IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/enepol/v39y2011i3p1305-1311.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The economic viability of nuclear power in a fossil-fuel-rich country: Australia

Author

Listed:
  • Owen, Anthony D.

Abstract

This paper assesses the economic viability of investment in nuclear power generation in Australia in the future and, in addition, domestic factors which may influence government policy towards such investments. It argues that the structure of the grid in Eastern Australia and the nature of the existing generator mix would require nuclear technology that has similar attributes to current combined cycle gas technology; i.e. modular construction of (relatively) small generating units, load following capability, low unit capital cost, and a general acceptance by the Australian public. The current generation of nuclear plants possesses none of these attributes. Therefore this paper concludes that it is only technology with similar characteristics to some Generation IV nuclear technology concepts that has the potential to be part of Australia's energy mix after 2030.

Suggested Citation

  • Owen, Anthony D., 2011. "The economic viability of nuclear power in a fossil-fuel-rich country: Australia," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 39(3), pages 1305-1311, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:enepol:v:39:y:2011:i:3:p:1305-1311
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301-4215(10)00883-9
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Beerten, Jef & Laes, Erik & Meskens, Gaston & D'haeseleer, William, 2009. "Greenhouse gas emissions in the nuclear life cycle: A balanced appraisal," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 37(12), pages 5056-5068, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Zanin, Luca & Marra, Giampiero, 2012. "Assessing the functional relationship between CO2 emissions and economic development using an additive mixed model approach," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 29(4), pages 1328-1337.
    2. Sebastian Schäfer & Lisa Altvater, 2021. "A Capacity Market for the Transition towards Renewable-Based Electricity Generation with Enhanced Political Feasibility," Energies, MDPI, vol. 14(18), pages 1-24, September.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Linares, Pedro & Conchado, Adela, 2013. "The economics of new nuclear power plants in liberalized electricity markets," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 40(S1), pages 119-125.
    2. Brook, Barry W., 2012. "Could nuclear fission energy, etc., solve the greenhouse problem? The affirmative case," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 42(C), pages 4-8.
    3. Carless, Travis S. & Griffin, W. Michael & Fischbeck, Paul S., 2016. "The environmental competitiveness of small modular reactors: A life cycle study," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 114(C), pages 84-99.
    4. Pomponi, Francesco & Hart, Jim, 2021. "The greenhouse gas emissions of nuclear energy – Life cycle assessment of a European pressurised reactor," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 290(C).
    5. Nick King & Aled Jones, 2020. "An Assessment of Civil Nuclear ‘Enabling’ and ‘Amelioration’ Factors for EROI Analysis," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(20), pages 1-34, October.
    6. Poinssot, Ch. & Bourg, S. & Ouvrier, N. & Combernoux, N. & Rostaing, C. & Vargas-Gonzalez, M. & Bruno, J., 2014. "Assessment of the environmental footprint of nuclear energy systems. Comparison between closed and open fuel cycles," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 69(C), pages 199-211.
    7. Muellner, Nikolaus & Arnold, Nikolaus & Gufler, Klaus & Kromp, Wolfgang & Renneberg, Wolfgang & Liebert, Wolfgang, 2021. "Nuclear energy - The solution to climate change?," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 155(C).
    8. Jeong, Minsoo & You, Jung S., 2022. "Estimating the economic costs of nuclear power plant outages in a regulated market using a latent factor model," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 166(C).
    9. Sovacool, Benjamin K. & Burke, Matthew & Baker, Lucy & Kotikalapudi, Chaitanya Kumar & Wlokas, Holle, 2017. "New frontiers and conceptual frameworks for energy justice," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 105(C), pages 677-691.
    10. Verbruggen, Aviel & Laes, Erik & Lemmens, Sanne, 2014. "Assessment of the actual sustainability of nuclear fission power," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 32(C), pages 16-28.
    11. Tingzhu Li & Debin Du & Xueli Wang & Xionghe Qin, 2022. "Can Nuclear Power Products Mitigate Greenhouse Gas Emissions? Evidence from Global Trade Network," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(13), pages 1-25, June.
    12. Sheldon, Seth & Hadian, Saeed & Zik, Ory, 2015. "Beyond carbon: Quantifying environmental externalities as energy for hydroelectric and nuclear power," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 84(C), pages 36-44.
    13. Dittmar, Michael, 2012. "Nuclear energy: Status and future limitations," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 37(1), pages 35-40.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Australia Nuclear Economics;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:enepol:v:39:y:2011:i:3:p:1305-1311. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/enpol .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.