Nuclear is certainly far better than coal, or any other fossil...

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    Nuclear is certainly far better than coal, or any other fossil fuel for that matter, when it comes to safety, but there are a number of issues with it that we will never overcome in oz. I do not believe we will ever have nuclear capacity here.

    First is the lead time and cost of building a plant. By the time it is halfway complete the regs will have changed, cost blowouts and uncertainty will plague any construction effort, except in china. Second, the treatment of spent fuel involves timescales that transcend our experience - this makes it extremely difficult to account for and compare intergenerational risk using accepted economic methodology. Third, the necessary scale means it can only be deployed in particular situations - there will never be nuclear power in WA for instance, the east coast interconnected transmission systems would need major overhauls and you will always need at least capacity +1 reactors in any system. Fourth, we have now discovered how enormous the decommissioning cost can be and that it can completely blow the economics of it. Fifth, there is very little public or political appetite for it in this country.

    We are going to do something else, like it or not, for better or worse. Let's focus on what we can do.
 
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