“No economic case:” Global experts say nuclear has role in some countries, but makes no sense in Australia Rewrite the following news story as a viral, SEO-optimized article using HTML headings ( , , etc.) for all sections and sub-headings. Only output the article body. — As Australia’s ultra conservative political parties embark on a headlong race towards nuclear and away from renewables, a major new report by global experts says nuclear has a role in some countries, but makes no sense and will only cause delays and increased costs in Australia. The new report from the Energy Transitions Commission, a think-tank comprising dozens of energy experts around the world, including those in the nuclear industry, says nuclear capacity could double over the next three decades or so, but it will stay play a relatively minor role in the overall transition away from fossil fuels. And, they point out in the report – “The Role of Nuclear in the Energy Transition: Complementary but Limited” – it will only make sense in a few countries – a situation the report suggests will not be greatly changed by the hype and interest generated by AI and the push for massive energy-hungry data centres around the world. For countries like Australia, rich in lower cost renewable resources like wind and solar, the report says nuclear makes no economic sense at all, and trying to build a system around them will simply lead to delays and increased costs. “In these countries, which include most of Africa, and much of Latin America and Australia, renewables (particularly solar) and batteries will provide the fastest and cheapest option for scaling electricity supply at suitable increments to align with financing availability and system needs,” the report says. “In these markets, investing in nuclear concentrates scarce capital in a small number of centralised projects, committed roughly a decade before operations, during which the power system could change substantially. “Developing nuclear would deliver no total system cost benefit, and would require a reliance on foreign nuclear supply chains, which would reduce energy security. Pursuing nuclear programmes in these countries would divert resources from cheaper alternatives, and nuclear shares should remain close to 0%.” These conclusions, of course, are well understood by the energy industry in Australia, from the Australian Energy Market Operator, the CSIRO, policy makers and regulators, the network operators, the renewables industry and the major utilities who currently burn coal and gas for a living. But the global fossil fuel and climate denial industry still has its tentacles around the conservative parties in Australia – particularly One Nation and its less popular sidekicks in the Liberals and Nationals – all of whom are determined to slow or even stop the renewable transition in Australia, legalise nuclear and have the government invest countless billions into the tech. The Energy Transitions Commission highlights the folly of such an approach, and the report would make sobering reading for those politicians, assuming they would be bothered to read it. Like the World Nuclear Status report released more than a week ago, it punctures a major hole in the nuclear hype, including the assumption that small modular reactors (SMR) will somehow change the game. “Small modular reactors remain 1-2 decades away from wide deployment, despite attracting large investment and political attention amid surging AI-driven power demand,” the report notes. “Early US cost estimates range from ~$US140–$US270 per MWh, well above the large reactor cost range of $US40–$US190 per MWh. Similar reactor designs can cost 4–9 times more to build in the US and Europe than in China and South Korea – financing costs are key factor.” The report also notes that depending on nuclear power would intensify supply chain risks, rather than easing them. Russia, it notes, controls 40% of global uranium enrichment capacity in 2025, and key nuclear equipment manufacturing is concentrated in just six countries. “Nuclear supply chain concentration poses the greatest risk, rather than safety and waste management,” the report says. The report looks at the recent commitment to treble nuclear capacity across the globe by 2050 to around 1,500 gigawatts of capacity. This it says, would require around 500 GW of nuclear extensions (although that itself might be too optimistic), and it struggles to see how 1,000 GW of new capacity could be built. It says that would require a six-fold increase in contraction compared to recent years. And even if it was delivered, it wouldn’t reduce the need for new wind and solar, which would still have to be built at a rate of 1,500 GW each year, rather than over the next 25 years. “While this contribution to the energy transition is useful in targeted countries, even this scale of nuclear buildout would be dwarfed by the required scale of investment in renewables to transition to low-carbon energy systems,” the report says. “An investment of $200 billion per year in new nuclear build is likely to be less than 10% of the $2,200 billion per year needed in renewables, grids and storage.” The report is at pains to note that nuclear technology may make sense in some countries, those with limited renewable resources and also those with billions already invested in the nuclear industry, including those with nuclear weapons. More importantly, nuclear’s system value is highest where land is scarce and solar and windresources are weakest But for many it doesn’t. This graph highlights the switch in nuclear adoption from Europe and the US to Asia in recent decades. And below is the graph that probably explains this best. As the report notes, the costs of the technology per se don’t change much from one place to another, what does cost money is labour and the cost of capital, and the infrastructure needed to support a new industry. “The large range of upfront CAPEX, project timescales and financing costs results in a wide range of LCOEs acrossdifferent countries,” it notes. “China, South Korea and India are likely to continue to be able to deliver nuclear generation at costs below $US50 per MWh by 2035, whereas France, the UK and the US are currently unlikely to achieve costs below ~$US125 per MWh.” Indeed, even in the UK – with a nuclear arsenal and a well established nuclear power industry, the report says that nuclear costs would need to fall by 40 per cent below current levels to make a grid with 20 per cent nuclear as low cost as a 100 per cent renewable grid in the UK. And just to emphasis a point often misrepresented by the renewable naysers, it is important to look at the issue of so-called “baseload.” As the report says: “Both the supply profile of renewables and the typical demand profile vary over time: neither is, nor needs to be, baseload,” the report says. “Proponents of nuclear power often argue that power systems will need a high share of baseload capacity, suchas nuclear, to ensure power availability when solar and wind power are unavailable. “However, baseload demand can increasingly be met with a combination of solar, wind, storage, and demand-side flexibility, reducing the role for high-utilisation assets such as nuclear. “In future clean power systems, for the moments where solar, wind, other renewables (hydro, geothermal), batteries and long-duration energy storage (LDES) cannot meet demand, a limited role remains for lower-CAPEX assets such as peaking gas, biomethane or hydrogen.” Source: WorldNewsAPI | Read original
