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💧simon holmes à court

@simonahac

Jul 20

hardly a week goes by without some 🪿telling me that "saudi arabia built a nuclear power station in just 8 years" or similar.

south korea built it for the UAE & it'll be 16+ years from formal announcement to project completion.

no, it was not on time & likely not on budget

any 🪿telling you nuclear can be built in australia in 2-3, 5, 10 or 15 years:
• ignores years of work required before construction starts
• doesn't understand IAEA's "construction" ignores _years_ of actual construction
• assumes an established regulator & warm supply chain.

https://x.com/Agrivetbusiness/status/1813905668925198781

"from memory, it was 2-3 years" 🪿

https://x.com/Agrivetbusiness/status/1813905668925198781

Read 6 tweets

💧simon holmes à court

@simonahac

Jun 28

🤓 icymi, latest data from @EnergyInstitute is out!

this dataset has been lovingly curated since 1952, until recently by @bp_plc.

a good report, lots of charts and most exciting for energy nerds, lots of raw data!

i knocked up a few charts 🧵

energyinst.org/statistical-re…

🤓 global electricity generation by technology

gas and coal still growing, but at a slower pace than renewables.

quite likely we'll see coal and gas both peak in the next few years.

🤓 global nuclear and wind+solar, as energy

nuclear peaked in 2006. IEA expects that a new peak may be set in 2025.

Read 9 tweets

💧simon holmes à court

@simonahac

Jun 18

☢️ with the #coalition expected to announce its #nuclear plan on wednesday, here are 18 questions every diligent journalist should be seeking answers to:

🧵

1. how will dutton remove the ban?

the coalition would require control of the senate to repeal the ban, which is embedded in two acts.

the coalition hasn’t controlled the senate since 2004-2007.

2. which state(s) would dutton build the reactors in?

only VIC, NSW and QLD grids are big enough to handle a large nuclear reactor.

WA, SA and TAS grids are too small to host a GW-scale reactor.

Read 20 tweets

💧simon holmes à court

@simonahac

May 20

🤓 you'll probably hear scary claims today about "blackouts" in NSW, due to a "reliability gap".

…caused by delays with SA-NSW transmission line, a few batteries & mothballed generators.

to meet the 99.998% reliability standard, NSW needs to build more kit.

not a big deal. 🧵

the eraring power station has 4 units, each 720MW. delaying closure of 1-2 units could fill the gap.

a 500MW–1GW gas generator operating <10 hours a year would also suffice. lower emissions and might be cheaper?

helpfully AEMO has provided 9 options to fill the gap:

small reliability gaps are forecast in VIC and SA, but far enough out that they'll likely evaporate… as they often do for this regular report.

why? because the reports show what happens if we don't do anything more than committed — and we pretty much always do.

Read 6 tweets

💧simon holmes à court

@simonahac

May 15

i attended the ‘navigating nuclear’ conference on monday in sydney.

up front: there were some high quality presentations — on issues such as health impacts, safety culture, regulatory systems.

…but sadly there was also some abject nonsense…

the presentation below argued that we have two options:

1. build a complex grid of wind, solar, hydro, hydrogen, batteries, pumped hydro, transmission and EVs.

2. just build nuclear and use existing powerlines.

…apparently #2 is the way to go. 🙄

Read 10 tweets

💧simon holmes à court

@simonahac

Mar 21

https://twitter.com/abcnews/status/1770562231320637946

⚛️ @abcnews's recent #FactCheck made a classic rookie error in calculating that the latest US nukes had "build times of 10.1 and 10.4 years".

depending how you count it, it took somewhere between 13.9 years and ~19 years to build them.

easy mistake to make.

let me explain… 🧵

https://twitter.com/abcnews/status/1770562231320637946

ABC's analysis assumes the build time is the elapsed period between "construction start" and "grid connection" dates.

in the real world, a nuclear power building project begins years before "construction start" and often finishes months after "grid connection".

"construction start" is defined by the IAEA as the "the date when first major placing of concrete for the base mat of the reactor building is made."

"grid connection" is when "the plant is first connected to the electrical grid for the supply of power."

pris.iaea.org/PRIS/Glossary.…

Read 18 tweets

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