CSIRO reaffirms nuclear power likely to cost twice as much as renewables
Dec 9 2024
ABC News
The CSIRO has doubled down on its previous findings on cost and lead times of nuclear power for Australia.
In short:
The CSIRO's new GenCost report again says a nuclear power plant for Australia would likely cost twice as much as renewable energy.
Australia's leading science agency also said nuclear power plants enjoyed relatively little financial advantage from their long lives and would run at a capacity similar to coal.
What's next?
The Coalition has put forward a nuclear power plan for Australia but is yet to release how much they expect it to cost.
Building a nuclear power plant in Australia would likely cost twice as much as renewable energy even accounting for the much longer life-span of reactors, according to a new report from Australia's leading science agency.
In its latest economic analysis of the cost of building various energy projects, the CSIRO found nuclear plants enjoyed relatively little financial advantage from their long lives, which could be double a solar or wind farm.
The CSIRO regularly releases the GenCost report, which looks at the cost of Australia's energy sources. It has consistently found renewable to be the cheapest option, despite a run of inclusions at the request of critics to make changes to the modelling — the latest being the life span of a nuclear plant.
And the agency said there was little evidence to suggest nuclear reactors in Australia would be able to benefit from running flat-out around the clock, noting they would face the same forces that are hollowing out the business case for coal.
The conclusions come after the CSIRO copped heavy criticism over a report in May that found Australia's first nuclear power plant would cost up to $17 billion in today's dollars and not be operational until 2040.
At the time, critics including opposition energy spokesman Ted O'Brien, who is spearheading the Coalition's case for nuclear power, said the CSIRO analysis was flawed.
Ted O'Brien has criticised CSIRO's previous analysis on nuclear.
Central to the criticism were suggestions the report failed to properly account for a nuclear reactor's long life, which could be anywhere up to 60 or even 80 years.
Similarly, there were complaints the CSIRO wrongly discounted how much power a reactor would produce, with backers arguing nuclear plants could run at or near their capacity for long periods of time.
They also attacked findings that it would take "at least" 15 years to build a nuclear power plant in Australia, saying this was overly pessimistic.
But in an update of its GenCost report — which it carries out annually alongside the Australian Energy Market Operator — the CSIRO has largely stood by its earlier findings.
Nuclear's long life 'no advantage'
According to the agency, energy generation projects were typically funded using loans that lasted 30 years, which was about the life span of a solar or wind project.
CSIRO chief economist Paul Graham said even if a nuclear project could get a loan with a 60-year term, higher interest payments would wipe out many of the supposed gains.
In the more likely event a nuclear project would get a loan with a typical life span, Mr Graham said it was true the operating costs of the reactor would be relatively low once the debt had been repaid.
The report found nuclear's long life span would have no significant cost benefit over renewables.
However, he said these low costs would be short-lived because nuclear reactors faced substantial refurbishment costs running into billions of dollars after about 40 years of operation.
For these reasons, Mr Graham said there was no "unique" cost advantage offered by nuclear compared with renewable energy projects backed by transmission lines and so-called firming technologies such as batteries and gas plants.
"If we had a 60-year nuclear project and a 60-year solar project where you rebuild the solar halfway through, both require re-investments," Mr Graham said.
"Overall we didn't find any additional unique benefit from nuclear generation and its long life, and so the relativity between nuclear and renewables hasn't changed."
Mr Graham said there was also scant evidence to suggest a nuclear reactor in Australia would be able to repay its debt quickly and lower its costs by running at close to full capacity much of time.
Nuclear's capacity analog to coal's
He said one of the criticisms faced by the CSIRO following its May report was that it had been too miserly in its calculation of a nuclear plant's "capacity factor".
The term refers to the share of a plant's nameplate capacity that is actually used.
It is almost invariably higher in base-load generators such as nuclear and coal plants, which can run around the clock, compared with wind turbines and solar panels, which are dependent on the weather.
Mr Graham said supporters of nuclear had argued the technology should be given a capacity factor of 93 per cent, in line with reactors in the United States.
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