Four Reasons Why Nuclear Power is a Dumb Idea for Australia

**Australia’s Energy Landscape: The Case Against Nuclear Power**

In the heart of Australia's vibrant and renewable-rich landscape, the symphony of wind and solar energy has long played the tune of progress. However, an unexpected blare has cut through this harmony—sudden advocacy for nuclear power from a political party that previously silenced such discussions. This about-turn has sparked curiosity and debate, as the idea of embracing nuclear energy in Australia's clean energy future is being championed by the Conservative opposition under Peter Dutton.

Rosie Barnes, with her 20 years of experience in clean energy development, shares her insights on why nuclear power might not be the solution for Australia. She begins by recounting how nuclear energy was once firmly off the table in Australia, thanks to a nationwide ban introduced in 1998 as part of a deal between the Conservative Howard government and the Greens Party to secure a nuclear research reactor at Lucas Heights near Sydney.

Now, with theban potentially lifted, the question arises: Should Australia embrace nuclear power? Barnes argues that it’s not just a bad idea—it’s a *dumb* one. Her reasoning is backed by four solid arguments.

### 1. **The Sluggish Pace of Nuclear Power Development**

Nuclear power plants take an average of nine years to construct, with some projects experiencing significant delays and cost overruns. For instance, the Vogtle plant in Georgia began construction in 2013 and remains unfinished, while Hinkley Point C in the UK, announced in 2007, is projected to be completed beyond 2030. According to Bent Flyvbjerg’s research on large projects, 93% of nuclear projects exceed their expected timelines, with an average schedule overrun of 65%. If Australia were to pursue nuclear power, it could expect a similar fate, pushing the timeline well into the future.

Given that Australia aims to have 90% of its electricity sourced from renewables by 2033, there’s little room for nuclear power to contribute meaningfully during this transition. By the time a nuclear reactor comes online, the energy landscape would likely have already shifted significantly.

### 2. **Incompatibility with Wind and Solar Power**

Australia’s renewable energy landscape is rapidly evolving, with wind and solar accounting for over 30% of electricity generation today—up from less than 1% just 15 years ago. While nuclear power provides constant output, wind and solar are inherently variable, requiring dispatchable energy sources (such as hydro, batteries, or gas peakers) to balance supply and demand minute by minute.

Combining nuclear with variable renewables doesn’t reduce the need for dispatchable power; it merely shifts some of the burden. Countries like France and Sweden that have significant nuclear and renewable capacity also rely heavily on hydroelectricity, which can be turned on and off as needed. Australia lacks this luxury, making nuclear integration challenging without additional infrastructure.

### 3. **High Costs**

Nuclear power is expensive. Even when accounting for the extra costs of integrating variable renewables (transmission, storage, etc.), wind and solar remain far more cost-effective than nuclear. Studies show that new nuclear projects often double their initial cost estimates due to delays and overruns. In contrast, wind and solar projects have minimal cost overruns, averaging 0–10%.

While operational costs are low for existing nuclear plants, Australia doesn’t have a legacy fleet of reactors to extend or maintain. Building new nuclear capacity would be prohibitively expensive.

### 4. **Solving Problems We Don’t Have**

Nuclear power provides constant baseload energy, which is beneficial in countries with seasonal energy demands (e.g., winter peaks). However, Australia’s demand peaks are during summer when solar output remains strong. Additionally, periods of low wind and solar (dunkelflaute) in Australia are rare—typically lasting hours or a day at most.

Australia also has ample land for renewable projects, making the space-saving advantage of nuclear irrelevant. For instance, 0.1% of Australia’s land could generate all its energy needs through solar alone. This abundance of land negates one of nuclear’s key benefits in densely populated countries like Japan or Korea.

### Conclusion

While Rosie Barnes acknowledges that nuclear power has its place in certain contexts, she argues that it’s not suitable for Australia. The slow pace of development, incompatibility with wind and solar, high costs, and the fact that it solves problems we don’t have all point to a future where nuclear energy is unnecessary.

As Australia continues to lead the way in renewable energy innovation, the focus should remain on accelerating the adoption of wind, solar, and complementary technologies. Nuclear power, despite its potential, simply doesn’t fit the bill for Australia’s unique energy challenges.

Thank you for tuning in! If you have any thoughts or questions about this video, feel free to leave them in the comments below.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enIn the vibrant,renewable-rich landscape of Australiathe symphony of windand solar has long playedthe tune of progress, an unexpectedblare cuts through the harmony.Like a foghorn in the calm of dawn,the sudden advocacy for nuclear powerfrom a party that previouslysilenced such discussions is turning headsand raising eyebrows.It's an about-turnthat could make solar panels tilt inCuriosity.I'm Rosie Barnes,and with 20 yearsin the trenches of clean energydevelopment, I've seen firsthandthe evolution of Australia's energylandscape. DoesAustralia need nuclear power?The notion of nuclear energywas, until recently,firmly off the table for Australia.But now it's found its way backinto conversation championedby the Conservative opposition partyUnder the leadership of Peter Dutton,there's a push to integratenuclear power as a backbonefor Australia's clean energy future.His vision includesswift construction timelines for largereactors and small modular reactorsonce that technology matures.And they are specifically targetingthe sites of our retiring coal plantsto take advantage of existinginfrastructure, The first obstacle thatthese nuclear plans face is that nuclearpower is currently banned in Australia.Back in 1998,the Conservative Howard government wantedto secure a nuclear research reactorat Lucas Heights near Sydney.To do so,they needed support from the Greens Party,who made a deal to support the researchreactor if a nationwide ban on nuclearpower plants was introducedat the same time.so it was banned and remains so today.But what if this ban were lifted?Should we then embrace nuclearfor our energy future?Nah, it's a dumb idea for Australia.And I'm not just throwing around wordshere.There are some solid reasonsbehind this bold claim. four to be precise.Let's start with the first one.The sluggish paceof bringing nuclear power online.In an era where rapid change is the norm.this slow stride just doesn't cut it.Ready on to find out why.Let's dive in.the first reason that nuclear poweris a dumb idea for Australiais that it is too slow.Recently completed nuclear power plantshave taken about nine years on averageto construct.If we step into our time machineto 2033 Australia, 90% of our electricitywill come from renewables by then.Which doesn't leave a lot of spacefor nuclear.All of our brown coal power will be closedand a decade laterthere'll be no coal power at all.And that nine yearsI mentioned is only for construction.It takes years of planningbefore any contracts are signed.Some countries are buildingnuclear reactors faster than thatnine year average.some of China's recent plant constructionshave taken more like five years.But others, like the USand the UK, are taking much longer.The Vogtle plant in Georgia, USA,began construction in 2013and it's still not complete.And Hinkley Point C in the UKannounced in 2007that the reactors would powerBritish homes by Christmas 2017.However, construction didn'teven start until 2018,and the latest projections push completionto beyond 2030, with more slippageexpected by most people.Those aren't isolated examples.Nuclear projects are very prone to largeoverruns and construction time.Worsethan any other kind of energy project.And the only other categoryof large projects that performs worsethan nuclear power plants is Olympic Gamesand nuclear storage projects.according to Bent Flyvbjerg,who has spent his career studying costand scheduling overruns in large projectsout of the 191 nuclearpower projects he studied, 93% of themtook longer than expected to complete.And the mean schedule overrun was 65%.so if the plan for Australia is ten yearsconstructionand remember, that needs to come afterwe change the law to allow it and developa regulatory environment for nuclear powerfunding, etc., then we could expectthat on average instead of ten years,it'll actually take 16.5 years.And this would be our very first reactorbuilt presumably by foreignexperts in a new marketand or by inexperienced locals.I think it would be prudent to assumewe're not going to beat that average.All that is to say that by the timewe managed to get a nuclear reactoroperating in Australia, the energytransition would have mostly happened.That alone is reason enoughto rule out nuclear power for Australia.I'm going to gothrough three more reasons.The next oneis that it doesn't play nicelywith wind and solar power.Australia has a lot of wind and solarpower and more and more every day.15 years ago,less than 1% of our electricitycame from wind and solar power.And today it's over 30%,growing by about threeor four percentage points every year.Of course, the thing about windand solar is that they are variable,nuclear power plantson the other hand,like to be turned on and stay operatingat a nice constant output.If you don't think very closely about it,perhaps you might think that sounds niceand complementary.Actually, it's not.Electricity demand variesfrom hour to hour and season to season.Either nuclear or renewablesneed a dispatchable energy sourcelike hydro, batteries or gas peakersto match generation with demand minuteby minute.Combining nuclearwith variable renewables,turns out to not actually reducethat amount of dispatchable powerthat's needed by much, if anything.Now, there are lots of countriesthat combine nuclear with renewables,but none with both a lot of nuclearand a lot of variable renewables.Francegets most of its electricity from nuclearand most of the rest from renewables,but that's nearly all hydro.which can be turned on and offwhen you want.Same with Switzerland, Armeniaand Slovenia. the only countrieswith both a lot of nuclearand a lot of variable renewablesare Sweden, with 30% nuclear at 20% windand Finland with 35% nuclear and 16% wind.But crucially, both of thesealso have a lot of hydro.40% and 20% respectively.Let's look a bit closer at what exactlythis means for a country like Australiawith currently 32% of our electricityfrom wind and solar power.Today, the amount of other generationneeded varies by a factor of two.From midday to evening, on average,modern nuclear reactors can varythat output a bit, but to cycle from 50%to 100% on a dailybasis is really pushing it.Today,that's only done across fleets of nuclearby turning some off entirelyand ramping the rest by a smaller amount,which means you needa large number of reactors like France has.and using their reactors intermittentlylike that with a lower capacity factorwould make nuclear power more expensive.This chart shows both highand low cost estimates for nuclear power,and you can say that in eithercase, the difference between operatingat 60% capacity factor instead of 90%capacity factor is going to addsomething like 30% to the cost of energy.Ramping up and downis also hard on the equipment,which leads to higher maintenance costs.There is at least oneexample of a reactor in Germanythat broke down as a result of rampingand in that case it was only rampingup and down by about a third.Whichleads me to the cost of nuclear power.It is expensive.There is admittedly a lot of disagreementamongst published valuesfor the cost of nuclear,but the ones that I've seenare at least doubleand probably more than triplethe cost of wind and solar in Australia.And that's true even when you accountfor the extra integration coststhat variable renewables need.That means extra transmissionand more storage.Furthermore, as well as being proneto schedule overruns, nuclear projectsare even more prone to cost overruns.With the average nuclear projecteventually costing overdouble its original estimate.in contrast, wind and solar projectshave about 0 to 10% average cost overruns.those are costs for new nuclear,but after it's paid for itself,it is very cheapand that's great for countriesthat already have nuclear who might ratherextend the lifetimes of their reactorsthan build new alternative sources of lowcarbon generation when those reactorswere supposed to retire.But that's not us in Australia.And that leads me to the last reasonthat nuclear is a dumb idea for Australia.It solves problems we don't have.There are a bunch of great things thatnuclear can do, that wind and solar can't.It can provide constant baseload powerno matter the weatherand no matter the season.nuclear reactorsalso take up less space than renewables,and existing nuclear is cheap to run.Let's tackle those one by onein the Australian context.first, nuclear providesfirm baseload power.Well, there's no such thing as baseloadin Australia anymore.At times, rooftopsolar on its own covers 100% of the demandin the highest renewable energy grid.South Australia.That means there is no spacefor anything else at that time.This is going to happenmore and more acrosslarger and larger parts of the countryas solar installationscontinue over the coming decades.but that's usually only in spring andsummer and probably a bit in autumn, too.What about winter?One of the benefits of nuclear is that itis weather and season independentand that is great for countrieswhose energy demand peaks in winterwhen the solar power may be close to zero.But that's not Australiafor most of Australia.Energy demand is in summer and there isstill good solar output in the winter.You can see on this chart that the balancebetween renewables and fossil fuelsin our current grid doesn't changethat much from month to month.But renewables are variable, intermittent,unreliable, right?What about dunkelflaute?That's periods when there's no windand no sun for days or weeks at a time.Potentially a huge problem in some places,but again, not in Australia.42 years of weather data history showthat widespread dunkelflaute acrossthe whole Australian grid last hoursand occasionally a day, never weeks.These charts show renewable resourcesfor every one of the last 42 years.There are some winter dayswhere renewables dipa little under 50% of the average output.There are no weeks below 50%and the worst ever winter month was around70% of the whole year average.There will be occasions every few decadeswhere there will be a dayor maybe two of very low wind and solarand on occasion,a few weeks in a row of somethinglike 50% average output.And for thosewe will need to use somethingmore expensive to cover those shortfallsafter sitting around mostly idlefor ten or 20 years at a stretch.But you can't do thatwith a nuclear reactor.you can't just turn on a nuclear reactorthat's been sitting idle for ten years.It's going to be gas or hydrogenor biodiesel or something like that.The next advantage of nuclear.It doesn't take up much space.that is so important for countries likeJapan, Korea, that have a lot of peoplepacked in a small area.Well, guess whatwe are not short of in Australia? space.Australia is so bigand so sunny that we would only need0.1% of our land covered in solar panelsto generate all our energy from solar.For wind, it's about double that.And that's just sticking to onshore wind.if we consider offshorewind too, it's going to be even less.And our wind farms coexist with grazing.Our solar panels mostly go on roofsand could co-exist with agricultureif we so wished.So even these tiny fractionsare misleadingly large. in Australia,It does not matter that nuclear powermight take up less space.I can understandwhy countries like Korea, Sweden or Canadafeel like they would benefitfrom nuclear power.They have long, hard wintersthat solar power can't help much with,and some of them have high populationdensity.They can use nuclear to avoidseasonal storage and avoid needingenergy imports But even in winterAustralia, solar is pretty good.And our dunkelflaute are infrequent and short.We have more than enough landto capture what we need.Do I think nuclear powershould be banned in Australia?No. I think it should be alloweda level playingfield with other energy technologiesto allow a fair fight.Like most people, I want the cheapestclean electricity possible and for anyone of the reasons I've mentioned, nuclearwould lose that fair fight.Add them all upand there is absolutely zerochance we'll ever havenuclear power in Australia.I am not a nuclear hater.I think that nuclear makes a lot of sensein countriesthat have the kinds of problems that Imentioned in the last part of this video.I'm working on another nuclear videowith a more global perspective currently,So please feel free to leaveyour angry comments about how I was unfairto nuclearin the comment sectionso I can make sure that the next oneincludes that rounded perspective.Thanks for tuning in.A special shout out to the Engineeringwith Rosie Patreon teamfor your ongoing support and engagement.Your contributionsmake this content possible and better.if you're not a member yet,but would like to join our community,then check out this linkto see how you can get involved.I'll see you in the next video.\n"