nuclear-news

Batteries Also Make Nuclear Uneconomic

Australian Submarines May Go Nuclear But Our Power Stations Never Will,   SOLARQUOTES, October 11, 2021 by Ronald Brakels 

• ”………………………………………..Batteries Also Make Nuclear Uneconomic. As solar and wind generation increases, the worse the economics of nuclear energy become.  This is because its low cost pushes down wholesale electricity prices.  There can be periods of high electricity prices when renewable output isn’t sufficient to meet demand, but this isn’t enough to make nuclear pay.  Nuclear wouldn’t pay if there were no such thing as battery storage, but battery storage makes its economics worse. 
• Next year a 580 megawatt-hour battery will be built in Victoria for $270 to $300 million.  That’s around $500 per kilowatt-hour.  If each kilowatt-hour of storage capacity provides a total of 4,000 kilowatt-hours of stored energy over its lifetime — a not unreasonable amount — then the cost of storage will be around 13 cents per kilowatt-hour.
•  That’s not cheap, but still a lot cheaper than nuclear energy, especially since we will often charge it with renewable electricity that costs 1 cent or less per kilowatt-hour.  It also has the advantage it will supply electricity when prices are high, rather than more or less continuously, as is usually the case for nuclear power.    
• There’s no reason to expect the cost of utility-scale battery storage to stop falling anytime soon, so by the time a nuclear power station could be completed in Australia, its economics will be far worse from falling energy storage costs alone. ………https://www.solarquotes.com.au/blog/submarines-nuclear-not-power-stations/

October 14, 2021 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | Uncategorized