As the shift away from fossil fuels gathers pace, the Coalition has turned to an emissions-free technology with a long and contentious history — nuclear fission. These are the numbers you should keep in mind when thinking about its place in Australia’s energy transition.
I encourage you to at least glance through the article before you leave a comment that other commenters will dunk on you for.
Are there merits to investing in nuclear now?
A nuclear plant would take the best part of 20 years to build and has at least a 40 year lifespan. It’d be competing not against today’s solar and batteries but against 2040’s solar and batteries on day one. And it’d need to be profitable until 2070.
It would have been great to have invested in nuclear in the 80s, but we didn’t. Like hydrogen cars, it could have been great but we’ve moved past it already.
Nuclear is difficult in Australia because of our low population. I agree it would have been nice to have some 40 year old reactors now (Lucas Heights doesn’t count as it isn’t a power reactor) but we don’t because we don’t and didn’t have the population to support enough reactors for maintenance of one to not cripple the grid until small reactors were invented recently