> Australia is a great deal smaller in both population and wealth and utterly lacks any significant skill set in nuclear power generation and engineering, a handful of Australian nuclear scientists aside.

And so wouldn't it be better to put a patch on these lacks? China also had no nuclear competence, now it speaks for itself. Same stuff for the automobile market.

These shortcomings are not a problem, but an opportunity to build an industry. Otherwise with the same mentality there would be no progress.

> This isn't a nuclear plan, it's a plan to build more coal power station "in the meantime" and hope that one day it'll be economical in Australia to buy some "off the shelf" set and forget SMR magical thinking nuclear tech.

Which is equivalent to thinking you can install solar, wind and batteries all in one day. Germany has been investing for decades, hoping to remove coal-fired power plants. But so far, it hasn't succeeded.

At least, with nuclear power, you know that once you build the plant, you're sure you're going to have that energy, for now it's whishful think the rest.

> As a matter of pragmatic action, in the immediate short term, in an Austraian context, it makes better economic sense to put money now into rapid expansion of renewables and storage

And why wouldn't it be possible to do both? The most pragmatic solution would be to diversify.