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@mariner4life said in Climate Change:
@antipodean there is no way one of the parties at least hasn't run the numbers on this. i would love to know what those polling numbers are
With nuclear power making a return to the national political agenda, a new survey from Essential finds 44% of Australians support nuclear power plants, up four points since the question was last asked in November 2015, and 40% oppose them.
That's from two years ago in the Guardian (https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/jun/18/australians-support-for-nuclear-plants-rising-but-most-dont-want-to-live-near-one)
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Classic NIMBY - put all the nuclear plants you want, but don't put them near the people just in case . Which kind of works for a few of our existing coal gen sites, so they could go there I guess. Just as long as they're on the coast for cooling needs.
The main issue is cost horizons - right now, solar and wind is cheap as shit, quick to install, and replace a large part of the market. Yes you have to overbuild it, but you have to overbuild anything. The NEM is much larger than most days of the year, but comes in handy 4-5 days of the year when heatwaves or cold snaps hit.
The price of nuclear means it will probably get to the table when other options are exhausted, and then it might be too late.
The nuke fans like to talk about the legislation holding back any work in this area, despite multiple state and federal inquiries/reviews showing that it can't compete in our market; it would need to start from scratch, basically, despite anything we could bring in from overseas.
Even ignoring the most poorly-run nuclear projects in terms of cost, the strike price is still higher than renewables + storage. It will probably continue to be that way unless there are significant leaps in SMRs (which won't reach market for a decade).
I like the idea of distributed SMRs across our networks providing the non-variable part of our demand, with renewables filling in the rest. It'll cost about 5 times as much as renewables with grid forming tech, but I think by that point we'll have put cost aside.
Really, electricity infrastructure and other utilities should never have left government hands.
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@nzzp said in Climate Change:
But yes - and hydro is effectively impossible to consent in NZ at the moment.
What are the restrictions on that?
Last couple of times I've been there, I've seen a few of the hydro setups (Whakamaru on the Waikato and Roxburgh in Clutha Valley), and the age of some of the equipment means it could be good to upgrade and maybe increase capacity.
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@nta said in Climate Change:
@nzzp said in Climate Change:
But yes - and hydro is effectively impossible to consent in NZ at the moment.
What are the restrictions on that?
literally, consenting. The last few that have tried have failed miserably.
The Mokihinui (sp?) didn't even get to consent application I think.
The last scheme was an (iwi supported) weir to take some of the water - not even dam the river. Failed to get consent.
The issue is that damming a river has an environmental impact. That becomes unconsentable - despite the obvious benefits. It's super expensive and high risk. I think we should (as a country) weigh this up and facilitate water storage for hydro power and water resilience. But right now, its' just not on the cards. We haven't built a big new dam since probably Opuha or maybe the current WaitakiValley scheme. (memory may be failing, happy to be corrected)
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@nzzp in a similar vein, Cairns gets an enormous amount of rain every summer, and yet by the end of the year dam levels are often low. why? because good luck getting a dam built in a rainforest.
So all that rain water washes straight out to sea
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@snowy said in Climate Change:
Actual question - why aren't Aus all over nuclear? Just hippie, anti, types protesting?
You have the GAFA to put it in and in the unlikely event that things went wrong it really wouldn't matter. There's nobody there, bury it and leave it for 10,000 years nobody would even know.
Great Australian Fuck All?
Transmission would be the issue. Generators can't be too far away from what they're powering.
Edit: and need water for cooling.
Edit 2: #booboo by Nick
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These series of images should be the first and last words in debate over nuclear vs "renewables".
That's despite Germany spending $830 billion dollarydoos. The Environment Minister Peter Altmaier predicted in 2013 that it 'could add up to around one trillion euros by the end of the 2030s'.
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Two other:
Guess which one is France? Which is saving the world?
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I can't stress enough how absolutely unwatchable this looks. People will side with climate change after this.
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@no-quarter said in Climate Change:
I can't stress enough how absolutely unwatchable this looks. People will side with climate change after this.
this poster alone has made me go outside, turn the ute on, and just leave it running until it's time to go home
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James Corden is enough for me although the fat fluffybunny looks to have shed a couple of kilos at least. Is there some rule in America that late night talk show hosts have to be completely unfunny fuckheads ? ( I don’t recognise the one with the massive forehead on the left though )
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@no-quarter said in Climate Change:
I can't stress enough how absolutely unwatchable this looks. People will side with climate change after this.
Wonder how many times they'll mention China being the largest problem here.
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@tim always amazed that, despite 70 years in business, nuclear has never gotten cheaper or easier.
The supporters like to talk up political opposition, NIMBYs, and the harsh regulations that nuclear face over other types of generation, but they can't ever answer the simple question: why is a longstanding, well understood technology not following the same cost curve as almost every other technology in energy or otherwise.
Why don't we have Thorium reactors? Or at least some form of widespread deployment of a Gen IV with all the safety and high yield? They've been working on it for 20 years ffs...
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@nta said in Climate Change:
@tim always amazed that, despite 70 years in business, nuclear has never gotten cheaper or easier.
The supporters like to talk up political opposition, NIMBYs, and the harsh regulations that nuclear face over other types of generation, but they can't ever answer the simple question: why is a longstanding, well understood technology not following the same cost curve as almost every other technology in energy or otherwise.
Why don't we have Thorium reactors? Or at least some form of widespread deployment of a Gen IV with all the safety and high yield? They've been working on it for 20 years ffs...
Not wanting to dis you Nick but I'm thinking because they don't work well enough to be be cost efficient? Coz if they were corporations would be in to them?
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@nta I think it's because they stopped building nuclear reactors for a long time, and lost the expert knowledge and trained leadership and staff to build them. France had a great record of cheap and safe nuclear power, but stopped building reactors for decades.
Enormous obstacles have been put in the path of new reactors, and dismissing them is asinine, but the great pause in construction is a unique challenge for a mega scale industry.
A tragic indictment on western society.
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@booboo said in Climate Change:
@nta said in Climate Change:
@tim always amazed that, despite 70 years in business, nuclear has never gotten cheaper or easier.
The supporters like to talk up political opposition, NIMBYs, and the harsh regulations that nuclear face over other types of generation, but they can't ever answer the simple question: why is a longstanding, well understood technology not following the same cost curve as almost every other technology in energy or otherwise.
Why don't we have Thorium reactors? Or at least some form of widespread deployment of a Gen IV with all the safety and high yield? They've been working on it for 20 years ffs...
Not wanting to dis you Nick but I'm thinking because they don't work well enough to be be cost efficient? Coz if they were corporations would be in to them?
Well it is mainly the capital cost, and the promise that they'll deliver cheap energy or 80 years (yet to be anywhere near proven). Getting finance for something that might not deliver a single kWh for a decade is a big ask.
Part of it is lack of standardisation - if everyone just agreed on a particular design and capacity it would make manufacturing a lot easier.
France sort of did that back when they built their fleet in the 70s in light of the oil threat, but that thinking seems to have fallen by the wayside.
Small Modular Reactors (SMRs) are supposed to be the future, but it'll be at least 2 decades before they're economic. I'd love to see them get a go, tho.
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@tim said in Climate Change:
@nta I think it's because they stopped building nuclear reactors for a long time, and lost the expert knowledge and trained leadership and staff to build them. France had a great record of cheap and safe nuclear power, but stopped building reactors for decades.
Enormous obstacles have been put in the path of new reactors, and dismissing them is asinine, but the great pause in construction is a unique challenge for a mega scale industry.
A tragic indictment on western society.
I agree in the main, but ultimately it is just an engineering challlenge.
Like space travel, the industry generally operates on cost-plus so making it cheaper or more efficient isn't in the builder's interests when demand is low.
Nuclear needs a SpaceX style shakeup to transform the industry. Hopefully SMRs start getting regulatory approval at speed to be that kind of change.
Climate Change