>It's cheaper to produce electricity from renewables than new nuclear power stations.
Yeah if you look at it from a
"its standing there costing nothing right now producing energy"
perspective. Incorrect - CSIRO says by far the lowest cost way of producing electricity is with solar and wind even when factoring in storage. In contrast, the costs of building and operating nuclear in Australia remain prohibitively high.
If you consider whole life cycle, not really. You cannot justify that position with numbers. Yes you can - The cost of creating energy from a nuclear reactor is by far the most expensive technology option for Australia. Official estimates by the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) show that the cost of nuclear energy creation is $16,000 per kilowatt.
Even assuming that turbines can operate at 33% rated capacity constantly (they can't) you'd still need 60 odd thousand turbines at a cost of 3 million a pop, replaced every 10 odd years plus other maintenance just to meet current demand.
Don't forget the manufacture and transporting of all that infrastructure also takes energy and materials... and recycling... So we need even more to meet energy demand. You'd have similar if not worse issues with nuclear power station
>It's not popular with majority of people, political parties won't touch it. Why are we making decisions based on popularity and not actual rational debate. So silly. Why is it silly? politicians move on popular views of the people - majority of Australian's don't support Nuclear power generated electricity.
>In other countries maybe new stations will be built - no chance in Oz No, we probably won't have electricity, because there's no way we can afford to build a distributed power network of tens of thousands of turbines, batteries and solar panels, and replace it all every 10 odd years. This is a ridiculous view as the current electricity grid needs to be updated - regardless of electricity source. Or, more likely, we'll just keep burning coal. More likely, Australia will continue to increase renewable energy sources and infrastructure - whether you like it or not, that's the way Australia is heading
