Comments on: Not-really-clean-coal for Victoria.

By: Luke Weston

Luke Weston — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 04:35:26 +0000

Don’t apologise Tony – that’s a great post. Coal isn’t free, let alone the hazardous coal waste.

By: TonyfromOz

TonyfromOz — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 15:23:17 +0000

What I find absolutely amazing is how the anti nuclear power fanatics say the a large 2000MW nameplate capacity baseload nuclear plant is far and away more expensive than a coal fired plant of equivalent size. Let’s look at the costs, and what I’ll do is to compare the Nuclear plant with this one in Victoria which will only be one fifth of the power capacity.
The cost of the nuclear plant is all at the front end and is expanded by the actual cost of the money itself. Let’s say $3.5 Billion, and here I’ll go worst case scenario. It will take 7 years to construct so that cost effectively doubles. They actually say that the cost of decomissioning the plant is the same as for what it costs at the front end, so add another $3.5 Billion. Cost of the rods and ceramicised pellets around 500 million, realising that even if the cost of the yellowcake was to increase by a factor of 5 times, the pellets themselves will only increase in cost by less than 5% so that cost for the rods should stay static. So what we are looking at is around $11 Billion. The plant can be licensed for fifty years to run at 95% capacity day and night, and then probably be relicensed for a further 25 years at a pinch.
This figure is so far and away totally unaffordable that to even suggest it would be stupid.

So, here we have an el cheapo anthracite burning dirty coal fired plant. It’s going to cost $750 million. Lets pretend that we can actually separate the hot flue gas. Lets pretend we can then separate out the CO2 element. lets pretend we can liquify it, lets pretend we can then pipe it through as yet unconstructred pipelines to undiscovered geo sequestration areas and then lets pretend we can sink it into the ground so it stays there for all time. All this pie in the sky will double the original cost they tell us. So now we’re looking at a cost of $1.5 Billion. Now you see why they are proposing this coal fired plant. They’re just so much cheaper.
Oh! Sorry. I forgot the coal. Silly me. Let’s see now. A 400MW coal fired plant burns on average 3000 tons of coal per day. At the current price of $120 per ton for the same 50 years and let’s not extend it shall we, just the routine 50 years.
3000 tons X 365 days X 50 years X $120 per ton. Equals a tick under $7 Billion dollars. added to the original 1.5 Billion makes just under $9 Billion.
Here I talked worst case scenario for the nuclear plant and best case scenario for the coal fired plant. Compares pretty favourably to me considering the Nuclear plant provides five times the power.
And we worry that nuclear is the expensive option.

Sorry to take up so much space.

Tony.

By: Ellie

Ellie — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 02:05:05 +0000

*The Victorian government*

By: Ellie

Ellie — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 02:04:06 +0000

Well.. Good old Kevin Rudd being completely true to his word – totally not hypocritical in any sense! It seeems like every citizen with half a brain can see this is stupid, besides the new government; although I’m not talking them up and saying they have at least half a brain. The Victorian is no better. I don’t see WHY we need more power at the moment, anyway. It’s so easy to fork out hundreds of millions of dollars for a power station, but not for something like the Health system, so it seems. It’ll just be something else for us to be taxed on; “This energy is a whole like.. 30% cleaner than previous brown coal energy, it took more technology and labor to make it – you pay 5% extra on your bills, NOW!”. IDGCC my ass. Screw Labor. Nice to see a lot of people who voted for them up in arms over this, was it not a given that they’d be total failures?

By: Ed

Ed — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 11:56:01 +0000

Good post Luke!

By: Josh Maxwell

Josh Maxwell — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 05:00:12 +0000

A friend of mine just emailed me one of your articles from a while back. I read that one a few more. Really enjoy your blog. Thanks