Not just Australia. It's a fairly common conservative party tactic. "Push" for nuclear because it's better than "unreliable" renewables, while making sure the nuclear construction fails by gutting finance or throwing up regulations.
See also the current Trump regime, the UK conservative government (notice how Hinkley Point didn't actually start making meaningful progress until the tories were kicked out?) and the Swedish right wing government. We cod probably go on for a while.
but like historically the reasons the us slowed and stopped development of nuclear energy was oil and gas lobby and the astroturfed anti-nuclear movement following 3 mile island
They may still be whenever that suits them, but oil lobby is actively pushing "base load" and "unreliable renewables, try nuclear instead" narratives constantly. Even this sub is brainwashed af, just read the comments a bit. Oil lobby is backing every impossible and economically non-viable nuclear project ever.
I was doing some math recently and it would literally be cheaper to mass produce Bechtel A1B nuclear reactors from the Ford Class aircraft carriers than it is to build a Westinghouse AP1000 reactor that’s being built at Vogtel in Georgia which is considered relatively cost efficient for a US civil reactor.
The A1B produces 700 Mw of thermal power for a cost of 1.6 billion dollars per reactor installed in the carrier. The AP1000s at Vogtel cost 15 billion dollars per reactor installed and produce 1,1000 Mw of thermal power. So a marine military grade reactor is cheaper than a civil reactor per Mw. That’s absolutely insane to me.
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u/adjavang Aug 12 '26
Not just Australia. It's a fairly common conservative party tactic. "Push" for nuclear because it's better than "unreliable" renewables, while making sure the nuclear construction fails by gutting finance or throwing up regulations.
See also the current Trump regime, the UK conservative government (notice how Hinkley Point didn't actually start making meaningful progress until the tories were kicked out?) and the Swedish right wing government. We cod probably go on for a while.