As the shift away from fossil fuels gathers pace, the Coalition has turned to an emissions-free technology with a long and contentious history — nuclear fission. These are the numbers you should keep in mind when thinking about its place in Australia’s energy transition.

I encourage you to at least glance through the article before you leave a comment that other commenters will dunk on you for.

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[–] psud@aussie.zone 10 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (11 children)

I'm sure I have also heard on radio national that Australia would have a lot of trouble running on nuclear because we only have ~26 million people.

We could only support about two or three normal sized reactors with our power usage

If we only had three, taking one down for months for maintenance would knock out a third of our supply, half if we had only two

We really would want to use small reactors and have dozens of them, but they're even more expensive, and we probably couldn't support the expertise to run them due to the small population

Solar and wind and batteries is cheaper. Solar and wind and pumped hydro is cheaper.

It looks like the largest effect of an attempt to go nuclear would be to extend the lives of coal plants under a promise that the new reactors are only five years away for the next two decades

[–] princessnorah@lemmy.blahaj.zone -1 points 4 months ago (7 children)

...pumped hydro is cheaper.

It might be cheaper financially, but we've known about the huge environmental cost of dams for decades now. It boggles my mind that people suggest it in the same sentence as renewables.

Let alone that the immediate risk to life and property if a dam bursts can be similar to that of a nuclear meltdown.

[–] dillekant 2 points 4 months ago

Pumped hydro is not exactly a dam. There's a hole and 2 water reservoirs. Yes there's a cost but so does anything.

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