After Microsoft, Amazon and Google unveiled their plans to back nuclear power, hysteria amongst wind and solar rent-seekers hit unprecedented levels. And the wind and sun cult are positively at apoplectic.

When the smart money, including Big Tech backs ever-reliable nuclear over hopelessly unreliable wind and solar, you know the game is over.

Fatuous claims about “reliable renewables” and Australia being a “renewable energy superpower” seem all the more ridiculous.

In Australia, the current Federal government (a hard-left Green/Labor Alliance filled with Trotskyites) has been pushing an all wind and solar ‘transition’ as if it was a done deal.

In reality, the grand wind and solar scam is on the brink of collapse.

Dozens of wind and solar projects have stalled; investors are crab walking away from inevitable financial ruin.

Much of it due to the fact that once nuclear takes the stage, there is simply no need for wind and solar. Assuming (incorrectly) that wind and solar reduce carbon oxide gas emissions (the principal argument in their purported favour), nuclear does precisely that, but doesn’t reduce power output to something that depends entirely on where the Sun sits in the sky and whether the wind is blowing.

In this piece, The Australian’s Chris Kenny identifies why Big Tech’s nuclear power move spells the death knell for the anti-nuclear squad.

Big Tech puts final nail in ALP’s anti-nuclear coffin
The Australian
Chris Kenny
26 October 2024

Who do you think would be smarter and more experienced in matters of energy and economics, Microsoft founder Bill Gates and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, or lifelong ALP operatives Chris Bowen and Anthony Albanese? How would the smarts of our Prime Minister and his Climate and Energy Minister shape up against Google chief executive Sundar Pichai or Oracle chairman and co-founder Larry Ellison?

These are pertinent questions given the four tech companies have recently announced decisions to invest hundreds of millions of dollars in nuclear energy, while Albanese and Bowen claim nuclear power does not stack up. Not everyone can be right; one side of the argument must be wrong.

If Gates, Bezos, Pichai and Ellison are wrong, their companies will be devalued and shareholders will revolt. If Albanese and Bowen are wrong, we will weaken our country in economic, technological and ­social terms for decades to come.

If you argue nuclear energy is uneconomic then the United States, UK, France, Finland, South Korea, UAE, China, Taiwan, Russia, India, Canada, Pakistan, Japan, Argentina, South Africa, Spain and others must have it wrong. You contend that only Australia has it right with a nuclear-energy ban.

Last year, 22 countries, including our AUKUS partners the US and UK, pledged to triple global nuclear energy output by 2050. Google has announced a deal with Kairos Power to deploy several small modular reactors (SMRs) to power AI data centres, with the first reactor to be in place within six years; Amazon announced a $US500m ($750m) deal for SMRs; Microsoft has underwritten the ­reopening of a reactor at the infamous Three Mile Island plant in Pennsylvania; and Oracle is building a data centre requiring a gigawatt of power supplied by three small reactors.

Yet here in Australia Albanese and Bowen talk about becoming a “green energy superpower” as they ignore uncapped renewable costs and regional battles against solar, wind and transmission projects.

All the while, our descent from a plentiful cheap energy economy to an electricity basket case continues.

This is a grand exercise in ­national self-harm driven by climate catastrophism and ideological zeal. Labor seems incapable of reconsidering it.

This week we heard two astonishing admissions from the Australian Energy Market Operator – one of the bodies the Albanese government uses to buttress claims its renewables-plus-storage plan will lead to cheaper prices. In a parliamentary hearing, AEMO chief executive Daniel Westerman was asked by LNP senator Matt Canavan whether he could “guarantee” current government policy would deliver lower prices. “I can’t guarantee that, no,” Westerman replied.

AEMO limits its goal to delivering the “lowest-cost path” to the government’s emissions reduction targets. Even then, its calculations are confined by the government’s chosen model.

The Integrated System Plan is AEMO’s road map for the electricity grid, and Albanese and Bowen rely on it to promise lower prices. Renewables proponents also use the GenCost report (where AEMO and the CSIRO calculate comparative generation costs) to argue renewables are the cheapest form of energy, but critics point to major flaws in both reports.

“Since coal plants are not considered a long-term option because of emissions targets, and nuclear energy is off the table because of federal legislation, the ISP has effectively omitted the modelling of the only credible alternatives to renewables, storage and gas that could be used as a baseline for comparison,” declares Aidan Morrison, director of energy research at the Centre for Independent Studies.

Morrison says the GenCost conclusions are “incorrect and misleading” and he pinpoints holes in the ISP and GenCost costings because they fail to include the full expense of transmission, storage, household solar and batteries, subsidies to keep coal generators going, and Snowy 2.0.

Governments and their authorities are underestimating the cost of their renewables-plus-storage model by hundreds of millions of dollars. And in assessing the costs of nuclear they fail to factor in the 75+ years of reactor lifespan compared to 15 or 20 years for renewables kit.

At this week’s hearing, Westerman also revealed AEMO does not even calculate the electricity cost to consumers. “We don’t model power prices,” he said.

This is scandalous. Despite promises of cheaper power (remember the $275 pledge?) there is no analysis from the market operator to either confirm the ­government’s undertakings or ­ensure the country is adopting the best option.

The facade is crumbling. It has long been clear to anyone prepared to examine the facts that the renewables-plus-storage model is not only expensive but might not even be possible – no comparable country has even tried it.

Now we see the advice and modelling cited by government is so deeply flawed that it exposes Bowen and Albanese as frauds. Voters have been told that AEMO and the CSIRO have considered various generation and distribution models to arrive at a system to deliver reliable, low-emissions power at the cheapest cost to consumers – but nothing of the kind has occurred.

Albanese and Bowen have been flying blind. And the teals, the Greens and most of the media have happily gone along for the ride.

We will all wear the consequences. This world-first renewable energy experiment risks our money and economic future – the government gets to grandstand, but consumers invariably will pay.

When the Coalition raised the nuclear alternative, Labor’s kneejerk response was to demonise ­nuclear as unsafe, trotting out Simpson-esque three-eyed fish. When they saw how ridiculous this made them look, the critics switched to cost – but that didn’t stack up either (the cost of the renewables-plus-storage model is at least $122bn on the government’s own numbers).

So now the critics have started to focus on timing, claiming we cannot get nuclear in place before our coal generators shut down, leaving an energy gap. This is a bit like a starving man rejecting a meal because it won’t be delivered until tomorrow. It also makes the grand assumption that there will be enough wind, solar and storage in time.

Green hydrogen is already falling by the wayside, with major investors Origin Energy and Fortescue withdrawing. Offshore wind is hitting stormy waters too, with Norwegian firm Equinor and local partner Oceanex pulling out of the Illawarra zone in NSW.

Yet with nuclear expanding overseas and going from plans to power-points in the UAE over just 10 years, we are told this technology is beyond Australia. Talk about the energy harm of low expectations.

On Thursday, the Australian Energy Regulator chair Clare Savage told the nuclear energy select committee that it will take a decade just to get the regulatory framework in place. “By the time you do licensing, safety, environmental, technical, commercial and you do legislation, rules, guidelines, consultation”, Savage said, “for us, just to do a guideline takes 12 to 18 months because you have to do an issues paper, a draft decision, a final decision.”

What a pathetically sad assessment – a modern economy faces an energy crisis and bureaucrats warn against the most promising option because bureaucracy will stifle it. This is bureaucracy as a weapon against progress.

Anyway, it is bunkum. Because we do not have to reinvent the wheel.

We already have a modern research and medical reactor at Lucas Heights on Sydney’s southern fringes, the second reactor on that site over 70 years. It is operated by the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation under regulation from the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency.

Australian nuclear industry lawyer Helen Cook has worked on nuclear regulation around the world and says we can do the required work in good time.

“We have in place today an agency that covers nuclear security and nuclear safeguards,” says Cook.

“We have an established nuclear regulatory authority that oversees nuclear safety, and these regulatory bodies have international reputations, highly credible ones, and if we were to move down a nuclear power plant path yes, we would need to adapt these frameworks to make sure they are fit for purpose for nuclear power, but we would be adapting and building on what we have.”

Such logical and experienced views are not prominent in the current debate. The nuclear option has become a hyper-partisan battleground.

Apart from the vested interests of the renewable energy sector, the Coalition’s nuclear plan is attacked by the ALP and its union masters. There will be a scare campaign at the election – already the ABC has weighed in with a deceptive Four Corners piece decrying nuclear energy.

Yet on the opposite side of the ledger are the facts, and the reality of countries and companies latching on to reliable, affordable, emissions-free electricity from proven technology.

At the same time, right around our country, communities are being torn apart by wind, solar and transmission projects. And consumers are being hit by ever-rising electricity bills.

Whatever path we choose for a zero-emissions power grid, the truth is it will be expensive, and the evidence suggests nuclear is at least competitive, if not much cheaper. And the critical fact is we know it will work – on a small footprint with existing transmission infrastructure.

The renewables-plus-storage option demands the largest machine ever constructed across vast areas, alienating agriculture, clearing bushland, ruining views, and interfering with marine environments. And even still, it might not give us the power we need, when we need it.
The Australian

From THE DAILY SCEPTIC

by Eugyppius

Climatism in Germany is attended by all manner of naïve ideas and bright pink fairytale slogans. Among the latter is a dubious proverb proclaiming that “The sun doesn’t send any bills” (in German: “Die Sonne schickt keine Rechnung”). Such proverbs always seem initially plausible (is there anything freer and more democratic than sunshine?) while proving to be basically the opposite of the truth. In fact, the energy transition has landed German taxpayers in the position of paying billions of Euros for the sun to shine. It is becoming an unmitigated disaster, and what is worse, the more we expand solar capacity, the more we will have to pay. For something that does not send any bills, sunshine has sure become very expensive here in the Federal Republic.

Welt calls it “the solar trap”, and it works like this: our Renewable Energy Sources Act (EEG) pledges to pay renewables producers fixed tariffs for every kilowatt hour of electricity their installations feed into the grid. Whether you are an ordinary climate-conscious person with solar panels on your house or you run massive solar farms, the EEG entitles you to receive these fixed “feed-in tariffs” for a period of 20 years. The EEG also requires grid operators to accept your electricity regardless of demand and to sell it on the electricity exchange.

Now the sun, although it may not charge for its services, turns out to have this naughty habit of shining in many places all at once. When this happens, electricity supply often exceeds electricity demand and exchange prices fall. They can fall all the way to zero, or in extreme situations of excessive sunshine they can even go negative. Negative prices mean that you have to actually pay “buyers” to take the excess power off your hands. Whether the prices are merely very low, or zero, or negative, the German taxpayer has obligated himself, via the EEG, to pay these producers of unwanted if extremely green and climate-friendly electricity their fixed feed-in tariffs anyway. That is, we are on the hook for the difference between the actual exchange value of excess electricity and the feed-in tariffs promised to producers. In this way we have ended up literally paying for the sun to shine.

In September alone, Germany paid €2.6 billion to renewables producers for electricity that had a market value of a mere €145 million. Our sunny autumn is destroying our already-fragile Government budget. Federal number-crunchers had originally allocated €10.6 billion for feed-in tariffs in 2024, but already the Government owes €15 billion and the year is not yet over. Scholz’s Cabinet is thus trying to allocate an additional €8.8 billion for the rest of the year. The Parliament has yet to approve the additional funds, though, and also the damned sun will just not stop bloody shining, and so probably even this supplementary allocation won’t be enough. We’re bleeding money, all for a sun that doesn’t send any bills.

This problem will get worse before it gets better. The more solar panels we install, the greater oversupply we’ll face when the sun shines, and the larger the spread between the fixed feed-in tariffs and the actual market value of this green electricity. In 2024, as I said, the Government projected that feed-in tariffs would cost €10.6 billion, but they’ll probably end up costing €20 billion at least. Next year, the costs are projected to be even higher, and the year after that, they will be higher still. As Welt reports, the German Government plans to triple our solar capacity to 215 gigawatts over the next six years – “the equivalent of 215 nuclear reactors” every time the sun emerges from behind a blessed cloud.

The energy transitioners know they messed up. The new plan is to change the rules for solar subsidies. When prices go negative, larger producers won’t receive their fixed tariffs, and they’ll also have to sell their electricity themselves. In this way, they will become newly sensitive to market demand and stop overproducing electricity when nobody wants it. It’s almost like creating a blind system totally oblivious to market incentives was a bad idea. Unfortunately, the new rules will apply only to new solar installations. The German Government will still have to honour its insane agreement to pay the operators of older solar plants for years to come. We will burn billions for nothing.

You’ll also note that these new rules only target larger operators. The millions of small operators out there – all the ordinary people who have bolted solar panels to their roofs – constitute a serious, ongoing problem for which nobody has any solution at all:

In the long term, [energy economist and Government adviser] Lion Hirth believes that “all electricity producers will have to operate directly on the electricity market”. Even the owners of small rooftop photovoltaic systems would theoretically have to become direct marketers, because only this would provide the economic incentive to take their system off the grid when there is an electricity surplus. “In principle, I consider the expansion of direct marketing to be the only sensible approach in the long term,” Hirth said. … Direct marketing, however, is also highly regulated at the bureaucratic level and also expensive, so it is hardly an option for small systems.

Hirth notes that rooftop installations also don’t make any economic sense. They are three times more expensive, per unit of capacity, than large solar fields. Yet we can’t get rid of these small operators, because climate change propaganda has generated a whole population of eager-beaver German greenists who want to make a personal contribution to stopping climate change by screwing renewable technology to their roofs. As always, climate politics prioritises individual consumer choices and experiences over pragmatic, system-wide outcomes, because at base the Green voter does not really want to stop CO₂ emissions. He wants to have the experience of stopping CO₂ emissions, and that is not even nearly the same thing.

In the meantime, all budget planners can do is “hope for bad weather” to “decrease solar power feed-in and cause electricity exchange prices to rise again”. Before our Renewable Energy Sources Act, the sun indeed did not send any bills, but in our desperation to change the weather we have created an artificial system in which it will not stop sending them. Ours is truly one of the dumbest eras in human history.

This article originally appeared on Eugyppius’s Substack newsletter. You can subscribe here.