Antinuclear

Frisson vs fission in nuke fantasy vs facts

What’s hot and what’s not in the contest of ideas? The Grattan Institute reckons SMRs are too hot to handle and renewables play it cool.

by MURRAY HOGARTH, 26 November 2024,  https://thepolitics.com.au/frisson-vs-fission-in-nuke-fantasy-vs-facts/?fbclid=IwY2xjawGzOJ9leHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHdspzuMHENz02Lj8EZ5cQ2dLAjLtF07_Y9DOMfUzUO4galMDnSzr7KEP3w_aem_VAbXVviTwHaKR6W26dn-Rg

This week the quickfire Senate inquiry into a social media age ban has been hit with 15,000 submissions in a bit over 24 hours. Meanwhile, the months-long House select committee inquiry into nuclear energy is yet to hit 300.

Sure most of the social media age ban submissions will follow a template propagated by vested-interest outrage from Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, X/Twitter owner and now self-styled “First Bro” in the Trump US presidency team. But the raw numbers are a sobering reminder of what’s hot and what’s not when it comes to voter attention and the political sausage-making machine and, to borrow the new word of the year, the “enshittification” of our public policy decision-making.

Of course it’s not apples and apples to compare the social media age ban and the fate of the energy transition. The former is an impossibly subjective behavioural challenge for society, here and internationally, which could be rushed into law this week for pre-election political expediency. The latter is a far-reaching, fundamental matter of economic and environmental strategy for the nation, which will be decided one way or the other at a federal election by May at the latest.

Will it continue to be renewables-led with a gas top-up under the current Labor government? Or a switch to nuclear-led under a resurrected Coalition government, keeping dirty coal for longer and burning a lot more carbon-polluting gas for 15 to 20 years while reactors get legalised, planned and built? 

Reality bites

The last time Australia had a national nuclear energy inquiry, in 2019, about 300 submissions were received, and a number of the same interested parties are back in similar numbers for the 2024 version of the debate which has been running for more than 60 years. The too-niche nuclear contest is like that. Ideologically enduring. Factually selective. Passionately partisan. Conducted largely removed from mainstream political sentiment or awareness of detail, and also remote from economic reality. 

Yet it’s of monumental national importance, given that the energy transition will decide both the shape and success of the economy in the 21st century, and how we respond to the great global imperative of climate action and net zero decarbonisation by 2050. Which is where a relatively brief submission to the nuclear energy inquiry from the Grattan Institute, the widely respected independent public policy think-tank, becomes worthy of particular attention.  

Titled “Nuclear energy for Australia? Not Plan A and probably not Plan B”, the Grattan submission has been written by energy experts Tony Wood and Alison Reeve, and it reflects a facts-over-fantasy approach to the question it poses. For starters, it considered the same question more than a decade ago, in 2012, and finds not much has changed. Except, that is, that the Liberal-National Coalition has put nuclear energy at the heart of its climate and energy election pitch, and is leading in the national polls.

Fraught with danger

Grattan says:

“Nuclear power generation is banned in Australia. The Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Act 1998 and the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 both prohibit nuclear power. Similar prohibitions exist under the laws of every state and territory. Recent interest in nuclear power and the initiation of this inquiry have been largely triggered by a proposal from the federal Coalition for nuclear power to be part of its policy platform for the next federal election.”

Cost and technology uncertainty was (and remains) the key barrier:

“Grattan’s headline conclusion in 2012 was that uncertainty about the probable cost of nuclear power in Australia would continue until there was a weight of practical experience in deploying current reactor designs in countries with similar economic and regulatory conditions. But unlike some other countries such as the UK, Australia could afford to wait for this to happen, because Australia has multiple options to ensure its overall energy security. Given this, Australia should wait to see the economics of new nuclear deployment in other countries before considering any commitment to build nuclear power plants here.”

Fast-forward to 2024 and the picture for nuclear, the Coalition’s Plan A, remains the same:

“Since the publication of that report in 2012, little has happened to change our views. The cost of nuclear has not improved over that time, and large-scale nuclear construction timelines continue to blow out.”

But what has changed dramatically is the cost and technology picture for renewables, although that’s not without its challenges:

“Since 2012, the cost of solar and wind generation has fallen dramatically and renewables’ share of power generation has increased from about 10% to about 40%. The pace of deployment has recently slowed, mostly due to challenges in building the transmission network capacity in areas where there is insufficient capacity to connect more distributed generation. These challenges have been caused by escalating costs, slow regulatory approvals, and failure to secure local social licence for this new infrastructure.”

B stands for bad news

Nor does Grattan see the case for nuclear being enhanced or saved by the new, as yet commercially unproven technology, focus on small modular reactors (SMRs), which it dubs Plan B:

“Although more than 80 designs are in development, their economic competitiveness is still to be proven in practice. Recent work by the Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering suggests a mature market for SMRs is unlikely before the mid to late 2040s. This means they are no quicker an option for Australia than is large-scale nuclear.”

What is needed, according to Grattan, is a major, very objective overhaul of the national electricity market (NEM) to make it fit for purpose in a new energy era:

“The review must be approached as a co-design exercise between consumers, industry and politicians, drawing on the deep expertise of the market bodies. It has to acknowledge and accommodate political and physical realities as well as technocratic theory. It cannot be held hostage by ministers insisting that various technologies must be in or out.”

Apparently reading Grattan’s collective mind — although really just responding to a blindingly obvious and long overdue need — Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen announced today exactly such a review of Australia’s main electricity grid and market, led by an expert independent panel, to run for 12 months.

Grattan also takes an even-handed view of long-term political failure by Australian governments to come to grips with the real issue for climate and energy: decarbonisation:

“The single biggest challenge facing energy markets is decarbonisation. And yet, with a couple of honourable exceptions, governments are consistently shy about stating explicitly what this means and by when it should happen.”

The 2019 nuclear energy inquiry, dominated by the then-Coalition government, found in favour of a shift towards nuclear. The 2024 version, dominated by the Labor government, and just months out from an election, will inevitably find itself opposing such a shift. All of which will make Australians not much the wiser. In this debate, even more than most, the role of independent experts and fact-based analysis is more important than ever.

A footnote

Former NSW Liberal treasurer and energy minister Matt Kean participated in a debate last night organised by Macquarie University in Sydney around the topic “Australia’s Future Energy Mix — Is Nuclear Part of the Solution?” As though in some parallel political universe, where Liberals can be renewables champions and climate action true-believers, Kean is now the Labor-appointed chair of the Climate Change Authority, which advises the government on emissions targets. He warned that waiting 20 years for nuclear power would destine Australia to a less reliable, more expensive, dirtier energy future, saying:

“And let me tell you what that looks like. It looks like a breakdown of our precious ecosystems and biodiversity. Just look at the Great Barrier Reef and the coral bleaching that is going on there that is going to be baked into the system. Look at the Arctic ice sheets. Look at sea level rise, and look at the fact that large tracts of Australia will be uninhabitable because they are unlivable. That’s what the science tells us. And the science is not something that’s happening in the future. It’s happening now. 

“I was the treasurer of NSW. It’s those that say the cost of taking action on climate change is too high. Let me tell you, I had to foot the bill because we hadn’t taken action on climate change to fund the worst natural disaster event that we’ve ever seen in the Lismore floods that followed the worst bushfires the country had ever seen, the Black Summer bushfires that followed the worst drought our nation had ever seen. So anyone sitting there saying, oh, you know, the cost of taking action on climate change is too much. Let me tell you, the cost of not acting on climate change will be far, far greater. How we get to net zero matters just as much as the goal itself.”

He may be an ex-politician now, if not forever, but Kean remains the nation’s best political communicator on the climate crisis and energy challenge by far. 

November 29, 2024 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | politics