As in every election over the last 20 years, at stake will be the question of whether Australia chooses a clean energy future, or prolongs the life of coal and gas – an outcome the nuclear plan relies on.

In that sense, nuclear energy is shaping up as an election fig leaf like no other.

John is on Mastodon @johnquiggin@aus.social. I’m not sure if me tagging him here on Lemny federates to Mastodon ?

  • Mountaineer@aussie.zone
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    8 days ago

    The coalition has multiple aims here.

    1. This is a political differentiator - they become the “Nuclear” party.
    2. Nuclear technologies create a wonderful wedge to split any green support along the “reduce carbon” and “anti radioactive” line.
    3. In a best case, if they started tomorrow, there would be AT LEAST a decade (more like 15 years) before the first Nuclear electricity got onto the grid, and in the meantime their fossil fuel backers get to BURN-BABY-BURN.

    And that’s before we get into all the other little thing, that are really just colouring around the edges, ie spending taxpayer money to build a new monopoly which the government can later privatise to their sponsors.

    One of the things that I haven’t seen any of the recent articles highlighting is how no investment body is willing to back the construction of nuclear power in Australia, so the government will have to 100% bankroll it with our taxes.
    Meanwhile, private equity are lining up to invest in wind, solar, batteries etc - just angling for subsidies because “why not?”.
    This ALONE should be indicative of most likely outcomes.