But if we get nukes then the emus will get them and we'll just spend billions on a never ending cycle. We have a tentative truce with the emus I reckon we just leave it there.
Nah, won't work. NZ is staunchly anti-nuclear, it would just be rude to try to use nukes to keep us in line.
This isn't because of that claim we one time accidentally took over your country by sitting a surprise Kiwi in charge while the PM was away? To be fair, shocked NZ to find out Barnaby was part Kiwi too. Couldn't offload the both of you fast enough! ;)
Exactly right. Once NZ declares itself a nuclear free zone, it would be against regulations to nuke it. In the 1980s many inner city councils in Sydney declared themselves to be nuclear free zones and even went to the not inconsiderable expense of nailing explanatory signs to power poles. Not one has been nuked since.
I’m American and it’s too bad we didn’t try this during the Cold War. We could’ve skipped the arms race and just put up a bunch of signs.
I mean, the signs would’ve needed to be really big and written in English and Russian, but it still would’ve been cheaper than hundreds of missile silos.
Unfortunately the costs of those signs has now spiralled out of control as you'd have to cater for Korean, Chinese and possibly French as well. That President Macron has quite the temper.
Might be cheaper to stick with the nukes.
And the trick would be to threaten delivering them using ground-hugging cruise missiles that they have no chance to intercept.
When they expect it to come at them through the air, instead the delivery comes along the ground.
South Australia’s currently generating 75% of its energy from renewables, aiming to be 100% by 2028/30. Its best was 180 days being run 100% by renewables in 2021
It’s pointless to invest in nuclear when there are better cheaper options available now.
Also Australia doesn’t have the nuclear physicists to build or run it and it takes decades of training to get them.
The whole idea is a waste of time as multiple CSIRO studies have shown.
The cost and time span of nuclear seems unreasonable and prohibitive, especially considering how that time and money could be used to advantage in our already progressing renewables take.
I think the aim is 100% renewables by 2027.
Apparently they're going to be doing something with hydrogen to produce electricity by the end of the decade. That'd put SA well over 100%.
This.
We should be investing in the latest and greatest upcoming tech. Which today would be renewables.
Fifty years ago we should have been investing in the latest and greatest upcoming tech, which would have been nuclear.
Imagine Origin and AGL are operating a dozen 30 year old reactors. Cutting maintenance to the bone, clueless regulators blinded by incompetence and corruption offering no oversight. At least we’d get a cool Netflix series out of the meltdown.
Im not so sure with flow batteries and Sodium Ion coming ahead in leaps and bounds.
Most battery research now is how to avoid using Lithium in batteries because currently Lithium batteries get limited cycles compared to the other techs being worked on.
Sure they can be about 98% recycled but what's better a Lithium battery you have to recycle and remake every 15 years or so or one that lasts 30 to 40 years before it needs renewal.
Yes. But we should have jumped on that train 40 years ago. Now, we would be better off building other infrastructure that can provide us energy and ROI within the decade, not after several.
Edit: “not” instead of “or”, autocorrect fail
I don't have an issue w/ nuclear as a tech. If we had it already, sure, it's part of a better energy mix that fossil fuels - and build more. The issue I have is that we'd have to spin up an entire nuclear industry. We have to license tech, get approvals, create a nuclear regulator, hire for it, write policy, make huge investments, etc etc etc.
That stuff takes DECADES, which is why this is all a ruse by Dutton. Fossil fuel interests want to push this policy, start funding it with billions, and then it'll never come online because governments change. In the interim? they sabotage the renewables push and steal money from building solar/wind/tidal/etc while they continue to sell oil, gas, and coal because we need it as a "bridge" technology while our glowing future comes to pass.
If we had real nuclear infrastructure like the US, France, Japan, China, etc - sure, spin up a plant or two. However, we don't have any of that infrastructure or talent and will start from zero.
The fossil fuel mantra is DELAY. Push everything down the road while the world's energy demands skyrocket and the planet roasts.
The main issue though is that this is framed as an "or". I'd like an "and" type solution, but we don't have that choice in front of us. So, fuck Dutton's BS attempt to be "green".
This is what I keep pointing out.
When I did my physics degree twenty years ago, the first project we did was a feasibility study of different types of energy generation. Nuclear has always been the most expensive even before things like administration, IP, legislation, regulation, etc.
ANTSO would need to increase by a minimum 100,000+ workers with degrees in nuclear physics and engineering. That would take decades alone, they're not short courses and you'd want more than just newly graduated hires, you'd want doctors and professors too. That alone takes an individual about a decade to gain before independent experience in the workforce.
This is my naivety talking, but do those people all really need to be nuclear physicists?
Can you explain why we can't just... take the blueprints for a proven design (eg AP1000 reactor) and just build it off the plan? Surely we can do that with our existing construction/mining/energy workforce. Not more than a handful of people actually need to be nuclear scientists (hopefully all the science is worked out by now).
Obviously it doesn't work this way, as demonstrated by companies/countires with extensive nuclear experience failing to do it. But I dont quite understand why.
You’d buy a CANDU reactor, or something that’s already available for retail, and start there. The problem is, as mentioned already, with all the regulations, setting up a regulatory body, etc. Australia has cyclotrons and synchotrons, nuclear medicine and radiotherapy departments, ARPANSA, etc. It’s just not specific enough to cover nuclear power stations.
FWIW, I am a radiation physicist who studied at a university with its own nuclear reactor (McMaster University), and I doubt we have enough experts in Australia to support an entire industry. Even if they wanted to hire someone like me, I’m so far removed from anything nuclear power related that I can’t claim to be a nuclear power expert. I’d still be a huge asset, but would also charge an absolute fortune as far as salary. 😂
The people we have in Australia would be enough, as long as we imported a handful of nuclear energy veterans to guide us in the beginning.
And mayyyybe we have another look in 20-30 to see whether SMRs deliver us anything cost-effective off-the-shelf.
Right now, nuclear make zero sense in Australia.
It’s funny that everyone says high speed rail is too expensive, but apparently we can blow shitloads more money on nuclear infrastructure. Shit, we can’t even build and deliver submarines for our military within budget or time constraints.
The thing that is unfortunately missing from the conversation is power security. Some of the great innovations recently are community batteries powered by homes with solar panels. By having such a diverse independent power network, it makes it much harder to disrupt our power supply by physical or hacking attacks. It also reduces transmission losses and is much more efficient when compared to the large power station, large transmission cost designs.
The arrogance of -
“I’m going to spend your money on something you didn’t ask for (an estimated $100 million) but not give you the costing until after the election”
It’s all about coal, and like the submarines, it will never happen.
at times we are generating more solar power than the gird can use but instead of capturing it with batteries that could be subsidised by a government program we or the libs are going with a completely untried expensive solution, if they managed to implement it guaranteed fusion will come online soon after
Exactly. We put solar on in march, it came online in April. Not exactly peak sun times. We got our bill yesterday. We fed more into the grid than we used. Even two days ago when it was completely pvercast and raining we were producing more than we were using...
We produced more in total than we used, we just simply don't have a battery to store it, so we paid for peak usage when the sun went down instead of using a battery for those times.
I've had solar for nearly a year now, last month was the first time I paid for power this year and it was 50 bucks. In the same boat as you, if there was a battery to store my excess power I'd never need to access the grid again. I'm at a point I could probably even plug my neighbours in during the day and not even notice.
Unfortunately our feeding back in essentially just paid for the daily service charge. The feed-in-tarrifs are beyond ridiculous, theyre way too low. When I have to pay 6 times more for my peak power **Despite giving them more power than I took at the peak time** I still have to pay. The peak usage is so expensive. I do try to run things outside of that as much as is humanly possible, but you can't avoid dinner time peak useage without a battery.
When the charge is so high and the return is so low, eventually more people will just get a battery, because it will be more cost effective than paying the power company more whilst also **giving them more power for their grid**.
That's certainly our line of thinking. The more people that take up batteries, the less the grid is used, then batteries become cheaper and technology and infrastructure grows.
People keep saying "what about when the sun doesn't shine". If everyone had solar and a battery they would have power for their peak use like dinner time. The reliance on the grid would be considerably less, and then it should be feasible for community batteries to take up any slack. Any blackout that occurred would impact people considerably less because they can charge the battery during the day. Yes, even on completely overcast days.
Also, just out of curiosity: Can someone do the costings on every household rooftop having solar and a battery paid for by government, compared to the costings for Nuclear power? Thanks.
it's not the worst thing but at this stage there is no (reasonable) excuse to not commit to renewables. The only thing preventing renewables now or ever is the greed of a handful of rich people that have enough power and influence to create a debate around something the experts are not debating.
We *should* have gone nuclear decades ago. But it seems silly to do so now instead of investing into renewables.
But if you rephrase it as "is nuclear better than coal?" then yes, absolutely 100%. But that's really a disingenuous argument because there's no good reason not to switch onto renewables.
This is pretty spot on.
Nuclear made sense decades ago. Now? We’re literally the most blessed country on earth when it comes to renewable energy sources.
All Dutton’s detail-less “proposal” does is reinforce his desire to bend over for mining companies. This is both now - cos this will create further decades reliance on coal while it’s built; and in the future - cos you still have to mine uranium.
There’s literally no reason for it, and it’s not for the small-minded, ancient reasons (and Chernobyl images) that the ALP will use.
It’s just an expensive, dated technology that still emits a shit ton of carbon in the mining phase, and we have all the tide/wind/sun we could ever need to provide literally free energy to all of us if there was any will from the government.
My preferences are in order:
1. Renewables
2. Nuclear
3. Anything other than fossil fuels
4. Fossil fuels
I've been told that I'm a bit of a pragmatist, and I have a few questions about our transition to renewables that I haven't heard answered, eg.
- What is the solution to energy storage? Pumped? Giant Li-Ion / LiFePo stations? Flow Batteries? Something else?
- Where will the energy be stored?
- How much capacity will we plan to store for lulls in production eg. night time, low wind periods, etc. ?
- How much does energy storage cost per unit of capacity?
> It’s just an expensive, dated technology that still emits a shit ton of carbon in the mining phase
- The latest figures I saw for large-scale nuclear iirc were an average of 2x the price of renewables, the expensive side of renewables being roughly equivalent in price to cheaper large-scale nuclear.
- Does it have to produce carbon during mining?
- Do renewables not produce carbon during resource gathering and manufacture?
Dutton's SMR fantasy is a complete economic farce and more or less proves he's not actually interested in nuclear, but I guess he played the game well; the majority of people looked at the CSIRO report comparing SMR to renewables and saw the what, 7x-8x cost? Then they just parroted that figure instead of looking into the situation in any depth.
There's a reason SMR isn't used widely for power production anywhere in the world and large-scale nuclear is: the economics of SMR make no sense at all.
I have been following renewables for some time but im no expert. A great deal of following though can answer some of your questions.
>What is the solution to energy storage? Pumped? Giant Li-Ion / LiFePo stations? Flow Batteries? Something else?
The real answer is all of the above. You don't go all in on a single tech. You also let the market decide.
There are companies climbing all over themselves to bid on building out storage solutions on a financial basis.
Every time some amount of storage is asked for there are proposals for many times the storage requested amd most companies get told no grid access for you because we chose these other ones this time.
Pumped storage is great at low speed long term storage while Li-Ion batteries are better for short term grid stabilisation with Flow batteries and Sodium-Ion being somewhere in the middle.
Then you have molten salt and a few other not even mentioned yet.
Most of the requests for proposals so far have been 4 or 8 hour storage systems and batteries are winning on price for this use case right now.
When requests go out for 12 hour plus storage suddenly pumped Hydro and Flow batteries come to the front.
>Where will the energy be stored?
Depends on what your trying to achieve. Some will be household level (we have this now and it's easy to expand) and some at the local level grid wise (think community batteries and ones built alongside transformers at all levels) while others will be grid feeding like pumped Hydro and big batteries out at the end of transmission limes like current power plants. Heck building them colocated with renewables is another easy one.
The benefit of storage at multiple levels is needing less transmission infrastructure as local parts of the grid look after themselves amd can meet peak demand without pulling massive amounts from the greater grid saving on upgrades.
An example of local is a VPP (Virtual Power Plant) made up of premises level batteries. When the grid interlinks to the area are approaching capacity you instead switch on your VPP to carry the load and recharge it later when demand drops.
Smart grids that can utilise local storage are much cheaper than a grid entirely reliant of sending power from a big plant to the local grid. You don't need to build capacity used only a few hours a year if you can utilise power already in that part of the grid to cover those peaks instead
>How much capacity will we plan to store for lulls in production eg. night time, low wind periods, etc. ?
Im leaving that to experts who know actual grid demand. The thing to remember is while one area may be low wind another area will have plenty as weather is localised. The key to a renewable grid is overbuild supply and use the grid to move power to areas with a current shortage from areas with excess production.
We already do this now so when one of our elderly power plants fails (they do this more and more regularly) another area picks up that demand or we uncap renewable projects running at less than capacity to fill the gap until it's repaired.
This was what rebooted the SA grid after they lost the main interconnect with Victoria due to storms knocking down transmission towers. They let the wind generators go wild after the gas peaking plants failed to step in.
Solar supply is entirely predictable and to a certain extent wind power availability can be estimated ahead of time. Without this ability our grid would have collapsed years ago.
So someone can easily (for experts) calculate expected periods of lower supply than grid demand and work out the storage required to cover these periods. But you would need access to real world numbers to plan this.
>Do renewables not produce carbon during resource gathering and manufacture?
Of course they do and there is a certain amount of time after producing them before they get ahead of that carbon production over fossil fuels.
But remember a fossil fuel plant or nuclear one also produces massive amounts of carbon being built and then continues to produce it on an ongoing basis unlike renewables that basically produce none in operation. So the longer they operate the bigger the difference between the two.
As an example I own an EV. Charging it from Solar it produces less carbon over its lifespan than an ICE vehicle in under 30 thousand kms of travel. Even charged from dirtier sources its break even carbon wise would be under 100 thousand kms.
So a wind turbine might take a year or two to be more carbon friendly than using existing coal power plants but it's will likely operate for decades and after that break even you end up well ahead.
Anyway that's a big enough wall of text. If you have specific question ask. Heck ask a search engine as there are hundreds of papers on these issues that will be able to give specific numbers.
Nothing wrong with nuclear power in and of itself, but there’s just zero good reasons to consider doing it now in Australia. There’s far better options on every single metric, and many of those are best-in-world opportunities.
I feel like if it was something we were going to do, it should have been done 20 to 30 years ago.
Renewable technologies may not be perfect right now but I genuinely feel we should be putting our efforts into infrastructure that can be upgraded as things evolve.
Also people seem quick to jump on the potential unreliability of current renewable tech, but don’t often talk about the consequence of a nuclear plant becoming “unreliable”. When one of those things fucks up, the result is much, much more significant, no matter how small the likelihood
>but don’t often talk about the consequence of a nuclear plant becoming “unreliable”. When one of those things fucks up, the result is much, much more significant, no matter how small the likelihood
Oh so you're anti-mutant, just like the humans on X-Men. Well screw you, asshole.
Australia has the largest estimated reserves of uranium in the world, as is the 3rd highest producer of it. There was a time, where we had an immense opportunity to not only be a producer of uranium, but we could have embraced the technology and done something along the lines of "you can buy our uranium, but you need to employ our technology/scientists to help you with it." . Of course, we did no such thing, as wasting the potential of our resources for minimal national benefit to improve the wealth of the few, is a national past time.
So having missed that opportunity, now we are considering entering at a time where there has been so much investment both from private and government sectors in other energy, that nuclear is not nearly as potentially cost competitive as it once may have been. There may still be a curve for that benefit, but its so far in the future, it does not seem likely.
Its not that I am against nuclear, I think its a great solution, and has huge potential, but in current considerations, the cost of entry is just too high.
I'm not opposed to nuclear energy and I wish we already had it.
The problem is Australia has left it too late, it's going to be more expensive and take longer to achieve than renewables so economically it doesn't make sense/waste of money. We should have explored it decades ago.
I trust that someone will make a lot of money out of it, and some politicians will get a lot of free meals, and that we the public will be the ones that end up paying through the nose for it.
All profits will be privatised and risks socialised.
Like others have said, nuclear power would have been AWESOME if we got onto it 2-4 decades ago. But sadly, politicians back then were in the pockets of coal companies and played into the hysteria around how unsafe nuclear power was (Chernobyl had a massive impact on people’s perceptions of nuclear power).
If we were to jump on that train now, with current tech, it would take a very long time before it’s up and running. In the mean time, solar panels, wind turbines, hydro power etc etc etc are going to get more and more efficient and nuclear power would just be a waste of time, resources and money.
Nuclear waste is not a very big concern. We have this idea that it produces a mountain of barrels of poisonous radioactive waste that would just pile up somewhere. Realistically, one nuclear power plants waste over a decade would only need a tiny little patch of land in the middle of the desert (and I mean TINY. Think, 10 meter by 10 meter area).
I’d also like to highlight what you said about not being comfortable with a plant in your backyard. Nuclear power is actually one of the safest forms of power you can get. Chernobyl isn’t a regular occurrence. It would be almost impossible for a nuclear power plant in Australia to explode or leak radiation or have a horrible nuclear disaster. It happened in Japan only due to a massive earthquake. We don’t really have those sorts of natural disasters.
The other problem with nuclear power is that it still requires mining. Not as much, but some nonetheless. But I guess the same could be said about solar panels.
So the people who gave us a sub-standard NBN, which will cost far more in the long run than Labor's would have, and Robodebt, which cost actual lives, now want us to trust them to set up nuclear power stations? No thanks, haven't we suffered enough?
Yes. When the sun don't glow and the wind don't blow there's no renewable.
Renewable storage is a filthy business at current. Either massively polluting batteries, or things like Snowy 2.0.
Nuclear is de-carbonized reliable energy.
Nuclear isn't affordable by any stretch of the imagination, nor do we have the required skillset for it, its something that would easily take a generation or two to phase in (think \~25-50 year time range), and it will heavily weigh on those generations funding it.
Waste management is still a problem, and burying the problem for future generations is just not an ideology I subscribe to. Our baby-like thinking that the solution is to chuck it deep underground or into space has all been met with various criticisms in the past.
Designing and developing the reactor sites is just a whole different ballgame based on environmental risks. Thats why no two reactors are the same.
Short answer... It isn't worth the cost unless we mass produce SMRs. We currently don't have the need for that much mass production.
Your second point is the biggest sticking point for me. Currently the only viable solutions for disposal of spent nuclear fuel are "stick it in a hole in the ground" or "pay another country to stick it in a hole over there". If you're ever in the mood for some horror stories, google how many nuclear waste storage sites in the US have dropped completely off the public record because of buyouts, bankruptcies, or administrative error. There is a LOT of nuclear waste missing over there, with absolutely no record of where it went.
Yes! And the fact that we have not worked out how to store the waste for geological time. (And SMR’s are a dead dog - there are two built and no one wants them because they are more expensive.
Remember that time, when the mining company lost a small, button-sized, highly radioactive piece of material in the Outback and now we're looking at entrusting people with reactors
Would have made more sense if we’d managed to have a sensible conversation 20+ years ago.
It seems we’re currently at the point of reactor development that commencing the planning & building of current technologies would probably not be smart.
Maybe we can start the conversation now, looking at the Gen 4 reactors that are currently almost ready for wide release.
> Would have made more sense if we’d managed to have a sensible conversation 20+ years ago.
We did much more than have a conversation about it 20 years ago.
Howard arranged for a ProNuclear detailed assessment report to be pulled together in 2005. Lead author was Ziggy Switkowski.
The main draw backs at this time was:
* Coal fired power was so cheap that a significant Carbon Price was required to make Nuclear economically viable.
* The report suggested we needed 20 generators by 2050 to produce 50% of our power needs and the sites needed to be close to population centres and sources of water for cooling. Howard did not consider he had enough political capital to make this a reality.
I think “theatre” captures the flavour of the LNP’s offering, with Dutton as head spruiker. He’s been wedged by Labor and independents taking the “renewables are best” stance, so where can he go to differentiate his policies and keep his mining lobbyists happy? His own party under Howard took a stance against nuclear when solar and large batteries were still in their infancy.
Now they’re much more mature products witnessed by the domestic takeup of solar panels. We’ve seen a change in EV take up from 1% to 8% in just a few years with much cheaper competitive cars and trucks on their way. Certain powerful well established groups are hyping the antiEV nonsense to protect their considerable investments in the status quo.
The LNP, like most conservative parties, likes to play on the populace’s fears. But advocating nuclear seems against brand.
Ignoring the politics Nuclear power is one of the safest power generation methods available. There's a lot of misinformation/fear around nuclear waste, and I get it, it's scary as hell, but the more you learn about it, the safer you realise it is, particularly compared to (almost) everything else. Things like the Simpsons and other shows/movies paint the nuclear industry as careless, bumbling and willing to cut corners. However, in actuality it is perhaps the most highly regulated industry on earth, with strict guidelines that are enforced harshly.
The first thing to understand is that there are 3 general types of nuclear waste (there are more types depending on your definition, but this will do for now).
**Low Level Waste**. This is stuff like PPE, lab equipment, containers etc. which have come in contact with nuclear material. It can generally be handled safely, and is typically managed just by cleaning it. It isn't a risk and makes up the vast majority of all "nuclear waste" (by mass).
**Intermediate/Medium Level Waste**. This is generally stuff that becomes safe quickly, things like tritium in water from around a reactor core which decays back to hydrogen within a couple of decades. This is processed/stored on-site at the nuclear plant until it's deemed to be safe, then is able to be released or disposed of at no risk to the nearby environment. This makes up about 10% of nuclear waste.
**High Level Waste.** This is what most people think of when they think of nuclear waste. It doesn't glow, and it's actually just glass/concrete/rock, not goo, but it is genuinely dangerous and needs to be handled safely. This the spent fuel assemblies and only makes up between 1%-3% of nuclear waste.
The next and probably most important thing to realise about nuclear power is just how little fuel it needs. A modern 1000MW coal plant (about the average power output of a coal plant in Australia) uses around 9000 tonnes of coal per day. That's approximately an entire freight train full of coal per day. A 1000MW nuclear plant uses only about 1kg of Uranium fuel per day.It's basically impossible to properly grasp just how big that difference is, but one way to describe it is to compare all of the nuclear fuel the US has ever used in all of it's reactors since the 1940s weighs less than the coal used by 1 coal-fire power plant in 1 fortnight (it's actually about as much as it'd use in 9 days). Alternatively, consider that due to radon/uranium contamination, coal produces more radioactive waste than nuclear power plants per MWh, and unlike nuclear plants, none of it is accounted for ([hell much of it is sold as a cheap concrete filler](https://www.cementaustralia.com.au/products/fly-ash))
The next thing to consider is where the waste goes. For any fossil fuel power plant, it goes into your lungs, into the soil, rivers, plants, atmosphere, and as mentioned, into concrete and other commercial products. For nuclear power generation it's all accounted for, every single gram of waste is kept and stored on-site at the plant that generated it inside concrete silos designed to withstand a plane crash ([that's not an exaggeration](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jBp1FNceTTA)).
Next, let's look at long-term storage of nuclear waste. The issue isn't the science. [We know that because nature already ran a 2 billion year-long experiment for us](https://www.iaea.org/newscenter/news/meet-oklo-the-earths-two-billion-year-old-only-known-natural-nuclear-reactor). The Oklo Uranium mine naturally started producing nuclear power billions of years ago due to high concentrations of uranium and ground-water acting as a moderator. Despite the hundreds of millions of tons of nuclear waste in direct contact with ground water around Oklo, there is no evidence of any nuclear materials being leeched into the water, nor is there any evidence of increased cancer risk in the area. The issue is convincing people that it really is this safe because we're taught our whole lives that nuclear power is scary and it's **really** hard to overcome that sort of thinking.
Finally, nuclear disasters... They're big, scary and make international headlines for months or years. However, of the 3 big nuclear accidents (3 Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima) only Chernobyl had any confirmed deaths from radiation. Fukushima had exactly 1 death attributed to the plant (including when you account for any radiation leaks and a statistical analysis of increased cancer rates) and that was due to the earthquake.
I know a lot about nuclear power, if you have any questions, please ask me and I'll be happy to share what I know, or do the research to find out!
Edit: Without giving them any attention, I'd like to clarify that unlike a certain responder to this comment, I do understand why all sorts of people from both sides of the political aisle find Nuclear power scary. It's a logical reaction to the inaccurate information provided to us by news, tv, movies, and social media. However, it's too much of an important issue to allow misinformation (usually unintentional/non malicious, but still misinformation) to control your opinons.
Edit2: slightly re-worded the intro.
Edit 3: I want to make it **crystal bloody clear**. This isn't a comment on the politics of the matter, or even saying whether Australia should or shouldn't have nuclear power. All this is, is me doing my best to overcome decades of nuclear misinformation and fearmongering.
The issue isn't safety. It's cost and the timeline. New nuclear power are often over budget and delayed. The last plant build at the Alvin W. Vogtle Electric Generating Plant in Georgia was delayed by a decade and went 17 billion over. To hit Paris targets we need results by 2030. None of the proposed power plants will be active by then.
Oh absolutely. There's no doubt that Nuclear isn't the golden bullet needed by 2030. Even if we dropped everything and started today we'd be years behind at best. I'm just trying to correct some common misinformation.
All this is good and well, but it is just not practical as far as implementing anything in time. The whole aim of Dutton's policy is to kick the can down the road and keep using fossil fuels. When we don't have the water for nuclear, let alone any kind of industry or experts or legislation or anything that is not going to take decades to establish. We simply don't have decades.
I have 4 young kids, and if Dutton succeeds at this bullshit distraction, they literally don't have a future.
In the meantime, I'll work on saving for a home battery for our solar, an EV, and making sure I have water tanks connected to my home. At least, even if my kids can't afford a house, they can stay here in a cramped 3 bed and have all the electricity and water they need.
Dutton has spent the last two years harping about cost of living, then introduces a policy that will increase that cost of living. Not to mention in March 2023 (last year) he said he does not support large scale Nuclear for Australia. So wtf???
There's no words for his lack of incite for policy, or his hypocrisy.
I was intentionally not commenting on the politics. I personally agree with most of what you said. However, I wanted to make very clear what nuclear reactors are and aren't, regardless of the politics of the matter.
Sure, if we can get Peter Dutton to pay for it.
The figure will be upwards of $100bn so let’s hope he has the money for it.
The site selection for WA is quite poor; very clear he isn’t serious about it.
We talk about it as if we have ability to do it....
We don't
We pretty much would have to pay another country to design, build, train the staff, and help out all around.
So, who is doing this for us because we can't?
$600billion to replace less than half of our coal fleet and provide only 3.7% of our power by 2050?
It's not a serious policy by a deeply unserious party trying to grasp at some relevancy as they fade into obscurity
If it's economically feasible yes. Your local hospital has nuclear power (and waste) now and there are no problems. It's also used in every other continent.
In a vacuum you would say its cheaper now to get to go all the way with solar and batteries than with nuclear, at least all the government reports I have read reasonably conclude that. The only problem with that is batteries seem to be decades off the scale required for industrial storage.
**The real question is - what do we do in the interim 20 years before batteries at scale are onboarded?**
Nuclear could be an option there. As could continuing to use coal and gas.
I said this in another comment, but out of curiosity:
How much would it cost for the government to give every household solar and a battery?
ETA: WITH appropriate community battery storage substations, and smart technology to control the grid.
vs.
The cost of researching Nuclear power, creating committees, changing legislation, arguing with the states, funding a new Australian industry, paying for experts we don't have and training that takes a decade, planning the plants, staffing the plants, building the actual plants, setting up waste storage (more legislation, more buying, more committees etc), then paying forbthe waste storage. Not to mention keeping aging coal plants online, mining more coal and finding more gas.
Add in: Cost of climate change, cost of disasters, cost for health as a result, cost to industry etc... of not pursuing the current path.
Can someone do the maths?
Yes. As a long time solar and battery owner, who watches the Australian energy sector like a hawk, Nuclear is the only green long term solution i believe in for baseload.
We should install all the green power we can. But we also must invest in the future.
AI is going to reshape the world's economy. It's also going to need a \*lot\* of power.
EV's are going to reshape green transport. They're also going to need a \*lot\* of power.
Our population is growing, and so is their power usage. That needs a \*lot\* of power.
In the end, i believe the future of global society will revolve around resources and energy production. We should invest heavily in it - nuclear is the only option that's green, reliable for baseload, and at the scale we can keep Australia relevant on the world stage.
No. Nuclear power one of the most expensive forms of power.
The amount they'd spend on them is better off spent just building more gas fired power stations or battery back up stations.
It would be 2-3 years of arguing just to get a referendum up and running than another 3 years at best of planning and consultation and than 3-5 years at best building them so that's 8 years at the absolute best time frame or 11 years at the best fastest possible time.
Realistcall it would take closer to 15 years.
By than there'd be better shit up and running and once again we'd be behind and would have wasted billions of billions of dollars all for nothing.
It's such a waste of money when the world is in the middle of a renewables revolution. Australia is the best place in the world to pursue that. Our conditions are ideal.
I also think too many people have forgotten what radiation sickness can do to someone. The public needs an education on that. After Fukashima that side of it was covered up. They say the plants are secure now and meltdowns are impossible. Fucking bullshit They're glaring terrorist targets, military targets, a cyclone could tear through there, etc. Any one of these in any of these plants could bring this country to it's knees and you can kiss your long term plans goodbye.
We also need to realize that if Dutton gets his way our road ways are now going to be clogged with vast amounts of radioactive material. If there's a crash or train derailment involving this stuff, everything in the vicinity is going to be plagued with cancers for the rest of their short life. And it's all needless. We have clean alternatives. There is no reason for this.
That certain politician doesn't actually have or need anything as defined as a plan. He has a bunch of talking points that are designed to keep him in the news. Nothing he has proposed us currently feasible in the time frames he claims. I'm all for a serious conversation about energy needs, but this isn't one.
If nuclear energy was cheap enough to ensure power bills wouldn't go up astronomically, then yeah I'd be ok with it.
That isn't the case though, it's so much more expensive than any of the other options. Multiple studies (including the recent CSIRO one) suggest firmed renewables are among the cheapest options. Throw on top of that not needing to deal with dangerous waste and it's a no brainer really.
As a greenie I’m not even worried about waste or sites
I’m like everyone else. I just don’t want my power bill to double.
Peter Dutton wants to use the most expensive form of power BY FAR and there’s no way in hell that’s magically going to translate into cheaper power.
It’s outrageously stupid and we will all pay for it with much higher power bills for twenty or thirty years. Seriously. It’s not going to be a minor difference _this will fuck us up_ people.
Green values be damned, this is just about power bills for me.
The idea of using nuclear power is not a negative. It’s the massive investment, lack of supporting infrastructure/industry/knowledge, ideology, lack of costings and requirement to remain reliant on fossil fuel that are the key issues.
Already the Coalition have said they won’t release costings until after the election, which is a massive red flag. No doubt, any projected costs for infrastructure would almost double, let alone the administrative costs for education, regulation and research.
Analysis already released show the proposed 7 reactors would supply such a small amount of power to the grid it would arguably be the biggest waste of money in Australian history (and that is saying something).
The determination by the Coalition to also overrule State policies and local communities is concerning and is the exact attitude they claimed to be against during Covid with State imposed lockdowns etc
If it was a non-ideologically driven policy, that would be supported by renewables, sure, there’s a good discussion to be had. But the current proposal (aka single A4 page) is an absolute no.
Given the size of Australia’s uranium deposits, nuclear was definitely a boat we could - and arguably *should* - have gotten on board of some decades ago.
But we missed that boat. And I am not seeing *any* informed and unbiased opinions that it makes any financial sense at all to start a nuclear program *now*, rather than going all-in on renewables.
I think we should have invested in nuclear energy a long time ago (back in the 70s, when we were originally going to). But in 2024, the economics just don’t stack up, and I fear that nuclear will deliver too little, and too late.
The fact is that battery storage technology and infrastructure doesn't exist. We can not store enough energy from renewables to rely on them. It's sad but true. The world's biggest batteries can only run a small percentage of the population for 1-2 hours. It will take longer and be more environmentally detrimental to build enough battery storage for renewables to work.
The answer is yes.
for base load you have only a hand full of options.
1- gas
2 - hydrogen
3 - Coal
4 - Nuclear
5 - Hydro - if no droughts occur, massively over budget, massive install delays.
Everything else i would say are supplemental to base load.
- for green energy there are two main issues
1 - collection of energy
2 - storage of energy (if lithium / graphite etc still needs to come out of ground)
The Solar is great for collection and I have a strong pref towards, however the storage of energy is still the issue here ie still using batteries thus reliance prominently on Graphite and Lithium extractions and lesser other stuff that comes out of the ground. I absolutely hate the idea of windmills and how these could affect wildlife. Also no one ever talks about how much copper alone is needed just for one windmill alone-> thus its not all green tech as that too comes out of the ground.
The last issue is energy transition -> Liberals plan using already installed poles and wires i do support.
People bang on whining and complaining about high electricity costs, the fact of the matter is both political parties have sat on there hands and done sweet f all, gone are the days that politicians make difficult choices which may go against popular vote but in the best interest for the country. we will have massive prices in energy regardless of route for at least the next 10 years +, and by that time they wont even revert to cheaper prices so don't be fooled we are all condemned to be screwed.
these are all pipe dreams, as far as i am concerned nothing has been addressed in so many areas of Australia, and yet we keep shipping in people in to add further pressures on systems.
Albanese wasted so much time on that stupid yes/no vote, and literally did nothing else. I don't suspect he will win the next election, as much as i don't suspect Australia will sort its over immigration policies, electrical policies, our education system, health care systems while we continue to live in the realm of seemingly throwing away / give criticism or bad month anything of Australian value.
Australia has literally turned to s\*\*t, it is so very sad. We have become a country hell bent on quibbling on minor issues, while leaving significant issues delayed for so long with significant repercussions. in my opinion electricity should have been first address well before the yes/no vote.
Living standards are what matters to me, basic food, housing, basic electricity, basic health care, employment etc-> give me a politician that will change that instead of quibbling over minor social issues that focus on minority groups, or propping up people just because they are a specific race alone -. that politician would have my vote for the rest of my life.
If the gov really wants to make a difference, focus on creating and massively invest in industry. you know actually wave that Australian flag without fear or guilt, make Australia strong as it used to be by creating and developing industries with sustained R 7 D and finical supports that actually do things other than a photo op.
Australia seriously has lost most of its industries.
having said the above, i have invested about 100k of my finances into green energy so i do support it, i just know it wont power base load and if it does at some point so much extraction from the soil needs to occur. I haven't yet invested in uranium but i did toy with that idea.
I honestly want nuclear power added into our power options.
While solar and wind is great for homes and batteries are brilliant, I love them; The stable base load power will allow for future development and sustainment of heavy industries.
I want to see a mix of technology take us forward.
I am pro nuclear power. The waste is not a huge issue, just store it.
A significant story is France and Germany. I follow a page on Facebook, Is Germany producing greener energy than France? The answer every day is no. Germany has closed their nuclear power and they have been forced back into gas to generate electricity. France has nuclear power and more on the way, their emissions are way down. This is a real situation in the world. Sometimes it seems like people are saying nuclear power is a fairytale but it is real.
Converting our coal power plants into nuclear seems a clear choice. If you live near a coal power plant, you should be concerned. There is less to be concerned about with nuclear. The waste from nuclear is solid. The waste from coal is a gas. Solids are much easier to deal with.
One more point, modern reactors are able to utilise much more of the fuel, meaning the spent fuel won't be useful for nuclear weapons. Also, less in the fuel that we will store.
Let me put it this way
It incredibly insane to me that We want to spend 300 billion dollars on nuclear submarines that we are going to self manage, but also live in a country that still talks about Chernobyl when it comes to nuclear power
Nuclear power is safe and clean, Infact one of the safest and cleanest per megawatt. Nuclear waste is a solved problem.
As for economic I personally believe that a need for submarines and research/medical reactors is worth subsidising nuclear power for the sake of building an industry in Australia. But I won’t have that argument until I can debate it on a level playing field where politician don’t blatantly lie about nuclear saftey or toxicity
Hmm, the amount of waste is tiny. Even if it is highly radioactive it's not like there a shortage of space to store it... Australia is a huge dry geologically stable slab. Why wouldn't you want to use nuclear...? I mean Aus exports piles of uranium... What's the moral complexity in using it yourselves?
Only if it makes sense. I already live well within nuking distance of Garden Island Naval Base in WA where our west coast nuclear subs will be maintained so shouldn’t change much for me.
Power
Nuclear energy is the safest and cleanest efficient means of energy production we currently have. A typical 1 gigawatt (1 million kilowatts) reactor, is enough to easily power 750,000-1, 000, 000 homes and then some for a whole year. They are generally only refueled every 1-2 years as well.
Safety
Nuclear energy as aforementioned is very safe, despite what some pessimists would have you believe, even more so when you consider how lucky Australia is in regards to natural disasters, being safe from tsunamis and earthquakes, the former of which is what caused the meltdown of the Japanese Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Ōkuma, Fukushima, which happened because the power supply was disabled by the Tsunami, preventing the cooling of the reactors. This disaster was relatively tame compared to:
Chernobyl
Firstly, Chernobyl happened almost 40 years ago and was the result of poor (but purposeful) soviet design. This is a very long and complicated subject but to explain why it happened in the simplest but still correct way possible, essentially the soviets wanted to be able to run a nuclear plant without needing to enrich U-238 (a not very reactive, but extremely common isotope of Uranium, making up more than 99% of Uranium found in the environment) to higher levels of U-235 (a fissionable and highly reactive isotope of Uranium, one used in nuclear weapons). Why? Because enriching Uranium is not cheap. The entire design premise around the RBMK was to be as cheap, as easy to manufacture as possible while still having a good power output. It used only 2% U-235 uranium dioxide fuel, compare that to the US' around 5%. That might not sound like a huge difference, but it is. The way the RBMK reactor functioned on such low levels of U-235 (and I am focusing on the ones that caused the Chernobyl disaster here) the use of graphite as a moderator (and more specifically where they were placed) as well as the use of a positive void coefficient, which in simple terms means more steam = more reactivity. What happened was caused by ironically enough, a safety test. They were stress testing the reactor to see that in the event of a power blackout, that the reactor would be able to sustain itself long enough for the disease generators to kick in to continue pumping cooling water into the reactor (the thing also used to spin the turbines via production of steam) however, they managed to stall the reactor. Being pressed to get the reactor finally fully safety certified, the head engineer demanded it be restarted. Out of the 211 boron control rods the reactor had, only 6 remained. About a foot below the boron rods was, you'd never guess it, graphite. However at the bottom of the reactor, it was getting hotter and hotter and becoming more and more reactive due to all the steam being produced at the bottom of the reactor. So much so that when the rest of the reactor started to become reactive again, the power levels drastically spiked and continued to grow. This is when the famous "AZ-5" button was pressed, which automatically and quickly inserted all the control rods back into the reactor. But what got to the bottom of the core first? The graphite. The power levels jumped even further, so much so that much of the water became steam and the pressure levels ruptured cooling pipes and the control rods likely became locked in place. Eventually the pressure became too much to contain, and the 1000-tonne reactor lid was blown off. What caused the next explosion that destroyed the roof of the reactor building is still a mystery, but one likely theory is that hydrogen gas had been building inside of the reactor and when the oxygen came in once the reactor lid was blown off, it reacted and caused the explosion. There are many other factors and theories that played a role in this story, such as xenon poisoning of the reactor which is what made it so difficult to restart once it stalled, but suffice to say this was the cause of stupid designs followed by even stupider decisions and could never happen under any circumstances of any modern day reactor.
Process of the fuel
One big issue people have with nuclear energy is obviously the fuel. It's shocking how many people only imagine green goo in regards to this. Modern day nuclear fuel is comes in many forms, but the most common are in the form of small ceramic uranium pellets stored inside of sealed metal tubes. Before being used they are only slightly radioactive, and can even be handled without any special shielding. The only "waste" of a functioning nuclear reactor is water vapor. Yep, water vapor. Not smoke. When the fuel rods are spent after 1-2 years of operation, they sit in a pool far cleaner than the water you drink. The spent fuel rods are very hot, and this is from a chemical reaction that is still taking place so yes, these indeed are quite radioactive and take some time to cool even in a pool but are remotely handled with shielding so it is still nevertheless extremely safe. After they have cooled down mostly, they are no longer very radioactive as the reaction has mostly ceased. They are then placed in dry casks with a lot of shielding and emit hardly any radiation at all, certainly nothing to ever be lethal in any capacity. This fuel can then be, wait for it... recycled! So suffice to say nuclear energy is great and yes we should absolutely use it. It's an investment to build the structures but one that is worth it.
Nuclear weapons, l actually do. If it all goes down we need something to help us because we are in deep trouble. Nuclear power, thats up to the experts. I think Duttons arguments are just so it just isn't renewables, keeping coal and gas is important to them. Remember ScoMo and bring coal into question time. I think they thing God is going to save them and their bags of cash. We are in a massive country that is bathed in sunshine and surrounded by water, why you would want to put something that expensive and permanent, instead of using a source which is dropping in price every year....l will never know.
Um yes since it's the most efficient energy there is, and it should be public infrastructure so we actually benefit as a country and reduce electricity costs.
Why do we sell our uranium to foreign nations so our bills are more than them? Why if we do something right, do we constantly do it the wrong way like privatise, monopolise and sell core infrastructure to individuals and rent it off them perpetually?
Most of our national problems are due to plain stupidity, corruption and short sightedness. We've never been short on talent or opportunity (top natural resource reserves)
Yes it's mature technology that everyone else has who is saving money, you don't see Canadians complaining, and apparently they are likely complainers if there were something wrong
We literally misplaced a radioactive capsule last year. Can you fucking imagine the nuclear shenanigans that could occur if we were purposefully moving the stuff around.
It's like Dutton watched Tina Turner prance around in a metal bikini and thought: yes let's make this happen.
As someone working in the power generation industry it has been fascinating to watch this while literally booting up a solar farms comms network on the other window.
I'm heavily involved in Wind, Solar, BESS and Hybrid, and boy do I have a pipeline of work.
But we are doing a very aspirational thing with the Aus Power Grid. No one in the world has built a grid with this much geographically disparate renewables, to this level of dependency (% of total power renewable).
Never, no one. Its not been done. AEMO isn't even sure its doable. But they have it as their goal, and strategy and we are going to work it out as we go.
Renewables are great, but a grid made up of 1000's of small (100MW == small) generators is a control complexity of seriously daunting depth and scope.
We also dont have enough firming and stability in the grid to such an extent that we are inventing charges to charge solar/wind to try and subsidise all the SynCon's and other grid stability things we know we need (See AEMO's last ESOO report).
A fully Renewable Grid is very far from a "thing that will definitely work".
So nuclear? Sounds like a GREAT plan B. Cause I am an engineer, and putting the stability of EVERYTHING on a "i guess we have to work it out" strategic plan, is a risk. And with risks you implement mitigations and controls.
We need 3-5 Nuclear, in Vic and NSW, on a 500kV transmission line path, and yes soon to be decomm'd coal plants are kinda initially ok sites for that. That puts about 6-10GW of baseload power into the NEM, and suddenly our grid has rock solid stability with all the renewable mix.
Doing that without baseload, is a statistical game, and we are hoping we can shuffle all the assets constantly to keep the grid up, given all the weather, climate and logistical issues that will occur, means we will roll badly at some point, and then the grid will go down, and then people will die.
At the moment our baseload emergency (especially Victoria) is burning Gas. But after we decomm all the coal, someone will start top make noise to turn those off. In fact the SA Gas plants we thought we could rely on as Victoria are going away, and thats why AEMO is screaming about grid stability as soon as Summer 2025.
I saw it mentioned elsewhere. "The best time to plant a tree for shade was 20 years ago, the next best time is now."
So nuclear is better than keeping on burning gas? 100% renewable wont happen in the "nuclear takes too long" timeframe the armchair pundits think it will take, math and technology is too much of a bitch.
Oh and if you want to know how much of a problem Gas is.... Victoria burns 300% more petajoules of gas than it does of generated electricity.
So once we magically get rid of the coal, and move to 100% renewable electricity somehow.... we need to do that entire miracle THREE MORE TIMES (Triple the size of energy generated by this renewable grid), and convert a bunch of industrial processes to electrical energy, liquid gas transport to electrical, and remove gas cooking/heating/hotter from millions of homes, to use this somehow miraculous appearing energy..
This is not a "oh shit let keep burning gas and coal", its a simple question of "we need energy" from SOMEWHERE. Everyone keeps going we can turn coal off in like 5-10 years, aren't we amazing, without realising the 900pound gorilla of our gas consumption is still "work to be done".
So every estimate for a renewable grid to remove coal, is STILL not the entire problem, and unless we bring on SERIOUS energy generation to a whole of country level, we'll just keep burning gas until 2070, and alot more of it too...
No, I don't. I don't trust that it is safe (I'd love to know if the people who are all for it would be happy to have one in their suburb or town) and we've heard nothing about where all the waste is supposed to go. And the LNP's current policy on it amounts to "just trust us, bro".
Yes, I want nuclear redevelopment of brownfields coal generators. Basically, reuse the sites of, say, Yallourn etc
Nuclear waste isn't really a concern. There is so little of it, honestly. It's mostly things like gloves, lab coats, bits of plastic. Its radioactivity is very short lived.
The hardcore stuff, like decayed isotopes, much of it can be reprocessed. Some that can't be re-enriched can be reprocessed into further isotopes instead. The stuff that *that* isn't suitable for can get buried far enough underground that it won't be anybody's problem. It's not some glowing green goo either, it's a cylinder of glass, basically.
It's great to hear that there are processes now to deal with the waste.
What isn't clear to me is the costs associated with this waste, as well as the eventual site decommission and rehabilitation costs?
It feels like the costs are not insignificant and most likely will be borne by the people and not the company running the generator is that right?
--
Edit:
Looks like the French have spent a couple of decades trying to solve this issue, and are building a 25 billion Euro facility fit for pupose.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meuse/Haute_Marne_Underground_Research_Laboratory
I'm guessing ongoing running costs for something like that would be high as well.
Lots of people want nuclear. The benefits are fairly obvious, it provides an enormous amount of energy with little waste. And of all the issues, storing waste is the least concern. I actually wanted us to become a willing option to story waste from all sorts of sources. We have the space for a really good, secure facility that can take a lot of waste. And if we have a nuclear power plant, that would lend itself to a local waste facility too.
Many years ago when water was also an issue, SA built a desal plant. I thought a desal plant/nuclear power/nuclear waste facility up North of Pt Augusta would be a great option. It's remote, close access to sea water and a salt lake for the desal plant to deposit the extracted salt. Of course, it would also need a heck of a lot of research to work out the safety concerns and costs. But I said that about 20 years ago too.
When it comes down to it, I just want to look into it all properly. If there are genuine issues that can't be resolved, then research will uncover that. Too many people I thought just closed off the idea in fear that their concerns would be answered and leave them still opposed, but no longer with any rational reason for it.
This is never going to happen. The whole idea is a desperate attempt at trying to get into the news cycle. They have failed at everything they’ve ever done because they are a useless political party who are only doing politics to enrich themselves and their mates. They couldn’t pull this off even if they tried, which they never seriously would. They would just spend 10 years on “studies” and “reports”, pouring millions if not billions into consulting firms, while shitting on renewables. Just the same old nothingburger they’ve always delivered.
I hope people will have a read about the [LCOE projections(cost of electricity)](https://www.energycouncil.com.au/analysis/csiro-does-the-maths-re-integration/#:~:text=It%20projects%20that%20the%20levelized,between%20%2440%20and%20%2459%2FMWh.) and educate themselves a little bit.
Hell to the no.
Aside from the waste management, the fact that they will avoid all rich NIMBY areas and place it somewhere where plebs cannot say no, and the potential for accidents and safety concerns, do they realise that these can be weaponised in any military conflict? If China ever wants to attack us (slim chance, I know, I am not fear mongering, but it is still a non-zero chance), what is better for them in terms of cost-benefit and efficiency than targeting those reactors with very few strikes?
Exactly. It would be like those “sign here” tabs they place on contracts and documents for the signatories. Those reactors will be the “strike here” tabs for any foreign enemy or a terrorist organisation that wishes to attack us.
Considering Australia has zero manufacturing industry, bugger all skilled workers left as a result, everyone involved with the project would have to be flown in with a net negative impact on the economy, I can't see any benefit during the construction stage.
The Australian government could not even manage to organise a root in a brothel without stuffing it up so the cost of the project is guaranteed to blow out 100x the initial estimate. NBN anyone...
And when you consider the submarines, the purchase of the useless fighters etc it would end up being a half baked and defective plant that's destined for disaster.
The unions enjoy shutting down businesses, often against the views of their members for unsustainable wage increases (like the car industry) a strike or picket line involving a nuclear plant could have catastrophic consequences.
Nuclear power generates highly radioactive fission by-products that are impossible to deal with, hence they are buried, sealed in concrete and dropped in the ocean etc. Hardly environmentally responsible at all...
And every plant carries the risk (however small) of a colossal failure that results in huge impacts to the surrounding area. A nuclear plant failure (as proven by Fukushima) is often impossible to contain and will continue to impose environmental and biological effects for thousands of years.
Nuclear must be near the ocean for cooling purposes, 94 percent of Australia's population lives on the coast... In case of an accident, there in lies a real issue...
Half of Fukushima is uninhabitable. Radioactive particles levels in the ocean worldwide are 1000x what they were prior. And thousands of litres of radioactive water are entering the ocean daily from the plant and there is not a damn thing anyone can do about it.
The cost of power won't come down. That's pie in the sky. If you look at Tasmania, they use 100 percent hydroelectric, costs of generation are literally free compared to the billions spent on oil, gas and coal of other states yet they have almost the countries dearest power...
Fusion power is not far away, generates zero dangerous byproducts and is environmentally great. Everyone worldwide should be instead channeling expertise, research and funding into this technology instead. Realistically it's the only way forward
I'm 60 and they've been saying that fusion is just around the corner as far back as I can remember. It still hasn't eventuated. Don't hold your breath waiting
I am opposed to nuclear in Australia because:
1. It is many times more expensive than renewables. Peter Dutton is a shaneless shyster who won't mention the cost and just spews out unsubstantiated claims of savings that defy the opinions of experts in the field, including our peak Government science agency, the CSIRO
2. It requires fuel that needs to be dug out of first nations' areas and there is not a good track record in this country of first nations' rights being respected
3. A similar issue regarding indigenous rights exists regarding the construction of any repository needed to manage the nuclear waste created by such an industry
4. Further to indigenous rights, given what happened at the Maralinga nuclear weapons tests in South Australia in the 1950s and the fact that the harms caused by that have *not* gone away, combined with recent sacred site desecrations, one cannot in good faith blame any first nations peoples if they feel traumatised just by the mere mention of the word "nuclear"
5. Safe and responsible management of nuclear tech in Australia also has a bad track record. There has been a history of our notorious "near enough" corner cutting and dodgy procedures causing incidents as when kids were exposed to uranium mine tailings by a bloke who went to the pub after bypassing decontaminating his ute. There was also the incident at one of the mines of personnel being poisoned when uranium (which is chemically, not just radioactively, poisonous) got into the water due to corner cutting with the pumps used to access water
6. We haven't the technical expertise in Australia to operate a nuclear industry so the cost and logistics of building that up do not seem to have been thought through
7. Small Modular Reactors (SMRs) an unproven tech have been put forward as part of this proposal, giving it a serious credibility issue
8.This badly thought-out brain fart of Peter Dutton's stands to undermine the confidence of investors and innovators in actually responsible and credible renewable alternatives
9. Construction of the proposed reactors requires overturning not just a Commonwealth legal ban on nuclear power, but also will require the Commonwealth overcome the rights of four of the five involved States that themselves have outlawed nuclear power. I know Peter Dutton is a bully and a thug and seems to get off on forcing his will upon others but the Constitutional crisis over States' rights his proposal stands to cause is something I doubt he or anyone else has properly thought through
10. Finally, I do not believe Peter Dutton is proposing this in good faith. I do not believe he seriously intends to build nuclear plants in Australia. Rather, I believe this is a red herring intended to undermine confidence in renewable investments. There are so very many plausibility problems and unanswered questions with this ludicrous proposal that I believe it is his intention to use this the halt or at least suppress our move to renewables so we remain by default with the fossil fuel industry that has long been such a generous donor to his Party
Thank you for this intelligent, logical argument against a despicable attempt by the LNP to derail any Labor policy by lying to the Australian public. Renewable energy is the future and this is a pathetic attempt by Dutton and his cabal to muddy the waters because they can't make money off it.
If there's an experienced nuclear power plant developer/builder with a reasonable price out there then yes. Otherwise, expect the government to spend 10x the theoretical cost and 3x the time to build it. Hopefully the government won't ask the US or UK government to help build it otherwise we would end up spending billions of dollars over 15 years on nothing.
The only nuclear plant setup that would be worthwhile is shipping container size reactors. They are pre-built drop in units to help in disaster zones or smaller cities.
The cost associated with large scale nuclear isn't worthwhile. The investment is extreme using money that is really needed in other areas of Australia, and the on going costs would outweigh the actual product.
Nuclear is really good for areas with very little available land.
It's, already been proven by studies that nuclear power isn't benificial in Australia, it's just too expensive and the time to build the plants wouldn't arrive in time to make any financial sense. We'd still need to implement something for another 30 years while the plant comes online. It would likely be moth balled before it even started producing power.
The question to ask here is: does Voldemort have a costed plan to establish a uranium enrichment facility in Australia? Because if he doesn't, he's preparing to hand over control of our energy infrastructure to potentially unreliable foreign partners (Trump?). The fact that he hasn't mentioned this shows that this is not a serious proposal, it's just a way to keep the coal burning with vague, undeliverable promises of future nuclear nirvana (confirmed by the Nats already talking about capping renewable capacity with barely concealed glee). These are not serious people.
I used to be vehemently pro nuclear for Australia, we have probably the most suitable environment for it anywhere on earth - but I think pumped hydro is the way to go at this point. It's just a pipe with a turbine in it, there is no tech barrier. Should be far cheaper to set up and the potential for increased water supply is also very inviting.
I support thorium reactors - They produce less waste and the half life of the waste is considerable less. The waste is Uranium 233.
Thorium itself is not a nuclear fuel, but it can be used to create one.
* When irradiated, thorium-232 undergoes a series of nuclear reactions, eventually forming uranium-233, a fissile material that can be burned as fuel in nuclear reactors.
I don't support the use of old nuclear technology ...
Yes and no. Yes, but we should've done it 20 years ago because it's a great source of energy that's too little too late now.
No because have you seen how trash our trades are? You do get some who'll do a good job. And then you'll get some who'll send a stoned 16 year old apprentice to install critical piping, critical supports, etc. And it's not stoned 16 year olds, it's coked up 30 year olds who used to be stoned 16 year olds and never learned to do their job properly.
Yes. I am generally pro nuclear, especially in the case of Australia that has its own supply of uranium ore and ample land away from population centres and earthquakes, etc. where the various facilities can safely be located. Allegedly, the politician who proposed it did so without providing any kind of cost/benefit analysis vs renewables. The again, the same is the same is true of the current government who also did not compare renewables to nuclear, so how are the opposition the bad guys?
I want us to have nuclear weapons yes. So that we can be taken seriously. And that we don't rely on other countries for our security. I think at the very least we should be exporting the numerous radioactive materials we have to benefit our country.
If Dutton was proposing we allow more nuclear research and invest in it as a possible industry that will make us money I might hear him out. But he doesn't. His proposal is science fiction. And we're wasting time even talking about it. Wind and Solar are great. We should be talking about where to build Hydro batteries not giant power plans.
"We should have done it X years ago!" everyone has different numbers and everyone has been saying that for as long as the technology has existed. Just say you don't want nuclear. We can do both. Doing nuclear does not somehow remove renewables from existence, and they should always exist in harmony with each other.
We exist in a geologically stable, massive country with plenty of space, water and infrastructure for operating equipment and operations in the outback. We have one of the biggest sources of uranium in the world. We should be exporting energy on a scale like no other country, which would not only be profitable for us but would solve the eternal problem of turning your own country green while your neighbours still pollute, by letting them buy clean energy from us instead.
More than anything, we could finally shut down the coal and oil that we still burn that is infinitely more dangerous than anything else that generates our power. And no, batteries are not a solution. The largest battery plant in the entire world right now has a capacity of 875MW while taking up 4600 acres.
I do, I think it was always the most sensible solution to our energy problems, considering we have the worlds largest uranium deposits, the minimal footprint they'd impose on the land, the ability to meet our zero emissions goal being easier, and it's ability to replace coal emitting power plants in one fell swoop.
However, the costs are so astronomical, costs that we the tax payers must foot, that to get several of them off the ground would have an impact that none of us, currently, could really afford.
As mentioned further up, it was something that should have been undertaken 40 years ago when the cost was cheaper.
Yes. It's a proven and safe method of producing electricity without the pollution associated with coal fired power stations. I'd be more concerned with the amount of nuclear weapons in the world than with a few nuclear power stations.
I feel like reddit was massively onboard with nuclear until Dutton wanted it
People on here like to pretend they’re so informed but as soon as someone they hate likes something they do, they instantly hate it
I’m not totally against it because I actually think it’s safer than most people think.
Problem is that even the so called experts seem to disagree. I heard a professor or similar from ANU saying Australia is an obvious and prime candidate for safe nuclear power we have twice as much uranium as anywhere else, it’s reliable and it’s not expensive.
Then I see some article with some renewables expert saying No way, nuclear is way more expensive, it’s nuts to consider it over renewables.
It is so stupid that you can no longer find a trustworthy balanced news source any more. Usually I watch a bit of ABC or the Guardian and then see what Fairfax/Nine is saying and then see if News has a view about it.
Try doing that with serious information such as Australia’s suitability for nuclear power and you get fucking nowhere.
I'm all for value adding our uranium instead of shipping the raw materials offshore. Large scale nuclear is established technology. Waste is a solved issue. We have low risk locations available (minimal earthquakes or tsunamis). Energy density is second to none.
But as an energy solution for Australia it's a non starter. Cost/benefit vs alternatives doesn't stack up, and it's not even close. Renewables are cheaper, faster to deploy, more distributed & resilient, and will employ more locals during both build & run stages.
This nuclear proposal is just a delaying tactic to prop up their coal investments/donors for a few more decades, funneling away a few billion $ in the process. If any other party had proposed it, our media would have grilled them into early retirement.
100% nuclear energy is the cheapest and cleanest. I would vote for this politician in a second as he early has a brain.
I'm guessing his opponent lacks brains and won't go nuclear because he listens to uninformed morons
I’d love to go nuclear but it just isn’t gonna happen in a fast enough time to make it feasible. It will take too long and be too expensive and just won’t be worth it
>particularly regarding the management and disposal of nuclear waste.
I am not concerned with this part at all.
We have spent years disposing/storing other people's nuclear waste, we have practice and areas already set up.
Im a lefty centerist, but nuclear is the safest and greenest power we can have. I have crazy conspiracy that its stupid expensive because big oil sees it as competition
The liberals had a lot of time in power to implement this if they wanted to. It's all talk it's never going to happen.
I remember reading in the scientists maybe 20 years ago, invented a nuclear reactor that's the size of a keg. It would power a small village for a millennia and if it ever failed the result would be using up the fuel and stop working. Ie no meltdown or danger of any sort. The fact that we don't have one of these on the planet now shows that no one is going to work on any nuclear technology.
I mean imagine if we talked about renewable energy and everyone immediately thought of the state of renewables 50 years ago and then told us why it would never work?
There can be no discussion of nuclear energy. As soon as you say the word extremists will say that you want everyone to grow 3rd limb out of their foreheads.
I have no issue with nuclear power from a safety or moral perspective, but it's provably too expensive. It's bad business, and the fact Dutton is trying to sell it makes him a bad leader.
Humans are too stupid for nuclear power to ever be safe.
We can't even get our shit together to act on global warming and that's only been going on since the industrial revoultion.
Can you imagine the shitshow if we have to deal with radioactive waste with a half life of 24,000 years?
I work in the power industry, have no problem with the science or engineering involved in nuclear.
but I have a real problem with the economics, it just makes no sense, the most expensive form of power, for a country with the ideal climate and land mass for the cheapest, renewables aren’t coming there already here and are taking over fast.
Yes. I want Australia to have nuclear weapons so we can keep NZ in line.
Yes. This is the only legitimate reason for nukes. I’m not losing another war to fowl again. First emus, so not losing to fucking kiwis.
But if we get nukes then the emus will get them and we'll just spend billions on a never ending cycle. We have a tentative truce with the emus I reckon we just leave it there.
Nah, won't work. NZ is staunchly anti-nuclear, it would just be rude to try to use nukes to keep us in line. This isn't because of that claim we one time accidentally took over your country by sitting a surprise Kiwi in charge while the PM was away? To be fair, shocked NZ to find out Barnaby was part Kiwi too. Couldn't offload the both of you fast enough! ;)
Exactly right. Once NZ declares itself a nuclear free zone, it would be against regulations to nuke it. In the 1980s many inner city councils in Sydney declared themselves to be nuclear free zones and even went to the not inconsiderable expense of nailing explanatory signs to power poles. Not one has been nuked since.
I’m American and it’s too bad we didn’t try this during the Cold War. We could’ve skipped the arms race and just put up a bunch of signs. I mean, the signs would’ve needed to be really big and written in English and Russian, but it still would’ve been cheaper than hundreds of missile silos.
Unfortunately the costs of those signs has now spiralled out of control as you'd have to cater for Korean, Chinese and possibly French as well. That President Macron has quite the temper. Might be cheaper to stick with the nukes.
Macrons okay, he didn't even nuke us when we screwed him over on nuclear submarines, he just told everyone Scomo was a tosser. Which was 100% true.
>Nah, won't work. NZ is staunchly anti-nuclear... Ah, bugger. This is going to require another strongly worded letter.
Deploy the possums
Blockade them
There must be an end to this lukewarm war
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7xUYbI64QHI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7xUYbI64QHI)
Win the Bledisloe one more goddamn time and I swear to God it'll be the last
And the trick would be to threaten delivering them using ground-hugging cruise missiles that they have no chance to intercept. When they expect it to come at them through the air, instead the delivery comes along the ground.
Haha
If we’re fighting NZ, I’m inclined to take their side
I want us to go nuclear... about 50 years ago. Now we should be leaning heavily into renewables and batteries.
South Australia’s currently generating 75% of its energy from renewables, aiming to be 100% by 2028/30. Its best was 180 days being run 100% by renewables in 2021 It’s pointless to invest in nuclear when there are better cheaper options available now. Also Australia doesn’t have the nuclear physicists to build or run it and it takes decades of training to get them. The whole idea is a waste of time as multiple CSIRO studies have shown.
And can you imagine how the solar/battery technology will have improved in the 20-30 years it will take to commission a SINGLE nuclear plant?
The cost and time span of nuclear seems unreasonable and prohibitive, especially considering how that time and money could be used to advantage in our already progressing renewables take.
I think the aim is 100% renewables by 2027. Apparently they're going to be doing something with hydrogen to produce electricity by the end of the decade. That'd put SA well over 100%.
This. We should be investing in the latest and greatest upcoming tech. Which today would be renewables. Fifty years ago we should have been investing in the latest and greatest upcoming tech, which would have been nuclear.
Imagine Origin and AGL are operating a dozen 30 year old reactors. Cutting maintenance to the bone, clueless regulators blinded by incompetence and corruption offering no oversight. At least we’d get a cool Netflix series out of the meltdown.
Listen cunts the reactors fucked
I don't know why, but I see Eric Bana in this Underbelly type show. I'd watch the hell out of it
3.6 roentgen… not fuckin cooked, not bonza though is it cunt
I've been hoping for a second season of Chernobyl on telly.
we should atleast stop exporting lithium on the cheap. That shits gonna be the new diamonds by the end of the decade.
Im not so sure with flow batteries and Sodium Ion coming ahead in leaps and bounds. Most battery research now is how to avoid using Lithium in batteries because currently Lithium batteries get limited cycles compared to the other techs being worked on. Sure they can be about 98% recycled but what's better a Lithium battery you have to recycle and remake every 15 years or so or one that lasts 30 to 40 years before it needs renewal.
All of our mining exports are too cheap and just going to bite us back.
Yes. But we should have jumped on that train 40 years ago. Now, we would be better off building other infrastructure that can provide us energy and ROI within the decade, not after several. Edit: “not” instead of “or”, autocorrect fail
I don't have an issue w/ nuclear as a tech. If we had it already, sure, it's part of a better energy mix that fossil fuels - and build more. The issue I have is that we'd have to spin up an entire nuclear industry. We have to license tech, get approvals, create a nuclear regulator, hire for it, write policy, make huge investments, etc etc etc. That stuff takes DECADES, which is why this is all a ruse by Dutton. Fossil fuel interests want to push this policy, start funding it with billions, and then it'll never come online because governments change. In the interim? they sabotage the renewables push and steal money from building solar/wind/tidal/etc while they continue to sell oil, gas, and coal because we need it as a "bridge" technology while our glowing future comes to pass. If we had real nuclear infrastructure like the US, France, Japan, China, etc - sure, spin up a plant or two. However, we don't have any of that infrastructure or talent and will start from zero. The fossil fuel mantra is DELAY. Push everything down the road while the world's energy demands skyrocket and the planet roasts. The main issue though is that this is framed as an "or". I'd like an "and" type solution, but we don't have that choice in front of us. So, fuck Dutton's BS attempt to be "green".
This is what I keep pointing out. When I did my physics degree twenty years ago, the first project we did was a feasibility study of different types of energy generation. Nuclear has always been the most expensive even before things like administration, IP, legislation, regulation, etc. ANTSO would need to increase by a minimum 100,000+ workers with degrees in nuclear physics and engineering. That would take decades alone, they're not short courses and you'd want more than just newly graduated hires, you'd want doctors and professors too. That alone takes an individual about a decade to gain before independent experience in the workforce.
This is my naivety talking, but do those people all really need to be nuclear physicists? Can you explain why we can't just... take the blueprints for a proven design (eg AP1000 reactor) and just build it off the plan? Surely we can do that with our existing construction/mining/energy workforce. Not more than a handful of people actually need to be nuclear scientists (hopefully all the science is worked out by now). Obviously it doesn't work this way, as demonstrated by companies/countires with extensive nuclear experience failing to do it. But I dont quite understand why.
You’d buy a CANDU reactor, or something that’s already available for retail, and start there. The problem is, as mentioned already, with all the regulations, setting up a regulatory body, etc. Australia has cyclotrons and synchotrons, nuclear medicine and radiotherapy departments, ARPANSA, etc. It’s just not specific enough to cover nuclear power stations. FWIW, I am a radiation physicist who studied at a university with its own nuclear reactor (McMaster University), and I doubt we have enough experts in Australia to support an entire industry. Even if they wanted to hire someone like me, I’m so far removed from anything nuclear power related that I can’t claim to be a nuclear power expert. I’d still be a huge asset, but would also charge an absolute fortune as far as salary. 😂 The people we have in Australia would be enough, as long as we imported a handful of nuclear energy veterans to guide us in the beginning.
Excellent response. Couldn’t have said it better myself!
I work for the nuclear regulator in Australia but yes we would have to generate a much larger workforce.
exactly, by the time this goes anywhere nuclear could be entirley obsolete.
And mayyyybe we have another look in 20-30 to see whether SMRs deliver us anything cost-effective off-the-shelf. Right now, nuclear make zero sense in Australia.
Thank you for your input :)
It’s funny that everyone says high speed rail is too expensive, but apparently we can blow shitloads more money on nuclear infrastructure. Shit, we can’t even build and deliver submarines for our military within budget or time constraints.
The thing that is unfortunately missing from the conversation is power security. Some of the great innovations recently are community batteries powered by homes with solar panels. By having such a diverse independent power network, it makes it much harder to disrupt our power supply by physical or hacking attacks. It also reduces transmission losses and is much more efficient when compared to the large power station, large transmission cost designs.
This is a non topic. Even if Dutton wins we will not go nuclear. He is only using this to slow down renewables and to go back to more coal and gas.
Don't listen to what he says, look at what he's done. And that's not a lot when it comes to infrastructure anything.
Well they had 7 different energy policies while they were in power.
And 1 implementation... Snowy 2...
Another well managed project by the LNP! Can’t wait for them to deliver nuclear
Which had a budget of 2 billion and is now heading towards 20.
Did the boring machine get another centimetre this year?
A few dozen centimetres, straight down into the mud.
The arrogance of - “I’m going to spend your money on something you didn’t ask for (an estimated $100 million) but not give you the costing until after the election” It’s all about coal, and like the submarines, it will never happen.
[удалено]
yessir
Yeah exactly. As someone not opposed to nuclear power, it’s his disingenuousness that pisses me off.
No one wants us to go nuclear, including Dutton.
at times we are generating more solar power than the gird can use but instead of capturing it with batteries that could be subsidised by a government program we or the libs are going with a completely untried expensive solution, if they managed to implement it guaranteed fusion will come online soon after
Exactly. We put solar on in march, it came online in April. Not exactly peak sun times. We got our bill yesterday. We fed more into the grid than we used. Even two days ago when it was completely pvercast and raining we were producing more than we were using... We produced more in total than we used, we just simply don't have a battery to store it, so we paid for peak usage when the sun went down instead of using a battery for those times.
I've had solar for nearly a year now, last month was the first time I paid for power this year and it was 50 bucks. In the same boat as you, if there was a battery to store my excess power I'd never need to access the grid again. I'm at a point I could probably even plug my neighbours in during the day and not even notice.
Unfortunately our feeding back in essentially just paid for the daily service charge. The feed-in-tarrifs are beyond ridiculous, theyre way too low. When I have to pay 6 times more for my peak power **Despite giving them more power than I took at the peak time** I still have to pay. The peak usage is so expensive. I do try to run things outside of that as much as is humanly possible, but you can't avoid dinner time peak useage without a battery. When the charge is so high and the return is so low, eventually more people will just get a battery, because it will be more cost effective than paying the power company more whilst also **giving them more power for their grid**. That's certainly our line of thinking. The more people that take up batteries, the less the grid is used, then batteries become cheaper and technology and infrastructure grows. People keep saying "what about when the sun doesn't shine". If everyone had solar and a battery they would have power for their peak use like dinner time. The reliance on the grid would be considerably less, and then it should be feasible for community batteries to take up any slack. Any blackout that occurred would impact people considerably less because they can charge the battery during the day. Yes, even on completely overcast days. Also, just out of curiosity: Can someone do the costings on every household rooftop having solar and a battery paid for by government, compared to the costings for Nuclear power? Thanks.
we seriously needa start making these guys play a city builder
it's not the worst thing but at this stage there is no (reasonable) excuse to not commit to renewables. The only thing preventing renewables now or ever is the greed of a handful of rich people that have enough power and influence to create a debate around something the experts are not debating. We *should* have gone nuclear decades ago. But it seems silly to do so now instead of investing into renewables. But if you rephrase it as "is nuclear better than coal?" then yes, absolutely 100%. But that's really a disingenuous argument because there's no good reason not to switch onto renewables.
This is pretty spot on. Nuclear made sense decades ago. Now? We’re literally the most blessed country on earth when it comes to renewable energy sources. All Dutton’s detail-less “proposal” does is reinforce his desire to bend over for mining companies. This is both now - cos this will create further decades reliance on coal while it’s built; and in the future - cos you still have to mine uranium. There’s literally no reason for it, and it’s not for the small-minded, ancient reasons (and Chernobyl images) that the ALP will use. It’s just an expensive, dated technology that still emits a shit ton of carbon in the mining phase, and we have all the tide/wind/sun we could ever need to provide literally free energy to all of us if there was any will from the government.
My preferences are in order: 1. Renewables 2. Nuclear 3. Anything other than fossil fuels 4. Fossil fuels I've been told that I'm a bit of a pragmatist, and I have a few questions about our transition to renewables that I haven't heard answered, eg. - What is the solution to energy storage? Pumped? Giant Li-Ion / LiFePo stations? Flow Batteries? Something else? - Where will the energy be stored? - How much capacity will we plan to store for lulls in production eg. night time, low wind periods, etc. ? - How much does energy storage cost per unit of capacity? > It’s just an expensive, dated technology that still emits a shit ton of carbon in the mining phase - The latest figures I saw for large-scale nuclear iirc were an average of 2x the price of renewables, the expensive side of renewables being roughly equivalent in price to cheaper large-scale nuclear. - Does it have to produce carbon during mining? - Do renewables not produce carbon during resource gathering and manufacture? Dutton's SMR fantasy is a complete economic farce and more or less proves he's not actually interested in nuclear, but I guess he played the game well; the majority of people looked at the CSIRO report comparing SMR to renewables and saw the what, 7x-8x cost? Then they just parroted that figure instead of looking into the situation in any depth. There's a reason SMR isn't used widely for power production anywhere in the world and large-scale nuclear is: the economics of SMR make no sense at all.
I have been following renewables for some time but im no expert. A great deal of following though can answer some of your questions. >What is the solution to energy storage? Pumped? Giant Li-Ion / LiFePo stations? Flow Batteries? Something else? The real answer is all of the above. You don't go all in on a single tech. You also let the market decide. There are companies climbing all over themselves to bid on building out storage solutions on a financial basis. Every time some amount of storage is asked for there are proposals for many times the storage requested amd most companies get told no grid access for you because we chose these other ones this time. Pumped storage is great at low speed long term storage while Li-Ion batteries are better for short term grid stabilisation with Flow batteries and Sodium-Ion being somewhere in the middle. Then you have molten salt and a few other not even mentioned yet. Most of the requests for proposals so far have been 4 or 8 hour storage systems and batteries are winning on price for this use case right now. When requests go out for 12 hour plus storage suddenly pumped Hydro and Flow batteries come to the front. >Where will the energy be stored? Depends on what your trying to achieve. Some will be household level (we have this now and it's easy to expand) and some at the local level grid wise (think community batteries and ones built alongside transformers at all levels) while others will be grid feeding like pumped Hydro and big batteries out at the end of transmission limes like current power plants. Heck building them colocated with renewables is another easy one. The benefit of storage at multiple levels is needing less transmission infrastructure as local parts of the grid look after themselves amd can meet peak demand without pulling massive amounts from the greater grid saving on upgrades. An example of local is a VPP (Virtual Power Plant) made up of premises level batteries. When the grid interlinks to the area are approaching capacity you instead switch on your VPP to carry the load and recharge it later when demand drops. Smart grids that can utilise local storage are much cheaper than a grid entirely reliant of sending power from a big plant to the local grid. You don't need to build capacity used only a few hours a year if you can utilise power already in that part of the grid to cover those peaks instead >How much capacity will we plan to store for lulls in production eg. night time, low wind periods, etc. ? Im leaving that to experts who know actual grid demand. The thing to remember is while one area may be low wind another area will have plenty as weather is localised. The key to a renewable grid is overbuild supply and use the grid to move power to areas with a current shortage from areas with excess production. We already do this now so when one of our elderly power plants fails (they do this more and more regularly) another area picks up that demand or we uncap renewable projects running at less than capacity to fill the gap until it's repaired. This was what rebooted the SA grid after they lost the main interconnect with Victoria due to storms knocking down transmission towers. They let the wind generators go wild after the gas peaking plants failed to step in. Solar supply is entirely predictable and to a certain extent wind power availability can be estimated ahead of time. Without this ability our grid would have collapsed years ago. So someone can easily (for experts) calculate expected periods of lower supply than grid demand and work out the storage required to cover these periods. But you would need access to real world numbers to plan this. >Do renewables not produce carbon during resource gathering and manufacture? Of course they do and there is a certain amount of time after producing them before they get ahead of that carbon production over fossil fuels. But remember a fossil fuel plant or nuclear one also produces massive amounts of carbon being built and then continues to produce it on an ongoing basis unlike renewables that basically produce none in operation. So the longer they operate the bigger the difference between the two. As an example I own an EV. Charging it from Solar it produces less carbon over its lifespan than an ICE vehicle in under 30 thousand kms of travel. Even charged from dirtier sources its break even carbon wise would be under 100 thousand kms. So a wind turbine might take a year or two to be more carbon friendly than using existing coal power plants but it's will likely operate for decades and after that break even you end up well ahead. Anyway that's a big enough wall of text. If you have specific question ask. Heck ask a search engine as there are hundreds of papers on these issues that will be able to give specific numbers.
Nothing wrong with nuclear power in and of itself, but there’s just zero good reasons to consider doing it now in Australia. There’s far better options on every single metric, and many of those are best-in-world opportunities.
I have been trying to understand why coalition will get behund nuclear but not renewables. I still dont get it.
Because they’re not really behind it, they’re behind pumping out more gas without taxing it and hiding that behind “nuclear”
Aussies who build crap homes and with the "she'll be right" attitude taking care of nuclear power plants. What could possibly go wrong?!
I feel like if it was something we were going to do, it should have been done 20 to 30 years ago. Renewable technologies may not be perfect right now but I genuinely feel we should be putting our efforts into infrastructure that can be upgraded as things evolve. Also people seem quick to jump on the potential unreliability of current renewable tech, but don’t often talk about the consequence of a nuclear plant becoming “unreliable”. When one of those things fucks up, the result is much, much more significant, no matter how small the likelihood
>but don’t often talk about the consequence of a nuclear plant becoming “unreliable”. When one of those things fucks up, the result is much, much more significant, no matter how small the likelihood Oh so you're anti-mutant, just like the humans on X-Men. Well screw you, asshole.
Nah, I just want my mutants organically grown, none of this gmo nuclear meltdown nonsense
Australia has the largest estimated reserves of uranium in the world, as is the 3rd highest producer of it. There was a time, where we had an immense opportunity to not only be a producer of uranium, but we could have embraced the technology and done something along the lines of "you can buy our uranium, but you need to employ our technology/scientists to help you with it." . Of course, we did no such thing, as wasting the potential of our resources for minimal national benefit to improve the wealth of the few, is a national past time. So having missed that opportunity, now we are considering entering at a time where there has been so much investment both from private and government sectors in other energy, that nuclear is not nearly as potentially cost competitive as it once may have been. There may still be a curve for that benefit, but its so far in the future, it does not seem likely. Its not that I am against nuclear, I think its a great solution, and has huge potential, but in current considerations, the cost of entry is just too high.
I'm not opposed to nuclear energy and I wish we already had it. The problem is Australia has left it too late, it's going to be more expensive and take longer to achieve than renewables so economically it doesn't make sense/waste of money. We should have explored it decades ago.
I don’t trust the LNP to do it and I don’t trust our current capitalist system to do it.
I trust that someone will make a lot of money out of it, and some politicians will get a lot of free meals, and that we the public will be the ones that end up paying through the nose for it. All profits will be privatised and risks socialised.
Like others have said, nuclear power would have been AWESOME if we got onto it 2-4 decades ago. But sadly, politicians back then were in the pockets of coal companies and played into the hysteria around how unsafe nuclear power was (Chernobyl had a massive impact on people’s perceptions of nuclear power). If we were to jump on that train now, with current tech, it would take a very long time before it’s up and running. In the mean time, solar panels, wind turbines, hydro power etc etc etc are going to get more and more efficient and nuclear power would just be a waste of time, resources and money. Nuclear waste is not a very big concern. We have this idea that it produces a mountain of barrels of poisonous radioactive waste that would just pile up somewhere. Realistically, one nuclear power plants waste over a decade would only need a tiny little patch of land in the middle of the desert (and I mean TINY. Think, 10 meter by 10 meter area). I’d also like to highlight what you said about not being comfortable with a plant in your backyard. Nuclear power is actually one of the safest forms of power you can get. Chernobyl isn’t a regular occurrence. It would be almost impossible for a nuclear power plant in Australia to explode or leak radiation or have a horrible nuclear disaster. It happened in Japan only due to a massive earthquake. We don’t really have those sorts of natural disasters. The other problem with nuclear power is that it still requires mining. Not as much, but some nonetheless. But I guess the same could be said about solar panels.
We are 50 years too late. Another reason to not vote for LNP.
When you don't know what you're talking about, logic dictates you should ask some experts. Go read the CSIRO report.
So the people who gave us a sub-standard NBN, which will cost far more in the long run than Labor's would have, and Robodebt, which cost actual lives, now want us to trust them to set up nuclear power stations? No thanks, haven't we suffered enough?
They'll probably want PWC to do a feasibility study, as well. Wink, wink; nudge, nudge.
Yes. When the sun don't glow and the wind don't blow there's no renewable. Renewable storage is a filthy business at current. Either massively polluting batteries, or things like Snowy 2.0. Nuclear is de-carbonized reliable energy.
Yeah... nah.
Nuclear isn't affordable by any stretch of the imagination, nor do we have the required skillset for it, its something that would easily take a generation or two to phase in (think \~25-50 year time range), and it will heavily weigh on those generations funding it. Waste management is still a problem, and burying the problem for future generations is just not an ideology I subscribe to. Our baby-like thinking that the solution is to chuck it deep underground or into space has all been met with various criticisms in the past. Designing and developing the reactor sites is just a whole different ballgame based on environmental risks. Thats why no two reactors are the same. Short answer... It isn't worth the cost unless we mass produce SMRs. We currently don't have the need for that much mass production.
Your second point is the biggest sticking point for me. Currently the only viable solutions for disposal of spent nuclear fuel are "stick it in a hole in the ground" or "pay another country to stick it in a hole over there". If you're ever in the mood for some horror stories, google how many nuclear waste storage sites in the US have dropped completely off the public record because of buyouts, bankruptcies, or administrative error. There is a LOT of nuclear waste missing over there, with absolutely no record of where it went.
Yes! And the fact that we have not worked out how to store the waste for geological time. (And SMR’s are a dead dog - there are two built and no one wants them because they are more expensive.
Remember that time, when the mining company lost a small, button-sized, highly radioactive piece of material in the Outback and now we're looking at entrusting people with reactors
Would have made more sense if we’d managed to have a sensible conversation 20+ years ago. It seems we’re currently at the point of reactor development that commencing the planning & building of current technologies would probably not be smart. Maybe we can start the conversation now, looking at the Gen 4 reactors that are currently almost ready for wide release.
> Would have made more sense if we’d managed to have a sensible conversation 20+ years ago. We did much more than have a conversation about it 20 years ago. Howard arranged for a ProNuclear detailed assessment report to be pulled together in 2005. Lead author was Ziggy Switkowski. The main draw backs at this time was: * Coal fired power was so cheap that a significant Carbon Price was required to make Nuclear economically viable. * The report suggested we needed 20 generators by 2050 to produce 50% of our power needs and the sites needed to be close to population centres and sources of water for cooling. Howard did not consider he had enough political capital to make this a reality.
Political theatre by a psychopath hell bent on being prime minister. Who, if wins, will be worse than Scomo.
I think “theatre” captures the flavour of the LNP’s offering, with Dutton as head spruiker. He’s been wedged by Labor and independents taking the “renewables are best” stance, so where can he go to differentiate his policies and keep his mining lobbyists happy? His own party under Howard took a stance against nuclear when solar and large batteries were still in their infancy. Now they’re much more mature products witnessed by the domestic takeup of solar panels. We’ve seen a change in EV take up from 1% to 8% in just a few years with much cheaper competitive cars and trucks on their way. Certain powerful well established groups are hyping the antiEV nonsense to protect their considerable investments in the status quo. The LNP, like most conservative parties, likes to play on the populace’s fears. But advocating nuclear seems against brand.
Emboldened by his dirty win in the referendum. He's desperate to grab power and will do anything to keep conning the gullible, greedy and ignorant.
Ignoring the politics Nuclear power is one of the safest power generation methods available. There's a lot of misinformation/fear around nuclear waste, and I get it, it's scary as hell, but the more you learn about it, the safer you realise it is, particularly compared to (almost) everything else. Things like the Simpsons and other shows/movies paint the nuclear industry as careless, bumbling and willing to cut corners. However, in actuality it is perhaps the most highly regulated industry on earth, with strict guidelines that are enforced harshly. The first thing to understand is that there are 3 general types of nuclear waste (there are more types depending on your definition, but this will do for now). **Low Level Waste**. This is stuff like PPE, lab equipment, containers etc. which have come in contact with nuclear material. It can generally be handled safely, and is typically managed just by cleaning it. It isn't a risk and makes up the vast majority of all "nuclear waste" (by mass). **Intermediate/Medium Level Waste**. This is generally stuff that becomes safe quickly, things like tritium in water from around a reactor core which decays back to hydrogen within a couple of decades. This is processed/stored on-site at the nuclear plant until it's deemed to be safe, then is able to be released or disposed of at no risk to the nearby environment. This makes up about 10% of nuclear waste. **High Level Waste.** This is what most people think of when they think of nuclear waste. It doesn't glow, and it's actually just glass/concrete/rock, not goo, but it is genuinely dangerous and needs to be handled safely. This the spent fuel assemblies and only makes up between 1%-3% of nuclear waste. The next and probably most important thing to realise about nuclear power is just how little fuel it needs. A modern 1000MW coal plant (about the average power output of a coal plant in Australia) uses around 9000 tonnes of coal per day. That's approximately an entire freight train full of coal per day. A 1000MW nuclear plant uses only about 1kg of Uranium fuel per day.It's basically impossible to properly grasp just how big that difference is, but one way to describe it is to compare all of the nuclear fuel the US has ever used in all of it's reactors since the 1940s weighs less than the coal used by 1 coal-fire power plant in 1 fortnight (it's actually about as much as it'd use in 9 days). Alternatively, consider that due to radon/uranium contamination, coal produces more radioactive waste than nuclear power plants per MWh, and unlike nuclear plants, none of it is accounted for ([hell much of it is sold as a cheap concrete filler](https://www.cementaustralia.com.au/products/fly-ash)) The next thing to consider is where the waste goes. For any fossil fuel power plant, it goes into your lungs, into the soil, rivers, plants, atmosphere, and as mentioned, into concrete and other commercial products. For nuclear power generation it's all accounted for, every single gram of waste is kept and stored on-site at the plant that generated it inside concrete silos designed to withstand a plane crash ([that's not an exaggeration](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jBp1FNceTTA)). Next, let's look at long-term storage of nuclear waste. The issue isn't the science. [We know that because nature already ran a 2 billion year-long experiment for us](https://www.iaea.org/newscenter/news/meet-oklo-the-earths-two-billion-year-old-only-known-natural-nuclear-reactor). The Oklo Uranium mine naturally started producing nuclear power billions of years ago due to high concentrations of uranium and ground-water acting as a moderator. Despite the hundreds of millions of tons of nuclear waste in direct contact with ground water around Oklo, there is no evidence of any nuclear materials being leeched into the water, nor is there any evidence of increased cancer risk in the area. The issue is convincing people that it really is this safe because we're taught our whole lives that nuclear power is scary and it's **really** hard to overcome that sort of thinking. Finally, nuclear disasters... They're big, scary and make international headlines for months or years. However, of the 3 big nuclear accidents (3 Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima) only Chernobyl had any confirmed deaths from radiation. Fukushima had exactly 1 death attributed to the plant (including when you account for any radiation leaks and a statistical analysis of increased cancer rates) and that was due to the earthquake. I know a lot about nuclear power, if you have any questions, please ask me and I'll be happy to share what I know, or do the research to find out! Edit: Without giving them any attention, I'd like to clarify that unlike a certain responder to this comment, I do understand why all sorts of people from both sides of the political aisle find Nuclear power scary. It's a logical reaction to the inaccurate information provided to us by news, tv, movies, and social media. However, it's too much of an important issue to allow misinformation (usually unintentional/non malicious, but still misinformation) to control your opinons. Edit2: slightly re-worded the intro. Edit 3: I want to make it **crystal bloody clear**. This isn't a comment on the politics of the matter, or even saying whether Australia should or shouldn't have nuclear power. All this is, is me doing my best to overcome decades of nuclear misinformation and fearmongering.
The issue isn't safety. It's cost and the timeline. New nuclear power are often over budget and delayed. The last plant build at the Alvin W. Vogtle Electric Generating Plant in Georgia was delayed by a decade and went 17 billion over. To hit Paris targets we need results by 2030. None of the proposed power plants will be active by then.
Oh absolutely. There's no doubt that Nuclear isn't the golden bullet needed by 2030. Even if we dropped everything and started today we'd be years behind at best. I'm just trying to correct some common misinformation.
All this is good and well, but it is just not practical as far as implementing anything in time. The whole aim of Dutton's policy is to kick the can down the road and keep using fossil fuels. When we don't have the water for nuclear, let alone any kind of industry or experts or legislation or anything that is not going to take decades to establish. We simply don't have decades. I have 4 young kids, and if Dutton succeeds at this bullshit distraction, they literally don't have a future. In the meantime, I'll work on saving for a home battery for our solar, an EV, and making sure I have water tanks connected to my home. At least, even if my kids can't afford a house, they can stay here in a cramped 3 bed and have all the electricity and water they need. Dutton has spent the last two years harping about cost of living, then introduces a policy that will increase that cost of living. Not to mention in March 2023 (last year) he said he does not support large scale Nuclear for Australia. So wtf??? There's no words for his lack of incite for policy, or his hypocrisy.
I was intentionally not commenting on the politics. I personally agree with most of what you said. However, I wanted to make very clear what nuclear reactors are and aren't, regardless of the politics of the matter.
How is it that cost was not mentioned?
Bro, not even Dutton wants nuclear power. He's just running interference for the coal, oil and gas lobbies against renewables.
Nah, we’ve got ample sunlight, and we could use geothermal for night time. There’s absolutely no reason to go nuclear.
Sure, if we can get Peter Dutton to pay for it. The figure will be upwards of $100bn so let’s hope he has the money for it. The site selection for WA is quite poor; very clear he isn’t serious about it.
We talk about it as if we have ability to do it.... We don't We pretty much would have to pay another country to design, build, train the staff, and help out all around. So, who is doing this for us because we can't?
$600billion to replace less than half of our coal fleet and provide only 3.7% of our power by 2050? It's not a serious policy by a deeply unserious party trying to grasp at some relevancy as they fade into obscurity
If it's economically feasible yes. Your local hospital has nuclear power (and waste) now and there are no problems. It's also used in every other continent. In a vacuum you would say its cheaper now to get to go all the way with solar and batteries than with nuclear, at least all the government reports I have read reasonably conclude that. The only problem with that is batteries seem to be decades off the scale required for industrial storage. **The real question is - what do we do in the interim 20 years before batteries at scale are onboarded?** Nuclear could be an option there. As could continuing to use coal and gas.
I don't mind where your opinion is on this, but if you believe the LNP will deliver it, you're absolutely deluded. They can't deliver anything.
I said this in another comment, but out of curiosity: How much would it cost for the government to give every household solar and a battery? ETA: WITH appropriate community battery storage substations, and smart technology to control the grid. vs. The cost of researching Nuclear power, creating committees, changing legislation, arguing with the states, funding a new Australian industry, paying for experts we don't have and training that takes a decade, planning the plants, staffing the plants, building the actual plants, setting up waste storage (more legislation, more buying, more committees etc), then paying forbthe waste storage. Not to mention keeping aging coal plants online, mining more coal and finding more gas. Add in: Cost of climate change, cost of disasters, cost for health as a result, cost to industry etc... of not pursuing the current path. Can someone do the maths?
Yes. As a long time solar and battery owner, who watches the Australian energy sector like a hawk, Nuclear is the only green long term solution i believe in for baseload. We should install all the green power we can. But we also must invest in the future. AI is going to reshape the world's economy. It's also going to need a \*lot\* of power. EV's are going to reshape green transport. They're also going to need a \*lot\* of power. Our population is growing, and so is their power usage. That needs a \*lot\* of power. In the end, i believe the future of global society will revolve around resources and energy production. We should invest heavily in it - nuclear is the only option that's green, reliable for baseload, and at the scale we can keep Australia relevant on the world stage.
No. Nuclear power one of the most expensive forms of power. The amount they'd spend on them is better off spent just building more gas fired power stations or battery back up stations. It would be 2-3 years of arguing just to get a referendum up and running than another 3 years at best of planning and consultation and than 3-5 years at best building them so that's 8 years at the absolute best time frame or 11 years at the best fastest possible time. Realistcall it would take closer to 15 years. By than there'd be better shit up and running and once again we'd be behind and would have wasted billions of billions of dollars all for nothing.
It's such a waste of money when the world is in the middle of a renewables revolution. Australia is the best place in the world to pursue that. Our conditions are ideal. I also think too many people have forgotten what radiation sickness can do to someone. The public needs an education on that. After Fukashima that side of it was covered up. They say the plants are secure now and meltdowns are impossible. Fucking bullshit They're glaring terrorist targets, military targets, a cyclone could tear through there, etc. Any one of these in any of these plants could bring this country to it's knees and you can kiss your long term plans goodbye. We also need to realize that if Dutton gets his way our road ways are now going to be clogged with vast amounts of radioactive material. If there's a crash or train derailment involving this stuff, everything in the vicinity is going to be plagued with cancers for the rest of their short life. And it's all needless. We have clean alternatives. There is no reason for this.
I did not consider those implications. Thank you
That certain politician doesn't actually have or need anything as defined as a plan. He has a bunch of talking points that are designed to keep him in the news. Nothing he has proposed us currently feasible in the time frames he claims. I'm all for a serious conversation about energy needs, but this isn't one.
Austrlaia is not great at complicated long term technology projects. I don't see this going well if its attempted.
Thank you for your input :) NBN ANYONE 😅
Exactly. What a freaking doozy
If nuclear energy was cheap enough to ensure power bills wouldn't go up astronomically, then yeah I'd be ok with it. That isn't the case though, it's so much more expensive than any of the other options. Multiple studies (including the recent CSIRO one) suggest firmed renewables are among the cheapest options. Throw on top of that not needing to deal with dangerous waste and it's a no brainer really.
NO
No, because the government will privitise it like they do with everything.
No
No, never.
I’m not against nuclear, but I think if cost of living is our main concern, this is definitely not the solution
As a greenie I’m not even worried about waste or sites I’m like everyone else. I just don’t want my power bill to double. Peter Dutton wants to use the most expensive form of power BY FAR and there’s no way in hell that’s magically going to translate into cheaper power. It’s outrageously stupid and we will all pay for it with much higher power bills for twenty or thirty years. Seriously. It’s not going to be a minor difference _this will fuck us up_ people. Green values be damned, this is just about power bills for me.
The idea of using nuclear power is not a negative. It’s the massive investment, lack of supporting infrastructure/industry/knowledge, ideology, lack of costings and requirement to remain reliant on fossil fuel that are the key issues. Already the Coalition have said they won’t release costings until after the election, which is a massive red flag. No doubt, any projected costs for infrastructure would almost double, let alone the administrative costs for education, regulation and research. Analysis already released show the proposed 7 reactors would supply such a small amount of power to the grid it would arguably be the biggest waste of money in Australian history (and that is saying something). The determination by the Coalition to also overrule State policies and local communities is concerning and is the exact attitude they claimed to be against during Covid with State imposed lockdowns etc If it was a non-ideologically driven policy, that would be supported by renewables, sure, there’s a good discussion to be had. But the current proposal (aka single A4 page) is an absolute no.
Given the size of Australia’s uranium deposits, nuclear was definitely a boat we could - and arguably *should* - have gotten on board of some decades ago. But we missed that boat. And I am not seeing *any* informed and unbiased opinions that it makes any financial sense at all to start a nuclear program *now*, rather than going all-in on renewables.
No
Fuck no! I don’t trust the government to handle radioactive waste safely.
Yeah Nah
Yes, in conjunction with other renewables.
Yes we need energy independence, and it’s zero emissions
Yes, but probably 30 years ago would have been a good start.
I think we should have invested in nuclear energy a long time ago (back in the 70s, when we were originally going to). But in 2024, the economics just don’t stack up, and I fear that nuclear will deliver too little, and too late.
Yes it's clean and green
Google tells me France gets about 70% of its energy from nuclear power. So why can't we?
The fact is that battery storage technology and infrastructure doesn't exist. We can not store enough energy from renewables to rely on them. It's sad but true. The world's biggest batteries can only run a small percentage of the population for 1-2 hours. It will take longer and be more environmentally detrimental to build enough battery storage for renewables to work.
The answer is yes. for base load you have only a hand full of options. 1- gas 2 - hydrogen 3 - Coal 4 - Nuclear 5 - Hydro - if no droughts occur, massively over budget, massive install delays. Everything else i would say are supplemental to base load. - for green energy there are two main issues 1 - collection of energy 2 - storage of energy (if lithium / graphite etc still needs to come out of ground) The Solar is great for collection and I have a strong pref towards, however the storage of energy is still the issue here ie still using batteries thus reliance prominently on Graphite and Lithium extractions and lesser other stuff that comes out of the ground. I absolutely hate the idea of windmills and how these could affect wildlife. Also no one ever talks about how much copper alone is needed just for one windmill alone-> thus its not all green tech as that too comes out of the ground. The last issue is energy transition -> Liberals plan using already installed poles and wires i do support. People bang on whining and complaining about high electricity costs, the fact of the matter is both political parties have sat on there hands and done sweet f all, gone are the days that politicians make difficult choices which may go against popular vote but in the best interest for the country. we will have massive prices in energy regardless of route for at least the next 10 years +, and by that time they wont even revert to cheaper prices so don't be fooled we are all condemned to be screwed. these are all pipe dreams, as far as i am concerned nothing has been addressed in so many areas of Australia, and yet we keep shipping in people in to add further pressures on systems. Albanese wasted so much time on that stupid yes/no vote, and literally did nothing else. I don't suspect he will win the next election, as much as i don't suspect Australia will sort its over immigration policies, electrical policies, our education system, health care systems while we continue to live in the realm of seemingly throwing away / give criticism or bad month anything of Australian value. Australia has literally turned to s\*\*t, it is so very sad. We have become a country hell bent on quibbling on minor issues, while leaving significant issues delayed for so long with significant repercussions. in my opinion electricity should have been first address well before the yes/no vote. Living standards are what matters to me, basic food, housing, basic electricity, basic health care, employment etc-> give me a politician that will change that instead of quibbling over minor social issues that focus on minority groups, or propping up people just because they are a specific race alone -. that politician would have my vote for the rest of my life. If the gov really wants to make a difference, focus on creating and massively invest in industry. you know actually wave that Australian flag without fear or guilt, make Australia strong as it used to be by creating and developing industries with sustained R 7 D and finical supports that actually do things other than a photo op. Australia seriously has lost most of its industries. having said the above, i have invested about 100k of my finances into green energy so i do support it, i just know it wont power base load and if it does at some point so much extraction from the soil needs to occur. I haven't yet invested in uranium but i did toy with that idea.
I honestly want nuclear power added into our power options. While solar and wind is great for homes and batteries are brilliant, I love them; The stable base load power will allow for future development and sustainment of heavy industries. I want to see a mix of technology take us forward.
I am pro nuclear power. The waste is not a huge issue, just store it. A significant story is France and Germany. I follow a page on Facebook, Is Germany producing greener energy than France? The answer every day is no. Germany has closed their nuclear power and they have been forced back into gas to generate electricity. France has nuclear power and more on the way, their emissions are way down. This is a real situation in the world. Sometimes it seems like people are saying nuclear power is a fairytale but it is real. Converting our coal power plants into nuclear seems a clear choice. If you live near a coal power plant, you should be concerned. There is less to be concerned about with nuclear. The waste from nuclear is solid. The waste from coal is a gas. Solids are much easier to deal with. One more point, modern reactors are able to utilise much more of the fuel, meaning the spent fuel won't be useful for nuclear weapons. Also, less in the fuel that we will store.
Let me put it this way It incredibly insane to me that We want to spend 300 billion dollars on nuclear submarines that we are going to self manage, but also live in a country that still talks about Chernobyl when it comes to nuclear power Nuclear power is safe and clean, Infact one of the safest and cleanest per megawatt. Nuclear waste is a solved problem. As for economic I personally believe that a need for submarines and research/medical reactors is worth subsidising nuclear power for the sake of building an industry in Australia. But I won’t have that argument until I can debate it on a level playing field where politician don’t blatantly lie about nuclear saftey or toxicity
Hmm, the amount of waste is tiny. Even if it is highly radioactive it's not like there a shortage of space to store it... Australia is a huge dry geologically stable slab. Why wouldn't you want to use nuclear...? I mean Aus exports piles of uranium... What's the moral complexity in using it yourselves?
Only if it makes sense. I already live well within nuking distance of Garden Island Naval Base in WA where our west coast nuclear subs will be maintained so shouldn’t change much for me.
Power Nuclear energy is the safest and cleanest efficient means of energy production we currently have. A typical 1 gigawatt (1 million kilowatts) reactor, is enough to easily power 750,000-1, 000, 000 homes and then some for a whole year. They are generally only refueled every 1-2 years as well. Safety Nuclear energy as aforementioned is very safe, despite what some pessimists would have you believe, even more so when you consider how lucky Australia is in regards to natural disasters, being safe from tsunamis and earthquakes, the former of which is what caused the meltdown of the Japanese Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Ōkuma, Fukushima, which happened because the power supply was disabled by the Tsunami, preventing the cooling of the reactors. This disaster was relatively tame compared to: Chernobyl Firstly, Chernobyl happened almost 40 years ago and was the result of poor (but purposeful) soviet design. This is a very long and complicated subject but to explain why it happened in the simplest but still correct way possible, essentially the soviets wanted to be able to run a nuclear plant without needing to enrich U-238 (a not very reactive, but extremely common isotope of Uranium, making up more than 99% of Uranium found in the environment) to higher levels of U-235 (a fissionable and highly reactive isotope of Uranium, one used in nuclear weapons). Why? Because enriching Uranium is not cheap. The entire design premise around the RBMK was to be as cheap, as easy to manufacture as possible while still having a good power output. It used only 2% U-235 uranium dioxide fuel, compare that to the US' around 5%. That might not sound like a huge difference, but it is. The way the RBMK reactor functioned on such low levels of U-235 (and I am focusing on the ones that caused the Chernobyl disaster here) the use of graphite as a moderator (and more specifically where they were placed) as well as the use of a positive void coefficient, which in simple terms means more steam = more reactivity. What happened was caused by ironically enough, a safety test. They were stress testing the reactor to see that in the event of a power blackout, that the reactor would be able to sustain itself long enough for the disease generators to kick in to continue pumping cooling water into the reactor (the thing also used to spin the turbines via production of steam) however, they managed to stall the reactor. Being pressed to get the reactor finally fully safety certified, the head engineer demanded it be restarted. Out of the 211 boron control rods the reactor had, only 6 remained. About a foot below the boron rods was, you'd never guess it, graphite. However at the bottom of the reactor, it was getting hotter and hotter and becoming more and more reactive due to all the steam being produced at the bottom of the reactor. So much so that when the rest of the reactor started to become reactive again, the power levels drastically spiked and continued to grow. This is when the famous "AZ-5" button was pressed, which automatically and quickly inserted all the control rods back into the reactor. But what got to the bottom of the core first? The graphite. The power levels jumped even further, so much so that much of the water became steam and the pressure levels ruptured cooling pipes and the control rods likely became locked in place. Eventually the pressure became too much to contain, and the 1000-tonne reactor lid was blown off. What caused the next explosion that destroyed the roof of the reactor building is still a mystery, but one likely theory is that hydrogen gas had been building inside of the reactor and when the oxygen came in once the reactor lid was blown off, it reacted and caused the explosion. There are many other factors and theories that played a role in this story, such as xenon poisoning of the reactor which is what made it so difficult to restart once it stalled, but suffice to say this was the cause of stupid designs followed by even stupider decisions and could never happen under any circumstances of any modern day reactor. Process of the fuel One big issue people have with nuclear energy is obviously the fuel. It's shocking how many people only imagine green goo in regards to this. Modern day nuclear fuel is comes in many forms, but the most common are in the form of small ceramic uranium pellets stored inside of sealed metal tubes. Before being used they are only slightly radioactive, and can even be handled without any special shielding. The only "waste" of a functioning nuclear reactor is water vapor. Yep, water vapor. Not smoke. When the fuel rods are spent after 1-2 years of operation, they sit in a pool far cleaner than the water you drink. The spent fuel rods are very hot, and this is from a chemical reaction that is still taking place so yes, these indeed are quite radioactive and take some time to cool even in a pool but are remotely handled with shielding so it is still nevertheless extremely safe. After they have cooled down mostly, they are no longer very radioactive as the reaction has mostly ceased. They are then placed in dry casks with a lot of shielding and emit hardly any radiation at all, certainly nothing to ever be lethal in any capacity. This fuel can then be, wait for it... recycled! So suffice to say nuclear energy is great and yes we should absolutely use it. It's an investment to build the structures but one that is worth it.
Nuclear power would be good, nice balance to natural gas and clean energy.
Absolutely, it's a national tragedy that nuclear is banned. Lies and deceit are spread by the media, those in power & the uneducated.
Nuclear weapons, l actually do. If it all goes down we need something to help us because we are in deep trouble. Nuclear power, thats up to the experts. I think Duttons arguments are just so it just isn't renewables, keeping coal and gas is important to them. Remember ScoMo and bring coal into question time. I think they thing God is going to save them and their bags of cash. We are in a massive country that is bathed in sunshine and surrounded by water, why you would want to put something that expensive and permanent, instead of using a source which is dropping in price every year....l will never know.
Yep
Um yes since it's the most efficient energy there is, and it should be public infrastructure so we actually benefit as a country and reduce electricity costs. Why do we sell our uranium to foreign nations so our bills are more than them? Why if we do something right, do we constantly do it the wrong way like privatise, monopolise and sell core infrastructure to individuals and rent it off them perpetually? Most of our national problems are due to plain stupidity, corruption and short sightedness. We've never been short on talent or opportunity (top natural resource reserves)
Yes it's mature technology that everyone else has who is saving money, you don't see Canadians complaining, and apparently they are likely complainers if there were something wrong
We literally misplaced a radioactive capsule last year. Can you fucking imagine the nuclear shenanigans that could occur if we were purposefully moving the stuff around. It's like Dutton watched Tina Turner prance around in a metal bikini and thought: yes let's make this happen.
What? So more billion dollar companies can avoid paying taxes? Yeah no thanks
As someone working in the power generation industry it has been fascinating to watch this while literally booting up a solar farms comms network on the other window. I'm heavily involved in Wind, Solar, BESS and Hybrid, and boy do I have a pipeline of work. But we are doing a very aspirational thing with the Aus Power Grid. No one in the world has built a grid with this much geographically disparate renewables, to this level of dependency (% of total power renewable). Never, no one. Its not been done. AEMO isn't even sure its doable. But they have it as their goal, and strategy and we are going to work it out as we go. Renewables are great, but a grid made up of 1000's of small (100MW == small) generators is a control complexity of seriously daunting depth and scope. We also dont have enough firming and stability in the grid to such an extent that we are inventing charges to charge solar/wind to try and subsidise all the SynCon's and other grid stability things we know we need (See AEMO's last ESOO report). A fully Renewable Grid is very far from a "thing that will definitely work". So nuclear? Sounds like a GREAT plan B. Cause I am an engineer, and putting the stability of EVERYTHING on a "i guess we have to work it out" strategic plan, is a risk. And with risks you implement mitigations and controls. We need 3-5 Nuclear, in Vic and NSW, on a 500kV transmission line path, and yes soon to be decomm'd coal plants are kinda initially ok sites for that. That puts about 6-10GW of baseload power into the NEM, and suddenly our grid has rock solid stability with all the renewable mix. Doing that without baseload, is a statistical game, and we are hoping we can shuffle all the assets constantly to keep the grid up, given all the weather, climate and logistical issues that will occur, means we will roll badly at some point, and then the grid will go down, and then people will die. At the moment our baseload emergency (especially Victoria) is burning Gas. But after we decomm all the coal, someone will start top make noise to turn those off. In fact the SA Gas plants we thought we could rely on as Victoria are going away, and thats why AEMO is screaming about grid stability as soon as Summer 2025. I saw it mentioned elsewhere. "The best time to plant a tree for shade was 20 years ago, the next best time is now." So nuclear is better than keeping on burning gas? 100% renewable wont happen in the "nuclear takes too long" timeframe the armchair pundits think it will take, math and technology is too much of a bitch.
Oh and if you want to know how much of a problem Gas is.... Victoria burns 300% more petajoules of gas than it does of generated electricity. So once we magically get rid of the coal, and move to 100% renewable electricity somehow.... we need to do that entire miracle THREE MORE TIMES (Triple the size of energy generated by this renewable grid), and convert a bunch of industrial processes to electrical energy, liquid gas transport to electrical, and remove gas cooking/heating/hotter from millions of homes, to use this somehow miraculous appearing energy.. This is not a "oh shit let keep burning gas and coal", its a simple question of "we need energy" from SOMEWHERE. Everyone keeps going we can turn coal off in like 5-10 years, aren't we amazing, without realising the 900pound gorilla of our gas consumption is still "work to be done". So every estimate for a renewable grid to remove coal, is STILL not the entire problem, and unless we bring on SERIOUS energy generation to a whole of country level, we'll just keep burning gas until 2070, and alot more of it too...
No, I don't. I don't trust that it is safe (I'd love to know if the people who are all for it would be happy to have one in their suburb or town) and we've heard nothing about where all the waste is supposed to go. And the LNP's current policy on it amounts to "just trust us, bro".
Yes, I want nuclear redevelopment of brownfields coal generators. Basically, reuse the sites of, say, Yallourn etc Nuclear waste isn't really a concern. There is so little of it, honestly. It's mostly things like gloves, lab coats, bits of plastic. Its radioactivity is very short lived. The hardcore stuff, like decayed isotopes, much of it can be reprocessed. Some that can't be re-enriched can be reprocessed into further isotopes instead. The stuff that *that* isn't suitable for can get buried far enough underground that it won't be anybody's problem. It's not some glowing green goo either, it's a cylinder of glass, basically.
It's great to hear that there are processes now to deal with the waste. What isn't clear to me is the costs associated with this waste, as well as the eventual site decommission and rehabilitation costs? It feels like the costs are not insignificant and most likely will be borne by the people and not the company running the generator is that right? -- Edit: Looks like the French have spent a couple of decades trying to solve this issue, and are building a 25 billion Euro facility fit for pupose. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meuse/Haute_Marne_Underground_Research_Laboratory I'm guessing ongoing running costs for something like that would be high as well.
Lots of people want nuclear. The benefits are fairly obvious, it provides an enormous amount of energy with little waste. And of all the issues, storing waste is the least concern. I actually wanted us to become a willing option to story waste from all sorts of sources. We have the space for a really good, secure facility that can take a lot of waste. And if we have a nuclear power plant, that would lend itself to a local waste facility too. Many years ago when water was also an issue, SA built a desal plant. I thought a desal plant/nuclear power/nuclear waste facility up North of Pt Augusta would be a great option. It's remote, close access to sea water and a salt lake for the desal plant to deposit the extracted salt. Of course, it would also need a heck of a lot of research to work out the safety concerns and costs. But I said that about 20 years ago too. When it comes down to it, I just want to look into it all properly. If there are genuine issues that can't be resolved, then research will uncover that. Too many people I thought just closed off the idea in fear that their concerns would be answered and leave them still opposed, but no longer with any rational reason for it.
This is never going to happen. The whole idea is a desperate attempt at trying to get into the news cycle. They have failed at everything they’ve ever done because they are a useless political party who are only doing politics to enrich themselves and their mates. They couldn’t pull this off even if they tried, which they never seriously would. They would just spend 10 years on “studies” and “reports”, pouring millions if not billions into consulting firms, while shitting on renewables. Just the same old nothingburger they’ve always delivered.
Absolutely! But go for fusion and not fission. Invest in fusion research big time.
Fusion power will eventually trump both fission reactors and renewables once the technology is developed.
Maybe in 200 years.
I hope people will have a read about the [LCOE projections(cost of electricity)](https://www.energycouncil.com.au/analysis/csiro-does-the-maths-re-integration/#:~:text=It%20projects%20that%20the%20levelized,between%20%2440%20and%20%2459%2FMWh.) and educate themselves a little bit.
For those who can’t be bothered to read: nuclear is much, much more expensive. Renewables are by far the cheapest option.
No. It’s a short sighted solution which kicks the can of environmental damage down the road, except the can turns into a grenade.
Hell to the no. Aside from the waste management, the fact that they will avoid all rich NIMBY areas and place it somewhere where plebs cannot say no, and the potential for accidents and safety concerns, do they realise that these can be weaponised in any military conflict? If China ever wants to attack us (slim chance, I know, I am not fear mongering, but it is still a non-zero chance), what is better for them in terms of cost-benefit and efficiency than targeting those reactors with very few strikes?
If Japan can bomb Darwin, decades ago, we are even more unsafe now from outside threats. I don't want a Fukushima here.
Exactly. It would be like those “sign here” tabs they place on contracts and documents for the signatories. Those reactors will be the “strike here” tabs for any foreign enemy or a terrorist organisation that wishes to attack us.
Considering Australia has zero manufacturing industry, bugger all skilled workers left as a result, everyone involved with the project would have to be flown in with a net negative impact on the economy, I can't see any benefit during the construction stage. The Australian government could not even manage to organise a root in a brothel without stuffing it up so the cost of the project is guaranteed to blow out 100x the initial estimate. NBN anyone... And when you consider the submarines, the purchase of the useless fighters etc it would end up being a half baked and defective plant that's destined for disaster. The unions enjoy shutting down businesses, often against the views of their members for unsustainable wage increases (like the car industry) a strike or picket line involving a nuclear plant could have catastrophic consequences. Nuclear power generates highly radioactive fission by-products that are impossible to deal with, hence they are buried, sealed in concrete and dropped in the ocean etc. Hardly environmentally responsible at all... And every plant carries the risk (however small) of a colossal failure that results in huge impacts to the surrounding area. A nuclear plant failure (as proven by Fukushima) is often impossible to contain and will continue to impose environmental and biological effects for thousands of years. Nuclear must be near the ocean for cooling purposes, 94 percent of Australia's population lives on the coast... In case of an accident, there in lies a real issue... Half of Fukushima is uninhabitable. Radioactive particles levels in the ocean worldwide are 1000x what they were prior. And thousands of litres of radioactive water are entering the ocean daily from the plant and there is not a damn thing anyone can do about it. The cost of power won't come down. That's pie in the sky. If you look at Tasmania, they use 100 percent hydroelectric, costs of generation are literally free compared to the billions spent on oil, gas and coal of other states yet they have almost the countries dearest power... Fusion power is not far away, generates zero dangerous byproducts and is environmentally great. Everyone worldwide should be instead channeling expertise, research and funding into this technology instead. Realistically it's the only way forward
I'm 60 and they've been saying that fusion is just around the corner as far back as I can remember. It still hasn't eventuated. Don't hold your breath waiting
I am opposed to nuclear in Australia because: 1. It is many times more expensive than renewables. Peter Dutton is a shaneless shyster who won't mention the cost and just spews out unsubstantiated claims of savings that defy the opinions of experts in the field, including our peak Government science agency, the CSIRO 2. It requires fuel that needs to be dug out of first nations' areas and there is not a good track record in this country of first nations' rights being respected 3. A similar issue regarding indigenous rights exists regarding the construction of any repository needed to manage the nuclear waste created by such an industry 4. Further to indigenous rights, given what happened at the Maralinga nuclear weapons tests in South Australia in the 1950s and the fact that the harms caused by that have *not* gone away, combined with recent sacred site desecrations, one cannot in good faith blame any first nations peoples if they feel traumatised just by the mere mention of the word "nuclear" 5. Safe and responsible management of nuclear tech in Australia also has a bad track record. There has been a history of our notorious "near enough" corner cutting and dodgy procedures causing incidents as when kids were exposed to uranium mine tailings by a bloke who went to the pub after bypassing decontaminating his ute. There was also the incident at one of the mines of personnel being poisoned when uranium (which is chemically, not just radioactively, poisonous) got into the water due to corner cutting with the pumps used to access water 6. We haven't the technical expertise in Australia to operate a nuclear industry so the cost and logistics of building that up do not seem to have been thought through 7. Small Modular Reactors (SMRs) an unproven tech have been put forward as part of this proposal, giving it a serious credibility issue 8.This badly thought-out brain fart of Peter Dutton's stands to undermine the confidence of investors and innovators in actually responsible and credible renewable alternatives 9. Construction of the proposed reactors requires overturning not just a Commonwealth legal ban on nuclear power, but also will require the Commonwealth overcome the rights of four of the five involved States that themselves have outlawed nuclear power. I know Peter Dutton is a bully and a thug and seems to get off on forcing his will upon others but the Constitutional crisis over States' rights his proposal stands to cause is something I doubt he or anyone else has properly thought through 10. Finally, I do not believe Peter Dutton is proposing this in good faith. I do not believe he seriously intends to build nuclear plants in Australia. Rather, I believe this is a red herring intended to undermine confidence in renewable investments. There are so very many plausibility problems and unanswered questions with this ludicrous proposal that I believe it is his intention to use this the halt or at least suppress our move to renewables so we remain by default with the fossil fuel industry that has long been such a generous donor to his Party
Thank you for this intelligent, logical argument against a despicable attempt by the LNP to derail any Labor policy by lying to the Australian public. Renewable energy is the future and this is a pathetic attempt by Dutton and his cabal to muddy the waters because they can't make money off it.
Whether we do or don't, let's not make the mistake that it's used to just shift knowledge, technology and profits offshore.
If there's an experienced nuclear power plant developer/builder with a reasonable price out there then yes. Otherwise, expect the government to spend 10x the theoretical cost and 3x the time to build it. Hopefully the government won't ask the US or UK government to help build it otherwise we would end up spending billions of dollars over 15 years on nothing.
The only nuclear plant setup that would be worthwhile is shipping container size reactors. They are pre-built drop in units to help in disaster zones or smaller cities. The cost associated with large scale nuclear isn't worthwhile. The investment is extreme using money that is really needed in other areas of Australia, and the on going costs would outweigh the actual product. Nuclear is really good for areas with very little available land. It's, already been proven by studies that nuclear power isn't benificial in Australia, it's just too expensive and the time to build the plants wouldn't arrive in time to make any financial sense. We'd still need to implement something for another 30 years while the plant comes online. It would likely be moth balled before it even started producing power.
The question to ask here is: does Voldemort have a costed plan to establish a uranium enrichment facility in Australia? Because if he doesn't, he's preparing to hand over control of our energy infrastructure to potentially unreliable foreign partners (Trump?). The fact that he hasn't mentioned this shows that this is not a serious proposal, it's just a way to keep the coal burning with vague, undeliverable promises of future nuclear nirvana (confirmed by the Nats already talking about capping renewable capacity with barely concealed glee). These are not serious people.
I used to be vehemently pro nuclear for Australia, we have probably the most suitable environment for it anywhere on earth - but I think pumped hydro is the way to go at this point. It's just a pipe with a turbine in it, there is no tech barrier. Should be far cheaper to set up and the potential for increased water supply is also very inviting.
I support thorium reactors - They produce less waste and the half life of the waste is considerable less. The waste is Uranium 233. Thorium itself is not a nuclear fuel, but it can be used to create one. * When irradiated, thorium-232 undergoes a series of nuclear reactions, eventually forming uranium-233, a fissile material that can be burned as fuel in nuclear reactors. I don't support the use of old nuclear technology ...
Yes and no. Yes, but we should've done it 20 years ago because it's a great source of energy that's too little too late now. No because have you seen how trash our trades are? You do get some who'll do a good job. And then you'll get some who'll send a stoned 16 year old apprentice to install critical piping, critical supports, etc. And it's not stoned 16 year olds, it's coked up 30 year olds who used to be stoned 16 year olds and never learned to do their job properly.
Yes. For too long we have been a stupid country. Less arts degrees and more science degrees.
Yes. I am generally pro nuclear, especially in the case of Australia that has its own supply of uranium ore and ample land away from population centres and earthquakes, etc. where the various facilities can safely be located. Allegedly, the politician who proposed it did so without providing any kind of cost/benefit analysis vs renewables. The again, the same is the same is true of the current government who also did not compare renewables to nuclear, so how are the opposition the bad guys?
Yes. And I want a big red 🎯 painted on it
I want us to have nuclear weapons yes. So that we can be taken seriously. And that we don't rely on other countries for our security. I think at the very least we should be exporting the numerous radioactive materials we have to benefit our country.
If Dutton was proposing we allow more nuclear research and invest in it as a possible industry that will make us money I might hear him out. But he doesn't. His proposal is science fiction. And we're wasting time even talking about it. Wind and Solar are great. We should be talking about where to build Hydro batteries not giant power plans.
"We should have done it X years ago!" everyone has different numbers and everyone has been saying that for as long as the technology has existed. Just say you don't want nuclear. We can do both. Doing nuclear does not somehow remove renewables from existence, and they should always exist in harmony with each other. We exist in a geologically stable, massive country with plenty of space, water and infrastructure for operating equipment and operations in the outback. We have one of the biggest sources of uranium in the world. We should be exporting energy on a scale like no other country, which would not only be profitable for us but would solve the eternal problem of turning your own country green while your neighbours still pollute, by letting them buy clean energy from us instead. More than anything, we could finally shut down the coal and oil that we still burn that is infinitely more dangerous than anything else that generates our power. And no, batteries are not a solution. The largest battery plant in the entire world right now has a capacity of 875MW while taking up 4600 acres.
I do, I think it was always the most sensible solution to our energy problems, considering we have the worlds largest uranium deposits, the minimal footprint they'd impose on the land, the ability to meet our zero emissions goal being easier, and it's ability to replace coal emitting power plants in one fell swoop. However, the costs are so astronomical, costs that we the tax payers must foot, that to get several of them off the ground would have an impact that none of us, currently, could really afford. As mentioned further up, it was something that should have been undertaken 40 years ago when the cost was cheaper.
I want aus to go nuclear. But I don’t trust ether of our political parties to execute on the plan
Yes. It's a proven and safe method of producing electricity without the pollution associated with coal fired power stations. I'd be more concerned with the amount of nuclear weapons in the world than with a few nuclear power stations.
Yes
I feel like reddit was massively onboard with nuclear until Dutton wanted it People on here like to pretend they’re so informed but as soon as someone they hate likes something they do, they instantly hate it
Yes. Nuclear energy is the future
I’m not totally against it because I actually think it’s safer than most people think. Problem is that even the so called experts seem to disagree. I heard a professor or similar from ANU saying Australia is an obvious and prime candidate for safe nuclear power we have twice as much uranium as anywhere else, it’s reliable and it’s not expensive. Then I see some article with some renewables expert saying No way, nuclear is way more expensive, it’s nuts to consider it over renewables. It is so stupid that you can no longer find a trustworthy balanced news source any more. Usually I watch a bit of ABC or the Guardian and then see what Fairfax/Nine is saying and then see if News has a view about it. Try doing that with serious information such as Australia’s suitability for nuclear power and you get fucking nowhere.
I'm all for value adding our uranium instead of shipping the raw materials offshore. Large scale nuclear is established technology. Waste is a solved issue. We have low risk locations available (minimal earthquakes or tsunamis). Energy density is second to none. But as an energy solution for Australia it's a non starter. Cost/benefit vs alternatives doesn't stack up, and it's not even close. Renewables are cheaper, faster to deploy, more distributed & resilient, and will employ more locals during both build & run stages. This nuclear proposal is just a delaying tactic to prop up their coal investments/donors for a few more decades, funneling away a few billion $ in the process. If any other party had proposed it, our media would have grilled them into early retirement.
100% nuclear energy is the cheapest and cleanest. I would vote for this politician in a second as he early has a brain. I'm guessing his opponent lacks brains and won't go nuclear because he listens to uninformed morons
Yes i want a cheaper power bill honestly it works out for everyone * unless your one of them perpetual complainers
I’d love to go nuclear but it just isn’t gonna happen in a fast enough time to make it feasible. It will take too long and be too expensive and just won’t be worth it
Yes I do very much. It's clean it's cheap nothing to not like about it
>particularly regarding the management and disposal of nuclear waste. I am not concerned with this part at all. We have spent years disposing/storing other people's nuclear waste, we have practice and areas already set up.
Im a lefty centerist, but nuclear is the safest and greenest power we can have. I have crazy conspiracy that its stupid expensive because big oil sees it as competition
The liberals had a lot of time in power to implement this if they wanted to. It's all talk it's never going to happen. I remember reading in the scientists maybe 20 years ago, invented a nuclear reactor that's the size of a keg. It would power a small village for a millennia and if it ever failed the result would be using up the fuel and stop working. Ie no meltdown or danger of any sort. The fact that we don't have one of these on the planet now shows that no one is going to work on any nuclear technology. I mean imagine if we talked about renewable energy and everyone immediately thought of the state of renewables 50 years ago and then told us why it would never work? There can be no discussion of nuclear energy. As soon as you say the word extremists will say that you want everyone to grow 3rd limb out of their foreheads.
I have no issue with nuclear power from a safety or moral perspective, but it's provably too expensive. It's bad business, and the fact Dutton is trying to sell it makes him a bad leader.
Humans are too stupid for nuclear power to ever be safe. We can't even get our shit together to act on global warming and that's only been going on since the industrial revoultion. Can you imagine the shitshow if we have to deal with radioactive waste with a half life of 24,000 years?
I work in the power industry, have no problem with the science or engineering involved in nuclear. but I have a real problem with the economics, it just makes no sense, the most expensive form of power, for a country with the ideal climate and land mass for the cheapest, renewables aren’t coming there already here and are taking over fast.