Carlton Supporters Club

France are planning 14 more nuclear reactors by 2050 according to Macron.France has no oil, no gas and no coal and wants to close it's remaining  fossil fuel burning plants.
Australia would need about 25 reactors and they take around 10 -15 years to build.
You need plenty of water and they need to be near consumers so that's building around the coast plus you need foreign investment from companies and the reality is that will come from China etc who already have a strong ownership in our distribution network.
Can't see any Government making the nuke call in Aus and risking the backlash in the short to medium term.

Interesting article about the impending closure of Eraring, the biggest coal-fired power station in Australia. Renewable power has resulted in the closure being brought forward by 7 years to 2025.

Switching off, abc.net.au

The article shows how badly the shutdown will affect the workers at the plant and the local businesses which rely upon it. It also notes how well Germany handled the transition from fossil fuel energy generation to renewables and how badly governments handle the transition. The Germans made sure the transition would unfold over 50 years. Our transitions happen almost overnight.

But the fact that the power plant is going to be replaced by a battery is a pretty clear indication that nuclear power has no chance of taking off in Australia. The power plant is called Eraring after Lake Eraring, a plentiful supply of water. It also has the facilities to step up power to transmit it to the grid. After all, it supplies 20% of NSW's power. It's also in a regional location, so it wouldn't attract too many NIMBY complaints. I'd imagine the local residents would prefer the power plant to be replaced by another power station that would bring jobs with it, whereas the battery will only involve a construction crew of 128 and only 10 jobs once it's completed.

Yallourn is also closing by 2028 and will again be replaced by a battery:   Energy Australia to close Yallourn power station early and build 350 megawatt battery, abc.net.au.

London: Boris Johnson has pledged to approve up to eight new nuclear power plants in the next eight years as Britain seeks to end its dependence on foreign oil and gas, and dramatically cut its emissions and lower household energy costs.

I wonder why he's not relying on solar. We have the full range of renewable solutions at our disposal.

Yep, you can have those sorts of unexpected natural disasters. I seem to remember a Tsunami took out the nuclear power plant at Fookushima. It would indeed be unfortunate if we had a nuclear power plant that was taken out by a volcano, an earthquake or an asteroid strike.

The reality is that the bulk of harmful emissions from these events are very short lived and the bulk of it is contained to the immediate vicinity, the long lived stuff the anti-nuclear lobby continually harp on about remains contained. Three Mile Island for example emitted no radiation at all.

The real risk for long term dispersed contamination is the way waste is stored, handled and dispersed, not the threat of the power plant or it's reactors. Even the recent case in the Ukraine held very little risk of a major event, however if the same bombs had targeted the waste facilities then it would be a different matter. This is why I'm an advocate for Australia and other similar geographies to be global repositories for waste, and actually profit enormously from it. I realise the anti-nuclear / pro-renewables brigade rally against this idea, but in the same breath they demand Australia be held to account for it's waste from coal exports which seems hypocritical.

By volume more radioactive particulates are emitted from a normally operated coal fired plant over it's lifetime than will ever comes out of a normally operated nuclear plant over it's lifetime.

The best solution, in terms for having an immediate short term impact that can be sustained long term, seems to be a balanced approach using a diverse array of low carbon energy sources.

As you say I dont see a waste dump for profit being a popular idea in Aus, didnt that idea get brought up years ago with the French wanting to dump uranium waste in Aus?

The thing that is often overlooked with this whole power thing is its availability.
The sun doesn't shine for 24 hours.
The wind doesn't blow for 24 hours.