An expert raises concerns about Peter Dutton's plan to replace coal plants with nuclear power, highlighting the extended reliance on coal and potential cost overruns.
Peter Dutton’s plan to use nuclear power to replace coal plants hinges around the first nuclear plant coming online in the late 2030s, with use of coal plants being strung out until then. However, under his plan coal will be needed at least until the last of the seven nuclear plants is on line.
It is most likely to be way beyond 2050, maybe late 2060s or 2070s, quite optimistically allowing five years between nuclear plants coming online, and yet Dutton’s comparative costs against Labor’s plans are truncated at 2050. What we need is an outline implementation plan that includes all seven plants, not just the first, and the capital costs involved to keep coal stations running for what will be multiple times their initial design lives.Throughout my engineering career (now retired) I’ve been involved in power generation. Nuclear reactors are just another component in the process. I’ve got nothing against nuclear power as such, but let’s keep it in perspective. Whether coal, gas or nuclear all require a large plant to generate heat to produce steam to drive turbines etc to generate electricity. For various reasons, such a plant is located away from users of electricity which require large scale (and expensive) poles and wires. Strategically not good for Australia (it’s a big place and we are prone to bushfires). There is also a loss of the power generated when transmitted over long distances. Moving on from steam, modern technologies use an energy source to produce electricity directly (eg, sun, wind, tidal flows, waves, etc). Most times they are called renewables. A feature of these technologies (particularly sun and wind) is that setup and running costs are a fraction of the cost of the old, traditional technology. This is so if transmission costs can be minimised. This can be so if generation of power was kept close to where it is to be use
NUCLEAR POWER COAL ENERGY PLANNING COSTS RENEWABLES
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