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How would a switch to nuclear affect electricity prices for Aussie households and industry?

Public Policy / opinion
How would a switch to nuclear affect electricity prices for Aussie households and industry?
nuc
Photo by Nicolas HIPPERT on Unsplash.

By Roger Dargaville*

Australian opposition leader Peter Dutton has announced that under a Coalition government, seven nuclear power stations would be built around the country over the next 15 years.

Experts have declared nuclear power would be expensive and slow to build.

But what might happen to energy prices if the Coalition were to win government and implement this plan?

How might we estimate the cost of nuclear?

By 2035, 50% to 60% of the existing coal-fired fleet will very likely have been retired, including Vales Point B, Gladstone, Yallourn, Bayswater and Eraring – all of which will have passed 50 years old.

These five generators contribute just over 10 gigawatts of capacity. It’s probably not a coincidence that the seven nuclear plants proposed by Dutton would also contribute roughly 10 gigawatts in total if built.

Neither my team at Monash University nor the Australian Energy Market Operator has run modelling scenarios to delve into the details of what might happen to electricity prices under a high-uptake nuclear scenario such as the one proposed by the Coalition. That said, we can make some broad assumptions based on a metric known as the “levelised cost of electricity”.

This value takes into account:

  • how much it costs to build a particular technology

  • how long it takes to build

  • the cost to operate the plant

  • its lifetime

  • and very importantly, its capacity factor.

Capacity factor is how much electricity a technology produces in real life, compared with its theoretical maximum output.

For example, a nuclear power station would likely run at 90–95% of its full capacity. A solar farm, on the other hand, will run at just 20–25% of its maximum, primarily because it’s night for half of the time, and cloudy some of the time.

CSIRO recently published its GenCost report, which outlines the current and projected build and operational costs for a range of energy technologies.

It reports that large-scale nuclear generated electricity would cost between A$155 and $252 per megawatt-hour, falling to between $136 and $226 per megawatt-hour by 2040.

The report bases these costs on recent projects in South Korea, but doesn’t consider some other cases where costs have blown out dramatically.

The most obvious case is that of Hinkley Point C nuclear plant in the United Kingdom. This 3.2GW plant, which is being built by French company EDF, was recently reported to be now costing around £34 billion (about A$65 billion). That’s about A$20,000 per kilowatt.

CSIRO’s GenCost report assumed a value of $8,655 per kilowatt for nuclear, so the true levelised cost of electricity of nuclear power in Australia may end up being twice as expensive as CSIRO has calculated.



Other factors play a role, too

Another factor not accounted for in the GenCost assumptions is that Australia does not have a nuclear industry. Virtually all the niche expertise would need to be imported.

And very large infrastructure projects have a nasty habit of blowing out in cost – think of Snowy 2.0, Sydney’s light rail project, and the West Gate Tunnel in Victoria.

Reasons include higher local wages, regulations and standards plus aversion from lenders to risk that increases cost of capital. These factors would not bode well for nuclear.

In CSIRO’s GenCost report, the levelised cost of electricity produced from coal is $100–200 per megawatt-hour, and for gas it’s $120–160 per megawatt-hour. Solar and wind energy work out to be approximately $60 and $90 per megawatt-hour, respectively. But it’s not a fair comparison, as wind and solar are not “dispatchable” but are dependent on the availability of the resource.

When you combine the cost of a mix of wind and solar energy and storage, along with the cost of getting the renewable energy into the grid, renewables end up costing $100–120 per megawatt-hour, similar to coal.

If we were to have a nuclear-based system (supplemented by gas to meet the higher demands in the mornings and evenings), the costs would likely be much higher – potentially as much as three to four times if cost blowouts similar to Hinkley Point C were to occur (assuming costs were passed on to electricity consumers. Otherwise, taxpayers in general would bear the burden. Either way, it’s more or less the same people).

But what about the impact on your household energy bill?

Well, here the news is marginally better.

Typical retail tariffs are 25-30 cents per kilowatt-hour, which is $250–300 per megawatt-hour. The largest component of your energy bill is not the cost of generation of the electricity; rather, it’s the cost of getting the power from the power stations to your home or business.

In very approximate terms, this is made up of the market average costs of generation, transmission and distribution, as well as retailer margin and other minor costs.

The transmission and distribution costs will not be significantly different under the nuclear scenario compared with the current system. And the additional transmission costs associated with the more distributed nature of renewables (meaning these renewable projects are all over the country) is included in the estimate.

According to my back-of-the-envelope calculations, your retail tariff under the nuclear scenario could be 40–50c per kilowatt-hour.

In a free market, it is very unlikely nuclear could be competitive. AAP Image/Jono Searle.

But if you are a large energy consumer such as an aluminium smelter, you pay considerably less per kilowatt-hour as you don’t incur the same network or retailer costs (but the cost of generating electricity in the first place makes up a much bigger proportion of the total cost).

So if the cost of electricity generation soars, this hypothetical aluminium smelter’s energy costs will soar too.

This would be a severe cost burden on Australian industry that has traditionally relied on cheap electricity (although it’s been a while since electricity could be described as cheap).

A likely increase in energy costs

In summary, in a free market, it is very unlikely nuclear could be competitive.

But if a future Coalition government were to bring nuclear into the mix, energy costs for residential and especially industrial customers would very likely increase.The Conversation


*Roger Dargaville, Director Monash Energy Institute, Monash University.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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15 Comments

Yes, a nice logical argument. But....it kind of missed the point that fossil fuel generation will end, with a new source of energy needed to substitute for that.

Nuclear is one option I suppose

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It misses more points than that - although it's a kicker. 

France is having trouble with water temperature: https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/Heatwave-forces-temporary-c…  although one presumes that this could be out-teched, just making it more complex and more 'costly'. 

Then there is the fact that nuclear - like most renewables - only does electricity (and local heat, granted). That doesn't build the roads to the reactors...

Then there is ultimate scarcity; too many folk take 'x tons will last x years'  statements, to mean that the years are set in stone, even if you double/treble your take-rate. Uranium, if presently-accounted resources were to take the place of fossil energy like for like - would be gone before the last reactor had opened its doors. Doubling the resource, doesn't solve that dilemma. 

The fellow is correct re expertise - https://www-pub.iaea.org/MTCD/Publications/PDF/te_1399_web.pdf  (re an aging workforce - published 20 years ago). 

The posits are clear, and you nailed it: Fossil fuels are finite, and we've already burnt the best half. Beyond them, we are down to some form of what is called renewable, but is better defined as 'rebuildable'. The latter demands energy and materials, so there a gross/net issue there. And those we know either don't scale, or have no chance of being built in the remaining time - for an 'economy' which has no option but to contract anyway (techno-utopians aside. Simply put, if the attempt to prolong GROWTH kills the biosphere, there will be no humans to indulge in said GROWTH; it's the ultimate Catch 22.  

Is nuclear in the long-term-sustainability mix? I doubt it; too complex. But it's wastes and decaying remnants may do...  I'm more a fan of water-at-height (any scale) as the least impactive battery, and relying on rainfall (converted solar energy) to do the job of lifting the water. Can be kept going very low tech. 

 

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Thorium is three times more abundant in nature than uranium, and modern small-scale reactors are being developed that use thorium.  The small scale thorium reactors could be used for process heat, and negate the need for major infrastructure.

https://www.imeche.org/news/news-article/canada-invests-16m-in-shipping…

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The article about the French nuclear that you linked to itself says that if they built cooling towers so they had closed-loop cooling systems, water discharged to the river would only be a couple of tenths of degrees hotter than the intake water. So the solution is already known, it just has to be implemented, and yes that costs money and time.

Re: fuel for nuclear, there is sufficient "nuclear waste", uranium and thorium in the world, along with already proven reactor designs, that we could have enough fuel for reactors to replace all of our fossil fuels for at least several thousand years.

Now, none of that is actually going to happen because we're too far along the consumption curve and don't have the time or political will and cultural buy-in to do it. But if we were living in a world that took climate change from fossil fuels seriously in the 70s and 80s, then that's the reality we could be in now, although Jevons Paradox of very cheap and abundant nuclear electricity may have resulted in more environmental damage in that alternative universe. That universe would certainly be better placed for long-term human flourishing though, if they had more fossil fuels in the ground for future generations to enjoy.

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So an academic in renewables research finds there could be problems with power generated by non-unreliables. Colour me surprised.

There are a lot of half-truths in the article, but that isn't unusual in advocacy pieces.

The brown coal plants in Victoria are producing power at under $40/MWh. Replacements wouldn't be more than triple the cost. Current power price in SA is 45c a unit and other states over 30c, though not known if this is before or after domestic subsidies. However, prices have been signalled to rise steeply to put in all the grid balancing, transmission and system security upgrades to cover the loss of the coal unit. Look how AEMC doesn't put a price on just part of this requirement. 

https://www.aemc.gov.au/sites/default/files/2021-10/ERC0300%20-%20Final…

Hinkley costs have blown out for non-nuclear reasons, just government policy changes.. Same as Vogtle. The newer nukes can do some load following. The existing pumped storage can cover a lot of peaks and smoothing. The real electricity load in Oz has a lot less variability than made out (about 18 to 24GW this time of year.. It is behind the meter solar which makes it look peaky.  Many large electricity consumers have already left Oz because high costs and unreliable power under the current system. Those that have stayed like Portland get big subsidies. 

The sensible choice, ie the ones the politicians won't use, is the French cookie cutter approach. Choose a proven design like the Korean one and get a lot of units built on continuous supply contract - like one a year - with no significant changes between units. IIRC (and can't be bother Googling it) France went from none to about 60 reactors in twenty years. That is who to emulate. 

The unspoken benefits of nukes are lots of careers for STEM graduates and mid-career people, plus plenty of real trades jobs. There will be a lot of nuke engineers already in Oz. We even have them in NZ, working in other branches than their training. There are five I work with.

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"So an academic in renewables research finds there could be problems with power generated by non-unreliables. Colour me surprised.

There are a lot of half-truths in the article, but that isn't unusual in advocacy pieces."

Why has wind and solar grown so much over the last years, and continues to outpace other forms of electricity generation, even in countries where new nuclear power plants have no significant barriers? (And don't say "government subsidies" as that's true in countries which have received none.)

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Study climate fanaticism

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Independence from the grid is not a bad reason. 

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Which western world countries don't subsidise wind or solar, even indirectly? carbon charges are an effective subsidy for non- CO2 producers. Kit built with foreign money, especially from EU, often gets carbon credit financing. NZ subsidises the unreliables by giving them big dispensations from grid rules compliance, especially about meeting dispatch.

The EA has recognised the grid issues which is why the following was reported by Energy News " The Electricity Authority is considering whether the threshold for imposing frequency stability obligations on asset owners should be lowered from 30 MW to 5 MW. The changes are among a suite of options the authority is canvassing in order to ensure the reliability of the grid can be maintained over time as more variable and intermittent wind and solar generation is added and the expected departure of large thermal plant reduces inertia."

   

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> carbon charges are an effective subsidy for non- CO2 producers.

love it.  Those dam joggers on the street, enjoying their state subsidies aka swimming pool access charges.

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Pure economics , its cheaper , and getting even cheaper everyday .

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Yeah - solar is so cheap that they have to keep extending its subsidies because it can't be built without them.

https://www.masterresource.org/solar-power-issues/permanent-subsidy-sol…

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That's in the USA , I've seen some of the installation costs there , ridiculous .

There is no subsidy here . 

Life time costs are heading towards a few cents a KWH for large solar farms.

Agree a lot of work needs to be done on smoothing the grid out , but that is just as much a load problem as it is a generation problem.

If the oil price goes the way it is predicted , diesel generation  may become the backstop.

Preferable to coal anyway . 

Already putting generators into the Coromandel , I would argue wood fired would be better , but every town should have some backup generation , if the climate is going to throw up more frequent storms.

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As I wrote earlier, solar has significant indirect subsidies in that they don't have to meet onerous grid compliance rules. That is why the EA is looking to act. After the Northland trip, Ngawha came back that day. Solar didn't. That is another reason for its unreliability. 

If there were no carbon charges and the generation was a solid tranche, then coal is very cheap and reliable. A lot more so than diesel, either in engines or GTs.

Generation from wood burning boilers is more expensive and troublesome than coal. 

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> The sensible choice, ie the ones the politicians won't use, is the French cookie cutter approach.

The french are at it again.  "France sees potential for 14 new nuclear reactors [...] EDF will construct the new plants with tens of billions in public financing and chief executive Luc Rémont said his company aims to build roughly one 1.6GW reactor a year."

https://www.power-technology.com/news/france-may-build-14-new-nuclear-r…

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