The worst thing about this ‘plan’ is the media treating it like it’s an actual real thing that will actually happen if the LNP get in power.
this post was submitted on 19 Jun 2024
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Yes. I was saying to my daughter this morning that they platform these crazy people and enable them. But then it is also true that they are in our govt so it moreover says a lot about a public that voted them into those positions and elevated their voice.
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It's really just kicking the can down the street. My expectation is if they got into power, they would say the figures are more than they realised, say they have to fix Labor's economic mess and they'll come back to it when the economy is in the black. Like others, I would have seen it as viable 20 years ago, but it is just so expensive, they've cancelled builds overseas because of cost blowouts and Europe is turning off reactors because of all the renewable energy in their grid. The claim it would be cheaper annoys me the most, as it is an outright lie. All the liberals do is shovel shit and coal
Have they released who is going to pay for these power plants? Because if they put it on my monthly bill, I’m going off grid and I bet half the rest of the country will too.
I'm not fundamentally opposed to nuclear. The country's power needs are only going to keep growing, and I could see an argument for having multiple options for sourcing that power. It's a very expensive argument though, and one that's hard to swallow when all the experts are saying renewable is the way to go, and I haven't seen any projections that show that we'd necessarily need anything other than renewables in the foreseeable future.
The thing I'm strongly opposed to with regards to nuclear is rerouting funding away from renewables to pay for it. It's an expensive technology that won't be ready for decades, so I just don't see the need to pivot to it. If we'd started the transition to nuclear three decades ago things would be different, but the LNP was strongly opposed to the technology back then, funnily enough.
And it's absolutely absurd to then announce a cap on renewables spending as part of their plan to get to net zero by 2050.
The whole thing is a farce, and the LNP hasn't given any good reasons why nuclear is the way forward over renewables. They haven't said much of anything other than shout about it being the better option, but then that's been the LNP's go-to political strategy for as long as I've been old enough to vote so no surprise there.
Indeed. To me there is no debate: renewables are the only immediate way to bring us to net zero by 2050. The LNP are presenting this alternative as though we have time ahead of us - as if the planet is not already retaliating against our existence.
As an aside, the only somewhat valid argument I've heard is that nuclear would make future Australia an energy powerhouse for the region and allow for exponential growth, which is not something to dismiss flippantly. But in that I would think we would only need one, not seven! However, trying to put my paranoia aside about nuclear power plant meltdowns, that tech would need to be absolutely foolproof - and from my understanding, that is apparently true of modern nuclear generation tech available today. Yet, a solution for long-term storage of waste is still another huge and costly hurdle, let alone how you communicate the toxic danger of the area thousands of years into the future.
The problem of nuclear waste isn't actually a problem, and the 1000 year thing is a bit of an outdated myth. I wrote more about it here: https://aussie.zone/post/10867702/9731416
Energy storage is actually the biggest problem in energy right now (save for a crazy discovery like perpetual energy, or cheap mass produced super conductors that could optimize the absolute shit out of our energy transmission infrastructure and reduce the amount of energy that we need to produce in the first place).
The energy storage problem is actually the biggest reason why we need nuclear with our renewables.
Nuclear can run our baseloads, renewables plus storage can run our peakloads.
It's renewables AND nuclear, not renewables vs nuclear.
The overall expense of this endevour seems to be the biggest factor against nuclear, especially for a relatively small population separated across a vast landmass.
Recycling is incredibly expensive as well, and still requires extensive storage pools for the waste to cool for several years before it can be recycled - granted not for thousands of years, but a lot of short-term storage space would still be required.
Not all the used fuel is suitable for recycling either. And I'm of the understanding that thus far, only about 30% of spent nuclear fuel has been recycled in countries that do it (though I believe this is a capacity issue, not a suitability of waste fuel issue).
I'm not yet convinced on the safety of modern nuclear plants in natural disaster/apocalyptic scenarios, but I agree that an Australia of the future could benefit from being OP.
The cost of nuclear is only at the commissioning and decommissioning of the plant. But during the runtime of the plant is remarkably cheap. People just balk at the initial price because so much of the cost is up front.
Another thing to remember about recycling is that we as a species were producing nuclear waste before we had reactors that could use recycled waste so globally speaking we currently have a surplus of waste. Recently the US had to restart a reactor because they didn't have enough materials to use for powering deep space probes. It's not implausible that we could run out of waste to use and have to produce more fresh fuel.
On the topic of safety though, modern reactor designs require power coming in to keep the fissile material frozen to continue the reaction.
As soon as the power is cut, the coolant is cut, part of the plant is destroyed, or something else goes wrong, the plant stops working. If the plant stops working, there's nothing to cool down the fissile material.
The fissile material's own radioactivity heats it up to the point that it melts and pours away over what's essentially a pyramid plinko drain splitting up the liquid into many separate pools. (If it helps, think of your bath's drain if the pipe splits into two, which split into four, which split into eight, and on and on until a bath tub's water has been separated into an ice cube tray the size of a tennis court.)
Fissile material only reacts when it's next to enough fissile material.
And since it's separated and spread out, there's more reaction.
If you cut the power for the coolant pumps, the fuel melts, separates (by the power of gravity) and the reaction stops.
If the coolant leaks, the fuel melts, separates and stops reacting.
If you crash a plane into the reactor itself, the cooling mechanisms don't exist anymore and the fuel melts and pours out the nearest holes (either the drain or spilling outside the reactor into the containment structure, or even outside if need be), spreading out, separating, and reacting no more.
Modern reactors have more in common with an ice-cube hoisted above the great pyramid of giza than they do the fukushima or chernobyl plants. Both of those were designed to require power to prevent a dangerous meltdown which turn into a runaway reactions, whereas modern reactors make it so a meltdown prevents reactions.
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I think (or hope) most of us know that nuclear is no longer an option for us in Australia and that there are many more sustainable ways to generate energy here.
Energy generation is not an issue at all. It's a completely solved problem.
It's energy storage that is the problem, and that's why we need nuclear.
But Dutton isn't pushing nuclear because he's being responsible. He's not actually pushing nuclear, he's just pushing a pipedream doomed project designed to take time/money/effort away from renewables, storage, and actual nuclear, all to keep money flowing to the coal industry shareholders.
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The only reason why Dutto is pushing Nuclear as an option is because he is a crony.
Wind power generation has a barrier to entry, but it is much lower than Coal or Fracking, which is why there is so much corporate-sponsored astroturfing against it. Coal and Fracking also has a lower barrier to entry, but is cheap compared to Nuclear.
Solar is the great equaliser. Anyone can throw a handful of solar panels on their roof, connect them to an array of old car batteries and add an inverter and voila! Instant home power generation. Get out from under of the boot of Power Companies and be self-sufficient (as long as you don’t want to use a hair-dryer).
If the proles can get of free energy and no longer need to rely on The Grid, all of the Corporations that own Dutto will no longer have any political power.
Dutto is not offering Nuclear as an alternative to Coal and LNG to the electorate, he is offering it as an alternative to his lords and masters.
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There is nothing to discuss, its not a real plan, its a fever dream. It wont happen.
Worse than that, it's an intentional miss direction so that their billionaire benefactors can continue to squeeze the fossil fuel sponge well into the future. They want to get every last almost free drop out of our resources.
That is my hope but I hear people say things ... stupid things. Things like, "I like Peter Dutton, actually." 🤮 Which makes me lament the thought that the public can be easily persuaded to vote for these shysters at the next election and we will be stuck with their corrupt scams and BS for yet another decade!