Join Robert Parker as he presents on securing Australia’s energy using nuclear power.

For this presentation Robert will look at three key benefits of Nuclear Energy:

1.Very high power density leads to very low environmental footprint - we just don't need to make so much stuff nor do we need to industrialise our landscapes with excessive transmission lines, wind turbines, pumped storage and solar plants along with the associated expansion of mining.

2. Low system levelised cost of energy - SLCOE. This is a term that Dr Robert Barr, Barry Hill and I coined over breakfast in Seoul when we visited the South Korean nuclear energy industry. While wind and solar have lower Levelised Costs of Energy – LCOE, when we try to integrate them into an entire system containing backup plants such as gas turbines, hydro power, pumped storage and batteries the increased redundancy drives costs to a very high level. To this we then add additional transmission and distribution and ancillary services such as large spinning reserve and we add additional cost. A simple consolidated nuclear powered system has a lower total cost to consumers and is far more reliable. This section will also give me the opportunity to cover the use of small nuclear power plants on the Australian grid

3. Very Low carbon emissions. The nuclear system has very low emissions and by freeing itself of the need for redundant backup, transmission and ancillary services it excludes all the embodied emissions in those services, For example, a battery has embodied emissions of around 50 gr CO2/kWh sent out the nuclear power plant has just 12 gr/kWh

Speaker

Robert Parker

Founder, Nuclear for Climate Australia

Robert Parker graduated in 1974 as a Civil Engineer from the University of New South Wales where he obtained a Masters in Engineering Science. He spent 40 years in engineering design, project management and project development. Within Australia his work included dams, water treatment plants, rail, freeway and bridge projects. This was followed by extensive international assignments on large dam and hydropower jobs including projects in Vietnam, Iran, Eritrea and Indonesia.

Rob was the past President and Vice President of the Australian Nuclear Association. He has visited the nuclear power plants, fuel manufacturing facilities, power plant fabrication facilities and waste disposal sites in the USA, France and South Korea. Robert has recently appeared on TV for Nine and Seven networks, and also on Sky with Peta Credlin.