Antinuclear

If regional communities don’t want a windfarm, why would they accept a nuclear power station?

Guardian, Gabrielle Chan, 4 June 24

The Coalition’s energy policy is leveraged on regional discontent about renewables. But many farmers don’t want nuclear in their back yard either.

Here’s the thing about the Coalition’s latest nuclear policy. It tries to use one of the most contentious issues in rural areas, which is the rollout of renewables and the electricity transmission lines to carry energy around the country, to push an even more controversial energy transition.

Because nuclear power stations would also be built in the regions. And if you’re worried about renewables, hands up who wants a nuclear reactor next door?

My generation grew up with the US-Russian cold war and the Doomsday Clock.

While the conversation and the technology of nuclear energy has moved on, the cost, complexity and construction time has not, as the CSIRO found in a report released last month………………………

If there is one thing that I have learned from calling a country town home, it is that people are very attached to their place and how it is identified.

Not everyone opposes renewables but there is a significant portion of people who don’t want them in their own back yard. Others are quietly making their fortunes, having struck the formula for drought-proofing their businesses for decades to come. If the Big Dry strikes, you will probably find them on a beach somewhere.

That is because annual payments to host turbines start from $40,000 each though I know of agreements that are much higher, especially when communities collectively bargain. The New South Wales government pays landowners $200,000 to host transmission lines in annual instalments over 20 years, with Victoria paying the same over 25 years.

Those payments have crept up because of ongoing regional protests. That action has been amplified by poor community consultation from some energy companies highlighted in the Australian Energy Infrastructure Commissioner Andrew Dyer’s report. He found the rollout had created “material distrust” of developers in some communities.

Discontent is also being amplified for political purposes, including by David Littleproud, Barnaby Joyce and Matt Canavan, who spoke at a rally against renewables at parliament house.

The politics is clear. For starters, the long lead time kicks the nuclear energy can down the road to 2040. The Liberals cannot walk naked into the next election without at least a fig leaf for a net zero policy. The Nationals, on the other hand, don’t give a toss about net zero. They just want to extract the funding from the Liberals in compensation for hosting any technology that delivers on the net zero promise. Nuclear can be that fig leaf.

It is also true the Nats and the country Liberals will have to wear any pushback on where nuclear facilities are placed. They won’t be able to campaign against their own policy like some do on renewables.

Peter Dutton has not, as yet, specifically named any potential sites for a nuclear power station but he has pointed to current coal production facilities that are due to close. His announcement is imminent, perhaps even after the party room meeting on Tuesday.

Possible sites include the Hunter Valley in NSW; Anglesea and Latrobe Valley in Victoria; Port Augusta in South Australia; Collie in Western Australia; and perhaps Tarong in central Queensland – within Littleproud’s Maranoa electorate.

Since then the game has begun to get Coalition MPs to commit to host or rule out a reactor in their own back yard.

This is a bit silly really, because apart from the ACT, which renewable-supporting metropolitan MPs could commit to hosting a wind turbine or a solar farm in their city seats?

Littleproud and Joyce have both indicated their approval to host a reactor. But a dozen others would not commit when asked by Nine newspapers.

Keith Pitt told Nine he supported lifting the moratorium on nuclear power but, alas, there were technical restrictions, including earthquakes in his electorate. But if Pitt is worried about his area, other MPs might be scurrying to the Geoscience Australia map of faultlines for their own get-out-of-jail-free card.

Pitt’s seat of Hinkler looks like a shoo-in compared to the faultlines under Darren Chester’s Gippsland electorate, which covers the Latrobe Valley in Victoria, or the Liberal MP Rick Wilson’s seat of O’Connor, which covers Collie in WA…………………………………………..

Once you combine the feelings of the existing populations with younger populations, does that add up to support for nuclear over renewables in these changing back yards? I wouldn’t bet on it.  https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/article/2024/jun/04/liberal-coalition-nuclear-power-plant-policy-renewable-energy

June 4, 2024 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | politics | energy, news, nuclear, nuclear-energy, nuclear-power