Implementing and locking into a technology with a 100 year lifespan (building time plus proposed lifespan) That’s what some people want to do in building Fission Nuclear Power in Australia. In today’s rapidly changing world implementing any technology that locks you into using it in its constructed form for nearly 100 years is patently ridiculous. Would you like to have locked in your telephone system 100 years or even 20 years ago? How about your car? Even more telling is that the 2024 Levelised Cost of Energy for Nuclear is 3 times that of onshore wind or solar PV! Installing any major amount of a technology condemns you to that cost for the lifespan of the technology. Not only that but denies you the cost savings as new technologies like perovskite solar panels are introduced. And no, nuclear is not required for firming of the grid.
A clear demonstration of the futility of this 100 year Nuclear Fission scenario is that we may have viable Nuclear Fusion by the mid 2030’s when our outdated Nuclear Fission powerplants become operational! The fusion design is called a Stellarator and is based on magnetic confinement, “where large magnets corral plasma into long-burning fusion reactions”. Renaissance Fusion has attracted over AUD50m in Series A funds and plans to have a demonstrator “ready by the end of 2026… (and) a complete stellarator by the early 2030s”
Nuclear Power In Australia based on fission makes no technological sense.
Technologies will continue to advance and solve our problems despite the shortsightedness of some people.
