While the ALP is providing obvious reasons not to vote for it, it's wild to me that there's as much competition in the 2PP vote as there is, at least as reported by Poll Bludger. Nuclear power is a non-starter for most of the electorate, we will hear a lot more about it in the run up to the next election. Here's hoping for a few more independents to give the ALP the minority government they deserve, and we never have to hear about nuclear power for Australia ever again.
Another line of enquiry. Who would build and operate the new nuclear power stations? I could not find any Australian university offering a Bachelors degree course in nuclear engineering - there are several in nuclear medicine, which is irrelevant. Two universities, UNSW and ANU, offer Masters courses in the field. I could not find how many degrees are awarded each year, but it's not likely to be many. A significant national nuclear reactor programme would require hundreds of nuclear engineers. In practice they would have to be Chinese or Indian. Is this what Dutton's culture-war voters are looking for?
The more significant part of the plan - gutting support and limiting growth for RE whilst keeping coal plants going longer - doesn't require ANY nuclear plants be built.
And how long can an unpopular and heavily subsidised nuclear plant take to get built when the people building it don't care about climate or achieving zero emissions, when your principle superpower is blameshifting? "They won't let us!" - utter nonsense; 3 decades of knowing global warming is serious and still no real climate policy, not even a nuclear one. Since when do the LNP need the ALP and Greens to agree with them before having a policy?
The insincerity of the LNP on climate and energy is feature, not flaw - at no point do any LNP or RW pundits emphasize the seriousness of global warming as reason to support nuclear, just economic alarmist fears of imaginary energy costs of using RE. They are busy opposing the things that will make wind and solar work better. They remain welcoming of Deniers - of global warming AND of renewable energy - and they never, ever call out Denier BS, no matter how egregious.
This catalogue of failures would be embarrassing if nuclear were even close to the best solution, but given that even in the best case scenario nuclear is expensive and of limited use, it's ridiculous. In a sector filled with wacky pipe dreams like geothermal, fusion and various battery technologies, it's telling Dutton will only countenance the one that's not renewable. It's taking naysaying to a whole new level in that even his concrete policy proposals are against something.
"... wacky pipe dreams like geothermal, fusion and various battery technologies.." There is nothing particularly wacky about geothermal or the wide variety of battery chemistries trying to displace John Goodenough's lithium-ion. Fusion works fine inside stars and hydrogen bombs, though it's still a few decades and $billions away from commercial feasibility for power generation. What is happening is not so much the the weeding out of comically outré schemes but the selection pressure of a handful of successful wind-water-solar-storage technologies, steadily raising the bar for the second-best losers. Concentrating thermal solar works pretty well, but it can't compete with solar panels mass-produced in 10 GW/year Chinese PV factories. The same story goes for fuel cell cars and wave energy.
I agree "wacky" was not quite the right word, but the tone needed an adjective. Maybe "doomed " would have been a better word, because given the number of candidates, it's inevitable most of them will fail. I wanted to emphasise that Dutton isn't even trying to pick winners, rather he's trying to choose thee most destructive losers.
While the ALP is providing obvious reasons not to vote for it, it's wild to me that there's as much competition in the 2PP vote as there is, at least as reported by Poll Bludger. Nuclear power is a non-starter for most of the electorate, we will hear a lot more about it in the run up to the next election. Here's hoping for a few more independents to give the ALP the minority government they deserve, and we never have to hear about nuclear power for Australia ever again.
Another line of enquiry. Who would build and operate the new nuclear power stations? I could not find any Australian university offering a Bachelors degree course in nuclear engineering - there are several in nuclear medicine, which is irrelevant. Two universities, UNSW and ANU, offer Masters courses in the field. I could not find how many degrees are awarded each year, but it's not likely to be many. A significant national nuclear reactor programme would require hundreds of nuclear engineers. In practice they would have to be Chinese or Indian. Is this what Dutton's culture-war voters are looking for?
The Kulturkampf doesn't need to make sense.
An excellent exposition of Dutton’s blind “obsession” (to quote one of his own).
The Coalition’s 2023 pick, NuScale, collapses. Rolls Royce sounds nice.
RollsRoyce CEO: “We are facing a cliff edge, by December 2024 the money will have run out”. The UK doesn’t want RR SMRs anymore.
Ted O’Brien goes to OPG (Ontario Power Generation) whose ambition is to find markets for their unborn SMRs.
How to explain the latest Redbridge poll which shows quite a lot of ‘support for nuclear’?
Is it possible Mr Dutton will manage to cast nuclear as a fact-free party-political, ideological left/right issue before the next election?
The more significant part of the plan - gutting support and limiting growth for RE whilst keeping coal plants going longer - doesn't require ANY nuclear plants be built.
And how long can an unpopular and heavily subsidised nuclear plant take to get built when the people building it don't care about climate or achieving zero emissions, when your principle superpower is blameshifting? "They won't let us!" - utter nonsense; 3 decades of knowing global warming is serious and still no real climate policy, not even a nuclear one. Since when do the LNP need the ALP and Greens to agree with them before having a policy?
The insincerity of the LNP on climate and energy is feature, not flaw - at no point do any LNP or RW pundits emphasize the seriousness of global warming as reason to support nuclear, just economic alarmist fears of imaginary energy costs of using RE. They are busy opposing the things that will make wind and solar work better. They remain welcoming of Deniers - of global warming AND of renewable energy - and they never, ever call out Denier BS, no matter how egregious.
This catalogue of failures would be embarrassing if nuclear were even close to the best solution, but given that even in the best case scenario nuclear is expensive and of limited use, it's ridiculous. In a sector filled with wacky pipe dreams like geothermal, fusion and various battery technologies, it's telling Dutton will only countenance the one that's not renewable. It's taking naysaying to a whole new level in that even his concrete policy proposals are against something.
"... wacky pipe dreams like geothermal, fusion and various battery technologies.." There is nothing particularly wacky about geothermal or the wide variety of battery chemistries trying to displace John Goodenough's lithium-ion. Fusion works fine inside stars and hydrogen bombs, though it's still a few decades and $billions away from commercial feasibility for power generation. What is happening is not so much the the weeding out of comically outré schemes but the selection pressure of a handful of successful wind-water-solar-storage technologies, steadily raising the bar for the second-best losers. Concentrating thermal solar works pretty well, but it can't compete with solar panels mass-produced in 10 GW/year Chinese PV factories. The same story goes for fuel cell cars and wave energy.
I agree "wacky" was not quite the right word, but the tone needed an adjective. Maybe "doomed " would have been a better word, because given the number of candidates, it's inevitable most of them will fail. I wanted to emphasise that Dutton isn't even trying to pick winners, rather he's trying to choose thee most destructive losers.