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Legal status

Civilian nuclear power generation is currently prohibited in Australia. There is no lawful approval pathway for a civilian nuclear power reactor under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 (Cth) s140A or the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Act 1998 (Cth) s10, and New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland and Tasmania impose additional state-level bans.

Every Australian scenario in this suite is therefore a hypothetical “what-if” model. Nothing here represents that deployment in Australia is imminent, presently lawful, or an invitation to invest. See the disclaimers.

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Calculator 06

Data-Centre Diesel Replacement

Two very different questions, kept apart on purpose: displacing standby diesel that runs a few dozen hours a year, and supplying firm baseload that runs all year.

National context, display only. Australian data-centre electricity consumption was about 3.9 TWh in FY25, and about 21.4 TWh by 2035 under AEMO’s accelerated-growth scenario (AEMO / Oxford Economics). The 2035 figure is a named scenario forecast, not a fact. Neither figure is an input to anything calculated on this page: a national aggregate cannot size a site.

Facility assumptions

5.0MW

100hours/yr

Standby plant at a well-connected site typically runs 50–200 hours a year including testing. In the firm baseload scenario this is fixed at 8,760 hours and this control is disabled.

2.20A$/L

Urban and peri-urban data centres pay closer to the national retail average (A$1.92/L, independently published by AIP) than to remote delivered prices.

0.30L/kWh

48hours at full load

24–72 hours is the industry-typical design target. Confirm against the specific facility design brief and the applicable uptime tier requirement.

5years

Used only by the firm-baseload Unity Battery comparison below. Disabled in the backup scenario, where no economic comparison is presented.

0.65USD per AUD

Unity Battery figures are stated in US dollars and converted at this user-entered rate, which is a planning assumption and not a forecast. Used only by the firm-baseload comparison.

Annual energy from generators

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Annual diesel volume

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Annual diesel fuel cost

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Annual Scope 1 CO2-e

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On-site fuel storage implied by the runway

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1 MWe units to cover the load

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What this scenario does and does not show

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Forward-looking illustration These outputs are forward-looking statements: scenario estimates built from the assumptions you have entered and the constants listed below. They are based on assumptions that may not prove correct and involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties. Actual results would differ materially. No representation or warranty is given as to the achievement of any figure shown. Outputs describe avoided cost, emissions or noise at a hypothetical operating site — they are not returns, yields, distributions or any measure of investment performance. Civilian nuclear power is not currently lawful in Australia, so this scenario could not be built today.

Constraints that this arithmetic does not capture

  • Redundancy is not assumed. Unit counts cover the load only. Data centres are built to N+1 or 2N standards, so a real installation would need more units than shown. No redundancy configuration is proposed or costed here.
  • Standby diesel is not primarily an energy cost. Its function is ride-through and resilience. Displacing it changes the resilience architecture, which is a design and assurance question, not an arithmetic one.
  • Start-up and load-following behaviour differ. Standby diesel is specified on its ability to pick up load in seconds. No claim is made about the Unity Battery’s transient response, and no independently verified data exists on it.
  • Uptime certification. Tier certification, insurer requirements and customer contractual SLAs constrain what plant may be relied upon. None of these have been assessed for a reactor at an Australian data centre, where the technology is in any case currently prohibited.
  • Nothing here is a facility design. No Australian data centre has an approval pathway for on-site nuclear generation.

Method

The formulas, in full

Annual energy (kWh/yr) = Load (MW) × 1,000 × RunHours RunHours = user value (backup scenario) = 8,760 (firm baseload) Diesel volume (L/yr) = Annual energy × SFC Fuel cost (A$/yr) = Diesel volume × Price Scope 1 (t/yr) = Volume × 2.710 ÷ 1,000 Fuel storage (L) = Load (MW) × 1,000 × Runway (h) × SFC Units = ceil( Load (MW) ÷ 1 MWe ) Unity case (firm scenario only, company-stated) Capital (A$) = Units × US$10M ÷ FX Service charge (A$) = Units × US$350k ÷ FX /yr Cumulative = Capital + Service charge × Years

The two scenarios use the same engine with different running hours. They are presented separately because combining them produces a misleading result: applying baseload running hours to a standby fleet overstates avoidable fuel cost by two orders of magnitude.

Emissions use the DCCEEW-derived Scope 1 factor of 2.710 kg CO2-e per litre. Scope 2 grid emissions are not netted off, because in the firm baseload scenario the counterfactual mix is site-specific and no like-for-like study is presented here.

In the backup scenario no cost is attributed to the Unity Battery side, because standby plant is a resilience asset and a fuel-cost comparison would mislead. The firm baseload scenario carries an illustrative comparison built from company-stated planning figures (US$10M per 1 MWe unit plus US$350k per unit per year), badged as unverified. For the fuller total-cost treatment see Module 5.

Provenance

Constants and sources

General information only

This calculator provides general, illustrative information only about hypothetical energy-generation scenarios. It does not take into account your personal circumstances, objectives or financial situation, and does not constitute financial product advice, an offer of securities, or a recommendation to invest in Deployable Energy Fund Limited, Deployable Energy Limited, or any other entity. Figures are drawn from third-party Australian government, regulator and industry sources (cited on this page) and, where expressly badged, from Deployable Energy’s own unverified planning assumptions. They are provided for general educational and illustrative purposes only. The Unity Battery microreactor has not yet been deployed commercially, and civilian nuclear power generation is not currently permitted in Australia under the EPBC Act and the ARPANS Act (and, in several states, additional state legislation). Nothing on this page should be relied upon as a representation that deployment in Australia is imminent or currently lawful.

See the full disclaimers and important notices.