"All of this however is only possible if Australians and their leaders are prepared to have a frank and fearless discussion on nuclear power".

Australians have been 'discussing' it non-stop. It is their political class, in thrall to the lunatic left, that will not discuss it. We have an abundance of coal, and an abundance of uranium, but the backward politicians remain in the dark ages. They still believe the lie that climate change is not natural and that CO2, whose slight increase has greened previously dry parts of the planet, is a dangerous gas. So they they have been scared of coal - the only reason Australia's economy used to be booming, but they won't use uranium which would see our previous glory regained. Morons!

Apart from replacing coal baseload other advantages of nuclear are frequency stabilisation and the ability to use existing, not new, infrastructure. It seems inevitable that Australia will go from 257 Twh annual electricity demand to over 300 Twh as a result of electric cars, universal summer aircon, gas appliance replacement, desalination and population growth. That has to be reliable not at the whims of weather.

The SA development dept says that the state's half paced uranium production in 2016 produced 22 gigawatt years of electricity overseas. That's 193 Twh which could power all of Australia with a modest boost. While costs may be lowest with large gigawatt sized reactors they clearly take too long to build outside Asia. The hope has to be SMRs initially of the light water type but later the thorium and plutonium consuming types. Hazelwood and Liddell would be ideal sites to install the first SMRs.

The time to go nuclear should have been twenty years ago. I think it's too late now. By the time we could get nuclear power up and running, we'll be able to do the job cheaper with solar power.

The advantages of nuclear power:

https://www.thegwpf.com/what-could-have-been-if-nuclear-power-deployment-had-not-been-disrupted/

Our self-imposed prohibition is nonsense and should be lifted immediately.

I can't see any reason why our power source needs to be uranium, or a highly pressurized light water reactor operating at around 150 (extremely explosive) atmospheres, and if there's any breach in the system, the water immediately vapourises and flashes to its constituent parts, superheated hydrogen and oxygen. An extremely explosive mixture in those proportions. One part hydrogen two parts oxygen.

Which arguably is what actually exploded in Chernobyl? After expanding xenon had ruptured the reactor vessel or a heat exchange pipe. A tiny pinhole leak/metal fatigue, all that's required to start a problem like Chernobyl! And at any time without even a nanosecond warning!

Whereas, if we simply use the brains we were born with we would go straight down the thorium path! And use it in, WALK AWAY SAFE MSR technology, given the material is already molten, the reactor designed from the ground up to operate as an MSR And already fifty-year-old technology that is far more easily and cheaply miniaturized and modularized given the operating pressure!

Which is the same inside or outside the facility.

However way you paint it? The very best and safest source of nuclear-sourced medical isotopes are more easily made and much more abundantly in an MSR thorium based facility. Especially miracle cancer cure, Bismuth 213.

Currently, we are mining lithium and rare earth metals in around three places, with thorium as a waste byproduct we need to somehow dispose of in hundreds of annual tons.

One ton of which could power an MSR for thirty years, producing 1% waste, which is far less toxic and eminently suitable as long life space batteries, we'd need for our new aerospace industry!

Whereas, the equivalent 350 MW, light water reactor needs 2551 tons of vastly more expensive uranium from which we make 2550 tons of waste!

Why anybody with a still functioning brain or one of their own would propose the latter is beyond me? Save, they must want to create weapons from the plutonium we'd create in such a facility?
TBC Alan B.

Yes lets go nuclear.

But only if we are guaranteed it will produce power cheaper than coal.