<
https://theconversation.com/dutton-wants-a-mature-debate-about-nuclear-power-by-the-time-weve-had-one-new-plants-will-be-too-late-to-replace-coal-224513>
"If you believe Newspoll and the
Australian Financial Review, Australia wants
to go nuclear – as long as it’s small.
Newspoll this week suggests a majority of us are in favour of building small
modular nuclear reactors. A poll of
Australian Financial Review readers last
year told a similar story.
These polls (and a more general question about nuclear power in a Resolve poll
for
Nine newspapers this week) come after a concerted effort by the Coalition
to normalise talking about nuclear power – specifically, the small, modular
kind that’s meant to be cheaper and safer. Unfortunately, while small reactors
have been around for decades, they are generally costlier than larger reactors
with a similar design. This reflects the economies of size associated with
larger boilers.
The hope (and it’s still only a hope) is “modular” design will permit reactors
to be built in factories in large numbers (and therefore at low cost), then
shipped to the sites where they are installed.
Coalition enthusiasm for talking about small modular reactors has not been
dented by the failure of the only serious proposal to build them: that of
NuScale, a company that designs and markets these reactors in the United
States. Faced with long delays and increases in the projected costs of the
Voygr reactor, the intended buyers, a group of municipal power utilities,
pulled the plug. The project had a decade of development behind it but had not
even reached prototype stage.
Other proposals to build small modular reactors abound but none are likely to
be constructed anywhere before the mid-2030s, if at all. Even if they work as
planned (a big if), they will arrive too late to replace coal power in
Australia. So Opposition Leader Peter Dutton needs to put up a detailed plan
for how he would deliver nuclear power in time."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
