Star Wars or Hobbiton: where does Australia stand on nuclear?

The result is that South Australia currently produces over 70 percent of its power from gas, and in NSW and Victoria, similar amounts from black and brown coal, respectively.

If the gas and coal are removed, what amount of storage would be required to make up the difference? What additional amount of solar and wind would need to be built specifically to charge the storage? How long could the storage discharge energy before it needs to be recharged? And what if you miscalculate any of these because this was a one-in-a-hundred-year event?

Time for a Nuclear Push

So attention is now shifting to other solutions, and nuclear is the standout.

It can be dropped into the existing grid, so it requires no additional network. It doesn't require storage as a backup. It runs 24/7 over 90 percent of the time.

What's more, the advent of small nuclear reactors (SMRs) adds an additional degree of comfort.

I realised this when the supercarrier USS Ronald Reagan docked in Brisbane in 2019, a spent cartridge's throw away from Brisbane's most expensive real estate, and no one even whimpered.

Yet here was a ship powered by two small modular reactors of 70 megawatts (MW) each.

Back in the 60s, it would have been met by a rainbow-coloured flotilla of hippies in canoes and surf skis protesting its presence. In the 2010s, it was the site of a pleasant Sunday afternoon for Brisbane families touring its facilities.

Nuclear is the only technology that is genuinely low CO2 emitting, and SMRs at 70 MW in size are so anonymous that no one cares, even if it is just down the road.

This is an ideal issue for the opposition, as the party of material progress, to pick up.

The community is simultaneously worried about climate change and cost-of-living, and it is willing to contemplate the technically feasible rather than the impractically fantastic.

Dutton wants to be seen as the adult in the room. He's made a good start on that and is gradually improving in the polls.