Antinuclear

Dutton’s nuclear policy backfires

Mike Seccombe  The Saturday Paper, 27 Apr 24

This much can be said for Colin Boyce: he is not one of the federal Coalition’s nuclear nimbys. He would, if necessary, agree to have a nuclear power station in his electorate…………………………………………………..

Opposition Leader Peter Dutton’s announcement on March 12 that the Coalition would “shortly” announce about six sites across the country where nuclear reactors could be built forced the issue. Dutton’s plan would put them in places where coal-fired power stations were closing down.

The promised announcement of potential nuclear sites has been pushed progressively further into the future. Initially it was expected within a couple of weeks, then before the federal budget on May 14. Last Sunday, on the ABC’s Insiders program, Dutton would not commit to a pre-budget announcement, improbably blaming the recent stabbing incidents in Sydney for the delay.

On Tuesday this week, Nationals leader David Littleproud told Sky News the Coalition parties were “not going to be bullied into putting this at any time line, but you will see it before the election”.

Whenever the announcement does eventually come, Boyce’s central Queensland electorate, Flynn, is likely to be on the list.

Boyce’s acceptance of nuclear power in his electorate is not so much an endorsement of the policy being pushed by his leaders as an acceptance that he has no other choice.

Flynn, twice the size of Tasmania and dotted with coalmines and gas wells, produces vast amounts of energy, most of which is shipped overseas.

………………………………………………………………….. Boyce says, probably correctly, “ there will be no coal-firedpower stations in Queensland operational after 2035”.

He is not happy about that and is even less happy that the state opposition supported the government’s legislated target, for he has never accepted the need to stop burning fossil fuels.

Before his election to federal parliament, Boyce served five years in the Queensland parliament, representing the coal seat of Callide. There, he argued for the construction of more coal-fired power stations. He denied the reality of human-induced climate change.

Opposition to fossil fuels, he told state parliament on June 17, 2021, was “driven by the mind-numbing, eco-Marxist Millennials and upper middle-class ‘wokes’ who have been indoctrinated with some quasi-religious belief that coal is bad and carbon dioxide is poisoning the planet”.

……………………………………………………………………. Even within the Coalition’s ranks there are some who see the move as being at least as much an attempt to address a political problem as to address the climate crisis, although most will not say so publicly.

Bridget Archer will, however. The Tasmanian MP – one among a much-depleted cohort of moderate Liberals after the 2022 election – issued a warning to her colleagues via the pages of the Nine newspapers last month that nuclear energy should not be put forward as an alternative to wind and solar.

“There is no point even having a nuclear discussion if you don’t accept a need to decarbonise, to transition away from coal and gas,” she said. “There only is a case for nuclear if there is a fairly rapid transition to large-scale renewables, otherwise why are you doing it?”

She then answered her own question: “I think part of the reason for having the discussion is to keep people in the tent on net zero.”

Others privately assess the motivations of the federal Coalition leadership more harshly. They suggest it’s not primarily about getting nuclear up but about slowing the transition to wind and solar and thereby extending the life of fossil fuels in power generation.

Certainly, the chances of getting the federal parliament to greenlight a domestic nuclear industry are remote. For about 25 years, nuclear power has been prohibited by law in Australia, and it was the Howard Coalition government that banned it, under a 1998 deal with the Greens to get other legislation through the Senate.

Given the ever-growing proclivity of Australian electors to give their votes to progressive independent candidates and Greens, there is a good chance neither major party will win majority government at the next election. Even if the Coalition did win the House of Representatives, it almost certainly would not gain a majority in the Senate. Unless Labor recanted on its vehement opposition to nuclear power, Dutton’s plan would fall at the first hurdle.

……………………………………. the available evidence suggests even those members of the federal Coalition parties who publicly spruik the Dutton policy lack the courage of their convictions.

Last month, shortly after Dutton made his big announcement, reporters for the Nine papers contacted a dozen of them.

“Twelve opposition MPs have publicly backed lifting the moratorium on nuclear power in Australia but will not commit to hosting a nuclear power plant in their own electorate,” their story began

……………………………………………….. Two points. First, the Coalition plan no longer involves small modular nuclear reactors, but instead would rely on building traditional large plants. Second, the polling to which Littleproud referred actually showed a lot of people were woefully misinformed about the cost of nuclear power.

When asked to rank sources of energy “in terms of total cost including infrastructure and household price”, 40 per cent of respondents thought solar and wind power were the most expensive, compared with 36 per cent who thought nuclear was, and 24 who picked coal and gas. Fully one third of respondents thought nuclear was the cheapest option.

They are spectacularly wrong. According to the most recent GenCost report – the annual collaboration between the Australian science agency CSIRO and the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) – SMRs are by far the most expensive way of generating electricity. The “levelised cost” of power from an SMR would be $382 to $636 per megawatt hour, while solar and wind would cost between $91 and $130 per MWh.

The Dutton response was to attack the experts. He claimed GenCost underestimated the cost of renewables because it did not include expenditure on the transmission infrastructure required to integrate them into the grid.

This was untrue, as the report’s authors promptly made clear. Dutton was undeterred, however, which in turn saw the chief executive of the CSIRO, Douglas Hilton, release an open letter defending the importance of independent scientific endeavour.

Last Tuesday, the same day as Littleproud went on Sky News and maintained the falsehood that nuclear power was cheaper than wind and solar, another report was released, further confirming more wind and solar energy was simultaneously lowering both prices and emissions from the electricity sector.

The quarterly Energy Dynamics report from the energy market operator showed that in the first three months of this year, renewables provided 39 per cent of power in the east coast power grid, almost 2 per cent more than in the corresponding period last year.

……………………………..“We are increasingly seeing renewable energy records being set which is a good thing for Australian consumers as it is key in driving prices down and NEM [National Electricity Market] emissions intensity to new record lows,” AEMO’s executive general manager of reform delivery, Violette Mouchaileh, said in a media release accompanying the report…………………………………………………………………………………… more https://www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au/news/politics/2024/04/27/duttons-nuclear-policy-backfires

April 28, 2024 Posted by Christina Macpherson | politics | Leave a comment

Nationals’ nuclear climate policy puts Australia’s Paris deal in doubt

The Age, James Massola and Mike Foley, April 25, 2024 

The Coalition cannot commit to Australia’s 2030 emissions reduction targets, with senior Nationals MPs conceding a plan to adopt nuclear power would mean a future Coalition government would not comply with the Paris Agreement.

Days after Opposition Leader Peter Dutton delayed his announcement of up to six sites for future nuclear power plants – the announcement is now expected after the budget – Nationals leader David Littleproud told this masthead the path to net zero emissions by 2050 would not be linear under a future Coalition government.

The Nationals’ stated aim of slowing down the rollout of large-scale renewable energy projects, combined with the 15-year timeline for building a nuclear plant, means the Coalition would struggle if returned to power to meet Labor’s current target of 43 per cent emissions reduction by 2030.

But a Coalition government would inherit Australia’s legally binding 2030 target under the Paris Agreement, which requires nations to contribute to an international effort to keep global warming under 2 degrees.

Walking away from the Paris Agreement would infuriate Liberal moderates and MPs in metropolitan seats, where climate action is more popular; embolden the teals and other independents; and risk reigniting the climate wars fought between Nationals and Liberals in the former Morrison government.

Littleproud said “there is not a linear pathway to net zero, and trying to achieve one will have a detrimental impact on the economy. We have to have a broad-based solution rather than an all renewables approach.”

He would not commit to Australia’s climate target, set by the Albanese government, to cut emissions by 43 per cent by 2030.

“We want to wait and see what the modelling we come up with for 2030 [in the party’s new nuclear policy] says, but we won’t rush into anything …”

Experts including former chief scientist Alan Finkel and former Australian Energy Infrastructure Commissioner Professor Andrew Dyer have said it would take a minimum of 15 years for a nuclear plant to be built in Australia

Grattan Institute deputy energy director Alison Reeve said it would be impossible for Australia to reach its 2030 Paris target if there were a slowdown in the renewables rollout – including a pause to accommodate nuclear plant…………………………………………………………..

The Grattan Institute’s Alison Reeve said Australia would not hit the 2030 target under the Coalition’s nuclear push because most of the decarbonisation needed hangs off the government’s renewable goals.

“If you don’t reach that, you just don’t meet the 2030 target,” she said.

The bulk of reductions are to come from reducing coal-fired power and achieving the target to boost renewables to 82 per cent of the grid by 2030.

Reeve said cutting emissions from the energy sector by replacing fossil fuel electricity with renewables was a fundamental underpinning of Australia’s climate policy and any slowdown in wind and solar farms would make it harder for other sectors to clean up their act……….  https://www.theage.com.au/politics/federal/nationals-nuclear-climate-policy-puts-australia-s-paris-deal-in-doubt-20240424-p5fm8p.html

April 25, 2024 Posted by Christina Macpherson | politics | Leave a comment

Push-polling goes nuclear

Dr Jim Green , 18th April 2024 https://theecologist.org/2024/apr/18/push-polling-goes-nuclear

Conservative political parties in Australia actually believe that nuclear power is popular – based on biased push-polling.

A Newspoll survey led to a page-one article in the Australian, the Murdoch national newspaper, under the following headline: “Powerful majority supports nuclear option for energy security”.

The Australian’s political editor Simon Benson wrote in February: “Labor is now at risk of ending up on the wrong side of history in its fanatical opposition to nuclear power.” The party “ignores this community sentiment potentially at its peril”, he added. The story was prominent across the Murdoch owned press and on Murdoch’s Sky News.

The Newspoll question was as follows: “There is a proposal to build several small modular nuclear reactors around Australia to produce zero-emissions energy on the sites of existing coal-fired power stations once they are retired. Do you approve or disapprove of this proposal?”

Push-polling

The results: 55 per cent approval, 31 per cent disapproval and 14 per cent ‘don’t know’. However the poll was a crude example of push-polling designed to generate pro-nuclear results and headlines. Its many faults were identified by polling experts Kevin Bonham and Murray Goot and by economist Professor John Quiggin.

To give just one example of the bias, replacing Australia’s 21,300 megawatts of coal-fired power generation capacity with small modular reactors (SMRs) would require a large number of reactors, not ‘several’ as Newspoll asserted. If, for example, NuScale Power’s 77-megawatt reactors were chosen, 277 reactors would be required.

In broad terms, the tricks used by pro-nuclear push-pollers involve swaying opinions with biased preliminary comments, biased questions, limited response options, and misreporting the findings. Specific tricks include the following:

* Presenting or implying a narrow or false choice – as with the implication in the Newspoll survey that Australians could choose between nuclear reactors or coal.

 * Asking respondents if nuclear power should be “considered” or if they support an “informed and balanced conversation”, and then conflating support for those bland propositions with support for nuclear power itself.

* Linking nuclear power to climate change abatement without mention of the downsides or expense of nuclear power, or alternative and arguably better ways to address climate change.

* Asking respondents if they support ‘advanced’ nuclear power or ‘the latest nuclear energy technologies’ without noting that ‘advanced’ nuclear power reactors are few in number, they aren’t really ‘advanced’ in any meaningful sense, and in some cases they are used to power fossil fuel mining or pose increased weapons proliferation risks.

* Reporting on poll results without clearly stating what the actual survey questions were.

* Avoiding the word ‘nuclear’ by referring to small modular reactors, or avoiding the word reactors by using phrases such as ‘the latest nuclear energy technologies’.

* Using the word ‘small’, as in ‘small modular reactors’: expect to see more of this, it seems to work well despite the spectacular implosion of the most advanced SMR project in the US, the NuScale project in Idaho.

* Reporting self-selecting, online polls as if the results mean anything. For example Australian academic Oscar Archer is impressed by a meaningless ABC poll, a meaningless Murdoch tabloid poll, and a meaningless Channel 7 Sunrise poll.

Australia’s conservative parties fall for push-polling

Partly because of the Murdoch media’s promotion of nuclear power and its push-polling, the federal Liberal-National Coalition opposition has “pledged” to introduce nuclear power to Australia by the mid-2030s if it wins and forms a government at the election to be held no later than May next year.

The Coalition believes that most Australians support nuclear power, that younger Australians are particularly enthusiastic, and that local communities will welcome a nuclear power reactor. The problem is that those views are underpinned by nothing other than biased push-polling. 

Unbiased polls find that support for nuclear power in Australia falls short of a majority; that Australians support renewables to a far greater extent than nuclear power and nuclear power is among the least popular energy sources; that a majority do not want nuclear reactors built near where they live; and that most Australians are concerned about nuclear accidents and nuclear waste.

Even the push-polling results should raise red flags for the Coalition. A 2019 Roy Morgan poll preceded the poll question with this highly dubious assertion: “If the worries about carbon dioxide are a real problem, many suggest that the cleanest energy source Australia can use is nuclear power.”

Even with that blatant attempt to sway respondents, only a bare 51 per cent majority expressed support for nuclear power.

Locals are ‘hostile’ 

The Coalition hasn’t even formally released its nuclear power policy yet ‒ that will happen in the coming weeks. But already the policy has been disastrous for the Coalition with near-zero support beyond the far-right of the Coalition and the far-right media, in particular the Murdoch-Sky echo chamber.

Opposition to locally-built nuclear power reactors has been clearly and consistently demonstrated in Australian opinion polls for 20 years or more. A 2019 Essential poll was typical of the others: 28 per cent of respondents “would be comfortable living close to a nuclear power plant” while 60 per cent would not.

The Coalition proposes replacing retiring coal power plants with nuclear reactors and expects an enthusiastic response from local communities. A ‘Coalition source’ told the Murdoch press that Coalition MPs “had convinced themselves that people would be queuing up” for nuclear reactors. 

But recent focus group research carried out in the Hunter Valley in NSW and the Latrobe Valley in Victoria ‒ two of the coal regions that might be targeted ‒ found that voters are “hostile” to plans for reactors in their areas. 

Local hostility is just one of the problems facing the Coalition’s nuclear policy. Coalition MPs have said on countless occasions that the development of nuclear power in Australia would require bipartisan support. But nuclear power isn’t supported by the Labor Party and it faces strong resistance even from within the Coalition.

Indeed there is bipartisan opposition to nuclear power in most of the four states with operating coal plants that are likely to be targeted in a coal-to-nuclear program ‒ Victoria, Queensland, New South Wales, and Western Australia. Labor state governments in those four states are opposed to nuclear power in their states, and Liberal/Coalition opposition leaders are opposed to nuclear power or have failed to endorse it.

Colourful commentary

Tony Barry ‒ a former deputy state director and strategist for the Victorian Liberal Party, and now a director at the research consultancy RedBridge ‒ describes the Coalition’s decision to make nuclear power the centrepiece of its energy and climate policy as “the longest suicide note in Australian political history”.

On the strength of a detailed RedBridge analysis of Australians’ attitudes to nuclear power, Barry says that just 35 per cent of Australians support nuclear power and that only coal is less popular. If the Coalition is to have any chance of winning the next election it will not be with nuclear power, he says. 

Colourful commentary has also been offered to Murdoch journalists by Coalition MPs under cover of anonymity. One Coalition MP says the nuclear policy is “madness on steroids”, another says the Liberal and National Party rooms are “in a panic” about the nuclear policy and “they don’t know what to do”, and another says the nuclear policy is “bonkers”,

Former Liberal prime minister Malcolm Turnbull also describes the nuclear policy as “bonkers”. He says nuclear power’s only utility is “as another culture war issue for the right-wing angertainment ecosystem, and a means of supporting fossil fuels by delaying and distracting the rollout of renewables”, and that nuclear power “is exactly what you don’t need to firm renewables.” Turnbull describes ultra-conservative Coalition leader Peter Dutton as a “thug” who says “stupid things” about nuclear power. With friends like that…

Matt Kean, the NSW Liberal MP and former deputy premier, states: “I not only regard advocacy for nuclear power as against the public interest on environmental, engineering and economic grounds, I also see it as an attempt to delay and defer responsible and decisive action on climate change in a way that seems to drive up power prices in NSW by delaying renewables.”

John Hewson, the former federal Liberal leader, says the Dutton opposition has become “ridiculous” with its pro-nuclear, anti-renewables stance which is economic “nonsense”, and that Dutton may be promoting nuclear “on behalf of large fossil-fuel donors knowing nuclear power will end up being too expensive and take too long to implement, thereby extending Australia’s reliance on coal and natural gas”.

Nuclear power a ‘dog whistle to climate denialists’

The cynicism reflects concerns about the Coalition’s opposition to the federal Labor government’s target of 82 per cent renewables by 2030 and the Coalition’s plans to expand gas and prolong the use of coal. The Nationals are calling for a moratorium on the rollout of large-scale renewables.

Professor John Quiggin, an economist, notes that, in practice, support for nuclear power in Australia is support for coal and he has described nuclear advocacy in Australia as a dog whistle to climate denialists.

Even in the Murdoch-Sky right-wing echo-chamber, splits are emerging. A Murdoch media editor says the Coalition’s nuclear policy is “stark raving mad” and “madness…total madness”.

Australia’s big private electricity generators ‒ AGL Energy, Alinta, EnergyAustralia and Origin Energy ‒ have dismissed nuclear energy as a viable source of power for their customers. One senior executive says that power bills would triple if the nuclear path was pursued. Industry isn’t interested, and trade unions are overwhelmingly opposed.

The Australian chief scientist opposes to the introduction of nuclear power to Australia, as do at least two former Australian chief scientists and the NSW chief scientist.

A recent survey by the Investor Group on Climate Change asked big institutional investors with $37 trillion under management which energy and climate solutions they believed had good long-term returns. Nuclear power was ranked last of the 14 options, renewable energy first.

History repeating itself

In the mid-2000s, John Howard as the Liberal prime minister promoted nuclear power and conservatives hoped the policy would create splits within the Labor Party and the environment movement.

Labor wasn’t split, nor was the environment movement, but at least 22 Coalition candidates publicly distanced themselves from the Howard government’s nuclear policy during the 2007 election campaign. Howard lost his seat, the Coalition lost the election, and the nuclear policy was ditched immediately.

We could be seeing history repeating itself with Peter Dutton’s ill-advised promotion of nuclear power.

Labor MPs can’t believe their luck. Speaking in parliament, prime minister Anthony Albanese compared Peter Dutton to a nuclear reactor: “One is risky, expensive, divisive and toxic; the other is a nuclear reactor. The bad news for the Liberal Party is that you can put both on a corflute, and we certainly intend to do so.”

This Author

Dr Jim Green is the national nuclear campaigner with Friends of the Earth Australia and a member of the Nuclear Consulting Group.

April 21, 2024 Posted by Christina Macpherson | politics | Leave a comment

Modular Reactors. Peter Dutton hasn’t done his nuclear homework

by Rex Patrick | Apr 16, 2024 ,  https://michaelwest.com.au/nuclear-reactors-peter-dutton-has-not-done-his-homework/—

Has Peter Dutton’s proposed ‘rollout’ of modular nuclear reactors real policy or just politics? What research has he done to develop the policy? Not much, it seems. Rex Patrick reports.

In September 2020, the Morrison Government released a Low Emissions Technology Statement that placed Small Modular Reactors (SMR) on a list of watching brief technologies. SMR developments were to be monitored to see if they might play a part in Australia’s energy future.

Consistent with that listing, the Government directed the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO) to join an International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Coordinated Research Project focused on the Economic Appraisal of SMRs to provide information to assist in evaluating the technology’s economic viability.ANSTO assembled a team to prepare, among other things, a case study on Australia’s potential to adopt SMR technologies in the future and analyse financing options for the technology. As part of that project, ANSTO even supported a University of Queensland PhD thesis on SMRs.

Flip flop politics

Peter Dutton, a minister in the Government that commissioned the ANSTO work, came out mid-way through 2023 with a proclamation of the Coalition’s plans for Australian to adopt SMRs as a preferred tool in our movement towards net zero carbon emissions.

In doing so Dutton opened himself up to a political battering because of the nascent state of SMR development around the world and huge questions around costs.

Undeterred, in early March Dutton doubled down on nuclear power, switching his thinking to large nuclear power plants scattered about the country. As public controversy raged about the new plans, Dutton has started reinjecting SMRs into the total mix.

There are now to be a mix of economic and taxation incentives for the local communities targeted by the Coalition to host a nuclear reactor.

Missing homework

In response to their hip flip to a larger nuclear power plant and his small flop back to SMRs, I thought MWM set out to see if Dutton has visited ANSTO or taken a brief from them in relation to his plans.

After all, there’s no shortage of precedent for parliamentary oppositions to seek factual briefings from government agencies, especially on complex and specialised subjects.In a recent nuclear estimates brief prepared for the CEO of ANSTO, the first two paragraphs stated:

“ANSTO has significant insight into what other countries and jurisdictions are doing around the world in terms of nuclear power.”

As mentioned above, ANSTO was specifically engaged by the former Coalition Government to take a look at SMRs.So, I was left gobsmacked when a Freedom of Information request I made to ANSTO to find out what Dutton’s interactions with ANSTO had been over the past five years returned nil information.

ANSTO FOI response (on original)

Dutton has not visited Australia’s only nuclear reactor and has not received a brief from our country’s expert agency on the policy area he was developing.

In some measure, it explains the flip-flopping and limited detail in many of his announcements.

For completeness, I also asked the Government’s nuclear safety regulator, ARPANSA, if Dutton had visited them or sought advice from them. FOI came up with the same answer from them. (on original) Nothing at all..

Politics, not policy

You can’t develop policy just by chin-wagging at party room meetings and with briefs from vested business interests. That’s not how it works. You have to get independent and expert advice, and in the case of nuclear matters, a vital place to get that advice in Australia is ANSTO and ARPANSA.

So, just what policy work has Dutton done? In large part, he appears completely dependent on the Google skills of his little-known Climate Change and Energy spokesperson, Ted O’Brien.

With a background in marketing, O’Brien has no ministerial experience, so the practicalities of major project implementation may be quite novel for him. He did once chair a parliamentary committee inquiry into nuclear energy, but as so often is the case, the research there was largely done by the committee secretariat, with O’Brien just adding a thin layer of pro-nuclear evangelism on the top.

It’s pretty safe to say that, in the absence of comprehensive briefs from and engagement with Australia’s leading experts, Dutton is not engaging in serious policy development. Rather it’s a manoeuvre to achieve political differentiation and keep the anti-renewals, climate-change-denying core of his Coalition happy.  Dutton’s approach to policy development, in this instance, says just as much about him as it does about his nuclear plans.

“It’s all politics”

April 17, 2024 Posted by Christina Macpherson | politics | Leave a comment

Coalition nuclear plan flips back to SMRs after latest meeting with lobbyists

Giles Parkinson, Apr 12, 2024, https://reneweconomy.com.au/coalition-nuclear-plan-flips-back-to-smrs-after-latest-meeting-with-lobbyists/

And then, in a single bound, it was back to small modular reactors. The federal Coalition’s confused nuclear power policy has lurched from SMRs to large scale nuclear and back again to SMRs. It’s as if the policy is decided by the nuclear lobbyist most recently consulted.

Coalition leader Peter Dutton’s latest thought bubble on nuclear, dutifully reported in The Australian newspaper last weekend, is that Australia should sign up to SMRs, and should be able to build the first of them by the middle of the 2030s – faster than even most of the technology’s boosters admit is possible.

And then, in a single bound, it was back to small modular reactors. The federal Coalition’s confused nuclear power policy has lurched from SMRs to large scale nuclear and back again to SMRs. It’s as if the policy is decided by the nuclear lobbyist most recently consulted.

Coalition leader Peter Dutton’s latest thought bubble on nuclear, dutifully reported in The Australian newspaper last weekend, is that Australia should sign up to SMRs, and should be able to build the first of them by the middle of the 2030s – faster than even most of the technology’s boosters admit is possible.

Dutton says the new plan will be fully sketched out before the federal Labor government’s budget in early May – and according to The Australian this latest plan follows meetings last week with executives of Rolls Royce SMR and its Australian partner Penske.

Renew Economy decided to check all this out with Rolls Royce SMR itself, and got some surprising answers.

“It wasn’t a representative of ours (who met with Peter Dutton),” a company spokeswoman said by email. “I believe it was a potential partner of ours that met with Peter Dutton who spoke about RR SMR on our behalf.”

Dutton and other Coalition boosters like to talk about SMRs in the present tense, and most mainstream media dutifully follow suit, as if they are already operating.

This is deception. A group of my friends chatting over coffee this week was stunned to hear that SMRs are not actually a thing, despite what they read in the press. A few smaller nuclear reactors exist, such as in China and Russia, but they are in no way modular, which is the supposed key selling point of this new technology.

“One of the biggest problems for SMRs is that they don’t exist,” Allison Macfarlane, director of the school of public policy and global affairs at the University of British Columbia and a former chair of the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission, told the Financial Times this week.

“We’re still at the paper stage, the computer model stage. To get to demonstration models and then a full-scale model when you are ready to commercialise will take billions of dollars,” she added.

Rolls Royce SMR is still at least two years away from obtaining a licence, and the spokesperson told Renew Economy this week that the company is hopeful that the first SMR can be completed “in the early 2030s.”

However, Simon Bowen, the chair of Great British Nuclear, the government agency that is trying to lead the technology’s revival and find ways to replace its existing ageing fleet, told the FT this week the first SMR won’t likely be seen until the mid 2030s.

That time line is important, because it goes to the fantasy nature of the Coalition’s nuclear policy. Is Dutton seriously suggesting that Australia, with no civil nuclear power industry, can match the UK on timing on their proprietary nuclear technology.

And first-of-their-kind technologies are always considerably more expensive than those that follow. But more on the timing later, because that goes to the heart of what the Coalition is trying to do – not so much build nuclear, but to stop renewables in their tracks.

But it is impossible to think that Australia would commit to an SMR before it is built in its host country, with all the embedded infrastructure and know-how. And no country is going to commit to more SMRs until the first one is built, and can prove itself. Which straightaway pushes the Coalition timeline back into the 2040s.

On costs, Dutton is trying to convince everyone that nuclear – contrary to all available evidence – is low cost, which The Australian, unsurprisingly, reported as a matter of fact.

The Coalition’s energy spokesman Ted O’Brien engages in some impressive verbal calisthenics by claiming that they might be expensive for investors, but are low cost for consumers.

But if new-build nuclear is to be low cost to consumers it will be the result, as it is in France, of massive government subsidies. And given the Coalition’s horrified reaction to Labor’s “Made in Australia” green manufacturing plan, they are definitely not in favour of government subsidies.

The Australian reported that the Rolls Royce SMR is priced at around $5 billion for a 470 MW facility, which appears an heroic assumption given it is less than one third of the price of the only SMR to actually obtain a licence to date, the NuScale project in the US that was cancelled last year because it was too expensive for consumers.

Rolls Royce SMR’s own web page describes a study produced last year that claimed its technology could reduce wholesale prices in the UK by between three per cent and 13 per cent, depending on how many SMRs were rolled out.

Curiously, the study – according to the detailed Rolls Royce summary of it – arrives at these numbers by comparing SMRs to the cost of peaking gas plants, the most expensive generation on the grid, and which – in reality – is rarely used. They are only switched on around 1 to 2 per cent of the time.

These peaking gas plants are not seen as the usual competitor to nuclear or SMRs, because nuclear is designed to be baseload, not the fast response and flexible capacity needed to fill in the gaps of a grid dominated by wind and solar.

And, it should be noted, nuclear itself is highly dependent on fast-response capacity – peaking gas and pumped hydro – to make up for its own lack of flexibility.

The Rolls Royce spokesperson told Renew Economy that this analysis was conducted in the winter of 2022/23, when the energy crisis was at its worst, gas prices had soared, and energy consumers were being hit by huge bills.

It begs a question, which Rolls Royce didn’t answer: If SMRs are only able to undercut peaking gas power plant prices by a small amount, what does that imply when those costs are spread across the whole day?

The spokesperson confirmed that Rolls Royce SMRs will indeed be focused on “baseload” power, and its SMRs are designed not to displace renewables, but replace “the loss in low-carbon electricity … caused by our ageing existing reactor fleet going offline in the years ahead.” 

The spokesperson said SMRs do have a degree of flexibility to load follow and respond “when the wind doesn’t blow and the sun doesn’t shine,” and can use its thermal output to produce hydrogen or process heat, which might be attractive in the northern hemisphere.

But they have little ability to ramp up to fill in gaps of wind and solar because, as the spokesperson told Renew Economy in their email: “SMRs work most cost-effectively when ‘always on’.”

And this is important because it goes to the heart of why the Coalition nuclear plan makes absolutely no sense and is more about destruction of one industry, rather than construction of another.

Australia is heading towards 82 per cent renewables by 2030, and even if it doesn’t meet that deadline, it will be above 90 per cent by the mid 2030s, and likely close to 100 per cent.

A fleet of “always on” nuclear power plants will struggle to find a role in that scenario, particularly as daytime demand will be almost entirely met by the anticipated ongoing boom in small-scale solar on the roofs of household and business consumers.

But the Coalition policy, and it makes no secret of this, is not about compatibility. O’Brien’s own energy advisor admits that nuclear and renewables are effectively an “either-or” because the system is either going to be baseload or renewables and storage.

And the Coalition’s fundamental stand is that it refuses to believe that wind and solar can power a modern economy. “The lights will go out,” says Dutton, or “your fridge goes off at home” he added this week.

Which is why they are calling for a moratorium on the roll out of wind, solar, battery storage and transmission, and why they want coal-fired power stations to stay open until nuclear can arrive.

And it’s why their proxies in the mainstream and social media – and so-called think tanks and ginger groups backed by billionaires such as Gina Rinehart and Trevor St Baker – spend so much time demonising the technologies that are currently available, and which can do the job, such as solar, wind, battery storage and electric vehicles.

Dutton’s rhetoric is also liberally splattered with outright falsehoods. A check of his media transcripts this week reveals a number of common false statements.

The first is the claim that Australia is the only OECD country not to have or want nuclear. Not true. Germany closed down the last of its nuclear generators a year ago, and Italy voted against the technology in a referendum a decade ago after shutting down the last of its reactors. A number of other EU countries are following suit.

Dutton also claims that the federal government is planning “28,000 kms of new transmission lines by 2030.” Again, not true. The Australian Energy Market Operator’s Integrated System Plan models 10,000km by 2030 in its core step change plan. That’s still a lot, but little more than one third of what Dutton claims.

The 28,000km number is a 2050 target, not 2030, and only in the scenario where Australia becomes a renewable energy superpower by exporting green hydrogen and other green products, most likely from vast wind and solar projects in the middle of the country that will need to link into the grids or production facilities.

Dutton says he wants to have a “mature” discussion about the energy mix. But that can’t happen if his rhetoric is based around obvious lies.

April 14, 2024 Posted by Christina Macpherson | politics | Leave a comment

Cook by-election candidate Simon Kennedy says locals are ‘comfortable’ living near nuclear reactors

ABC News, By Ethan Rix 13 Apr 24

The by-election for former prime minister Scott Morrison’s southern Sydney seat has not garnered national fanfare the way other by-elections have in the past.

And as voters head to the polls today, you can count the apathy being felt in the electorate of Cook — with early voting down by about 11 per cent compared to the 2022 federal election and nearly 13 per cent lower than the Voice referendum late last year, according to the Australian Electoral Commission.

Even the Liberals’ candidate, Simon Kennedy, won’t be able to personally boost voter turnout as his team confirmed he didn’t move into the electorate in time to meet the registration deadline — denying him an opportunity to pose for the cameras as he votes for himself.

Perhaps the lack of enthusiasm is because the Liberals look set to comfortably hold a seat they have held for half a century, or maybe it’s because the Labor Party has opted not to put a horse in the race, diminishing any usual analysis the result could be a “test” of Anthony Albanese’s leadership.

But for people who are eligible to cast a ballot today, what are they really voting for?

A nuclear reactor in Cook’s backyard

Former McKinsey consultant Simon Kennedy has openly backed his party’s push to introduce nuclear power to the national energy grid, with the opposition preparing to announce up to six possible sites for nuclear plants.

When asked whether he would oppose a nuclear power reactor being built in the electorate of Cook, Mr Kennedy said locals were “comfortable” with the concept because there was already one positioned on its “doorstep” in Lucas Heights.

“People are comfortable with where Lucas Heights is, they’ve been comfortable with that concept,” he said.

“I haven’t heard any fear or worries about that at all.”

Lucas Heights, which is located on the outskirts of the Sutherland Shire, is home to Australia’s only nuclear reactor, which is not used to produce electricity.

It instead produces medical and industrial isotopes and stores low-level waste and a small amount of intermediate-level waste on-site.

“They’re [voters] not looking for people pushing clean or coal or one over the other, they’re looking for cheap, reliable and clean power,” Mr Kennedy said.

Looking at getting more female candidates

The number of female MPs in the Coalition has also been a key question in the lead-up to this by-election.

Mr Kennedy comfortably defeated the only female candidate to put her hand up for Liberal pre-selection, Veteran Family Advocate Commissioner Gwen Cherne, who received 35 votes to his 158.

The result was said to have upset those within the party pushing for more females to be preselected to safe Liberal seats……………….

Who else is running?

…………… The Australian Greens have put up Martin Moore, who has a Fine Arts Degree with a Masters in Social Ecology and ran for the local seat of Miranda at the 2023 NSW election.

Mr Moore disagreed with Mr Kennedy that locals would be comfortable living next to a nuclear reactor.

“I feel that people are really concerned that we’re being dragged into a nuclear wasteland with the AUKUS deal … and the opposition’s ideas of reactors,” he said……………………………… https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-04-13/cook-byelection-simon-kennedy-nuclear-reactors/103696760—

April 14, 2024 Posted by Christina Macpherson | politics | Leave a comment

Coalition “in a panic” about response to confused and unpopular nuclear power plan

The Australian noted the Australian Workers Union’s support for nuclear power but didn’t mention the opposition of the Australian Council of Trade Unions, Australian Education Union, Australian Manufacturing Workers Union, Australian Nursing and Midwifery Federation, Australian Services Union, Communication Workers Union, Electrical Trades Union, Independent Education Union (Vic – Tas), Maritime Union of Australia, National Union of Workers, Tasmanian Unions, Unions ACT, Unions WA, Unions SA, Unions NT, United Voice, United Firefighters Union, and the Victorian Trades Hall Council.

Jim Green, Apr 8, 2024,  https://reneweconomy.com.au/coalition-in-a-panic-about-response-to-confused-and-unpopular-nuclear-power-plan/

 The Coalition’s nuclear power policy is being released in instalments in the Australian newspaper ahead of its formal release sometime before the May budget.

Under a plan taken to the Coalition shadow cabinet in March, seven coal regions have been identified as potential locations for nuclear power plants, the Australian reports.

Presumably those regions are Collie in WA, the Latrobe Valley in Victoria, the Hunter Valley and Lithgow in NSW, and three regions in Queensland — the Darling Downs, Gladstone and Central Queensland.

The Australian reports that a shadow cabinet subcommittee will produce ‘economic impact statements’ to promote the potential economic benefits in the seven regions.

The Coalition will try to win local support by using taxpayer funds to reduce power bills for people living near the proposed nuclear plants. Workers will be offered higher-paid jobs, presumably at taxpayers’ expense. And taxpayers will be on the hook for workforce training, regulation, waste disposal and much more.

The plan “will involve the creation of new precincts for advanced manufacturing centred on cheap energy from small nuclear reactors”, the Australian reports. Cheap nuclear power will attract heavy industry, adding to the high-paid jobs bonanza.

A “community engagement process” would be rolled out once the coal sites had been identified, opposition leader Peter Dutton says.

But just like everything else associated with the Coalition’s nuclear policy, the plan to win over communities in coal regions has hit a snag.

The Murdoch press reported on April 7 that focus group research carried out in the Hunter Valley in NSW and the Latrobe Valley in Victoria found that voters are “hostile” to plans for reactors in their own areas.

An unnamed Coalition MP said of the Liberal and National Party rooms: “My read is they’re in a panic about it. They don’t know what to do.” A Coalition frontbencher said Dutton is “obsessed with this ­nuclear thing — obsessed with it.”

Rolls-Royce reactors

“There is every reason to be optimistic about bringing small modular net-zero emission nuclear into the power mix in the 2030s,” Dutton told the Australian.

Indeed he has “pledged” that if the Coalition were returned to government at the next election, the first nuclear reactors would be up and running by the mid-2030s. That’s a big pledge since there is zero chance of reactors operating in Australia by the mid-2030s.

Dutton recently met privately with executives from Rolls-Royce to discuss “the pursuit of low-cost small modular reactor technology for Australia”, the Australian reports.

Rolls-Royce claims it could build a reactor in Australia in just four years (once licensing and a myriad of other issues were sorted). Let’s compare that speculation with real world experience:

April 10, 2024 Posted by Christina Macpherson | politics | Leave a comment

Peter Dutton to press ahead with nuclear despite opposition in regional Australia

Locals who live in areas earmarked for nuclear reactors have delivered a blow to Peter Dutton’s energy plan.
James Campbell National political editor, April 7, 2024, The Sunday Telegraph
https://www.adelaidenow.com.au/news/nsw/peter-dutton-to-press-ahead-with-nuclear-despite-opposition-in-regional-australia/news-story/53a7108e83484542ee99870d5002fba9
Peter Dutton will press on with his plans for nuclear power, despite recent Coalition research finding widespread opposition to the proposals in regional areas earmarked for reactors.
Coalition sources said focus group research carried out in the Hunter Valley in NSW and the Latrobe Valley in Victoria in recent weeks found hostility to the proposed polices.
It found that while voters were aware of the general arguments for nuclear power, they were hostile to plans for reactors in their own areas.

A Coalition source familiar with the research said the findings had come as a shock.
“They had convinced themselves that people would be queuing up for these things,” the source said.
Another said it was clear “more work needs to be done” on winning the argument.
But Mr Dutton is still set to release his plan for net-zero energy before the May budget.
The Weekend Australian reported the Coalition’s plan would offer heavily discounted power bills to communities with nuclear power plants.
It also reported the plan is to install small nuclear reactors at as many as seven sites, which will be operating by the mid-2030s.

“The ability to produce zero-emissions baseload with 24/7 electricity to firm up renewables is within our grasp,” he told the paper.
However a Coalition MP who strongly supports nuclear power said there was increasing concern in both the Liberal and National Party rooms that it was already too late to win the public argument about nuclear power in the time left before the next election.
“We haven’t even seen the policy yet,” the MP said. “My read is they’re in panic about it. They don’t know what to do.”

The Sunday Telegraph spoke to a number of Coalition MPs, including frontbenchers, who expressed concerns about the saleability of nuclear power from opposition.
But they all agreed Mr Dutton is not for turning on ¬nuclear power.
According to one frontbencher who supports the plan “the best case scenario” from pushing nuclear power would be a “nil-all draw” with the Government.
“Let’s not kid ourselves that this is some kind of vote-catching policy,” the frontbencher said.
But he said there was no chance Mr Dutton would walk away from it.

“He’s obsessed with this nuclear thing – obsessed with it,” the frontbencher said.
“Peter is very determined to go down this path,” another said.
On Wednesday, Mr Dutton told reporters: “I think we need to have a proper, mature discussion about how we migrate to a new energy system where we can have renewables that are firmed up by zero emissions, latest generation nuclear technology”.
He added: “In terms of regions, we’ve been very definite in our advice that we’re looking at about half a dozen sites, on brownfield sites, those where you’ve got a coal-fired generator coming to an end of life”.

April 9, 2024 Posted by Christina Macpherson | politics | Leave a comment

The high-stakes power play that will shape our future

April 5, 2024, The Australian, Simon Benson; Political editor

The climate wars may be over but an equally divisive battle is arising out of the nation’s new political consensus. Both sides of politics are locked into a net-zero emissions target by 2050, Labor by choice, the Coalition by the force of political reality. But Peter Dutton’s introduction of the nuclear option creates a stark contest between the main parties on how to get there.

The competing pathways to net zero offer profoundly different outcomes for the nation’s future. They go beyond climate change and raise the fundamental question: what sort of Australia will emerge once a point of no return in the rollout is reached?

…………………………………. a new ideological contest into the debate, reigniting a clash of ideas not only over the future of energy but for the communities that have generational ties to its production.

There are two essential issues at stake.

While the question of energy security has become the axis around which Albanese’s radical transformation of the economy pivots, the economic future of the nation’s coal communities has become the new political frontline between Labor and the Coalition.

In this sense, Australia is not unique. The US is grappling with its own socio-economic dilemma……….

Last week, as the Prime Minister was preparing to fly to the Hunter Valley coalfields to announce a $1bn solar panel scheme to generate jobs as coal exits the community, Dutton was meeting privately with executives from Rolls-Royce for a deep dive into the feasibility of small modular reactors in an Australian context.

This juxtaposition symbolises the chasm of policy approaches to the challenge of decarbonising the economy. Both sides are embarking on equally ambitious road maps. While Albanese has rubbished the idea of an Australian civil nuclear energy program, Dutton is convinced it can work.

In an interview with Inquirer on Wednesday, he pledged that if the Coalition were returned to government at the next election, the first nuclear reactors would be up and running by the mid-2030s.

It is understood Rolls-Royce is confident its small modular reactor technology could be ready for an Australian market in this time-frame with a price tag of $5bn for a 470-megawatt plant. Each plant would take four years to build and have a life-span of 60 years.

Rolls-Royce signed a contract with the Albanese government in February to build the nuclear reactors for the second tranche of AUKUS submarines.

According to this timeline, nuclear power generation could begin being rolled out at about the same time as the first nuclear-powered submarines are delivered. The feasibility of this timeline will be strongly contested.

Social licence is essential to the Coalition’s ambitions…………………..

Under a plan taken to Dutton’s shadow cabinet two weeks ago, seven coal communities were identified as potential locations for coal-to-nuclear transition on or near the sites of exiting coal-fired power stations, with the promise of cheaper electricity for those communities, higher paying jobs and upgraded infrastructure……………………………………

Not all of Dutton’s colleagues are convinced there is enough time in the political cycle to start building the political case for nuclear power……………………..

Both sides are highly alert to the acute political consequences of an ill-managed transition.

What looms is an election battle over energy security set against vastly contrasting ideologies…………………………………………………

The Albanese government’s Net Zero Economy Authority bill passed by the parliament before Easter set out the agency’s purpose as one clearly designed around the transition to renewables. It was unambiguous in its assessment of the cost and scope of Labor’s plan. The bill was equally clear about what is at stake with the exiting of coal-fired power stations across the country and the consequences if steps aren’t taken to protect these communities.

It defines coal-fired power stations and associated thermal coalmines as being located in six regions around Australia: Collie in Western Australia, the Latrobe Valley in Victoria, the Hunter Valley and Lithgow in NSW and three regions in Queensland – the Darling Downs, Gladstone and Central Queensland.

The political expression of this reality is the number of regional seats that will be affected. Some sooner than others. Neither side can claim a monopoly on ownership of these constituencies.

In NSW, Labor is at risk in the Hunter Valley in the seats of Hunter, Shortland and Paterson, while Calare west of Sydney, held by the Nationals until Andrew Gee resigned to sit on the crossbench, covers the coal community of Lithgow.

In Queensland, the LNP has Flynn stretching west from Gladstone to consider with legacy coal community economics also stretching into Capricornia, which takes in Rockhampton up to southern Mackay. Both seats have been in Labor hands before. Nationals leader David Littleproud’s massive Queensland seat of Maranoa is another that takes in coal communities through Queensland’s southern and central west.

In Victoria, coal communities stretch across the Nationals’ seat of Gippsland, which now takes in the industrial region of the Latrobe Valley………………………………………………………………………………..

April 8, 2024 Posted by Christina Macpherson | politics | Leave a comment