Antinuclear

Inside the nuclear influence machine

Is the push for nuclear power in Australia more stalking horse for coal than a genuine alternative for a clean energy future? Here’s how the nuclear cabal is working its pitch

THE FIFTH ESTATE, MURRAY HOGARTH, 29 May 24

There’s a sophisticated, well funded strategy underway to prolong coal and gas and eventually take Australia down the nuclear road.

Documents unearthed by The Fifth Estate lay bare how funding for the strategy, now in motion, is coordinated by a coal mining leader from Queensland, working with possibly Australia’s most  influential conservative think tank, and also a key member of Australia’s unofficial nuclear club.

For this to work, the Liberal-National coalition needs to win back political power at the next federal election due by May next year.

• A key conservative think tank aims to keep coal until nuclear power arrives 
• Its energy security argument is echoed by Peter Dutton as coalition policy
• A Queensland coal baron mustered donors to fund this influence machine

As things stand, nuclear power is currently prohibited in Australia, and the Labor government is committed to fast-tracking a renewables-led energy transition and says it has no plans to lift the ban.

Canberra retreat

The documents we’ve obtained and refer to in this article are the script and slides from a revealing energy security project update to a private strategy retreat held in Canberra last year on 12 May 2023 by the Institute of Public Affairs (IPA).

Behind the current campaign to bring nuclear energy to Australia is a deliberate agenda to prolong coal generation and disrupt the renewables rollout

The Fifth Estate contacted the speaker and two other key IPA-connected figures identified in this story for comment on Monday 27 May, inviting on-the-record interviews and providing questions. On Tuesday evening 28 May, the IPA chief executive officer Scott Hargreaves responded by email but declined to be interviewed. Full details of that response and related information are included at the end of this article.

The Melbourne based IPA is known as Australia’s leading conservative think tank, a key influencer of Coalition policies, and breeding ground for conservative politicians.

It habitually loads speaking point bullets for coalition politicians to fire. And it looked like Opposition Leader Peter Dutton did just that when he delivered his headland nuclear policy speech at an IPA public event, just two months after the Canberra retreat on 7 July last year.

In 2023, the IPA threw an arm around one of the favourite sons of the nuclear club, University of Queensland Adjunct Professor Stephen Wilson, making him a Visiting Fellow, as part of a big new donor-funded influence project, running over three years.

A key and recurring focus of this project and subsequent related policy talking points is energy security.

The internal IPA documents, authored by Wilson, lay out what many people suspect and have alleged: that behind the current campaign to bring nuclear energy to Australia is a deliberate agenda to prolong coal generation and disrupt the renewables rollout.

The final commentary and slide in Wilson’s presentation show an IPA-orchestrated master plan for Australia to defend and preserve coal and gas in the 2020s; then build “mini and small modular reactor (SMR)” nuclear plants in the 2030s under the mantle of reaping energy security, environmental and low-cost rewards in the 2040s.

It’s a parallel universe to the view a vast number of people have of Australia’s energy future. And it’s totally at odds with the clean energy transition agenda and the federal government’s targets of  43 per cent greenhouse gas emissions reductions below 2005 levels and 82 per cent renewables by 2030.

Threat to climate targets

It’s also likely to breach Australia’s staged progress, with five yearly sub targets (for example 43 per cent by 2030, with 2035 targets due to be announced early next year, with a range of 65-75 per cent being evaluated by the Climate Change Authority), towards its bipartisan commitment to 100 per cent net zero by 2050, which was made by the former Morrison coalition government ahead of the UN Climate Summit in Glasgow in the UK in 2021.

The IPA, however, is no fan of UN processes, and as Wilson made clear in his project update notes for the IPA insiders, the aim of its strategy was definitely not to prolong a Labor government……………………………..

The coal connection

Wilson also identified in the presentation who was pulling together the funding for his IPA project, with a bit of ideological explanation to set the scene:…………………………………………………………………….

Bring on Peter Dutton

The private IPA retreat in Canberra on 12 May last year was followed less than two months later by Dutton’s major speech to launch the coalition’s new energy security themed nuclear policy. This was delivered at a public IPA event in Sydney on 7 July.

Dutton’s speech mirrors the theme

Dutton’s headland nuclear speech substantially mirrored the energy security theme and language from the IPA retreat. And it also picked up on themes from earlier “nuclear club”events and activities, a number of them involving Stephen Wilson. If Australia’s nuclear club has anyone it would like to make its intellectual rock star, it’s Wilson. 

Dutton’s IPA speech directly referenced Wilson, most significantly:

Professor Wilson says that we must stop procrastinating and prepare real options to deploy nuclear energy in case we need them. Countries are queuing up to put in their orders. Australia could have SMRs [small modular reactors] installed within a decade.

Wilson also confirmed his presentation to the IPA retreat in the video of another IPA event earlier this year, its 2024 Generation Liberty IPA Academy aimed at young conservatives, and relayed how Dutton had quoted him on a couple of occasions, expressing some surprise, saying, “I didn’t know he was going to do that.” (Dutton’s 7 July speech also quoted three other nuclear club regulars, as well as Wilson.)

Since then, SMRs have been a disappointment. Very inconveniently for Dutton and Wilson, the US showcase for new and thus far commercially-unproven SMR-design nuclear power stations, the NuScale project in Idaho, was cancelled in November last year due to cost overruns and lack of electricity buyer interest.

NuScale’s chief executive officer was reported as saying: “Once you’re on a dead horse, you dismount quickly. That’s where we are here.”

On message for energy security

However insecure the NuScale experience sounds, it’s worth remembering that the core theme of Wilson’s earlier 12 May IPA presentation, based on the notes and slides, was energy security. That was also a central theme of Dutton’s 7 July IPA speech:………………………………………………………………

The future of the nation and Western civilisation as we know it

On a geo-political note, national security was weighing heavily on Wilson’s mind on 12 May, as it did for Dutton on 7 July. According to Wilson’s speaking notes, at stake was nothing less than the future of the nation and Western civilisation as we know it:…………………………………………………………………..

Nuclear club bona fides

To be clear, this is the same Stephen Wilson who joined Queensland Liberal MP Ted O’Brien, Dutton’s Shadow Minister for Climate Change and Energy, and other nuclear club players, on a so-called “due diligence” study tour to the US and Canada in January-February 2023.

As Wilson’s slide deck for the IPA Canberra Retreat showed, the study tour group visited major nuclear industry companies, government representatives, lobbyists and campaign organisations. (Ted and friends’ excellent nuclear adventure in North America will feature in other upcoming articles in The Nuclear Files.)

By his own account, judging by a number of publicly available videos, Wilson imbibed deeply in the North American nuclear sector Kool-Aid, riffing off a theme he picked up on the US study tour, to proclaim that: energy security IS national security.

That became the inspiration for a key paper he published with the IPA on 1 November 2023, titled Energy security is national security. Its 1 November 2023 launch, in London on the perimeters of a global gathering of about 1500 ultra-conservatives, is another story coming soon from The Nuclear Files.

The Fifth Estate’s questions to key players in this story

The Fifth Estate provided these questions to IPA CEO Scott Hargreaves early on Monday afternoon:………………………………………………………………………………

The nuclear story, then and now, in brief

Nuclear power has been considered for Australia numerous times over the past nearly 70 years, from the 1950s, but has never happened, mainly for economic reasons. Historically because of the low cost and wide availability of coal, and now it is the low cost of renewables. This month the 2024 CSIRO GenCost report found that traditionally designed large scale nuclear power stations would cost at least 50 per cent more than solar and wind backed by batteries, and take at least 15+ years to develop, and more technically-advanced Small Modular Reactors (SMRs) could be four to six  times more expensive than renewables.

On ABC Radio Sydney on Wednesday morning, 29 May, Opposition nuclear frontman Ted O’Brien was pressed on the timing for release of the coalition’s highly anticipated nuclear policy, and insisted it would be revealed “in due course”. He confirmed that the coalition wanted to replace coal-fired power stations, as they exit the electricity grid, with nuclear ones, and that gas generation would fill any gap (which could be one to two decades) between coal shutting down and nuclear starting up.  https://thefifthestate.com.au/columns/columns-columns/the-nuclear-files/inside-the-nuclear-influence-machine/

May 30, 2024 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | politics