Let's not nickel-and-dime the green transition. Nuclear energy has a role to play, and so do renewables. The most urgent thing now is to get as much electricity generation off fossil fuels as possible. Building nuclear power plants is an important part of this, especially in countries like China and India which would otherwise default to burning coal.

Energy generation that works most of the time is more expensive than energy generation that only works some of the time, big surprise. Mason problem is that we need energy all the time and currently can't store it on a grid level.

Look, I'm all for renewable energy, where it makes sense. When I lived in southern California, BLM had so many wildlife restrictions in place, even for off-roading it was kinda nuts. A lot of it dealt with tortoises. Shortly after moving out of state, they started building solar farms all over the place. They're massive multi dozens to hundreds of acres in size. Many of them in the same areas they got all worked up about for the tortoises...

Generating the power is only a third the battle. Still need to store and distribute that power. Factor in power demands etc.

What I'm trying to say is, as a species we need to get better. This is a good step. However, the power output of a single nuclear plant to the size shouldn't be overlooked. We should stop fossil fuel reliance. Nuclear is at this point very understood. Yes some bad accidents happened in the past.

This is basically common knowledge now. CSIRO report pointed to similar conclusions for several years, at least since 2021 when I started to notice.

What is relevant to real life (since Australia probably never will get nukes) is that even assignning system costs only onto VRE, they are still almost the same LCoE in a 90% VRE system. This is again consistent with previous reports.

After Australia pass 100% VRE, exporting green hydrogen in the regional market will probably handle the last remaining flexibility needs. Exporting electricity directly to SE Asia is less likely but still a possibility.

Renewables cannot main grid frequency, which is crucial in America. We transmit AC power. You either accept nuclear or accept no electricity. This is fear mongering propaganda to keep us dependent on fossil fuels because that's the only other way to maintain grid frequency.

This article also specifically says IN AUSTRALIA. So it isn't even a comprehensive statement. We need nuclear. Get over it.

This is the best summary I could come up with:

The report says electricity generated by solar and on-shore wind projects is the cheapest for Australia, even when accounting for the costs of keeping the power grid reliable while they're integrated into the system in greater proportions over time.

It estimates the changing costs of electricity produced by coal, gas, solar, wind, nuclear, bioenergy, hydrogen electrolysers, and storage such as pumped hydro and batteries.

CSIRO's scientists say until recently, discussions about the potential cost of using nuclear energy in Australia have remained theoretical, with a lack of data from completed commercial projects hindering attempts to make worthwhile calculations.

This year's draft GenCost report also provides more data on the estimated "integration costs" for variable renewable technologies.

It says most new-build technologies, like renewables, can enter an electricity system and provide reliable power by relying on existing capacity already deployed, but as their share increases, which forces the retirement of existing flexible capacity, the system will find it increasingly difficult to provide reliable power supply without additional investment.

"Mind you, the integrated system plan was released last week and it did emphasise that although it is likely to be a renewable future, we'll still need gas as a supporting technology.

The original article contains 754 words, the summary contains 199 words. Saved 74%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

I eagerly await all the Nuclear fanboys to explain why this unfairly overestimates the cost of nuclear or was put out by the fossil fuel industry to … make renewables look good.