If you're including regulatory oversight (or lack of) under the 'management' heading, I'd definitely agree.
"Since 2009, the electricity networks that own and manage our “poles and wires” have quietly spent $45 billion on the most expensive project this country has ever seen. Allowed to run virtually unchecked, they’ve spent vast sums on infrastructure we don’t need, and have charged it all to us, with an additional fee attached. The spending was approved by a federal regulator, and yet the federal government didn’t even note it until it was well underway." [1]
> As far as I've been able to tell, we aren't building coal or nuclear because there are outrageous political risks ...
That adjective 'political' is not needed there, and serves to distract from the bigger, actual risks attached to those obsolete technologies. (With my usual caveat that I'm assuming people using the word nuclear mean only fission.)
> .. we aren't building anything else because because the economic option is coal.
Is it technically still an 'option' if you think there's only one?
Anyway, we (Australia(ns)) are not special.
Coal is not a sensible choice -- economic or otherwise -- anywhere on the planet.
Unfortunately many places, including here, haven't comprehended that yet. Or rather, the people that run the country -- both within and outside of the government -- prefer the extant power generation and delivery infrastructure for a variety of fairly obvious reasons.
Nuclear is obsolete to what? As far as I understand, nuclear is the replacement for coal, nothing else comes close to being able to provide a stable constant supply in large quantities.
What else can take the role of supplying the bulk of electricity to grids that doesn't also have it's own environmental concerns?
What else can take the role of supplying the bulk of electricity to grids that doesn't also have it's own environmental concerns?
Gas fire plants
Hydro
Pump Solar
Liquid salt storage
Geothermal
Wind + Large Scale Solar + Storage
Tidal
Decentralized PV solar plus decentralized storage.
There are enormous numbers of combinations of solutions which don't involve coal or nuclear. Both coal and nuclear power are slow to respond to changes in demand (or supply problems), and both are very expensive centralized solutions.
Much more efficient solutions can be built using smaller numbers of smaller, faster, cheaper power stations (ie, gas fired) plus a diverse combination of other sources.
Gas: Shits out CO2 and others, short lifespan, order of minutes to respond (less if forewarned)
Hydro: Used in the UK to provide peak backup (however thats pumped storage not generation. given the droughts and irrigation usage in aus, not the best idea) requires time to warm up. Has large environmental impact unless using a natural dam (~60 seconds to respond)
Liquid salt storage: See above, less efficient, slow response time (unknown response time. Suspect in the order of tens of minutes, as heat has to be transfered into water for steam, better as base load)
Geothermal: needs the correct rock formation (again, unknown response time, better as base load)
Large scale solar + wind: Storage is the problem. The amount of lithium required to proper storage is utterly vast. (depends very much on the storage medium and controller, also the amount of wind solar in the preceding days)
Tidal: requires the right geology, can have massive environmental impact, power comes when it wants, but is predictable.(Has some ability to provide backup outside of high/low tide. )
Decentralised x: horrifically expensive, however the cost can be passed directly to consumers. Keeping it all in sync requires decent infrastructure. (without a new and secure mechanism unlikely to provide grid backup, but could be used to dynamically cut load. )
In conclusion nuclear provide a brilliant base load, which can be used for things like charging the various storage devices, or allowing for solar to not work at night. Its relatively cheap across an entire life cycle, and surprisingly dependable. In terms of environmental impact, significantly less that the constant low-level pollutants that are emmited by coal & gas, and the environmental changes caused by hydro. Also Lithium mining has a large environmental impact too, as does PV production.
nuclear... relatively cheap across an entire life cycle
> Between 2002 and 2008, for example, cost estimates for new nuclear plant construction rose from between $2 billion and $4 billion per unit to $9 billion per unit, according to a 2009 UCS report, while experience with new construction in Europe has seen costs continue to soar.
And if you read the studies they require short term peak fossil fuel standbys.
"The real challenge is to supply peaks in demand on calm winter evenings following overcast days. That’s when the peak-load power stations, that is, hydro and gas turbines, make vital contributions by filling gaps in wind and solar generation."
In the UK that translates to gas/diesel standbys which in the case of the latter is horrendously polluting
Now, if you look at all of those studies, they make the assumption that there there is gas/hydro to act as backup. that is a base load.
The NRDC link ~25-50% of the power comes from Gas, which puts out CO2. Then there is biomass, which is also environmentally problematic in its current form. (https://www.nrdc.org/sites/default/files/styles/full_content...) Granted that does not take into account grid scale efficient storage.
But there is a base load, you can see it in the graphs. They almost exclusively use gas to plug that gap. If you want to reduce carbon output, that has to go.
Now, if I was to be in charge of a country, my route to energy security with minimal environmental impact would be thus:
1) insulation at a massive discount/loan.
2) diverse renewables, but not at any cost, and not on farm land. (UK based, so tidal, solar, wind)
3) small scale nuclear. Molten salt or similar with a negative feedback loop
4) Domestic & industrial power storage/generation incentives. If you can adjust the demands at source it greatly reduces the highs and lows.
Why in the UK is something like nuclear needed? Because if we are to reduce carbon output, we need to heat our homes with electricity instead of gas, that triples the power demand at a stroke. insulation standards of 0.6U or less would reduce this significantly. However its still more power than can be feasibly harvested with rooftop solar/wind/tidal alone.
Ah, the idiotic libertarian response. Just the other day I got a small cheque because I'm an investor in a local solar scheme.
Renewables work, have very modest maintenance requirements, and the intermittency can be managed. It's ridiculous that Australia isn't getting at least 30% of its energy from solar.
"Got a check" isn't the same thing. Somebody subsidized that check I think. We also have cities subsidizing aluminum recycling, which pays nobody and has no ecological benefit.
I'm just practical about what theatre I endorse, and what I skip.
Of course, but the coal is on a favourable tax regime and the nuclear plants won't be built without subsidy either. Hinkley Point C is guaranteed a price of £92.50/MWh regardless of the market rate.
Aluminium recycling is actually has lots of ecological benefit. It uses about 95% less energy to recycle aluminium than it does to produce it. In terms of subsidies to recycling you've chosen the item that would always be recycled no matter what.
> Nuclear is obsolete to what? As far as I understand, nuclear is the replacement for coal, nothing else comes close to being able to provide a stable constant supply in large quantities.
The article pretty clearly demonstrates that grid-scale battery storage systems are able to provide very fast reaction times.
More battery storage systems, along with other forms of energy storage such as Solar-Thermal and pumped-hydro can take daytime generation and make it usable at night. They're proven workable grid-scale technologies.
Large widely distributed deployments of Wind generation can also provide a lot of capacity. For those who claim wind doesn't always blow - well, it's always blowing somewhere.
Having a lot more individually smaller generators plus energy storage will inherently permit a more stable grid - one smaller generator tripping offline doesn't cause a massive issue.
"Since 2009, the electricity networks that own and manage our “poles and wires” have quietly spent $45 billion on the most expensive project this country has ever seen. Allowed to run virtually unchecked, they’ve spent vast sums on infrastructure we don’t need, and have charged it all to us, with an additional fee attached. The spending was approved by a federal regulator, and yet the federal government didn’t even note it until it was well underway." [1]
> As far as I've been able to tell, we aren't building coal or nuclear because there are outrageous political risks ...
That adjective 'political' is not needed there, and serves to distract from the bigger, actual risks attached to those obsolete technologies. (With my usual caveat that I'm assuming people using the word nuclear mean only fission.)
> .. we aren't building anything else because because the economic option is coal.
Is it technically still an 'option' if you think there's only one?
Anyway, we (Australia(ns)) are not special.
Coal is not a sensible choice -- economic or otherwise -- anywhere on the planet.
Unfortunately many places, including here, haven't comprehended that yet. Or rather, the people that run the country -- both within and outside of the government -- prefer the extant power generation and delivery infrastructure for a variety of fairly obvious reasons.
[1] https://www.themonthly.com.au/issue/2014/july/1404136800/jes...