Huge UK £286bn nuclear submarine deal with US at risk for one reason warns ex Navy chief
The construction of modern nuclear submarines requires more expertise than it took to land a man on the Moon, says the former chief of the Royal Navy.
EXPRESS UK, By CIARAN MCGRATH, Senior News Reporter, Sat, Mar 16, 2024
The first will see the US and UK share technology with Australia in order to develop a new class of nuclear-powered submarines, the SNN-AUKUS, while the second pillar will focus on cyber capabilities, artificial intelligence, quantum technologies, and additional undersea capabilities.
However, speaking earlier this month, Hugh White, an emeritus professor of strategic studies at the Australian National University, voiced his doubts about the long-term viability of AUKUS, citing estimated costs of up to £286 billion between now and the 2050s.
Prof White told ABC RN’s Global Roaming: “I think the chance of the plan unfolding effectively is extremely low.”
Meanwhile, in an analysis published last week, Allan Behm, director of Australia’s International and Security Affairs Program, wrote: “The 2021 AUKUS announcement came with the promise of a sovereign Australian fleet of nuclear-powered submarines.
“Nearly 18 months on, however, it remains unclear if these submarines will ever be delivered – or if Australia actually needs them.”………………
He explained: “Pillar Two is very useful, and there’s a discussion about whether Japan be allowed to get involved, should Canada be involved, etc, that’s great.
“But with Pillar One, there are a number of complications. So, yes, there’s a cost which is huge, and the Australians seem to be committed to it.
“But there are now a number of voices in Australia saying, can we really do this, as one would expect
“The other thing is the Americans themselves, who are going to be selling four Virginia class submarines to the Australians as a stop-gap.
“They are short of nuclear attack submarines and so there are people in America who are saying, ‘well, how are we sure we want to do this because we can’t build enough quickly enough to fill up the gap when we get rid of the ones we’re giving to Australia’.”
The Royal Navy currently operates six fleet submarines (SSNs), of the Trafalgar and Astute classes, with two more Astute-class boats currently under construction, and four ballistic missile submarines (SSBN), of the Vanguard class, equipped with nuclear weapons. All are nuclear powered.
However, Lord West emphasised that such vessels did not simply “come off the conveyor belt”.
He explained: “The Astute class submarines are more complex than the technical work to land a man on the moon. That is how incredibly complex the technology is. https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/1877871/aukus-deal-australia-royal-navy-astute-class
The Government will dictate where the high level nuclear dump will be.
@MrRexPatrick, ·Mar 13
The Govt has refused to provide #FOI access to its high level radioactive waste site selection process. But it turns out we don’t need to know because, as uncovered by @DavidShoebridge examining #AUKUS legislation today, the Govt will just tell us where the site will be
Nuclear power in Australia — a silver bullet or white elephant?
ABC News, By political reporters Tom Crowley and Tom Lowrey 16 Mar 24
“It’s time to talk nuclear,” Ted O’Brien declared in a video message filmed on an isolated beach last February.
Appointed shadow energy spokesperson a few months earlier, Mr O’Brien’s enthusiasm for nuclear power was already well known, but not yet fully formed as Coalition policy. By many in Canberra, it had been regarded with idle curiosity.
But it was the choice of beach that raised eyebrows on this occasion: Mr O’Brien was in Fukushima.
The small Japanese city was the site of an infamous nuclear accident in 2011, when the Daiichi power plant was damaged by an earthquake and tsunami.
Mr O’Brien had travelled to visit the plant at his own expense as a myth-busting exercise.
“I’ve heard many stories about the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, including some unfounded horror stories and wildly untrue claims. I therefore decided to travel to Fukushima to find out for myself,” he said.
“I discovered a beautiful place and wonderful people, and I returned home with enormous optimism for their future.”
A year on, nuclear energy for Australia has firmed as Coalition policy, and Mr O’Brien’s “enormous optimism” has earned derision from Energy Minister Chris Bowen.
“Tell him he’s dreaming,” Mr Bowen said last Sunday when asked about the Coalition’s plans. His concern was not safety, where there have been significant improvements since Fukushima, but cost and practicality.
“I don’t know what expert he’s talking to … The average build time of a nuclear power plant in the United States has been 19 years. Ted O’Brien thinks he can do it in Australia from 10 [years] with a standing start,” he said……………………………………………………………………………………….
Nice work if nuke can get it
………………………..setting up in the Australian context would be a different proposition, and would present several hurdles.
First, large-scale nuclear power plants are expensive. The cheap power produced by plants in Europe comes only after decades of operation, enough time for the operators to have recouped their significant upfront capital costs.
It would take a long time – the Coalition hopes for a decade, but Labor says it would be at least twice that – to get them up and running, and an even longer time to bring costs down.
Second, the CSIRO and the AEMO doubt that large-scale nuclear plants are the right fit for Australia’s energy needs.
The east coast electricity market is relatively small by global standards, owing to Australia’s small population.
A single large plant of the sort used in Europe, according to CSIRO and AEMO, would account for such a huge chunk of our power needs that it would be inadvisable, since the whole grid would falter if the plant went offline for maintenance, or due to some fault.
Instead, the agencies say we would need more than one plant working together, like the coal plants currently do. But that would be even more expensive.
Some have called instead for “small modular reactors” (SMRs) – mini nuclear plants, assembled in a factory, which can be set up quickly. Unlike large plants, they can also be switched on and off quickly, which means they could “pinch hit” to provide power alongside renewables or other power sources.
If this sounds appealing, cool your jets – the technology to do this on any notable scale doesn’t exist. Attempts to build them elsewhere, such as in the US, have so far run into fatal cost barriers.
None of that has dimmed the enthusiasm of SMR optimists, including Bill Gates, Rolls Royce and for a time the Coalition.
But the latter’s embrace of nuclear has shifted away from its early focus on SMRs and it now appears set to land on advocating larger-scale nuclear plants on decommissioned coal sites.
A radioactive political issue
This points to a political challenge on top of the practical one.
The Liberal Party has tried, and failed, to start a conversation on nuclear power on more than a few occasions.
John Howard took a nuclear policy to the 2007 federal election, hoping public perception of the industry had shifted. It hadn’t.
Nearly two decades on, the Coalition is hoping it is right this time.
Coalition backbenchers have been agitating on the issue for years, urging the former Morrison government to take up the idea.
Those pleas weren’t heeded, beyond a very low-key parliamentary inquiry, as the party feared a scare campaign on nuclear reactors in the suburbs.
But the change in leadership after the 2022 election saw a surprisingly rapid shift — with new Nationals leader David Littleproud openly calling for nuclear power to be on the table just weeks after polling day.
Peter Dutton also flagged early enthusiasm, although at first only in principle. Then, shortly after the Dunkley by-election loss a fortnight ago, he confirmed this would become official Coalition policy.
An announcement is expected before the budget, which Mr Dutton has hinted will include a list of possible sites for nuclear, likely large-scale nuclear.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese can scarcely contain his glee at the prospect of a nuclear fight.
“I’ll give you this tip, when they release their policy, you’ll hear a very clear response … [from] the communities where these giant nuclear reactors are going to go,” he said this week.
“[Peter Dutton] is a guy who’s scared of a solar panel but thinks that a nuclear reactor will be well received. I’ll wait and see.”
But Coalition MPs are confident they can sell the idea to voters, insisting the issue plays well with younger voters in particular.
They point to published opinion polls, which suggest more than half of Australians are now either supportive of nuclear or at least open to the idea.
The most prominent such poll was The Australian’s Newspoll, which suggested approval from 65 per cent of 18- to 34-year-olds.
That poll question asked about SMRs and described them as “zero-emissions energy on the sites of existing coal-fired power stations once they are retired”.
Nuclear in my backyard
But if this has created some optimism in the Coalition, the announcement of locations looms as an early political hurdle.
Just a handful of regions have coal-fired power stations that could fit the bill. This includes the Hunter, Gippsland and Central Queensland.
MPs in those areas would have the difficult task of selling a nuclear reactor to their electorate. So far, they seem cautiously enthusiastic, though some want assurances the technology is safe. Gippsland MP Darren Chester warned community concerns would need to be “ameliorated”.
There’s also the question of where to put the waste. Mr Dutton has sought to “put things in perspective” by pointing out the waste generated in the US since the 1950s “would fit in the area the size of a football field, to a depth of about nine metres”.
But if selling locals a nuclear plant is challenging, selling them a nuclear dump would be even more so – although as Mr Dutton points out, the same challenge awaits on waste from nuclear submarines under the AUKUS agreement.
Bonanza or boondoggle?
Even if the Coalition can convince enough voters to back nuclear power and put them in government, that won’t be the last of the political hurdles.
Next comes the question of money.
Labor’s Chris Bowen has suggested “eye-watering” amounts of taxpayer money would be needed to make nuclear viable.
“Every country in the world with nuclear has required massive transfers of taxpayer wealth to the nuclear constructors,” he said.
The Coalition has been coy on whether its policy will include a taxpayer subsidy, but has hinted at details to come in its forthcoming announcement.
And energy experts say that realistically, any private sector contribution would only come if investors had enough confidence the project would make it through to completion. That would require bipartisan support.
Bipartisan support may also be needed to overturn the federal ban on nuclear power. State-level bans in NSW, Victoria and Queensland would need to be overturned too.
Labor’s national platform currently includes an explicit ban on nuclear power, and some key unions are resolutely opposed to the industry.
‘Niche’ at best
All of that points to a difficult road ahead. And it’s one many energy experts say it would lead to a small benefit at best.
Alison Reeve from the Grattan Institute does not see nuclear as part of the mix, but says that if anything SMRs could play a “last resort” role, supplementing renewables during winter troughs.
“That would be the only possible niche I could see for nuclear … but you’re having to build generation that’s only used for a couple of weeks every year,” she said.
“At the moment it looks like the most economic opportunity for that role is gas, with offsets to cover the emissions.”………………………………….. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-03-16/nuclear-power-in-australia-silver-bullet-white-elephant/103571824
Reversing Europe’s and Australia’s slide into irrelevance & insecurity – National Press Club of Australia speech- Yanis Varoufakis
First, Australia must restore a reputation tainted by blindly following America into lethal adventures in Iraq, Afghanistan and, today, via its active and crucial complicity in Israel’s deliberate war crimes in Gaza, East Jerusalem and the West Bank.
Children are not starving in Gaza today. No, they are being deliberately starved. Without hesitation or remorse. The famine in Gaza is no collateral damage. It is an intentional policy of starving to death thousands until the rest agree to leave their ancestral homeland.
Second, Australia has a duty to de-escalate the New Cold War. To understand that this can only be done if Australia ends its servility to a United States’ actively creating the threats that they then make us pay through the nose to protect us from.
Imagine an Australia that helps bring a just Peace in Ukraine, as opposed to a mindless forever war. A non-aligned Australia that is never neutral in the face of injustice but, also, not automatically aligned with every warmongering adventure decided in Washington.
Imagine an Australia which, having re-established its credentials as a country that thinks and acts for itself, engages with China in the spirit of peaceful cooperation – a far better way of addressing Beijing’s increasing authoritarianism toward its own peoples than buying useless, hyper-expensive submarines that only succeed in forcing China’s political class to close ranks around a more authoritarian core.
Imagine a truly patriotic Australian Prime Minister who tells the American President to cease and desist from the slow murder of Julian Assange for the crime of journalism – for exposing American war crimes perpetrated behind the back of US citizens in their name.
To conclude, if Europe and Australia are to escape gross irrelevance, we need separate but well-coordinated European and Australian Green New Deals.
DiEM25, our paneuropean movement, is working toward this goal.
Yanis Varoufakis – 14/03/2024
Europe and Australia are facing a common existential threat: a creeping irrelevance caused, on the one hand, by our failure properly to invest and, on the other hand, by our ill-considered slide from a strategic dependence on the United States to a non-strategic, self-defeating servility to Washington’s policy agenda.”
Yanis Varoufakis’s address at the National Press Club in Canberra on Wednesday 13 March, 2024
…………………………………. The three post-war phases that shaped Australia’s and Europe’s habitat
Our present moment in Europe and in Australia has been shaped by three distinct postwar phases.
The first was the Bretton Woods system. America exited the war as the only surplus, creditor country. Bretton Woods, a remarkable recycling mechanism, was, in effect, a dollar zone built on fixed exchange rates, sustained by capital controls, and erected on the back of America’s trade surplus. With quasi-free trade as part of the deal, Washington dollarised Europe, Japan and Australia to generate aggregate demand for the products of its factories – whose productivity had skyrocketed during the war. Subsequently, the US trade surplus sucked the exported dollars back into America. The result was twenty years of high growth, low unemployment, blissfully boring banking and dwindling inequality. Alas, once the United States lost its trade surplus, Bretton Woods was dead in the water.
The second phase was marked by the violent reversal of this recycling mechanism. The United States became the first hegemon to enhance its hegemony by boosting its trade deficit. Operating like a powerful vacuum cleaner, the burgeoning US trade deficit hoovered up the world’s net exports. And how did America pay for them? With dollars which it also hoovered up from the rest of the world as German, Japanese and later Chinese capitalists sent to Wall Street 70% of dollar profits made from their net exports to the US. There, in Wall Street, these foreign capitalists recycled their dollar profits into Treasuries, real estate, shares and derivatives.
This audacious inverted recycling system, built on US deficits, required ever increasing American deficits to remain stable. In the process, it gave rise to even higher growth than the Bretton Woods era, but also to macroeconomic and financial imbalances as well as mind-numbing levels of inequality. The new era came complete with an ideology (neoliberalism), a policy of letting finance rip (financialisation), and a false sense of dynamic equilibrium – the infamous Great Moderation built on hugely immoderate imbalances.
Almost inevitably, on the back of the perpetual tsunami of capital rushing in from the rest-of-the-world to Wall Street, financiers fashioned gigantic pyramids of complex wagers – Warren Buffet’s infamous Weapons of Mass Financial Destruction. When these crashed, to deliver the Global Financial Crisis, two things saved Wall Street and Western capitalism:
- The G7 central banks, that printed a total of $35 trillion on behalf of the financiers from 2009 to last year – a peculiar socialism for bankers. And,
- China, which directed half its national income to investment, thus replacing much of the lost aggregate demand not only domestically but also in Germany, Australia and, of course, in the United States.
The third period is more recent. The era of technofeudalism, as I call it, which took root in the mid-2000s but grew strongly after the GFC in conjunction with the rapid technological change that caused capital to mutate into, what I call, cloud capital – the automated means of behavioural modification living inside our phones, apps, tablets and laptops. Consider the six things this cloud capital (which one encounters in Amazon or Alibaba) does all at once:
- It grabs our attention.
- It manufactures our desires.
- It sells to us, directly, outside any actual markets, that which will satiate the desires it made us have.
- It drives and monitors waged labour inside the workplaces.
- It elicits massive free labour from us, its cloud-serfs.
- It provides the potential of blending seamlessly all that with free, digital payments.
Is it any wonder that the owners of this cloud capital – I call them cloudalists – have a hitherto undreamt of power to extract? They are, already, a new ruling class: today, the capitalisation of just seven US cloudalist firms is approximately the same as the capitalisation of all listed corporations in the UK, France, Japan, Canada and China taken together!
Continue reading‘The most beige person’: The man behind the Coalition’s nuclear plans
The Coalition’s spokesman for climate change and energy, Ted O’Brien.
Mike Seccombe is The Saturday Paper’s national correspondent. March 16, 2024Just two months after the 2019 election, Barnaby Joyce was making trouble for the new Morrison government. The dumped Nationals leader was part of a group of maverick MPs pushing for nuclear power. He reckoned he knew a way to make such a policy saleable.
The Joyce plan, as articulated in The Sydney Morning Herald on July 21, was this: “If you can see the reactor [from your house], your power is for free. If you are within 50 kilometres of a reactor, you get power for half price.”
People living or working up to 75 kilometres away would get a 25 per cent reduction on their electricity bills, he told the paper. By his reckoning, communities across the country would be lining up to get reactors.
Scott Morrison didn’t want a bar of the idea, or of nuclear power. Inquiring media were assured the position taken by the Coalition to the election still held: there were no plans to build nuclear power plants and there would be none unless and until there was evidence they could stack up economically.
Still, the problem persisted. The split on energy policy was boiling over between moderates and right-wingers in the [Coalition] government’s ranks – the latter mostly from Queensland, mostly climate change sceptics and proponents of more coal-fired power as well as nuclear.
A number of the pro-nuclear members, prominently including Keith Pitt and James McGrath, had long been calling for a parliamentary inquiry into the prospect of taking Australia nuclear.
A few weeks later, Morrison gave them one, although technically the August referral to the Standing Committee on the Environment and Energy was from the then minister for energy and emissions reduction, Angus Taylor.
The chair of the committee was Ted O’Brien, the Liberal member for Fairfax on Queensland’s Sunshine Coast, a relative neophyte elected to the parliament only three years prior, on the slogan “Time for Ted”.
To him fell the difficult task of steering through a report that would pacify the pro-nuclear zealots without undermining the Coalition leadership’s “no nukes” policy.
In some respects, O’Brien is typical of Queensland’s conservative party, a unique amalgam of the Liberals and Nationals.
Like many in the Liberal National Party, he is the scion of a family business with agricultural links, Defiance Mills. He began his working life as a trainee baker, before moving into management.
In other ways, though, he differs from the norm. ——— (subscribers only) https://www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au/news/environment/2024/03/16/the-most-beige-person-the-man-behind-the-coalitions-nuclear-plans#mtr
CSIRO chief warns against ‘disparaging science’ after Peter Dutton criticises nuclear energy costings
Douglas Hilton says he will ‘staunchly defend’ scientists as opposition leader repeats incorrect claim that CSIRO report does not accurately represent cost of renewables
Guardian, Paul Karp and Graham Readfearn,15 Mar 24
Australia’s science agency, CSIRO, has rejected Peter Dutton’s claim its estimates of the cost of renewables are unreliable.
CSIRO chief executive, Douglas Hilton, has warned that maintaining trust “requires our political leaders to resist the temptation to disparage science”, rejecting Dutton’s comments about its GenCost report.
But the opposition leader has doubled down, repeating his incorrect claim on Friday that the report does not properly cost renewables and transmission required to integrate them into the grid.
On Tuesday, Dutton claimed the annual CSIRO report that had included estimates of costs for small modular reactors – which are not yet available commercially – was “discredited” because it “doesn’t take into account some of the transmission costs, the costs around subsidies for the renewables”.
Despite Dutton’s claim, the most recent GenCost report does include the cost of integrating renewables such as solar and wind into the electricity grid. That is, it includes the cost of building new transmission lines and energy storage such as batteries.
On Friday Hilton said that he would “staunchly defend our scientists and our organisation against unfounded criticism”.
“The GenCost report is updated each year and provides the very best estimates for the cost of future new-build electricity generation in Australia,” he said in a statement………………………………
Hilton insisted that “CSIRO’s scientists and engineers can be relied on by the community to work creatively, assiduously and with integrity”.
On Friday Dutton doubled down on the comments, despite the rebuke, telling Channel Nine his point was “we need to compare apples with apples”.
“And at the moment that report … doesn’t take into consideration all of the costs around renewables,” he claimed, repeating his original error…………………………………………
The climate change and energy minister, Chris Bowen, has repeatedly rebuffed Dutton’s nuclear push, citing cost – including an estimate from the energy department that replacing fossil fuels with nuclear could cost $387bn.
Bowen has accused the Coalition of using “the rightwing playbook of 2023 – populism, polarisation and post-truth politics” in making false claims about the potential for nuclear power in Australia. https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2024/mar/15/csiro-peter-dutton-gencost-report-nuclear-energy-renewables-cost
ABC interview- Sarah Ferguson and Tom O’Brien – a case study in exposing Trumpian-style deceptive spin
Greg Phillips 13 Mar 24
We need a proper transcript of this – Ferguson made a great point (11m25s) that Bill Gates said we should take advantage of our bountiful wind and solar potential. (Plus there are so many things that O’Brien said that I want to add to my “wacky nuclear predictions” file.) – Ferguson: I asked Bill Gates on this program whether Australia should get involved with nuclear energy – this was his answer – “Australia doesn’t need to get engaged on this, Australia should aggressively take advantage of Australia’s natural endowment to do solar and wind, that’s clear cut and beneficial to Australia”
Greg Phillips In the interview, Ted O’Brien employs logical fallacies to support the Coalition’s position on nuclear energy:
O’Brien appeals to the authority of experts and government agencies, such as ANSTO [Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation], to support his argument for nuclear energy.
O’Brien presents a false dichotomy by framing the energy debate as a choice between nuclear energy and renewables, suggesting that nuclear is necessary due to the perceived failure of renewable energy targets.
O’Brien engages in ad hominem attacks by criticising the Labor Party’s energy policies and accusing them of lacking transparency and effectiveness, rather than directly addressing the interviewer’s concerns about nuclear energy.
O’Brien misrepresents the interviewer’s arguments by suggesting that they are arguing against the attractiveness of nuclear energy to investors, rather than questioning its feasibility and cost-effectiveness in the Australian context.
O’Brien selectively then cites examples of successful nuclear energy projects in other countries, such as Canada and the United States, while ignoring instances of cost overruns and delays in countries like the United Kingdom and France.
These logical fallacies detract from the soundness of O’Brien’s arguments and undermine the credibility of the Federal Coalition’s stance on nuclear energy.
AUKUS anniversary brings a sinking feeling.
The Age, By Matthew Knott, March 13, 2024 —
As anniversaries go, this one has turned out to be quite a downer.
A year since Anthony Albanese, Joe Biden and Rishi Sunak stood at a naval base in San Diego to unveil Australia’s plan to acquire a fleet of nuclear-powered submarines, critics of the AUKUS pact are cock-a-hoop and its backers are on the defensive.
It’s a turnaround from December, when AUKUS’s champions were celebrating the fact that the notoriously dysfunctional and divided United States Congress had passed legislation authorising the sale of three Virginia-class submarines to Australia.
“This is a very significant accomplishment for all the parties involved,” declared US Congressman Joe Courtney, co-chair of the Congressional Friends of Australia Caucus.
“A lot of people have been holding their breath to see whether Congress takes this seriously.”
Yet in the lead-up to the one-year milestone, prominent commentators have been promoting a sense of gloom around the submarine plan.
“Dead in the water: the AUKUS delusion,” screams the bright yellow cover of the current edition of the Australian Foreign Affairs journal.
In the lead essay, defence expert and longtime AUKUS sceptic Hugh White argues the submarine plan will “almost certainly fail”, effectively reading AUKUS’s last rites before the pact has even reached teething age.
After laying out multiple ways in which the submarine plan could fall apart, White predicts the crunch is “perhaps most likely to come in Washington, where a number of hurdles could prove fatal to America’s willingness to sell us Virginia-class subs”.
Esteemed Financial Times foreign affairs columnist Gideon Rachman ventilated these anxieties to an international audience in February in a piece titled, “The squawkus about AUKUS is getting louder”.
Then came the Tuesday release of the Biden administration’s 2025 defence budget request, revealing it was only seeking funding for one Virginia-class submarine to built in the coming year. That is down from the two previously expected and well below the production rate of 2.33 subs a year the US says is necessary to sell any submarines to Australia.
As it tries to compete with China for supremacy in the Indo-Pacific, the US Navy is currently 17 attack submarines below its target of 66 – raising obvious questions about whether it will agree to hand over three boats to Australia beginning in 2032.
The legislation passed by Congress last year requires the president of the day to certify that the transfer of the submarines “will not degrade the United States undersea capabilities” and would be contingent on the US “making sufficient submarine production and maintenance investments” to meet its own needs.
The US navy is struggling to cope with supply chain blockages and worker shortages, so much so that the defence sector bought prime-time advertisements during the Oscars telecast to convince welders, forklift drivers, plumbers and marine biologists to help make AUKUS a reality.
Far from elated, AUKUS’s biggest champion in the US Congress is now furious. Describing the budget request as a “hard rudder turn”, Courtney said the decision to produce just one Virginia-class boat in a year “makes little or no sense” and would have a profound impact on both the US and Australian navies.
Former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull, who has long argued Australia would be better off under the deal he struck with France to acquire conventional diesel submarines, leapt onto ABC radio to say he told us so.
“This is really a case of us being mugged by reality,” Turnbull said.
“We are bobbing along as a cork in the maelstrom of American politics…Unless the Americans are able to dramatically change the pace at which they’re producing submarines, and there’s no reason to believe they will be able to do so, we will not ever get the submarines that were promised.”
The Australian and US governments have tried to push back on the doubters, with Defence Minister Richard Marles insisting the three nations “remain steadfast in our commitment to the pathway announced last March”.
The US Navy argues it is pouring $11 billion into the US industrial base over five years, with a plan to produce two Virginia-class submarines by 2028 and the 2.33 required to meet its AUKUS commitments soon after that.
……………………………………………………….. depends on how optimistic you feel about the American political system and the strength of the US-Australia alliance. Meanwhile, we have to contend with the possibility of Donald Trump’s return to the White House and no one knows what he would do about AUKUS…………………………….
From the moment it was announced a year ago, it has been clear the submarine plan was courageous in the Yes, Minister sense of the word: a hugely ambitious and risky endeavour that could come unstuck in several ways. While it is vastly premature to declare AUKUS dead, immense challenges remain.
Ultimately, only the delivery of the promised submarines will silence the doubters – not soothing words from Washington and Canberra. https://www.theage.com.au/politics/federal/aukus-anniversary-brings-a-sinking-feeling-20240313-p5fc0y.html
Pentagon sparks fresh AUKUS doubts on anniversary of Australia’s nuclear-powered submarine plans
ABC, By defence correspondent Andrew Greene, 13 Mar24
- In short: Defence Minister Richard Marles says AUKUS partners are working to help Australia acquire nuclear-powered submarines despite changes to procurement plans in the US.
- The US Navy says it will order just one fast-attack nuclear submarine in 2025, rather than two.
- What’s next? As part of the AUKUS deal, Australia will provide more than $4.5 billion to bolster America’s submarine industrial base
………………………………………Already the US is struggling to ramp up its submarine production rate to an annual target of 2.33 so it can replace retiring boats in its own fleet and begin transfers of second-hand stock to Australia in the early 2030s.
At present, the US is only achieving around 1.2 to 1.3 boats each year due to labour shortages and supply chain delays following the COVID-19 pandemic, with the Navy not expected to consistently hit a two-per-year target until 2029.
Former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull told the ABC Australia’s future defence had become completely dependent on the United States.
…………………………………….. This week marks one year since Prime Minister Anthony Albanese joined British counterpart Rishi Sunak and US president Joe Biden at a San Diego Naval Base to outline the AUKUS “optimal pathway” for Australia to acquire nuclear-powered submarines.
Greens senator David Shoebridge described the latest US defence budget request as a failure for the AUKUS partnership that was “almost too big to wrap your head around” and predicted Australia would end up with “nothing”.
“When the US passed the law to set up AUKUS they put in kill switches, one of which allowed the US to not transfer the submarines if doing so would ‘degrade the US undersea capabilities’. Budgeting for one submarine all but guarantees this,” he warned
………………………….Budget changes under new proposal
As part of the AUKUS deal, Australia will provide more than $4.5 billion to bolster America’s submarine industrial base, while the US aims to contribute a similar amount contingent on congressional negotiations over defence spending that are complicated by the Ukrainian war.
However, this week’s Pentagon budget proposal requests Congress to appropriate a further $US4 billion for the US submarine industrial base in 2025, and $US11.1 billion over five years, for a “historic” investment to expand production.https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-03-13/us-defence-announcement-raises-questions-on-aukus-anniversary/103578408
Opposition eyeing off six sites for nuclear reactors
New Daily, Poppy Johnston, Mar 12, 2024
Households and businesses close to the six nuclear power reactors the opposition hopes to see built could have their energy bills subsidised.
Teasing the coalition’s yet-to-be-unveiled energy policy at the Australian Financial Review Business Summit in Sydney on Tuesday, opposition leader Peter Dutton said the plan would likely include six nuclear plant sites.
Tasmania has been ruled out as a potential host state.
Dutton said the coalition would seek a social licence by incentivising close-by communities with subsided energy, a model he said was used in the United States.
“It provides incentive for industry to establish jobs,” he told the audience.
The opposition is expected to release its energy policy ahead of the federal budget in May, with the plan likely to include overturning the moratorium on nuclear technology and possible sites for reactors on old coal station locations to take advantage of existing transmission infrastructure…………….
The Albanese government has dismissed nuclear as an unsuitable technology for Australia that has a high price tag and will take too long to roll out.
Energy experts also say it’s difficult to estimate the cost of transitioning to nuclear given the technology is not currently commercially available.
Dutton addressed a number of what he described as “straw man arguments” against nuclear, including cost.
He used other regions with nuclear in the energy mix – South Korea and the Ontario region of Canada – to make his case for the system-wide cost of the energy source and its influence on power bills.
Reactors also produce a “small amount of waste” and Dutton said the government had already signed up to deal with nuclear waste via the AUKUS agreement……………………………. https://www.thenewdaily.com.au/news/politics/australian-politics/2024/03/12/dutton-six-sites-nuclear-reactors
Issues Changing the Nation: Never Ending AUKUS Submarine Policy Sagas
March 14, 2024 : The AIM Network, By Denis Bright
The issue of AUKUS has resurfaced from the murky depths of undersea politics. ABC News graphics remind readers of the latest additional payment to fast track the AUKUS deal with its proposed cost of at least $US368 billion.
Public policy interest in the AUKUS submarine saga is now being propelled by doubts about US construction deadlines for the high technology nuclear-powered submarines. The US Navy confirmed that it will halve the number of nuclear-powered submarines on offer in its 2025 budget. Second-hand LA Class submarines will not be available for sharing with Australia as they will be needed in the USA. Even the construction schedule for AUKUS-class submarines in Adelaide is now in doubt (ABC News 13 March 2024).
For readers who are new to this issue, I might restate some background to the AUKUS deals. The commercial military industrial complexes do not advertise their hidden details. Making a request to Gemini-Google Bard provided this summary for verification by readers:
- US Virginia-class submarines: Australia will acquire at least three (and potentially up to five) Virginia-class nuclear-powered attack submarines from the US. The first of these might be in early 2030s. The leading corporations from the US military industrial complexes are General Dynamics and Huntington Ingalls Industries (Newport News Shipbuilding). Numerous supportive technology companies engage in preparations for these developments including involvement from Boeing.
- AUKUS-class submarines: Provided through US and British commercial providers of a new class of nuclear-powered attack submarines during the 2040s. The British firms particularly embedded in the AUKUS Programme are:
: BAE Systems will play a critical role in the construction of the AUKUS submarines.
: Babcock International will be involved in construction and maintenance.
: Rolls-Royce will be involved in design and delivery of the nuclear reactors.
- Temporary Rotational Deployment UK Astute-class and US Virginia-class submarines are planned on a rotational basis to HMAS Stirling in Western Australia.
The US Studies Centre in Sydney (9 February 2024) offered commentary by its Director Professor Peter Dean and research associate Alice Nason:
AUKUS has become a case study in generational politics. Public opinion polling reveals only 33 per cent of Gen Z and millennial voters believe it’s a good idea for Australia to have nuclear-powered submarines, compared with 66 per cent of voters aged sixty-five and over.
Still, on some things, all generations agree: a plurality of Australian voters feel nuclear-powered submarines are not worth the cost to Australian taxpayers. Only 21 per cent of voters believe the submarines warrant their $368bn price tag.
These apprehensions, especially among young people, should alarm our policymakers. The people who are expected to staff Australia’s new submarine enterprise as of now don’t support it. This is only the tip of the iceberg for Australia’s workforce challenge.
Australia will build up a sizeable military industrial complex over the next half-century if the AUKUS deals proceed as planned. Lobbying in support of AUKUS has attracted retired political leaders from both sides of politics who are committed to the goal of a more militarized Australia (Anton Nilsson Crikey.com 23 January 2024).
From the far-off United States, Anna Massoglia and Dan Auble from the Open Secrets site were able provide details of lobbying by major corporations in during 2023 just in support of AUKUS. Boeing, Lockheed Martin and General Dynamics topped the lobbying spending with a combined expenditure of over $US80 million.
David Hardaker of Crikey.com exposed the roles of conservative lobbyists in support of the efforts of the military corporates (31 May 2023). This is an exercise in investigative journalism at its best:
A Crikey investigation into the power of conservative political lobbyists CT Group has revealed that two US companies represented by CT are set to be among the biggest winners of the “forever” AUKUS defence deal hatched by former prime minister Scott Morrison.
One of the companies, General Dynamics, is the lead contractor for constructing the US navy’s fleet of nuclear-powered submarines. The other company, Centrus Energy, is the leading provider of nuclear fuel for US national security purposes and for naval reactors.
CT’s US entity, CTF Global LLC, has acted as a lobbyist for General Dynamics and Centrus Energy since it set up shop in Washington in 2018, taking on the client list of long-term lobbyist Larry Grossman who was seeking to extend the global reach of his firm.
The evolution of the CIT Group as defence lobbyists came as it reached the peak of its political influence in Australia at the end of 2018 with its then-Australian CEO Yaron Finkelstein joining Morrison’s staff as principal private secretary.
In parallel with Australia, the CT Group also enjoyed the closest of relationships with then-UK prime minister Boris Johnson. David Canzini, a former CT executive, was part of Johnson’s team as a deputy chief of staff.
Readers can follow the investigative trails offered through Crikey.com:
Explore the Series
In this era of cost-of-living politics, no one on either side of politics seems to worry about the irregular additional costs of the AUKUS deals. There was an unexpected allocation of $A835 million to France was imposed on the Labor Government for breach of contract from the cancellation of Malcolm Turnbull’s submarine deal.
- Crosby Textor: the pollsters that took over the Liberal Party and became a global power.
- Mere coincidence? Crosby Textor is the common link in Morrison’s AUKUS deal.
- Scott Morrison issues blanket denial on nuclear submarine questions.
- Spooks and spies: Crosby Textor moves into shadowy territory.
- Crosby Textor group’s influence on the Liberals has been pervasive. Is it time to cut the link?
- Crosby Textor’s influence on prime ministers helped it dominate the Anglosphere.
The Register of Lobbyists and the Foreign Influence Transparency Scheme (the Scheme) from the Attorney-General’s Department do not provide easy access to the specific roles played by lobbyists for firms associated with military industrial complexes. Just knowing which lobbyists have an association with a company like the CT Group is of little practical purpose in investigative journalism. This is a sample register extract for the CT Group which was mentioned in the Crikey.com articles.The LinkedIn site offers more clues by showing which ex-politicians or former military personnel and policy advisers with links to Australian and global military industrial companies through both lobbying activities or the convening of forum events or other corporate links. There is nothing sinister about the openness of the opportunities offered through LinkedIn which opens a new world of connections for further investigation by journalists.
Here are just three examples. Arthur Sinodinos, Joel Fitzgibbon, Lynton Crosby
…….. Critical discussion might be painful to political elites. Armed conflicts in a nuclear age are even worse. Let’s pause for some reflection before more jingoism gets Australia into real trouble through over-commitment to global corporate military industrial complexes and the expansion of a stronger home-grown variant in Australia. https://theaimn.com/issues-changing-the-nation-never-ending-aukus-submarine-policy-sagas/
Refuting Peter Dutton’s recycled nuclear contamination
By Michelle Pini | 14 March 2024, https://independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/peter-duttons-recycled-nuclear-contamination,1841
Nuclear power is one hell of a way to boil water.
~ Albert Einstein
MANY AUSTRALIANS are accustomed to the Coalition’s deliberate lies and obfuscation on most issues, which is why they are no longer in power, at least for now.
The lengths to which the “friendly” media’s ongoing Right-wing public relations campaign is prepared to go in support of such obvious nonsensical blathering is, however, alarming.
In recent days, Opposition Leader Peter Dutton has been running free all over the countryside spruiking nuclear energy. Who cares? We hear you say. Well, apparently, every mainstream media platform, since they are not only publicising his outright lies, but in many cases, promoting them as credible policy.
Despite the current political state of play in Australia, in which the Labor Party has been elected federally and in every mainland state and territory, plus his “popularity” continuing to dwindle towards complete extinction, Peter Dutton appears mired to the outdated policies of generations past.
After yet another election loss, this time in the Dunkley by-election, Dutton has sprung up on every media platform, keeping the climate denial fires burning and rambling about nuclear as if it were a new idea, rather than the stale, worn-out dance with annihilation that it actually is.
According to Pete, nuclear is:
“…The only credible pathway we have to our international commitments to net zero by 2050.”
And proving yet again that facts never stood in the way of a good PR campaign, the Fourth Estate say: Facts be damned! We already had to (mostly) give up on climate denial so let’s give nuclear a good old-fashioned, vested-interests-funded, radioactive show of support!
This week, the usual suspects flooded our screens, radio waves and Google searches with headlines such as:
‘Nuclear will help Australia reduce emissions by 2050’ ~ Sky News
‘Shadow Energy Minister Ted O’Brien floats 10-year timeframe to get nuclear up and running in Australia’ ~ The West Australian
And the winner of the Most Creative Bullshit Headline award, once again, goes to that much-awarded Murdoch rag…
‘There’s no rational reason for maintaining the nuclear ban’ ~ The Australian
We may currently have a Labor Government, which has canned nuclear energy, but the media barons’ collective power to keep greenhouse gases spewing, corporate donors’ pockets overflowing and public minds contaminated should not be underestimated.
And so in answer to the Coalition and its nuclear-friendly media disciples, here are a few, by no means exhaustive, rational reasons to maintain Australia’s nuclear ban, keep nuclear energy firmly out of the energy mix and out of everyone’s backyard.
LIE #1: IT’S CHEAP
Even in the U.S., which boasts the biggest nuclear energy sector in the world, nuclear power costs have escalated. As recently as mid-2021, despite huge government subsidies, the target price for nuclear power increased by 53 per cent, to almost twice the price of utility-scale solar PV systems with battery storage.
Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen has estimated that the Coalition’s nuclear plan will carry a price tag of $387 billion – 20 times more than Labor’s current renewables investment fund – and would not be delivered before 2040. Nuclear energy, then, does not appear to be cost-effective.
LIE #2: IT’S QUICK
We (thankfully) don’t have nuclear reactors in Australia and thus there is no established nuclear reactor industry in place.
Nonetheless, back in 2023, Dutton first claimed:
“New nuclear technologies can be plugged into existing grids and work immediately.”
In their more recent ramblings, Dutton, his current Shadow Energy Minister Ted O’Brien and the unnamed “experts” to whom they refer claim Australia can have large nuclear reactors – magically – ready to go within ten years.
In the U.S., which boasts the largest nuclear industry in the world, it currently takes 19 years to achieve this.
According to Ted, the UAE produced a nuclear reactor from go to whoa in “ten years”. In reality, however, even with the UAE being an autocracy with a command economy, where communities are not permitted to object to reactors in their backyards, it actually took 13 years.
But what’s three extra years and a few more glow-in-the-dark communities between climate-denying friends?
Nuclear energy does not appear to be fast, either.
LIE #3: IT’S CLEAN AND GREEN
Even before we get to the radioactive leaks part of why nuclear power isn’t “clean”, there is the small matter of the Coalition’s stated need to maintain coal-fired power stations until all these nuclear reactors magically emerge, which even in Dutton’s plan, requires at least ten more years, but which based on the U.S. experience, we know will take more like 20.
This is, of course, at the heart of the Coalition’s nuclear push. This is the reason the Coalition gets energetic (pardon the pun) about most things. Nuclear energy generation takes a long time to develop at great cost, which would prohibit further investment in renewables and necessitate the extension of coal-fired power stations, currently set to be phased out by 2040.
According to its own Nuclear Regulatory Commission, in 2017, out of 61 operating – and self-regulating – nuclear power plant sites in the United States, 43 have had leaks or spills involving groundwater contamination above the EPA’s safe drinking water threshold.
So, nuclear energy does not appear to be “clean” or “green” or, as we indicate below, safe.
LIE #4: IT’S SAFE
There is still no answer to nuclear waste disposal or the toxic bi-products of nuclear storage. There is no safe way of “recycling” it.
There is still no answer to the “management” of radioactive leaks.
Nuclear waste, depending on its elemental composition, takes between 290 to a few hundred billion years to decompose. High-level nuclear waste consisting of spent fuel from nuclear reactors – of the type Peter Dutton and co would like to build – accounts for most radioactive waste and needs to be safely stored for up to a million years.
And then there are unplanned natural disasters, such as Fukushima.
As Dave Sweeney recently explained on IA, despite its established technical sophistication and even after 13 years, the best Japan can do with Fukushima’s ongoing radioactive waste is ‘pump and dump’ it into our oceans.
LIE #5: THE LIGHTS WILL GO OUT
According to self-styled nuclear energy mastermind Ted O’Brien, if we “prematurely” shut down coal-fired energy generators and implement nuclear reactors right now, “the lights will go out”.
Unsurprisingly, there is no factual basis for this claim. However, the lights may well go out if we do as his party is suggesting since natural disasters affecting nuclear reactors on a scale like Fukushima cannot be anticipated or prevented. Then there’s the “slight” problem of global warming, which, if we continue to accelerate by burning fossil fuels, will, indeed, result in all the lights going out.
To sum up – rationally – we repeat, nuclear power isn’t safe, it’s not cost-effective and it certainly ain’t green, unless you count glowing in the dark.
Dutton’s blast of radioactive rhetoric on nuclear power leaves facts in the dust
Graham Readfearn, Guardian, 14 Mar 24
Coalition’s claim of cheap power and quickly built reactors is at odds with real world experience of other countries.
We may not yet be entering a nuclear age in Australia, but we would all be best advised to handle the rhetoric around the issue as carefully as we would radioactive waste.
This week opposition leader Peter Dutton said an annual CSIRO report that had included estimates of costs for small modular reactors – which are not yet available commercially – was “discredited” because it “doesn’t take into account some of the transmission costs, the costs around subsidies for the renewables”.
Dutton is referring to a report known as GenCost, which calculates the cost of generating electricity from different technologies when fuel, labour and capital are included. This metric is known as the levelised cost of electricity.
Despite Dutton’s claim, the most recent GenCost report does include the cost of integrating renewables such as solar and wind into the electricity grid. That is, it includes the cost of building new transmission lines and energy storage such as batteries.
The most recent GenCost report estimates a theoretical small modular reactor built in 2030 would cost $382 to $636 per megawatt hour. It says this is much more expensive than solar and wind, which it puts at between $91 and $130 per MWh even once integration costs are included.
The calculations in GenCost don’t include subsidies for any generating technologies – including renewables or future SMRs.
The cost estimates for SMRs are challenging because no commercial plant has been built. But the closest a project has got to existing – the Carbon-Free Power Project in Utah – was cancelled late last year primarily because the cost of the power would have been too high. And that project was given more than $2bn from the US Department of Energy.
Mycle Schneider is an independent nuclear expert and coordinator of the annual World Nuclear Industry Status report that tracks nuclear power development around the globe. He points to research from US financial group Lazard that says in the US, the costs of unsubsidised solar and wind including firming costs, such as batteries, range from US$45 to $141 per MWh compared to new-build nuclear at US$180 per MWh.
Ramping up the nuclear rhetoric
On Tuesday, Dutton said he would soon reveal six potential sites for nuclear reactors around Australia – likely to be close to, current or retiring coal-fired power stations.
Shadow energy minister Ted O’Brien claimed this week Australia could have nuclear power “up and running” within a decade.
“Nuclear ‘up and running within a decade’ does not fit with the experience we have seen elsewhere,” said Prof MV Ramana, a nuclear expert at the University of British Columbia and a contributor to the nuclear industry status reports.
Ramana points to Finland that has operated reactors since the 1970s, where parliament voted in 2002 to add a fifth reactor to the country’s fleet. Work started in 2005 but the reactor didn’t connect until 2022 “almost exactly 20 years after the parliamentary vote,” he said.
“We can see similar long periods of time between decisions to build reactors and when they start operating, again in countries that already have nuclear plants, in countries like the United States and the United Kingdom.”
Dutton and O’Brien have both said there are 30 economies around the world using nuclear and “50 more” that want to.
But Schneider says there are actually 32 countries with nuclear reactors, “but the top five generators produced 72% of the nuclear electricity in the world.”
“Over the past 30 years, only four countries started nuclear programs (Romania, Iran, Belarus, UAE) and three phased out their programs (Kazakhstan, Lithuania, Germany). There are reactors under construction in three more newcomer countries (Bangladesh, Egypt, Turkiye). Most other ‘plans’ are vague.”
The UAE – a model case study?
On Sky News, O’Brien pointed to the United Arab Emirates as a country that had commissioned South Korea’s Kepco to build four reactors of the size that could be considered for Australia in less than a decade.
In fact, each of the 1.4GW UAE plants was expected to be delivered in five years, but took eight, according to the industry status report. And it took 12 years from the announcement of the plan in 2008, to the first unit coming online in 2020.
The problem with using the UAE as a case study is that it is not a democracy, but an autocracy.
“The UAE is not a good model for Australia,” Ramana said………………………………………..
Reactor reactions
Experts have told the Guardian that even if Australia were to remove its federal and state bans on nuclear energy, it would be unlikely to see reactors generating power until the 2040s – at which point most, if not all, of Australia’s coal-fired power will have been turned off years earlier. One nuclear advocate questioned whether Australia could actually find a company to build reactors.
This week one political journalist said on Sky that “Canada is about to put in small modular reactors” and had selected a site in Ontario.
While Ontario Public Generation does plan to build a fleet of four small modular reactors, the company doesn’t yet have a licence to construct them.
If it does go ahead, OPG has said it doesn’t expect the first-of-its-kind unit – each about one-tenth the size of Australia’s biggest coal-fired power plant – to be working commercially until the end of 2029.
Expertise needed to make giant leap
O’Brien and Dutton have rejected the notion that Australia would be “starting from scratch” on nuclear, citing the existence of the tiny reactor at Lucas Heights near Sydney, the country’s existing reserves of uranium and the agreement to buy nuclear-powered submarines in the future.
Glenne Drover, the secretary of the Victorian branch of the Australian Institute of Energy and a broad supporter of nuclear power, said it was “quite a step up” from the 20MW Lucas Heights research reactor “to 1,000MW+ and to build, own and operate a pressure reactor”………………………more https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/mar/14/peter-dutton-nuclear-power-comments-csiro-small-modular-reactors
Dead in the Water- The AUKUS Delusion
Australian Foreign Affairs – February 2024
The latest issue of Australian Foreign Affairs examines Australia’s momentous decision to form a security pact with the United States and the United Kingdom that includes an ambitious, expensive and risky plan to acquire nuclear-power submarines – a move that will have far-reaching military and strategic consequences.
Dead in the Water looks at whether the AUKUS deal will enhance or undermine Australia’s security as tensions between China and the US rise, at the impact on Australia’s ties with its regional neighbours, and at whether the submarines plan is likely to ever be achieved….. more https://www.australianforeignaffairs.com/
Australia’s biggest smelter to launch massive wind and solar tender, says nuclear too costly
Giles Parkinson, Renew Economy, Mar 13, 2024
A massive tender for wind and solar projects is to be launched next week to help repower Australia’s biggest aluminium smelter Tomago, near Newcastle, with its majority owner saying nuclear is out of the question because it is too slow and too expensive.
The tender will be a landmark event for the Australian renewable energy transition, because the Tomalgo smelter – with annual demand of more than 8 terawatt hours, is the biggest single energy consumer in the country.
Majority owner Rio Tinto this year has already announced two record-breaking contracts for wind and solar farms in Australia to provide power for its Boyne Island smelter in Gladstone, Queensland, and its two alumina refineries in the same port city.
Those contracts included one for the first gigawatt scale solar project in Australia, the 1.1 GW Upper Calliope solar project in central Queensland, and the 1.4 GW Bungapan wind project to be developed by iron ore billionaire Andrew Forrest’s majority owned Windlab.
In an interview on Renew Economy’s popular and weekly Energy Insiders podcast this week, the head of Pacific Repowering in Rio Tinto’s energy and climate division, Vik Selvaraja, says the first steps towards a new tender will be launched next week.
“Next week, we’re launching an RFP (request for proposals) for Tomago,” Selvaraja told the podcast.
“And we are very, very keen to go down a very similar process of assessing what projects exist in New South Wales that we can partner with to bring to the market.”………………………………..
The switch from fossil fuels to renewables for the country’s biggest consumers of energy makes a nonsense of the claims that such facilities can only prosper on so-called “base-load” power, a claim the federal Coalition uses to justify its plans to extend the life of coal fired generators and replace them with nuclear.
Opposition energy spokesman Ted O’Brien has been claiming that while nuclear is expensive to build, it is somehow cheap to consume. But that too is a nonsense claim, and only made possible in some countries by government ownership and massive subsidies.
Asked about the nuclear option, Selvaraja said: “As far as we can see … all validated and independent data that exists on costs say that it (nuclear) is a very expensive source of energy. And I think in Australia, certainly, we’ve got low cost wind and solar, and we were going to run with that.”
Rio Tinto, it should be noted, was once one of the major producers of uranium, but no more following the closure of the Ranger mine in the NT, owned by Energy Resources of Australia.
You can listen to the full interview with Selvaraja here, along with our weekly commentary of all things energy. You can find past episodes of the Energy Insiders and other RenewEconomy podcasts here. https://reneweconomy.com.au/australias-biggest-smelter-to-launch-massive-wind-and-solar-tender-says-nuclear-too-costly/
1 This month
Chernobyl: The Lost Tapes – A good documentary on Chernobyl on SBS available On Demand for the next 3 weeks– https://www.sbs.com.au/ondemand/tv-program/chernobyl-the-lost-tapes/235274195556
20 May – Webinar – The dangerous world of AUKUS, US, military occupation and suppression of dissent
National Webinar, 20th May, 2026, 6.30pm AEST. Confronting laws restricting/suppressing protest speech and action
Speakers: Former Sen. Rex Patrick, Lawyer Nick Hanna ,Arthur Rorris ,Jorgen Doyle, Sen David Shoebbridge,
Facilitator Kelley Tranter.
of the week – Australians for War Powers Reform (AWPR)
To see nuclear-related stories in greater depth and intensity
Antinuclear 