DEAR News Of The Area,

OUR local Federal member, Pat Conaghan, plans a couple of information sessions to promote the National (Mining) Party’s proposal to build nuclear reactors in Australia.

However, he wants to charge me $20.00 to attend!

No problem, the address by Robert Parker is available on YouTube.

Peter Dutton had the chance to spell out how much this plan would cost when he made his address on Monday but chose not to do so.

If overseas experience is anything to go by it doesn’t matter what price tag he puts on it as it will double or triple before it is completed.

The truth is that solar and wind are the cheapest forms of new generation to build, especially in a country like Australia.

Further, they can be built quickly and are reliable.

Building a solar farm, with battery firming, is now cheaper than keeping an existing coal plant running.

There is no financial case for building a new coal plant.

Our existing coal plants are aging and, as they age, they become more unreliable.

The race is on to replace their output with wind and solar before the last one retires in around fifteen years.

Added to this the demand for electricity is expected to be double the current output by 2050.

At this point, were the proposed seven nuclear reactors to be built, they would represent only about six percent of the electricity demand.

Six percent that could easily be covered more cheaply by wind and solar and batteries.

But won’t nuclear provide reliable base load power?

The trouble with nuclear, and coal, is that they operate within a narrow range of output.

They cannot easily be turned on or off, and produce power no matter the spot price.

Since at least 94 percent of generation will be wind and solar it is likely the spot price in the middle of the day will be very low, particularly on a sunny day.

Already, at least two nuclear power plants in the USA have gone into receivership because they have been unable to compete against wind power.

The fact is that “base load” is no longer a thing in a system dominated by renewables.

Finally, if we generated all our power with nuclear reactors we would run out of Uranium within 90 years.

Nuclear power is not a viable long term option although the waste will be hazardous for hundreds of millennia.

Solar and wind will be around for another 5,000 million years – effectively forever.

Regards,
Peter SOBEY,
Valla.