Four Reasons Why Nuclear Power is a Dumb Idea for Australia
Engineering with Rosie
95.4K subscribers
May 7, 2024
Nuclear energy in Australia was until recently off the table. But it’s now found its way back into conversation, championed by the conservative opposition party. Under the leadership of Peter Dutton, there's a push to integrate nuclear power as a backbone for Australia's renewable energy future. His vision includes swift construction timelines for large reactors, and small modular reactors once that technology matures. And they are specifically targeting the sites of our retiring coal plants to take advantage of existing infrastructure.
The first obstacle that these nuclear plans face is that nuclear power is currently banned in Australia. Back in 1998, the Howard government wanted to secure a nuclear research reactor at Lucas Heights near Sydney. To do so, they needed support from the Greens party, who made a deal to support the research reactor if a nationwide ban on nuclear power plants was introduced at the same time. So it was banned and remains so today. But what if this ban were lifted? Should we then embrace nuclear for our energy future? The answer, quite simply, is no. It's a dumb idea for Australia.
And I'm not just throwing around words here; there are solid reasons behind this bold claim. Four, to be precise: it's too slow, it doesn't play nicely with wind and solar, it's too expensive and it solves problems that we don't have in Australia.
Do I think nuclear power should be banned here? No, I think it should be allowed a level playing field with other energy technologies, to allow a fair fight. Like most people, I want the cheapest clean electricity possible. And for any one of the reasons I’ve mentioned, nuclear would lose this fair fight. Add them all up and there is absolutely zero chance we’ll ever have nuclear power in Australia.
I’m not a nuclear hater, I think nuclear makes a lot of sense in countries that have the kinds of problems I mentioned in the last part of this video. I’m working on a longer nuclear video with a more global perspective currently, so please feel free to leave your angry comments about how I was unfair to nuclear in this video in the comments so I can make sure that one is nicely rounded.
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