The Coalition has produced a policy! Don’t get too excited – this policy is recycled, and not in a good way – in fact it’s radioactive. Like Robert Menzies, John Howard and Tony Abbott before him, Peter Dutton wants to legalise nuclear electricity generation in Australia.
After lambasting Labor for the emissions caused by Climate Change Minister Chris Bowen attending COP28, the Liberal and National parties sent not one, not two, but seven elected representatives to the Dubai conference, or at least a sideline event designed to boost the interests of the nuclear industry. That well-known international energy expert, Lismore’s own Kevin Hogan, was one of those who joined the junket.
The group was led by the opposition’s climate change and energy spokesperson, Queenslander Ted O’Brien, who declared ‘COP28 will be known as the nuclear COP’, despite the fact that only 11 percent of countries at the Dubai talks agreed it was a good idea to triple nuclear power by 2050 as a response to the climate emergency. Apparently not everyone finds it as easy as the Coalition to forget Chernobyl, Fukushima and Three Mile Island.
The Liberals and Nationals were in the UAE at the behest of the World Nuclear Association and the Orwellian-sounding Coalition for Conservation, which has a stated goal to ‘reduce emissions and protect the environment’, as long as obvious solutions like renewable energy and reducing energy consumption are not involved.
Smoke ’em if you’ve got ’em
As part of his ongoing quest for relevance and media attention, Peter Dutton’s enthusiasm for nuclear energy has been steadily growing over the last couple of years, particularly in the form of Small (don’t be scared!) Modular Reactors, which he’s suggested might be built on defunct coal power generation sites, using plentiful Australian uranium.
The opposition leader appears to have been heartened by Labor’s wholehearted support of Scott Morrison’s very expensive AUKUS submarine thought bubble, which has further opened the nuclear crack in this country. The Nationals’ David Littleproud has jumped happily on board, saying the market should decide what sort of power generation we have in Australia, not the government.
Chris Bowen has called the Coalition’s nuclear boosters post-truth ‘climate charlatans’ with Prime Minister Anthony Albanese describing the nuclear debate as ‘a huge distraction from what we need to do’. Former PM Malcolm Turnbull and former NSW Liberal treasurer Matt Kean are also public nuclear sceptics.
As Teals-backer Simon Holmes a Court put it last week, ‘We could throw a trillion dollars at SMRs today, and they still wouldn’t be operating in the time that we need the energy to replace the coal power stations that have reached end of life.’
Despite his enthusiasm, Peter Dutton has been reluctant to explain which electorates would host the reactors, where the waste would be stored, or how to pay for the proposal, with experimental micro-reactors in Russia, China and the USA all facing major cost blowouts and delays, despite massive amounts of government assistance.
The bottom line
The CSIRO has recently said there’s no way that small modular reactors can compete economically with the plummeting costs of renewable energy technology, even without considering the political and environmental issues. Their latest detailed report found that small reactors would cost up to twice as much per kilowatt-hour as large nuclear reactors. Renewable power, by contrast, costs one eighth as much.
Theoretically safer and more economical forms of nuclear energy, such as nuclear fusion, remain at the experimental stage, where they have been for decades. Meanwhile the Australian Energy Market Operator has found that an optimum Australian grid could run almost entirely on our abundant solar and wind resources, with additional support from big batteries of various kinds, a few fast-start gas generators for emergencies, and pumped hydro.
The big problem with nuclear energy, even if all the other problems could be magically solved, is there’s no way it can be built to the required scale to handle Australia’s needs in time to do anything meaningful about the climate crisis, unless we become an ultra-wealthy dictatorship, like the UAE for example.
Maybe that’s the next Dutton policy?
Originally from Canberra, David Lowe is an award-winning film-maker, writer and photographer with particular interests in the environment and politics. He’s known for his campaigning work with Cloudcatcher Media.
Long ago, he did work experience in Parliament House with Mungo MacCallum.
For four decades The Echo has printed the stories some people loved, some people hated, and some pretended not to read. If you want us to keep telling the truth, the real truth, not the sugar-coated version. We’ll need your support to keep the presses rolling. 
