For anyone who didn't notice: the CSIRO report above is specifically about the relative marginal costs of building nuclear vs. renewables in Australia. Austral

For anyone who didn't notice: the CSIRO report above is specifically about the relative marginal costs of building nuclear vs. renewables in Australia. Australia is in a pretty unique position, energy-wise. I wouldn't attempt to generalize the findings in this report to any other country. On the nuclear-power side: Australia does have uranium ore deposits of their own. These are currently exported to partner nations. But Australia doesn't currently have any uranium refinement capability. Australia is not a "nuclear nation." Building up such a domestic capability would have large capital costs, and large ongoing operational costs. On the renewables side: one thing Australia has tons and tons of, is "land with low property values for renewable energy generation to live on." Consider: • A majority of Australia is nearly-empty "outback." While some of this can be used for farming, most of it is inhospitable even to that use-case. Much of it is hot near-desert conditions, getting tons of sunlight throughout the year — so solar farms are super-effective here. (There is already a huge one in production, feeding energy to Papua New Guinea: https://www.power-technology.com/data-insights/power-plant-profile-hiri-solar-farm-papua-new-guinea/?cf-view https://www.power-technology.com/data-insights/power-plant-p...). And unlike hypothetical proposals to cover the Sahara in solar, the Australian outback is also "close enough" to power demand that it's economical both to visit these farms to regularly to maintain the panels, and to run and regularly mantain HV power lines to deliver the power. • Because there is so little mountainous terrain in Australia (just lowlands and higher plateaus), Australia as a whole also has high levels of predictable, directional wind — perfect for wind power generation. Same arguments apply for building wind farms as for building solar farms. Put them where nobody's going to compete for the land — probably also in the outback. • A large part of the Australian coastline is also unpopulated, and undesirable to either population or shipping — being flat stretches of rocky shore without inlets to encourage make commercial/industrial use. This sort of environment, however, is highly economical for wave-power generation!