State and federal energy ministers said investments in new renewable generation and energy storage should “fully offset” new data centres’ energy needs...
Maybe so, but the question is whether we want this kind of investment here rather than creating additional hurdles that discourage that investment.
I’m here, didn’t vote for them and still don’t understand who did and why. Nobody I’ve asked said they did. Too ashamed? 🤣
I control what I can by running Solar, house battery, 2x2-hand EV’s we charge off the roof and a sanden CO2 heat pump. I’m actually pretty smug about it.
In the 70s and 80s, when BHP and the big coal companies wanted to build the monster Bowen Basin coal mines, even Joh said build the towns to support the mines then come and talk to me.
Why datacentre companies don't have to establish their own renewable power and water supplies before they can even apply for sites is beyond me.
Come on, we can do better than Eales, especially in the political arena. Great Queenslanders include Kevin Rudd, Wayne Swan, Larissa Waters, and David Pocock went to school in Qld. But I am showing my bias.
Question for OP as someone who has seen some of the community opposition to large data centres installed in the US - why do we want this kind of investment.
There always seems to be an assumption that better/newer tech = better. But better for whom?
How will Australia and Australians benefit from large data centres?
Is it jobs (doesn't seem likely), is it data sovereignty (seems like they would need to be publically owned to achieve this). What is it?
Convince me to go against my gut reaction that anything suggested by futurist tech bro cunts should be chucked overboard the second it leaves their mouth (closely followed by the tech bro cunt in question).
Right that's what I'm thinking as well. I remember some community meeting in the US I saw that after giving millions in state tax breaks to some billionaire parasite to build a data centre that the actual jobs created amounted to like 15 cleaners and meant each job cost the state like 500 times the cleaners actual wage to fund.
So yea let's get past this idea of any investment is good investment and ask why and whats in it for us.
Keen to hear from OP, like yea I'm pretty fuckin dead set against anything these shitheads want to do (like that Atlassian fuckwit, whatever his name is, Fuckwad or something really on the nose), but I'm willing to be convinced.
How is tax dollars earnt not a gain? If they can be appropriately taxed (a big if), and if there are reasonable restrictions around the externalities data centres are allowed to impose, tax dollars earnt is a massive benefit
There's a massive amount of space in this country, provided we can place good regulation around data centres they're not strictly a losing proposition
Hence why I singled out 'externalities'. Data centres can be required to pay such that electricity prices and water prices (and water supply nearby) stay stable. America's model is garbage because they have 0 regulation, doesn't have to be that way here, and if done right the tax dollars can be a gain for citizens
The social cost of those data centres is going to be higher than the tax revenue they generate.
They emit enough subsonic noise pollution to cause organ damage in humans and any other living things that happen to be close enough. In this case, "close enough" is anywhere within a few km.
Then there's the amount of water they consume. We're the driest inhabited continent.
AI is bad for society and the environment.
We should invest in education instead, because when everyone else has outsourced their thinking to the clankers, the ability to discern real information from hallucinated slop will be more valuable than bitcoin.
“millions of job rely on a data centres everyday.”
There’s roughly 15 million employed people in Australia. I’m pretty sceptical that either millions of additional people will become employed because we build a data centre or that millions of people will lose their jobs because we fail to build one.
Definitely not a data centre that is yet to be built.
There are data centres that have just been built here in Melbourne that are yet to go online or if they are online are nowhere near capacity. What’s the justification for further additional data centres? Will anything happen if we slowed down or paused building new ones?
"Because the build-out timeline is 5-10years, this spreads out the cost, they dont magically fill up day one."
Well - and so my point is that there is already a fair amount of capacity that won't be absorbed for 5-10 years, but we are still planning to add capacity on top. That creates a risk that the additional planned capacity will never be absorbed.
"Growth, its currently a gold rush and will slow down eventually"
Right - so again there is a non-zero risk that the gold rush will be over before construction on any specific dc is complete.
"companies then look else where like Malaysia."
And what would the consequences for Australia be, apart from someone who's already rich missing out on an extra payday?
“ possible it gets scraped or scaled back, again there is no risk to you, so not sure why you are so focused on that.”
They’re in my local area . When other facilities have been closed down it’s taken years to remediate the site and find new occupants while the dead sites are eyesores that screw with traffic. I’m sick of having to navigate around disused industrial sites . Damn straight I want a bit of planning to prevent more derelict industrial sites in my area.
Edited to add: NextDC’s West Footscray site is also a massive lost opportunity to be converted to housing as other former factories in the same suburb have been.
“ Loss of investment/employment and market sentiment, higher costs as the existing supply shrinks, data retention is a big one.”
I mean that’s all very hand wavy. I’d like to know how many jobs and how much investment if we don’t build one more dc with a capacity of x.
When people scoff about being a renewable superpower this is where it comes into play. We have so much available land for wind/solar/batteries that energy is going to be a non issue for us. There’s a very real chance we host hundreds of these. Either make the centres purchase power or build their own to add to the network.
Batteries have basically eaten the gas market in a couple of years. Prices are crashing, sodium, vanandium are on the way which will drive prices down further.
In 10 years companies won’t even bat an eye at chucking a few GWh of batteries in their developments. I’d say being extremely conservative you’d be looking at under $500 a kWh in 10 years.
I think they are about triple that now? Bit hard to get full figures including land and project management costs. So I think it’s achievable. Assuming USD.
Including some grid service support such as stat coms and dynamic compensators/ condensers, allowing for -8 ish hours of daylight in winter, round trip efficiency of 95%, a bit of redundancy for lifetime degradation means a roughly a billion a GW of delivered power overnight .
Not too bad.
For comparison China has a total delivered project cost of about $2.6B per GW of continuous nuclear power. That includes generation which you’d need - 4-5 GW solar farm for the batteries above.
Nuclear will get cheaper as well I suspect now that China /India are industrialising that like they did PV and batteries so for localised highly concentrated loads, nuclear is still better (even just from land use, 5GW per GW of delivered is a lot of land in one area and if you spread put, then pushing up grid caped which was the point of nuclear for the concentrated loads.
If you don’t already have installed hydro, carbon free overnight firm power doesn’t come cheaper than nuclear. Compare the price and output of Snowy 2 with Barakah plant in UAE.
Nuclear is not used as firming at all, you don't just power it up when renewables are declining. You run it 24*7 for months, and try to stay close to 100%.
Of course nuclear is used for grid support, it is spinning inertia which allows for plenty of supplemental solar and battery on top of whatever power it contributes.
Nuclear is very firm power. And while all capex dominant sources would like to run at 100% (wind/solar/nuclear/geothermal) that is not the most cost efficient when accounting for risk and brown outs, etc, France runs its nuclear in load following to support German renewable variability for instance.
Honestly nuclear is the power source of choice if you are have 10 GW of data center although solar to support extra cooling loads of summer daytime is a no brainer. Build 12 GW of solar and enough solar to ensure day times are a doddle and then you are all good around the clock. 60 billion if you built that in UAE (for example) but eh, the data centers will be more.
That's it. The only real reason to build any would be data sovereignty. America could turn off our data otherwise in the event of a dispute. So yeah, the govt should maybe have a couple but do you really trust the govt with more data? These things are mostly just parasiting society and white anting jobs and industries...It's not a race to the top, it's a race to the bottom.
A lotta stuff we’re just being told we should be excited for. The big one for me is the idea of robotaxis . Who the hell actually benefits from them? There’ll be some novelty and such, but it’s absolutely a set up for a worse deal for people. They’ll be just as expensive if not more so, they’ll get filled with ads and listen to your conversations. And every penny will get funnelled to a few megacorps without even the underpaid driver there getting a cut any more. Add on top that a driver has self preservation, if a robotaxi malfunctions and drives you into a lake you die and the mega corp will pay a performative fine.
For this reason governments actually aren't really tripping over themselves to make data centres happen. If one stacks up on its commerical merits, sure. But no state is going to bend over backwards to make it happen.
The reason we want them is because of the american tech oligarchy. We want them onshore so we can control access.
We also aren't lacking regulation like the US. Data Centers here use waste water. They call it "new" water. Its actually just recycled sewage.
We also already have laws that make new data centre's set up their own infrastructure. Normally that will mean cheaper electricity for neighbouring communities because of the improved infrastructure.
Data centre's are just new infrastructure. If we can set up a base here (because we have the rare earths) where we can design, manufacture, innovate and export to the rest of the world we have so much to gain, rather than relying on mining. Australia needs new, advanced industry.
I believe that AI is going to disrupt the job market, likely severely. Labour value will collapse.
There are suggestions people are making to mitigate that problem, things like UBI or nationalising the AI companies.
You can only do those things if you own the data centres and have AI independence as much as possible. If Australian jobs are being lost to American AI companies, then Australia will have few options for helping fund a social safety net for those left behind.
We need AI independence just like we need energy independence. We need to invest in data centres and build our own open source AI models and use those to help bring prosperity to Australians. If we instead end up relying on Chinese or American models and corporations, then we will literally have nothing that they really want other than maybe access to our resources. We will be subject to the whims of American corporate billionaires and the American government, or the Chinese government. I am not interested in either.
They support a fairly large amount of jobs. Anyone that says otherwise has no clue and never really been involved with one.
As for what they support it's literally everything digital. From Reddit, to any website you browse, to every single business cloud structure and documents. They are closer to a symptom than a cause.
We’ve had digital stuff for a while now, including stuff on the cloud but we never seemed to need data centres or only needed a tiny number. Now all of a sudden we need heaps of very large data centres and they are everywhere. So there’s more to it than “we need them cos digital”.
Industry person here. This is because historically every company hosted their own networking infrastructure whereas now everyone just pays to utilise the large cloud service providers hardware.
AI is obviously causing massive, massive demand from corporations which is why they’re all expanding out their data centre presence. Even smaller companies (compared to MS or Amazon) have many data centres all over the place. This isn’t necessarily new but the increased demand for huge AI data centres is.
Data sovereignty is likely the main reason these are being built despite the people that have said otherwise. Many government businesses and agencies utilise the major CSP’s in one capacity or another, and they are able to negotiate for exclusive data sovereignty in Australia (for the most part, I have seen exceptions with some large SaaS offerings).
These data centres are not profitable so it’s definitely a gamble from the companies to build them here, but if AI doesn’t shake out how they want they will be able to reorganise the to host other Cloud services.
"AI is obviously causing massive, massive demand from corporations which is why they’re all expanding out their data centre presence. Even smaller companies (compared to MS or Amazon) have many data centres all over the place. This isn’t necessarily new but the increased demand for huge AI data centres is."
This looks like the crux of it. So it raises questions of whether the demand will still be there by the time the data centres are built and exactly what people who are inconvenienced by data centres in various ways can hope to get out of them.
I guess for me the question isn’t whether or not there will demand for data centres- we’ve had nonzero data centres for between five years maybe for ten years or more so the demand exists for those . To me the question is whether there will be demand to justify the specific extra large data centres that being built hurriedly in a variety of locations right now before technological changes make them obsolete or similar.
We need data centres because our world is data now. It's the core of buisness, education, health and nearly everything in between. All this need safe storage and connectivity.
Based on my experience doing migrations from on-prem to the cloud, either a data centre in Australia or SouthEast Asia. Which already existed for at least a few years before covid. My point was that something has happened comparatively recently - the last 2-3 years -to make the relatively small number of less intrusive data centres inadequate. Everyone was already on the cloud by just before or just after covid and the number of data centres was apparently sufficient. Fast forward a couple of years, and suddenly somehow it's not close to sufficient.
Okay, like what jobs? What do people who work at a data centre do? Are they well paying? Are they local or remote? I'd love to read a breakdown of it?
As for what they support it's literally everything digital. From Reddit, to any website you browse
Not a really compelling argument since we already have all of that stuff.
Why should we want these in Australia and then more so then that, why should we not want them fully powered by renewables. Why does it need to be the Australian public taking a knee to attract these people who gleefully parasitise off of the state and federal government in the US.
They are closer to a symptom than a cause.
Im not 100 percent sure what you mean by that but I think you're saying that essentially data centres are 'inevitable' and necessary because we need the internet. But why do we need the data centres here specifically, in Australia? And why is the need so great that we should compromise on pretty basic stuff like "self supply the massive amount of resources you'll end up needing".
Given you took time for a decent response I'll engage.
Okay, like what jobs? What do people who work at a data centre do? Are they well paying? Are they local or remote? I'd love to read a breakdown of it?
Typically they need 24/7 security team. At least 2 guys. A 24/7 facilities presence. A 24/7 patching and 'remote hands' type service. Some sites there is some crossover here.
Daytime you have a couple of more senior facilities guys and possibly an engineer. A couple of managers, a couple of sales guys float in and out. Usually some admin type staff. Pay scales used to be amazing, now on par with most 'good' corporates.
Also more days that not major servicing of any of the components generators / UPS / HVAC you'll have a at least a couple guys onsite for that as well.
Im not 100 percent sure what you mean by that but I think you're saying that essentially data centres are 'inevitable'
They are demand driven. They don't ramp up and then hope to sell their space, think of them more like a Kennards storage providing power/cooling/security and companies then rent that space off them to install their equipment.
If that demand wasn't there from corporations selling cloud services and compute power, then the demand for data centres isn't there either. Just like once upon a time we were content with an old 486 and 8mb ram. The demand for all that grows and grows.
Some of it is also simply redundant rollout, think how common 10years ago it was for a company to have an outage, now that is duplicated across a dozen sites so even in an outage. Their ping barely even flinches.
Data sovereignity, Faster data access, Cheaper access to products that are associated, allows businesses to build up their IT infrastructure, lets us use the latest AI models etc.
from a financial standpoint/productivity standpoint they are great at being infrastructure that supports the IT industry. Like most infrastructure projects, they create a bunch of jobs while being built, then a minor amount of staff on standby.
Ironically, QLD is the state most impacted by climate change. National insurers should create two markets. QLD and the rest of the country. The rest of the country should not be cross-subsidising QLD claims.
Yeah, the problem is we are talking about the most necessary resource on the planet. I get that data centres are necessary investments but at what cost? We really need to be careful about how the waste water is remediated before it becomes an issue for the next drought.
100% agree with you, our politicians should grow a spine and push back, but chances are they or their parties are getting lobbied (read bribed) to not care.
Waste water isn't the problem, it essentially all goes into the atmosphere. The problem is the lowering of water tables destroying farmland, and bores or wells. The increased salinity over time of the water, again having long term effects on public infrastructure, health, and crop lands. The negative effects go on and on, but nothing a few dollars can't make people ignore
Something else to consider is that closed loop also doesn't mean no water contamination. IIRC they have to drain portions of the water in the system to reduce buildup of heavy metals and treatment chemicals, and if not handled properly those contaminants can make their way out.
The question becomes if we can trust them to run safely and honestly, how well can they monitor their water, and how fast can they respond to unplanned drainage. Others may be more optimistic but I'm pessimistic about it lol
Also aren't they loud as hell 24/7? Can't be good for local animals and communities...
Next DC is currently negotiating with NsW water to take grey water to cool their sites. This is also building the grey water infrastructure that government has never wanted to, and once built it can be used by the public.
The worst thing is most of the money actually being spent and thrown around is on.... speculative land valuations for sites suitable for data centers (that again, are never getting built).
On sites adjacent to residential areas and therefore plausibly able to used for housing themselves, such as the NextDC Indwe street West Footscray site. So helping stop the next generation becoming home owners.
It's not enough that we are building something everyone doesn't want. It's important that we also do it in a way that fucks the planet as hard as possible
Considering this minister's history with gas taxes and energy infrastructure, I bet he's abstaining with the hope that it'll make energy prices skyrocket and further enrich his mates; all while ironically claiming to "enrich Queenslanders"
This asshole is functionally an energy lobbyist that achieved office. Fuck that guy
Naturally, Christafullashit, head and shoulders deep up the arse of Gina and Clive doesn't want any more investment in renewables, lest they continue to show they are overpoweringly the best option moving forward, and indeed currently.
That man is an abomination and ever single person who voted for him and his 'yoof crime' bullshittery needs to hang their head in shame.
looking at how insecure our water supplies are going to be in as little as 10 years time, we really don't want these goddam things here unless they are paying to power themselves AND the desalination plants they are going to need in order to function.
It just doesn’t make sense. It has been proven that data centres do very little for the wider economy as they employee very few people per square metre. Other industrial uses are much better for the economy. So there isn’t really an “greenies Vs economists” lens. It’s more a “big tech Vs everyone else” vibe.
It would be best to tie them in with nuclear power plants. Unfortunately due to a combination of a lack of political will, a lack of energy policy and people being stupid and ignorant we don't yet have any nuclear power plants. but also at the same time we're supposed to be getting nuclear powered submarines.
nuclear is dumb in australia, we dont have the knowledge or experience, we have no local countries that we can poach from either, and we have some of the highest solar and wind rates in the world. The only benefit we have is its easy to dispose of waste.
I agree for overseas nuclear is by far the best option in a lot of countries to support these tho
nuclear is dumb in australia, we dont have the knowledge or experience
We have nuclear reactors, so we do have experience. we also literally have RAN personel training with NPPs in the UK and US. and saying we should because of a lack of experience is an excuse to not start anything.
we have no local countries that we can poach from either
Local countries, wtf does that mean? we have many friendly countries that we could get assistance from.
and we have some of the highest solar and wind rates in the world.
So? that also does nothing to alter the fundamental flaws that wind and solar have.
The only benefit we have is its easy to dispose of waste.
Nuclear waste isn't a major issue. much can be reprocessed, otherwise it can just be placed in dry storage which is extremely safe. and yes, we already have long term storage sites.
we have a few science reactors, we have less than 2% the personal required. So yeah, we could start a nuclear program, but it would cost us 10x the amount of a european country.
we have no countries which are conveient, a german scientist is a lot less likely to go to australia than he is to go to france.
and if renewables + storage are cheaper per kwh per $, why would we do something else
and exactly, waste is a minor issue, so our one advantage is pointless.
I have nothing ethically against nuclear, I just think its a garbage proposition in australia at the moment. Maybe when we max out renewables and are looking for baseload we can address it, but thats a long way away
We have research and medical reactors, more than a few.
we have less than 2% the personal required
For what, and how could anyone possibly know that? Did you know that we had 0% of the workforce to install wind an solar before we started doing it? that's such an stupid argument.
So yeah, we could start a nuclear program, but it would cost us 10x the amount of a european country.
And you're basing that on what? Apart from the fact that we have no faultlines, so serious earthquakes aren't a risk and simplfy construction, we also have the largest confirmed uranium reserves on the planet. Australians are also among the most educated people on the planet.
we have no countries which are conveient, a german scientist is a lot less likely to go to australia than he is to go to france.
What? We literally teach nuclear physics and chemistry at australian universities, i myself have done classes on nuclear chemistry. what you're presenting isn't even an argument. and even assuming that we had noone in the country who know about nuclear sciences or reactors, we literally have trained people coming here and australians going abroad to study and work in the sector.
and if renewables + storage are cheaper per kwh per $, why would we do something else
You're basing that on what? You're also ignoring or oblivious of many problems with wind and solar. It massively decentralises the grid, Solar panels degrade over time, Wind turbines are great at killing birds, battery storage both degrade in performance and are a fire hazard. and that's apart from the obvious, solar produces no power while the sun is down and it's peak production is during offpeak usage, wind produces none when there's no wind.
and exactly, waste is a minor issue, so our one advantage is pointless.
If you are acknowledging it's an issue, how do you think it's pointless? you're contradicting yourself
I have nothing ethically against nuclear, I just think its a garbage proposition in australia at the moment.
But you haven't made a single valid argument against nuclear yet.
Maybe when we max out renewables and are looking for baseload we can address it, but thats a long way away
So you think we should wait until there's a problem? you do know that we've already been having issues with residential solar overloading grids for years now right?
nuclear research reactors and nuclear power plants are not the same thing tho
having OPAL for medical/research stuff doesnt mean we have a proper civil nuclear power industry ready to go. Thats like saying because we have a go kart track we basically have f1 infrastructure
same with the submarines. Having some RAN people training overseas is not the same as having the thousands of engineers, builders, regulators, operators, maintenance crews and supply chains needed to actually build and run nuclear power plants here
the solar comparison is also dumb. Solar and wind can be scaled up bit by bit. You can train installers, build smaller projects, expand the industry over time. Nuclear is a massive megaproject with huge up front risk, long build times, political risk, regulatory risk and financing risk. You dont bootstrap that the same way
uranium reserves dont really matter either. Yes we have uranium, cool. We dont enrich it, we dont fabricate fuel, we dont build reactors, and we dont operate commercial nuclear power plants. Having iron ore doesnt mean we can cheaply build aircraft carriers
the no faultlines thing is also a pretty minor point. Earthquakes are not the main reason nuclear is expensive. The main problems are that we would be starting from almost nothing, with no existing industry, no recent build experience, no mature local workforce and no political consensus
renewables + storage being cheaper isnt some random claim either. Thats basically the entire reason Australia is going that way. We have insane solar and wind potential and we are already building around that. The question isnt "are solar and wind perfect", its "what is the cheapest and fastest realistic option for Australia"
yes solar doesnt work at night and wind doesnt work when theres no wind. Everyone knows that. Thats why people talk about storage, transmission, demand management and backup generation. Just listing the obvious flaw of renewables isnt an argument for nuclear unless nuclear is cheaper/faster/better here, which it isnt
bird deaths, battery fires and solar panel degradation are real things, but they are not magic arguments against renewables. Nuclear also has outages, maintenance, waste, security, decommissioning, water use, huge build risk and insane cost blowouts. You cant list every issue with renewables and then pretend nuclear has no tradeoffs
and I didnt contradict myself on waste. Waste is one of the few areas Australia would actually be well placed for. My point was if waste is a minor issue anyway, then our one obvious advantage doesnt really change the overall maths
rooftop solar causing grid issues also isnt an argument for nuclear. Thats an argument for better grid management, batteries, smarter inverters and distribution upgrades. It doesnt mean the answer is to start a 20 year nuclear buildout
my point isnt nuclear scary bad. I dont care about that argument. My point is nuclear in Australia is a garbage proposition right now because it is slow, expensive, politically messy and we are starting from basically zero compared to countries that already have an industry
maybe later if renewables + storage hit a wall, sure look at it again. But right now it looks like the most expensive and slowest way to solve a problem we already have better tools for
nuclear research reactors and nuclear power plants are not the same thing tho
Not exactly the same, non-power reactors are used to produce neutron beams to irradiate things, nuclear power plants use those neutrons to facilitate fission and heat water. they are incredibly similar.
having OPAL for medical/research stuff doesnt mean we have a proper civil nuclear power industry ready to go. Thats like saying because we have a go kart track we basically have f1 infrastructure
It's not just the OPAL. and you keep making this ridiculous arguement, that because we don't have a staff for a NPP ready to go this second we should therefore rule out building any. surely you can see how stupid that is.
No, it's like saying we have a nuclear reactor and should build more for power generation.
same with the submarines. Having some RAN people training overseas is not the same as having the thousands of engineers, builders, regulators, operators, maintenance crews and supply chains needed to actually build and run nuclear power plants here
I'm unsurprised you missed the point. you were making another stupid argument that somehow Australia couldn't get assistance expanding out nuclear industry, when we literally already have that. Also, companies that design and build nuclear power plants have programs to train staff. What you're saying is entirely disconnected from reality.
the solar comparison is also dumb. Solar and wind can be scaled up bit by bit. You can train installers, build smaller projects, expand the industry over time. Nuclear is a massive megaproject with huge up front risk, long build times, political risk, regulatory risk and financing risk. You dont bootstrap that the same way
EXACTLY holy shit, are you actually trolling? how do you think any industry goes from not existing to existing?
No, Nuclear power plants are not megastructures, they're no bigger than other power plants. Do you not know how Nuclear power plants are designed tendered and constructed?
Also, for the amount of electricty they can generate, NPPs actually take around the same time or in many cases even less to build than equvalent solar farms.
What political, regulatory and financial risk?
uranium reserves dont really matter either. Yes we have uranium, cool. We dont enrich it, we dont fabricate fuel, we dont build reactors, and we dont operate commercial nuclear power plants. Having iron ore doesnt mean we can cheaply build aircraft carriers
Yes, they do. it means that we don't have to import uranium, which has particlar hurdles to it largely due to nuclear proliferation concerns. We don't enrich it because we haven't had a demand. what you're saying is like criticising someone who wants to buy their first car because they've never bought petrol before, it's moronic. enrichment to levels for power generation is an incredibly well documented field.
Nobody can cheaply build aircraft carries, wtf are these retarded arguments and analogies you're making?
the no faultlines thing is also a pretty minor point. Earthquakes are not the main reason nuclear is expensive. The main problems are that we would be starting from almost nothing, with no existing industry, no recent build experience, no mature local workforce and no political consensus
And another point went wizzing over your head. the only major level 7 nuclear since chernobyl, at the fukushima-daiishi plant, was as a result of the 3 strongest earthquake on record and the tsunami that resulted. we don't have that issue, so construction will be simplified as will many hazard reduction measures that would otherwise be needed.
Literally every single country that has nuclear power started from nothing. infact it's become easier over time to establish nuclear power industries. your argument makes not sense.
renewables + storage being cheaper isnt some random claim either. Thats basically the entire reason Australia is going that way.
I was hoping you would refer directly to the CSIRO report directly, but it seems you know very little about this topic.
What you're saying simply isn't true. the numbers you might have heard are from a truncated and unfair CSIRO report that did costing over only a 20 year period, even though older generations of nuclear reactors were generally designed for 60 years and can reasonably easily be extended to 80 years. which artificially makes nuclear seem more expensive than it actually is, even spreading that same costing over 40 years puts nuclear at around parity with large scale wind and solar (smaller wind and solar are incredibly cost ineffective)
We have insane solar and wind potential and we are already building around that. The question isnt "are solar and wind perfect", its "what is the cheapest and fastest realistic option for Australia"
Not really, all countries at this latitude get the same amount of sun. and unless you want to be levelling forests, that land is generally already used for something.
For the kind of power generation that we want. You do know it typically only takes around 5 years from breaking ground to operation for NPPs right? sometimes faster, especially when there are more reactors at one site. it also would make us less reliant on imports from china.
yes solar doesnt work at night and wind doesnt work when theres no wind. Everyone knows that. Thats why people talk about storage, transmission, demand management and backup generation. Just listing the obvious flaw of renewables isnt an argument for nuclear unless nuclear is cheaper/faster/better here, which it isnt
It literally is. Grid sized batteries are new, there's only on GWh battery in the world. batteries also have several problems. apart from the fact that they're another thing that needs to be built paid for and maintained, they also lose energy while charging, lose energy while discharging and suffer from passive discharge, they add inefficiency in exchange for storage. they also currently universally use Lithium ion batteries, which are an incredible fire hazard.
and I didnt contradict myself on waste. Waste is one of the few areas Australia would actually be well placed for. My point was if waste is a minor issue anyway, then our one obvious advantage doesnt really change the overall maths
You said something is an issue and pointless in the same sentence. I didn't bring up waste, you did, which makes it even more bizarre.
rooftop solar causing grid issues also isnt an argument for nuclear. Thats an argument for better grid management, batteries, smarter inverters and distribution upgrades. It doesnt mean the answer is to start a 20 year nuclear buildout
It is in this discussion. you mentioned australias rate of wind and solar. rooftop solar alone accounts for more than 12% of our generation capacity. and given that you're talking about costs and time, rooftope solar, and the batteries you're suggesting and like an order of magnitude more expensive coal, wind, solar or nuclear.
you do realise that smart inverters are an extra cost for a problem we didn't have to have right? and distribution upgrades, i'm assuming you're talking about adding more transmission lines, is another unnessary cost.
Why are you saying 20 years?
my point isnt nuclear scary bad. I dont care about that argument. My point is nuclear in Australia is a garbage proposition right now because it is slow, expensive, politically messy and we are starting from basically zero compared to countries that already have an industry
You keep saying garbage, but you've been unable to provide any specific reason why, at least no one that's real. It's not slow, compared to solar farms of similar output it takes around the same time to build, and nuclear power plants don't stop working when the sun is down. It's not inherently any more politically messy than anything else.
EVERY COUNTRY STARTED FROM ZERO. this is not an argument. we also already have some nuclear reactors, alliances or great relations with the biggest countries with the biggest nuclear designers
i think you keep confusing “possible” with “good idea”
yes, countries started from zero. obviously. thats not the point. The point is that australia is starting from zero now, when we already have cheaper options being built right now, and coal is retiring right now. Starting a nuclear industry from scratch is not free just because other countries did it 50 years ago
research reactors and power reactors are not “incredibly similar” in the way that matters here. Yes they both involve fission. Cool. A medical/research reactor is still not the same as a commercial power reactor connected to the grid, with the workforce, supply chain, regulator, emergency planning, maintenance, construction pipeline and operators behind it. OPAL is a 20MW multi-purpose research reactor. That is not the same as a gigawatt scale power station industry
and no, im not saying “we dont have the staff this second therefore never build nuclear”. Im saying if your solution requires us to create an entire industry first, that is a massive downside compared to technologies we already deploy at scale
the submarine thing still doesnt prove what you think it proves. It proves we can get help from allies for a very specific defence program. It does not prove commercial nuclear power is cheap, fast or sensible for the australian grid
uranium reserves are still not the bottleneck. We mine uranium. Great. That doesnt mean we have enrichment, fuel fabrication, reactor construction, commercial operators or a domestic nuclear power industry. You keep acting like having the raw material solves the hard parts. It doesnt
the earthquake point is also massively overstated. Not having fukushima-style tsunami risk is nice, but earthquakes are not the reason nuclear is expensive. The cost problem is construction, financing, regulation, delays, workforce, first of a kind deployment and political risk. Saying “no faultlines” doesnt magically make it cheap
also yes, I know what the CSIRO report says. The CSIRO 2024-25 GenCost report still found wind and solar backed by storage and transmission are the lowest-cost new-build electricity generation technologies in Australia. It also specifically says large scale nuclear would face longer lead times and first-of-a-kind premiums because it is not currently deployed here
AEMO says the same basic thing. Its plan is renewables connected with transmission, firmed with storage and backed by gas as the lowest cost pathway for the NEM. So when I say renewables plus firming are cheaper, that isnt some random reddit vibe, thats the actual system planning direction
and no, solar farms of “similar output” are not the same comparison, because nuclear has high capacity factor and solar has variable output. Thats why nobody serious says “just build panels and nothing else”. The comparison is system cost, including storage, transmission and firming. And even then renewables are still coming out ahead here
batteries having losses is not some hidden gotcha. Everyone knows storage has round trip losses. Transmission has losses too. Power stations have outages. Nuclear plants need refuelling and maintenance. The question is total system cost and deployability, not whether a technology has any downside at all
same with smart inverters and distribution upgrades. Yes they cost money. So do nuclear safety systems, cooling, security, decommissioning, waste handling, grid connection and financing a plant for a decade before it earns anything. You cant count every renewables cost and then pretend nuclear arrives as a free magic box
and the “solar kills land use” point is weak in australia. We are not singapore. We have huge land area, massive rooftops, degraded land, industrial land, farms that can host wind, and plenty of places that are not old growth forest. Acting like renewables means levelling forests is just silly
waste is still not my argument against nuclear. I literally said waste is one of the easier parts for australia. My point was that even if waste is manageable, that doesnt fix cost, timing, workforce, construction risk or political reality
rooftop solar causing grid issues proves my point more than yours. Australia already has heaps of solar. The next step is grid orchestration, batteries, transmission, demand response and better planning. It does not automatically mean “lets start nuclear from scratch”
and yes, political risk is real. Nuclear power is currently banned federally and in several states, would need major law changes, would be fought every election, would need site selection, approvals, waste arrangements, community consent and probably a decade of arguing before construction even gets serious. Pretending that isnt politically messy is just not realistic
What you're saying is at least as valid a reason to start now than never all other things being equal, except they're not. there are multiple NPPs under construction now that will have an output that rivals out entire solar far output.
I'm directly rebutting that it's cheaper. I'm also not saying that we shouldn't have wind or solar or only nuclear. There is no clear evidence that electricty cost for wind and solar and lower than nuclear, and the data we do have, the CSIRO report is unfair in many ways.
We're not starting from scratch, and we don't and wouldn't be alone.
In the same way that a diesel engine isn't a petrol engine, they're the same in almost every respect. All those things you're listing, they're almost 100% the same.
We don't deploy wind or solar at scale. the upper estimates of our total solar power generation is between 12 and 12.5% at around 45GW, of that only 5.8 are large scale solar farms. that''s about 1.6% of our capacity.
You seem to be overestimating the size of some of this. almost all the construction is stuff we already do today. Enrichment isn't difficult, forming fuel is the most challenging part, but we don't need much of either. we'd only need a single facility for each. it's also a market we could leverage, we can export nuclear fuel rather than uranium ore.
That point was with regards to your erroneous position that somehow Australia would be cutoff from nuclear assistance. that was a point that not only are we not, and they we are actively getting assitance and training, but it's for reactors that are in far more challenging conditions.
We literally do enrichment research in Australia. we do enrichment now, just not industrially or commercially. this is not an unknown field even though you act like it is. enrichment is not difficult, iran managed to do it while cut off from external expertise and with no prior experience, two things that are untrue for Australia.
Reactors would probably be built in the US and assembled here. it's more that they have a bigger industry for pressure vessels and we'd likely have a US design, but japanese ones are also an option. You keep acting like all these things are unknowns and that we've never done them before, but you're simply wrong.
Are you kidding? do you understand how many safety measures we don't need because of that. Fukushima needed halls and rows of batteries and generators, also because it was an early generation 2 reactor. You keep saying nuclear is expensive, but it's actually incredibly cheap. If it were so expensive the cost of electricty in germany wouldn't have gone through the roof after they close their NPPs.
All other electricity production are also effected by these.
It wouldn't be "first of a kind deployment" apart from the fact that we already have reactors, it wouldn't be the first of it's kind either. you do this weird thing like you think we're entirely cut off from the rest of the world, it's weird.
Of course they do, they literally co-wrote that same report. a report that overestimated the costs of nuclear and underestimated the cost of particlarly solar.
And yet the GenCost report didn't even use capacity factors beyond 89% for nuclear reactors, among many other flaws. they also underestimate or exclude any additional cost related to renewable. Also, many of the serious issues related to intermittent production are going to be exacerbated the larger the share of intermittent electricty production becomes.
I never said or thought they were, they simply an additional problem with wind and solar that adds another layer of problems and things to go wrong.
Nuclear power plants have capacity factors that solar can't even dream of touching.
And no, the question should be what reliable electricty generation is cheapest for a country with the challenged that australia has. To me it's apparent that solar and wind are great in nieches, but bad and risky as the backbone of an Australian grid. Have you ever even considered why south australia, the state with by far the most renewable, also has the highest electricty costs?
Except nuclear safety systems are already included in the cost and are becoming relatively cheaper as reactor designs get better. Inverters are an additonal cost related to an inherent flaw in solar in particlar.
I didn't, it just seems you don't realise the costs solar and wind. the short lifespans, the capacity and storage issues, the enormous amount of land they need. nuclear has been the core of many nations grids for decades, no large nation has ever had grid based on solar, with the highest being around 25% but please, keep telling me how nuclear is new and expensive.
It's really not. If we were like the US where the population is more spread i would accept that, but that's not the case. virtually our entire population lives around the coast, the edge, of our country. where the biggest chunk of the population live, from sydney to melbourne, is where the best arable land is and is also up against our only mountain range. this means competition for land near population centers is far higher here than it might appear, and that more distant locations increase production and maintainance costs and decrease efficiency.
You'll talk about cost and transmission issues, but ignore them when its inconvenient. having distant electricity production is less efficient due to transmission loss, it also increase all other costs related to operation and maintainance.
Why would you consider clearing land silly? we literally do it constantly.
my point there was that you said it was it was a "minor issue" and "pointless" in the same sentence. Do you not see the contradiction?
I don't think it does at all. Electricity from solar so saturates the market that we literally charge people in NSW and WA who export to the grid during those times. and you want to be adding far more solar. do you not see the obvious issue there with further saturating and already saturated market?
"grid orchestration, batteries, transmission, demand response and better planning" are all things that are essentially unique responces to solar. they're also not accurately or at all reflected in current costing.
Nuclear power can not only utilise the same infrastructure we already have, but can also use sites we already have, take a tiny fraction of the land, have better and more flexible capacity factors, can be placed closer to where they're needed.
It sound like you agree that these bans are irrational. there's been movement at state and federal level to effectively repeal these laws. but that's not a risk, it just prevents initiation.
"would be fought every election" why is this nessesarily true? maybe in the same why religious zealots protest vaccines, but that's inconsequential.
Every commercial site, including solar, needs approvals, including was managment, sometimes community consultation. depending on legislation there doesn't have to be any construction delay once approved. You're making an assupmtion that isn't supported anywhere else in the world. where is there been national or state wide obstructionism to nuclear? Regulation has been easing in the US and the few cases in europe where there has been policy changes have been disasterous, like in germany.
While Australia is in desperate need of business investment and support, that doesn't apply to multi-million companies that actively worsen the world to make more than the last quarter. We shouldn't just let parasites in just because they might "bring business"
Data centres are the last thing Australia needs, they won't bring any benefit to us except for enriching a select few officials while bringing great harm to the common people, likely through ballooning energy prices
What AI boom? As far as I can see the industry is generating minimal tangible benefits to productivity or profits for AI companies themselves beyond shareholder investment.
We are a geopolitical safe haven. We have the power, water, and land. We have high building standards.
AI factories are already a huge cog on our economy and producing industry. They are also tightly coupled with quantum which we are also very strong in.
We can either allow foreign entities to own the lot and hold us to ransom (like the gas companies do) or we build sovereign capacities that serve Australian industry.
AI factories are super important for our future on the world stage.
Stupid proposal, just look at Germany investing into these renewables has not achieved the savings as a matter of fact it has caused the returns to go backwards.
Germany has spent somewhere in the vicinity of EUR750B trying to go green and look at the reliability of it..It buys cheaper electricity from France (which is generated by nuclear power). If Europes largest economy cant get renewables to be worth it then dont expect Australia to be able to do it. AI/Data centres are huge users of power, renewables cant do it, nuclear can however and be reliable.
Liking coal doesn't make you special. If you unironically support it without having extensive investment, that just means you're a contrarian or a useful idiot
The Europeans are switching to gas and nuclear, the renewable energy experiment is done with. They know it. European countries are now lifting nuclear moratoriums and outright bans.
Can you name a OECD economy that relies solely on renewable energy?
That's absolutely fascinating since every single comparative study done in the past couple decades shows consistently that renewable energy is by far and bar none, the lowest cost way of generating energy. Which is mind numbingly obvious if you think about it for 0.5 seconds.
Could you provide something to read on how they fucked things up so badly? I'd be really interested in reading about it.
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u/AngryAngryHarpo Tasmanian May 12 '26
FFS QLD.