In the context of this Australian source it's political and this particular article is casting shade on nuclear in China for local Australian reasons.
China still has plans for some 100 nuclear reactors (IIRC) with 10 or 15 under construction right now (again, ballpark as I recall) and a still standing long term goal of nuclear at 18% maybe 20% of total generation.
China already has nuclear reactors, has generations of skilled nuclear reactor technicians and a new generation in the pipeline being trained. It's also a large economy.
Australia is a great deal smaller in both population and wealth and utterly lacks any significant skill set in nuclear power generation and engineering, a handful of Australian nuclear scientists aside.
Of the two dominant Australian political parties one essentially denies AGW (climate change) is an issue and seek to do as little as possible, to this end they have proposed their "climate solution" as Nuclear!! (but much later than now, and only a few power stations, and we don't really have an actual plan like a blueprint or time table or permissions from proposed site owners, etc).
This isn't a nuclear plan, it's a plan to build more coal power station "in the meantime" and hope that one day it'll be economical in Australia to buy some "off the shelf" set and forget SMR magical thinking nuclear tech.
As a matter of pragmatic action, in the immediate short term, in an Austraian context, it makes better economic sense to put money now into rapid expansion of renewables and storage - there's even a solid government scientific body report on that.
This isn't a "let's hate nuclear" position, more a "what's the most economically feasible solution in Australia as it stands now" position.
The downplaying of China's nuclear portion of future planning here is entirely based (by my best guess) on not wanting to be seen to say "Hey, it's working in China" to an Australian readership.
It is working in China, but that has no real bearing on nuclear being a good fit in Australia at the present time.
> Australia is a great deal smaller in both population and wealth and utterly lacks any significant skill set in nuclear power generation and engineering, a handful of Australian nuclear scientists aside.
And so wouldn't it be better to put a patch on these lacks? China also had no nuclear competence, now it speaks for itself. Same stuff for the automobile market.
These shortcomings are not a problem, but an opportunity to build an industry. Otherwise with the same mentality there would be no progress.
> This isn't a nuclear plan, it's a plan to build more coal power station "in the meantime" and hope that one day it'll be economical in Australia to buy some "off the shelf" set and forget SMR magical thinking nuclear tech.
Which is equivalent to thinking you can install solar, wind and batteries all in one day. Germany has been investing for decades, hoping to remove coal-fired power plants. But so far, it hasn't succeeded.
At least, with nuclear power, you know that once you build the plant, you're sure you're going to have that energy, for now it's whishful think the rest.
> As a matter of pragmatic action, in the immediate short term, in an Austraian context, it makes better economic sense to put money now into rapid expansion of renewables and storage
And why wouldn't it be possible to do both? The most pragmatic solution would be to diversify.
> And so wouldn't it be better to put a patch on these lacks? China also had no nuclear competence, now it speaks for itself.
What's the pyramid of needs to support a sufficient number of nuclear engineers and how long is the lead up time?
China started during the Cold War and has a population and wealth of a billion+ people to draw on, Australia has considerably less.
> Which is equivalent to thinking you can install solar, wind and batteries all in one day.
We can, do, and already have been installing solar and solar batteries in Australia since the 1970s. Today we have massive solar farms going in and city scale battery parks in Adelaide, etc.
Check technical history .. nuclear power plants take a little longer and there are none at present in Australia (the existing facility is a research reactor, different kettle of neutrons).
> And why wouldn't it be possible to do both?
Australia has finite resources to invest in energy solutions, what we invest now gives better returns if put into renewables and we have a commitment to reduce emissions by 2050 that's based on a real problem.
Money we put towards nuclear delivers no power at all for decades and what would eventually result (given what we can afford) is less than we require (shortfall) and still requires money to be put to coal power now to carry us over until the time of not enough nuclear.
Have you read the CSIRO report on Australia's energy options?
China still has plans for some 100 nuclear reactors (IIRC) with 10 or 15 under construction right now (again, ballpark as I recall) and a still standing long term goal of nuclear at 18% maybe 20% of total generation.
China already has nuclear reactors, has generations of skilled nuclear reactor technicians and a new generation in the pipeline being trained. It's also a large economy.
Australia is a great deal smaller in both population and wealth and utterly lacks any significant skill set in nuclear power generation and engineering, a handful of Australian nuclear scientists aside.
Of the two dominant Australian political parties one essentially denies AGW (climate change) is an issue and seek to do as little as possible, to this end they have proposed their "climate solution" as Nuclear!! (but much later than now, and only a few power stations, and we don't really have an actual plan like a blueprint or time table or permissions from proposed site owners, etc).
This isn't a nuclear plan, it's a plan to build more coal power station "in the meantime" and hope that one day it'll be economical in Australia to buy some "off the shelf" set and forget SMR magical thinking nuclear tech.
As a matter of pragmatic action, in the immediate short term, in an Austraian context, it makes better economic sense to put money now into rapid expansion of renewables and storage - there's even a solid government scientific body report on that.
This isn't a "let's hate nuclear" position, more a "what's the most economically feasible solution in Australia as it stands now" position.
The downplaying of China's nuclear portion of future planning here is entirely based (by my best guess) on not wanting to be seen to say "Hey, it's working in China" to an Australian readership.
It is working in China, but that has no real bearing on nuclear being a good fit in Australia at the present time.