ESSAY 5: ENDING ENERGY WARFARE – NUCLEAR POWER
Essay 1 included the following statement:
“If there is price to protect the planet’s climate, let us spend it by publicly investing in clean reliable nuclear energy. This responds to both sides of argument and offers affordable reliable power for industry.”
Background
Whatever one’s view on climate change, it is time MPs rid us of its political divisiveness. Our past five Prime Ministers (Rudd, Gilliard, Rudd, Abbott, Turnbull) all lost office largely due to ructions over climate change (Editor’s Note: On 21 May 2022, Mr Morrison became our 6th PM unable to resolve climate debate). The prioritisation of climate change has been to the detriment, of national focus on other matters which (unlike the climate), government can actually impact.
Our country has lost over 15 years in futile political debate between climate change ‘believers’ and ‘deniers’, arguing over who can best foretell the future. If the past is our best guide, we look set to continue the same debate, but with ‘renewable backers’ and ‘engineering sceptics’ as our main ‘believers / deniers’.
Common Sense observes that whatever global scientific consensus exists over climate change, no mention is ever made of corresponding global engineering consensus, over the propensity for solar and wind power to displace fossil fuels. The absence of such global engineering consensus is no surprise, as no major developed nation anywhere in Eurasia or the Americas, is contemplating displacing fossil fuels, predominantly with solar and wind power. All of those developed nations have access to (i) cross-border energy backups; (ii) material hydro-electricity options; and/or (iii) nuclear power.
It is true that compared to most of those developed nations, Australia’s geographic size relative to population, provides opportunity for widespread dispersal of solar and wind power sources. It is true that this mitigates against their inherent intermittency. It is also true that these same factors are the nub of the concerns of a number of articulate Australian electrical engineers, that the bipartisan plan of Australia’s Government and Opposition, for solar and wind power to dominate our future energy generation (whatever their admitted technical capacity to do so) is unaffordable nirvana.
Early adoption of nuclear power lessens the need for broad-blanket investment in renewables. It would provide a buffer against the extent of any sunk costs we come to regret, having too heavily invested in renewables, if in the fullness of time the ‘engineering sceptics’ prove correct. And it would help keep more, not less money available for investment in nuclear energy, for Australia’s care of our planet.
From that perspective, our early investment in nuclear energy does not deny a role for renewables. It is mere prudence, in not having all eggs in one basket.
If developing countries (eg India and Bangladesh) can afford to build nuclear power plants and France can export nuclear power across a continent, then so can Australia. Our federal politicians should heed this recent outcome, of the problems arising in Europe from efforts to replace fossil fuels with renewables:
“In a shift, the French President on Tuesday night, Paris time (Wednesday morning AEDT) said the country would rededicate itself to atomic power” (The Sydney Morning Herald, 10 November 2021)
Chris Kenny has summarised our political situation as well as anyone (The Australian, 18 September 2021):
“Whatever individuals might think about global warming, different assessments of the rates of change or the harm and benefits from warming, and the myriad policy options proposed to deal with the issue, there is one fact that seems plain; the world is going to decarbonise. The weight of political, diplomatic, business, shareholder and social pressure is all pushing towards net zero; for good or ill, that is where we are heading, sooner or later.
If it can be done with minimal economic and social harm, there can be little downside – as Margaret Thatcher put it – to giving the planet the benefit of the doubt. The trouble is that the so-called solutions proffered so far, of widespread renewables coupled with storage, are both financially devastating and practically impossible, so that they promise maximum pain with no gain.
The challenge is pretty clear, a global need for more energy, not less, and it needs to be reliable, affordable, and sustainable (or emissions free). There is only one form of energy that meets all three criteria – nuclear.”
If any view in climate debates should be derided as ‘opinion of dinosaurs’, is it ‘scepticism’ as to whether recent and future technologies can guarantee that renewable power sources will in the future provide Australia with an affordable electricity system, or is it ‘denial’ that nuclear power has for decades now on a daily basis, been safely delivering affordable electricity to peoples’ homes throughout Europe, Asia and America?
Proposals
Federal legislation change, which gives our planet, the ‘benefit of any doubt’:
(i) Remove the words ‘a nuclear power plant’ both from Section 10(1) of the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Act 1998 and from Section 140A(1) of the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 (which preclude our nation’s use of nuclear power);
Two federal funding proposals, which also give our planet, the ‘benefit of any doubt’:
(ii) Federal Government commitment to majority funding (80%:20%), of ‘build costs’ of nuclear power plants, to such mainland states as choose to accept it (in principle) no later than one month after their next election.
(iii) Federal Government commitment to fully and immediately fund one (only one) university faculty as the nation’s primary institution for advancement of our nuclear industry, in whichever mainland state in the National Electricity Market (NSW, QLD, SA or VIC) first agrees (in principle) to the ‘80:20’ proposal.
Transition
Nuclear energy is a long term project. The two funding proposals, (ii) and (iii), offer a somewhat radical means of advancing its commencement.
Comments
The funding proposals exemplify how Australia can deploy ‘competitive federalism’ for our national (nuclear) advancement.
Common Sense concurs with bipartisan support of the Federal Government and the Opposition for the coal industry (specifically, the solidarity of the Labor Party, the Liberal Party and The Nationals, in favour of Australia’s ongoing export of bithumous – black – coal, for both thermal and metallurgical purposes).
Counter arguments
Proposals merely advance debate, to where people in each state, must in turn debate, if their state will host generation of nuclear energy. (Logical spots for major nuclear power plants are sites of closing coal-fired power plants, given their historical community role and their existing transmission infrastructure).
For and on behalf of Common Sense for Australia Inc
Authorised for publication, 11 November 2021
Further Reading:
Clare Lehmann, The Australian, 22 July 2022: Safest, cleanest option for energy future is nuclear