Coalition to put nuclear plan on the chopping block
Ryan Cropp Energy and climate reporter, May 4, 2025, https://www.afr.com/politics/federal/coalition-to-put-nuclear-plan-on-the-chopping-block-20250504-p5lwcw
The Coalition’s nuclear energy policy looks set to be one of the first casualties of the party’s monumental election defeat on Saturday after opposition MPs declined to publicly back the controversial strategy.
Dutton had used the policy as a means of aligning the party behind a commitment to achieve net zero carbon emissions by 2050, but several senior Liberals on Sunday indicated the party would need to consider dumping the plan if it were to find a path back to government.
Dutton announced the proposal to build seven government-owned nuclear reactors in July last year, but on Saturday the plan proved to be a major electoral liability, particularly in key metropolitan seats.
When asked whether the Coalition should dump its nuclear plans, Liberal frontbencher Keith Wolahan said Australians had sent a message and the party needed to listen.
“It wouldn’t be fair on me to dissect that particular policy, but everything should be on the table and that should be analysed,” Wolahan told the ABC.
“We have to listen to Australians. They have sent us a message. And our first task is to hear it. And that often takes time.”
Wolahan is one of several Liberal moderates who have lost their seats. Others include Michael Sukkar in Deakin and David Coleman in Banks.
Policy toxic in inner urban seats
The lack of public support for the plan was exploited mercilessly by Labor throughout the campaign. The government repeatedly claimed the plants would cost up to $600 billion to build and would need to be paid for by cuts to key social services.
Dutton failed to visit a single one of his proposed nuclear sites during the campaign.
The policy proved particularly toxic in inner-urban and suburban seats in Sydney and Melbourne, where Liberal challengers failed to make any inroads against climate-friendly teal independents.
Six candidates backed by Simon Holmes a Court’s Climate 200 crowdfunding organisation in 2022 were re-elected, while teal challenger Nicolette Boele looks set to take the blue-ribbon Liberal seat of Bradfield.
Dutton’s loss in his own seat of Dickson was based, in part, on preference flows from Climate 200-backed independent Ellie Smith, which went to Labor’s Ali France. Elsewhere, lower-profile Climate 200 candidates in seats such as Sturt in South Australia, Casey in Victoria and Forrest in WA peeled votes off Liberals and put Labor MPs in winning or winnable positions.
Nationals leader David Littleproud denied that nuclear was to blame for the Coalition’s election defeat, but did not rule out dumping the policy.
“I don’t think nuclear was the reason we lost. I think this was a schmick campaign by Labor destroying Peter Dutton,” Littleproud told Sky News. “We’ll sit down, obviously, after this and work through the policy positions and make sure they’re fit for purpose and fit for the future.”
The Coalition’s attempt to exploit local opposition to offshore wind farms also appears to have backfired, with two-party preferred swings to Labor in key coastal seats including Paterson, Gilmore and Whitlam in NSW and Forrest in WA. In Wannon in Victoria, however, Liberal frontbencher and potential leadership contender Dan Tehan saw off Climate 200 contender Alex Dyson, in part off the back of strong opposition to a proposed offshore wind farm in the region.
Asked on Saturday if the Coalition should stick with nuclear power, Tehan also left the door open to axe the policy.
“What we need is a proper review – a proper review of all the policies, a proper review of how we campaigned. And we have to do that over a period of time,” he said. “Everything should be part of the review.”
In the western NSW electorate of Calare, where the Coalition’s proposed Mount Piper nuclear plant was to be built, former Nationals MP Andrew Gee won his seat running as an independent. Gee has expressed scepticism about nuclear, which one poll suggested had as little as 22 per cent support in the region.
Ryan Cropp is an energy and climate reporter at The Australian Financial Review based in the Canberra bureau.
A resounding win for the world’s nuclear-free clean energy movement.
https://theaimn.net/a-resounding-win-for-the-worlds-nuclear-free-clean-energy-movement/ 5 May 25
In early analyses of the historic Labor election victory, commentators have tut-tutted over the Liberal Coalition’s policies that didn’t impress voters – like reduced tax on petrol, like poor housing plans, and certain Trump-like aspects. These were the things, and the “cost-of living” issues that brought down the vote for the Coalition. And a number of interviews with voters did show that these issues were important.
BUT, in the media build-up to the election, those issues were hammered, and it seemed to me, that Peter Dutton’s party was happy with that, and especially, to stay OFF the topic of nuclear power.
But nuclear power was the core policy in the Opposition’s campaign. Its quiet partner policy was the drastic slowing down of solar power, and renewable energy in general. Along with this went a downgrading of climate change – Dutton coming close to climate-change denial – “I’m not a scientist” was his answer to questions about the impacts of global heating. The inevitable delay in nuclear power becoming operational would be a gift for the fossil fuel industries,
And it was a pretty amazing policy- to bring in nuclear power across a very special country! Australia is the only country in the world that is a nation-continent, a great island -continent with one federal government, and one predominant language. There is no doubt that, had the Coalition won this election, it would have been a grand coup for the global nuclear lobby.
The Labor government is also beholden to the nuclear lobby. Anthony Albanese, as Opposition leader in 2021, agreed to the then Liberal government’s AUKUS nuclear submarine deal. In 2024, his Labor government cemented its agreement by signing an updated version of the AUKUS Exchange of Naval Nuclear Propulsion Information Agreement (ENNPIA).
So no wonder that both of Australia’s major parties are playing down the significance of the nuclear issue, now that across the nation, voters have rejected nuclear power. And the obedient mainstream media is playing it down, too.
Australia’s unique advantage is that it is the only nuclear-power -free nation-continent , and is also a world leader in renewable energy.
Even in 2023, 33% of Australian households had rooftop solar panels. generating their own electricity. Australia is a world leader in rooftop solar adoption, with solar panels installed on more homes per capita than any other country. This trend continues to increase, with Australians making huge savings on energy costs.
To be fair to the Albanese Labor government, it has done well on promoting renewable energy. It has not done so well on climate change action – The Australian government is continuing its long-standing support for fossil fuels both at home and abroad.
Despite its two major political parties being wedded to the fossil fuel industries, and both of them sycophantic to American militarism and the nuclear lobby, Australia really does have the opportunity to lead the world in the direction of clean safe nuclear-free energy.
The AUKUS agreement, the nuclear submarine deal , is looking a bit wobbly at this moment -with the Trumpian uncertainty clouding Australia’s relationship with the USA.
All in all, it is a positive outlook for Australia, and its leading role in clean energy. But don’t expect the corporate media, or the timid ABC, to genuinely emphasise the importance of this election victory over the nuclear lobby.
Australia Islamic Caliphate? Dark money and the 11th hour Election propaganda blitzkrieg
by Wendy Bacon and Yaakov Aharon | May 2, 2025, https://michaelwest.com.au/australia-islamic-caliphate-dark-money-and-the-11th-hour-election-propaganda-blitzkrieg/
An 11th-hour Election 2025 blitzkrieg claims the Greens are enabling extremists who “will do anything in their power to establish a worldwide Islamic Caliphate.” Wendy Bacon and Yaakov Aharon investigate the Dark Money election.
Minority Impact Coalition is a shadowy organisation that appeared on Australia’s political landscape in February of this year.
According to its constitution, its object is to promote “mutual respect and tolerance between groups of people in Australia by actively countering racism and bringing widespread understanding and tolerance amongst all sectors of the community.”
However, it is spreading ignorance, fear and Islamophobia to millions of mostly male Australians living in the outer suburbs and the regions.
Advance is “transparent … easy to deal with”
Australian Jewish Association webinar, Roslyn Mendelle, who is of Israeli-American origin and a director of Minority Impact Coalition (MIC), said Advance introduced her to the concept of a third party.
“Advance has been nothing but absolutely honest, transparent, direct, and easy to deal with”, Mendelle said.
The electoral laws, which many say are “broken by design”, mean that it will be several months before MIC’s major donors are revealed. Donors making repeated donations below $15,900 are unlisted ‘dark money’. (This threshold will change to $5000 in 2026).
Coming in second place are the returns from the Australian Taxation Office.
Further down is a $50,000 donation from Henroth Pty Ltd, co-owned by brothers Stanley and John Roth. Stanley is also a director of the $51 million charity United Israel Appeal, while John Roth is married to Australia’s Special Envoy for Combating Antisemitism, Jillian Segal.
$14.5 million of Advance’s funds is unlisted dark money.
In NSW, it is targeting Greens candidates everywhere and is also focused on the Labor-held seat of Gilmore, challenged by Liberal Party candidate Andrew Constance.
Roslyn (nee Wolberger) and her wife Hava Mendelle founded MIC last year. The couple met in 2017 while Roslyn was living in the Israeli settlement of Talpiot in Occupied East Jerusalem in breach of international law.
Independent journalist Alex McKinnon reported that MIC spokesperson and midwife, Sharon Stoliar, wrote in an open letter:
“When you chant ‘from the river to the sea Palestine will be free’… while wearing NSW Health uniforms, you are representing NSW Health in a call for genocide of Jews.YOU. ARE. SUPPORTING. TERRORISM… I. WILL. REPORT. YOU.”
Its campaign material is authorised by Joshu Turier, a retired boxer and right-wing extremist.
According to Facebook library, MIC’s ads are targeted at men, particularly between ages 35 and 54 in Queensland, Victoria and New South Wales.
In mid-April, the group paid for an ad so extreme that Instagram pulled it, leading to Turier reposting on his own Facebook page again this week. He complained that “It’s beyond troubling when our media platforms remove simple, factual material.”
They are “coming for us” {Editor … oh no!}
By Wednesday, the video was back on MIC’s Facebook account. The video says that the Greens are deliberately enabling pro-Palestine student protesters, who
“Don’t actually believe in the concept of a nation. They don’t believe in borders. They don’t believe there is a national identity. They believe in the Islamic brotherhood.”
“…It is just the beginning. When antisemitism starts, it’s not going to stop. They are going to come for Christians, for Atheists, for Agnostics.”
MIC is spending big on billboards, campaign trucks, and professional videos targeting at least five electorates. But despite their big spending, they cannot be found on the Australian Electoral Commission transparency register.
According to the transparency advocacy group WhoTargets.Me, MIC has spent more than $50,000 on Google and Meta ads in the last month alone. This doesn’t account for billboards, trucks, labour, or the 200,000 addresses letterboxed in late March.
More investigation shows their donations will all flow through the QJ Collective Ltd (QJC), which also ‘powers’ the Minority Impact Coalition website. QJC is registered as a significant third party with the Australian Electoral Commission.
Clones with ghost offices
MIC and Queensland Jewish Collective are virtually identical. They have always had the same directors, with Azin Naghibi replacing Roslyn’s partner, Hava Mendelle, as both QJC and MIC director in March 2025.
When QJC first came to MWM’s notice last year, it was running a relatively well-funded campaign, although limited to several seats, to ‘Put the Greens Last’ in the Queensland state election.
In September 2024, the group’s website stated that it was “non-partisan and not left or right-wing”, and that its “goal was to support Queenslanders in making informed decisions when voting for our leaders”. MIC is the vehicle for this campaign.
Today, neither the QJC nor MIC makes any such claim. The Collective’s website lists its leading ‘campaign’ as “exposing the two-faced nature of the Labor party”.
The alarming detail
While the two ‘grassroots’ groups share several of their total five different associated addresses, mostly consisting of shared offices, it is not a perfect match.
For both groups, directors Mendelle and Turier list their address as 470 St Pauls Terrace, Fortitude Valley, Queensland. There was no name or company, just an address; however, shared offices run by Jubilee Place are available at that location.
QJC and MIC director Naghibi lists her address on both extracts as 740 St Pauls Terrace, a non-commercial building.
Either Mendelle and Turier are living out of a shared office, or Naghibi is unable to remember the address of the shared office she has little real connection to.
Last year, MWM contacted the owners of QJC’s listed office address at Insolvency Company Accountants in Tewantin, Queensland. At first, the firm said that no one had heard of them. Following that, the firm said that the Collective is a client of the firm, however denied any further connection.
A fresh search this year showed an additional contact address listed by the grassroots Collective – this time 1700 kilometres away – at 1250 Malvern Road, Malvern, Victoria. Again, there was no name or company, just an address.
Located at that address is boutique accounting firm Greenberg & Co, which specialises in serving clients who are “high net worth individuals”. MWM contacted senior partner Jay Greenberg, who said his role was only one of ‘financial compliance’. He said that he did have personal views on the election, but these were not relevant. He declined to discuss further details.
Previously, Greenberg served as Treasurer (2018-2019), under Jillian Segal as President, of the peak roof body, the Executive Council of Australian Jewry.
Attack of the clones
Better Australia is a third-party campaigner that, like QJ Collective in 2024, claims to be bipartisan.
Its communications are authorised by Sophie Calland, an active member of NSW Labor’s Alexandria Branch. Her husband, Ofir Birenbaum – from the nearby Rosebery Branch – is also a member of the third party Better Australia.
Co-convenor of Labor Friends of Israel, Eric Roozendaal, and former Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s secretary, Yaron Finkelstein, provided further campaign advice at a members’ meeting.
Patron of Labor Friends of Israel and former Senator Nova Peris teamed up with Better Australia for a campaign video last week.
“When Greens leader Adam Bandt refuses to stand in front of the Australian flag,” Peris said, “I ask, how can you possibly stand for our country?”
Better Australia’s stated goal is to campaign for a major government, regardless of which major party is in office.
The group urges voters to “put the Greens and Teals last”, warning that a Labor minority government would be chaos. The ‘non-partisan’ third party has made no statements on the Liberal-National Coalition, nor on a minority government with One Nation.
Some Better Australia workers – who wear bright yellow jackets labelled ‘community advisor’ – are paid, and others volunteer.
‘Isabella’ told MWM that her enlistment as a volunteer for the third-party campaigner is “not political” – rather, it is all “about Israel”.
Previously, Isabella had protested in support of the Israeli hostages and prisoners of war held in Gaza.
Better Australia’s ‘community advisor’ Isabella at a Bondi Junction polling booth. Source: Wendy Bacon, supplied
Another campaigner told us he was paid by Better Australia. He spoke little English and declined to say more.
Two schoolgirls campaigning at Rose Bay told MWM they were paid by their father, who had chaired a Better Australia meeting the previous evening. They declined to disclose his name.
On Wednesday, the group posted a video of Calland campaigning at Wentworth’s Kings Cross booth, which included an image of her talking with a young Better Australia worker.
MWM later interviewed this woman, who is an Israeli on a working holiday visa. She was supporting the campaign because it fits her political “vision”: the Greens and independent MPs like Allegra Spender must be removed from office because they are “against Israel” and for a “Free Palestine” which would mean the end of “my country”.
Allegra Spender denies these assertions.
Greens leader Adam Bandt remained determinedly optimistic, telling MWM that organisations such as Better Australia and MIC,
“are able to run their disinformation campaigns because Australia has no truth in political advertising laws, which enables them to lie about the priorities of the Greens and crossbench without consequence, as well as huge corporate money flowing into politics.”
“In this term of Parliament, Labor failed to progress truth in political advertising laws, and instead did a dirty deal with the Liberals on electoral reforms to try and shut out third parties and independents.”
Labor’s candidate for Wentworth, Savannah Peake, told MWM on Tuesday that she has known Calland for 18 months.
Peake said that while she knew Calland had previously founded Better Council, she had only discovered Calland was authorising Better Australia when she arrived at the booth that morning.
Peake told MWM that she had contacted the NSW Labor Head Office to voice her objections and was confident the issue would be “dealt with swiftly”.
The third-party campaign runs contrary to Peake’s preferences, which tells supporters in Wentworth to vote #1 Labor and #2 Allegra Spender. MWM repeatedly tried to follow up with Peake throughout the week to find out what action NSW Labor had taken, but received no reply.
Liberal candidate for Wentworth, Ro Knox, complies with Better Australia’s call to put Greens last on her voting preferences.
Many people in NSW Labor know about their fellow members’ involvement in Better Australia. The Minister for Environment and MP for Sydney, Tanya Plibersek, state member Ron Hoenig and NSW Labor have all previously refused to answer questions.
A Labor volunteer at a Wentworth pre-poll booth told MWM that he disapproved if a fellow party member was involved with the third party. Two older Labor volunteers were in disbelief, having incorrectly assumed that the anti-Teal posters were authorised by the Trumpet of Patriots party. Another said he was aware of Calland’s activities but had decided ‘not to investigate’ further.
Better Australia focuses on Richmond
By the end of the week, Better Australia had left a trail of “Put the Greens last’ placards across Sydney’s Inner West, one of them outside the Cairo Takeaway cafe where the third party’s organiser, Ofir Birenbaum, was first exposed.
The third party have extended their polling campaign to the seat of Richmond, on the North coast of NSW where campaign sources are expecting more volunteers on election day.
As parties dash to the finishing line, they are calling for more donations to counter the astroturfers. According to website TheyTargetYou, the major parties alone have spent $11.5 million on Meta and Google ads over the last month.
Better Australia splurged $200,000 on ads targeting digital TV, social media, and the Australian Financial Review. Digital ads will continue in the final three days of the election, exploiting loopholes in the mandated political advertising blackout.
The Australian public has made little progress towards transparency in the current term of government.
Until reforms are made, Silicon Valley tech giants will continue to profit from dodgy ads and astroturfing groups sowing division with each Australian election cycle.
Australians once feared the health impacts of nuclear. Now nobody’s talking about it
SMH Angus Delaney, May 1, 2025
In 1982, Helen Caldicott, one of Australia’s most prominent anti-nuclear campaigners, spent an hour with Ronald Reagan at the White House, warning the then-president about the dangers of nuclear.
“I came out of that saying I thought, because I’m a physician, that he had impending Alzheimer’s,” Caldicott, now 86, says. “Which he did.”
Caldicott fears Australia’s memory is also faltering.
From her home in regional NSW, Caldicott says people have forgotten that period where anti-nuclear activism was a key cause of the left and nuclear safety fears ran high.
As Australians prepare to cast a vote in an election which could have huge implications for the country’s energy future, nuclear proponents dismiss Caldicott’s fears as outdated.
But they are still lurking in the debate as an unspoken question over the Coalition’s policy to build seven nuclear plants nationally to offset the decline of coal power and help Australia reach net zero emissions by 2050.
When asked if nuclear energy production was a safety risk to Australians in April, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese dodged the question and said the main reason for the concern was “about the economy”.
His government, in lockstep with the Coalition, is investing billions in a fleet of nuclear-powered submarines under the AUKUS pact.
At the final leaders’ debate on April 27, Opposition Leader Peter Dutton said the government’s endorsement of AUKUS proved nuclear power was not dangerous.
“Who in his or her right mind would sign up to a nuclear submarine and put our sailors onto the submarine thinking that there was a concern about safety?” he said on Channel Seven.
But in recent weeks, Dutton has avoided drawing attention to his nuclear policy, and Labor has attacked him over not visiting the sites of the Coalition’s proposed reactors.
The issue was dragged onto centre stage this week as anti-nuclear protesters disrupted a Dutton campaign event and press conference – and their theatrics largely played on the fears people have around nuclear safety.
If Dutton were to form government, safety could come to the fore again because it would need to overturn the federal ban on nuclear energy, implemented in 1999 by John Howard in a deal with the Greens.
Despite the dangers being dismissed by Labor and the Coalition, Caldicott remains concerned about nuclear waste being improperly stored in Australia and contaminating water supplies – or even a Chernobyl-like reactor meltdown.
“It’s not being discussed at all, which is amazing to me”, Caldicott says. “People are very ignorant.”
…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. UNSW associate professor Mark Disendorf says the fears are valid. He says earthquakes are common in the Hunter Valley – the site of one proposed reactor – and is concerned by a German government study that has shown proximity to a nuclear power plant increased the likelihood of leukemia for children under five.
He says that the argument that Australia’s stringent safety regulations and access to modern technology would make it immune to the dangers was “invalid because Australia has so little experience”.
In a statement, the Australian government’s primary authority for radiation protection and nuclear safety says nuclear power plants are designed to be safe and have significantly improved their operations in recent decades, “but cannot be considered entirely risk-free”.
……………….. “Australia does not have a large nuclear sector and there is low familiarity with nuclear science in the wider community,” it says.
A generational divide and ideological opposition to renewables are two explanations as to why anti-nuclear sentiment has faded, says social trends researcher and director of research at 89 Degrees East, Rebecca Huntley………………………………………………………………………………………. https://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/australians-once-feared-the-health-impacts-of-nuclear-now-nobody-s-talking-about-it-20250324-p5lm2k.html?btis=&fbclid=IwY2xjawKA7V5leHRuA2FlbQIxMQBicmlkETFISGV5ZEdSZW16a2ZnQzh3AR54eVK6JF8ohdYybFhLGtY2D9k94_z5LqoVHO8xa7LOALj64JcGRZvN5lMgWA_aem_rgh9nTz4UR4AV7RXbwaoig
Coalition says its energy plan is climate approved. Here’s what the IPCC really says about nuclear
Does the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) claim that nuclear power is necessary for decarbonisation? No, but that has not stopped the Liberal-National Party (LNP) Coalition from claiming the IPCC tells them that to decrease emissions we must increase nuclear power.
The IPCC gathers scenarios and presents projections but in fact does not prescribe any one path to emissions reductions. All rhetoric about just following the science or any pretending that there is a linear relation from science to policy only serve to obscure the choices not being made transparent.
We should thus unpack the Coalition’s use of the IPCC and shine a light on some of the choices being made by banking on nuclear power for emissions reductions.
Energy policy on TV
On Sunday, host of ABC TV’s Insiders program, David Speers, interviewed Bridget McKenzie, the shadow transport minister for the Coalition, asking “is there anything you would do to bring down emissions in the next 10 years?”
“I’ll tell you what we are going to do to bring down emissions. We are going to do what the IPCC has said we should do to bring down emissions, and that’s increase nuclear power generation across the globe. We are hoping to open our first one in close to a decade, and in the meantime, we are going to bring on gas, a lower emissions fuel than coal,” McKenzie said.
Speers failed to interrogate this claim. The IPCC does not single out nuclear power as the kind of prime mitigation pathway that would warrant the Coalition to conclude that opting for nuclear power is what the IPCC says politicians “should” do.
Maybe impartiality as non-partisanship, balance or non-interference explains the lack of questioning, but journalism has for some time been more confrontational, with the credibility of the interview judged by the degree of probing questions.
Indeed the ABC editorial standards stipulate that “there are few things more important to factual content making at the ABC than the interview”, because interviews are where “we tease out matters of accuracy.” If the issue is “contentious or controversial”, then ABC general rules suggest “it is often necessary to take a ‘devil’s advocate’ approach” and ask the “awkward questions”.
Speers could have thus queried the robustness of McKenzie’s claim by asking whether the IPCC in fact claims nuclear power is necessary for decarbonisation? Or what degree of confidence the IPCC expresses in a nuclear pathway to emissions mitigation? Or does the IPCC in fact recommend nuclear power?
Unfortunately, absent further clarification, we are left alone to reconstruct the Coalition reasoning, and what follows is an attempt to do so.
The IPCC in 2018: presence but barriers
The Coalition claims their choice of nuclear power for emissions reduction is derived from what the IPCC says they should do. Yet in doing so the Coalition cherry-picks from the IPCC what features of the nuclear power option to emphasize. Specifically, raw presence over actual barriers.
To spot the Coalition choice to ignore barriers, return Speers could have thus queried the robustness of McKenzie’s claim by asking whether the IPCC in fact claims nuclear power is necessary for decarbonisation? Or what degree of confidence the IPCC expresses in a nuclear pathway to emissions mitigation? Or does the IPCC in fact recommend nuclear power?
Unfortunately, absent further clarification, we are left alone to reconstruct the Coalition reasoning, and what follows is an attempt to do so.
The full report is 630 pages long and you can access html view and pdf downloads of chapters here. But the barriers included the risks of weapons proliferation, ongoing obstacles to waste disposal, connections between nuclear installations and health hazards, compounding of water scarcity problems, high and/or uncertain costs, and deployment rate constrained by lack of social acceptability
………………………………………………..The IPCC in 2022: nuclear is a tiny sliver in the pathways
………………………………………Like what we saw in the pro-nuclear response to the IPCC Global Warming of 1.5°C report of 2018, the mere presence of nuclear power in IPCC WG3 mitigation scenarios and pathways in the 2022 report is made to carry the burden of implying the IPCC recommends nuclear power as a plausible route to ambitious emissions reductions.
The effect is to hide the choices the Coalition is making……………….
On the one hand, it is simply a mistake to interpret IPCC scenarios and illustrative pathways as recommending or implying the necessity or even high plausibility of nuclear power as a front line emissions mitigation option. If there were a lesson to be drawn from the IPCC reports, it is that renewables are projected to play that front line emissions reduction role.
But set aside any prosecuting of which technological option the IPCC work paints in the best light. Relying on mere presence in IPCC scenarios and pathways to ground “what the IPCC has said we should do” is ultimately a tactic to avoid public discussion about the challenges with and barriers to deploying nuclear power in any quest to decarbonise.
Darrin Durant is Associate Professor in Science & Technology Studies at the University of Melbourne
Scotland does not need nuclear power and people aren’t being told the truth
Commonweal 1st May 2025,
https://www.commonweal.scot/daily-briefings/briefing-r57be
The nuclear industry has one of the most aggressive lobbying and public relations campaigns of all energy sources. It pushes relentlessly on politicians and the public to support the merits of nuclear power based on partial or inaccurate information. Very often this goes unchallenged in the Scottish media.
Given that nuclear power presents itself as a pragmatic response to decarbonising energy and given the scale of the PR campaign, it is perhaps not enormously surprising that SNP voters appear to split with their party over this issue. But would they continue to support nuclear power if they knew the numbers?
Here are some stark realities. The cost of generating of electricity from renewable sources is £38 to £44 per MWh. The estimated cost of the same electricity from nuclear (at the new Hinkley Point C reactor) in 2025 is £150 per MWh. It can only be presumed that the participants in this survey were not told that generating electricity would become between three times as expensive with nuclear.
But even that hides the true costs. Nuclear power is very dangerous and, at the end of its lifecycle, is very complex to decommission and make safe. Every spent rod of nuclear fuel takes a full ten years simply to cool down. They must be immersed in a deep pool of cold, constantly-circulating water and monitored closely for ten years just to bring them down to a cool enough temperature that they can be processed.
That’s just the ongoing fuel. The complexity of decommissioning and entire nuclear power plant is significantly greater. In fact the current estimate of the cost for decommissioning nuclear power is about £132 billion. That is not paid for by consumers in their electricity bill – it is paid for by consumers through their tax.
This is the second stark reality that nuclear power works hard to conceal; not only is it three times as expensive as renewables to run, there is then a cost of at least £4,600 for every household to decommission the nuclear power plants and make them safe for the future.
Of course, safety is another issue here. Nuclear power stations are very vulnerable. They are extremely sensitive sites which require substantial long-term attention. There are currently concerns around the world that unreliable power supplies could mean existing plants may struggle to keep spent fuel rods from combusting if they cannot constantly and continually keep large amounts of cold water circulating round spent fuel.
Nuclear power stations do not like loss of electricity, especially for any extended period of time. This makes them very climate-vulnerable. And of course who knows what sorts of extreme weather we may face before the lifetime of a nuclear station is complete. Fukushima is not a cautionary tale for no reason.
And it is uncomfortable to dwell on the risks of nuclear sites if they become targets for terrorism or in war. No-one is expressing continent-wide anxiety over the threat-to-life status of Ukraine’s wind turbines; they absolutely are over the shelling of Ukrainian nuclear power stations.
The remaining case for nuclear is to provide ‘electricity baseline’ – the ability to bring electricity provision on and off line as renewable generation rates rise or fall (if the wind does blow), or during periods of peak demand. This just isn’t really honest – nuclear power does not like rapid changes in supply and are designed to run flat out, all the time, not least because costs rise rapidly if they are running at less then full power. You can’t just ‘turn them on and off’. So yes, they can provide baseline electricity but not ‘on demand’ electricity that can balance renewables.
Hydrogen storage can though. Scotland currently dumps enormous amounts of perfectly useable electricity in the ground if it is generated when there is no demand. This can be turned into hydrogen and then, on demand, converted back into electricity. At the moment the cost of electricity from hydrogen is about half as much again that of generating by nuclear. But there are big caveats to that.
First, the current hydrogen electricity price is about £230 per MWh, but this is a rapidly-developing area of technology and the current industry target is £100 per MWh. That makes it cheaper than nuclear. Second, there is no hidden capital cost – the incredible costs of building and decommissioning nuclear which are hidden from consumers by subsidy from tax just isn’t there for hydrogen. It is a simple technology.
Third, these costs all assume that you are generating hydrogen from electricity at full wholesale grid prices. But if you are using electricity that would otherwise be dumped because it is being generated at the ‘wrong time’, the hydrogen becomes a waste product. It is in practice much cheaper than nuclear and can supply long-term baseline. (Battery storage for short term is even cheaper.)
That is the reality that respondents in this poll were not given. Try the poll again with ‘do you want to pay three times as much for your electricity with an additional costs to your household of £4,600 to have unsafe nuclear power when renewables with hydrogen storage are cleaner, cheaper and safer’.
Consistent, reliable renewable energy isn’t hard to solve in Scotland. There are nations where nuclear may have to be part of a clean energy solution, but Scotland is not one of them. You need to withhold a lot of information from people to make them believe the wrong thing about nuclear.
1 This month
of the week – Disrupting War & Militarism in Oceania. Active solidarity. Radical practice.
Antinuclear 