this post was submitted on 29 Jun 2024
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"""
That’s the trust cost of nuclear power in Australia, not the just the hundreds of billions of dollars in the cost of constructing the reactors more than a decade away … but the danger that another decade of denial prevents the action on climate and investment in energy we need now,” he will say.
“Australia has every resource imaginable to succeed in this decisive decade: critical minerals, rare earths, skills and space and sunlight, the trade ties to our region.The only thing our nation does not have, is time to waste.”
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I was onboard with the delay reasoning until he mentioned critical minerals, rare earth as the first 2 examples. That just makes me think he only cares about Industry and Businesses and not the pollution and ecological destruction.
Politically, you need to convince at least some of the "what about the economy/China" types. So economic and energy/manufacturing sovereignty arguments can be more convincing than "humanity is fucked if we don't act quickly enough". It's stupid, but that's democracy for you.
That's basically the case, Labor recently (as in this last week) approved new fossil fuel extraction projects to open in fucking the 2060s and 2080s... (We are meant to be at zero emissions by 2050)
They're also giving out an ungodly amount of subsidies to fossil fuel companies, to the tune of $14.5 Billion
The climate activism group I'm with arranged a bunch of snap protests around Melbourne at Labor offices. The one federal member who came out to talk to us basically just tried to distract from all of this with the increase in renewables spending, but she also implied that they had to keep opening new projects like this because of the money...
This is somewhat confusing. He's against nuclear power, a thing that would offset a considerable amount of carbon emissions... because building a plant is a lengthy process? It's not as if you can't also install solar panels in the mean time
If you install solar in the meantime you don't need the nuclear reactor anymore by the time it's finished. It's a financial sinkhole.
building nuclear power plants isn't just like putting a leg of lamb in the oven though.
it would take a gargantuan investment of money, skills, labour, et cetera. All of which ought to be directed to building out renewable facilities.
It's a long-term investment. Once it's built, nuclear outright breaks the pricing scheme on fossil fuel energy. Surely the prudent thing is to have both it and renewables? To have one to shore up the other?
I agree that nuclear is an option that ought to be considered as part of the mix.
I'm not convinced that it's right for Australia given our unique circumstances.
I disagree on cost. We've never built nuclear. We not only need a reactor, buy need to buy all the relevant skills and build all the supports to create an industry. I genuinely believe that the cost per kWh would be far greater than our other options.
The many hundreds of billions is better put to renewables, storage, and hydrogen cracking.
There are some next gen reactors being built in different places. Smaller output, less waste, salt cooled. We should let others bear the cost of development and see how it pans out.
Oh, that does change the calculation quite a bit. I wonder if this push has more to do with those submarines than any energy considerations.
excited to see how the thorium rock-salt reactors progress