Re: You can stick a spent nuclear fuel rod right up your arse
The Poms asked the French how to do it for them. They got Hinkley Point C.
Where's the water going to come from? You could build a reactor in the Yallourn Valley, provided you were prepared to sequester Melbourne's drinking water supply.
Where's the waste going to go? SA had better watch out. The only way Spud will be able to pay for his dream is if he offers to take France and China's high level waste in perpetuity. That'll teach them to make a viable renewable energy industry.
Where's the fuel going to come from? Australia's nuclear experience consists of digging uranium ore out of the ground and putting it on boats.
Doing a Hinkley Point 7 times over in Australia per Spud's dream would consume more than half of an annual GDP and not generate a single kWh of electricity until after 2040. And the UK is a country that already has a nuclear industry, and all of the supervisory government to go with it, something he has no plan to build.
Meanwhile the same policy would stop renewables installation because guess what...? If we keep building renewables at current rates, nuclear power will be uneconomic. As it is right now, a nuclear generator would literally have to pay to put energy into the grid during the day in summer, because that's normal whenever the sun is shining because of the scale of already installed renewables. Nuclear works efficiently at steady state, so you can't turn it down when electricity is not cheap but free.
And when you've finished doing all that, the nation's energy generation capacity will be smaller than it would have been if we had kept building renewables. Considering a modern economy is essentially the transformation of energy into goods and services, we're left with less economic strength to pay off the debt we went into to build it in the first place. But it's ok, the kids will be paying for it because Spud will be retired by then.
Spud has no intention of building nuclear reactors. His policy exists to placate the National Party so the Libs can continue to not have an energy policy and not have a climate change policy, while simultaneously placating the wealthy inner suburbs that have got wise to the Coalition's climate position and thrown them out on their arse for it.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
