Nuclear is not essential, and Australia will have gone down the gurgler before it is up and running. It wouldn't take as long as the nitwit Bowen raves about, but it would be too long.

There is no climate 'emergency'. There is no proof that life-giving carbon dioxide has any effect on the climate: Professor Ian Plimer has been asking the confidence tricksters for proof for ten years. He still hasn't had any.

Coal and gas is still the only thing that will save Australia, as it was saving Australia very well until the lunatics took over.

The fast depreciation of renewable technology is usually glossed over. Now landfills are getting full of old solar panels and wind turbine blades, both difficult to recycle. More pointedly the cost of electricity from large batteries is high due to their short lifespan. The lowest figure I've seen for commercial batteries is $117 per MWh or 11.7c per KWh. Yet renewables spruikers say daytime solar only costs $50 per MWh. Yes but some of us go to bed well after 5pm.

Coal is providing about 60% of our electricity yet most of it is supposed to be gone by 2030 or just a few short years. Tell'em they're dreaming. I note a couple of aluminium smelters say they'll cope but what they mean is keep up the subsidies if a lot of gas has to be burned to maintain electricity supply. Hopefully some models of SMR will be on the market by 2030. When wind and solar are doing OK the mini nukes can do desalination or make hydrogen.

Address common stupidity & all problems will just about solve themselves. Address Wokeism & the associated Left & 99% of the afore-mentioned will disappear in a flick ! Replace religion with Faith & all these problems will be gone !
There is no shortage of energy only a massive surplus of stupidity !

Absolutely agree! To simply say there's no shortage of energy is stupid/rocks for brains. And the shortage is confirmed with every brown or blackout.

To shout that we don't need nuclear because we have coal and gas, is the same as saying we don't need a manufacturing sector. Because our reliance on either is the death knell of manufacturing in Oz and firms up our incredibly stupid reliance on China for manufactured goods!

Because coal and gas are so expensive, we need a much cheaper and 24/7 reliable, dispatchable option. And nothing beats nuclear, be it price or safety. The death toll per gigawatt hours is lower for nuclear than coal, gas or even renewables!

The only renewable that comes within a bull's roar of nuclear is very large scale, solar thermal replete with heat sinks that provide useful heat for a week or more. Heat sinks can include big tanks of sand.

All our domestic gas needs can be provided by homemade biogas.

Methane is mostly hydrogen with a few carbon atoms included.

We can make crude by recycling waste tyres.

Even with the plethora of alternative options, nothing beats nuclear as MSR thorium.
Alan B.

The energy is out there for the taking but instead the dumb-craps are wasting it & then scream shortage. A number of small nuclear power plants will cope even with the demands of the stupid. Cut back on waste will provide for the real needs !
Chernobyl & Fukushima have demonstrated the folly of large plants. Just because scientists can build things is absolutely no guarantee that whatever they invent is good if in the hands of standard morons.

Ahhh Individ, Chernobyl and Fukashima did not demonstrate anything
about large reactors all they demonstrated was that engineers can be stupid.
With Chernobyl the Russians at the Vienna conference on nuclear
reactors ignored warnings from the other conference nuclear experts
that their design of the moderators had a flaw and could cause a
runaway discharge of energy which boiled the reactor.

With Fukashima if they had built it on the west coast it would still
be running. Surely engineers in Japan know about Tsunami ?
The Pacific plate divide is just east of Fukashima.
DUH !