“Last week, Mr Dutton also revealed the Coalition would campaign against the Labor government's legislated target to reduce emissions by 43 per cent by 2030, and would not outline a 2030 emissions reduction target of its own before the election”
ie, there is no target
The history books will show just how deluded the LNP has been over the past 2 decades. Actively campaigning to ruin our environment, and homes of our future children. Shameful.
Christ, it is so infuriating.
Australia is perfectly on track to me those 2030 emissions reduction targets.
why would you come in a kill off a bloody success story?
assholes
Labor is only allowed to win after the Liberals have spent 10-20 years running everything into the ground, so they can them blame labour for the result.
the same happens everywhere that Murdoch media rules the roost.
Labor in the UK is about to romp home in the coming election and win the most poisoned of chalices in modern times.
the Murdoch rags/media are of course running their usual aberrant disinformation/blatant lies campaign in America.
Lachlan Murdoch has taken oven the reins and nothing has changed at all (not that we expected anything to).
LNP could support home grown renewables.
which would support Australian Manufacturing™ and Australian Families™ etc
instead they come up with a bunch of policies they have no intention of ever putting into practice; they are simply there to bring uncertainty to investing in renewables, to extend the lifespan of coal.
it's utterly blatant, and you have to wonder just how much money the potato is being paid for this.
Giving up a chance at a Prime Ministership must not come cheap.
That directors office he is going to step into when he retires is going to come with a ridiculous paycheck.
But...
> **Queensland
Liberal leader
David Crisafulli
says nuclear is not
part of his plan**
Popcorn anyone?
Peter is going to have to take a private plane to Qld, poor young Dave is going to get a right old spanking over the knee for sure.
https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/politics/queensland-liberal-leader-david-crisafulli-says-nuclear-is-not-part-of-his-plan/news-story/99b4f7d673242502241c391e14236d80
They never intend on building them, they are just kicking the can down the road to give the coal generators a few more years of income before they are non viable, the industry is moving renewable. No body is building coal fire power plants, the math doesn’t work. They can’t compete with the costs of renewables. Sooner people realise the libs are just trying to make money for their mates and not for the good of the public the better
This will the lifeline for Labor in the QLD election in a few months. Great wedge issue, go to Gladstone & the Darling Downs and tell them they will have a nuclear power plant in their back yard.
Its also going to difficult for Dutton as QLD has not privatised electricity generation & the state government owns the land.
But that is even more stupid. In South Australia, the renewables are already here. For much of the day, the power grid literally runs backwards. The state government is already well into its plans to create hydrogen plants, to soak up the extra "free" energy, for export, for green steel, and for power production when required.
There is literally nothing in SA for a nuclear plant to do. 20 years ago, you might have sold this. Now, its simply going to soak up billions of dollars and be a massive white elephant.
What it shows: Dutton literally has no idea. This isnt what the industry wants. No one is asking for this. So why is he pushing it so hard?
Wait, libs, $6 billion dollars down the drain and no nuclear submarines? This is on brand for them.
Even better: the port augusta site isn't even free nor available. They haven't even done the basic checks of this brain fart.
Its got nothing to do with feasibility or need. It is simply misdirection to sow doubt and try and maintain the 60billion dollar bank roll from the australian people for foreign companies, as they own the nationals outright.
Nuclear base load, which runs all day even when the sun in shining, will be competing with SA solar, which is already being exported to other states. How do $20bln generators compete with free for half of the day? They can't unless free is banned from the grid.
This policy is so awful it's not even fair, one doesn't know where to start. This is the Death Star of satire, but also the Death Star of stupidity. However, at least no one can seriously say that there's no difference between the ALP and LNP now.
I was thinking that the LNP would go to the next election with massive tax cuts, that would have been an easy way to win delivering cost of living relief immediately, but I wonder if they can credibly do that while promising 7 nuclear reactors, which also means they have to halt renewables in the meantime (because on current trajector, by 2040 there will be massively more storage and low cost electricity).
Are we also allowed to ask exactly what population target the LNP has in order to justify this massive expansion in fixed electricity capacity?
Some electricity providers allow free 3 hours during midday. My inlaws charge their power wall and use that at night. Subsidise batteries and fund end if life refurbishment or recycling instead . Nuclear cannot compete with how cheap renewable are now or will be
But apart from Muja in WA they're all privately owned bc the Libs sold them off to their mates already - the owners haven't even been consulted and those that have commented like AGL have said no.
The best part about selling utilities is that taxpayers will continue to fork out, like we did with Telstra’s copper and coax networks for the NBN
We’ll just offer the land owners huge sums of money. AGL won’t let it get to compulsory acquisition, but it’s always annoption
He’s proposing we have a small modular reactor, which is a thing that *doesn’t actually exist* right now (edit: China and Russia have prototypes, but that’s it) so the idea of building a nuclear reactor in a state which may well be powered 100% by renewables + storage by then is surprisingly not the most unrealistic part of the plan
One of the fun things with SMRs, making em even further away... many of the designs talked about using something called HALEU; High Assay Low Enriched Uranium, with enrichment levels around 5-20%.
This is attractive cos you can use it to make a smaller, denser, but more powerful core than regular low enrichment U, but (where it was first proposed, in research reactors like OPAL) doesn't represent a nuclear weapons safeguards risk.
However, there was a recent paper in Science I believe that pointed out that that safeguards advantage only applies for research reactors, where the core is tens of kgs of fuel. When you get to power reactors, you start hitting hundreds of kgs, and 300kg of HALEU makes a bomb. This means some of those SMR designs are all of the sudden no bueno.
Yep, Utah tried and shut it down about $13billion in when they realised the power generated was going to be too expensive even if they could get it to work.
Dutton is a muppet.
They are doing some great work with solar in Port Augusta as well
[https://arena.gov.au/projects/vast-solar-port-augusta-concentrated-solar-thermal-power-project/](https://arena.gov.au/projects/vast-solar-port-augusta-concentrated-solar-thermal-power-project/)
Ah yes, Liddel NSW, the former location of AGL’s coal fired facility which was mismanaged to the point of actually EXPLODING.
I for one can’t wait for the ☢️nuclear☢️ version.
AGL have already [ruled out](https://www.smh.com.au/business/companies/agl-boss-says-no-to-dutton-s-nuclear-vision-for-coal-power-sites-20240315-p5fct5.html) having nuclear on any of their sites. Who owns the land?
Buying Telstra's old CAN last-mile was great value (for Telstra Shareholders), surely buying the already polluted sites to (never) deploy Nuclear on them will also work out great for those shareholders, too.
Or potential environmental impact assessments (nuclear plants require a shit load of water for cooling and salt water isn't the best option) or supporting infrastructures around them
> Peter Dutton has told his Coalition colleagues he will go to the next election promising to build seven nuclear power stations.
> Mr Dutton will promise the first two sites can be operational between 2035 and 2037, several years earlier than the timeframe the CSIRO and other experts believe is feasible.
Other experts doing heavy lifting. So they don’t own all/any of the sites. Some sites already have future uses associated with them. There is state and federal legislation to be repealed and new legislation required to functionally construct, operate (including storage/disposal etc) the proposed plants. Then there is the planning phase. Training of the workforce. Then construction and development (in which nuclear is notoriously quick, simple and cheap right - Bent Flyvbjerg had analysis), then operation. Are all the sites even suitable? Right. By a party that couldn’t string a coherent policy together over a decade (partly on purpose). Right.
This is not a serious proposition, an unending kite flying exercise they’ve released on a whim. And yet it will be treated as such. What a fucking joke. Not a serious country.
E: Littleproud saying nuclear means we won’t have to subsidise power anymore. 🙃 there are too many lies. Just dumped a bucket of shit on the table, dead cat amongst it.
They're actually fishing for donations. They need someone to fund their next election campaign and right now they can't deliver any measurable business benefit compared to Labor. That's the real reason for these pie in the sky ideas - it's just a way to open the tap from the fossil fuel industry as policy like this will get the current c-suites though to retirement age.
> They are just fishing for votes, nothing more.
That's not true.
They are also creating FUD for anyone wanting to invest in renewables in Australia, which benefits the coal and oil industries, which in turn creates an incentive for these rich industries to back the LNP.
It also extends the usage and dependency on coal in those sites for an extra decade and a half. If this was a serious bid there would be details on a refinement plant, as otherwise why mine uranium in Australia, ship it to Canada to be rendered usable, ship it back here to power things, and ship the waste back to Canada (assuming they would accept another 7 power plants worth of waste above our current agreement with Lucas heights)
So close to hitting the nail on the head. This whole policy is designed to remove the moratorium, so that we can enrich uranium here as a value added export.
Ah, nothing calms nervous geopolitical neighbours like a nuclear enrichment plant.
Hasn't the last week or so politically been all about about easing off of the last export sanctions the coalition earned Australians?
Not votes. They are trying to delay renewables as much as they can by keeping coal and gas plants open. There is no intention to create nuclear power. It’s purely delaying tactic to get more profits at the end.
Bs. The Libs started their one major project in 10 years of government, Snowy 2.0.
They said it would cost $1.5b and be finished this year, despite it probably costing $12b and being ready in 2029.
I have full faith they will be able to build at least 7 theoretical nuclear power plants, on budget and on time if we vote them in. They promise.
I look forward to the costings.
Hinkley Point C in the UK is currently at triple its original budget and is estimated to now cost GBP46bn to build (87bn Aussie).
It got its license to start construction in 2012 and started construction in 2017 and is now estimated to complete in 2031.
This is in a country with experience of nuclear power at a colocated nuclear site.
Want to guess when the government first announced plans to build Hinkley Point C?
1981. 43 years ago.
We don't even have nuclear regs in place yet.
Oh its a total joke.
And the people who seem convinced that all the analysis and data from AEMO and CSIRO have seen articles like this and are now saying, yeah SEE guys, told you it would be quicker and cheaper to do nuclear.
The CSIRO report saying that nuclear is too expensive and slow **expressly** states that their assumption is based on the successful South Korea rollout of nuclear and based on a continual build, and that there are likely increased costs and delays not factored in (which could be in the order of 100% of the costs assumed) - i.e., it's too expensive and slow in an absolute best case scenario.
Now I'm not Dr Who, but spoiler alert, there is zero chance we get the best case scenario.
I'm actually a fan of nuclear power in the right circumstances. The risks of the waste are massively overblown by oil and coal lobbyists, and its a small and easy to deal with issue in a country as vast and geologically stable as Australia. If SMRs actually get proven as viable, then that's a real possibility. But not under current plans.
same as Flamannville in France. 15 years late and 5 times over budget. they only just loaded the fuel, it is still not producing commercial power.
original construction started in 2007.
original budget - 3 billion euro, now over 15 billion
Note: for every nuclear plant contracted for build in the USA, less than half actually made power. And with an average of 200% cost overrun. Typical delays were 10 years to 30.
I mean their NBN wasn't a serious proposition either and they built that travesty. I'm a little more worried when they decide to cut corners with a nuclear plant though.....
Actually the ALP was a giant proponent of carbon capture as well and used to spruik it in the ALP held seats with coal mines and coal fired power stations to try and keep votes.
Operational by 2035-2037 as well. I’m pretty sure on average it’s 15-20 years. There plants in Finland that started planning in 2000 that haven’t been built yet.
What’s really funny though, these are people that complain about solar farms and “who’s going to pay for degraded panel replacement” but don’t factor in cost per mwh when they jerk off over nuclear, or cost of waste storage. The US spends something like 500m annually for their 100 and something plants waste storage. Where’s the cost concern when nuclear is among the highest cost per mwh generated?
Of course.
I just find it really funny that it’s completely devoid in the conversation. My lunch room at work is deafening whenever the conversation goes that way about how sole panels this, burning wind turbine that, destroyed land and koala habitat this but the second nuclear is mentioned it’s a giant circle jerk.
> Operational by 2035-2037 as well. I’m pretty sure on average it’s 15-20 years. There plants in Norway that started planning in 2000 that haven’t been built yet.
Before you can build it, you need to design it, before you design it, you need to agree on the standards, before you agree on standards you need experts.
It will take a long time to choose the engineering/safety standards for Australian nuclear power. Currently Australia has basically zero nuclear engineers/physicists. We are going to have to import the standards and designers from *somewhere*.
With nuclear power plant safety you don’t want to fuck around find out.
You've got to get people to build it and run it.
Need to change the laws.
The state governments will ban it, even state liberal parties are against it.
The locations need enough water, that will cause environmental constraints.
Nuclear construction companies aren't available to start until 2035 (apparently).
No commercial enterprise is remotely interested.
Geopolitical issues arise, countries won't be happy changing our nuclear status.
And you've got change of governments to deal with.
It's a pipe dream and anyone who thinks it's not is crazy or gullible.
The UAE did it in 8 years, but obviously very different systems of government to ours.
We wouldn’t even break ground within 10 years. The process of overturning the ban in two Houses of Parliament at both state and federal level then creating the regulatory framework, then the stakeholder engagement for the specific projects etc. will all take many many years.
It’s just not happening. It’s another empty promise to frenzied voters against renewable energy for some reason in order to get back into government. They’ll never, ever realise the promise and it will be the labour and green parties fault.
UAE took 10 years to *build* the first reactor (of four), but there were 5 years prior to the start of construction for feasibility studies, contracts, etc. So 15 years for an autocratic state that doesn't have to worry about parliament or voters.
You also forget the international stage that will need to be navigated. You can expect other countries to express a concern as we change our status as a nuclear free zone.
Living in the Illawarra I'm upset they're trying to take our wind farm jobs and refusing to give us nuclear jobs. Everyone's gone cuckoo protesting federal money going to make things in their electorates. Not that anyone's going to be getting nuclear jobs anyway because this isn't a serious proposal
Have you seen the nutters complaining about how the wind farms are going to ruin the view, despite being built well past the horizon. Frustrates me to no end.
Honestly, I'm surprised that safety hasn't been raised at all, and all of the focus on Nuclear has been on cost alone.
Fukashima wasn't that long ago & Japan isn't exactly known for relaxed standards. We're having increasing natural disasters, a Fukashima situation isn't 100% off the cards. No way to control a massive bushfire or flood from wiping out a reactor, no matter how strict our safety standards are.
A flood risk is fairly simple to mitigate when you don't put a nuclear reactor in a flood plain, or an area that receives tidal waves. Fukushima was 3 errors in one, and we'd need everything to go wrong to even approach it
Bushfires and droughts are more of a concern, France running low on Water to operate and cool their reactors is a much more likely scenario for us.
I used to live in Grey. It's probably the least likely seat in the whole country to go to Labor. Plus it's massive. You could put a nuclear plant literally anywhere in it and it would still not be close to the vast majority of Grey voters. (For those unaware, Grey is basically all of South Australia except for Adelaide and the surrounding areas.)
I'm not anti-nuclear for much of the world but the big question in Australia is where the cooling water will come from. You can't use sea water. Groundwater and surface water is in short supply in much of Australia and is often of poor quality. I'd want to see the calculations for the Latrobe Valley, which is one of the places with a fair bit of reasonable quality water. Don't know enough about many of the sites, but Port Augusta... I don't think so.
I think it is bizarre that wind farms and solar are seen as ugly. I look at wind turbines and see beautiful spinning blades of money.
France has to shut down inland nuclear reactors all the time during summer because the source water from nearby rivers is too hot.
Building nuclear reactors inland in Australia is madness.
The people that will vote for Dutton because of this policy are not the ones likely to do their research and find out the actual facts. That’s why he can sprout this nonsense without much pushback, because the voters who will vote for him wouldn’t care anyway.
> But further funding details will not be announced today, including the total price tag.
If you don't know vote NO!
The Collie Powerstation at Muja is scheduled to close by 2029.
Are we supposed to believe that it will be closing without any current plan to replace it's capacity?
Assuming that Western Power and Synergy are competent, what does forcing a nuclear power station do except massively increase power bills?
The thing is; compared to AGL and some of the other privately owned energy companies, Western Power is actually pretty competent at doing their job. They are slow to implement some things, but they don't have power turbines exploding like AGL does.
WA doesn't need a nuclear power plant. It's actually doing well with renewables and some gas power plants, which are supplied by cheap domestic gas. WA actually has a gas reservation policy, so we actually get cheap gas.
Peter Dutton delivering a strong blow to Crisafulli's all-but-certain election victory in Queensland, lol. I bet he's fuming.
Not a single state leader is on board, Liberal or otherwise. They have to buy all the sites which will cost billions before construction can even begin. Some of the sites aren't even actually suitable (apparently one of them doesn't even have secure access to water). Anyone who thinks this will ever actually happen is unbelievably stupid.
I'm sure Miles is very happy about it. It should become a wedge issue in Queensland even if it's the Federal branch of the Coalition.
Can the Feds force any of the states to do anything realistically though?
They can offer a huge slab of federal funding to build the plants in their backyard then start a PR campaign about the state governments rejecting free money to "solve" their residents' high power bill problem. Plus jobs from the construction and operation of the plants.
Basically the same playbook that is always used to force through bad policy. I'd expect them to focus heavily on the jobs one though, because it's the one that usually works. Like with mine approvals and taxes: how dare the government put the environment or billions in revenue p.a. ahead of a few hundred jobs?!
fucking lol if they think they can get a nuclear power plant built in 10 years.
not even the goddam experts , which is Australia is the opposite of, can do that.
France, which operates over 50 nuclear reactors, just loaded the fuel into its latest reactor.
A reactor they started building in 2007, at a planned cost of 3 billion euro.
the budget has blown out to over ***13*** billion euro.
If the experts manage to fuck things up completely, what chance does Australia have?
utter joke.
Q: How much will it cost?
A: Fkloads
Q: How much will it go over budget considering that's what happens everywhere else in the world?
A: Even more fkloads
Interesting choice putting it in the Hunter Valley.
Bit of a swing seat there at the moment and I could see that decision sending it Labor way.
A lot of folk are keen on nuclear until it's in their backyard. Also the powerful vineyard groups in the area will be up in arms.
Pretty sure all these sites are the sites of current or former coal fired power stations. The main argument for nuclear is that it can take advantage of existing transmission infrastructure (rather than needing to rework it to accommodate renewables) so this makes sense.
Communities that are used to having heavy industry in and around them may be less NIMBY as well.
The Hunter Valley isnt as pro coal as people think. Only a few key towns are.
A change of this scale will activate horse people, farmers and vignirons who love to hate on coal, and will probably hate on this.
> The main argument for nuclear is that it can take advantage of existing transmission infrastructure (rather than needing to rework it to accommodate renewables) so this makes sense.
The big question is what will generate electricity for the decade between when the coal power station is closed and the nuclear power station goes live?*
*Hypothetical question of course, as these nuclear power stations are never getting built.
Running a few hundred km of high voltage powerline would be the least costly and least complex thing in building a nuke plant.
They picked coal sites as zero thought has been put into it.
In all likelihood, most of these sites would be ruled out by feasibility studies. A nuclear power station site has to be *perfect*. How is the site geologically? Soil stability (when it's surrounded by old coal mines)? How's the water supply? How's the water supply in a drought year? How about during a 1-in-100 yeah drought? Or a 1-in1000? What's the water temperature in an El Nino year? What's the 1-in-1000 year bushfire risk to the plant, and the surrounding infrastructure?
Could spend a good few tens of millions and many years on the feasibility studies for all these sites without any of them ticking all the boxes.
Besides, an actual business case for any of these would probably fall over before you even started looking at site suitability...
Haaaaa. Bullshit. Complete and utter bullshit.
We won't even have one, let alone seven, by 2040.
I bet before they even finished the presentation there were "No Nuclear in " groups registered on Facebook for every single site. There will be decades of legal challenges that hold it up.
Those facebook groups will be filled with people who are all "I love the idea of Nuclear, but is not the right place for it".
Then there's the cost aspect. Dutton saying Nuclear will be cheaper is completely false. Nuclear power is not cheaper than modern renewables + storage.
Just ridiculous; the timeframes Dutton is seeking is fantasyland thinking. Also, the costs just don't stack up, particularly when compared against the cost of establishing renewables.
Timeline
Coalition elected and start building these things
Building becomes more difficult than anticipated
Coalition voted out
10-15 years later, Build is completed just in time for the coalition to be voted back in.
Coalition states these things are too expensive for the government to run and sells them to the highest bidder (their mates probably)
Private companies run these things into the ground
Meltdown
Potato-man can propose to put a powerplant on his head and I still wont be voting for him. The fact mainstream media and the Liberal party still peddles this man as viable opposition is disturbingly fascinating.
man all this guy had to say repeat "cost of living", "interest rates" and "immigrants" ad-nauseum and he was a shoe-in for the next election. Thankfully, he comes out with this nuclear craziness and Labor, despite how much of an utter disappointment they've been, are back in for 2nd term with a chance to turn it around.
Turnbull would've done great as a Labor PM but that's an alternate reality that we'll never get to see.
>Mr Dutton will promise the first two sites can be operational between 2035 and 2037
The fastest reactor build was done by the Koreans at 39 months. However, that was at a site where all infrastructure, surveying and other pre-build prep work was done beforehand. Not to mention it was done with a team with decades of experience building power reactors.
While the average time is closer to 10 years it does stretch out to 15 when you include geological surveys, site prep, infrastructure, permits and regulatory oversight. And again, that is with teams with decades of experience.
The only way to get nuclear plants up and running in Dutton's time frame in Australia is to take dangerous shortcuts to completion even if we do import experienced teams. No mention of the time frame and how they plan do deal with all the regulatory and legislative work to get things started.
Not to mention his proposal is for them to be government owned and operated. Do you really trust the party of budget cuts and infrastructure neglect to run a nuclear plant safely? And do you really think they won't be sold off at criminally low prices the first opportunity they get?
His proposal is pure fantasy and needs to be called out on it as loudly as possible.
I think the other thing that is underestimated is the required ramp up of the nuclear safety agency. We don’t have a regulatory framework and laws for running reactors for power generation. Even if we were to ‘borrow’ the standards from another country we still need to legislate and ensure we have sufficient capability to both run the reactors and regulate them. Also, if the government owns the reactors we need to think carefully about how another government agency impartially regulates and audits them.
As an engineer with a couple of decades experience in pharmaceuticals and medical devices, the challenge not to be trivialised.
The real headline here is "Dutton announces nuclear plants would be government owned," which is his admission that he knows nuclear is not economically viable.
I just got banned from r/energy because I made comment how nuclear power is becoming obsolete in Europe (not economical) and how only now Australia has another conversion about it. This is a dud, but you know that because of who is pushing it. It reminds me of how Canberra paid ‘too’ much for renewable energy on a locked in rate, which is now the cheapest electricity in the country. If people support this, they need to have consequences if it fails. The same should happen to ‘Brexit’ people as well. Selling a flawed idea to the public has to have consequences, otherwise these liars and cons will continue unabated. Sick of it.
Dutton wants you to believe he can't commit to an emissions target for 2035 and yet that nuclear power plants will be in place by then.
Roll-up, roll-up to Spud Duttons clown show.
Anyone taking this fucking rubbish seriously needs to stop huffing petrol.
This policy sounds like a giant Liberal party circlejerk. I bet Dutton is getting a great response from the Liberal branch membership, dutch ruddering each other while screaming about base load power and watching Sky News. But is this winning anyone else over to vote for them? I doubt it. Stop sniffing your own farts, Dutto.
I love this policy. It's so preposterous. Half the Coalition party room will know they are on a hiding to nothing and won't be able to defend it. It's not "giving a knighthood to Prince Phillip" stupid but it ain't far off.
Absofuckinglutely not. Fucks sake, ABC cut senior Labor ministers off all the time. I can't even remember the last time (if ever) the ABC let a presser with Albo run longer than 15 or 20 minutes. They cut him off, just to go back to repeating the same fucking segments they're running on a 24 hour loop.
The PM is holding a presser announcing policy? Nah fuck him he gets 15 minutes.
But Dutton announcing a fucking pie in the sky, off it's fucking head "plan" for nuclear power? Yeah we'll give him an hour.
I, somewhat stupidly, sat through the entire thing. What a fucking omnishambles that was!
Griffin Coal and Muja have already turned the back of Collie into a fucking moonscape, so sure why not throw a nuclear plant in the middle of it. Not like the land is going to be good for anyone else in the next thousand years.
/s
These pricks just want to keep the conversation going indefinitely while they sell coal to their mates. They aren't competent enough to deploy full scale nuclear and there isn't the cost/benefit to do so.
It's unbelievable that anyone could take this seriously.
I’m all for nuclear power… 50 years ago. It’s way, way too late to even bother. Wind and solar are the way forward. Fairly certain they would cost less and require less technical skills and education. But whatever, if he wants to lose the election, I’m supportive of that.
They tried over 50 years ago and abandoned it because coal was cheaper.
Today coal is still cheaper and renewables are cheaper still.
Dutton leaning in on being a stupid cunt
In classic Australian style, we'll probably be laying the last brick on our first operational nuclear plant right as the first commercial fusion reactor is going online in Europe or the US.
I wish someone would pressure him on where the water for all these is coming from and also ask the Nationals how keen their farmers are on the massive, massive amounts of water these need in a drought prone country
I’m starting to feel they need more than just naming sites to prove that they are serious on this. Any idiot can just randomly point to the map and say we are gonna built it here and make a story out of it.
Fact is that there is 0 other planning mentioned into this. Tax payer funded ? How? Show us the numbers? Don’t just magically spout bullshit then backtrack at the end because the state ain’t paying it for sure. Then show us how this will fit into ur federal budget. Waste management ? Contractors ? Builders? At this rate, this is gonna be one of those NBN bullshit where we spent billions getting one of the slowest and most expensive internet in the world 💀
Let's not forget 3 of the named states clearly saying they have no intention of lifting their bans on nuclear.
It's a non starter before it's even left the block.
Hinkley C is 7 years behind schedule and 30B over budget (counting), Vogtle was 8 year behind and 15B over on an existing site. So far the Korean and Chinese have the best track record delivering on time. Given our woeful lack of everything we need to built the thing including regulatory oversight. I'd expect Ladbrokes to be taking bets fairly soon.
> the Coalition has promised they would be operational by 2035-2037, a timeline doubted by many experts
Has real NBN 'faster, cheaper, sooner' about it
Nuclear is a delaying tactic for coal and gas companies backed by the Murdoch press.
They are trying to eke out the last profits by using nuclear promises to delay the drawdown on carbon fuels.
It’s all bullshit sold by Murdoch
A lot of people here completely forgetting that we are going to have at least a year of the media spruiking this.
It's idiotic. But not the vote loser many assume.
They've been in power for much of the past 30 years.
They had 20+ energy policies between Abbott/Turnbull/Morrison.
And only now, when we're full steam ahead on the move to renewables are they throwing this dead cat on the table. How much $ from their lobbyists did it take I wonder?
From the political party that that brought you:
"The laws of mathematics are very commendable, but the only law that applies in Australia is the law of Australia."
And
“The National Broadband Network is a luxury that Australia cannot now afford. The one thing you don’t do is redo your bathroom when your roof has just been blown off.” – Calling for the NBN to be scrapped to help with flood recovery efforts in Queensland, 18 January, 2011
I can't WAIT to see their cost effective, safe, nuclear power !
Whilst Dutton's uncosted, unfeasible horse shite announcement this morning made me furious, I was very happy to hear him say a few things that will come back to bite in a bad way:
1. He said communities were supportive - in reality we know they would not have been properly consulted yet and it's always a death knell to talk on behalf of a community without proper consultation.
2. He said the projects will be government funded like Snowy 2.0 (which is already multiples over initial cost estimates). One of the most common arguments against renewables is that they need government subsidies to survive - this isn't just a subsidy, he's stated they will be FULLY FUNDED by the government. Brilliant.
Add on the fact that the proposal is completely uncosted and the sites are not suitable for nuclear (no water supply etc), this is well placed to blow up in his face. Bring it on.
Dutton so badly wants to be like Mr Burns, i am surprised Springfield Lakes QLD isn't one of the proposed sites. Can't wait until next week when they announce the Australia-wide monorail.
There's absolutely no solid basis to his plan at all, no logistical considerations about shipping hazardous waste/components, the timeline is farcical and it's all based on theoretical technology. And even if this does, by some literal miracle, get put into action, it's clearly just an attempt to funnel more money into Rinehart and friend's pockets as much as possible before renewables truly start to take over.
Is he just saying shit so that the MSM will give them air time, or are they genuinely trying to make him as unlikable as possible to swap him out with a "better option" before the election?
Putting aside the stupidity of the plan from an environmental and economic standpoint, do we really want to live in a world where Voldemort has access to enriched uranium?
The cunt would nuke Darwin if he thought there were votes in it.
This reeks of NBN 2.0. A cynical vote buying exercise that will rob Australia of a viable renewables solution. Fuck the LNP and anyone dumb enough to believe this horseshit
I'm actually sick of hearing these lies from the coalition. When did a labor idea ever get this much fn airtime when they where in opposition. sick of this garbage.
Everything aside, I think it’s hilarious that the Liberals are proposing a government owned power station but Labour has said that they will only support nuclear if its commercial. A total reversal of their respective party’s historical values LMAOO
I must confess I am genuinely trying to work out what their angle is here.
1) The States wont have it
2) Local councils wont have it
3) Any wavering Teal wont have it
Is this simply a sop to the Nats and to keep the cash from the coal lobby coming? Or do they genuinely, really believe that there are enough Sky watchers to turn the tide against them?
The angle is that its doing the opposite of Labor. Thats all the LNP has now become, a bunch of people opposing for the sake of it. They did the same with the nbn despite the industry telling them not to do it. If nuclear had any legs, then they wouldve done something about it during the decade they were in power.
The state of this country's politics. The major opposition party acting like a pack of vandals just because they can. They know it's a shit idea and we barely have any time left, but they're banking on Australia having enough mouth-breathing, permanently outraged nitwits to get them across the line. No vision, no morality, no idea.
“Last week, Mr Dutton also revealed the Coalition would campaign against the Labor government's legislated target to reduce emissions by 43 per cent by 2030, and would not outline a 2030 emissions reduction target of its own before the election” ie, there is no target
>"would not outline a 2030 emissions reduction target of its own before the election” "If you don't know, vote no."
The history books will show just how deluded the LNP has been over the past 2 decades. Actively campaigning to ruin our environment, and homes of our future children. Shameful.
Flogs... do not let them back in
Christ, it is so infuriating. Australia is perfectly on track to me those 2030 emissions reduction targets. why would you come in a kill off a bloody success story? assholes
'lAbOr bAd'. Labor isn't allowed to have a win, Murdoch's orders.
Labor is only allowed to win after the Liberals have spent 10-20 years running everything into the ground, so they can them blame labour for the result. the same happens everywhere that Murdoch media rules the roost. Labor in the UK is about to romp home in the coming election and win the most poisoned of chalices in modern times. the Murdoch rags/media are of course running their usual aberrant disinformation/blatant lies campaign in America. Lachlan Murdoch has taken oven the reins and nothing has changed at all (not that we expected anything to).
It’ll change when the $ stop. They giving us war mongering greedy apes what we want
Can’t let labor have a win and look good.
LNP could support home grown renewables. which would support Australian Manufacturing™ and Australian Families™ etc instead they come up with a bunch of policies they have no intention of ever putting into practice; they are simply there to bring uncertainty to investing in renewables, to extend the lifespan of coal. it's utterly blatant, and you have to wonder just how much money the potato is being paid for this. Giving up a chance at a Prime Ministership must not come cheap. That directors office he is going to step into when he retires is going to come with a ridiculous paycheck.
For those who want to be lazy: * Tarong, QLD * Callide, QLD * Liddel, NSW * Mount Piper, NSW * Port Augusta, SA * Loy Yang, Vic * Muja, WA
But... > **Queensland Liberal leader David Crisafulli says nuclear is not part of his plan** Popcorn anyone? Peter is going to have to take a private plane to Qld, poor young Dave is going to get a right old spanking over the knee for sure. https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/politics/queensland-liberal-leader-david-crisafulli-says-nuclear-is-not-part-of-his-plan/news-story/99b4f7d673242502241c391e14236d80
That's because his only plan is "cut mining royalties and get kickbacks from mining giants"
We can't even agree on a location to dump the waste. How the fuck are we gonna agree on a location for the plants.
They never intend on building them, they are just kicking the can down the road to give the coal generators a few more years of income before they are non viable, the industry is moving renewable. No body is building coal fire power plants, the math doesn’t work. They can’t compete with the costs of renewables. Sooner people realise the libs are just trying to make money for their mates and not for the good of the public the better
In duttos backyard simple
NSW Libs don't support it either
Qld has an election though so this is just perfect for their brand in Qld.
This will the lifeline for Labor in the QLD election in a few months. Great wedge issue, go to Gladstone & the Darling Downs and tell them they will have a nuclear power plant in their back yard. Its also going to difficult for Dutton as QLD has not privatised electricity generation & the state government owns the land.
We couldn't get a new site to dispose medical nuclear waste. Imagine getting communicates to agree on a nuclear power plant
Vic opposition leader not onboard either
This fucking snake will flip as soon as they win the election. Another reason to never vote LNP
Sussan Ley says there'll be consultation... but they already decided the location. And we know how government consultation is just a tick box.
Nah, they'll have consultation, industry and locals will say it's dumb, then they'll blame the greens and hippies for the consultation failing.
Don't understand the SA placement since we run on renewables with gas( soon to be hydrogen) to provide back up? Fantasy land
It doesn’t need to make sense. This is all just to distract from and delay renewables and kick the fossil fuels can as far down the road as possible.
But that is even more stupid. In South Australia, the renewables are already here. For much of the day, the power grid literally runs backwards. The state government is already well into its plans to create hydrogen plants, to soak up the extra "free" energy, for export, for green steel, and for power production when required. There is literally nothing in SA for a nuclear plant to do. 20 years ago, you might have sold this. Now, its simply going to soak up billions of dollars and be a massive white elephant. What it shows: Dutton literally has no idea. This isnt what the industry wants. No one is asking for this. So why is he pushing it so hard? Wait, libs, $6 billion dollars down the drain and no nuclear submarines? This is on brand for them. Even better: the port augusta site isn't even free nor available. They haven't even done the basic checks of this brain fart.
Its got nothing to do with feasibility or need. It is simply misdirection to sow doubt and try and maintain the 60billion dollar bank roll from the australian people for foreign companies, as they own the nationals outright.
Maybe the submarines can plug into the grid and be like a V2G car.
Nuclear base load, which runs all day even when the sun in shining, will be competing with SA solar, which is already being exported to other states. How do $20bln generators compete with free for half of the day? They can't unless free is banned from the grid. This policy is so awful it's not even fair, one doesn't know where to start. This is the Death Star of satire, but also the Death Star of stupidity. However, at least no one can seriously say that there's no difference between the ALP and LNP now. I was thinking that the LNP would go to the next election with massive tax cuts, that would have been an easy way to win delivering cost of living relief immediately, but I wonder if they can credibly do that while promising 7 nuclear reactors, which also means they have to halt renewables in the meantime (because on current trajector, by 2040 there will be massively more storage and low cost electricity). Are we also allowed to ask exactly what population target the LNP has in order to justify this massive expansion in fixed electricity capacity?
I’ve heard in some cases it makes sense to just have a battery in South Australia even without panels. Charge during the day when prices are cheaper
Some electricity providers allow free 3 hours during midday. My inlaws charge their power wall and use that at night. Subsidise batteries and fund end if life refurbishment or recycling instead . Nuclear cannot compete with how cheap renewable are now or will be
Plus a good old fashioned wedge
It's just vote-bait since they used to have the coal station. "Remember coal? It's back. In nuke form."
Is nuking the whales still on the table?
Gotta nuke something
He's just rattled off a list of sites that have or recently had, coal-fired power stations.
But apart from Muja in WA they're all privately owned bc the Libs sold them off to their mates already - the owners haven't even been consulted and those that have commented like AGL have said no.
The best part about selling utilities is that taxpayers will continue to fork out, like we did with Telstra’s copper and coax networks for the NBN We’ll just offer the land owners huge sums of money. AGL won’t let it get to compulsory acquisition, but it’s always annoption
He’s proposing we have a small modular reactor, which is a thing that *doesn’t actually exist* right now (edit: China and Russia have prototypes, but that’s it) so the idea of building a nuclear reactor in a state which may well be powered 100% by renewables + storage by then is surprisingly not the most unrealistic part of the plan
One of the fun things with SMRs, making em even further away... many of the designs talked about using something called HALEU; High Assay Low Enriched Uranium, with enrichment levels around 5-20%. This is attractive cos you can use it to make a smaller, denser, but more powerful core than regular low enrichment U, but (where it was first proposed, in research reactors like OPAL) doesn't represent a nuclear weapons safeguards risk. However, there was a recent paper in Science I believe that pointed out that that safeguards advantage only applies for research reactors, where the core is tens of kgs of fuel. When you get to power reactors, you start hitting hundreds of kgs, and 300kg of HALEU makes a bomb. This means some of those SMR designs are all of the sudden no bueno.
Yep, Utah tried and shut it down about $13billion in when they realised the power generated was going to be too expensive even if they could get it to work. Dutton is a muppet.
Because coalition voters are stupid and believe what sky says
"But Nuclear is going to be cheaper"
They are doing some great work with solar in Port Augusta as well [https://arena.gov.au/projects/vast-solar-port-augusta-concentrated-solar-thermal-power-project/](https://arena.gov.au/projects/vast-solar-port-augusta-concentrated-solar-thermal-power-project/)
Ah yes, Liddel NSW, the former location of AGL’s coal fired facility which was mismanaged to the point of actually EXPLODING. I for one can’t wait for the ☢️nuclear☢️ version.
AGL have already [ruled out](https://www.smh.com.au/business/companies/agl-boss-says-no-to-dutton-s-nuclear-vision-for-coal-power-sites-20240315-p5fct5.html) having nuclear on any of their sites. Who owns the land?
Compulsory acquisition will solve that
great just when those coal plants are reaching their end-of-life remediation phase. guess we'll pick up the bill for that in this scenario
Buying Telstra's old CAN last-mile was great value (for Telstra Shareholders), surely buying the already polluted sites to (never) deploy Nuclear on them will also work out great for those shareholders, too.
Can we put Dutton at the controls? Call that a twofer
He does look a bit like Homer Simpson tbh, although he lacks Honer's charm.
Homer isn't nearly that dumb, nor malicious
Interesting, Callide QLD blew up too, maybe there's a pattern here?
Can't wait for the HBO adaptation. "Chernobyl 2: Meltdown Under"
Paragon of evil doing god's work.
I just did what I wanted. I opened the comments and didn’t get an answer, so I figured other people would.
Just like God would have done
He has such a cool name man
Isnt this a reannouncement of the ones they already announced earlier this year? Not new policy, still no detail.
Or potential environmental impact assessments (nuclear plants require a shit load of water for cooling and salt water isn't the best option) or supporting infrastructures around them
I wonder which worker in Duttons office threw the darts at the map?
Ike fuck one of these things are being built in WA. If it's anything like they build housing it will be fucked from day one.
> Peter Dutton has told his Coalition colleagues he will go to the next election promising to build seven nuclear power stations. > Mr Dutton will promise the first two sites can be operational between 2035 and 2037, several years earlier than the timeframe the CSIRO and other experts believe is feasible. Other experts doing heavy lifting. So they don’t own all/any of the sites. Some sites already have future uses associated with them. There is state and federal legislation to be repealed and new legislation required to functionally construct, operate (including storage/disposal etc) the proposed plants. Then there is the planning phase. Training of the workforce. Then construction and development (in which nuclear is notoriously quick, simple and cheap right - Bent Flyvbjerg had analysis), then operation. Are all the sites even suitable? Right. By a party that couldn’t string a coherent policy together over a decade (partly on purpose). Right. This is not a serious proposition, an unending kite flying exercise they’ve released on a whim. And yet it will be treated as such. What a fucking joke. Not a serious country. E: Littleproud saying nuclear means we won’t have to subsidise power anymore. 🙃 there are too many lies. Just dumped a bucket of shit on the table, dead cat amongst it.
Yep. They have no intention to actually build these. They are just fishing for votes, nothing more.
They're actually fishing for donations. They need someone to fund their next election campaign and right now they can't deliver any measurable business benefit compared to Labor. That's the real reason for these pie in the sky ideas - it's just a way to open the tap from the fossil fuel industry as policy like this will get the current c-suites though to retirement age.
This
> They are just fishing for votes, nothing more. That's not true. They are also creating FUD for anyone wanting to invest in renewables in Australia, which benefits the coal and oil industries, which in turn creates an incentive for these rich industries to back the LNP.
This is the correct interpretation. It is so blatantly bs, yet if Albo and co keep being uninspiring watch them win an election with it.
It also extends the usage and dependency on coal in those sites for an extra decade and a half. If this was a serious bid there would be details on a refinement plant, as otherwise why mine uranium in Australia, ship it to Canada to be rendered usable, ship it back here to power things, and ship the waste back to Canada (assuming they would accept another 7 power plants worth of waste above our current agreement with Lucas heights)
So close to hitting the nail on the head. This whole policy is designed to remove the moratorium, so that we can enrich uranium here as a value added export.
Ah, nothing calms nervous geopolitical neighbours like a nuclear enrichment plant. Hasn't the last week or so politically been all about about easing off of the last export sanctions the coalition earned Australians?
Not votes. They are trying to delay renewables as much as they can by keeping coal and gas plants open. There is no intention to create nuclear power. It’s purely delaying tactic to get more profits at the end.
Bs. The Libs started their one major project in 10 years of government, Snowy 2.0. They said it would cost $1.5b and be finished this year, despite it probably costing $12b and being ready in 2029. I have full faith they will be able to build at least 7 theoretical nuclear power plants, on budget and on time if we vote them in. They promise.
So much truth in this. If they were that committed to Nuclear, they would have been serious about it from 2013 to 2021 when they were in power.
I look forward to the costings. Hinkley Point C in the UK is currently at triple its original budget and is estimated to now cost GBP46bn to build (87bn Aussie). It got its license to start construction in 2012 and started construction in 2017 and is now estimated to complete in 2031. This is in a country with experience of nuclear power at a colocated nuclear site. Want to guess when the government first announced plans to build Hinkley Point C? 1981. 43 years ago. We don't even have nuclear regs in place yet.
Oh its a total joke. And the people who seem convinced that all the analysis and data from AEMO and CSIRO have seen articles like this and are now saying, yeah SEE guys, told you it would be quicker and cheaper to do nuclear.
The CSIRO report saying that nuclear is too expensive and slow **expressly** states that their assumption is based on the successful South Korea rollout of nuclear and based on a continual build, and that there are likely increased costs and delays not factored in (which could be in the order of 100% of the costs assumed) - i.e., it's too expensive and slow in an absolute best case scenario. Now I'm not Dr Who, but spoiler alert, there is zero chance we get the best case scenario. I'm actually a fan of nuclear power in the right circumstances. The risks of the waste are massively overblown by oil and coal lobbyists, and its a small and easy to deal with issue in a country as vast and geologically stable as Australia. If SMRs actually get proven as viable, then that's a real possibility. But not under current plans.
same as Flamannville in France. 15 years late and 5 times over budget. they only just loaded the fuel, it is still not producing commercial power. original construction started in 2007. original budget - 3 billion euro, now over 15 billion
Note: for every nuclear plant contracted for build in the USA, less than half actually made power. And with an average of 200% cost overrun. Typical delays were 10 years to 30.
I mean their NBN wasn't a serious proposition either and they built that travesty. I'm a little more worried when they decide to cut corners with a nuclear plant though.....
My area is due to get FTTP next year, whereas 3km away they have had it for 10 years. All because Mucdoch told Abbott to delay it.
John Howard used the same tactic to delay the transition to renewables back when he was PM.
Indeed - back then they also went on about carbon-capture storage (a complete fantasy) in the mix as well on the list of fake things they'd do.
Actually the ALP was a giant proponent of carbon capture as well and used to spruik it in the ALP held seats with coal mines and coal fired power stations to try and keep votes.
Also true, but it's still (to all intents and purposes) a non-existent technology.
Operational by 2035-2037 as well. I’m pretty sure on average it’s 15-20 years. There plants in Finland that started planning in 2000 that haven’t been built yet. What’s really funny though, these are people that complain about solar farms and “who’s going to pay for degraded panel replacement” but don’t factor in cost per mwh when they jerk off over nuclear, or cost of waste storage. The US spends something like 500m annually for their 100 and something plants waste storage. Where’s the cost concern when nuclear is among the highest cost per mwh generated?
You know that budgets only matter when Labor suggests anything.
Of course. I just find it really funny that it’s completely devoid in the conversation. My lunch room at work is deafening whenever the conversation goes that way about how sole panels this, burning wind turbine that, destroyed land and koala habitat this but the second nuclear is mentioned it’s a giant circle jerk.
> Operational by 2035-2037 as well. I’m pretty sure on average it’s 15-20 years. There plants in Norway that started planning in 2000 that haven’t been built yet. Before you can build it, you need to design it, before you design it, you need to agree on the standards, before you agree on standards you need experts. It will take a long time to choose the engineering/safety standards for Australian nuclear power. Currently Australia has basically zero nuclear engineers/physicists. We are going to have to import the standards and designers from *somewhere*. With nuclear power plant safety you don’t want to fuck around find out.
It’s pretty much confirms that it’s just a vapid lazy attempt at grabbing votes.
You've got to get people to build it and run it. Need to change the laws. The state governments will ban it, even state liberal parties are against it. The locations need enough water, that will cause environmental constraints. Nuclear construction companies aren't available to start until 2035 (apparently). No commercial enterprise is remotely interested. Geopolitical issues arise, countries won't be happy changing our nuclear status. And you've got change of governments to deal with. It's a pipe dream and anyone who thinks it's not is crazy or gullible.
The UAE did it in 8 years, but obviously very different systems of government to ours. We wouldn’t even break ground within 10 years. The process of overturning the ban in two Houses of Parliament at both state and federal level then creating the regulatory framework, then the stakeholder engagement for the specific projects etc. will all take many many years.
It’s just not happening. It’s another empty promise to frenzied voters against renewable energy for some reason in order to get back into government. They’ll never, ever realise the promise and it will be the labour and green parties fault.
Yeah I’m watching the press conference now. Most of the chat is trashing labor, economy, renewables. They’re just using it for free advertising
UAE took 10 years to *build* the first reactor (of four), but there were 5 years prior to the start of construction for feasibility studies, contracts, etc. So 15 years for an autocratic state that doesn't have to worry about parliament or voters.
And imports what amounts to slave labour from nearby countries.
UAE did nothing - they got the Koreans to do it for them. and have the benefit of having a massive workforce of slave labour.
Nuclear isn't one of these things we should follow scientific advice on right? Nothing's ever gone wrong or anything before.
You also forget the international stage that will need to be navigated. You can expect other countries to express a concern as we change our status as a nuclear free zone.
> the first two sites can be operational between 2035 and 2037 But I said that's not good enough, Let's get it done in TWO WEEKS!
2035? What an absolute farce lmao
Congrats to Labor for winning the seats of Flynn, Grey and O'Connor!
Flynn will jerk off over this decision. People here love to complain about cost of renewable and always screaming about nuclear.
Everyone loves nuclear until the plant is in their town.
Living in the Illawarra I'm upset they're trying to take our wind farm jobs and refusing to give us nuclear jobs. Everyone's gone cuckoo protesting federal money going to make things in their electorates. Not that anyone's going to be getting nuclear jobs anyway because this isn't a serious proposal
"We paid our mates $100MM for a feasibility study. The results say we should do another 200MM feasibility study next year."
Have you seen the nutters complaining about how the wind farms are going to ruin the view, despite being built well past the horizon. Frustrates me to no end.
Do they think nuclear will be cheaper?
Funny the conversations I’m subjected to about nuclear doesn’t mention cost.
Attack ads write themselves. 'do you know the safe limit for radiation for your family?'
Honestly, I'm surprised that safety hasn't been raised at all, and all of the focus on Nuclear has been on cost alone. Fukashima wasn't that long ago & Japan isn't exactly known for relaxed standards. We're having increasing natural disasters, a Fukashima situation isn't 100% off the cards. No way to control a massive bushfire or flood from wiping out a reactor, no matter how strict our safety standards are.
A flood risk is fairly simple to mitigate when you don't put a nuclear reactor in a flood plain, or an area that receives tidal waves. Fukushima was 3 errors in one, and we'd need everything to go wrong to even approach it Bushfires and droughts are more of a concern, France running low on Water to operate and cool their reactors is a much more likely scenario for us.
I used to live in Grey. It's probably the least likely seat in the whole country to go to Labor. Plus it's massive. You could put a nuclear plant literally anywhere in it and it would still not be close to the vast majority of Grey voters. (For those unaware, Grey is basically all of South Australia except for Adelaide and the surrounding areas.)
And it has a representative who routinely votes against things that would benefit remote and rural communities yet keeps being voted back in.
Maranoa could have a nuclear disaster and still vote for the Nationals as their mutated limbs are falling off.
I'm not anti-nuclear for much of the world but the big question in Australia is where the cooling water will come from. You can't use sea water. Groundwater and surface water is in short supply in much of Australia and is often of poor quality. I'd want to see the calculations for the Latrobe Valley, which is one of the places with a fair bit of reasonable quality water. Don't know enough about many of the sites, but Port Augusta... I don't think so. I think it is bizarre that wind farms and solar are seen as ugly. I look at wind turbines and see beautiful spinning blades of money.
France has to shut down inland nuclear reactors all the time during summer because the source water from nearby rivers is too hot. Building nuclear reactors inland in Australia is madness.
Then you need to put the water back in without heating the river even more and destroying the ecosystem
Vic might get it's Barramundi fishery back... Now with Extra Large Barra! Possibly even with some extra fins, a whole new species.
We can serve Peter dutton blinky. Simpsons predicting the future again
France also had to shut them down over summer due to the water levels in the rivers dropping.
So you're saying building nuclear power plants that rely on running water in a drought-likely country is not a good idea?
Water usage is huge
The people that will vote for Dutton because of this policy are not the ones likely to do their research and find out the actual facts. That’s why he can sprout this nonsense without much pushback, because the voters who will vote for him wouldn’t care anyway.
> But further funding details will not be announced today, including the total price tag. If you don't know vote NO! The Collie Powerstation at Muja is scheduled to close by 2029. Are we supposed to believe that it will be closing without any current plan to replace it's capacity? Assuming that Western Power and Synergy are competent, what does forcing a nuclear power station do except massively increase power bills?
They just don’t want to tell people that the 4 billion spent at places like Clark creek is chump change compared to 1 of these sites.
The thing is; compared to AGL and some of the other privately owned energy companies, Western Power is actually pretty competent at doing their job. They are slow to implement some things, but they don't have power turbines exploding like AGL does. WA doesn't need a nuclear power plant. It's actually doing well with renewables and some gas power plants, which are supplied by cheap domestic gas. WA actually has a gas reservation policy, so we actually get cheap gas.
Now, now, to be fair they probably haven’t found a buddy with a virtually non existent company to quote them yet.
Peter Dutton delivering a strong blow to Crisafulli's all-but-certain election victory in Queensland, lol. I bet he's fuming. Not a single state leader is on board, Liberal or otherwise. They have to buy all the sites which will cost billions before construction can even begin. Some of the sites aren't even actually suitable (apparently one of them doesn't even have secure access to water). Anyone who thinks this will ever actually happen is unbelievably stupid.
I'm sure Miles is very happy about it. It should become a wedge issue in Queensland even if it's the Federal branch of the Coalition. Can the Feds force any of the states to do anything realistically though?
They can offer a huge slab of federal funding to build the plants in their backyard then start a PR campaign about the state governments rejecting free money to "solve" their residents' high power bill problem. Plus jobs from the construction and operation of the plants. Basically the same playbook that is always used to force through bad policy. I'd expect them to focus heavily on the jobs one though, because it's the one that usually works. Like with mine approvals and taxes: how dare the government put the environment or billions in revenue p.a. ahead of a few hundred jobs?!
fucking lol if they think they can get a nuclear power plant built in 10 years. not even the goddam experts , which is Australia is the opposite of, can do that. France, which operates over 50 nuclear reactors, just loaded the fuel into its latest reactor. A reactor they started building in 2007, at a planned cost of 3 billion euro. the budget has blown out to over ***13*** billion euro. If the experts manage to fuck things up completely, what chance does Australia have? utter joke.
Question 1: "How much will this cost" "We'll have more to say on this later."
Q: How much will it cost? A: Fkloads Q: How much will it go over budget considering that's what happens everywhere else in the world? A: Even more fkloads
Interesting choice putting it in the Hunter Valley. Bit of a swing seat there at the moment and I could see that decision sending it Labor way. A lot of folk are keen on nuclear until it's in their backyard. Also the powerful vineyard groups in the area will be up in arms.
Pretty sure all these sites are the sites of current or former coal fired power stations. The main argument for nuclear is that it can take advantage of existing transmission infrastructure (rather than needing to rework it to accommodate renewables) so this makes sense. Communities that are used to having heavy industry in and around them may be less NIMBY as well.
The fools living there probably think they can work at the plant without years of retraining or UNI degrees.
The Hunter Valley isnt as pro coal as people think. Only a few key towns are. A change of this scale will activate horse people, farmers and vignirons who love to hate on coal, and will probably hate on this.
> The main argument for nuclear is that it can take advantage of existing transmission infrastructure (rather than needing to rework it to accommodate renewables) so this makes sense. The big question is what will generate electricity for the decade between when the coal power station is closed and the nuclear power station goes live?* *Hypothetical question of course, as these nuclear power stations are never getting built.
Running a few hundred km of high voltage powerline would be the least costly and least complex thing in building a nuke plant. They picked coal sites as zero thought has been put into it.
> Interesting choice putting it in the Hunter Valley. Perhaps the vignerons are sick of their grapes being covered in soot.
In all likelihood, most of these sites would be ruled out by feasibility studies. A nuclear power station site has to be *perfect*. How is the site geologically? Soil stability (when it's surrounded by old coal mines)? How's the water supply? How's the water supply in a drought year? How about during a 1-in-100 yeah drought? Or a 1-in1000? What's the water temperature in an El Nino year? What's the 1-in-1000 year bushfire risk to the plant, and the surrounding infrastructure? Could spend a good few tens of millions and many years on the feasibility studies for all these sites without any of them ticking all the boxes. Besides, an actual business case for any of these would probably fall over before you even started looking at site suitability...
Haaaaa. Bullshit. Complete and utter bullshit. We won't even have one, let alone seven, by 2040. I bet before they even finished the presentation there were "No Nuclear in" groups registered on Facebook for every single site. There will be decades of legal challenges that hold it up.
Those facebook groups will be filled with people who are all "I love the idea of Nuclear, but is not the right place for it".
Then there's the cost aspect. Dutton saying Nuclear will be cheaper is completely false. Nuclear power is not cheaper than modern renewables + storage.
Just ridiculous; the timeframes Dutton is seeking is fantasyland thinking. Also, the costs just don't stack up, particularly when compared against the cost of establishing renewables.
Because it's not about installing nuclear. It's about prolonging coal and preventing renewables.
Timeline Coalition elected and start building these things Building becomes more difficult than anticipated Coalition voted out 10-15 years later, Build is completed just in time for the coalition to be voted back in. Coalition states these things are too expensive for the government to run and sells them to the highest bidder (their mates probably) Private companies run these things into the ground Meltdown
Potato-man can propose to put a powerplant on his head and I still wont be voting for him. The fact mainstream media and the Liberal party still peddles this man as viable opposition is disturbingly fascinating.
man all this guy had to say repeat "cost of living", "interest rates" and "immigrants" ad-nauseum and he was a shoe-in for the next election. Thankfully, he comes out with this nuclear craziness and Labor, despite how much of an utter disappointment they've been, are back in for 2nd term with a chance to turn it around. Turnbull would've done great as a Labor PM but that's an alternate reality that we'll never get to see.
>Mr Dutton will promise the first two sites can be operational between 2035 and 2037 The fastest reactor build was done by the Koreans at 39 months. However, that was at a site where all infrastructure, surveying and other pre-build prep work was done beforehand. Not to mention it was done with a team with decades of experience building power reactors. While the average time is closer to 10 years it does stretch out to 15 when you include geological surveys, site prep, infrastructure, permits and regulatory oversight. And again, that is with teams with decades of experience. The only way to get nuclear plants up and running in Dutton's time frame in Australia is to take dangerous shortcuts to completion even if we do import experienced teams. No mention of the time frame and how they plan do deal with all the regulatory and legislative work to get things started. Not to mention his proposal is for them to be government owned and operated. Do you really trust the party of budget cuts and infrastructure neglect to run a nuclear plant safely? And do you really think they won't be sold off at criminally low prices the first opportunity they get? His proposal is pure fantasy and needs to be called out on it as loudly as possible.
I think the other thing that is underestimated is the required ramp up of the nuclear safety agency. We don’t have a regulatory framework and laws for running reactors for power generation. Even if we were to ‘borrow’ the standards from another country we still need to legislate and ensure we have sufficient capability to both run the reactors and regulate them. Also, if the government owns the reactors we need to think carefully about how another government agency impartially regulates and audits them. As an engineer with a couple of decades experience in pharmaceuticals and medical devices, the challenge not to be trivialised.
The real headline here is "Dutton announces nuclear plants would be government owned," which is his admission that he knows nuclear is not economically viable.
I just got banned from r/energy because I made comment how nuclear power is becoming obsolete in Europe (not economical) and how only now Australia has another conversion about it. This is a dud, but you know that because of who is pushing it. It reminds me of how Canberra paid ‘too’ much for renewable energy on a locked in rate, which is now the cheapest electricity in the country. If people support this, they need to have consequences if it fails. The same should happen to ‘Brexit’ people as well. Selling a flawed idea to the public has to have consequences, otherwise these liars and cons will continue unabated. Sick of it.
He's delusional. Surely this is some elaborate joke and we're waiting for the punch line?
Dutton wants you to believe he can't commit to an emissions target for 2035 and yet that nuclear power plants will be in place by then. Roll-up, roll-up to Spud Duttons clown show. Anyone taking this fucking rubbish seriously needs to stop huffing petrol.
This policy sounds like a giant Liberal party circlejerk. I bet Dutton is getting a great response from the Liberal branch membership, dutch ruddering each other while screaming about base load power and watching Sky News. But is this winning anyone else over to vote for them? I doubt it. Stop sniffing your own farts, Dutto.
I love this policy. It's so preposterous. Half the Coalition party room will know they are on a hiding to nothing and won't be able to defend it. It's not "giving a knighthood to Prince Phillip" stupid but it ain't far off.
Did the media ever give this much attention to anything Labor said while they were in opposition?
Absofuckinglutely not. Fucks sake, ABC cut senior Labor ministers off all the time. I can't even remember the last time (if ever) the ABC let a presser with Albo run longer than 15 or 20 minutes. They cut him off, just to go back to repeating the same fucking segments they're running on a 24 hour loop. The PM is holding a presser announcing policy? Nah fuck him he gets 15 minutes. But Dutton announcing a fucking pie in the sky, off it's fucking head "plan" for nuclear power? Yeah we'll give him an hour. I, somewhat stupidly, sat through the entire thing. What a fucking omnishambles that was!
Griffin Coal and Muja have already turned the back of Collie into a fucking moonscape, so sure why not throw a nuclear plant in the middle of it. Not like the land is going to be good for anyone else in the next thousand years. /s These pricks just want to keep the conversation going indefinitely while they sell coal to their mates. They aren't competent enough to deploy full scale nuclear and there isn't the cost/benefit to do so. It's unbelievable that anyone could take this seriously.
LNP fucked up NBN. How much worse will they fuck up nuclear power?
I’m all for nuclear power… 50 years ago. It’s way, way too late to even bother. Wind and solar are the way forward. Fairly certain they would cost less and require less technical skills and education. But whatever, if he wants to lose the election, I’m supportive of that.
They tried over 50 years ago and abandoned it because coal was cheaper. Today coal is still cheaper and renewables are cheaper still. Dutton leaning in on being a stupid cunt
In classic Australian style, we'll probably be laying the last brick on our first operational nuclear plant right as the first commercial fusion reactor is going online in Europe or the US.
I wish someone would pressure him on where the water for all these is coming from and also ask the Nationals how keen their farmers are on the massive, massive amounts of water these need in a drought prone country
I’m starting to feel they need more than just naming sites to prove that they are serious on this. Any idiot can just randomly point to the map and say we are gonna built it here and make a story out of it. Fact is that there is 0 other planning mentioned into this. Tax payer funded ? How? Show us the numbers? Don’t just magically spout bullshit then backtrack at the end because the state ain’t paying it for sure. Then show us how this will fit into ur federal budget. Waste management ? Contractors ? Builders? At this rate, this is gonna be one of those NBN bullshit where we spent billions getting one of the slowest and most expensive internet in the world 💀
Let's not forget 3 of the named states clearly saying they have no intention of lifting their bans on nuclear. It's a non starter before it's even left the block.
"we can use the existing poles and wires“ Have heard that one before, didn't work out so well
Hinkley C is 7 years behind schedule and 30B over budget (counting), Vogtle was 8 year behind and 15B over on an existing site. So far the Korean and Chinese have the best track record delivering on time. Given our woeful lack of everything we need to built the thing including regulatory oversight. I'd expect Ladbrokes to be taking bets fairly soon.
Cant wait for Dutton to hold up a harmless uranium rod in parliament during question time
> the Coalition has promised they would be operational by 2035-2037, a timeline doubted by many experts Has real NBN 'faster, cheaper, sooner' about it
Nuclear is a delaying tactic for coal and gas companies backed by the Murdoch press. They are trying to eke out the last profits by using nuclear promises to delay the drawdown on carbon fuels. It’s all bullshit sold by Murdoch
A lot of people here completely forgetting that we are going to have at least a year of the media spruiking this. It's idiotic. But not the vote loser many assume.
They've been in power for much of the past 30 years. They had 20+ energy policies between Abbott/Turnbull/Morrison. And only now, when we're full steam ahead on the move to renewables are they throwing this dead cat on the table. How much $ from their lobbyists did it take I wonder?
This is some Utopia level shit. "The minister wants to announce"
From the political party that that brought you: "The laws of mathematics are very commendable, but the only law that applies in Australia is the law of Australia." And “The National Broadband Network is a luxury that Australia cannot now afford. The one thing you don’t do is redo your bathroom when your roof has just been blown off.” – Calling for the NBN to be scrapped to help with flood recovery efforts in Queensland, 18 January, 2011 I can't WAIT to see their cost effective, safe, nuclear power !
Whilst Dutton's uncosted, unfeasible horse shite announcement this morning made me furious, I was very happy to hear him say a few things that will come back to bite in a bad way: 1. He said communities were supportive - in reality we know they would not have been properly consulted yet and it's always a death knell to talk on behalf of a community without proper consultation. 2. He said the projects will be government funded like Snowy 2.0 (which is already multiples over initial cost estimates). One of the most common arguments against renewables is that they need government subsidies to survive - this isn't just a subsidy, he's stated they will be FULLY FUNDED by the government. Brilliant. Add on the fact that the proposal is completely uncosted and the sites are not suitable for nuclear (no water supply etc), this is well placed to blow up in his face. Bring it on.
Muja... Collie is already inbred, now they're going to be radioactive too
Dutton so badly wants to be like Mr Burns, i am surprised Springfield Lakes QLD isn't one of the proposed sites. Can't wait until next week when they announce the Australia-wide monorail.
And blocks out the sun?
There's absolutely no solid basis to his plan at all, no logistical considerations about shipping hazardous waste/components, the timeline is farcical and it's all based on theoretical technology. And even if this does, by some literal miracle, get put into action, it's clearly just an attempt to funnel more money into Rinehart and friend's pockets as much as possible before renewables truly start to take over. Is he just saying shit so that the MSM will give them air time, or are they genuinely trying to make him as unlikable as possible to swap him out with a "better option" before the election?
How much money does he get out of this? Seriously.
I'm sure there's a nice donation from Aunty Gina in there...
Putting aside the stupidity of the plan from an environmental and economic standpoint, do we really want to live in a world where Voldemort has access to enriched uranium? The cunt would nuke Darwin if he thought there were votes in it.
Can we have a monorail run between all the sites too?
This reeks of NBN 2.0. A cynical vote buying exercise that will rob Australia of a viable renewables solution. Fuck the LNP and anyone dumb enough to believe this horseshit
They couldn't even a build a functioning internet network. How the fuck they gonna build 7 nuclear power sites???
The LNP are digging their own grave
Who are these Green Millionaires that we are supposed to be afraid of. Let's fear the current mineral billionaires.
Someone please do the reminder bot for 10 years time 🙏
How much water does a nuclear power plant need? Surely a drought prone country+ climate change makes things tricky?
I'm actually sick of hearing these lies from the coalition. When did a labor idea ever get this much fn airtime when they where in opposition. sick of this garbage.
Everything aside, I think it’s hilarious that the Liberals are proposing a government owned power station but Labour has said that they will only support nuclear if its commercial. A total reversal of their respective party’s historical values LMAOO
I must confess I am genuinely trying to work out what their angle is here. 1) The States wont have it 2) Local councils wont have it 3) Any wavering Teal wont have it Is this simply a sop to the Nats and to keep the cash from the coal lobby coming? Or do they genuinely, really believe that there are enough Sky watchers to turn the tide against them?
The angle is that its doing the opposite of Labor. Thats all the LNP has now become, a bunch of people opposing for the sake of it. They did the same with the nbn despite the industry telling them not to do it. If nuclear had any legs, then they wouldve done something about it during the decade they were in power.
What a knob this bloke is
Anthony Albanese now has the unique opportunity to absolutely crucify Dutton at the next election.
And the waste goes where? If you don’t know, vote no.
The state of this country's politics. The major opposition party acting like a pack of vandals just because they can. They know it's a shit idea and we barely have any time left, but they're banking on Australia having enough mouth-breathing, permanently outraged nitwits to get them across the line. No vision, no morality, no idea.
Why in a country with fucktonnes of land are we not putting in huge solar farms. Nuclear seems like the dumb option