Thanks Scott.
This may be the answer.Even thoughSMRs produce power that’s even more expensive than conventional nuclear power plants while having the same safety concerns, theoretically they’d be quicker to build, not cost as much and could even be moved around. The problem is that you need a lot more of them than a traditional nuclear reactor of the kind that would take 20 years and $10 billion to build.
So forget only putting a reactor in six electorates — put one in every electorate. It would be much fairer than subjecting only a handful of voters to bearing the costs of the net zero transition by having a nuclear reactor nearby. This, surely, is the benefit of SMRs — they can be put whereenergy users are rather than at locations that will require extensive and expensive transmission lines.
Dutton’spitch to voters would be simple: 151 SMRs across the country. Some electoratescould even have two or three, depending on the energy use there, but everyonewould get a reactor nearby. Instead of reactors in Gippsland, and the HunterValley and Gladstone, there’d be a reactor in Sutherland and Penrith and dottedacross the outer western suburbs of Sydney, and one in Frankston and Belgraveand the Mornington Peninsula in Victoria, and one in Ipswich and FortitudeValley in Queensland and right up the coast, and reactors across Adelaide andliberally scattered over Perth and five of them in Tasmania.
Most Australians would not need to be more than a few kilometresfrom a nuclear reactor; only people living in regional communities would livesome distance from one — unless they got two or three of them. By leveragingoff the advantages of SMRs, this is the sensible and fair solution to theCoalition’s problem that people don’t want a possible nuclear accident down theroad. Everyone shares the burden equally.
