Comment on Australian governments subsidising fossil fuel use by more than $30,000 a minute, analysis finds
FreedomAdvocate@lemmy.net.au 2 days agoThe sun is an amazing source of energy……when it’s hitting solar panels, solar panels that are incredibly inefficient and inconsistent. It’s the times when the sun isn’t up that is the bigger issue, and it’s one that there currently is no feasible solution to that runs entirely on “renewables”. I say “renewables” in quotes because none of the things that make harnessing the suns power (or the wind or waters) and storing it is actually renewable, all relying on endless destructive mining of non-renewable materials along with endless dumping of non-recyclable and hazardous material. That’s not even mentioning the sheer land area needed to go full “renewable only”, or the costs and time it would take to get there.
Nuclear is the only viable option to go carbon neutral. Unfortunately we’re going to destroy the country physically and economically before everyone realises this.
shads@lemy.lol 2 days ago
I’m not going to get too deeply into this because frankly I am not qualified. However people who I know that are well informed have talked about what it will take to overcome the cost and lead time issues with nuclear. Apparently there are two methods, one is we all agree to pay, A LOT, to cover the capital expenditure required to get a functional nuclear grid off the ground. The other involves a time machine and a jaunt back to the late 70s early 80s to squeeze an extra generation of nuclear R&D in.
Nuclear is either a great long term goal, or a smoke screen.
Just using publicly available figures, in 2025 worldwide nuclear generated 2667 TWh. In 2024 Australias energy generation was 265 TWh. So we would need to generate 10% of the total worldwide nuclear output just to supply demand in Australia. That’s a phenomenal amount of construction we would need just to match today’s demand.
Plus have you seen the amount of material involved in constructing a nuclear powerplant, they don’t grow on trees and they are certainly not small. And yes I know we get to talk about SMRs now, they aren’t ready yet, and will only ever be a component in an energy mix.
Inevitably when we talk about 20-50 year lead times and trillion dollar investments to meet current demand if we go nuclear the offered solution is to maintain coal and gas, put all that together and the economy and ecology arguments don’t seem to hold water.
Plus you seem to assume renewable generation and storage technology are not improving at a rate of knots. Or that we can’t recycle and remanufacture. Plus as we are all about to experience, local production and distribution are often significantly more resilient than highly centralised networks.
Australia should have owned solar technology, we did so much of the initial work to make it mass manufacturable but we as a Country gave up on it because the people who actually make money off our resources didn’t want anything upsetting the coal applecart. It’s too late for us to be the technology and industrial leaders in this sector, let’s not fail to embrace it as consumers just so we can continue to line the same pockets.
Plus so much of this is ideological. I honestly have no fixed preference when it comes to which technology we use going forward. If a sound case could be made for nuclear energy being the absolute best way to go forward I would give it my full backing, but it’s just not there. And I really don’t want my power to be 8x more expensive at wholesale level (who knows how much on my power bill) just so team nuclear gets to have the win.