Antinuclear

Nuclear Power and Net Zero II Symposium – REPORT ON ATTENDANCE AT THE CONFERENCE

April 24 2026, Robyn Wood, Friends of the Earth Adelaide

My friend and I arrived early at the Waite campus of Adelaide University, and they had
two security guards standing outside the main doors armed only with radios.

It was an interesting day. They are a dedicated bunch, very polite, about 70 people, and
I think they believe their heart is in the right place. They are very negative about
renewables, kept going on about “baseload power” and they expect grid collapses and
blackouts within the next 5 years. They are most insistent that nuclear is cheaper than
renewables when you take the whole big picture into account (but apparently you
shouldn’t take the cost of building a nuclear power plant into account when measuring
how much the electricity it produces costs). They cherry picked and misinformed, things
they accuse the antinuclear movement of doing, and say the general public need more
education so they learn to love nuclear. 
I actually almost felt sorry for them with the current federal Labor government so
committed to renewables and antinuclear, and probably the next 2 federal governments
being Labor.

I asked electrical engineer Dr Robert Barr who presented “Integrating Nuclear into the
grid” if he had spoken to the government with his models of the NEM and pricing and he
said the government won’t speak to him but he has spoken to the opposition. He wanted
to use “cheaper gas” and I don’t know where he is going to find that with the Iran war
on. We saw his presentation last year and I asked him again what he based his costings
of long term high level waste disposal on and he still couldn’t remember but said it was
a small number. I was not very convinced.

They were even sad about all the education and scholarships going into school &
university students for AUKUS as they saw that as stealing away talent from future
nuclear power plant workers. They brought out the old chestnuts about AUKUS means
we should have nuclear power, and that because we sell uranium we should take back
the high level nuclear waste. My friend shut them up by saying we sell coal and other
products and don’t take back the waste so what makes nuclear waste special.

My friend got security called on him because he got so annoyed with former ANSTO
CEO Adi Patterson using data from 2020 and 2022 when the whole symposium was
supposed to be about advances from the last symposium in 2024 that he challenged
him. My friend interrupted Adi instead of waiting to the end asking him why his data was
so old and where was the recent data. People got cross with my friend for interrupting,
and 5 min later I noticed security standing next to him, but the guard never said
anything.  One old man complained at the break to the female MC that she hadn’t run
things properly by not stopping the argument, and she said she liked passionate
discussions but they should be in the QnA section. He then said to us that she couldn’t
take criticism!

They had a whole session strongly criticising renewables and I didn’t bother taking any
notes as I didn’t believe a word of their figures and models which were based on
ChatGPT. So many of the things they picked on renewables for also applied to nuclear
power, but they didn’t mention that. One example being the environmental damage of
mining and mineral processing which applies to both, but somehow it was only a
problem for renewables.

I asked ANSTO’s GE of ‘Nuclear Operations, Safety and Security’ Miles Apperley how
many safety incidents ANSTO had had over the years, and he said he didn’t understand
my question, so I narrowed it and asked him how many safety incidents ANSTO had
had while he had worked there. He said he wasn’t avoiding the question but they had a
safety culture and everything got reported, not necessarily to do with radiation, and the
most dangerous issue was the road entering the facility where there were no traffic
lights and there had been near misses. Then he tripped over someone’s bag and made
a joke about it being a safety issue. So he got away with avoiding my question. I would
have expected he would have had those safety statistics memorized due to his
responsibilities.

We found out that ANSTO has a program of giving tours to NSW school children, and
one man who worked in the regulatory sector said they provided information to schools
but teachers returned the information as they said it was too dangerous!

They all seemed to think the disposal of high level nuclear waste was solved as
Australia has “lots of land”. So I told the panel discussion that I was interested in deep
geological waste disposal of intermediate and high level waste, and was following
Finland who were still working on their deep geological waste dump after 20 years, and
asked how the panelists planned on dealing with the UN Rights of Indigenous People
when Aboriginal people had stopped the last four efforts at a low level ANSTO dump. (I
figured Aboriginal people should be mentioned as they hadn’t been so far). Jasmin Diab
(MD of Global Nuclear Security Partners and Former President of Women in Nuclear
(WiN) Australia) chose to answer me and said 20 years to build a high level dump
wasn’t a long time. She then gave me the answer I expected, and said they had learned
not to treat Traditional Owners as ‘stakeholders’ but as ‘partners’ (what the difference is
I have no idea), and to sit down together to solve the problem, and basically bribe them
with things like jobs and doctors for the town as we saw with Kimba and Hawker. MC
Kirsty Braybon (a lawyer who was the inaugural Head of Legal for the Australian
Radioactive Waste Agency) pointed out that the UN Rights of Indigenous people was
not legally binding and Australia had signed but not ratified it, but she expected future
dealings with the government to comply with it, and on other topics as well as nuclear
waste.

I was standing behind one man in his 60s in the lunch queue and eavesdropped on him
lamenting that the demographics in the room were mostly older people and he wanted
to know how to get younger people involved. There were a lot of men in their 60s and
70s. It seems retired engineers and scientists set up their own consultancies and try to
stay relevant. A few young men of uni student age attended who probably hoped for
AUKUS submarine jobs.
The scary thing for me is that there is a LOT of portable SMR R&D planned over the
next five years, especially in the US Department of War. Scottish nuclear construction
civil engineer Peter Anusuas who had worked on Sizewell C in the UK said the most
likely way nuclear power would enter Australia was via SMRs in the military or mining
industries. One woman said the mining industry wanted the pronuclear industry to lobby
the government for SMRs but didn’t want to be seen as behind them as they didn’t want
to go against the government’s

Their final session on “where to next” with lobbying with their expensively filmed video of
the day, and a written summary but didn’t come up with much. They said they needed to
start in primary schools showing kids that science was fun and interesting and you
wouldn’t end up sitting in a lab in a white coat doing maths all the time, which is exactly
what my science career was like!
All in all it was an interesting day and quite cheered me up how despondent and
rudderless they were even with Adelaide University financially supporting them. Despite
the university‘s financial support, tickets were $70 and there was no student
concession. The free lunch, coffee and cake were nice.
Robyn Wood
Friends of the Earth Adelaide
Adelaideoffice@foe.org.au

Nuclear Power and Net Zero II

April 24 2026
Waite Campus, Adelaide University
The topics and speakers may be found at the Humanitix link.
https://events.humanitix.com/nuclear-energy-and-net-zero-ii-symposium

Description: Following the very successful June 2024 half-day symposium on
“Nuclear Energy and Net Zero” and significant global developments since then,
Dr Rod Hill FTSE FRACI and Prof Geoff Fincher FAA FTSE have organised a
follow-up symposium entitled “NUCLEAR ENERGY & NET ZERO II – A 2026
UPDATE”.
The aims of the symposium are

1. To provide a dispassionate, apolitical and evidence-based update on the
   potential role of nuclear energy in achieving Australia’s Net Zero targets and
2. To prepare a summary of proceedings and primary outcomes for distribution to
   governments and other relevant parties.
   Twelve invited speakers will address many areas where significant advances
   have been made since the June 2024 symposium. These include:

 Current and planned global nuclear power generation as a component of the
global energy mix in countries overseas.
 Technology developments in large and small-scale reactors.
 Australia’s nuclear technology and reactor operations record and its fuel cycle,
including spent fuel transmutation and disposal.
 Integrating nuclear energy into the electricity grid.
 Nuclear power plant construction in the UK.
 Analysis of popular community perceptions of nuclear and renewable systems.
The symposium will conclude with a speaker panel Q&A discussion with the audience.

May 4, 2026 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | Uncategorized