The Climate, Environment and Energy Thread

[LP]

Australia would be building them around the coast  near water supply and building them in safe areas to offset rising sea levels. You would expect Desalination and probably Hydrogen Production to also feature as part of any new builds and the latter of course feeds into greener energy solutions.

If we just constrain the debate to Australia and it's situation this is 100% correct and feasible, in fact Australia is crazy not build fast breeder reactors and desalination plants hand in hand. Desalination plants have to be run 24x7 to be reliable, GW nuclear plants need a continuous base load to that they don't have to shutdown and restart, so the technologies are like peas in a pod.

Further, both desalination plants and reactors make a nice array of rare elements as by-products that are required for a whole host of advanced manufacturing techniques and medicine. At the moment ANSTO (Australain Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation) basically runs it's reactors to produce these necessary materials, which are used for many things diverse as treating cancer or manufacturing advanced sensors. They also use the associated neutron sources for advanced science and engineering techniques.