Best of the week — the five most popular stories among readers, July 22 – July 26, 2024

What were the five biggest stories of the week? Here’s what visitors to @AuManufacturing were reading. 5) Civmec and Austal join forces for landing ship bid Engineering firm Civmec and shipbuilder Austal have executed a memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to form a Joint Venture (JV) to submit a proposal to the government to support the project LAND8710…

Small modular reactors have promise. But we found they’re unlikely to help Australia hit net zero by 2050

By Ian Lowe, Griffith University and Kylie Walker, Australian National University Australia’s clean energy transition is already underway, driven by solar, wind, batteries and new transmission lines. But what about nuclear? Opposition leader Peter Dutton last month committed to building nuclear reactors on the site of retired coal plants – triggering intense debate over whether…

Best of the week — the five most popular stories among readers, July 15 – July 19, 2024

What were the five biggest stories of the week? Here’s what visitors to @AuManufacturing were reading. 5) Fortescue backpedals on green hydrogen, heads downstream Andrew Forrest’s Fortescue has backpedaled on its ambitions in green hydrogen, reorganising the mining and energy company and focusing more on familiar downstream green energy opportunities. The company, which has taken what some…

$13 million in critical minerals grants awarded to Renascor, Queensland Pacific Metals

The federal government has announced a total of $13 million in grants to Queensland Pacific Metals and Renascor Resources through the International Partnerships in Critical Minerals program. Each grant supports up to half of project costs, with $5 million to Renascor Resources for its pilot purified spherical graphite (PSG) project and $8 million to Queensland…

Without a massive grid upgrade, the Coalition’s nuclear plan faces a high-voltage hurdle

By Asma Aziz, Edith Cowan University Keeping the lights on in Australia is a complex task. Enough capacity must be ensured everywhere in the country, at every moment. Surplus in one location won’t solve shortages in another, unless we have the transmission infrastructure to transmit electricity between them. The transmission network largely consists of high-voltage…

Australia-India Strategic Research Fund backs five new projects

Round 15 of the Australia-India Strategic Research Fund (AISRF) has backed five research projects with a total of $3.8 million in grants, including those involving nanomaterials for water remediation and recycling metal from disused mobile phones. According to a statement from federal industry minister Ed Husic on Wednesday, Indian and Australian researchers were cooperating through…

Australia needs large-scale energy production – here are 3 reasons why offshore wind is a good fit

By Ty Christopher, University of Wollongong and Michelle Voyer, University of Wollongong On the weekend, an area 20km off the Illawarra coast south of Sydney became Australia’s fourth offshore wind energy zone. It’s the most controversial zone to date, with consultation attracting a record 14,211 submissions – of which 65% were opposed. The zone’s declaration…