* What is the figure on the magnitude of power Australia needs?
* How many 2MW molten salt reactors like the built and being tested TMSR-LF1 reactor would Australia need to meet that figure? What would be the cost and time to construct that number in parallel?
* There's a 10MW version planned - what's the cost | timeline | number for those?
* Eventually there might be a ~ 300MW version built and tested .. what's the timeline on that?
The CSIRO GenCost report seems to think the costs of batteries + renewables will be far less overall and more immediately available in Australia as we scale them out .. rather than waiting decades and still having to fudge about in the meantime .. thoughts?
Australia's electricity consumption in 2021 was approximately 265 TWh (terawatt-hours) per year. Napkin math works out to:
Annual energy production of one 2 MW reactor: 2 MW * 8760 hours/year = 17,520 MWh/year = 17.52 GWh/year.
Number of reactors required: 265,000 GWh/year / 17.52 GWh/year = ~15,130 reactors.
This is of course a silly computation for scaling a research grade molten salt reactor. 300+ MW reactors knocks things down to a few dozen.
Now, how about if we apply this same requirement to solar power? How many solar panels will we need to get the same power gain?
Total energy required: 265,000 GWh/year = 265,000,000 MWh/year = 265,000,000,000 kWh/year.
Number of panels needed: 265,000,000,000 kWh/year / 584 kWh/year per panel ≈ 453,767,123 panels.
I know Chinese panels are cheap and all, but the notion that Australia will maintain a network of 450M panels is silly, and this is just to replace what we have now, not what is needed in the future.
* How many 2MW molten salt reactors like the built and being tested TMSR-LF1 reactor would Australia need to meet that figure? What would be the cost and time to construct that number in parallel?
* There's a 10MW version planned - what's the cost | timeline | number for those?
* Eventually there might be a ~ 300MW version built and tested .. what's the timeline on that?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TMSR-LF1
The CSIRO GenCost report seems to think the costs of batteries + renewables will be far less overall and more immediately available in Australia as we scale them out .. rather than waiting decades and still having to fudge about in the meantime .. thoughts?
https://www.csiro.au/en/research/technology-space/energy/Gen...