• BadlyDrawnRhino @aussie.zone
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    18 days ago

    There’s an important bit of context for this that you probably aren’t aware of, being from America, and that is that Australia doesn’t currently have any nuclear power capabilities whatsoever. We have zero reactors currently, and zero expertise.

    While I can’t be sure because I’m not from the CSIRO, I imagine their projections take the significant cost of introducing brand new technology into account.

    Another bit of context, our conservative party is currently pushing for nuclear as the only option, claiming that it’ll be the cheapest. They want to gut spending on renewables because a lot of their funding comes from the mining sector. That’s why the CSIRO has done a report on the projected costs on the various options, because that’s how the conservative party is framing things. Is nuclear better than gas from an environmental perspective? Yes. But that’s irrelevant to the conversation that is happening over here.

    • Forester@yiffit.net
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      18 days ago

      Just my two American cents.

      The Australian Royal Navy to my understanding maintains roughly somewhere between 7 and 14 nuclear-powered submarines. Your country has the technology, and the expertise to run nuclear programs but you would need to e to develope implement and import more workers in field .

      I am 100% for renewables.

      I am 100% against greenwashing gas powered stations with solar panels.

      If I was omnipowerful and could dictate what humanity does as a whole for the next few decades to fix our current power problems. I would convert at least 1/3 of the current coal and gas-fired turbines into nuclear-powered turbines. I would continuously and ruthlessly continue to develop solar wind and hydrogen based tech.

      Ideally I’d want to cover the base load with nuclear and then use renewables to desalinate and split water into hydrogen during the day and then to burn that hydrogen during the peak load at night.

      • maniacalmanicmania@aussie.zoneOP
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        18 days ago

        The Australian Royal Navy to my understanding maintains roughly somewhere between 7 and 14 nuclear-powered submarines.

        Say what now? Are you human or a LLM?

        • Forester@yiffit.net
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          18 days ago

          I do not follow Australian politics closely but I was under the impression you guys were in the middle of an arms build up because of China doing China things in the South China Sea. From what I can see on a cursory Google, you guys definitely do have strong plans to acquire nuclear-powered subs.

          For some reason I thought you guys had just purchased a bunch from France, but I’m guessing that must be someone else in the region.

          https://www.navy.gov.au/capabilities/ships-boats-and-submarines/nuclear-powered-submarines#%3A~%3Atext=Australia's+future+conventionally-armed%2C+nuclear%2Cthat+operate+nuclear-powered+submarines.

          Look at my post history. I’m definitely an autistic as fuck human avoiding his desk job, alternating between typing on my phone and using googles shitty auto dictation.

          • The_Decryptor@aussie.zone
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            18 days ago

            We ordered a bunch of subs from France, using a nuclear design as the base, but our government had them rip out the nuclear reactors from the design and stuff diesel engines in their place instead.

            Then they walked away from that agreement entirely and joined up with the US and UK instead.

            Edit: Oh, and the subs we’re now buying from the US, we’re getting the US to maintain them because we’ve got no capability to do so here.