Energy Minister Chris Bowen has given credibility to the case for nuclear power by releasing a partial and flawed analysis that tries to debunk it, independent expert Tony Wood says.
It used the highest SMR cost estimate in CSIRO’s 2023 GenCost report of $18,167 per kilowatt of capacity, which assumes no new policies; the cost if the world achieves net zero emissions by 2050 is estimated to be about $11,000/KW in 2030.
“There is competition for project funding and there are lower cost, mature alternatives that can be more quickly deployed. There is also a lack of a social licence to support a nuclear industry in Australia at the moment and there would need to be work done to develop community support, address the legislative barriers and gain bipartisan support.
“There are also very few scale manufacturers of SMR reactors, and very little learning available about how SMR reactors might be integrated into the system as power generation.“The answer to the energy problem is cohesive policy and a mix of cost-effective assets – renewable generation, grid scale hydro and batteries, orchestrated distributed energy resources and electric vehicles, and lots of new transmission lines. This is where the focus of policy needs to remain.
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