Whilst I'd like to see us get nuclear power up and running, I also do not want to see it happen under Voldemort. I'm in his electorate, and the only reason he's in is because we have a number of conservative hicks and nut jobs.
The issue Australia has is it was illegal to build a nuclear plant for far too long, and even now I would be suspicious of what the balance of opinion is for the topic on the left flank of politics. It doesn't matter what the coalition thinks when there is that level of political risk, nuclear may well be uninvestible in Australia until Labor (and the Greens) commit to it with some level of enthusiasm. I have a vague memory of Labor removing the "No Nuclear" line from their policy documents a few years ago, but that is hardly the endorsement we need for people to start risking capital.
Things like that is why I would term our energy policy an international embarrassment. Our high-tech play is "no". Our solar tech play is "people got so sick of the grid they bought panels from China and installed them themselves". Which is better than it could be, but crikey it is not good policy on the energy regulation front. I'm still horrified that this seems to be doing well compared to the Europeans.
I find myself wondering something along the lines of: if it's 10-15 years to build a nuclear power plant, that's potentially 3, possibly 4 governments. How will a single power plant project make it through, let alone e 2, 3, 4.
Additionally, at that time will we see breakthroughs in fusion technology that means we are building into old tech? Not that this point can be helped without a crystal ball, bit it certainly wouldn't surprise me. Penance for 60 years of inaction and lack of commitment to nuclear technology?
I really don't see it myself. Particularly when we look at the Gillard government which had to rely on the Greens to get legislation through and that ended up with them negotiating a carbon tax. That sort of action against the nuclear industry can completely scupper a plant. There is huge sovereign risk in these things that we've seen materialise in Ukraine/the USSR, Germany and Japan. Even to a lesser extent in the UK and US with their approval processes. With a global record like that, I really don't see how the coalition's opinion matters in Australia; they've always been lightly pro-nuclear. Labor's opinions matters, and the Greens to an uncomfortable extent for an investor.
The energy from the wind farms built over the last few years are priced of a Contracts for Difference basis i.e. if energy price is under a set price we pay the operator, if it’s over the operator pays us
The largest impact on electricity prices has been the war in Ukraine, and as electricity prices are set by the highest cost generator then domestic prices have risen (and fallen) in line with oil / gas prices
What’s clear though is the renewables are cheaper than oil and gas for electricity generation and are largely stable enough to meet demand (we also have the option of importing from France or Scandinavia for non-fossil fuel produced electricity)
In this post you've identified that the UK had given marginal pricing power of already costly energy to Ukraine (a highly corrupt country 3 borders away, poor and as it turns out in a geopolitical hotspot). The UK has not only no ability to keep the region stable. In fact it's foreign policy has been assisting the US in escalating the conflict by pouring in weapons and military aid in to the region.
That suggests indefensibly stupid energy policy. It is hard to fail worse than that without week-long blackouts. This is something that India and China have managed not to suffer from and they're managing energy for a population of >2 billion people. China is also doing better than the UK on a per capita basis just to really rub salt in to the wounded pride, using a mix of technologies that the UK couldn't hope to match.
1) Australia's energy situation is humiliating. We've been gifted what might be the most unreasonably energy-rich land in the world and have managed to build this 2nd-rate grid that is not operating anywhere close to the efficiency we could manage. It is so bad that people would often rather go almost off-grid with solar than deal with the costs we manage to impose on ourselves for no obvious reason. We're also technophobes over here, being the only advanced economy that didn't even have the expertise to build a commercial nuclear reactor and having succeeded to an impressive extent in driving any local solar panel expertise off shore to China.
2) Germany's per-capita (and total; their population isn't shrinking) electricity generation has rolled back 50 years of progress into the modern era [0]. I want to reap the opposite of whatever benefits they are reaping, I like to look at their energy stats because it makes Australia look well managed, by comparison. Last time I checked they had the most expensive power in Europe.
3) The UK is also obviously being squeezed for energy availability [1] and appears to be worse off than Germany (!). In line with a lot of other European countries that are struggling.
The problem renewables have with this history isn't some sort of "negative sentiment campaigns". The problem appears to be that their track record is appalling and was pushed by a bunch of people who are now in the history books for woefully mismanaging the key input for modern comfort and prosperity. It looks like the future is going to be different because a rational person would choose to be involved now; but the outcomes so far are eye-wateringly bad. The image commercial renewables have is both unreasonably good and improving remarkably quickly given the circumstances we came from; fortunately capitalists are very forgiving to things that start making money.
[0] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/per-capita-electricity-ge...
[1] https://ourworldindata.org/energy/country/united-kingdom