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Where do you get that from? Wishful thinking? I have heavily promoted nuclear in the past, when it was cheaper and renewables were very expensive.

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That is what I have been saying all along. Except with a carbon tax. But you can't let the market decide to build a nuclear power plant in Penrith. And you can't let the market decide to ignore the cost of storing nuclear waste.

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It allows the market to decide how to reduce GHG emissions, not whether. Some things the market will inevitably fail at, such as taking into account the impact of emissions on the global climate, the cost of long term storage of nuclear waste, or the risk associated with a nuclear reactor in a densely populated area.

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We are not. On a per capita basis, we have benefitted from coal fired power stations more than Chinese citizens ever will, and are still emitting far more CO2. If you compare yourself to a group of 100 people, you are likely to find you do about 1% of the bad things that they do, but complaining about it just makes it look like you cannot do the maths.

Not that it has any relevance to whether we build nuclear power stations. Chinese building coal fired power stations is not a rational argument for us to build nuclear.

freediver wrote on Oct 5^th, 2025 at 7:38pm:



The only advances in science have come from those who disagreed with the consensus.

freediver wrote on Oct 5^th, 2025 at 7:38pm:


To keep themselves in jobs. They may differ on means to arrive at a conclusion, it doesn't mean they want a different conclusion.

freediver wrote on Oct 5^th, 2025 at 7:38pm:



Not at all. As I said No scientists. 

freediver wrote on Oct 5^th, 2025 at 7:38pm:


And how much overbuild will that take? Cover Australia in  them?

freediver wrote on Oct 5^th, 2025 at 7:38pm:


Then you have to have the figures to back them up.

According to Lazard LCOE of components High End -

Wind - onshore $75
Wind - offshore $140
Solar -  Utility scale $96

Nuclear - $221

And that doesn't account for intermittency as Lazard notes.

freediver wrote on Oct 6^th, 2025 at 3:21pm:


Nope. The earth as the centre of the earth, overturned, you can't extend something that is wrong.

freediver wrote on Oct 6^th, 2025 at 3:21pm:


Very good. Then how much overbuild is necessary? Put a figure on it. It is your claim.

Here is the best explanation of the real cost of 'renewables' I have seen. A 24 minute presentation but well worth looking at:

https://youtu.be/Oit8pzyqL3U?t=2 

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You are getting closer to a sensible question Lee.

How much do we want to spend on cars?

"According to a July 2023 report from Net Zero Australia (a consortium from the University of Melbourne, University of Queensland, Princeton University, and management consultancies Nous and Evolved Energy), the cost of meeting the 82% RET would be $1.2 to $1.5 trillion by the end of this decade, with $7 trillion to $9 trillion in capital required by 2060 to meet Australia’s goal of net zero by 2050.


Source: Net Zero Australia

Much of this predicted cost is attributed to the huge amounts of storage required to offset the inherent intermittancy of wind and solar:



The intermittency of renewable energy is especially noticeable in the winter, when solar generation is low and there are typically long periods of low wind.

The Snowy Hydro 2.0 pumped hydro project is a microcosm of the cost and difficulty of achieving the ‘net zero’ fantasy.

Snow Hydro 2.0 aims to use surplus renewable energy generated during the day (mostly solar) to pump water up to an elevated reservoir, which is then released at night or during wind droughts to provide hydroelectricity when renewable generation is unavailable.

The cost of Snowy Hydro 2.0 has skyrocketed to unimaginable levels.

The former Turnbull Coalition government initially announced that the project would cost $2 billion and be finished by 2021. The government increased the cost to $6 billion, then $12 billion by 2023.

Problems persist, however, with Snowy Hydro 2.0 still under construction and years behind schedule. As a result, taxpayers are facing further cost blowouts and delays.

Snowy Hydro chief executive Dennis Barnes last week indicated that the cost blowout is so great that it will take 9 months to fully quantify.

“We have gradually come to the realisation, and then quickly come to the realisation that we’re not going to achieve the schedule at target cost of $12bn”, Barnes said.

“We need some time to do a proper analysis of what the final cost will be, but it was clear as we were finalising our annual report that we weren’t going to be able to achieve the $12 billion”.

Snowy Hydro admitted productivity improvements have not been delivered as expected, and the project can no longer absorb the costs associated with the “geological challenges”, which have ranged from rock too hard to penetrate to land too soft to drill.

To add salt to wounds, Snowy Hydro 2.0 will be linked via the 365-kilometer HumeLink in southwest New South Wales. This ‘green’ project is also behind schedule, and the estimated cost has risen to about $5 billion.

HumeLink was originally pitched at $1.3 billion by Transgrid before official estimates put it at $3.27 billion in 2021 and then $4.88 billion in 2024, when its carrying capacity was also reduced from 2.6 gigawatts to 2.2 gigawatts.

While construction on HumeLink has finally commenced, it has not yet secured all its landowner agreements."

https://www.macrobusiness.com.au/2025/10/snowy-hydro-2-0-and-the-soaring-cost-of...