I’m not against nuclear but it is a long way from being cheap and easy. Look at the recent andventures with Hinkley C. And that’s with an existing industrial base for nuclear power. 25 bn pounds is 45 billion AUD which is what previous governments paid to wire the whole country up with a patchwork of broadband (inflation unadjusted). And don’t say they small modular will step into the breach because it is not a proven technology and until the first 10 are deployed may never be.

Australia has no nuclear knowledge base and would require a nationwide debate about getting into the nuclear power game so we would have at a minimum a 20 year lead time to build something.

We could be totally decarbonised by that point and we wouldn’t even have a reactor online.

As to your other points, have you seen how much space we have down here? Cramming a plant into a specific area is not a net benefit. We’ve got a geographically diverse population with a lot of empty space, it would be better to have more plants in more diversified locations.

We will end up passing nuclear by, the economics and time lag just don’t stack up for us

You can politically thank The Greens for no nuclear power plants in Australia (apart from Lucas Heights, medical).

Ironically, their 100% outright, non negotiable no nuclear policy has pushed heavy carbon emitting coal power plants for the last 30 years until the recent policy shift of winding them down in lieu of solar.

Is this true?

Greens sometimes have influence in balance of power, but ultimatly they are a smaller party with limited influence or policy making decisions.

Logically that view seems to look at one side of the position only, if they had the power to stop nuclear you'd have to think they also have the power to significantly reduce/replace coal, which hasn't been the case.

Generally doesn't seem fair statement to me but open to reading information that shows otherwise.

No. It's not true. The Greens as a party didn't exist when the Australian Labor Party resolved to ban uranium mining and join the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Pact in the mid 70's. The various Australian anti-nuclear movements (plural) largely arose and thrived during the late 70s and 80s. Public opposition to nuclear energy started to wane in the 2000s, accelerated by concerns relating to climate change.

It is not true; the main impediment to nuclear in Australia has been some combination of the Australian Labor party and the people who vote for them. They've been staunchly anti-nuclear for a long time.

"Labor will ... [p]rohibit the establishment of nuclear power plants and all other stages of the nuclear fuel cycle in Australia;" [0]

[0] https://www.alp.org.au/2021nationalplatform

I think generally it wasn't the 'Green Party' but rather the wider environmental movement that then had a wide influence on the left in particular. The right meanwhile generally is just happy with fossil fuels and does whatever is cheaper.

That was always the problem with nuclear, it didn't have a political ally.

In one of the few cases where it did have political allies, it was in France when the realized how much control over oil is in the middle east. So French elites turned on fossil and invested in nuclear. And within 20 years they solved the problem. Its pretty instructive.

> recent andventures with Hinkley C

Building individual prestige one-off projects will always be a bad idea. This is the kind of things government do if they just need to hand out pieces of the pie to everybody.

A better example would be what South Korea has done in the UAE. Building 4 reactors 1 after the other in a country with no experience and no labor force. They did it pretty quickly and the unit price and unit speed goes up with every one.

In the UAE, construction started 2012, commissioned 2020. But importantly, after that they finish every year.

In reality, nuclear is not actually that slow if a government is really willing to do it and build a plant that has been built before.

> We will end up passing nuclear by, the economics and time lag just don’t stack up for us

Again the economics are better than what is being done. However.

> I’m not against nuclear but it is a long way from being cheap and easy.

Ah yes just like JFK said about going to space. "We choose to decarbonize the grid with solar not because it is the best option, not because the cheapest option or even because it is hard - but because it is easy and politically expedient."