity????
The waste products can be recycled down to what is called minimum storage with half lives of around 12 years , the recovered product can be repacked into fuel rods and reused by the same reactor that produced them. Sweden and a few places in Europe run their reactors on recovered materials.
99% of the waste is filters, gloves and aprons, the so-called low-level waste, it’s considered a low radioactive hazard for ~50 years and is typically isolated in a basement room in a hospital. It’s not particular dangerous, but it would be desirable to limit exposure to it. The high-level radioactive waste, the partially spent fuel rods, which you could measure in cartons of beer per year, could remain a radioactive hazard for hundreds of thousands of years. We've been managing this waste safely since the dawn of the nuclear age and it doesn’t harm people’s health nor the environment, and we've no reason to believe it ever will. We also choose to recycle it. We already send Lucas Heights waste to France to be recycled and the ultimate waste stream can be reduced to ~300 years of radiotoxicity. And the economics of recycling will only improve with generation 4 reactors and beyond.
In contrast, the global annual output of solar panel waste is set to overtake the global annual output plastic waste as early as 2030. You would measure solar panel waste in train cars per day. Solar panels contain toxic heavy metals, lead, cadmium, and others that are toxic forever and therefore it must be treated as hazardous waste. Solar panels ‘can’ be recycled, but it is more expensive and more difficult to recycle solar panels than plastic, hence, this is why Australia recycles our nuclear waste but doesn't recycle our solar panel waste. Because solar panels are hazardous, we need to be careful of how we dispose of this waste, because, after all, the authorities tell us not to eat too much fish because of their heavy metal mercury content (0.01 ppb in seawater), and not because of their uranium or radiotoxicity content, even though seawater contains a non-insignificant quantity of dissolved uranium (3.3 ppb in sea water). If you think plastic waste is a problem today? You just wait…
If we had an ice age and were worried about nuclear waste entering the environment, we’d just get a few trucks, pick it up and move it. But if we had an ice age and were worried about our solar panel waste entering the environment, we're completely boned.
Robert’s error. He thought he had been invited by a scientific organisation. Engineers Australia is, in fact, Social Engineers Australia. Indeed, his values do not fit with SEA!😅
Excellent.
Excellent presentation, many thanks for going to the effort to share. I'm hoping the conversation nationally moves to generation targets and loaded cost of consumption as consumers / industry. China published some goals in this space and would think these are probably good baselines for us to consider.
Fair point about the "relic economy".
and this nuclear costing is for trad nuclear, built on site with solid fueled water based...image the shift if it was liquid fueled(molten salt ect), build as a standardized design in a factory or shipyard not using water base cooling so no need for a pressurized containment.
There is so much engineering wise that is wrong, it would take another hour to correct.
How many 'experts outside their expertise' give 'professional' opinion ??????
Grid electricity includes grid construction engineering economics.
You need a knowledgeable critic from the distribution and transmission construction industry.
Who has recent capacity upgrade projects to illustrate the reality.
If 99% of electricity is non nuclear in a fossil fuel free world then you do not need nuclear electricity.
So how much will it to insure against a radiation incident for such an unlikely event.
Thanks
Please come to New Zealand and stand for Parliament
What is the subisdes for Ontario's electricity?
Great presentation, Thank You
19:33
Does it for me as well.
In the 70's; a school mate (late primary) related the available energy from a sewing thimble of uranium to that available from tonnes of coal or gallons of diesel.
One of the things I didn't forget.
Good work Robert.
Solar on all rooftops, charge batteries in your car, bus, truck, at work & home. Bypass the middle men. eg. Transmission lines are aluminium & efficient. Cost est $3M/km/500kw. Big industries want to socialise their 'overheads' like electricity, gas & diesel costs to the majority of taxpayers in Oz.
Great job presenting this. i operate coal fired power station units, i know what i am talking about and this is spot on.
If our gov does not change course, the average person will be stuffed when it comes to bills, it's already so expensive, when we export our fossil fuels to lower costs elsewhere, it's insane.
7:20 America actually doesn't quite "get this," with over 74,000 wind turbines, and companies like NuScale struggling to get the same subsidies (though that recently changed in Congress). Climate scientist James Hansen is on board with nuclear, as he's done the math that quasi-renewables pushers won't get into. They have a strange disdain for natural looking scenery on land or sea. A sad turnabout of what environmentalism used to be.
Trust the Science.
(Sadly this depends on your politics)
Here in SA, I have just gone to a solar max feed in plan ...Total 27kw panels on the roof etc ...about 4kw for off grid heating and cooling and about 25kw on grid with feedin ... I have gone somewhat crazy because I can
I did this because of the stupid rates here for the leccy
I realise that sadly the vast majority of people would find this a cost prohibitive thing to do for their home
The latest market rate with Energy Australia is over 55c / kwh in peak times
This situation certainly makes that nuclear mix option very very attractive
Nuclear is sooooo late coming to the party here in australia .. soooo much paranoia here
I see from your presentation that we are 10-15 years away from some sort of change if things were done according to logic and requirement rather than to political knee jerk reactions etc
Unfortunately the reality is that so many people are going to stampede to solar when they can afford it in an attempt to kill the bill ... which is only going to exacerbate things
:/
Teal is complimentary to Pink both on the color wheel and the political spectrum, evidently.
Like watermelons green on the outside, Marxist red inside.
The Teals are mostly rich women that are all about feelz over facts.
@@damienasmr922 dunning kreuger effect?
The thing that strikes me is that the figures show this is not a slight thing. Its very clear.
They appeared from nowhere created by the powers that be to stay in power , remember labor only got 33 percent of the national vote they scraped across the line with the teals and the greens, just a thought .
Many people who have never done anything really hazardous have suddenly become experts. Domestic violence is a serious issue and is affected by economic conditions, but we should not empower women ? - I am a silly man - I believe in women. No woman can ever afford to fail the sisterhood. When I was a manager, I was always aware of that and made my judgements accordingly.
All sounds great but if a nuclear reactor is not owned and operated by Australia we will constantly be screwed over on pricing, share holders are always the priority that is so clear to see how Australians have been screwed over by every thing that has been privatized.
How can the IPA be independent if it is so stacked with people and connections to the political right?
Thorium reactors with anti-corrosive casing!!!!!
America tried to build one years ago. They gave up trying. The Chinese are having similar problems today.
@@Poorlineforeva China already built a SCALABLE one SUCCESFULLY!
@@Poorlineforeva China built a scalable one!
ruclips.net/video/HMv5c32XXoE/видео.html
Thank you Robert for a very well considered presentation. One issue with nuclear that I have actually discussed with Scott also is the relatively poor turn-down ratio of nuclear. Turn-down ratio = (minimum load)/CMR which for nuclear, I understand, is only 85-90% compared with coal-fired plant TDR = 40% approx. A poor TDR affects the ability of the nuclear to back off load during the night. Is Robert able to give some idea what he believes is a reasonable TDR to assume for nuclear generation?
is that for solid fueled reactors or liquid fueled reactors? , last i heard liquid fueled can easily load follow, or if the are high heat can just make other chemicals with the excess heat
www.oecd-nea.org/nea-news/2011/29-2/nea-news-29-2-load-following-e.pdf
"a rate of change of electric output of 3-5% Pr/minute."
So presumably a NPP cut from 100% to 50% in about 17 minutes, when designed for load-following.
However, this is better when a LOT of NPPs are run as a fleet, so a fleet of 10 reactors each cutting 1% of their power output, can lower total output by 10%.
With storage, you can keep the NPP running at full, but put the excess into storage sized for a 24h cycle. This is very efficient, because demand load is predictable, and unlike VRE, nuclear power is also predictable, so your storage charging cycle is predictable!
we need TEALS out..