Late last Friday - a timeslot where ministers are known to announce policies they are most proud of - the Minister for Energy, Angus Taylor, ordered a parliamentary inquiry into nuclear energy.
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| Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Minister for Energy and Emissions Reduction Angus Taylor. |
In a country currently engulfed in a gas price crisis, caused by the voracious appetite of the gas industry to export cheap gas and sell Australians expensive gas, are we really willing to believe that the solution to expensive gas is even more expensive energy from nuclear reactors? While renewables keep coming down in price, nuclear is only the energy source that keeps getting more, and more, expensive over time.
And if policymakers are trying to solve an energy crisis in 2019, why would they select a form of power generation that has a legacy of expensive delays and failures and, optimistically, takes a decade to build? It just doesn't add up. Globally, reactors have taken decades. Of all nuclear reactors currently under construction, two-thirds are behind schedule and nearly half of those were delayed again in the last year.
Read the story from The Canberra Times by Richie Merzian - “We're wasting too much energy on nuclear talk.”
