Mapping the revolving door between government and the weapons industry
Undue Influence revolving door database progresses
MICHELLE FAHY, Undue Influence Substack, NOV 4, 2023
Some 80 per cent of the United States’ four star generals and admirals go on to work for US weapons-making companies, it was revealed last month. US arms industry expert William Hartung also noted that with the Pentagon’s budget soaring towards US$1 trillion a year, and security challenges posed by Russia and China front and centre, an independent assessment of the best path ahead for the US was vital.
Yet, he said, “more often than not, special interests override the national interest in decisions on how much to spend on the Pentagon, and how those funds should be allocated”.
Hartung’s revelations were made possible by US research tracking the revolving door between the US government and the weapons industry.
In Australia, the defence budget is also rising. At the same time, transparency and accountability from our politicians and the Defence Department continues to decline.
The US research has reinforced the importance of the Australian revolving door database that I am creating, in collaboration with a research assistant and a technical specialist. This project was made possible by a grant from the Jan de Voogd Peace Fund.
Revolving door a feature in major defence procurement in Australia
My two-part investigative feature, first published by Declassified Australia in July, put the spotlight on the revolving door between the Australian government and the world’s sixth largest arms manufacturer, BAE Systems. It also contributed to a referral to the National Anti-Corruption Commission (NACC).
The investigation revealed close links between government and industry – information that will be included in the revolving door database – and provided a rare insight into the Australian revolving door in action. It exposed how the government gave former senior BAE insiders influential behind-the-scenes roles before and during a tender process that BAE went on to win. Few of these senior roles were publicly acknowledged by the government.
The procurement of the Hunter class frigates, now at $46 billion (and rising), is Australia’s second largest ever defence acquisition. The Greens’ defence spokesman David Shoebridge made the referral to the NACC.
Database progress to date
The revolving door database has been funded by the Jan de Voogd Peace Fund (administered by the NSW Quakers). The project is being auspiced by the Medical Association for Prevention of War.
The database architecture is now complete following a detailed and complex development process which enables arms company contract data to be extracted from the government’s public databases. The website will aggregate hundreds of contract values into a single annual figure for each major arms corporation, updated daily. With major multinational arms makers having up to 20 or more relevant subsidiaries, it is vital to be able to combine the total value, and this is what the database will do.
The names of people who have occupied 60 senior military, political and defence-related positions back to the year 2000 have been compiled. We will now investigate the existence of subsequent arms-related private sector positions.
How you can help
- Send information on revolving door appointments
Email us at undueinfluence@protonmail.com with information about revolving door appointments that have occurred since 2000 between the defence-related public sector and the arms industry (in either direction). - Fund our ongoing investigative work
While much of my focus in the coming months will be on the revolving door database, I am determined to continue my investigative research and writing as there is much more to be revealed. If you are able to upgrade [on Substack] from a free to a paid subscription to Undue Influence, it would be greatly appreciated. The grant funds are exclusively for work on the database and our regular investigative research and writing continues to rely heavily on reader subscriptions…………………..
https://undueinfluence.substack.com/p/mapping-the-revolving-door-database-progress?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=297295&post_id=138509639&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&utm_medium=email
Australia must lobby US for ‘no first use’ of nuclear weapons, says ex-minister Gareth Evans
Former foreign minister says it is ‘sheer dumb luck’ that arms have not been used in the past 78 years and urges leadership on control measures
Daniel Hurst, Guardian, 1 Nov 23
Labor luminary and former foreign minister, Gareth Evans has urged Australia to lobby the US to promise “no first use” of nuclear weapons, warning that global arms control agreements “are now either dead or on life support”.
Evans says that in the wake of sealing the Aukus nuclear-powered submarine deal, the Albanese government should give “some comfort to ALP members and voters that we are really serious about nuclear arms control”.
Evans told Guardian Australia it was “sheer dumb luck” that the world had avoided a nuclear attack in the 78 years since the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and “it is utterly wishful thinking to believe that this luck can continue in perpetuity”.
Evans joined arms control experts and former senior diplomats in urging the prime minister, Anthony Albanese, to take “a leadership role in addressing the rising nuclear threats in our region”.
Australia should appoint “a high-level envoy to engage our regional partners on an agenda of nuclear confidence building and preventive diplomacy measures”, according to a letter from the Asia-Pacific Leadership Network for Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament (APLN).
While the group’s letter to Albanese is not specific about policy measures, Evans offered his own view that Australia’s status as a close US ally “gives us a particularly significant potential role” in pushing to reduce nuclear risks.
“The most immediately useful step we could take would be to support the growing international movement for the universal adoption of No First Use doctrine by the nuclear-armed states,” Evans told Guardian Australia…………………………………….
In a stark warning about the security environment, Evans said the risk of nuclear weapons being used through human error, miscalculation or system error was “greater than ever, not least given new developments in AI and cyber-offence capability”.
“Nearly 13,000 nuclear warheads are still in existence, with a combined destructive capability of close to 100,000 Hiroshima- or Nagasaki-sized bombs, and stockpiles, especially in our own Indo-Pacific region … are now growing again,” he said.
“The taboo against their deliberate use is weakening, with Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, talking up this prospect in language not heard since the height of the cold war.”
In addition to seeking universal support for “no first use”, Evans said other potential risk-reduction measures include cutting the number of weapons ready for immediate use……………………………………………….
The APLN letter gained support from high-powered experts including John Carlson, the former head of the Australian Safeguards and Non-Proliferation Office, and Ramesh Thakur, a former UN assistant secretary general.
Other signatories included John Tilemann, a former diplomat and international civil servant with the International Atomic Energy Agency, and Gary Quinlan, a former Australian ambassador to the UN.
The leader of the Greens in the Senate, Larissa Waters, backed the letter with the former Australian Democrats leader Natasha Stott Despoja and the former Labor minister for international development Melissa Parke. https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/nov/01/australia-must-lobby-us-for-no-first-use-of-nuclear-weapons-says-ex-minister-gareth-evans #nuclear #antinuclear #nuclearfree #NoNukes
AUKUS nuclear submarine deal triggers accusations over cost and construction
SMH, By Daniel Keane 30 Oct 23
South Australia’s premier remains insistent that the nation’s future nuclear-powered submarines should be constructed in Adelaide, despite a prominent call for the vessels to instead be built by, and purchased from, another AUKUS nation in order to save taxpayers “billions and billions of dollars”.
Key points:
- Alexander Downer has called for all of the nation’s future nuclear subs to be built overseas
- But SA premier Peter Malinauskas says Australia should build them “for national security reasons”
- Mr Downer also said the question of storage of AUKUS nuclear waste needs to be addressed
Former foreign affairs minister Alexander Downer has described the AUKUS project’s $368 billion price tag as “eye-watering”, and said he expects a future federal government to abandon the local construction element of the deal.
“We’re just going to wreck Australia if we keep promising to spend money on any manner of projects and have no idea where the money is going to come from,” Mr Downer told the ABC on Sunday.
“I don’t think the existing federal parliament or the next one is going to make a decision on this, but I think down the years, in the end, the federal government will decide that this is just too expensive, and they will buy the submarines from overseas.
“I’d be almost certain of that.”
Responding to similar comments Mr Downer made in The Weekend Australian, SA premier Peter Malinauskas said it is vital that Australia develops the ability to build the vessels “for national security reasons”, but also because “neither the US nor the UK in the long term have the capacity” to construct Australia’s entire fleet.
“They are struggling to meet their own demand,” Mr Malinauskas said.
Under the current terms of the AUKUS pact, Australia will get three US-made Virginia-class submarines while it builds up to eight nuclear-powered submarines of its own.
Mr Malinauskas accused Mr Downer of “misunderstanding” the intentions and expected outcomes of AUKUS…………………………………………………………..
But Mr Downer has rejected the premier’s comments, and in turn accused Mr Malinauskas of failing to understand the economics of AUKUS.
“I have a challenge to the premier — to explain where all this money is going to come from, and why does the premier think it’s better we spend eye-watering amounts of money on building nuclear submarines in Adelaide rather than investing … in other parts of our economy?” Mr Downer said……………………
“Peter Malinauskas and [SA opposition leader] David Speirs will be well and truly retired by the time this project comes about.
“It’s easy for them to make any manner of promises about times in the future, which will be way beyond their political life span — we can all make promises about the Second Coming.”
Mr Downer also said the question of storage of nuclear waste from the subs had not been satisfactorily addressed.
“There’s some elements of the Labor Party who have reservations, or are opposed to, nuclear-powered submarines and any association with nuclear power, and so I part company with them on that,” he said.
“But you’re going to have to store the waste somewhere. I’m not sure where that will be stored.” https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-10-29/sa-premier-defends-aukus-after-alexander-downer-questions-cost/103036822
The Independent and Peaceful Australia Network (IPAN) steps up drive to keep U.S. military expansion out of Australia
By Bevan Ramsden | 26 October 2023 https://independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/ipan-steps-up-drive-to-keep-us-military-expansion-out-of-australia,18020
The Independent and Peaceful Australia Network (IPAN) has produced a petition opposing the Force Posture Agreement (FPA) which is enabling U.S. militarisation of Australia in preparation for the U.S. to support/launch war from the Australian continent against China.
The e-petition to Parliament is an instrument for peace calling for the termination of the FPA.
It can be signed HERE.
The devastation of war, currently in Ukraine and in Palestine, confronts us on TV on a daily basis. All peace-loving people cry out for a ceasefire on both war fronts to enable, hopefully under United Nations auspices, conferences of all affected parties to find solutions that meet the security needs of all parties and free non-combatants from the horrors of war.
But concern about these wars should not blind us to the preparations for war occurring on our own continent under the auspices of the United States and with the enthusiastic complicity of successive Australian governments.
When defence matters are discussed, much is made of the U.S.-Australia alliance. But when the U.S. militarisation of Australia is considered, the alliance pales into insignificance compared to the U.S.-Australia FPA. It emerged as a concept from former President Barack Obama’s “Pivot to Asia” of the U.S. armed forces, in which he announced the stationing of U.S. marines in Darwin each year to train for war with our Defence Force.
The “Pivot” was a strategy designed to “contain” China and maintain U.S. hegemony in the Asia/Pacific area. President Obama’s concept was enthusiastically received by all politicians of both major parties.
Subsequently, the Gillard and Abbott Governments, in conjunction with their U.S. defence counterparts, produced a greatly expanded concept, the FPA, providing “an operational posture” for U.S. forces in Australia, a gateway for U.S. militarisation of Australia. It was signed by the Abbott Government and the United States Government in 2014.
The FPA:
- facilitates the stationing in Darwin, for six months each year, of up to 2,500 U.S. Marines; they are trained and equipped for immediate deployment and while in Australia, train for war in exercises with the Australian Defence Force. They are not under the control of the Australian Government. They are under the control of the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command;
- facilitates unimpeded access to Australia’s airfields and airport facilities for U.S. fighter planes and bombers including the stationing of up to six B-52 bombers at RAAF Base Tindall. B-52 bombers were used to devastate Vietnam in that war and some are capable of carrying nuclear weapons;
- facilitates unimpeded access to Australia’s seaports for U.S. naval vessels including their nuclear submarines at HMAS Stirling in WA;
- facilitates the establishment of storage facilities for aircraft fuel, spare parts and munitions under U.S. military control. This includes huge fuel storage facilities at East Arm, Darwin and logistics facilities for storage of equipment, munitions and spare parts at Bandiana in Victoria;
- opened the door for the embedding of U.S. military intelligence operatives within the Australian defence intelligence organisation now called the Combined Intelligence Centre — Australia; and
- under the FPA, a U.S. command centre has been established in Darwin to control U.S. aircraft operations and another command centre in Darwin to control U.S. marine operations.
In short, the U.S. could launch and control military operations from Australia.
I have stressed the words “unimpeded access” because they are the words used in the Agreement.
Article IV of the FPA states:
…United States Forces and United States Contractors shall have unimpeded access to and use of Agreed Facilities and Areas for activities undertaken in connection with this Agreement.
Australia hereby grants to the United States operational control of Agreed Facilities and Areas…
Part 4 of Article VII states:
‘As mutually determined by the Parties, aircraft, vehicles, and vessels operated by or for United States Forces shall have access to aerial ports and seaports of Australia and other locations, for the delivery to, storage and maintenance in, and removal from the territory of Australia of United States Forces’ prepositioned materiel.’
Activities under Article IV include:
‘…training, transit, support, and related activities; refuelling of aircraft; bunkering of vessels; temporary maintenance of vehicles, vessels, and aircraft; temporary accommodation of personnel; communications; prepositioning of equipment, supplies, and materiel; deploying forces and material; and such other activities as the Parties may agree.’
Summing up, the FPA, with the enthusiastic support of the Australian Government, is facilitating increased U.S. militarisation of Australia to support U.S. military operations in the Indo-Pacific from which it could launch or support a war against China. This has been done with the agreement of both major political parties.
The FPA lasts 25 years from the date of signing but has a clause facilitating termination if either party gives one year’s notice.
IPAN is campaigning to have this FPA terminated. This would be a strong step in the direction of keeping Australia out of another U.S. war. And this time, one which would have a catastrophic impact on the Australian people.
If you wish to join this campaign, IPAN has a parliamentary e-petition which is open until 15 November 2023 for signature and it can be accessed by using your mobile phone and this QR code. [on original] #nuclear #antinuclear #NoNukes
Australians Call to End Long Persecution of WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange.
ROBIN ANDERSEN, 25 Oct 23 https://fair.org/home/australians-call-to-end-long-persecution-of-wikileaks-julian-assange/
As WikiLeaks founder and Australian citizen Julian Assange has nearly exhausted his appeals to British courts against a US extradition order, Australia has ramped up its advocacy on his behalf. Six Australian MPs held a press conference outside the US Department of Justice on September 20 to urge the Biden administration to halt its pursuit of Assange (Consortium News, 9/20/23).
They came representing an impressive national consensus: Almost 80% of Australian citizens, and a cross-party coalition in Australia’s Parliament, support the campaign to free Assange (Sydney Morning Herald, 5/12/23). Opposition leader Peter Dutton joined Prime Minister Anthony Albanese in urging Assange’s release.
The day before, an open letter to the Biden administration signed by 64 Australian parliamentarians appeared as a full-page ad in the Washington Post. It called the prosecution of Assange “a political decision” and warned that, if Assange is extradited, “there will be a sharp and sustained outcry” from Australians.
Given what is at stake for freedom of the press in the Assange case, and the intensified pressure from Australia—a country being wooed to actively enlist in the US campaign against China by spending $368 billion on nuclear submarines and supersonic missiles (Sydney Morning Herald, 8/10/23)—we ought to expect coverage from the Washington Post, New York Times and major broadcast networks. But coverage of the press conference was virtually absent from US corporate media.
Prosecuting publishing
The US has been seeking to extradite Assange from Britain on charges relating to the leaking of hundreds of thousands of documents to international media in 2010 and 2011, many of which detailed US atrocities carried out in the Afghanistan and Iraq wars and other human rights violations, such as the torture of detainees at Guantánamo Bay (Abby Martin, 3/10/23).
In 2019, President Donald Trump’s administration brought Espionage Act charges against Assange for obtaining and publishing leaked documents, a dramatic new attack on press freedom (FAIR.org, 8/13/22). Assange could face 175 years in a supermax prison if convicted under the Espionage Act, “a relic of the First World War” meant for spies (American Constitution Society, 9/10/21), and not intended to criminalize leaks to or publications by the press. The Biden administration has rolled back much of the legal mechanism used by Trump to attack journalists, but President Joe Biden has reaffirmed the call to extradite Assange.
Assange also coordinated with international news outlets to publish other material known as Cablegate about the “inner-workings of bargaining, diplomacy and threat-making around the world” (Intercept, 8/14/23). Indeed, the New York Times (e.g., 11/28/10) published many articles based on the WikiLeaks documents, which had been sent to Assange by US army whistleblower Chelsea Manning.
US officials have repeatedly justified their case by charging that Assange put lives at risk; to date, no evidence has surfaced that any individuals were harmed by the leaks (BBC, 12/1/10; Chelsea Manning, Readme.txt, 2022). As the Columbia Journalism Review (12/23/20) admonished, don’t let the Justice Department’s
misdirection around “blown informants” fool you—this case is nothing less than the first time in American history that the US government has sought to prosecute the act of publishing state secrets, something that national security reporters do with some regularity.
US officials have repeatedly justified their case by charging that Assange put lives at risk; to date, no evidence has surfaced that any individuals were harmed by the leaks (BBC, 12/1/10; Chelsea Manning, Readme.txt, 2022). As the Columbia Journalism Review (12/23/20) admonished, don’t let the Justice Department’s
misdirection around “blown informants” fool you—this case is nothing less than the first time in American history that the US government has sought to prosecute the act of publishing state secrets, something that national security reporters do with some regularity.
In failing health after suffering a stroke, Assange has been held in London’s high-security Belmarsh Prison since he was removed from the Ecuadorian Embassy in April 2019. He had sought asylum at the embassy in London in 2012 to avoid being sent to Sweden for questioning over sexual assault allegations, because Sweden would not provide assurances it would protect him from extradition to the US. Sweden dropped charges against Assange in November 2019 (BBC, 11/19/19), after he was in British custody.
International condemnation
The Australian diplomatic mission coincided with the convening of the UN General Assembly in New York City, where President Lula da Silva of Brazil condemned the prosecution of Assange, offering yet another opportunity for US corporate media to cover the strong international opposition to Assange’s treatment.
A video (9/19/23) of Lula speaking at the opening of the UN General Assembly was widely circulated on social media. “Preserving press freedom is essential,” Lula declared. “A journalist like Julian Assange cannot be punished for informing society in a transparent and legitimate way.”
Former British ambassador Craig Murray commented about Lula’s reception at the UN (Twitter, 9/17/23):
It is really not normal for the hall at the UN General Assembly to break into this kind of spontaneous applause. The US has been losing the room internationally for a decade. The appalling treatment of Julian is a focus for that.
US media absence
Yet, with a few exceptions (Fox News, 9/20/23; The Hill, 9/21/23; Yahoo News, 9/21/23), none of this made the major US news outlets.
Over a week later, Business Insider (10/1/23) ran a long piece that featured an interview with Gabriel Shipton, Assange’s half-brother. It pointed out that Assange had become an obstacle to US plans to involve Australia in its aggression toward China, quoting the PM. But the piece also hashed through a number of long-debunked claims, including one that reminded readers that Mike Pompeo once called Assange “a fugitive Russian asset” (FAIR.org, 12/03/18; Sheerpost 2/25/23), and another that repeated US assertions that WikiLeaks releases would put the US at risk.
The New York Times has been conspicuously absent from the coverage of Assange. Though the Times signed a joint open letter (11/28/22) with four other international newspapers that had worked with Assange and WikiLeaks, appealing to the DoJ to drop its charges, the paper has remained almost entirely silent on both Assange and the issues raised by his continued prosecution since then.
As FAIR pointed out, during the Assange extradition hearing in London, the Times
published only two bland news articles (9/7/20, 9/16/20)—one of them purely about the technical difficulties in the courtroom—along with a short rehosted AP video (9/7/20).
There were no editorials on what the case meant for journalism. FAIR contributor Alan MacLeod noted that the Times seemed to distance itself from Assange and WikiLeaks, and its own reporting on the Cablegate scandal, coverage that boosted the papers’ international reputation.
Other opportunities for coverage have been missed by the Times. For instance, Rep. Rashida Tlaib wrote a letter (4/11/23), signed by six other members of the Progressive Caucus, calling for the DoJ to drop the charges against Assange. Tlaib cited support from the ACLU, Amnesty International, Reporters Without Borders, the Committee to Protect Journalists, Defending Rights & Dissent and Human Rights Watch, and many others, stating that his prosecution “could effectively criminalize” many “common journalistic practices.” The letter was covered by The Nation (4/14/23), the Intercept (3/30/23), Fox News (4/1/23), The Hill (4/11/23) and Politico (4/11/23), but the Times and other major newspapers were conspicuously silent.
When Assange lost his most recent appeal against extradition in June, a few outlets reported the news online (e.g., AP, 6/9/23; CNN, 6/9/23), but not a single US newspaper report could be found in the Nexis news database. (Newsweek‘s headline framed the news as a “headache for Biden”—6/8/23—rather than a blow for press freedom.) The Times only vaguely referred to the news (Assange “keeps losing appeals”) two weeks later in a feature (6/18/23) on the late whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg, who had criticized Biden’s decision not to drop the case against Assange.
The world is watching
A huge collective breath is being held as the world watches to see what will happen to Assange, the most famous publisher on the globe. Will he be returned to his country and his family by Christmas, as the Australian MPs have requested? Or will Britain and the US continue to slowly execute him?
Assange’s case is expected to be discussed during Prime Minister Albanese’s current visit to the US, which includes a state dinner hosted by Biden on October 25. MP Monique Ryan, part of the pro-Assange delegation, told news outlets: “Our prime minister needs to see this as a test case for standing up to the US government. There are concerns among Australians about the AUKUS agreement, and whether we have any agency” (Business Insider, 10/1/23).
As Common Dreams (9/19/23) quoted from the delegation’s letter:
We believe the right and best course of action would be for the United States’ Department of Justice to cease its pursuit and prosecution of Julian Assange…. It is well and truly time for this matter to end, and for Julian Assange to return home.
South Australia takes another bold leap into deep green energy future
There is little doubt that South Australia is leading the world on the
integration of wind and solar. Now, it’s about to take an even bolder
leap into a deep green energy future through its hydrogen jobs plan.
The state has sourced more than 70 per cent of its electricity demand from wind
and solar over the past year, and when RenewEconomy interviewed state
energy minister Tom Koutsantonis on Sunday afternoon for its Energy
Insiders podcast, it was nearing the end of a 60-hour period where it
average more than 100 per cent wind and solar. Earlier that day, the state
had reached a stunning new peak of 264 per cent “potential” wind and
solar, the combination of renewable energy actually produced, and the
renewable energy curtailed by the lack of a market.
South Australia response to the this excess of green energy is to encourage even more, with
another bold step that it hopes will make it a global leader in green
hydrogen, just as it has done with renewables.
Renew Economy 25th Oct 2023
Australian Submarine Agency stated Osborne, South Australia for building nuclear submarines, – but Osborne is totally unsuitable!
25 Oct 23
The latest reliable information is that Osborne, South Australia, is unsuitable for the construction of the new hybrid nuclear power submarines in that it is far too small.
Besides it in its inherent size, being too small without any capacity for expansion, the submarines building
facility will require two concentric buffer zones for which there is simply no room based on the reports in
InDaily.
The first of these buffer zones will be immediately surrounding the Osborne complex and will be a “
shoot to kill“ buffer zone for high security.
The external buffer zone surrounding the first one will be fairly substantial and is to ensure complete
environmental and similar protection
It is therefore daydreaming to put up Osborne for the construction of the hybrid nuclear powered
submarines
From INDAILY 11 October 2023, Radiation monitoring at SA nuclear subs: – “In a written response to InDaily, a spokesperson from the Australian Submarine Agency said they had informed the State Government, Port Adelaide Enfield Council, and the PortnAdelaide residents Environment Protection group of the environmental baseline contamination assessment at Osborne.
“This assessment will determine existing levels of non- radiological contaminants and background radiation on the preferred site for the Submarine Construction Yard and surrounding areas,” the spokesperson said.” –
This is at first instance no more than a good political photoshoot based on ignorance .
It seems that as pointed out by Rex Patrick the government has failed to learn anything from the ill fated and expensive Kimba situation
Having regard to the warnings by ANSTO it also seems that yet again there is no consensus by the various organs of the federal government
Finally it is interesting that Susan Close who is the deputy premier of South Australia and is ostensively regarded environmental scientist has had little to say on this situation which is similar to her stance on Kimba.
Both the federal and state governments should heed the excellent study entitled RESET OF AMERICA’S NUCLEAR WASTE MANAGEMENT Strategy and Policy by Professor Rod Ewing and his assembled experts to properly understand the implications and requirements of the possible start of a nuclear installation such as in this instance.
The work now being undertaken should immediately start a safety case for full community consultations which seems most appropriate since media polls suggest that more than 70% of South Australia’s population is against any nuclear activity
This situation is just another black mark for the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) for not approving the implementation of AUKUS under the nonproliferation treaty
Australia needs ‘drastic’ renewables boost as nuclear not an option for decades, says centre-right thinktank
Blueprint Institute says nuclear ban should be lifted, but disagrees with Coalition opposition to green energy rollout
Guardian Adam Morton, 20 oct 23
A centre-right thinktank is calling for “drastically accelerated deployment” of renewable energy, batteries and electricity transmission infrastructure and acknowledged there is no prospect of nuclear energy playing a role in Australia before 2040.
The report by the Blueprint Institute, not yet released but seen in draft form by Guardian Australia, says the ban on nuclear energy should be repealed and argues small modular nuclear reactors (SMRs) could play a “small but vital role” in minimising costs in reaching net zero emissions in the power grid by 2050.
The report, due to be published soon, is set to land during a polarised debate about the future of energy and the pace of decarbonisation.
The Coalition and parts of the media have attacked the Albanese government’s renewable energy policy and have called for the rollout to be slowed, a position at odds with scientific warnings that emissions cuts need to accelerate. The opposition leader, Peter Dutton, has suggested SMRs could be built on the site of old coal plants.
The Blueprint Institute report says reaching the government’s target of 82% renewable energy by 2030 will be a major challenge, but does not provide support for those challenging the goal. It says the country has “no choice, at least in the short-term”, but to “double down on renewable energy” and proven “firming” technology to avoid “calamitous blackouts” as old coal plants close.
“This means a drastically accelerated deployment of batteries, solar, onshore wind, pumped hydro, and gas, along with a corresponding build out of transmission infrastructure,” the report says.
The report says the potential role of nuclear energy in Australia is “strictly limited to a decade or more from now – specifically, from 2040”……………………………….
Bruce Mountain, director of the Victoria Energy Policy Centre, said the report’s findings had “no great policy weight” because it was impossible to accurately predict the cost of cutting emissions from the grid in the long-term given technological change was happening so rapidly…………………..
He said nuclear energy was not well suited to playing a minor role in a grid already overwhelmingly running on renewable energy, and its introduction would be “likely to require the abandonment of a good deal of already existing renewable generation”………………….. more https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/oct/19/australia-needs-drastic-renewables-boost-as-nuclear-not-an-option-for-decades-says-centre-right-thinktank
Radioactive instrument missing at South Australian steel plant
The West Australian, Neve Brissenden and Jacob Shteyman AAP, Thu, 19 October 2023
Authorities are scratching their heads after a piece of radioactive material went missing at a steel plant in South Australia.
The Environmental Protection Authority was called to the Liberty OneSteel site on the Eyre Peninsula three weeks ago with reports of a missing industrial bin level gauge – a measuring instrument containing a small radiation source.
Despite a combined effort of the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency, police, firefighters and steelworkers, the device – which is about the size of a domestic gas BBQ cylinder – is yet to be found.
The EPA said there was no risk to the public and the 35-year-old device had low levels of radioactivity.
…………………………………….A spokesman for ARPANSA said a team of experts with specialised detection equipment were performing “extensive radiological searches for the missing item”.
He said repercussions would be determined by the regulator and the missing devices were not unusual. https://thewest.com.au/news/radioactive-instrument-missing-at-sa-steel-plant-c-12256768
‘Cottage industry’: Gurus say nuclear no match for solar energy
Professor Green described nuclear as “pie in the sky” – including the small modular reactor technologies that have enthused the British government and the opposition in Australia as countries race to transition to green energy.
Hans van Leeuwen https://www.afr.com/companies/energy/cottage-industry-gurus-say-nuclear-no-match-for-solar-energy-20231013-p5ebxp
Hans van Leeuwen covers British and European politics, economics and business from London. He has worked as a reporter, editor and policy adviser in Sydney, Canberra, Hanoi and London. Connect with Hans on Twitter. Email Hans at hans.vanleeuwen@afr.com
London | The debate on nuclear power is a distraction from solar, which is about to tip into exponential growth that will sweep aside all other energy sources, say Australia’s much-garlanded pair of leading solar inventors.
Andrew Blakers and Martin Green, often dubbed the “fathers of photovoltaics”, described nuclear energy as “a cottage industry”, with no chance of reaching economies of scale in any useful timeframe.
Solar, though, “is going to take over energy it is in a way that will be utterly astonishing for most people”, Professor Blakers said.
“It is going to do it as fast as we went from film photography to digital photography. In the space of 20 years, basically we’re going to flip from solar being a few per cent to solar being everything but a few per cent. It really is the fastest energy change in all of history by a large margin,” he said.
The two men were in London to collect the latest in a string of prizes for their work on PERC solar photovoltaic technology, which has brought down the cost of solar panels by 80 per cent in the past decade.
At Buckingham Palace on Thursday (Friday AEDT), the King awarded them and their colleagues Aihua Wang and Jianhua Zhao with the Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering.
Professor Green described nuclear as “pie in the sky” – including the small modular reactor technologies that have enthused the British government and the opposition in Australia as countries race to transition to green energy.
“They are going to have a few prototypes up by 2030, but it really needs the economy of volume to get the prices down to where they’re projecting,” he said. “So you need to be selling hundreds of these things, not just a few sample ones.”
He also said that the history of power generation had been about reducing costs by making things bigger. “It’s going against historical trend, I think, imagining that you can do things cheaply by making a lot of [smaller ones].”
Professor Blakers said nuclear was simply not in the net-zero race. “This year, it looks like the world will do about 500 gigawatts of solar and wind – maybe 400 gigawatts of solar, 100 gigawatts of wind. Hydro will do about 20 gigawatts, nuclear will do approximately one, gas and coal maybe 50,” he said.
“Solar has been growing at 20 per cent a year for a long time. If it continues to grow at this level, we will completely decarbonise the world by the early 2040s. This is how fast it’s happening. It’s so cheap compared with anything else.”
Nuclear, meanwhile, had not increased its capacity in the past 13 years, he said, adding no more than a gigawatt a year.
“You cannot grow an industry from one to multi-thousand gigawatts, which is what you’d need per year, in any reasonable timeframe. It’s impossible unless you put it on a war footing,” he said.
“You just don’t have enough engineers, scientists, raw materials, the factories, the factories to build the factories, the factories to build the factories to build the factories – it just doesn’t happen.”
Grids: the big hurdle
Both men were convinced that battery technologies and costs would continue to fall, driving increasingly rapid growth. The one big obstacle in Australia was transmission.
“Basically, you need a lot of new transmission to bring the new solar and wind into cities. And we’re not building it,” Professor Blakers said.
“Transmission only becomes important once you get up to 30, 40 per cent solar-wind. We’re currently 33 per cent solar-wind, and we will be 75 per cent by 2030. We don’t have a transmission problem yet. But in two years’ time, we’ll have a major one, and everyone can see that.”
He said initiatives to increase compensation to land owners should overcome the remaining community resistance.
Professor Green said the growth of solar energy use would not unseat China’s dominance of the supply chain for solar panels.
“Solar is basically going to demolish the market for coal and gas. And the geopolitical question is whether India, Europe and the US would tolerate having 80 or 90 per cent of the global solar industry coming out of China,” he said.
“It’s very hard to see other countries competing with China. The momentum they’ve got.”
He said India might become a major manufacturer, but its industry’s development would not be as co-ordinated and co-operative as China’s had been.
China, though, would have to address the demand of its customers for higher environmental and social standards – creating an opportunity for Australia to become a player in providing green-friendly metallurgical-grade silicon.
No charges or fines for Western Australia’s wayward radioactive capsule
Perth Now, Neve Brissenden, AAP, October 12, 2023
An investigation into the disappearance of a potentially deadly radioactive mining capsule in outback Western Australia has concluded with no charges or fines laid.
The item, measuring 8mm by 6mm, fell out of a density gauge while being trucked from a Rio Tinto mine in the Pilbara region to Perth in January.
Search crews spent six days scouring a 1400km route amid warnings the caesium-137 in the capsule could cause radiation burns or sickness if handled, and potentially dangerous levels of radiation from prolonged exposure.
The capsule was eventually found two metres from the Great Northern Highway by specialist equipment designed to pick up emitted radiation.
The truck arrived in the Perth suburb of Malaga on January 16 but it was not until nine days later that a technician realised the capsule was missing.
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The missing capsule sparked international headlines and national media coverage in addition to widespread interest in WA.
An investigation by WA’s Radiological Council found no charges or fines should be laid………………………
“Recommendations have been made about areas for improvement in gauge design and assessment and in transport of radioactive sources in WA,” the council’s chair Andrew Robertson said.
Under the Radiation Safety Act, the council said it could not release details of the investigation to “maintain security and public safety”.
“The incident was a rare event which has implications for other radiation safety bodies,” Dr Robertson said.
The Department of Health said it was sharing the findings with other jurisdictions to ensure the incident did not happen elsewhere.
Under WA laws, the maximum fine for failing to safely store or transport radioactive material is $1000.
In February, WA Health Minister Amber-Jade Sanderson said the government was looking at increasing the outdated and “unacceptably low” penalty……………………………………………. more https://www.perthnow.com.au/business/mining/no-charges-or-fines-for-was-wayward-radioactive-pill-c-12183902
The case of Yaroslav Hunka, and its echoes in Australia’s history
Jayne Persian 9 Oct 23 https://overland.org.au/2023/10/the-case-of-yaroslav-hunka-and-its-echoes-in-australias-history/?fbclid=IwAR3fq-DqIxk7y61nKGzy77tlYkYp9vU9JaywMHQdzsQEcC6nrbU5dzrIrFk
Dr Jayne Persian is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Southern Queensland and the author of Fascists in Exile: Post-War Displaced Persons in Australia, forthcoming with Routledge Studies in Fascism and the Far Right.
On 22 September, during a visit to the Canadian Parliament by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Speaker Anthony Rota publicly introduced ninety-eight-year-old Yaroslav Hunka as a constituent ‘who fought for Ukrainian independence against the Russians’ as part of the First Ukrainian Division during the Second World War. He was ‘a Ukrainian hero, a Canadian hero, and we thank him for all his service.’ Hunka received a standing ovation from all present.
This scene was reported two days later by an antifascist site on Twitter, who pointed out that the First Ukrainian Division was also known as the Waffen-SS Galizien Division. Canadian academic Ivan Katchanovski linked to a veterans’ webpage in which Hunka wrote that he had been a volunteer recruit to the Galizien Division in 1943. Hunka had also uploaded photographs showing him in uniform with the ‘boys’.
The Kremlin immediately reacted, with spokesman Dmitry Peskov arguing that ‘such sloppiness of memory is outrageous.’ Opposition Leader, Pierre Poilevre, described this incident as the worst diplomatic embarrassment in Canada’s history. Rota resigned, and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was forced to apologise unreservedly.
These embarrassing episodes continue to occur in countries that resettled the post-war displaced persons of Central and Eastern Europe. This mass of around one million people had refused to return to homes that were under Soviet control. As well as concentration camp inmates and forced labourers, these political refugees included soldiers who had fought in German military units, as well as civilian collaborators. Security screening was difficult and there was also some sympathy from the Allied military authorities for veterans on the losing side. Whole cohorts were resettled in Britain, including 8,000 Ukrainian members of the Waffen-SS Galizien Division. Ukrainian nationalist declarations were also treated seriously. While all Ukrainian displaced persons held either Polish or Soviet Union citizenship, they were treated as a separate group quite quickly.
Many of these men should have been charged with war crimes. The German-led Holocaust had relied on the firepower and administrative skill of non-German Central and Eastern Europeans, including Ukrainians. Ukrainian anti-Soviet and anti-Polish nationalists were initially involved in individual and group paramilitary acts, including voluntary local pogroms and/or acts of murder before or beside the German occupation. One of the pogroms, which involved the massacre of 12,000 Jews, was named Aktion Petliura after the Ukrainian nationalist leader Symon Petliura, who had been assassinated by a Ukrainian Jew (this assassination itself framed as retaliation for earlier pogroms) in 1926.
After the initial wave of pogroms, Ukrainians became progressively involved with an institutionalised German genocidal machinery. Ukrainians joined a Ukrainian Auxiliary Police Force (Schutzmannschaft), the German security police (Sicherheitspolizei, SiPo) and the intelligence agency (Sicherheitsdienst des Reichsführers-SS, SD). Others hunted Jews in their forest warden jobs. Local policemen were empowered to kill anyone the Germans defined as enemies of the state, including Jews; indeed, the Germans relied on the dramatically increased numbers of local forces to do the dirty work of the Holocaust, including the shooting of children. Between 1941 and 1944, 1.6 million Jews had been murdered in Ukraine. In 1943, 100,000 of these men volunteered to join the Waffen-SS Galizien Division. In this capacity, they have been accused of murdering Polish civilians.
The United Nations’ International Refugee Organisation resettled the displaced persons in the United States, Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom. The western world was eager to use the labour of these healthy, white, and stridently anti-communistic young men. Australia resettled 170,700 displaced persons including Poles, ‘Balts’ (Estonians, Latvians and Lithuanians), Yugoslavs, Ukrainians and Hungarians. There was immediate criticism by Jewish groups and sections of the press that the new migrants included war criminals but these were roundly dismissed as Soviet communist propaganda.
Decades later, all four of the main resettlement countries instituted judicial processes against the alleged perpetrators of the Holocaust who were now resident in their countries. In Australia, such men were guaranteed a fair criminal trial: the evidence, for crimes that occurred over forty-five years before, had to include documentary and material evidence and, ideally, eyewitnesses to the alleged individual perpetrator carrying out a war crime. Of course, the nature of the Holocaust was such that very few eyewitnesses to genocide survived in order to testify against individual killers.
After a flawed investigative process, only three men were charged. All three were Ukrainians who had resettled in Adelaide. Ukrainian auxiliary policeman Mikolay Berezowsky was accused of being party to a mass murder of 102 Jewish villagers. Henry Wagner, an ethnic German liaison officer between the German and Ukranian auxiliary police force, was charged with being party to two mass murders, including the shooting of nineteen part-Jewish children. Forest warden Ivan Polyukhovich was accused of hunting and killing Jews under the German occupation, and in taking part in a mass shooting. However, the evidence bar was so high that there were no convictions.
Immediately after the unsuccessful war crimes trials, Ukrainians again attracted attention with an award-winning novel by Helen Demidenko, purporting to be written by a Ukrainian-Australian and based on the life story a member of that community. To the great embarrassment of the Australian literati, Demidenko was soon unmasked as English-Australian Helen Darville, who had attended the Polyukhovich trial with a young man who was noticed to be repeatedly muttering ‘Jews’.
Many responses to Ivan Katchanovski’s tweets shedding light on this unsavoury history — one that Canada and Australia share — claimed that this was not the time to be critiquing Ukraine or Ukrainian nationalists. Ukraine was, of course, invaded by Russia in 2022 and that war is ongoing. Most in the West sympathise with, and support, Ukraine’s fight. And Russia has attempted to smear all Ukrainians with accusations of Nazism, which is simply not true. Dismissing inconvenient histories and the problematic pasts of individual migrants to both Canada and Australia, however, is not useful.
The complicity of the West in assisting perpetrators to escape justice should be acknowledged, and we must be wary of any attempt to normalise fascist views and actions in the public sphere.
Radiation monitoring at SA nuclear subs site starts – but community consultation is lacking.
The first steps in monitoring radioactive contamination at the state’s new nuclear-powered submarine shipyard and nearby dolphin sanctuary is starting, sparking calls for far greater consultation with residents.
Belinda Willis, In Daily 11 Oct 23
New documents released under the Freedom of Information Act reveal details of an 18-month contract to collect soil, groundwater and marine water samples at the future subs site and the nearby sanctuary to establish a baseline for checking future radiation levels.
Documents released to former federal senator and submariner Rex Patrick show samples will be delivered to the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation “for radiological analysis”.
The test findings will be used to build an Environmental Contamination Baseline Assessment so radioactive activity where the nuclear-powered submarines are built or docked can be closely monitored.
Patrick said the papers raised new concerns about South Australians not being consulted about regulations and the handling of operational nuclear waste at the $2 billion shipyard, saying there “is absolutely no community engagement, there’s no attempt to establish social licence” about having nuclear reactors on site.
“(The monitoring is) in order to be able to understand the magnitude of a leak or the nature of a problem that might develop in the future,” Patrick said, adding that people living in Port Adelaide and Osborne “probably aren’t aware that this activity is taking place”.
Sadly, the Defence Department is not interested in being open and transparent about what they are doing around nuclear stewardship and safety,” Patrick said.
“There is no community engagement and there is no social licence being developed. It’s a foolish approach noting that ANSTO has warned defence of the need for social licence.
“Perhaps they’re setting themselves up for another ‘Kimba’ style court case.”
Patrick was referring to a recent court decision that led to the dumping of a site for a low-level radioactive waste site at Kimba in South Australia despite years of consultation and the more than $100 million spent on the process………………………………………………..
Under the AUKUS deal with the United States and United Kingdom, Australia is obtaining eight nuclear-powered submarines at an estimated taxpayer cost of $268-$368 billion.
Defence Minister Richard Marles has said submarines will be built at Osborne and also that waste from spent nuclear reactors from the submarines will be stored on defence land.
Port Adelaide Enfield Mayor Claire Boan said the local council “has not been briefed on the specifics of this matter i.e. management of radioactive materials”, but said council staff has had an initial meeting with defence staff regarding the environmental impact assessment for this development required under federal and state regulations. ……..
The documents released to Patrick show the Submarine Construction Yard will span about 75 hectares and is made up of four distinct areas.
Nearby is the 12,000-hectare Adelaide Dolphin Sanctuary which is the home of up to 60 bottlenose dolphins and is visited by another 400 to feed and nurse their calves in the Port Adelaide River and Barker Inlet.
Mutton Cove Conservation Reserve is also nearby.
South Australia’s Defence Minister Susan Close, who is also Port Adelaide’s member of parliament, did not respond to questions about whether people living in her electorate have been consulted about work at the nuclear-powered submarine construction site.
The Minister and Premier Peter Malinauskas have been vocal supporters of the project, the Premier having flown to the United Kingdom to meet with the UK submarine builders. https://indaily.com.au/news/2023/10/11/secrecy-surrounds-radiation-monitoring-at-sa-nuclear-subs-site/
David McBride facing life sentence as war criminals go unpunished
By John Jiggens | 9 October 2023
The whistleblower of Australian war crimes in Afghanistan is facing life in prison for exposing the truth, while the perpetrators remain free. Dr John Jiggens reports.
AFGHAN WAR CRIMES whistleblower David McBride is facing a secret trial on 13 November that could result in him serving a life sentence for leaking classified information that formed the basis of ‘The Afghan Files’, a 2017 ABC exposé revealing allegations of misconduct by Australian special forces in Afghanistan.
Although the allegations were substantiated by the Brereton Inquiry, which found “credible information” of war crimes committed in Afghanistan by Australian SAS personnel, in a startling similarity to the Julian Assange case, only the whistleblower is being prosecuted while those who committed war crimes go unpunished.
David McBride finds himself charged with theft of government property. Under the National Security Information Act, one of a slew of draconian laws that came in after 9/11, the Government can close the court and present secret evidence that only the judge is permitted to see, and whose contents neither the defendant nor their legal representatives are permitted to know.
During his tours to Afghanistan as a legal officer in 2011 and 2013, David McBride became increasingly concerned that the war was being dictated by politics rather than the best interests of Australia and Australian soldiers.
The rules of law and war were not being followed and were being breached with impunity because of the indifference of higher command. While some soldiers were committing war crimes, others were being wrongly prosecuted to cover up for the higher-ups. There was something terribly wrong with Defence: they weren’t defending the country anymore, they were simply defending the Government, putting out whatever good news stories the Government wanted.
In an interview with Andy Paine for 4ZZZ Paradigm Shift, McBride said:
“You can’t win wars if you just keep saying: ‘We’re beating the enemy’, even if we’re not. ‘This is good’, even if it’s not. ‘We’re going to give a medal to this guy because he’s a brave hero’, even if he’s not.”
McBride’s own “through the looking glass” experience came when he was involved in a case where it seemed the military was trying to put decent soldiers in gaol to protect bad soldiers. The only reason they did this, he reasoned, was because the really bad soldiers were famous people and if they went down, politicians could go down with them, so they needed scapegoats. It was all PR.
McBride said:
And that sickened me, to see good soldiers sacrificed in order to protect bad soldiers so as to protect the minister’s popularity.
We’ve learned from the United States, where everything is just a PR exercise. If we go on like this we’re going into another war, another unjust, unjustified, unwinnable war, where more Australian soldiers are going to die. And that is wrong. You don’t do that. You don’t sacrifice the lives of Australians; you don’t send them to places where they can’t win for political goals. So I’m not fighting about the last war, I’m also worried about the next.
……………………………………………………………….. In 2013, McBride made internal complaints about certain SAS soldiers, though he expected it would go nowhere because effectively he was complaining to the very people who had committed the cover-ups. As expected, the internal complaint failed, but it took eight months in which McBride busied himself, gathering documents marked secret that he would give to the ABC.
……………………………… Whether the documents McBride is being prosecuted for leaking are genuinely about national security or are simply hiding war crimes and cover-ups, is something that will be argued in the coming month at David McBride’s trial. What will emerge is unclear. Defence has the power to close the court down: under the National Security Information Act, the Government can clear the court and present evidence to the judge that no one – not even the accused or their lawyers – can see.
If you live in Lismore, you can hear David McBride speak about this at Star Court Theatre, Lismore, at 6:30 PM on 12 October. He will be supported by the globe-wandering John Shipton (father of Julian Assange), back from France, Switzerland and Brazil, to speak about the worldwide campaign of support Assange’s family have been building as his extradition to the U.S. draws near.
Is nuclear energy feasible in Australia (and how much would it cost)?
What problem is nuclear trying to provide a solution for, asks Ernst & Young climate change and sustainability partner Emma Herd. “If it’s cost of living, it’s expensive. If there are challenges with social licence for renewables then nuclear has got 10 times more social licence problems. If it is the need to rapidly deploy low-emissions energy technology to replace coal then nuclear takes a long time to get approval for, let alone to build, let alone to get up and operating. If it’s the need for rapid decarbonisation, again, it’s too slow.”
Debate has erupted over nuclear energy’s role in Australia’s shift from fossil fuels. Could it work? And why is it so controversial?
SMH, By Mike Foley, OCTOBER 7, 2023
Australia is in the middle of an unprecedented energy revolution, switching from the fossil fuel-powered electricity grid that’s been the bedrock of the nation’s economy for decades to clean energy, through a rush of renewables as wind and solar farms spring up across the country.
The shift is being driven by Australia’s commitment to help tackle climate change by cutting damaging greenhouse emissions.
But a fiery political debate has erupted over the future of Australia’s energy supply in recent months, with federal Opposition Leader Peter Dutton demanding the Albanese government remove the nation’s longstanding ban and deploy what he claims is clean, cheap and reliable nuclear power…………..
What would be the costs? And how does nuclear power work?
………………………………………………………………………… This atomic fission also creates zero greenhouse gases, [ed. note: in the reactor operation, but not in the entire fuel cycle] which is a key benefit cited by nuclear energy advocates, but its opponents point to the dangers associated with storing the radioactive waste and the potential for spent fuel from nuclear reactors to be used to make nuclear weapons.
Past accidents have undermined public confidence……………………………..
…………………………………. In Australia, a national ban on nuclear energy was put in place by the Howard government in 1999, after horse-trading with the Australian Democrats over the government’s signature green reform, the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act, which stated that the relevant minister could not approve a nuclear power plant.
Seven years later, the Howard government asked Telstra chief executive and trained nuclear physicist Ziggy Switkowski to investigate the merits of nuclear power in Australia. That report delivered a hammer blow to the industry. Switkowski found that nuclear power could compete economically with coal power only if a politically contentious carbon tax was imposed.
In 2019, Switkowski also told a parliamentary inquiry there was little prospect for Australia to develop a nuclear energy industry because the “window for large gigawatts to go in nuclear generators has now closed for Australia”. He said a nuclear industry would take too long to establish and be too costly to build compared to alternative infrastructure. He also said it was unlikely the industry could establish enough support to gain a social licence to operate.
“Given that the investment in a power station, particularly a big one, would begin at $US10 billion and go up from there, and it would take around 15 years to make it work, you can’t progress without strong community support and bipartisanship at the federal level, and there is not too much evidence of that,” he said.
But now the federal Coalition is calling for the nuclear energy ban to be abolished.
……………………………. Nuclear energy proponents argue nuclear should replace coal. Those advocates include the Minerals Council, prominent Nationals including leader David Littleproud and former leader Barnaby Joyce, and some Liberal MPs including Dutton and his climate change and energy spokesman, Ted O’Brien.
……………………………….Renewable energy advocates point out that investors are flocking to large-scale wind and solar projects, which are pumping cheaper energy into the grid and outcompeting coal. The Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO), which manages the electricity grid, says a grid based on renewables will be just as reliable as a system centred on baseload power.
Could we get a nuclear industry happening in time?
Speed is of the essence, say climate scientists. Global emissions are on track to exceed the goal of the Paris Agreement to limit global warming to less than 2 degrees, a level that would avoid the worst damages from climate change. While renewables are available now, and cheaply, it would likely take decades to establish a nuclear energy industry in Australia.
Australia’s former chief scientist, Alan Finkel, told this masthead in August it was highly unlikely Australia could open a nuclear power plant before the early 2040s, pointing out the autocratic United Arab Emirates took more than 15 years to complete its first nuclear plan using established technology.
What problem is nuclear trying to provide a solution for, asks Ernst & Young climate change and sustainability partner Emma Herd. “If it’s cost of living, it’s expensive. If there are challenges with social licence for renewables then nuclear has got 10 times more social licence problems. If it is the need to rapidly deploy low-emissions energy technology to replace coal then nuclear takes a long time to get approval for, let alone to build, let alone to get up and operating. If it’s the need for rapid decarbonisation, again, it’s too slow.”
Herd says it would take decades of investment in enabling services for the nuclear energy value chain before a new plant could be built, on top of the likely 20 years needed to plan, gain approval for and build a plant.
“Nuclear has got not just a 20-year timeframe to build something, it’s actually probably more a 30- to 50-year timeframe to build an industry,” she says. This includes either educating or importing a generation of nuclear experts to design and operate facilities, capability to construct the complex facilities, creating a bureaucracy to administer the industry and writing the laws to govern it.
Could nuclear energy solve the power line ‘problem’?
A key sticking point in the Opposition’s criticism of renewable energy is the Albanese government’s push to build some 10,000 kilometres of power lines to link the plethora of renewable energy projects springing up across the country with major cities. AEMO has forecast that could cost around $13 billion by 2030. Nuclear energy advocates say those costs could be avoided by building nuclear plants on the sites of existing coal plants, where existing transmission lines converge.
In fact, even if there were no renewable energy expansion, expensive new transmission lines are still needed to upgrade the grid and increase its capacity in line with population growth, but they have been delayed. Energy experts are increasingly worried that time is running out, risking Australia’s ability to compensate for the looming closures of coal-fired power plants.
A major factor in the delays is community backlash against transmission lines, with farmers denying land access to private companies. Littleproud is leading the charge against the renewable energy rollout and backing farm groups in their protest. Backed by Dutton, he has accused the government of running a “reckless race” to renewables and is calling for a halt to privately run transmission projects, for a Senate inquiry or summit into renewable energy and for a national discussion on removing Australia’s moratorium on nuclear power.
Isn’t there a new type of nuclear technology now?
With Dutton heading the push for a plan to replace Australia’s existing fleet of coal plants with nuclear, Littleproud has declared he is open to having a plant in his Queensland electorate. The Coalition says Australia could deploy the next-generation of nuclear technology called small modular reactors, which are based on the energy units in nuclear submarines.
Finkel has said that, from a “purely engineering” perspective, nuclear technology is appealing, with zero emissions, a continuous supply of baseload power and a small mining footprint for fuel. But he has said that small modular reactors are not currently viable technology. “There’s no operating small modular reactor in Canada, America or the UK, or any country in Europe.”
Finkel noted that private company Nuscale is aiming to commission 12 small modular reactors starting from 2029, but he said it would take at least a decade to follow suit in Australia.
Is nuclear cheaper?
A joint study by the CSIRO and AEMO, the GenCost report, calculated the future cost of energy generation for a range of technologies. It found that solar and wind energy generation would cost between $60 and $100 per megawatt hour by 2030, including back-up power from either batteries, pumped hydro or gas plants. (This figure also includes CSIRO and AEMO-termed “sunk costs” of new transmission lines.)
GenCost forecast that one megawatt hour of power from a small modular reactor in 2030 would cost between $200 and $350 per megawatt hour.
Another energy advisory, Lazard from the US, calculated the levelised cost of nuclear and renewables – which means the average net present cost of electricity generation for a generator over its lifetime. It found that one megawatt hour from solar power, including back-up storage, costs between $72 to $160 per megawatt hour, while a traditional nuclear plant costs from $220 to $347.
Why is the politics of nuclear toxic?
Even if the Albanese government wanted to open a debate over the future of nuclear power in Australia, the party’s official policy platform that is formed by rank and file members states Labor will “prohibit the establishment of nuclear power plants and all other stages of the nuclear fuel cycle in Australia”.
While it’s not impossible for politicians to ignore the policy platform, it is extremely challenging.
In any case, the government has come out swinging against the opposition’s call for nuclear power in Australia. Bowen……………………. https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/is-nuclear-energy-feasible-in-australia-and-how-much-would-it-cost-20231004-p5e9qc.html
1 This month.
Australians deserve the truth
about
AUKUS – https://aukuspublicinquiry.com/
23 July – Australian Premiere: ‘Our Planet, The People, My Blood’ documentary
Thu, 23 Jul, 10am – 12pm ACST
The Mercury
13 Morphett St, Adelaide SA 5000
Link to register and more information here. tickets free but you must register
30 July – WEBINAR (Free) – Is Nuclear Power the Solution to Climate Change? https://my.acaw.org.au/event/acaw-is-nuclear-power-the-solution-to-climate-change
18:30 – 19:45 ACST
19:00 – 20:15 AEST
PETITION – To: Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and the Australian Labor Government
of the week – Australians for War Powers Reform (AWPR)
To see nuclear-related stories in greater depth and intensity
Antinuclear 