Comparison of Solar, Nuclear and Wind Options for Large Scale Implementation

This paper addresses the relative suitability of nuclear and solar in Australia as a primary future electricity option, since nuclear can use abundant Australian resources of U235, but the direct solar option is the biggest global resource. The background is that we are likely to need generation systems which use close to zero net emissions by mid-century. There are many energy options, but few are ready, and this paper addresses the issue about whether a viable energy system can be based mostly around solar and wind alone as a worst case. This paper investigates issues such as usefulness of various technical options in the 2050 time frame, global availability of uranium fuel, load-following operation of candidate solar and nuclear technology, net energy gained, net global pollution savings, dynamic cumulative energy gained. It is found that advanced solar and nuclear typical of the next decade have similar cost/efficiency and each can supply the electricity load if necessary. Nuclear has a severe global fuel resource problem not shared by solar. Solar has almost no fuel cost and decommissioning uncertainties while nuclear has long term back end and fuel cost uncertainties. The author proposes technology-independent support schemes based on delivered energy (feed-in laws, carbon trading) which allow increased selling price for early support of new technology, where each technology must openly pay its own real costs for meeting radiological and environmental standards, security charges, insurance, fully insured waste disposal, fuel enrichment, and fully insured decommissioning.