On the specifics of Dutton’s nuclear plan:
Dai Wynn writes: While there are many examples of nuclear meltdowns — Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima, to name the most famous — the failure of a transmission line in the switchyard or a high voltage transmission line damaged by a storm is not unheard of. These are called single points of failure. It exposes the weakness of using a centrally located power generator with a huge output.
Next, to suggest that existing transmission lines can be used without building new ones is to liken them to a four-lane freeway asked to carry tens of thousands of vehicles per hour.
Finally, all of those Coalition voters who have spent significant amounts of money on solar panels and batteries will have their production curtailed due to the ever-present nuclear baseload. Remember, the amount of electricity generated must always equal the load, otherwise nasty things happen. Nuclear power does not have a speed throttle.
Paul Anderson writes: The thing that gets me is that, with nuclear, you pay the majority of carbon costs before you generate any electricity. It’s in the construction budget, and follows later in the fuel supply and waste storage budget. Yet Dutton, and heaps of others, get away with calling it carbon-free or carbon-neutral when this is demonstrably false. If we need to reduce our carbon emissions now, we can’t be promoting a technology that adds most of its carbon costs now with dubious promises of future purity.
Mike Sprange writes: Where to start? I cannot think of any other plan in the past 50 years of Australian politics, so ridiculous, so counterfactual, so downright fraudulent. Dutton is wrong on every point he makes — and worse, he knows it. Here are a few.
New nuclear is more expensive than firmed renewables, not cheaper. Existing nuclear is somewhat cheaper, but still not cheap enough, and of course entirely irrelevant for us.
Nuclear can never be available for first-of-its-kind implementation in less than 15 to 20 or more years. By then our firmed renewable rollout will not need much, if any, baseload support.
The 28,000 kilometres of grid required for renewables is simply a lie.
Nuclear plants lasting 80 years? The best future estimates are 40 to 60, and none have yet made that time without substantial refits.
Nuclear, wind and solar all use virtually free fuel, but the capital cost per kilowatt-hour with nuclear is four to six times more!
Nuclear power costs are directly proportional to plant uptime. They are very good for providing steady levels of baseload power, but hopelessly expensive if they are running at much less than maximum capacity.
Worse still, AEMO is now talking about mechanisms to “sink” power at times of peak generation, for example by expecting that large-scale battery operators can respond to minimum demand as well as maximum by keeping batteries empty at likely peak supply times. That is likely to mean that baseload supply becomes less valuable and less required, meaning an investment in nuclear would have a short and even more agonisingly inefficient life.
Power generation is a complex issue. Dutton’s suggestions are ill-informed, boyishly naive, uneconomic and totally impractical. But his pitch is delivered — with News Corp henchmen at his shoulder — as though he has just proudly cut out the coupon for his PhD in energy science from the back of his cornflakes packet.
I despair of our nation, that our politics can support total poppycock with such little public scorn. Shame on Dutton for trying! Shame on Ted O’Brien for being your patsy!
On the politics of his nuclear plan:
Rod Campbell-Ross writes: As with so much else that Dutton says, you need to look him hard in the eye when he says anything because it is usually at the very least deceitful, if not a downright lie.
Dutton doesn’t want to actually build any nuclear. What he is actually doing is muddying the investment waters for renewables for a good long time, thereby slowing it down and so helping the coal industry.
We should collectively tell him to shut up and crawl back into his hole (and build out battery-firmed renewables as fast as we can).
Marilyn Hoban writes: The saddest thing about Dutton’s ridiculous nuclear plan is that by the time the first plant is completed, he will be well gone from the political scene and won’t have to face the consequences of the damage he has foisted on our planet.
Power prices will soar, it will use our scarce water resources and pump hot steam into the atmosphere — which is polluting. He must be defeated at all costs.
Bill Flemming writes: IMHO it is populist crud. To try and sell the concept of amortisation as a funding model is evading the cost question. There is no plan of addressing the huge issues of labour and expertise spread across this wide, brown land. Yes, there is infrastructure near the proposed sites but a realistic timetable puts the plan into a time when the current politicians have retired to their solar-powered homes.
On Dutton himself:
Anita Lawrence writes: Peter Dutton is trying to punch above his weight. He refuses to accept the decision of Australia’s scientific authorities on the issue of his nuclear “plan”, which could hardly be described as a plan. It appears to be just another way to cause division among the Australian people, hoping that this will be enough for him to oust Anthony Albanese at the imminent election.
Shamefully, he treats Australians as if they’re stupid. Australians should never forget the impact of Peter Dutton on First Nations peoples, more shame!
