I would sooner believe real nuclear experts with many years practical experience such as Dr Adi Patterson on the benefits and practicality of nuclear energy than this load of lefty BS that seems to be singing from a Labor song sheet. The fact is there is no other major developed nation that is putting all its eggs in one unreliable intermittent "renewables" energy basket and nations such as France with around 70% nuclear energy is a major exporter of energy to other Euro countries such as Germany who tried the "renewables" experiment and found it to be a great disaster.
Nuclear provides reliable, clean, 24/7 energy for up to 80 years - wind and solar, when they are not catching fire or destroyed by storms, have a life span of around 20 years then they have to be disposed of (creating more huge problems) and replaced so they can go on killing millions of birds and bats and marine life while encroaching on arable farmland and native forests home to koalas and other threatened species.
Great plan, Bowen, Albo and co.

China;

Over the past decade China has added 37 nuclear reactors.

China's government has set a goal of selling 30 nuclear reactors to Belt and Road partners by 2030.

Certainly sounds like stagnation to me.

Go and read this.

https://joannenova.com.au/2025/03/tech-giants-quietly-drop-renewables-and-sign-pledge-to-triple-nuclear-power/

David

Two east European countries and a Canadian province have signed memoranda of uderstanding for SMRs. Meanwhile development is proceeding fast, Rolls Royce for example has 600 people working on their version with the UK likely to sign on for several units. Meanwhile Russia, Egypt, UK, India, China, Hungary, Czech Republic and Bangladesh are building or modifying gigawawatt plus units.

When Australia sees SMRs getting built fast at an affordable cost we'll join the bandwagon. Smelters need steady power for days in overcast, calm weather. We need to see this this early on.

The anti-nuclear hack authors of this vacuous and misleading puff piece appear even more clapped out than Australia's coal fired power stations.

Go back a few years and it was commonly believed (by technically inept morons like the authors, unfortunately all too common) that wind and solar would take over the grid so fast that the existing generating infrastructure could be left unmaintained. What happened was that wind and solar have proved to be a very expensive and unreliable failure. Like perpetual motion advocates, the moronic anti-nuke hack authors will argue that wind and solar are the real deal and just need a few tweaks. And yes, those supply issues and price hikes are all the fault of coal fired generation aren't they?

I wouldn't be reading any moronic arguments were it not for the renewable energy con, driven by massive subsidies courtesy of the taxpayer, and some of that money no doubt funds anti-nuclear propaganda. People involved in this impoverishing and environment destroying renewable energy con are national traitors in my opinion.

Remember the French? They built enough nuclear power generation from scratch in fifteen years from the mid 1970s to power their electrical grid one and a half times over. Why couldn't Australia do the same half a century later? Why are the authors blind to this fact as well as the fact that the cheapest dispatchable low carbon power comes from nuclear generation?

Who are those people who wrote that article?
How about some truth Please.
Misinformation:
The following figure, with the added title “FUKISHIMA RADIATION HAS CONTAMINATED THE ENTIRE PACIFIC OCEAN AND ITS ONLY GOING TO GET WORSE!” was repeated over and over again on the web by various “green” groups. https://onewomanjourney.com.au/2025/02/27/the-effect-of-false-fear-of-low-dose-radiation-fake-graph-of-fukushima/

A First Nations man told me recently that Australia spends less than 5% on fire management and 95% paying for the damage afterwards. He wanted to know why we had it so backwards.

We are spending billions of dollars to reduce the emission of carbon dioxide when we produce electricity. Yet, fire releases far more carbon dioxide and has the potential to become much worse. If we stay on our current pathway, we will destroy the ability of our land to be a carbon sink https://onewomanjourney.com.au/2023/11/29/australia-is-almost-carbon-neutral-but-could-go-backwards-very-fast/

From Argentina (25) China (28) plus other countries such as Bangaladesh, Brazil, Egypt, India, Iran, Japan, Korea and Ukraine, there are 62 Small Nuclear reactors under construction as at 4 DAYS AGO.
https://pris.iaea.org/PRIS/CountryStatistics/CountryStatisticsLandingPage.aspx

Dutton becoming PM will coincide with the end of the Ukraine War and the lifting of sanctions on Russian oil and gas. It will also boost eastern Ukrainian coal production, which is in the Russian zone.

This will cause a a worldwide glut in fossil fuels and a consequent decline in fossil fuel prices.

That will make Dutton's only major policy, NUCLEAR Reactors, even more expensive compared to fossil fuel electricity and renewable electricity production.

Hence Dutton's Taxpayer Funded high cost nuclear dream will become unviable and be quickly forgotten.

Maverick, the problem with that scenario is that by then the old obsolete coal fired generators will have closed down.

Have a look at what companies like Copenhagen Atomics are doing.
David

Its obvious that Dutton's taxpayer funded nuclear pipe dream, if implemented, would be an absolute disaster for Australia. Even if elected Dutton's Nuks could not begin to come on line in less than 15 years, given world evidence of delays and cost overruns that would be a very optimistic forecast. With coal fired power in rapid decline and ever increasing unreliability, the majority of plants are over 40 years old, and scheduled to close by 2038, Australia needs a viable energy program based on renewables, and not some pie in the sky political pipe dream from Dutton.

Some people think that the energy debate is a political argument. It isn't. The problems with wind and solar relate to the cost of making the energy dispatchable and the environmental footprint.

For starters, commercial wind and solar generation would require a grid twice the cost of what we have currently. Given that the current grid accounts for 40% of the electricity cost, your wind and solar would need to be a third the cost of fossil fuel generation to deliver electricity at the same price.

So what about rooftop solar with battery storage? Sounds great, but apparently the cost of all those batteries would be greater than building a fleet of nuclear reactors to provide all of Australia's electricity.

But wait, there's more. With wind an solar you also need commercial storage (pumped hydro and batteries) as well as 100% gas powered generation as backup. Then there is the matter of destroying farmland and large tracts of the natural environment providing refuge for Australia's flora and fauna. Also, there is the toxic waste, soil contamination and decommissioning costs to consider.

When you consider the cost it is no wonder that there is no stand alone wind and solar system in existence. Walpole will be the first system to provide a real world example, but it is yet to be switched on. Why might that be? Of course, as cult leader Albo points out, the reason is always clear and simple: "Peter Dutton!".

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-12-01/australian-first-mini-pumped-hydro-scheme-wa-walpole/104655498

Yes there are many Liberal-National party TALKING POINTS revealing they (like Trump) are ideologically opposed to renewables.

The Liberal-National party - with its Billionaire constituency - is relying on votes and campaign finance for the coming Election from fossil fuel interests.

Hi Mav,

Speaking of billionaires, would you happen to know how much in subsidies Forrest and Holmes a Court have got from taxpayers? Allegedly tried to stop someone giving a talk about nuclear energy. Why might that have been?

https://x.com/BenFordhamLive/status/1801540082714939791

Are they acting in the national interest, or is it self interest by opposing something that is cheaper, and unlike wind and solar, it has many working examples producing dispatchable power at competitive costs.

Cult leader Albo doesn't want the nuclear vs renewables debate to be a technical debate. Why is that?

Yes Fest

The renewable push has its own Billionaire spruikers, Twiggy being the
most ambitious for taxpayers' money to fund his grandiose Green Hydrogen plans. See http://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-07-21/green-hydrogen-forrest-fortescue/104120492 or 21 July 2024

Twiggy's Fortescue Metals Group (FMG) "investors and analysts have long been concerned about the extent and speed to which the company has expanded into renewable energy and the overlapping connections with Forrest's private ventures.

Since late January [2024], when FMG's share price hit a record just shy of $30, it has shed almost one-third its value."

Poor nuclear energy advocate Rob Parker http://www.2gb.com/cancelled-nuclear-power-expert-silenced-at-conference/ Even nuclear advocates shouldn't be cancelled.

As Australia has no experience with nuclear reactor electrical production we should apply Pete's Principle:

ie. with the future Oz reactors taking Double the acquisition time estimate, Triple the cost estimate of reactor and don't forget Decommissioning each reactor will cost more than its construction .

My principle also applies to Snowy 2.0 and major weapons systems like AUKUS submarines.

Cheers Pete

Hi Fester,

If nuk power is such a goer, I ask the simple question; Why is it that private capital is unwilling to invest in Dutton's nuks, yet they invest billions into renewables?

The article makes some decent points about nuclear’s challenges, but pushing the idea that nuclear is on its way out is an exaggeration. Leave the misinformation to the anti-renewables crowd.

Global nuclear capacity in 2024 was about the same as in 2005, but that doesn’t mean nothing’s changed. Reactors are more efficient now, and nuclear is actually expected to hit record-high power generation in 2025. Plus, there are 65 reactors currently being built, with China leading the charge.

Caim that SMRs are "going nowhere" is a stretch, too. Sure, some projects have flopped, but plenty are still moving ahead. Rolls-Royce has a team working on SMRs in the UK, China and Russia already have some running, and countries like Canada, the US, and parts of Europe are investing in them. It’s still early days, but writing them off completely is premature.

Then there’s the renewables comparison. Yeah, wind and solar are growing way faster in terms of capacity, but that doesn’t tell the whole story. Nuclear runs basically all the time, while renewables need storage and backup power when the weather isn’t cooperating. That’s not to say renewables are useless (they’re obviously the future in a lot of ways), but acting like nuclear is irrelevant just isn’t accurate.

France is another case where the article paints a pretty one-sided picture. It has had cost overruns, but it still gets most of its power from nuclear and exports electricity to Germany. Instead of ditching nuclear, they’re extending their current plants and planning to build six new reactors.

This isn’t to that say nuclear is perfect - it’s expensive, takes long time to build, and has the waste issue to deal with - but pretending it’s dead while renewables are flawless is an exaggeration. Nuclear is struggling in some places, growing in others, and isn’t going away anytime soon.

Poland's new Nuclear Project puts Duttons rosy picture in doubt. http://youtu.be/VeN2JfVR8Hg?si=hjchULC_D22ZqJ0X

0:35 "official figures put the cost at 45 Billion Euros" for one large city size Nuclear power station with 3 reactors = 78 Billion Australian Dollars.

4:11 [Like Australia] "Poland has no experience with nuclear energy" Poland had the mere beginnings of an old rusty Soviet era nuclear power station.

4:27 the new Polish project may take more than 20 years. This is a real world number rather than Dutton's hugely optimistic timings.

Note Dutton has gone quiet about nuclear - even though (or because) he is in election campaign mode. Around the country Dutton has found no state governments are speaking out in favour of Dutton's nuclear plans. So he basically stopped talking about them 2 months ago.

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