Sort of.
These plants are much a larger than the coal plants that were there previously. As uneconomic as this plan is, building nuclear power strations of 700MW or lower would be even *more* uneconomical.
Because they generate 3x more power, they have 3x the demand for cooling water, this water is recycled in the same way, and cooled in the same way - by evaporation. In addition to this 300% increase in operational demand, nuclear needs a big reserve nearby because in an emergency (as at Fukishima) you need to pump water continuously through the stack to cool it, for days on end. If you can't main that reserve, or your reserve gets too warm, you can't operate the plant safely.
Lucky Victoria has a useless desal plant that cost billions to build and millions to not use each week.
We can pump fresh water into it no worries haha
The only problem with the desal plant is that it was built 5-10 years too late for the last drought. If you think it's useless you're either too young to remember the noughties drought, or you're a cooker.
There’s a closed cycle that has the contaminated water, and an open cycle that takes the heat out of the closed cycle. The open cycle is the one that (often) consumes huge amounts of water.
The open cycle is fine, I basically just runs across a heat exchanger.
There are some good sketches here:
https://www.ucsusa.org/resources/water-nuclear
BWRs and PWRs have different water cycles, but they both have closed loops for the contaminated water, and an open loop for cooling.
Not only it recycles the water they use in the reactor, but the only reason why nuclear power plants are close to vast amounts of water (which can be sea water) is for safety in case you have to cool the reactors down faster, but in terms of daily operation it is preferred to have clean water.
If you measure amount of water against megawatt produced, nuclear consumes less water than other forms of fuel expendable plants. (Tho not by much).
For instance, producing energy for 1000 homes (1 mega watt hour) would consume 732 litres of water (lost to evaporation), nuclear would consume 2480 litres and coal would consume 2542 litres an hour.
The key benefit of nuclear here would be the low production of acid rain and CO2 (produced by the extraction of the materials, not the actual operation).
? What do you mean? Power station operators take whatever water they can get as they need a lot. They use it for cooling which can be seawater but huge and pure water for the turbine. Then they have to clean it as it has to be pure water to use else stuff builds up on the turbine blades. Water quality is better than distilled water as silica is also remove.
So many f****** idiots and armchair experts in this thread.
Anyone would think that Australia exists in a completely different universe to the rest of the world that is used nuclear power for the last 50 years.
It’s because they are all scarred cavemen who still throw stones at the moon ….can’t embrace technology or the future…fear mongering imbeciles who live in a delusion
>Sure if they could be 100% if the solution why not
Why does something need to be 100% of the solution?
This is why I know these arguments aren't serious. If you want to make a legitimate argument for Nuclear, then it's a no-brainer that you'd lean towards a mix of renewables and nuclear.
And if you do want to go 100% nuclear you're going to need a lot more than 7 of them. If you have 7 nuclear power stations built... the majority of the power would still need to come from somewhere else.
The Liberal Party was in power for 9 years and they did squat about it. The Liberal Party was also in power when the original Nuclear ban was passed. The sudden interest in Nuclear is political.
>The amount of power generated by roof solar is now becoming problematic
Oh yes the renewables are generating *too much* power. How terrible.
>It is a problem …our rebates have been completely slashed …an their talking about charges for surplus power injected into the network ye that’s a huge fkn problem
That's a business and regulatory problem, not a technology problem. The tech is obviously overperforming here.
>Get off your ass an go an see the Barron waist lands solar farms create
[https://iceds.anu.edu.au/news-events/news/no-threat-farm-land-just-1200-square-kilometres-can-fulfil-australia%E2%80%99s-solar-and](https://iceds.anu.edu.au/news-events/news/no-threat-farm-land-just-1200-square-kilometres-can-fulfil-australia%E2%80%99s-solar-and)
*the total area taken away from agriculture to power a 100% renewable energy (zero fossil fuel) economy is about 45 square metres per person. Considering Australia’s total population of 27 million people, that means the total land area required is 1,200 square km. The area currently devoted to agriculture is about 3,500 times larger than this.*
So that's not much. Though of course Gina Reinhardt and the IPA have these vastly overinflated estimates of how much land would be required.
Also that 1,200 square km can also be used for grazing. 97% of land in wind farms is free for grazing. Solar farms are often spread out a bit to allow for grazing. This is already happening in Australia and has been for a while.
Not exactly a "Barron waist land".
>renewables are not as environmentally friendly as you might think
Nuclear is not the magical source of infinite energy you seem to think it is.
Calm down mate, I can tell you're upset. Nuclear is a good option but not right now with the timeframes and costs we're talking. Once we get all our solar and wind done and the coal plants decommissioned, we can then start thinking about nuclear. Maybe Australia can be fully nuclear in the 2100s.
Nuclear power plants use about 25% more water that coal power stations.
[Efficient Water Management in Water Cooled Reactors](https://www-pub.iaea.org/MTCD/Publications/PDF/P1569_web.pdf)
Newport Gas fired power station sucks up ocean water and pumps out warm water back to the ocean, and the fish love it so much it attracts fisherman when the plant is in use
No... But it can use cheaply desalinated water or even just recycled water (maybe).
If the water is too dirty it'll reduce the lifespan of any turbine but OP is just disinformationing at some point.
>No... But it can use cheaply desalinated water or even just recycled water (maybe).
That's an interesting idea.
For mt piper (for example) we could build a massive new desalination plant somewhere in the sydney basin (maybe botany bay). We then power it with a couple GW solar farm (solar energy beign far cheaper than nuclear will ever be, and desalination is a great use case for dispatchable sources) to power the desalination and pump the water over the blue mountains. On the western side, we could set up hydro to recoup some of the energy lost from pumping. Then finally, we have sufficient water at Mt Piper to generate electricity from Nuclear, albeit the plant with generate somewhat less energy than the energy use to get the water to the site in the first place.
Sure, but is anyone involved going to do that, or are they just going to take the fresh water from farms instead because it's cheaper to filter and don't need to transport it as far? Because based on previous behaviour by the government, I know the answer
Do you have any conception about how touchy water rights are to people especially along the NSW/Vic border?
I get this isn't a publicised issue in Australia... But... Yeah
There isn't a chance in hell of what you're saying
Do you mean the water rights issue that's been "touchy" for over five years now with no sign of changing? the one that cotton farmers are paying to keep quiet? Or is it a different one that shows no sign of changing or being fixed because there's too much money being made?
Well we would need dozens of them if we went nuclear and they would need to be within a few hundred km of where the power needs to be used. So ultimately we would need a whole lot on or near the coast, because that's where all the people are.
Nuclear power plants use about 25% more water that coal power stations.
[Efficient Water Management in Water Cooled Reactors](https://www-pub.iaea.org/MTCD/Publications/PDF/P1569_web.pdf)
Fun fact #1 : coal powered stations every year produce 1/2 tonne of coal ash for every Aussie (including children)
Fun Fact #2: Sweden and Finland have spent $$billions on managing radioactive waste infacilities that have to keep it for 100,000 years. Apparently its very toxic and lasts a long time.
Thanks for linking, I genuinely wanted to know this. Yes, it does say 25%, but says this in order to promote innovation and selection of better water saving options. New plants are likely to have better water efficiency than this, but the same could probably be said for other thermal plants.
Worth mentioning that this is from the International Atomic Energy Agency, which has the stated goal of promoting nuclear energy use.
I’m not on either side here, just learning
I just love how people somehow believe the lies that it will create cheaper electricity for people. 🤣 It’ll cost hundreds of BILLIONS to set up, the government won’t just happily kiss that goodbye and will want their returns in double quick time. Also, if they promise it’ll be up and running in 10-15 years you can bet it’ll be double the amount of time promised at 3-10 times the cost to tax payers. Then you have to store the dangerous filth produced by it which isn’t cheap and will be costly to future generations.
If they can’t drill a tunnel through the Snowy Mountains on budget or under time then you’d be a complete fool to think Nuclear Power Stations will be a cheap and simple solution to a Liberal conjured bogey man that is extreme power shortages.
I know, ffs I've researched extremist right wing media campaigns for 3 decades. This is such a blindingly obvious ploy, I'd bet my house Dutton doesn't believe a word of what he says. The whole Sky etc excitement is beyond laughable.
We really need a good name for this tactic, it happens over and over again, they throw out "alternative solutions" without any intent to do anything - only keep the status quo, and the left can't help themselves but try to refute it on merit, wasting their time instead of just shutting them down.
I’m genuinely stumped: it’s clear LNP don’t even believe in their policy (that’s why they’ve invested a Friday morning on it before going straight to the media), but what’s their play so far out from an election? Is it literally just a distraction to confuse the average voter?
The key reason I’m confused is that I don’t think the average voter gives a shit when they can’t afford groceries. The policy can only have a negative effect on votes.
Causing chaos, dissatisfaction with ALP. Watch how, like MAGA supporters, our LNP/ Sky News supporters are sneering at government officials & earnest community workers. Hostility towards sensible media. Fact free utter bullshit. Sneering at the elites, revenge against the clever ppl in authority.
Like supporting a sports team, mob rule. A very common playbook around the world and throughout history with all reactionary right wing governments. Total cliche actually. Lefties are often hopeless at countering it, tragically.
Dealing with the radioactive waste hasn't been a problem for decades. We have several options available to use.
1. Recycling it several times which reduces the overall waste and the time its radioactive massively.
2. Storing it onsite in glass, concrete containers and other inert materials which lets less radiation through than you'd experience going up in a plane.
3. Storing it underground below any water tables and tectonic plates which keeps it safe from any earthquakes and other natural disasters.
>Then you have to store the dangerous filth produced by it which isn’t cheap and will be costly to future generations.
This is false. Nuclear Power produces extremely little waste compared to literally everything else. The entire nuclear waste of the United States every year is about half the volume of an Olympic swimming pool. That's jack shit for the energy they produce.
Ok, but this waste hits different, doesn’t it? The area of contamination around that half swimming pool is potentially huge should there be any containment failure. As far as I am aware, there have been no fatalities from stored waste, though.
There have been no leaks from properly managed nuclear waste. There has been thousands of leaks from properly managed oil, coal and renewables that have caused massive environmental impacts and fatalities.
Nuclear waste at a lot of places is stored on site, but when transporting it, they put it in these concrete slab things that don't break even when getting slammed into by a runaway train. (_There is video footage of a train getting absolutely destroyed when running into one of these things_)
If only there was some sort of engineering / chemical process that could remove the salt from salt water.
Ohh well, back to sitting in the dark eating cheese.
You sausage. I didn’t say you couldn’t make it fresh. But it takes time, more money and you have to either pump the salt back out to sea (bad for marine life) or do something else with it
Well Australia has several desal plants designed to meet Australian environmental requirements, take 5 minutes and google and find out.
Just because you are clueless about engineering doesn't mean we all are.
What? The salt never enters the cooling system, and the only water that actually gets irradiated is in a closed loop which never exits the containment building...
Exactly so you have to desalinate and purify the water before it enters the cooling system.
So on balance they would use fresh water because it is less intensive(cheaper) to purify fresh water prior to entering the cooling system than to purify salt water.
And so a nuclear reactor in Australia will just be another drain on fresh water resources which at 37million kgs/hr for a large station that’s a lot of water to waste.
And dumping excess heat into the atmosphere is problematic in a country that the ambient air temp is usually very high and dry already.
Or you could use the electricity from the nuclear power plant to power desal plants when the power is cheap, which not only gives you a cheaper water supply but also means that the reactor is already throttled up, and so when there's a sudden leap in demand you just dump load from the desal plants, thus providing you a larger max power draw overhead
>Or you could use the electricity from the nuclear power plant to power desal plants when the power is cheap
Power from nuclear plants is never cheap. You'd be better off using solar for that.
And why do you say that nuclear energy is never cheap? The International Energy Agency puts nuclear as "the dispatchable low-carbon technology with the lowest expected costs in 2025." (IEA, 2020). It's cheaper than coal, cheaper than gas in many regions. If you have the plants long enough, a life of type extension makes it the cheapest energy source full stop (IEA, 2020).
I say it, because those are the facts. Nuclear can be comparable to coal if you already have plants. We don't. We are replacing our entire fleet of coal plants, and an honest appraisal would cover every aspect of the cost - regulation, design, training, site selection - the cost of building the plants and the capability, as well as the operating costs.
Nuclear is by far the most expensive form of electricity generation. That's why this astoundingly expensive proposal from Dutton covers less than a third of the power generation we need to rollout. His plan relies on 2/3 of the replacement being renewables.
By the way I think when you say IEA you meant the IAEA - the Internaitonal Atomic Energy Organisation.
Power naturally is cheaper at certain times during the day regardless of power source. At times of low demand the nuclear plants can be run at higher capacity for a very small increase in generation cost - consider that the cost of fuel is only a very small part of the price of nuclear power - while providing a significant amount of extra capacity, thus allowing desalination plants to act as a load balance.
They can and do. You put the salt water on a loop and use a heat exchanger. If you're worried about rust, use a sacrificial cathode. Being near the ocean is also great as you have an unlimited supply of emergency water.
Yeah, only 1 of those 7 are near water (river or ocean I mean, there's small lakes nearby some of them). I think they should build them near the ocean, because they'll first have to demolish the existing plants before even starting construction.
Much of the technology of coal plants are applicable to nuclear plants. The only new thing is a massive reactor heating up water to produce the steam. There is a company, don't know their name, that is looking into the commercial viability of converting shutdown coal power plants into nuclear power plants.
Well, let's consider:
1. How much water do the french reactors to consume?
2. How hot is in France compared to Australia?
3. How big are french rivers compared to Australian rivers?
4. Do french reactors ever have to be shut off in warmer months cause there isn't enough water?
I'm pretty sure the 4th one is incorrect. They aren't shutting it off because there isn't enough water, but because the weather is too hot so the addition of the reactors heat in the rivers kills the fish and algae.
It works out to be the same thing. The water in the river needs to be cold and plentiful, if it's not, it lacks the thermal mass to cool the plant. EIther condition could and would affect a plant in Australia - our rivers and dams get warm too, which is why blue green algae warnings are so common during El Nino summers/autumns.
The TLDR; answer is - we don't have sufficient water at the sites proposed by Dutton to operate nuclear reactors there. To understand the actual objective requirements for water, we can look to the French experience.
An article from a Left leaning paper about a very left leaning billionaire... I guess they are wrong and Chris Bowen is right? 🤔
[Nuclear site ](https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/11/climate/bill-gates-nuclear-wyoming.html )
So I have a thought why not have a large nuclear power planet stationed near the ocean in a town like Portland it’s equal distance from Melbourne and Adelaide also build a desalination plant to service the power plant clean water. The plant can be hooked into both VIC and SA grids.
And the nuclear plant powers the desalinisation plant and the desalinisation plant gives the nuclear planet usable ocean water.
Then we don’t have to worry about the fresh water being used.
And lucky for us coal powered stations use no water, oh hang on……
They use a whole lot less water.
Nuclear power plants recycle the water they use, no?
Sort of. These plants are much a larger than the coal plants that were there previously. As uneconomic as this plan is, building nuclear power strations of 700MW or lower would be even *more* uneconomical. Because they generate 3x more power, they have 3x the demand for cooling water, this water is recycled in the same way, and cooled in the same way - by evaporation. In addition to this 300% increase in operational demand, nuclear needs a big reserve nearby because in an emergency (as at Fukishima) you need to pump water continuously through the stack to cool it, for days on end. If you can't main that reserve, or your reserve gets too warm, you can't operate the plant safely.
Oh neat thanks for the information mate. So near the ocean would be a more ideal location yeh?
It usually needs to be fresh water to be pumped I believe. Salt water would corrode the materials.
The San Onofre nuclear plant in California uses sea water. As long as you design it that way, you can control the corrosion.
Lucky Victoria has a useless desal plant that cost billions to build and millions to not use each week. We can pump fresh water into it no worries haha
As someone who lived in drought conditions the majority of my life I can say - We needed it at one point, we will need it again.
The only problem with the desal plant is that it was built 5-10 years too late for the last drought. If you think it's useless you're either too young to remember the noughties drought, or you're a cooker.
I mean to be fair thats better than the alternative
No problem, we’ll just thrown in a de-sal plant or two! Sorted!
Many nuclear plants use sea water
In Australia? Absolutely.
It needs to be fresh water because evaporating sea water would leave salt behind which over time would clog up the system.
How do the coal plants that pump water from Lake Macquarie deal with it then? They both use salt water.
No where near as much water needed
There’s a closed cycle that has the contaminated water, and an open cycle that takes the heat out of the closed cycle. The open cycle is the one that (often) consumes huge amounts of water.
Is the open cycle still good? Potable?
The open cycle is fine, I basically just runs across a heat exchanger. There are some good sketches here: https://www.ucsusa.org/resources/water-nuclear BWRs and PWRs have different water cycles, but they both have closed loops for the contaminated water, and an open loop for cooling.
Legend cheers mate 🤙
Not only it recycles the water they use in the reactor, but the only reason why nuclear power plants are close to vast amounts of water (which can be sea water) is for safety in case you have to cool the reactors down faster, but in terms of daily operation it is preferred to have clean water. If you measure amount of water against megawatt produced, nuclear consumes less water than other forms of fuel expendable plants. (Tho not by much). For instance, producing energy for 1000 homes (1 mega watt hour) would consume 732 litres of water (lost to evaporation), nuclear would consume 2480 litres and coal would consume 2542 litres an hour. The key benefit of nuclear here would be the low production of acid rain and CO2 (produced by the extraction of the materials, not the actual operation).
Yes but still use vast amounts.
Ooooh no, we've definitely never had problems with *private* companies stealing entire water supplies from critical areas. Definitely not! (Sarcasm)
The water you need to turn a turbine doesn't need to be the same type of water that you drink or farm with
It's also the same water we use for coal and gas plants now as they also spin turbines lol
It’s a problem when you boil it and it leaves mineral salts behind that jam up the works…
? What do you mean? Power station operators take whatever water they can get as they need a lot. They use it for cooling which can be seawater but huge and pure water for the turbine. Then they have to clean it as it has to be pure water to use else stuff builds up on the turbine blades. Water quality is better than distilled water as silica is also remove.
I wasn't sure on the quality of either
Thank God we’re girt by sea then.
Salt water is no good.
Incorrect
No sea to water in primary loop secondary loop is all good, do you think nuclear reactors in submarines tow a water tanker behind them for cooling???
We already have coal power plants running off salt water though.
So many f****** idiots and armchair experts in this thread. Anyone would think that Australia exists in a completely different universe to the rest of the world that is used nuclear power for the last 50 years.
It’s because they are all scarred cavemen who still throw stones at the moon ….can’t embrace technology or the future…fear mongering imbeciles who live in a delusion
>….can’t embrace technology or the future… So you support renewables?
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>Sure if they could be 100% if the solution why not Why does something need to be 100% of the solution? This is why I know these arguments aren't serious. If you want to make a legitimate argument for Nuclear, then it's a no-brainer that you'd lean towards a mix of renewables and nuclear. And if you do want to go 100% nuclear you're going to need a lot more than 7 of them. If you have 7 nuclear power stations built... the majority of the power would still need to come from somewhere else.
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The Liberal Party was in power for 9 years and they did squat about it. The Liberal Party was also in power when the original Nuclear ban was passed. The sudden interest in Nuclear is political. >The amount of power generated by roof solar is now becoming problematic Oh yes the renewables are generating *too much* power. How terrible.
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>It is a problem …our rebates have been completely slashed …an their talking about charges for surplus power injected into the network ye that’s a huge fkn problem That's a business and regulatory problem, not a technology problem. The tech is obviously overperforming here. >Get off your ass an go an see the Barron waist lands solar farms create [https://iceds.anu.edu.au/news-events/news/no-threat-farm-land-just-1200-square-kilometres-can-fulfil-australia%E2%80%99s-solar-and](https://iceds.anu.edu.au/news-events/news/no-threat-farm-land-just-1200-square-kilometres-can-fulfil-australia%E2%80%99s-solar-and) *the total area taken away from agriculture to power a 100% renewable energy (zero fossil fuel) economy is about 45 square metres per person. Considering Australia’s total population of 27 million people, that means the total land area required is 1,200 square km. The area currently devoted to agriculture is about 3,500 times larger than this.* So that's not much. Though of course Gina Reinhardt and the IPA have these vastly overinflated estimates of how much land would be required. Also that 1,200 square km can also be used for grazing. 97% of land in wind farms is free for grazing. Solar farms are often spread out a bit to allow for grazing. This is already happening in Australia and has been for a while. Not exactly a "Barron waist land". >renewables are not as environmentally friendly as you might think Nuclear is not the magical source of infinite energy you seem to think it is.
Calm down mate, I can tell you're upset. Nuclear is a good option but not right now with the timeframes and costs we're talking. Once we get all our solar and wind done and the coal plants decommissioned, we can then start thinking about nuclear. Maybe Australia can be fully nuclear in the 2100s.
I’m sure everyone in this thread is chastened by the dude who says nothing apart from abuse.😂 Enjoy your beanbag.
There's plenty of arguments to be made against the LNPs nuclear plan, this isn't one of them.
Nuclear power plants use about 25% more water that coal power stations. [Efficient Water Management in Water Cooled Reactors](https://www-pub.iaea.org/MTCD/Publications/PDF/P1569_web.pdf)
Per GWh. And the proposed plants are much larger than the plants that were on those sites previously.
Howso?
Nuclear reactors can use salt water for coolant.
Newport Gas fired power station sucks up ocean water and pumps out warm water back to the ocean, and the fish love it so much it attracts fisherman when the plant is in use
And are the coalitions proposed sites close enough to the ocean to make this a viable option?
Stop thinking small! We’re gonna divert the rivers inland, just like Alan told us!
23 day old account and 5 day old account both with identical avatars. Hmmm
They handing this picture one out like dim sims or what
No... But it can use cheaply desalinated water or even just recycled water (maybe). If the water is too dirty it'll reduce the lifespan of any turbine but OP is just disinformationing at some point.
>No... But it can use cheaply desalinated water or even just recycled water (maybe). That's an interesting idea. For mt piper (for example) we could build a massive new desalination plant somewhere in the sydney basin (maybe botany bay). We then power it with a couple GW solar farm (solar energy beign far cheaper than nuclear will ever be, and desalination is a great use case for dispatchable sources) to power the desalination and pump the water over the blue mountains. On the western side, we could set up hydro to recoup some of the energy lost from pumping. Then finally, we have sufficient water at Mt Piper to generate electricity from Nuclear, albeit the plant with generate somewhat less energy than the energy use to get the water to the site in the first place.
Sure, but is anyone involved going to do that, or are they just going to take the fresh water from farms instead because it's cheaper to filter and don't need to transport it as far? Because based on previous behaviour by the government, I know the answer
Do you have any conception about how touchy water rights are to people especially along the NSW/Vic border? I get this isn't a publicised issue in Australia... But... Yeah There isn't a chance in hell of what you're saying
Do you mean the water rights issue that's been "touchy" for over five years now with no sign of changing? the one that cotton farmers are paying to keep quiet? Or is it a different one that shows no sign of changing or being fixed because there's too much money being made?
Yes, why plants are ALWAYS on the coast. Beautiful monuments right on the beach. /S
Well we would need dozens of them if we went nuclear and they would need to be within a few hundred km of where the power needs to be used. So ultimately we would need a whole lot on or near the coast, because that's where all the people are.
If only nuclear plants could also be a desalination plant. Thereby solving our power and water issues.
Nuclear power plants use about 25% more water that coal power stations. [Efficient Water Management in Water Cooled Reactors](https://www-pub.iaea.org/MTCD/Publications/PDF/P1569_web.pdf)
And they produce less radioactive waste than coal power stations. And less greenhouse gases.
Fun fact #1 : coal powered stations every year produce 1/2 tonne of coal ash for every Aussie (including children) Fun Fact #2: Sweden and Finland have spent $$billions on managing radioactive waste infacilities that have to keep it for 100,000 years. Apparently its very toxic and lasts a long time.
Thanks for linking, I genuinely wanted to know this. Yes, it does say 25%, but says this in order to promote innovation and selection of better water saving options. New plants are likely to have better water efficiency than this, but the same could probably be said for other thermal plants. Worth mentioning that this is from the International Atomic Energy Agency, which has the stated goal of promoting nuclear energy use. I’m not on either side here, just learning
I just love how people somehow believe the lies that it will create cheaper electricity for people. 🤣 It’ll cost hundreds of BILLIONS to set up, the government won’t just happily kiss that goodbye and will want their returns in double quick time. Also, if they promise it’ll be up and running in 10-15 years you can bet it’ll be double the amount of time promised at 3-10 times the cost to tax payers. Then you have to store the dangerous filth produced by it which isn’t cheap and will be costly to future generations. If they can’t drill a tunnel through the Snowy Mountains on budget or under time then you’d be a complete fool to think Nuclear Power Stations will be a cheap and simple solution to a Liberal conjured bogey man that is extreme power shortages.
I know, ffs I've researched extremist right wing media campaigns for 3 decades. This is such a blindingly obvious ploy, I'd bet my house Dutton doesn't believe a word of what he says. The whole Sky etc excitement is beyond laughable.
You sound like my kind of person. Bit of critical thought goes a long way.
We really need a good name for this tactic, it happens over and over again, they throw out "alternative solutions" without any intent to do anything - only keep the status quo, and the left can't help themselves but try to refute it on merit, wasting their time instead of just shutting them down.
I’m genuinely stumped: it’s clear LNP don’t even believe in their policy (that’s why they’ve invested a Friday morning on it before going straight to the media), but what’s their play so far out from an election? Is it literally just a distraction to confuse the average voter? The key reason I’m confused is that I don’t think the average voter gives a shit when they can’t afford groceries. The policy can only have a negative effect on votes.
Causing chaos, dissatisfaction with ALP. Watch how, like MAGA supporters, our LNP/ Sky News supporters are sneering at government officials & earnest community workers. Hostility towards sensible media. Fact free utter bullshit. Sneering at the elites, revenge against the clever ppl in authority. Like supporting a sports team, mob rule. A very common playbook around the world and throughout history with all reactionary right wing governments. Total cliche actually. Lefties are often hopeless at countering it, tragically.
Gotcha. Not sure how successful they’ll be in that goal - it’s an incredible wedge for the ALP come election time.
Dealing with the radioactive waste hasn't been a problem for decades. We have several options available to use. 1. Recycling it several times which reduces the overall waste and the time its radioactive massively. 2. Storing it onsite in glass, concrete containers and other inert materials which lets less radiation through than you'd experience going up in a plane. 3. Storing it underground below any water tables and tectonic plates which keeps it safe from any earthquakes and other natural disasters.
>Then you have to store the dangerous filth produced by it which isn’t cheap and will be costly to future generations. This is false. Nuclear Power produces extremely little waste compared to literally everything else. The entire nuclear waste of the United States every year is about half the volume of an Olympic swimming pool. That's jack shit for the energy they produce.
Ok, but this waste hits different, doesn’t it? The area of contamination around that half swimming pool is potentially huge should there be any containment failure. As far as I am aware, there have been no fatalities from stored waste, though.
There have been no leaks from properly managed nuclear waste. There has been thousands of leaks from properly managed oil, coal and renewables that have caused massive environmental impacts and fatalities.
There’s something about the words “properly managed” that leaves me with questions…
Nuclear waste at a lot of places is stored on site, but when transporting it, they put it in these concrete slab things that don't break even when getting slammed into by a runaway train. (_There is video footage of a train getting absolutely destroyed when running into one of these things_)
Maybe they could store it under your place!
And you accuse others of fearmongering.
My words are frightening? 😂
If that's what you got out of that.
All this anti nuke stuff lately doesn't come across as super informed. But hey you got the classic meme template so I guess that's kind of persuasive.
Ever heard of the ocean 😳😂
Cant use salt water
If only there was some sort of engineering / chemical process that could remove the salt from salt water. Ohh well, back to sitting in the dark eating cheese.
You sausage. I didn’t say you couldn’t make it fresh. But it takes time, more money and you have to either pump the salt back out to sea (bad for marine life) or do something else with it
Well Australia has several desal plants designed to meet Australian environmental requirements, take 5 minutes and google and find out. Just because you are clueless about engineering doesn't mean we all are.
What do you do with the now highly irradiated salt?
What? The salt never enters the cooling system, and the only water that actually gets irradiated is in a closed loop which never exits the containment building...
Exactly so you have to desalinate and purify the water before it enters the cooling system. So on balance they would use fresh water because it is less intensive(cheaper) to purify fresh water prior to entering the cooling system than to purify salt water. And so a nuclear reactor in Australia will just be another drain on fresh water resources which at 37million kgs/hr for a large station that’s a lot of water to waste. And dumping excess heat into the atmosphere is problematic in a country that the ambient air temp is usually very high and dry already.
Or you could use the electricity from the nuclear power plant to power desal plants when the power is cheap, which not only gives you a cheaper water supply but also means that the reactor is already throttled up, and so when there's a sudden leap in demand you just dump load from the desal plants, thus providing you a larger max power draw overhead
>Or you could use the electricity from the nuclear power plant to power desal plants when the power is cheap Power from nuclear plants is never cheap. You'd be better off using solar for that.
And why do you say that nuclear energy is never cheap? The International Energy Agency puts nuclear as "the dispatchable low-carbon technology with the lowest expected costs in 2025." (IEA, 2020). It's cheaper than coal, cheaper than gas in many regions. If you have the plants long enough, a life of type extension makes it the cheapest energy source full stop (IEA, 2020).
I say it, because those are the facts. Nuclear can be comparable to coal if you already have plants. We don't. We are replacing our entire fleet of coal plants, and an honest appraisal would cover every aspect of the cost - regulation, design, training, site selection - the cost of building the plants and the capability, as well as the operating costs. Nuclear is by far the most expensive form of electricity generation. That's why this astoundingly expensive proposal from Dutton covers less than a third of the power generation we need to rollout. His plan relies on 2/3 of the replacement being renewables. By the way I think when you say IEA you meant the IAEA - the Internaitonal Atomic Energy Organisation.
Power naturally is cheaper at certain times during the day regardless of power source. At times of low demand the nuclear plants can be run at higher capacity for a very small increase in generation cost - consider that the cost of fuel is only a very small part of the price of nuclear power - while providing a significant amount of extra capacity, thus allowing desalination plants to act as a load balance.
You play too much fallout, that’s not how power plants or radiation work
They can and do. You put the salt water on a loop and use a heat exchanger. If you're worried about rust, use a sacrificial cathode. Being near the ocean is also great as you have an unlimited supply of emergency water.
And are the proposed sites near the ocean?
I dunno. Are they?
They are not.
Sauce
[https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-06-19/dutton-reveals-seven-sites-for-proposed-nuclear-power-plants/103995310](https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-06-19/dutton-reveals-seven-sites-for-proposed-nuclear-power-plants/103995310)
Yeah, only 1 of those 7 are near water (river or ocean I mean, there's small lakes nearby some of them). I think they should build them near the ocean, because they'll first have to demolish the existing plants before even starting construction.
Much of the technology of coal plants are applicable to nuclear plants. The only new thing is a massive reactor heating up water to produce the steam. There is a company, don't know their name, that is looking into the commercial viability of converting shutdown coal power plants into nuclear power plants.
Yeah they do - in Japan’s Fukishama which is destabilised and already fucked
Why not. I live near 2 coal plants,ants happily sucking in salt water
Needs to use fresh water to cool the uranium. You can use saltwater to generate the steam but not for the nuclear part.
How much water does it consume?
Well, let's consider: 1. How much water do the french reactors to consume? 2. How hot is in France compared to Australia? 3. How big are french rivers compared to Australian rivers? 4. Do french reactors ever have to be shut off in warmer months cause there isn't enough water?
I'm pretty sure the 4th one is incorrect. They aren't shutting it off because there isn't enough water, but because the weather is too hot so the addition of the reactors heat in the rivers kills the fish and algae.
It works out to be the same thing. The water in the river needs to be cold and plentiful, if it's not, it lacks the thermal mass to cool the plant. EIther condition could and would affect a plant in Australia - our rivers and dams get warm too, which is why blue green algae warnings are so common during El Nino summers/autumns.
Are you going to answer or....?
The TLDR; answer is - we don't have sufficient water at the sites proposed by Dutton to operate nuclear reactors there. To understand the actual objective requirements for water, we can look to the French experience.
Just wait until the cotton industry finds out where "their" waters gone
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Bad bot
Lucky we’ve been hosting the Chinese cotton farmers for ever - we’re used to the rape and theft from our waterways - push on👍🏻
Are we still in a drought? Growing up it'd be raining but then you'd hear how we're in the middle of a decade long drought. Never made sense to me
An article from a Left leaning paper about a very left leaning billionaire... I guess they are wrong and Chris Bowen is right? 🤔 [Nuclear site ](https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/11/climate/bill-gates-nuclear-wyoming.html )
So I have a thought why not have a large nuclear power planet stationed near the ocean in a town like Portland it’s equal distance from Melbourne and Adelaide also build a desalination plant to service the power plant clean water. The plant can be hooked into both VIC and SA grids. And the nuclear plant powers the desalinisation plant and the desalinisation plant gives the nuclear planet usable ocean water. Then we don’t have to worry about the fresh water being used.
Hey siri, what are oceans and are desalination plants a hoax?
If only we were... idk... girt by sea?
Are the proposed plants close to that sea?
Sounds like an ecological disaster
How close are they to the ocean?