Should New Zealand invest in nuclear power plants?

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freitasm

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#312702 10-May-2024 10:15

We have been warned of possible power disruptions due to low generation and high demand in the last couple of days. Add to this the prospect of new EV charging requirements as households move from ICE to EV transportation. New data centres are being built all over the country, including Microsoft Azure and AWS regions.

With less snow, our lakes might have less water than needed for full power generation.

Should New Zealand at least investigate and plan to use nuclear power plants to provide power, replace gas, coal and diesel, and provide a backup for hydro?

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#3228559 10-May-2024 10:21

Not trying to be smart with a one-word answer - but 'yes'.

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#3228560 10-May-2024 10:22

Anti-nuclear feelings aside, the NAFT government cancelled Lake Onslow (before the engineering feasibility study was complete) nominally because they were concerned about the cost. I can't see a nuclear power plant being cheaper than Lake Onslow, even were we willing to risk building any of the unproven 4th generation designs for immediate commercial service.

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freitasm

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#3228562 10-May-2024 10:31

When creating this thread, I think the idea was to discuss if it was an option we should consider and the pros/cons. So here it goes:

@SaltyNZ:

Anti-nuclear feelings aside.

So why anti-nuclear? Is it anti-nuclear power or anti-nuclear weapons?

We have nuclear material being used in medicine (imaging and treatment) around the country. How do you reconcile that with "anti-nuclear feelings"?

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#3228563 10-May-2024 10:33

SaltyNZ:

Anti-nuclear feelings aside, the NAFT government cancelled Lake Onslow (before the engineering feasibility study was complete) nominally because they were concerned about the cost. I can't see a nuclear power plant being cheaper than Lake Onslow, even were we willing to risk building any of the unproven 4th generation designs for immediate commercial service.

When i looked yesterday the estimate for Lake Onslow was $15 Billion, but by the time they go to build it, and over the build timeframe, 7-9 years, it would likely double.

About $30 billion USD would get you 2 reactors generating about, 2100MW of power. That is about 50% of our current hydro capacity.

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#3228564 10-May-2024 10:35

It does not help that we have about 750MW down for maintenance at the moment, I would have thought maintenance would have been done in the warmer months when less power is needed.

NZ does need to invest in its infrastructure, I can’t see too many more hydro dams going in, wind is not as green as you think and solar is a long way off being a viable candidate.

The next thing we should do is waste to energy, a friend of mines, brother-in-law converts coal stations in the UK to burn rubbish, apparently it is cleaner than coal by a long shot, it gets so hot in the furnace it just disintegrates most things.

I saw something on the internet a few days ago ( so it must be true ) that Singapore has four waste to energy plants for a good chank of its electricity generation.

As much as I don’t like it I think we will have to go nuclear in our lifetime, I have heard of these small floating plants that they anchor off shore and run a cable, I think this is a good idea, have more smaller ones rather than one or two large ones.

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freitasm

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#3228568 10-May-2024 10:40

SATTV:

As much as I don’t like it I think we will have to go nuclear in our lifetime, I have heard of these small floating plants that they anchor off shore and run a cable, I think this is a good idea, have more smaller ones rather than one or two large ones.

What could possibly go wrong? Floating plant anchor breaks, it floats away, some terrorist group breaks it to get some material for a dirty bomb.

I would think an inland plant would be safer.

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ockel

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#3228569 10-May-2024 10:42

SaltyNZ:

Anti-nuclear feelings aside, the NAFT government cancelled Lake Onslow (before the engineering feasibility study was complete) nominally because they were concerned about the cost. I can't see a nuclear power plant being cheaper than Lake Onslow, even were we willing to risk building any of the unproven 4th generation designs for immediate commercial service.

Onslow was never going to be baseload. Nuclear would be baseload by definition but relatively expensive. Could nuclear also act as peaking, cos thats the generation we're absent at present?

I think it could be considered but more focus should be on geothermal, we have natural resources to take advantage of and its North Island based where demand is higher.

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#3228570 10-May-2024 10:43

Yes I think we should be looking at nuclear.

But that will take a very long time so we should be looking at getting batteries.
With all the solar farms starting to appear there will no doubt be an excess of power during the day that could be stored in batteries for use during peak times.

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#3228571 10-May-2024 10:44

freitasm:

We have nuclear material being used in medicine (imaging and treatment) around the country. How do you reconcile that with "anti-nuclear feelings"?

We also have the ridiculous situation with nuclear material being flown in from Australia specifically for this purpose.

It's not fun trying to keep someone with a head injury and a near-zero attention span sitting around waiting for a scan because the flight containing the radioactive material is running late.

freitasm

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#3228573 10-May-2024 10:45

I think a few things have always impacted life (as in causing conflict) and will continue in the next decades: access to water, food and raw materials.

Energy is needed to extract, produce, move and manage those other things. It's the fourth item on the list.

We are not doing enough on the [clean] energy front.

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#3228575 10-May-2024 10:47

Jase2985:

SaltyNZ:

Anti-nuclear feelings aside, the NAFT government cancelled Lake Onslow (before the engineering feasibility study was complete) nominally because they were concerned about the cost. I can't see a nuclear power plant being cheaper than Lake Onslow, even were we willing to risk building any of the unproven 4th generation designs for immediate commercial service.

When i looked yesterday the estimate for Lake Onslow was $15 Billion, but by the time they go to build it, and over the build timeframe, 7-9 years, it would likely double.

About $30 billion USD would get you 2 reactors generating about, 2100MW of power. That is about 50% of our current hydro capacity.

Building is only part of the equation. It is the storage on nuclear waste and the decommissioning that is the main cost

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#3228576 10-May-2024 10:48

The problem with Nuclear is NZ has highly Variable load and little heavy industrial demand,

Nuclear's other issue ( currently) is that it comes in Large sizes, 900MW+

[There is only 2 Generating sites in NZ with similar Capacity ( Huntly and Manapouri) but even they have multiple smaller generators, (7@ Manpouri and I think 5@ Huntly)

If you have 1GW of nuclear running as base load you need to have 1GW of spare generation sitting round in case it fails, otherwise all the lights go out....

Small Modular reactors (SMR) are an emerging technology and would come in units of around 300MW, which would be ideal for NZ, but as yet they really only appear to exist in Russia, and are not yet in wide western Adoption...

freitasm

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#3228577 10-May-2024 10:49

@SaltyNZ:

I can't see a nuclear power plant being cheaper than Lake Onslow, even were we willing to risk building any of the unproven 4th generation designs for immediate commercial service.

In addition to my previous question to you.

if a nuclear-powered generation plant costs the same as a hydro option, why not have it, considering we risk having less water available in the coming years due to droughts or less snow during winter, therefore less water in summer?

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#3228578 10-May-2024 10:54

Big no for the Shakey Isles, EQ risk is too great. Upgrading transmission lines should be the first priority.

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#3228579 10-May-2024 10:54

we should also go back to hot water cylinders but with passive thermal panels to heat the water, again reducing the need for power.

we should be subsiding solar panels to put on housing

we should also be investing in battery storage (the new Sodium batteries look good ).

We also need to improve home insulation.

Those things could mostly eliminate housing as an energy consumer.

And dare I say it, but heating larger buildings by burning scrap wood and forest slash ( NOT adding additional CO2 into the atmosphere, it is actually recycling)

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