Beijing stooge.

Our boy is showing personal political hopes & wishes, much more than any "political analyst" savvy.

While I see the article is pro-Chinese? It makes a few valid and well-considered points. The first being, we could be the only non-nuclear nation to operate nuclear subs?

The rest, academic. Inasmuch as we still o self-defence by proxy and as a virtual free lunch courtesy of allies.

Albeit, have now committed more than 2% of our GNP to defence. That defence would be seriously enhanced by building several nuclear reactors!

Just not conventional reactors, but MSR thorium unconventional variants, With an eye to two byproducts, cancer remediating medical isotopes and fuel made from transforming inexhaustible seawater into a bevy of useful hydrocarbons, using proven science!

And includes alternatives for diesel, jet fuel, petrol, nitrate fertilisers, and plastics, to name some of what might be doable/ Yet remain competitive with current cost imperatives, or indeed, undercut them? The latter dependant on MSR thorium and prices available at around 1 cent PKWH wholesale!

Now that sanity has finally prevailed! It can only be a question of very limited time, before the penny drops and we adopt some nuclear capacity to grow our manufacturing base!

In hindsight, just how stupid was it to shut down car manufacture in this country and all the associated industries that grew from that? It was not superior foreign products that cost us that industry but greed that knew no bounds on the part of the taxman, price-gouging energy companies, manufacturers and dealers alike!

And further complicated by dumb practice of, making a bit here and a bit there, all adding tax and transport inputs to the final cost factor! And the model it would seem for the submarine build?
Alan B.

Hopefully Alan this is a foot in the door to sell the Oz population on the fact we must use our coal or our nuclear deposits to have any chance of keeping the lights on. Queensland should be using our huge coal deposits or nuclear deposits, I don't give a damn which, to process our huge bauxite deposits, to become the aluminum supplier to the world, rather than watch another industry die.

We could of course use our huge shale oil & gas deposits as well if we had half a brain. Rundle deposit was proven economic, but the government allowed the foreign controlled Oz refineries to refuse to use it. We have vastly larger deposits further inland. Meanwhile we are ripped off by the Singapore refineries controlled by the major oil companies.

Can't agree entirely with your take on the car industry. It was mainly the ridiculous pay rate of process workers, who could be trained in a week that destroyed the viability of our industry.

I read comments about how the construction of nuclear reactors in Australia is being considered. One thing I can't understand: why? After all, there is so much sun in Australia that we can easily provide ourselves with energy from the sun.

You do not have any physics or math do you Pokitren.