The headline and text of this article were amended on 24 March 2025 after the Guardian was notified of a significant calculation error in the Queensland Conservation Council research. An earlier version said the dams that supply the proposed Callide and Tarong nuclear plants “could not access enough water” to cool them in the event of a meltdown; our article has been amended in line with the organisation’s revised analysis.
Source: bottom of amended article.
Australia is still heavily reliant on coal. Anything anti-nuclear can be seen as pro-coal, which is obviously horrid for the environment: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_Australia
Anything anti-nuclear can be seen as pro-coal
I saw in your profile history that you’re not Australian, so you can be forgiven for not understanding the reality on the ground here.
But this is very much not accurate. In fact, the exact opposite is true. Being pro-nuclear is correlated with being pro-coal. The reason is simple: nuclear is a delaying tactic. Australia is extremely well-suited to renewable energy, and for over a decade we’ve had studies saying that it would be cheaper to fully embrace renewables than to convert to nuclear. And renewables have only gotten cheaper since then.
Nuclear, on the other hand, would take easily a decade to actually deliver, between politics, planning, approval, building, and testing. And that’s if it didn’t get stalled out. Australia, today, doesn’t have any nuclear industry. I think there’s one small plant in Sydney used for scientific or medical purposes, but we would be essentially creating an entire new industry in our country from scratch. That’s neither cheap nor fast.
In Australia, supporting nuclear energy is a way of delaying much-needed action against climate change.
That’s only for nuclear from scratch, and it’s still better for baseload than renewables. However all coal plants can be converted to nuclear plants, usually saves half the time and much of the cost.
better for baseload
I’mma stop you right there. The need for baseload is a myth. And that’s a fact we’ve known for over a decade. (During which time, again…renewables and storage have only gotten cheaper and better.)
That’s really not a valid conclusion from their research; from their own admission they need hydro ‘batteries’ or “renewable” natural gas turbines. The former is more expensive and longer to build than nuclear, the latter is the same type of myth as clean coal or carbon capture.
You could have a mix of renewables that theoretically covers all energy demands, but that would include massive batteries and likely geothermal, the former being arguably a huge waste of limited resources, the latter having similar geographic limitations to traditional hydro (which itself is a nightmare for the environment, at least hydro batteries tend not to fuck with rivers).
Fair point re: starting nuclear from scratch and politics, but I guess my question is why haven’t renewables taken off then? If it makes sense economically and has less regulatory friction, wouldn’t private businesses have started selling renewable energy by now?
They do… South Australia is almost entirely renewable, with natural gas generators as a backup if required
Thought this was BS, looks like it’s legit. TIL
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_South_Australia#Renewable_energy
Given the years of our previous federal government, i can understand it sounding like BS. Aside from this, some major providers have been refusing to extend the life of coal plants because it doesn’t make sense vs renewables
There is growing private industry support for renewables. Far more than there is for nuclear, for sure. As just one example, over a third of households in Australia have solar panels installed. That’s including all the people who literally can’t get solar because they’re in apartment buildings. In fact, it’s gotten to the point that the Energy Market Operator is calling for the ability to turn off solar remotely, because too much is being generated, and fossil fuel plants don’t like that. Feed-in tariffs for solar have already been drastically reduced to discourage people feeding solar power into the grid.
But for now, fossil fuels are still much cheaper than either, and the private sector is not generally known for its long-term outlook. It doesn’t help that our government, even our more left-leaning Labor Party, are heavily influenced by the fossil fuel lobby.
Edit: whoops. Initially said “there’s more private investment for renewables than there is for renewables”, which is obviously nonsense.