Energy equation still chasing a perfect set of numbers

Thank you, David Pearl, for your brave attempt to explain Australia’s energy porridge (“The cost of nuclear energy? A guide for the perplexed”, 27/12), and also to the many Australian letter writers who have wrestled so assiduously with this topic this year.

With renewable energy costs well and truly sunk, inconvenient as it may be, it seems there is now no easy way out of the energy mess regardless of who wins the next election.

Uncertainties abound with any investment strategy and most investment analysts advocate a mixed portfolio as the best way to mitigate risk. Big and complex as it may be, Australia Pty Ltd is no different and we would be well-advised to establish an energy cocktail that includes nuclear and helps underwrite the competitiveness and wellbeing of our economy and our standard of living.

Nick Palethorpe, Turramurra, NSW

David Pearl’s scepticism over any substantial decrease in power prices under the Coalition’s plan is justified, for the same reason that they must accelerate even more under Labor. Frontier Economics figures do stack up but they still indicate the substantial cost of doubling wind and solar infrastructure by 2050, with nuclear power providing the baseload firming as gas is planned to do in the short term. This is the crucial point he makes and this plan would not remove the need for a further proliferation of expensive transmission lines, which is a threat to both agriculture and the environment.

Investors still will require subsidies and inevitably the burden will fall on households and industry, whether as taxpayers or consumers. The only rational alternative would be to discourage new wind and solar projects and limp on with coal and gas while planning and building a full-scale nuclear power industry like that of France.

John Morrissey, Hawthorn, Vic

Like David Pearl, I find the Coalition’s power policy has too much of renewables and too little understanding of how Donald Trump will change the world energy scene.

Trump, who is dead serious about draining the climate swamp, is advised by some very experienced scientists who tell him carbon dioxide was not an important factor in past climate change, as it isn’t today, and China, India and others are right to do as they must to generate affordable, reliable power, including burning coal.

When the US withdraws from the Paris Agreement and burns fossil fuels without restraint, that will mean more than half the world will be doing likewise. We would be fools not to join them and go back to the cheap energy superpower we once were.

Doug Hurst, Chapman, ACT

Given that no storage facility has yet been found for Australia’s low-level nuclear waste, could Peter Dutton enlighten us as to where a facility is to be sited for the safe storage of high-level waste from seven nuclear power plants?

Rosalie McDonald, Rostrevor, SA

David Pearl is right to highlight the challenges facing Australia’s shift to a low-carbon energy system and his analysis is useful.

But, disappointingly, he offers no real solution. Instead he calls for an abandonment of the science-based net-zero target using Donald Trump’s election as an excuse. Trump will be gone in four years, but our grandkids still will be around. As we tell them, just because something is hard doesn’t mean we should stop trying.

Ray Peck, Hawthorn, Vic

It’s far from certain that the Coalition’s nuclear power policy will have “wind and solar accounting for between 50 and 60 per cent of electricity generated in 2051”.

With the proposed nuclear power stations being fully operational and supported by Snowy 2.0 and other pumped storage options, the anticipated need to replace life-expired wind turbines and solar panels may no longer exist. Furthermore, the expense of replacing every existing wind turbine and solar panel, and any others erected during the timeframe, is a huge unknown. It may be the cost of those renewals far exceeds the cost of additional nuclear power stations being added to the fleet. With the bulk of our electricity able to be generated using nuclear power far into the future, it is easy to envisage the splurge into an “all renewables” future as utter folly.

Rob Davies, Drysdale, Vic