Nuclear power plant
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Australia will have to shell out AU$8.5 billion to build a nuclear power plant, which is 50% more expensive than wind- and solar-powered options, a CSIR report has revealed.

According to the report by Australia's leading scientific organization that calculates the costs for large-scale reactors for the first time, building the nuclear power plant would take at least 15 years, which would overshoot the deadline to end coal-fired power, and the electricity production would cost more when compared to energy produced from renewable sources ABC News reported.

Though the report points to a nearly same cost in gas- and black coal-fired generation with carbon capture and storage, nuclear technology could be at least 50% more expensive than large-scale wind and solar power backed by "firming" technologies such as batteries. Still, a combination of solar and wind power would be the cheapest source of electricity, even after adding the extra costs of integrating them into the grid.

CSIRO's GenCost report warned that "premiums of up to 100% cannot be ruled out" as such a large reactor had never been built in Australia before.

"We've previously reported on small modular reactors," Paul Graham, the chief economist of the CSIRO's energy business unit, said. "But this time, we did an update and looked at the cost of large-scale nuclear reactors, and they're cheaper — on the order of $150 to $250 a megawatt hour. That's still one and a half to two times the cost of renewables. So they are still higher cost than deploying solar and wind."

The Guardian reported that CSIRO estimated the value of a theoretical 1,000MW nuclear plant built today would be at least $8.6bn, adding that the costs in that range "can only be achieved if Australia commits to a continuous building program and only after an initial higher cost unit is constructed."

Each year, the CSIRO and Australian Energy Market Operator give a report, GenCost, on the estimated costs for building new electricity generation and storage projects.