Thing is, Renewables are already cheap. By the time Nuclear is built, batteries and solar will be hugely cheaper than the price they are now.
The same thing that happened to NBN will happen to nuclear (basic Game theory). With NBN, competitors undercut the NBN with 5G, because FTTC and FTTN was so bad.
In this case, if they start building, everyone knows that power costs will be expensive, so renewable energy companies will target the prices, and encourage people to install solar and batteries anyway… If batteries are 1/5 of the price they are now, everyone will simply install 5x more batteries, more panels (because they’ll also be more efficient and cheaper than they are now, and work during worse conditions) and remove themselves from the grid. From a game theory point of view, Solar/batteries have a 10-15 year head start and are already cheaper.
I bought my 6.6kw panels maybe 3 years ago, and 10kw is apparently already cheaper. If I wait 5 years, 15-20kw will probably be cheap (and I have more than enough roof space, so the only thing limiting me would be weather the power company allows it)
I have no idea why anyone would want a centralised grid. Last major power outage here in Victoria during storms was triggered because Loy Yang coal fell offline, and non-solid state power generation takes ages to come back online (it needs to sync up to the grid). Solar and batteries sync up immediately, so
dgriffith@aussie.zone 2 weeks ago
Link the east and west coast grids to let afternoon solar on the west coast flatten the evening east coast peaks, pick a big old chunk of desert in South Australia for wind and solar, throw in a few gigabatteries and tart up some hydro systems, done.
Probably only be $10-15 billion or so.