No investment appetite for nuclear- says Ziggy Switkowski,
No investment appetite for nuclear: Switkowski, The renewed debate on nuclear power is largely one for “intellects and advocates” because the lack of political bipartisanship means there is little investment appetite, says one of the country’s foremost experts…… (subscribers only) https://www.afr.com/politics/federal/no-investment-appetite-for-nuclear-switkowski-20190805-p52dwv
Small modular nuclear reactors for Australia?
Parliament to look at small nuclear reactors as future energy source. A parliamentary inquiry into an Australian nuclear industry will look at the fast-changing technology of small modular reactors. InDaily, Rebecca Gredley, 5 Aug 19, A parliamentary inquiry into an Australian nuclear industry will look at the fast-changing technology of small modular reactors.Energy Minister Angus Taylor says he’s requested the Standing Committee on the Environment and Energy to investigate nuclear as a power source for Australia.
“We have a moratorium on nuclear. There is absolutely no plan to change that moratorium,” the minister told ABC Radio on Monday…….
Small modular reactors are factory produced and installed on-site.
Director of the Australian National University’s Energy Change Institute Kenneth Baldwin says wind and solar paired with battery storage will continue to be the cheapest form of power.
“These costs will decrease and who knows, in 10-15 years, it may simply be uneconomic to look at nuclear power,” he told ABC News.
Baldwin says such reviews need to be done periodically to understand the current technologies and costs. It would take at least a decade before nuclear is realistically part of the energy mix, he added.
“You need the social licence to operate such a system, and to gain public acceptance may take many years,” he said.
“Add to that the fact that you have to then build a regulatory system – let’s say that it takes five years to do that, five years to build a public acceptance – that’s ten years.”
A federal review into nuclear energy was last conducted under the Howard government, with a report finding 25 reactors would be needed across Australia to supply one-third of the nation’s electricity supply by 2050. https://indaily.com.au/news/2019/08/05/parliament-to-look-at-small-nuclear-reactors-as-future-energy-source/
Australia’s one great river system – Murray-Darling Basin Plan ‘untenable’ – corrupt?
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Murray-Darling Basin Plan ‘untenable’ says NSW, as Inspector-General says more corruption wouldn’t surprise https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-08-05/murray-darling-basin-plan-untenable-says-nsw/11382396
Key points:
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Angus Taylor, Australia’s Minister for Coal and Nuclear, wants to launch Inquiry into nuclear power
Taylor presses nuclear button, as energy wars enter dangerous new phase, Giles Parkinson 5 August 2019 https://reneweconomy.com.au/taylor-presses-nuclear-button-as-energy-wars-enter-dangerous-new-phase-47854/
Australia’s energy minister Angus Taylor has campaigned against renewables since before he entered parliament in 2013, appearing at anti-wind events organised by an anonymous and unpleasant website, and vowing on many occasions to scrap the renewable energy target.
He has been powerless to stop the build out of wind and solar, although he has complained about it often enough. But now Taylor and the Coalition government have taken their war against wind and solar to its next inevitable phase: They’ve pressed the nuclear button.
Taylor revealed late Friday that he had asked the Environment and Energy Standing Committee to launch a new inquiry into nuclear energy, including its costs and issues of waste etc. They’ve got four months to produce a report.
Taylor insists that there is no intention to repeal the laws that outlaw nuclear energy in Australia. But that beggars the question. Why have the inquiry in the first place?
The answer is simple. As Taylor revealed in an interview on ABC’s AM program, he simply doesn’t accept that renewables can power the electricity grid. A view that is loudly shared by many of his Coalition colleagues, the Murdoch media, and of course the coal industry.
The timing of the announcement is interesting. It comes just a couple of days after the end of the parliamentary sitting week (they won’t be back again until September) and just as the country’s far-right conservatives got ready to gather at the Australian Conservative Political Action Conference.
Tellingly, this is the first policy or initiative that Taylor has announced since the shock re-election of the coalition government in May, and comes after a major push by the far right ideologues of this conservative government to reconsider the ban on nuclear.
And as we have noted before, the same Coalition MPs that have been pushing for nuclear are the very same Coalition MPs pushing for new coal generation, and the very same Coalition MPs who reject the science of climate change, or make a mockery of the urgings of young people that they should take it seriously.
This is no co-incidence. This is not about carbon emissions, and it is certainly not about cheap energy. The common enemy of these people is wind and solar, and the shift from a centralised system based around “baseload” fossil fuel generators to a renewable system that is largely decentlralised (and democratised), and based around renewables, storage and demand management.
Australia is one of those regions – like Germany and California – that is at the forefront of this transition, and the fossil fuel industry view is that it cannot be allowed to succeed.
So it is no coincidence that the biggest industry supporter of nuclear is the coal lobby itself, in the guise of the Minerals Council of Australia, which is also pushing for new coal generators and urging the government to do as little as possible on climate.
The MCA is cosy with the Coalition – its former CEO and deputy CEOs are now key advisors in Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s office, and its chair is the former Coalition minister Helen Coonan. Its current CEO, Tania Constable, was appointed by the Coalition government to the board of the ABC, over-riding independent recommendations.
A new dimension is also added.
One of the noisiest opponents of renewable energy technologies is Trevor St Baker, pushing for new coal generators and whose Vales Point coal generator in NSW – currently in the queue to get federal government funding to remain open beyond its schedule closure date – is also the founder of a company SMR Nuclear that looking at new “modular” nuclear technologies that Taylor suggests could be a focus of this inquiry.
Like St Baker, the likes of Constable argue that only nuclear is able to deliver 24/7 emissions free power. They insist it is “cheap”, but that is nonsense.
The International Energy Agency desperately wants nuclear to succeed, but it concedes that costs have surged, as this graph (above) from a recent report illustrates. While the cost of solar has fallen 95 per cent over the past decade, and the cost of battery storage by some 70 per cent, the cost of nuclear has more than trebled upwards.
Even re-fitting existing stations was considered more expensive than wind and solar, although as BloombergNEF founder and now commentator Michael Liebreich has pointed out, the costs might be close enough to convince some countries to extend their life.
But there is no economic case for new nuclear. Liebreich says. Cost blowouts are occurring in the UK with Hinckley, and in France and in Finland with their versions of the latest technology, as it is in China (which has begun no new projects in the last three years), and in the US.
This graph[on original] from Le Monde in France illustrates how costs have surged in its next generation technology at its flagship project in Flamanville. It was begun in 20017 with promises it would be finished in 2012 at a cost of €3.5 billion.The latest delay and cost blowout have pushed the assumed finish date to 2022 and the new estimate of costs to €11.5 billion.
As France’s own National Infrastructure Commission said last year, a focus on renewables ‘looks like a safer bet than constructing multiple new nuclear plants’”.
Into this debate recently landed Industry Super Australia, the union fund research body with a report that is quite possibly one of the most inept analyses of the energy industry that has been produced in Australia. And that says something because it has had strong competition. The ISA, and the ISF that oversees it, should be embarrassed that it is published in its name.
To address the issue of costs, the ISA report produces a completely nonsensical “capital cost” assumption that confuses output with capacity factors, multiplies it by the cost of solar plants built more than 5 years ago.
It delivers a figure of $16 billion per gigawatt for the cost of solar. It is not a rough “back of the envelope” calculation as the authors try to claim, it is complete and utter garbage.
Among its other laughable claims are that Australia would need “one hundred” Snowy 2.0 pumped hydro schemes, or 72,000 Tesla big batteries were it to go 100 per cent renewables.
It’s a preposterous number that completely misunderstands the workings of the energy system, and the role of storage technologies, and fails to appreciate that if we do electrify everything, then we will be using less energy, not more.
Apart from now being expensive and polluting, burning fossil fuels is hugely inefficient – most of it disappears as heat, be it in a coal fired power station or in the internal combustion engine of a car – and it is two or three times more wasteful than electric motors and batteries.
But the authors of this report seek to mislead, either deliberately or through their ignorance. They make the patently false claim that fossil fuel plants “do not need back up.” Try running that past anyone who actually operates an electricity grid, and has to deal with large plants that need regular maintenance or which may trip for any number of reasons.
The study is so poorly researched it even claims that the Invanpah solar tower facility in California does not need back-up.
If the authors bothered to spend two minutes researching that project, rather than relying on the blogs of nuclear fantasists, they would have discovered that it has no storage, and needs gas plants to help fire it up in the morning. Yes, it was costly, but it turned out to be such a bad idea that no plant like it has or will be built again. All new solar towers do and will have storage.
But the authors’ minds were set. They even dismiss the reaction to the disasters at Chernobyl, Fukushima and Three Mile Island to “behavioural bias” and compares the lot of the nuclear industry with that of a baseball pitcher in 1930s, Chad Bradford, who had an unusual throwing action.
- “They just judged him on the way he looked. So they demoted him to the minor leagues for a time,” they plead.
- For heavens sake, nuclear is not judged by the way it looks, or its throwing action, but for its costs. And the CSIRO and the Australian Energy Market Operator – like the IEA – have made it clear that nuclear – like new coal – costs a multiple more than the cheapest alternatives, wind and solar backed by dispatchable capacity, be that pumped hydro, batteries, or demand management.
You won’t see baseload mentioned in AEMO’s Integrated System Plan, the 20-year blueprint for the future. Neither will you see it championed by the grid operators in the UK, or China. The world has moved on.
AEMO says Australia has the technology and know-how to move to 100 per cent renewables, although they would differ about the time frame from the most enthusiastic renewables supporters.
The problem is that like the ISA report, the nuclear boosters in the Coalition are prone to accept garbage as gospel.
The energy industry has largely dismissed nuclear as an option in Australia, knowing that it is absurdly expensive, and that if it were built in Australia it would take so long – possibly two decades at the very least – that the country would be powered almost exclusively by much cheap wind and solar and dispatchable storage by that time (if allowed to).
But Ted O’Brien, the chair of the committee reviewing the nuclear issue (it is stacked with four out of seven members from the Coalition) has already made up his mind.
Like his Coalition colleague Craig Kelly, lampooned in the cartoon above, he’s long been a big fan of nuclear – and given his analysis of Labor’s energy policy – he said it would be a tax on Tim Tams – he might have been about as thorough in his assessment of nuclear as Homer Simpson.
Don’t laugh.These people really are that stupid. They are not interested in the advice of experts – be it on climate science, energy technologies, or electric vehicles. But one thing they can’t admit is that the Greens – and now the rest of the energy industry – are right about wind and solar, and the focus on “dispatchable” power rather than “base-load”.
If Australia can demonstrate that a modern economy can be run on a predominantly renewables grid, it’s all over for the fossil fuel industry across the world. So expect this push to have some powerful friends, and not just in the media industry, and not just in Australia.
Giles Parkinson is founder and editor of Renew Economy, and is also the founder of One Step Off The Grid and founder/editor of The Driven. Giles has been a journalist for 35 years and is a former business and deputy editor of the Australian Financial Revie
Liberal National Coalition wants to embrace nuclear power
Coalition wants to embrace nuclear power, https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/breakfast/coalition-wants-to-embrace-nuclear-power/11382616 4 Aug 19 Australia’s decade-long energy wars have taken a new twist with the Morrison Government ordering a Senate inquiry into the feasibility of nuclear power in this country.
Energy Minister Angus Taylor says the review will look at the economic, environmental and safety implications of lifting the moratorium on atomic energy as a source of baseload power.
The inquiry coincides with the United States flagging the deployment of intermediate missiles in Darwin after Donald Trump pulled the US out of a nuclear arms treaty with Russia
Minerals Council CEO ecstatic about parliamentary inquiry into nuclear power
 Minerals Council welcomes inquiry into nuclear power, THE AUSTRALIAN, OLIVIA CAISLEY, REPORTER, AUGUST 5, 2019
“When the rest of the world is deploying the cheapest zero-emission 24/7 energy source, Australia should readily embrace an energy future which is good for both national progress and the environment.” It comes as Energy Minister Angus Taylor wrote to the standing committee on the environment and energy on Friday and asked them to investigate nuclear as a potential power source for Australia……. : “Nuclear energy is safe, reliable and affordable. This is the inconvenient but fundamental truth ignored by those arguing against nuclear power.” Her support of the inquiry comes as Labor leader Anthony Albanese yesterday questioned why the government had requested the inquiry. Mr Albanese said the viability of nuclear energy had been examined “many times” before, with studies showing nuclear power could be up to three times more expensive than wind or solar when connected to other systems. …… https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/minerals-council-welcomes-inquiry-into-nuclear-power/news-story/38a0a74c1831558c35bd8a15e9712a9f
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Nuclear lobby claims that Australia will hold Parliamentary Inquiry into nuclear power, especially small modular reactors
Australian parliament to launch nuclear energy inquiry. http://world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/Australian-parliament-to-launch-nuclear-energy-inq, 02 August 2019
Australia’s Energy Minister Angus Taylor has asked the House Standing Committee on the Environment and Energy to investigate the nuclear fuel cycle, Committee Chairman Ted O’Brien announced today
“This will be the first inquiry into the use of nuclear energy in Australia in more than a decade and I believe it’s the first time the Australian Parliament has ever undertaken such an inquiry,” O’Brien, who is Member of Parliament for Fairfax in Queensland, said. He will be tasked with leading the inquiry after the ministerial request is considered and adopted by the committee.
In a letter to O’Brien, Taylor said the inquiry will consider the economic, environmental and safety implications of nuclear power. The minister has specifically asked the committee to inquire into and report on “the circumstances and prerequisites necessary for any future government’s consideration of nuclear energy generation including small modular reactor technologies in Australia”.
The terms of reference for the inquiry include: waste management, transport and storage; health and safety; environmental impacts; energy affordability and reliability; economic feasibility; community engagement; workforce capability; security implications; national consensus; and “any other relevant matter”.
“Australia’s energy systems are changing with new technologies, changing consumer demand patterns and changes in demand load from major industries,” the context for the inquiry notes. “At the same time the National Electricity Market is seeing a significant increase in capacity in intermittent low emissions generation technologies.” The country’s bipartisan moratorium on nuclear electricity generation – which has been maintained by successive Labor and Coalition governments – will remain in place, it said.
The inquiry will have regard to previous inquiries into the nuclear fuel cycle, including South Australia’s 2016 Nuclear Fuel Cycle Royal Commission and the 2006 Review of Uranium Mining Processing and Nuclear Energy in Australia, which is also known as the Switkowski report after its lead author Ziggy Switkowski.
The minister has requested that the committee completes the inquiry and delivers its report by the end of this year.
Australian govt ignored nomination panel, appointed uranium industry’s Vanessa Guthrie to ABC Board
Documents show Coalition government passed over some of Australia’s most eminent cultural figures to appoint Vanessa Guthrie, Guardian, Margaret Simons, Sat 3 Aug 2019 The government passed over some of Australia’s most eminent cultural figures in order to appoint a mining executive to the ABC board in 2017, despite the fact that she was not recommended by an independent selection process.Documents released under freedom of information legislation show that in February 2017, the government rejected singer, writer and director Robyn Archer, former managing director of SBS Shaun Brown, and Sandra Levy, former chief executive of the Australian Film, Television and Radio School.
They were on a list of eight names recommended by an independent nomination panel after an extensive application and vetting process. The then communications minister, Mitch Fifield, instead appointed the chair of the Minerals Council of Australia, Vanessa Guthrie.
Guthrie had no media experience. At the time, the ABC was facing constant government criticism over its reporting on the coalmining industry and energy security.
Guthrie had also been through the application process but was not recommended for appointment. Fifield’s press release at the time said that while Guthrie had not been recommended, she “was identified by the government as having the requisite skills”.
However, until now, we have not known who was passed over in Guthrie’s favour.
Robyn Archer – singer, writer, director and public advocate for the arts, as well as the former artistic director of the Adelaide and Melbourne international arts festivals.
• Shaun Brown – former managing director of SBS for four years from 2006. Before that, a reporter, presenter, producer and senior executive with Television New Zealand.
• Sandra Levy – former CEO of the Australian Film, Television and Radio School, former head of drama at Zapruder’s Other Films, former director of development at Channel Nine and, before that, director of television at the ABC.
• Emile Sherman – Academy award-winning film producer, known for his work on the films The Kings Speech, Lion and Shame. Co-founder and managing director of See-Saw Films.
• John M Green – publisher, novelist, former executive director of an investment bank, business writer and commentator, member of the governing council of the National Library of Australia.
Georgie Somerset was also on the list recommended by the board, and was appointed with Guthrie. She is a Queensland cattle farmer with board experience across the not-for-profit sector.
An eighth recommended person’s name has not been released at their request. …….
Out of the current nine-member ABC board, five were appointed by the government despite not being recommended through the independent process. As well as Buttrose and Guthrie, the others are company director Dr Kirstin Ferguson (appointed 2015), businesswoman Donny Walford (2015) and businessman Joseph Gersh (2018).
The revelation of the rejected February 2017 applicants is the result of a 22-month battle. The original freedom of information request was lodged in October 2017…….. https://www.theguardian.com/media/2019/aug/03/abc-board-secret-shortlist-of-candidates-ignored-in-favour-of-mining-executive-revealed?CMP=share_btn_tw
South Australian Labor – too pro environment ?
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Our own base rejected us”: Labor warned on ‘pro-environment’ agenda, InDaily, Tom Richardson @tomrichardson, 2 Aug 19
The ALP’s recent caucus strategy meeting in the Barossa – colloquially known as the ‘Labor Love-In’ – was given detailed analysis of the federal election results in SA, with a breakdown of booths relevant to state seats. Results in the key Liberal-held marginal of Boothby, obtained by InDaily, show strong swings to Labor in more affluent areas, including Hills districts such as Belair and Blackwood, with swings away from the party in more traditional working class booths such as Edwardstown, Ascot Park and South Plympton. Boothby was retained by Nicolle Flint on a 1.4 margin, despite a 1.3 per cent swing against her after a federal boundary redistribution. A Labor insider says the Boothby booth result is indicative of a broader trend seen “in every seat in the country” – which they insist dispels the popular election post-mortem that Labor’s financial reform policies cost them the poll. “The principal conclusion you come to from that data is that there are mild swings in the wealthiest parts of the seat to Labor, and big swings in the working class areas against Labor – that would rather suggest it wasn’t the franking credits that lost us the election,” the source said. “It was something more fundamental – it was our own base that rejected us. “Did they reject us on the franking credits [or a] scare campaign on negative gearing policy? Maybe. “Or did they get the sense that we were more pro-environment than pro-jobs?” That conclusion is one being impressed on Peter Malinauskas’s state caucus, with insiders insisting Boothby “doesn’t augur well for a state result”…….. But ALP insiders aren’t universally convinced that the lesson from the federal result is to eschew a strong climate change agenda, which was a hallmark of Labor’s 16 years in government. …… https://indaily.com.au/news/politics/2019/08/02/our-own-base-rejected-us-labor-warned-on-pro-environment-agenda/ |
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New South Wales Parliament inquiries on uranium, nuclear, and energy
Dan Monceaux shared a link. Nuclear Fuel Cycle Watch South Australia , 1 Aug 19 https://www.facebook.com/groups/1021186047913052/
1. Uranium Mining and Nuclear Facilities (Prohibitions) Repeal Bill 2019 (Submissions close 18 October 2019)
2. Sustainability of energy supply and resources in NSW (Submissions close 15 September 2019)
Australia’s government, lackey of the coal industry, in denial over climate change
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While others face climate reality, our government denies the undeniable, SMH, John Hewson, Columnist and former Liberal opposition leader, 1 Aug 19, despair at just how long our Australian government can continue to deny the undeniable. It seems the new Morrison government has learned nothing, doesn’t want to learn anything, just wants to kick the climate emergency further down the road, hoping nothing of consequence happens on its watch.It is fundamental to us meeting our global obligations as the largest exporter of fossil fuels in the world, with poor and worsening biodiversity, and in the clear interests of our future generations, that we make the transition to a low-carbon society by the middle of this century.
It should have been particularly instructive that Britain, a nation that led the industrial revolution fuelling its economy with coal, and has weathered the Thatcher era tensions with the coal mining industry, has recently announced its plan for a complete exit from coal and declared that there is, indeed, a “climate emergency”. Similarly, the Germans have announced a commitment to stop using coal by the mid-2030s, and even the likes of China and India are moving much faster than expected to reduce their reliance on fossil fuels. At the very least, our government should have heard and responded to the din of cries for action: from the 60 to 80 per cent of respondents to various surveys; from big business, including conspicuously large fossil fuel miners such as BHP, Rio, Glencore, and Woodside; and from the Reserve Bank of Australia, the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority, the Australian Securities and Investments Commission and the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission. No! The tin-eared Coalition has preferred silly stunts such brandishing a lump of coal in Parliament, claiming unjustified electoral mandates to mine more coal and build a new coal-fired power plant in North Queensland, even though there is no net demand for electricity in that region (when more than 80 global banks wouldn’t finance it nor insurers insure it, and where renewable alternatives are much cheaper). It has also ignored the potential of carbon farming in agriculture and scare-mongered over the inevitable transition to electric vehicles. While Australia dithers, others face reality. In November, the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco will host what is believed to be its first research conference focused on climate change, acknowledging the systemic risks to the soundness of the US banking system. In April, with global insurers shouldering $160 billion in climate-related losses from last year alone, a group that included 30 central banks – Australia’s included – called for measures to spur green finance. In May, the Bank of England issued climate risk guidance to help insurers and re-insurers assess the financial risks posed by climate threats such as heatwaves, floods and storms. ……https://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/while-others-face-climate-reality-our-government-denies-the-undeniable-20190731-p52cdl.html |
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Australian Senate passes motion to retain Australia’s ban on nuclear power
This motion was moved by Senator Hanson-Young and passed by the Senate, 29 July 19
Flynn electorate, Queensland, would be happy to host nuclear power plant, National Party MP Ken O’Dowd says
My area would accept nuclear: Qld Nats MP, The Islander, Rebecca Gredley , 29 July 19,
Federal Nationals MP Ken O’Dowd says his electorate would accept a local nuclear power plant, spruiking the energy source as the “safest” for electricity.
“Study after study in scientific journals prove that nuclear power plants are by far the best and safest way to make reliable electricity,” the Queenslander told the lower house on Monday.
Labor MPs in the chamber heckled Mr O’Dowd during his speech, questioning where he would propose to build a nuclear power plant in Australia.
The Nationals MP said it would take 20 years to build a power station, so the debate needed to start sooner rather than later…….
Mr O’Dowd is one of a handful Nationals MPs calling for a feasibility study into nuclear power. …….https://www.theislanderonline.com.au/story/6299668/my-area-would-accept-nuclear-qld-nats-mp/?cs=7
New Minerals Council chair Helen Coonan speaks out for nuclear power, and for Adani coal mine
Nuclear power should be considered for Australia: Minerals Council chair Helen Coonan, ABC, By senior business correspondent Peter Ryan 29 Jul 19, Newly appointed Minerals Council chair Helen Coonan has become the latest business heavyweight to call for nuclear power to be considered as part of Australia’s future energy mix.
Key points:
- The Minerals Council’s new chair Helen Coonan says there should be a parliamentary inquiry into nuclear power for Australia
- Ms Coonan’s comments come in response to statements from BHP’s CEO saying that climate change poses “an existential risk” to the planet
- She backed Adani’s Carmichael coal mine, saying the company “wouldn’t be proceeding if they didn’t have the business model to sustain the mine”
The former Howard government minister said the “nuclear option” should be on the table, along with renewables, as the resources industry edges away from fossil fuels in the coming decades.
Speaking to the ABC’s AM program, Ms Coonan said Australians were ready for a “sensible conversation” about nuclear power generation, which is currently outlawed in Australia.
“I think it’s time to give it a go quite frankly. There’s a long way to go, of course, because there are legislative barriers and there needs to be political will,” Ms Coonan said in her first broadcast interview as the Minerals Council of Australia’s chair……..
Ms Coonan’s push for nuclear power came as she responded to growing concerns about the future of coal, after BHP chief executive Andrew Mackenzie recently said climate change posed “an existential risk” to the planet.
Federal and state legislation blocks the development of local nuclear power generation, although calls are growing for a parliamentary inquiry into the feasibility of a local industry
Last week, former National Party leader Barnaby Joyce suggested residents living near a nuclear reactor could be offered free nuclear power.
Ms Coonan — the first Minerals Council chair to come from outside the resources industry — did not sidestep environmental and safety concerns, but suggested Australia could consider smaller nuclear power stations, unlike the giant plants in the US, Europe and China.
“You’ve always got to be concerned about safety and that applies to nuclear power,” she said.
“It’s important to that any technology any mine and any power source is safe.”
Minerals Council backs Adani mine
Ms Coonan backed the approval of Adani’s Carmichael mine in central Queensland and said tough regulation was unnecessarily delaying projects………..
Last week, University of Sydney forensic accounting specialist Sandra van der Laan told the ABC that Adani’s corporate structure was “a corporate collapse waiting to happen”.
In an analysis labelled by Adani as false and misleading, Professor van der Laan likened Adani’s complex structure to the US energy giant Enron, which collapsed in spectacular fashion in 2001.
In addition to the Minerals Council role, Ms Coonan is also chair of the Australian Financial Complaints Authority and a non-executive director at Crown Resorts. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-07-29/nuclear-power-australia-should-be-considered-minerals-council/11359998
Australia’s legal ban on nuclear power will remain, says Environment Minister Sussan Ley
Environment Minister Sussan Ley refuses to consider an amendment to nuclear power ban in Australia The West Australian, 29 July 2019
Environment Minister Sussan Ley has quashed a push to lift the moratorium on nuclear power, saying she will not consider the ban as part of an upcoming review of Australia’s environmental protection legislation.
Speaking to The West Australian, Ms Ley gave the Federal Government’s strongest comment yet on the issue, indicating the settings would remain the same on nuclear power and a moratorium would not be lifted.
“I will not be looking to change the moratorium on nuclear power as part of that review,” Ms Ley said.
Ms Ley also said she would not be reviewing the decision by her predecessor — West Australian Melissa Price who was dumped from Cabinet — to approve the Yeelirrie uranium mine 500km north of Kalgoorlie a day before the May 18 Federal election.
“I don’t propose to review decisions that were already made before I became minister,” Ms Ley said, despite advice the mine could lead to the extinction of up to 12 native species.
As part of her portfolio, Ms Ley will have carriage over the 10-year review of the Environment Protection and Bio-diversity Conservation Act, which needs to begin by October.
The Act recognises the protection of the environment from nuclear actions as a matter of national environmental significance and specifically prohibits nuclear power generation in Australia.
A group of Coalition MPs, including Craig Kelly, James McGrath and Keith Pitt, want the Act to be amended to allow nuclear power generation to be permitted in Australia as a way to supply reliable, low-emissions base load power.
The move is backed by the Minerals Council of Australia and industry with Prime Minister Scott Morrison handed a draft terms of reference into a nuclear power inquiry last month. Ms Ley’s stance also comes as Labor tries to wedge the Government on power prices.
Shadow energy minister Mark Butler will today say average wholesale energy prices in the States connected to the National Energy Market — of which WA is not a participant — have risen 158 per cent since 2015.
Resources Minister Matt Canavan said it “makes sense” to see if nuclear power was a worthwhile option in the current environment but that he was not convinced it would be good for Australians struggling with higher power prices.
“It may not meet our present needs given we have a desperate need to reduce power prices and nuclear power is on the more expensive end of the scale,” he said.
Former deputy prime minister and Nationals MP Barnaby Joyce, who wants an inquiry into nuclear power, said last night he believed it was the only way to achieve zero emissions power.
“If this absurd zeitgeist believes that Australia singlehandedly contains the temperature of the globe by reason of them using coal fired power – as much as I disagree with that based on science – I’ll take the next alternative for baseload power which is nuclear power,” he said.
“Although we send uranium all around the world for zero-emissions power, there is an exceptional paranoia about it in Australian politics,” he said.
Energy Minister Angus Taylor told Question Time last week the government had an “open mind” on nuclear power generation but that there was no current plan to lift the moratorium.
“We always approach these things with an open mind, but we do not have … a plan to change the moratorium,” he said.
Opposition energy spokesman Mark Butler said nuclear power would not bring price relief for Australians.
“Based on the advice of industry and experts, it is clear nuclear power is not a viable option for Australia… The economics do not stack up and it would just mean higher power bills,” he said.
Nuclear power generation in Australia was pushed by John Howard while Prime Minister, with the Coalition running on a pro-nuclear platform at the 2007 election.
In 2006 former Telstra CEO Ziggy Switkowski chaired a Commonwealth government inquiry into nuclear power which concluded Australia was well placed to consider adding nuclear to its energy mix.
An energy Green Paper by the Coalition government in 2014 suggested nuclear energy was a “serious consideration for future low emissions energy”.
Australia is home to a third of the world’s uranium deposits and is the third largest producer behind Kazakstan and Canada.
Uranium accounts for around a quarter of Australian energy exports.
1 This month.
PETITION – To: Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and the Australian Labor Government
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
19 May – Webinar- Webinar: No Nuclear Weapons in Australia
Start: 2026-05-19 18:00:00 UTC Canberra, Melbourne, Sydney (GMT+10:00)
End: 2026-05-19 19:30:00 UTC Canberra, Melbourne, Sydney (GMT+10:00)
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 