10 reasons why nuclear energy is a bad idea for Australia
There’s a lot of information and disinformation out there on nuclear energy. These are my 10 reasons why nuclear energy would be a bad idea for Australia
By Arthur Wyns, University of Melbourne, https://pursuit.unimelb.edu.au/articles/10-reasons-why-nuclear-energy-is-a-bad-idea-for-australia 16 April 2025
As always seems to be the way, energy and climate policy is proving to be an area of contention between the major parties in Australia’s 2025 election.
One issue that’s provoked a lot of discussion and confusion is the Liberal-National Coalition’s proposal to build seven nuclear power plants across Australia.
It’s a controversial idea that’s opposed by Labor, the Greens, many independent MPs and some Liberal groups.
Both the Climate Change Authority and Australia’s Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) concluded that the deployment of nuclear energy in Australia would significantly increase the country’s energy prices and cause us to miss our climate change targets.
1. Too expensive
It’s extremely expensive to build and operate nuclear power plants anywhere in the world. Independent analysis by the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA) found that building nuclear power in Australia could see average household electricity bills rise by $AUD665 a year.
Estimates by CSIRO and the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) for the 2024-2025 GenCost Report also found renewables are the cheapest option for any new electricity generation.
2. Too slow
Even if we drop everything else and throw all our weight behind nuclear energy, it wouldn’t play a role in Australia’s energy grid for more than a decade.
It took an average of 11 years to build the nuclear reactors that came online around the world in 2023 – largely in countries with a well-established nuclear industry, like China.
In Australia, CSIRO estimates it would take at least 15 years before we’d reach the first nuclear generation.
3. Too risky
Nuclear accidents are rare but they have devastating consequences.
The Chernobyl disaster in 1986 and the Fukushima disaster in 2011 contaminated large areas and continue to impact the health of hundreds of thousands of people. Both disasters caused a rise in anti-nuclear sentiments in the Australian public.
They also led to the majority of German citizens supporting an end to nuclear power in the country, with the three last remaining nuclear power plants in Germany taken offline in 2023.
4. Hard to build
Nuclear power stations are huge and complicated infrastructure projects that almost never stay on schedule.
The UK’s Hinkley Point C nuclear plant construction is now running 14 years late and is costing three times more than it was estimated: a whopping $AUD90 billion.
Smaller nuclear power plants, known as Small Modular Reactors (SMRs), have been proposed as an alternative, but there are no known commercial SMRs operational anywhere in the world.
The only company to have a small modular nuclear power plant approved in the US has since cancelled its first project due to rising costs.
5. Produces nuclear waste
Once in operation, nuclear reactors continuously produce radioactive waste. Generally, this waste is buried underground, where it remains radioactive for thousands of years.
Australia already produces a relatively small amount of low-level radioactive waste for some medical and research activities.
However, Australia currently doesn’t have any waste storage facilities to process high-level radioactive waste that would be produced by nuclear reactors – and recent efforts to build the country’s first radioactive waste storage facility have failed.
6. Uses lots of water
Nuclear reactors need to be cooled constantly, which requires high volumes of water.
It might not make sense to switch to a water-intensive energy source in the driest inhabited continent in the world, which is already facing increasing droughts and extreme heat.
Even countries like France and Sweden – with dramatically cooler climates compared to Australia – are increasingly being forced to shut down their nuclear power plants during warm periods when their cooling water heats up.
This means they then have to import energy from neighbouring countries.
7. No energy security
Australia’s remaining coal-fired power stations are old and increasingly breaking down, with over 60 per cent of our coal-generating capacity now more than 40 years old.
Even in the most optimistic scenarios, nuclear power is unlikely to come online before 2040, by which time all of Australia’s coal plants will have retired, according to the National Electricity Market.
In other words, the timelines for a coal-to-nuclear transition don’t add up.
Extending the life of these ageing coal-power plants would mean spending billions to prop up coal rather than investing in updating the electricity grid and expanding more cost-effective and readily available forms of energy like renewables.
8. No expertise
While nuclear generation is well established in many countries, it has never been deployed in Australia.
We currently lack the trained workforce and technical capability required for building a large-scale nuclear reactor.
Any attempt to go nuclear would leave Australia reliant on foreign companies and expertise. This is something we’re seeing play out in building and maintaining the nuclear submarines Australia agreed to host as part of the AUKUS deal.
In comparison, the renewable energy industry already creates more than 25,000 local jobs in Australia and this is expected to grow.
9. We’ll miss our climate goals
While nuclear energy is a form of low-emissions energy in many countries with established pre-existing nuclear facilities, focusing on the development of new nuclear energy in Australia is a diversion from taking real climate action.
Australia’s Climate Change Authority (CCA) recently released a detailed analysis concluding that a nuclear pathway for Australia would result in an additional two billion tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions.
It would extend the use of some coal-fired generators, slow down the uptake of clean technologies, and obstruct existing national plans to deliver 82 per cent renewable electricity by 2030.
10. Illegal in Australia
In the late 1990s, the Australian Federal Government introduced several new laws banning nuclear energy, including the National Radiation and Nuclear Safety Act (1998).
This Act prohibited the development of any new nuclear power sites in Australia.
The Commonwealth Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act (1999) also introduced rules preventing the construction or operation of any facilities that generate nuclear power.
Building nuclear reactors is currently illegal in every Australian state and territory.
Ultimately, pursuing a lengthy, expensive and potentially harmful energy source is a misguided step for Australia, particularly when we have all the resources and potential to make us a renewable energy superpower.
Arthur Wyns is a research fellow at Melbourne Climate Futures, University of Melbourne. He has written widely on climate change and global health issues, and regularly advises national governments and UN agencies. In 2023-2024, Arthur was the senior health advisor to the government of the United Arab Emirates as the host of the COP28 UN climate conference. He was a climate change advisor to the World Health Organization during 2019-2023, where he represented WHO at the UN climate negotiations, authored several UN reports on climate change and health, and acted as WHO’s speechwriter on climate change. Arthur is an editor of the Journal of Climate and Health and sits on the editorial board of ClimaHealth, the knowledge platform of the WHO-WMO Joint Office for Climate and Health.
The Australian investors betting big on fusion – the “holy grail” of nuclear tech
ReNewEconomy, Rachel Williamson, Apr 17, 2025
One of Australia’s biggest super funds is backing nuclear tech – but not the kind being pitched by the federal Coalition.
Hostplus is investing in fusion energy.
CIO Sam Sicilia says a combination of tech advances in the last five years and a youthful member base means fusion is now a real option for big, patient investors…………………
Fusion power is the holy grail of energy technologies: it makes more energy than nuclear fission, produces less waste, doesn’t create anything that could be used in a weapon, and has zero risk of meltdown.
The truth is more complicated, not least because the longest ever sustained reaction was only achieved in January, when China’s “artificial sun” reactor in Heifei managed a whole 17 minutes. …………………..
And with almost half a billion dollars of funding sunk into the industry last year, the race is on for companies ranging from Commonwealth Fusion Systems – the MIT spinout that is leading so far and Hostplus’ investment pick – to Australian startup HB11………………………………………………………………………………
If this sounds ambitious for a technology that just five years ago was still wrestling with major functional problems, it isn’t to people in the industry – even in Australia.
Patrick Burr leads the student project to build a donut-shaped tokamak fusion reactor – just a little one – at University of New South Wales (UNSW). He also works with Australia’s only home-grown fusion company, HB11 Energy.
He says commercialisation of fusion energy is now an engineering problem that requires money and people…………………………………………………………………………..
Australia as a fusion power? Maybe
Matt Bungey is taking a bet that fusion energy will be ready for launch – in Australia – by the late 2030s.
Bungey is a partner at Western Australian venture fund Foxglove Capital and an investor in another fusion frontrunner, Type One, which recently set up an Australian subsidiary.
He believes fusion should be part of a diverse energy strategy even if by the late-2030s renewables and storage are the dominant generators.
But he does admit there is a deadline.
“There’s a timing element here, if you don’t get it right before the mid 2040s there’s a question of whether you really need it,” he says.
The other view is that Australia’s energy needs will scale in unimaginable ways as the demands of decarbonisation and AI require more electricity……………………………………………………………..
Today the global industry has attracted $US7 billion ($A11 billion) in funding, according to the FIA.
But even the $A130 billion Hostplus is merely dipping a toe in – its CFS investment is worth $US136 million.
Still, CFS CEO Bob Mumgaard says there is enough curiosity in the technology from within Australia to warrant a look here – even if nuclear power generally is still illegal. ……………………………………………………………………………………
Australia enters the chat, with HB11
Australia does have its own fusion startup in HB11. It is forging a technology path quite different to those pursued by CFS (a tokamak design) or Type One (a stellarator).
HB11 is using lasers and a proton-boron fuel, rather than the more common deuterium/tritium, deuterium/deuterium, or deuterium/helium3 combos.
“The key difference between what we’re doing and what most of the other private fusion companies are doing is we’re using [boron] which does not produce neutrons,” McKenzie says.
Boron is abundant and costs about a dollar a kilogram, and the method of firing a laser at small pellets to create an ongoing reaction doesn’t make the materials around them radioactive – more on this later.
McKenzie gently negs the tokamak and stellarator players, saying none have produced a net gain – more energy out than in – whereas laser fusion has, in December 2022 at the National Ignition Facility in California.
“The catch is it’s much harder to produce. Essentially we’ll need much bigger lasers [than we have now],” McKenzie says.
How big, you might ask?
Computer simulations suggest that, right now, they may need to be several football fields long and multiple storeys high. The National Ignition Factory’s laser is in a 10-story building about the size of three American football fields; China’s version in the southwest city Mianyang will be 50 per cent larger again, a size MxKenzie says “is about right”.
HB11 has a plan for its version of fusion to be widespread by the mid-2050s but it has a long way to go.
“When we achieve a neutronic hydrogen-boron fusion energy gain we’ll be on our way to Stockholm to pick up a Nobel prize,” McKenzie says.
Is it illegal or not?
Australia’s ban on nuclear fission technology for energy might apply to fusion – but also might not.
Experts spoken to by Renew Economy say there isn’t much interest within federal government to revisit nuclear rules and carve out a new area for fusion, somewhere between legal nuclear medicine and illegal fission.
But the UK and USare showing how fusion might be introduced, without dumping it in with fission.
Both countries say they won’t regulate fusion technology like fission, but instead treat the new reactors more like a particle accelerator.
That’s a framework that advocates like Bungey are pinning their hopes on, given almost every major hospital in Australia houses a particle accelerator to make nuclear medicines. These are controlled by the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency (ARPANSA) as well as a suite of other regulators.
McKenzie says the deuterium-tritium fuel might be difficult for nations to support, given both are fuels used in nuclear weapons, but generally fusion should not be affected by national bans on fission energy.
“My legal understanding is that it will not come under Australia’s nuclear ban. But yes … what the rest of the world is doing, fusion is a relatively new field with no regulations,” he says.
“The US and the UK very recently passed legislation where the nuclear fission and fusion regulators are different and they require different standards, so you’re starting to separate the two technologies and that makes a big difference.”
But it’s Italy that might be the most appropriate model for Australia because it’s coming from a total ban on nuclear energy as well, Mumgaard says.
But Italy is also un-banning fission technology after a 40-year hiatus, producing a draft law in March to set up both fission and fusion technologies.
Pros and cons
Fusion is now such a small sector in Australia that it’s hard to find one person who isn’t connected to one of the local or global companies competing to be first, cheapest, or most realistic.
UNSW’s Patrick Burr is involved with HB11 but happy to also cut through the marketing speak. Every technology, as Burr says, has its drawbacks.
The main problem today is talent. Burr says companies are already cannibalising each other’s staff, from fusion engineers, scientists, down to people in the supply chain, and educating new talent was one reason why UNSW launched the student-led tokamak project.
But there are some practical problems as well which are high on the ‘to solve’ list of the engineers.
One of the first dot points on any ‘why fusion is better’ powerpoint slide is the tiny amount of waste it produces from a reaction.
But this is misleading. The irradiated waste of a fusion plant is the whole internal structure, albeit with a hundreds of years half life instead of a thousands of years half life.
Dealing with concrete or equipment that is toxic for hundreds of years is manageable for a society, Burr says. The challenge will be figuring out how to handle the higher volumes of radioactive material.
Another drawback is the source of fuel.
The most common fuel pairing is deuterium and tritium – the former is abundant in nature, the latter is not and has a short half life. Other fuels have their own challenges, such as HB11’s boron-hydrogen method, which right now requires giant lasers to activate.
Taking a position on nuclear energy in a country like Australia, where it doesn’t exist outside the medical sector, is a bet on the distant future.
For Burr, it’s a question on whether Australia will have won the fight with hard-to-decarbonise sectors in 50 or 100 years’ time. And whether the country wants to make a bet today on a technology that may – or may not – be that solution. https://reneweconomy.com.au/the-australian-investors-betting-big-on-fusion-the-holy-grail-of-nuclear-tech/
Peter Dutton insists there’s enough water for his seven nuclear plants, contradicting shadow frontbencher
ABC By chief digital political correspondent Jacob Greber, 17 Apr 25
In short:
Voters are getting mixed messages about whether Peter Dutton’s nuclear power plan takes account of water needs.
The opposition insisted in Wednesday’s ABC Leaders Debate that allocations for all seven sites have been assessed.
What’s next?
But Nationals MP Darren Chester said water requirements would be based on experts’ “facts not opinions” and take up to 2 ½ years to determine.
The Coalition has sent voters contradictory messages about whether it has accounted for the vast water requirements of its seven proposed nuclear plants after Peter Dutton declared the issue all but resolved.
In Wednesday night’s ABC News Leaders Debate the opposition leader said he has already assessed water allocations for “each of the seven sites” where he plans to build nuclear power plants.
When challenged by ABC debate host David Speers whether “you need more” water for nuclear, Mr Dutton replied: “We’re comfortable with the analysis that we’ve done”.
The remarks undermine comments given just hours earlier by a senior Coalition frontbencher who represents one of the potential nuclear sites and who insisted the issue would first need to be resolved by water “experts in the field”.
Darren Chester, the member for the Victorian coastal seat of Gippsland, told local ABC radio that there would be a two- to two-and-a-half-year investigation to determine whether enough water was available.
They would also consider other risks, including the potential for earthquakes.
“What that means [is that] the experts in the field would be required to report on all seven sites around issues surrounding water and seismology, so earthquake risk … and the question around the viability in terms of access to the network” via transmission lines, he said.
“You have to do a full site characterisation study based on facts not opinions … to find out what water is available and what’s possible at each of the seven sites.
The Coalition’s mixed messaging on water comes amid signs the opposition is struggling to sell its vision of a nuclear powered future, including from groups that say they are close to the Liberal Party.
Part of the challenge is that nuclear power stations would require a large quantity of water in addition to what is already earmarked for agriculture, environmental flows and remediation of old coal sites, raising fears of major shortfalls during inevitable periods of drought.
A report this month by Australian National University visiting fellow Andrew Campbell, commissioned by Liberals Against Nuclear, found the Coalition’s plan would require 200 gigalitres of water a year.
Professor Campbell found that half of the proposed nuclear capacity would not secure enough water and that another 40 per cent of the proposed nuclear generation would be curtailed during dry seasons.
Mr Chester, who is a member of the Nuclear Energy Select Committee, indicated he supports nuclear energy as long as it stacks up…………………………………………………….https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-04-17/dutton-insists-theres-enough-water-nuclear-plants-election-2025/105189220
The Conservative Argument Against Nuclear Power in Japan
It has been said that nuclear power stations are like nuclear weapons directed at your own country. I couldn’t agree more.
Getting rid of these “nuclear weapons directed at our own country” will not require huge defense spending or difficult diplomatic negotiations. All that is required is the ability to look square at the facts, and a conservative mindset determined to protect our rich and productive land and pass it on to the next generation.
Higuchi Hideak, Apr 15, 2025, https://www.nippon.com/en/in-depth/d01111/
A Devastating Loss of Territory
“Conservatism is essentially realism. A conservatism that refuses to confront reality is as worthless as a progressivism without ideals.”
This is how I opened my Hoshu no tame no genpatsu nyūmon (Nuclear Power: An Introduction for Conservatives), which came out last summer. In the book, I tried to bring attention to the contradictions inherent in the policies of the Liberal Democratic Party: a party that claims to support conservative values and uphold the ideals of patriotism but nevertheless advocates that Japan should continue or increase its reliance on nuclear power, even in the aftermath of the Fukushima disaster.
In the book, I made three main points. First, nuclear power is fundamentally incompatible with conservatism and patriotism. Second, nuclear power stations are inherently vulnerable to earthquakes, for structural reasons. And third, nuclear power stations are also vulnerable from a national security perspective.
The disaster at the Tokyo Electric Power Company’s Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station in March 2011 led to the evacuation of more than 150,000 people. More than 20,000 are still not able to return to their homes even today. And the state of emergency declared shortly after the disaster has still not been lifted, 14 years later.
In Fukushima Prefecture, evacuation orders are still in effect across more than 300 square kilometers, in what the government has designated as “closed to inhabitation indefinitely.” This is in spite of the fact that the annual safety limits for radiation exposure among the general population were lifted from 1 millisievert to 20 millisieverts. An area of more than 300 square kilometers—equivalent to the size of Nagoya, one of Japan’s key economic centers—is still effectively under evacuation orders. The country has effectively lost territory 50 times larger than the Senkaku Islands in Okinawa Prefecture, controversially claimed by China and the frequent focus of national security anxiety. As if this weren’t bad enough, more than 300 young people have been diagnosed with childhood thyroid cancer, a condition that would normally be expected to affect only around one in a million. Many of these have been serious cases requiring invasive surgery.
When I sat as presiding judge in the case brought before the Fukui District Court to stop the planned reactivation of the Ōi Nuclear Power Station, operated by the Kansai Electric Power Company, the argument put forward by the Liberal Democratic Party (then newly returned to power) and the business lobby was that shutting down nuclear plants would force Japan to import vast amounts of oil and natural gas to fuel thermal power stations. This would result in a massive outflow of the nation’s wealth and lead to national impoverishment.
On May 21, 2014, the court handed down its verdict. Even if shutting down the plant did lead to a trade deficit, the court rejected the idea that this would represent a loss of national wealth. True national wealth, the court held, consists of rich and productive land—a place where people can put down roots and make a living. The risk of losing this, and being unable to recover it, would represent a more serious loss of national wealth. Compare the arguments of the LDP and economic business lobby with the decision of the Fukui District Court. Which represents true conservatism, unafraid to look squarely at the facts about nuclear disasters? Which best represents the true spirit of patriotism?
Disaster Caused by a Power Failure
Let’s consider a few of the characteristics of nuclear power stations. First, they must be continuously monitored and supplied with a constant flow of water to cool the reactor. Second, if the supply of electricity or water is interrupted, there is the risk of an immediate meltdown. A serious accident could potentially mean the end of Japan as a nation.
The accident at Fukushima Daiichi came perilously close to rendering much of the eastern part of Japan uninhabitable. Yoshida Masao, the director in charge at the time, feared that radioactive fallout would contaminate all of eastern Japan when it looked as though the containment building at the Unit 2 reactor would rupture after venting became impossible. The chair of the Japan Atomic Energy Commission also expected it would be necessary to evacuate the population from a 250-kilometer radius of the plant, including Tokyo.
The accident at Fukushima did not happen because the reactor was damaged directly by the earthquake or tsunami. The initial earthquake interrupted the external supply of electricity, and the tsunami that followed cut off the emergency supply as well. Essentially, a power failure made it impossible to cool the reactor, and this was enough to trigger a catastrophe.
These characteristics mean that the resilience of nuclear power stations depends not on how physically robust the reactors and containment buildings are, but on the dependability of the electricity supplied to them. Nuclear power plants in Japan are designed to be able to withstand seismic activity between 600 to 1,000 gals (a gal being a unit of acceleration used in gravimetry to measure the local impact of an earthquake). But earthquakes over 1,000 gals are not unusual in Japan, and some have exceeded 4,000 gals. For this reason, some construction companies build housing that is designed to withstand seismic shocks up to 5,000 gals.
There are only 17 fully constructed nuclear power stations across the country. Six earthquakes exceeding the safety standards have already occurred at four of these: Onagawa, Shika, Kashiwazaki-Kariwa, and Fukushima Daiichi (twice each at Onagawa and Shika). Japan experiences more earthquakes than any other country on earth. Although the country accounts for just 0.3% of the world’s landmass, more than 10% of all the world’s earthquakes happen here. Despite the inherent dangers, there are 54 nuclear reactors along the coasts, around 10% of the world’s total.
Since it is impossible to forecast what scale of earthquake might hit a given site in an earthquake-prone country like Japan, construction companies operate on the principle that houses should be able to withstand seismic events equivalent to the strongest earthquake on record in the past.
The government ratified the Seventh Strategic Energy Plan at a cabinet meeting in February this year. This latest iteration of the plan removed references to an ambition to reduce the country’s dependence on nuclear power as much as possible, and signaled a clear intention to restore nuclear power to a more prominent position in the country’s energy strategy. Despite this, the seismic planning standards for nuclear power stations still assume that it is possible to accurately predict the maximum size of any earthquake that will hit in the future by analyzing past seismic data and running a site assessment of local geotechnical conditions. Whose position demonstrates better scientific judgement and a more realistic assessment of the facts—the government’s or the construction companies’?
Why Europe’s Biggest Nuclear Power Plant Fell into the Hands of the Enemy
TEPCO was a huge company, with annual revenue of around ¥5 trillion and a profit margin of 5%, meaning the company was making ¥250 billion every year. But the economic damages from the Fukushima accident came to at least ¥25 trillion, equivalent to 100 years in revenue for the company. What can we say about an approach to electricity generation in which a single accident can wipe out a century’s worth of revenue and essentially bankrupt a huge company like TEPCO? It is an energy source that is not just cost-ineffective but unsustainable.
For example, it is estimated that if an accident on a similar scale happened at the Tōkai Daini Nuclear Power Station in Ibaraki Prefecture, it would cause damage worth ¥660 trillion (compared to the national government budget of ¥110 trillion). As head of the Fukushima plant, Yoshida was resigned to losing the containment building of the unit 2 reactor to an explosion. He was saved by a “miracle” when a weakness somewhere in the structure of the building allowed pressure to escape and a rupture was avoided. Without this lucky intervention, it is estimated that the economic damages might have reached ¥2.4 quadrillion.
These figures make clear that the problem of nuclear power is not merely an energy issue. It has profound implications for national survival, and should be regarded as a national security priority. Russia’s war in Ukraine has provided a stark reminder of the seriousness of this threat. The Zaporizhzhia station on the Dnieper River is the largest nuclear power plant in Europe. A threat from Russia to attack it was enough to persuade Ukraine to hand over the plant to Russian control. If the plant really had been attacked, it might have caused a crisis with the potential to lay waste to large parts of Eastern Europe.
It has been said that nuclear power stations are like nuclear weapons directed at your own country. I couldn’t agree more. And in Japan we have 54 of these reactors bristling our shores, all but unprotected against earthquakes, potential enemies, and terrorist attacks. The LDP government mocks those who oppose Japan’s holding the offensive capability to attack enemy bases and argue for an exclusively defense-oriented posture as indulging in “flower garden” thinking. At the same time, the party is blind to the fact that nuclear power stations represent this country’s biggest national defense vulnerability.
Getting rid of these “nuclear weapons directed at our own country” will not require huge defense spending or difficult diplomatic negotiations. All that is required is the ability to look square at the facts, and a conservative mindset determined to protect our rich and productive land and pass it on to the next generation.
In my previous books and articles, I addressed the legal issues involved in nuclear power. In my Nuclear Power: An Introduction for Conservatives, I made clear that my own political stance is conservative. I was prepared for a backlash from progressives, who make up the bulk of the antinuclear movement, but in fact I received no pushback from that quarter all. In fact, I was taken aback by the resounding support I received.
Most of the criticism came from supposed conservatives who were apparently determined to discredit my sincere intentions and grumbled that it was unseemly for a former judge to be sticking his nose into politics. On Amazon, my reviews were flooded with apparently coordinated personal attacks and slander. But I am still convinced that true and fair-minded conservatives will understand my true intentions.
Geologists acknowledge that it is simply not possible to accurately predict earthquakes with today’s science. A huge earthquake could strike tomorrow, causing a catastrophe at one of the nation’s nuclear power stations that could wipe out or render inhabitable large parts of the country. My aim is simply to make as many people as possible aware of this terrifying fact.
(Originally written in Japanese. )
Donald Trump flounders about on the Ukraine situation
17 Apr 25 https://theaimn.net/donald-trump-flounders-about-on-the-ukraine-situation/
Trump’s previous presidency resulted in huge job losses, a massive increase in the national debt, and global uncertainty about economics. Still, the stock market went up, and the very wealthy got wealthier. His purpose then was perhaps to enrich himself and his rich mates. Apart from that, it all looked like incompetence. If the job of President is to preserve the security and well-being of the nation, his administration was floundering about.
So – no real surprise that this is now happening again.
And what better example of the flounder is there than Trump’s dithering about over the Ukraine war?
As far as the Ukraine war goes, Trump’s big advantage over his predecessor Joe Biden, is that he is willing to negotiate at all. But Donald Trump’s concept of “negotiation”really needs to be examined. He is inordinately and mistakenly proud of his “art of the deal”. But when we observe his actual behaviour, it’s more like a form of childish bullying, than any real method of negotiation.
Major tenets of negotiation, as explained by Herb Chen, to achieve a win-win situation, are to prepare well with information on the situation, seek out and understand the other side’s needs, respect the other side and establish trust.
To start with. Donald Trump aims to win, i.e to defeat the other side. Is Donald Trump even capable of going for a win-win situation? He is quoted as saying “My whole life is about winning” – though I could not find the source. https://www.youtube.com/shorts/YPg9sBtuMJw
So already it appears that Trump’s goal in negotiating is to get what he wants, in a bulldozing manner. And what he wants now is for USA business interests to win in Ukraine, rather than an acceptable peace agreement between Ukraine and Russia.
As to “preparing well with information on the situation”, Trump seems to have understood some of the critical facts – for example, that Putin will not tolerate Ukraine becoming a member of NATO, that Zelensky depends on USA military backing. But the more complex picture concerning the national borders, and the industries in the region seems to be beyond him. And this starts to matter when questions arise about the ownership of rare earths resources. This is a complicated story, but industry experts and economists warn that for the USA to gain control of Ukraine’s mineral resources is not likely to be a success, either commercially or geopolitically.
But Trump’s focus in the negotiations is on American business taking over Ukraine’s minerals. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ya9WKaveRXU
The “deal” that Trump is pursuing also involves that very thorny question – which nation will own and control the Zaporizhzhia nuclear station. I have previously written about this. But suffice to say that the ownership of this particular NPP is a very fraught matter. All three nations, Ukraine, Russia, and USA, seem to want to take on this huge responsibility – massive out-of-action nuclear reactors, all very dangerous and lacking a dependable supply of cooling water.
So, squabbles over industrial resources, and nuclear facilities would be predictable to anyone who bothered to prepare for negotiations on ending the war in Ukraine.
Seeking out and understanding the other side’s needs? Has Donald Trump any concept of this? He might appreciate strongman Putin’s need to look tough and insistent on tough conditions – but Trump does not take account of Russia’s need for to have sanctions on it ended, nor to have Ukrainian troops gone from Russia’s Kursk region, nor to prrevent a pause that enables Ukraine to build up weapons. Trump doesn’t take any interest in the complex needs of the Ukrainian side either, – with many in the Donbass area especially desperate for the war to end.
Respecting the other side and establishing trust? Trump’s manner shows that he doesn’t even respect his own side – as evidenced by his recent rudeness to Ukraine’s President Zelensky. About the other side – he’s said that he’s “pissed off” with Putin, and has threatened to impose secondary tariffs on countries that buy from Russia. He has broadcast his anger with Putin, – but added that “the anger dissipates quickly … if [Putin] does the right thing”.
So much for Trump’s promise about quickly ending the carnage in Ukraine. Almost three months after he took office, Trump has achieved nothing. Thousands of soldiers and civilians continue to be injured or die each month.
Without going into the nightmare of the Trump tariffs situation, the economic effect of the current Trump administration is starting to look very like the economic effect of his previous one. Unless the purpose of it is solely the enrichment of Trump and billionaires, the whole operation looks like being massively incompetent. And, sadly, the Ukrainian people are prime victims of this incompetence.
The Coalition Nuclear Policy is a Fake
Arena Online, Darrin Durant, Jim Falk, Jim Green, 17 Apr 2025, https://arena.org.au/the-coalition-nuclear-policy-is-a-fake/
Calls for commercial nuclear power in Australia have historically all featured the Liberal National Party (LNP) promising nuclear power but later quietly shelving such plans. With a looming federal election date, that pattern seems to have returned with the Coalition running silent on nuclear power, despite the election being only weeks away. Why?
The Coalition’s policy is a bit like a Potemkin Village anyway—the fake villages said to be erected by Grigory Potemkin to impress Catherine the Great. Like them, the nuclear proposal is at best a facade, lacking essential content but acting to distract attention from division within the Coalition on emissions reductions.
Nuclear Potemkin villages
The Coalition has an electricity plan, but it is highly unlikely to actually involve nuclear reactors. The idea of nuclear reactors (large or small) with their low life-cycle emissions (at least compared to fossil fuels) provides a facade for misdirecting public attention. Behind the facade are continuing placeholders for fossil fuels, a stalling of renewables development, and a plan to keeping coal plants running as long as possible—probably switching to gas when those coal-fired power stations become technologically and economically unviable.
The long-promised Coalition nuclear plan was eventually outlined with minimal detail in June 2024 as seven reactor-site locations across New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland, South Australia and Western Australia, producing 14 gigawatt, or 38 per cent of electricity, with the first reactor supposedly coming on line by 2035–37. The claim was for an outcome ‘significantly’ cheaper than the Australian Labor Party (ALP) renewables plan. It invoked the myth of baseload power as the only route to grid reliability, and claimed it would ‘responsibly’ integrate with renewables.
On Friday 13 December 2024, when most news outlets would have already filed their stories, the Coalition released actual costings of their nuclear plan, using modelling by Frontier Economics. These costings were roundly criticized for sins of omission:
- mass under-estimations of the cost of keeping coal-plants running, the amount of planned curtailment of renewables, how much transmission nuclear would need, and the implications of not meeting net zero commitments;
- poor market-design assumptions, with the low projected cost ($263 billion less than the ALP renewables plan) being incompatible with lived experience of contemporary reactor costs. The claim of smooth renewables integration was undermined by Frontier’s own modelling suggesting solar would be curtailed to create room for nuclear;
- obfuscation of emissions, including the issue that the Coalition plan would emit more than 1.7 billion extra tonnes of carbon dioxide up to 2050 compared to the ALP renewables plan;
- assumptions about a contracted not expanded industrial manufacturing base (the Frontier scenario assumes 40 per cent less electricity use);
- systematic under-estimation of full costs of nuclear reactors (estimated in the Coalition plan to be $10 billion per gigawatt while real experience shows $15–28 billion per gigawatt).
Economic analysts have confirmed that the Coalition nuclear plan rests on accounting tricks, hiding the true cost of nuclear, ignoring the cost of petrol and gas, neglecting the cost of replacing coal-fired power stations—which will otherwise be permitted to pollute for decades—and failing to cost the damage from those higher emissions.
Astroturfing nuclear support
There is a strategic vagueness in the Coalition’s nuclear plan, which replicates a key pattern in the history of nuclear power proposals in Australia: make promises, provide insufficient detail, then walk away (rinse and repeat so long as nuclear can pretend to be a climate policy). The vagueness is strategic because the lack of essential detail in the LNP nuclear plan encourages other social actors to read their ideas into the plan. It is a form of astroturfing where the proponents of an orchestrated message attempt to hide its actual sponsors but make it appear that it is supported by unsolicited grassroots individuals.
The Frontier Economics Report purports to compare the ALP’s renewables and LNP’s nuclear plans, yet in fact compares apples to oranges, based on quite different energy-demand scenarios. The ALP scenario costs more because it serves a much higher energy consumption projection. Despite it being three years since the nuclear policy was first suggested, we have been offered no idea of what the socio-political contours of a nuclear industry would look like in Australia.
There are constitutional questions. How would the LNP garner parliamentary support to overturn both federal and state bans on nuclear facilities or impose nuclear on states? There are waste disposal questions: what confidence can publics have that vastly increasing the stock of nuclear waste to be managed would succeed, given a history of failed repository siting at Kimba, Muckaty and Woomera and a legacy of Indigenous distrust of government sowed by atomic bomb testing and the extractive industries?
There are proliferation questions. When will uncertainties in Small Modular Reactor designs be resolved in a way that permits open assessment of the proliferation risks in the nuclear fuel cycle for a nuclear-juvenile nation like Australia? There are integration questions: the Coalition assumes smooth integration of nuclear and renewables but research suggests nuclear does not ‘ramp’ well, that nuclear undermines carbon emissions mitigation strategies, and that cycling limitations and the high capital costs of nuclear make nuclear power poor fits within renewables-heavy grids.
Only half-baked answers by a flood of interest groups attempt to fill the empty policy space. Thus, the Minerals Council of Australia (MCA) has engaged in disinformation in their support of nuclear power, attacking renewables seemingly because adopting nuclear would diminish investor confidence in renewables. Whereas the MCA engages in corporate and parliamentary lobbying, media networks such as The Australian and Sky News have populated the mainstream media with repackaged climate denial and delay talk: renewables are economic black holes, solar and wind are unreliable, and decarbonization transitions need to be managed (glacially).
Popup nuclear groups, including Nuclear for Climate and WePlanet (an offshoot of the UK fossil-fuel funded RePlanet) litter the online social media spaces with new denialism. Old denialism denied anthropogenic warming. New denialism, a ‘regime of obstruction’, throws sand in the gears of the decarbonization transition to keep fossil capital in the driving seat. The effects and urgency of climate mitigation are sidelined, disarming the objection that nuclear is too slow and piecemeal. Renewables-based climate solutions are discredited. These popup public groups reinvent the rationalist critique of environmentalism, deriding anti-nuclear critics as emotional. The scientism of the popup nuclear groups is palpable.
The astroturfing effect—creating a perception of broad public support where little exists—is in part explained by an effect discussed by the experimental psychologist F.C. Bartlett in his Remembering (1932). His argument was that the complexity of a response is a function of the complexity of the responding agents, not the stimulant. Audiences fill a simple message with missing meaning. With the LNP plan, plural, polarized publics have loaded up the vague nuclear proposal (closer to a meme than a policy) with meanings. The LNP simply prodded audiences with rhetoric about ‘renewables will not cut it’ and ‘we need reliable power’, then let the existing regime of obstruction interest-groups jump in. In this way, public support for nuclear is manufactured. It’s astroturfing, via experimental psychology and the politics of division.
The Coalition nuclear plan: A Claytons policy
The Australian Coalition government has repeatedly advanced nuclear as the solution to a problem, falling in love with nuclear publicly, and then ghosting it after a brief flirtation.
The John Gorton-led Coalition Government sought to build a reactor at Jervis Bay in 1969, but the idea floundered by 1971. The John Howard-led Coalition government introduced legislation in 1998 to ban nuclear facilities in Australia, ostensibly to secure support for a new research reactor at Lucas Heights but also reflecting bipartisan agreement that commercial nuclear power lacked political legitimacy in Australia.
Yet in 2006 the Howard government commissioned a task force to spruik the potential for commercial nuclear power. The Report, authored by Ziggy Switkowski and released in 2007, suggested Australia could start in 2020 to build twenty-five reactors that by 2050 would supply one-third of Australia’s electricity. However, by 2007 the Coalition again tried to run dead on nuclear power. Having announced reactor siting would be decided according to commercial decisions, community backlash saw the Coalition first backtrack by promising binding local plebiscites for any proposed location, then shelve any nuclear legislation until after the election. Howard lost his seat, and the Coalition did not raise nuclear again.
Until they did. The South Australian (SA) Liberals pushed for a nuclear power royal commission and the SA Labor Party obliged in 2016. In 2017 the New South Wales Liberals called for a debate on nuclear power. In 2019, the federal Liberals established a parliamentary commission to canvas what would be needed to introduce commercial nuclear power into Australia. In May 2022, Peter Dutton, then in government and (supposed) fan of nuclear power, stated that nuclear was ‘not on the table’, citing concerns to reduce costs rather than raise them. Yet in October 2022 the Liberals (now from opposition) introduced a bill to remove nuclear prohibitions.
What changed? One suggestion is to be found in a podcast that emerged in 2023, where the Coalition’s Minister Matt Canavan (who introduced the bill) admitted his colleagues were ‘not serious’ about nuclear power and only engaging with it ‘because it fixes a political issue for us’.
The Australian LNP has a plan for commercial nuclear power reactors in Australia that is a Claytons energy policy. Some may recall that Claytons was a non-alcoholic beverage, marketed in the 1970s and 1980s, and promoted as ‘the drink you have when you’re not having a drink’. To refer to ‘a Claytons’ means to refer to a shadow of the real thing, a substitute, an imitation. Nuclear power in Australia is the energy policy you have when you do not have a viable energy policy.
Australian nuclear news 14 – 21st April
Headlines as they come in :
- Fact Check: No, Mum, Nuclear Won’t Reduce Costs By 25%
- No walk in the park for nuclear reactors at life’s end.
- HALF-BAKED!
- Nukes kill kids.
- Dotty and Cretinous: Reviewing AUKUS.
- The real cost of living fix is renewables, not nuclear.
- Dutton’s nuclear revival smells rotten to Gens Y and Z
- 10 reasons why nuclear energy is a bad idea for Australia.
- Tim Wilson, secretive money and “think” tanks. Australia’s democracy is at stake.
- The Australian investors betting big on fusion – the “holy grail” of nuclear tech.
- Nuclear Fantasies and Migrant Fearmongering: Dutton’s Debate Playbook Is a Fact-Free Zone
- The Coalition Nuclear Policy is a Fake.
- Peter Dutton’s nuclear power plan could lead to major electricity shortages, analysis says.
- Peter Dutton insists there’s enough water for his seven nuclear plants, contradicting shadow frontbencher
- Forget nuclear, Australia is on fast lane to 100pc renewables.
- Dutton’s nuclear push will cost renewable jobs
- Victorian Liberal leader distances state party from Peter Dutton’s nuclear proposal: ‘Our focus is gas’
- Coalition’s nuclear power pitch falling flat with some voters, Vote Compass data suggests.
- Rightwing lobby group Advance says it makes ‘no apology’ for support given to anti-Greens groups
Forget nuclear, Australia is on fast lane to 100pc renewables
by Andrew Blakers | Apr 11, 2025 https://michaelwest.com.au/forget-nuclear-australia-is-on-fast-lane-to-100pc-renewables-solar/
Gas is the talk of the town, while nuclear is not, but a massive increase in solar power generation capacity has already put Australia on the fast track to a 100% renewable energy future. Solar cell engineer
Andrew Blakers explains.
An academic living in cold Canberra retired his gas heaters a few years ago and installed electric heat pumps for space and water heating. His gas bill went to zero. He also bought an electric vehicle, so his petrol bill went to zero.
He then installed rooftop solar panels that export enough solar electricity to the grid to pay for electricity imports at night, so his electricity bill also went to zero. That Canberra academic will get his money back from these energy investments in about eight years.
I am that academic.
Solar energy is causing the fastest energy change in history. Along with support from wind energy, it offers unlimited, cheap, clean and reliable energy forever.
With energy storage effectively a problem solved, the required raw materials impossible to exhaust — despite some misconceptions in the community — and an Australian transition gathering pace,
“solar and wind are becoming a superhighway to a future of 100 percent renewable energy.“
While the technological arguments for solar and wind power are compelling, it’s clear renewables have to overcome obstacles.
One is the division over the impact of the rollout of renewable energy infrastructure. It has divided affected communities across the country and needs to be addressed. Generous compensation and effective education about large regional economic opportunities are good ways forward.
There is also the political debate about what form Australia’s energy transition should take.
Solar surge
Yet, beyond those issues, solar offers unlimited energy for billions of years and provides the cheapest energy in history with zero greenhouse gases, zero smog and zero water consumption.
That explains why solar energy generation is growing tenfold each decade and, with support from wind, dominates global power station construction markets, while global nuclear electricity generation has been static for 30 years and is largely irrelevant.
In 2024, twice as much new solar generation capacity — about 560 gigawatts — was added compared with all other systems put together. Wind, hydro, coal, gas and nuclear added up to about 280 gigawatts.
There will be more global solar generation capacity in 2030 than everything else combined, assuming current growth rates continue. Solar generation will pass wind and nuclear generation this year and should catch coal generation around 2031.
About 37 percent of Australia’s electricity already comes from solar and wind, with an additional 6 percent from hydroelectric power stations that were built decades ago.
“More solar energy is generated per person in Australia than in any other country.”
Solar is by far the best method of removing fossil fuels, which cause three-quarters of global greenhouse gas emissions, from the economy.
In Australia, 99 percent of new generation capacity installed since 2015 has been solar and wind, and it is all private money. The energy market is saying very clearly that solar and wind have won the energy race and energy policies are consistent with reaching the government target of 82 percent renewable electricity by 2030.
Solar on the roof coupled with energy storage in a hot water tank, an EV battery and a home battery allows a family to ride through interruptions to gas, petrol and electricity supply and that energy resilience can apply at domestic, city, state and national levels.
Managing the balance
Balancing high levels of solar and wind energy to avoid supply interruptions is straightforward at low cost using off-the-shelf technology available from vast production lines. New transmission brings new solar and wind power into the cities and also smooths out the vagaries of local weather by transmitting solar and wind electricity to where it is needed.
For example, if it is raining in Victoria and sunny in New South Wales, then electricity can be transmitted south. Storage comprises batteries for short-term storage of a few hours and pumped hydro energy storage for hours to days.
“Together, batteries and pumped hydro solve the energy storage issues.“
Pumped hydro energy storage provides about 95 percent of global energy storage. It typically comprises two reservoirs located a few kilometres apart and with an altitude difference of between 500 and 1,000 metres.
On sunny or windy days, renewable sources like solar or wind power are used to pump water into the uphill reservoir, and during the night, the water flows back downhill through the turbine to recover the stored energy.
The same water can go up and down between the reservoirs for 100 years. Global potential pumped hydro energy storage is equivalent to two trillion electric vehicle batteries.
Australia has about 300 times more pumped hydro energy storage potential than needed to support 100 percent renewable electricity. It already has three pumped hydro systems, with two more under construction.
Globally, the world has more than 820,000 potential pumped hydro sites, which is about 200 times more than we need to support a 100 percent renewable energy system.
When eventually complete, Snowy 2.0 will provide 85 percent of energy storage in the national energy market at a cost 10 times lower than equivalent batteries and with a lifetime that is five times longer.
Myths and misconceptions
There are those — often vested interests — who throw up arguments against solar energy, regardless of what the facts say about its merits.
Here are a few:
- It takes up valuable farmland. Most of the area in solar and wind farms remains in use for agriculture. The area withdrawn from agriculture to generate all our energy from solar and wind is very small, equating to about the size of a large living room per person.
- The rural landscape can’t fit in any more solar and wind farms. Heat maps developed by researchers at the Australian National University show the vast number of good locations for solar and wind farms.
- Renewable infrastructure is a blight on the landscape. Hosts of solar and wind farms (and their neighbours) are generously compensated, while hosts of transmission lines are paid more than $200,000 per km. All the solar farms, wind farms, transmission and pumped hydro are in regional areas, which means that vast amounts of money and employment are flowing into regional areas. Solar farms are usually invisible from other properties. Open-cut roads, buildings, open-cut coal mines and gas fields are also visible in the landscape. People in cities have a far more cluttered view from their windows than rural people.
- We will run out of critical minerals. No critical minerals are required, only substitutable minerals. Solar panels require silicon for the solar cells, glass, plastic and conductors, which are made from extremely abundant materials.
- We will drown in solar panel waste. The amount of solar panel waste generated when all energy (not just electricity) comes from solar amounts to about 16 kg per person per year (mostly glass). Panel waste is a small and solvable problem.
Nuclear Energy Means Climate Action Delay: O’Donnell and Winfield
Susan O’Donnell and Mark Winfield, https://www.theenergymix.com/nuclear-energy-means-climate-action-delay-odonnell-and-winfield/ 16 Apr 25
What is the best way for utilities to delay the transition from fossil fuels? Propose to build nuclear reactors.
Electricity utilities wanting to “decarbonize” have several options for replacing the fossil fuel (coal, oil and gas) plants on their grids: aim to increase energy efficiency and productivity; add new renewable energy and storage resources; consider adding carbon capture and storage (CCS); or propose to build new nuclear reactors.
By objective measures, building new nuclear power plants will cost more, take longer to deploy, and introduce catastrophic accident risks—relative to improving energy productivity, expanding renewables with energy storage, and developing distributed energy resources. CCS suffers from limits of appropriate geology, reduced plant efficiency, and high costs.
However, if the goal is to keep fossil fuel-fired plants operating as long as possible, promising to build more nuclear energy has definite appeal.
Reactor design, planning, and build times are notoriously long—usually measured in decades—with well-established patterns of significant “unexpected” delays. Delaying while waiting for the promised new nuclear builds or reactor refurbishments maintains the status quo, effectively kicking actual climate action well down the road.
The two Canadian provinces with operating nuclear power reactors, Ontario and New Brunswick, provide case studies in this strategy. Both provinces are investing in significant new fossil gas generating infrastructure while waiting for new reactor designs to be developed and then built.
In Ontario, greenhouse gas emissions from the electricity sector have already risen dramatically as fossil gas plants are run to replace out-of-service nuclear reactors, and the province proposes to add more gas-fired generating capacity to its system. After a nearly decade-long hiatus, it only recently proposed a feeble reengagement with renewable energy. New nuclear reactor builds at Darlington, Bruce, and now Wesleyville, with timelines stretching well into the 2030s and 40s, remain the centrepiece of its energy (and supposed) climate strategy.
New Brunswick’s NB Power plans to add 600 MW of new nuclear power at its Point Lepreau nuclear site on the Bay of Fundy. Calls to build renewables instead have been rebuffed. In 2018, the province invited two nuclear start-up companies to set up in Saint John and apply for federal funding. Despite generous support from federal and provincial taxpayers, the companies have been unable to attract matching private funds. The NB Power CEO recently said she is “unsure” if the ARC-100, the reactor design promoted in 2018 as the closest to commercialization, will be ready by “the late 2030s.”
Meanwhile, the government recently announced support for building a large fossil gas plant, the biggest power project in the province in more than a decade.
The reality is that the new nuclear reactors being pushed by proponents are largely “PowerPoint reactors”—unproven and unbuilt designs. The BWRX-300 reactor that Ontario Power Generation (OPG) is proposing for its Darlington site, for example, lacks a fully-developed design, including key elements like safety systems. The Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC) still gave OPG a licence to build it, while the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission is still reviewing the design and asking for more information.
Recent analyses from the U.S. Tennessee Valley Authority also suggest the cost of the reactors will be far higher than OPG has claimed, and the timeline to construction and completion by 2030 seems less and less likely.
The new Monark design for a CANDU reactor that AtkinsRéalis (formerly SNC Lavalin) is proposing for the Bruce Power nuclear site is even further behind the BWRX-300 in development. According to the CNSC, the Monark is at a “familiarization and planning” stage, with no date set for even the first, preliminary stage of the design review.
The Monark’s main competitor is the AP-1000 reactor by Westinghouse. In 2002, the company submitted the AP-1000 design for formal review by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Two reactors came online in 2023 and 2024 at the Vogtle plant in Georgia, more than two decades later and twice the original timeline. Prior to the Vogtle project, the last reactor to come online in the U.S. took more than five decades from the start of construction to supplying power to the grid.
The final cost of the recent Vogtle project, at US$36.8 billion, was more than twice the original budget. If the same cost profile is applied to Ontario’s nuclear expansion projects, the total bill to Ontario electricity ratepayers and taxpayers could exceed $350 billion.
Promising to build more nuclear power is a political path to climate action delay and a distraction from a sustainable and decarbonized energy system transition. There is a reason why the International Energy Agency predicts that despite new nuclear reactor builds, nuclear energy will provide only eight percent of electricity supplies globally by 2050. In the meantime, while renewables development continues to accelerate globally, Canadian utilities, detoured by nuclear and CCS ambitions, double down on fossil gas and drift further and further behind in the global energy revolution.
Dr. Susan O’Donnell is adjunct research professor and lead investigator of the CEDAR project at St. Thomas University in Fredericton. Dr. Mark Winfield is a professor at the Faculty of Environmental and Urban Change at York University in Toronto, and co-chair of the faculty’s Sustainable Energy Initiative.
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Victorian Liberal leader distances state party from Peter Dutton’s nuclear proposal: ‘Our focus is gas’
Brad Battin says he had a conversation with the federal opposition leader about the ‘language’ he would use about plans to build a nuclear reactor in eastern Victoria
Benita Kolovos Victorian state correspondent, https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2025/apr/15/victorian-liberal-leader-brad-battin-distances-state-party-from-peter-dutton-nuclear-proposal
The Victorian opposition leader says he discussed the language he would use to distance the state party from the federal Coalition’s campaign to build a nuclear reactor in the Latrobe Valley, telling Peter Dutton “it’s your campaign”.
The Loy Yang coal-fired power station in the Latrobe Valley east of Melbourne is one of seven proposed sites for the federal Coalition’s proposal to build nuclear reactors, the centrepiece energy policy the federal Liberal leader will be taking to the 3 May poll.
But in his first interview with Guardian Australia since becoming the state Liberal leader in December, Brad Battin was clear to separate his team from the proposal, saying: “Our focus is gas, let the feds get on with what they’ve got to get on with.”
He confirmed he had not spoken to anyone in the federal Coalition about its two-and-a-half-year consultation plan for each proposed nuclear site, with the issue “barely raised” at all on the campaign trail.
However, Battin said a conversation had taken place with Dutton and his office about how he would handle questions on the policy.
“I’ve had the conversation with Dutton and his office around what my language is going to be, which is basically saying, ‘We’re happy to have a conversation at the right time. But for us, it’s your campaign at the moment. Our priority, our focus, is on gas,’” he said.
Battin said the federal Coalition would need state parliament to overturn Victoria’s Nuclear Activities (Prohibitions) Act of 1983, which bans the construction and operation of nuclear facilities in the state. Asked if he would be happy with that law being overturned, he said: “I’ll let you know on 4 May.”
Without the support of state parliament, Battin said a Dutton government would face a “difficult process” under section 109 of the constitution, which allows federal law to override state law in the case of conflict.
At his campaign launch on Sunday, Dutton vowed that Australia would become a “nuclear-powered nation” under the Coalition if elected. He said nuclear energy would reduce the need for “sprawling solar and windfarms or laying down 28,000km of transmission lines”.
Battin, however, said most Victorians wanted cheaper energy but “don’t know what the answer to that is yet”.
He said that as existing gas fields in Victoria’s Gippsland and Otway basins continue to deplete, the state should prioritise expanding onshore gas exploration instead.
The comments mark a shift in tone for Battin, who has spent months sticking to a carefully worded position that the Victorian Coalition was open to an “adult conversation” about the policy. He has also repeatedly refused to provide a personal view on nuclear energy.
How climate change could disrupt the construction and operations of US nuclear submarines
By Allie Maloney | April 14, 2025 https://thebulletin.org/2025/04/how-climate-change-could-disrupt-the-construction-and-operations-of-us-nuclear-submarines/ Allie Maloney is the Herbert Scoville Jr. Peace Fellow with the Nuclear Information Project at the Federation of American Scientists. Maloney holds two bachelor’s degrees in international affairs and political science from the University of Georgia. Previously, she was a Richard B. Russell Security Leadership Fellow at the University of Georgia’s Center for International Trade and Security.
The US Defense Department is currently in the midst of a multi-decade-long nuclear modernization effort that includes replacing all the nuclear submarines making up the sea leg of the US nuclear triad. The nuclear-armed and -powered submarines—which hold over half of deployed US nuclear warheads—are known for their “survivability,” thereby providing the United States with second-strike capability even after a surprise attack.
But climate change could make the US submarine force inoperable over the coming decades.
Rising sea levels and extreme weather events increasingly threaten the submarine force’s infrastructure, which is mainly located in at-risk flood areas. This vulnerability reveals the precarious state of nuclear weapons—which the Defense Department considers the “backbone of America’s national security”—to the threat of climate change.
Threat multiplier. The Navy plans to spend $130 billion on procuring new Columbia-class nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines (SSBNs) over the next two decades to replace the current Ohio-class fleet. The delivery of the lead boat—the USS District of Columbia (SSBN-826)—has already been delayed by 12 to 16 months due to insufficient work instructions, low material availability, and disruptions from the COVID-19 pandemic. It is now only about halfway through construction. According to the Government Accountability Office, budget overruns are five to six times higher than estimates by the Navy and General Dynamics Electric Boat, the submarine’s building company. As the Pentagon spends more and more on modernizing its nuclear submarines, natural disasters are likely to disrupt supply chains and damage nuclear facilities, sinking costs further.
In recent years, the Defense Department has started to acknowledge climate change as a “threat multiplier”—albeit slowly. Acknowledging the billions of dollars climate change could cost the Navy in the future, the Pentagon now incorporates inclement weather disasters and other climate effects into military planning and base structures. However, during the first Trump administration, the Navy quietly ended the climate change task force put in place by the Obama administration, which taught naval leaders how to adapt to rising sea levels. As the new Trump administration wipes all mention of climate change and other environmental measures from federal agency websites, climate-related measures may also be halted despite being critical for the viability of naval missions.
Most of the naval construction and operations infrastructure for the United States’ ballistic missile submarines are located on the Pacific and Atlantic coasts. Due to sea level rise and increased inclement weather attributed to climate change, these facilities are becoming more vulnerable to flooding. The intensity and number of hurricanes in the North Atlantic region have increased since the 1980s and will continue to do so as ocean temperatures keep rising, further threatening coastal areas. These incidents are highly costly and disruptive to operations. According to a Congressional Research Service report, the Defense Department has 1,700 coastal military installations that could be impacted by sea level rise. In 2018, Tyndall Air Force Base in Florida suffered $4.7 billion in damages from Hurricane Michael.
Infrastructure at risk.……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
Self-induced vulnerability. The Navy’s Final Environmental Assessment for the Columbia class submarines estimated that homeporting at Kings Bay, Georgia, would result in emissions of 998 metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent. This is equivalent to 1,108,593 pounds of coal burned and the amount of carbon sequestered by 1,001 acres of US forests in one year. General Dynamic’s greenhouse gas emissions for 2023 were around 713,874 metric tons—over 700 times higher. While it had committed to reducing GHG emissions in 2019, the company’s emissions have increased since taking on several Pentagon contracts related to nuclear modernization.
The geophysical threats the nuclear deterrent faces show just how precarious these weapons are. As the United States builds new ships for national security, it also contributes to the sinking of its bases. A nuclear weapon buildup is vulnerable to changing environments and cannot save the United States from the looming threat of climate change.
Dutton’s nuclear push will cost renewable jobs
by Charlie Joyce, https://australiainstitute.org.au/post/duttons-nuclear-push-will-cost-renewable-jobs/
As Australia’s federal election campaign has finally begun, opposition leader Peter Dutton’s proposal to spend hundreds of billions in public money to build seven nuclear power plants across the country has been carefully scrutinized.
The technological unfeasibility, staggering cost, and scant detail of the Coalition’s nuclear proposal have brought criticism from federal and state governments, the CSIRO, the Climate Council, the Electrical Trade Union (ETU), the Climate Change Authority, the Australia Institute, and independent energy experts.
The CSIRO, among others, has refuted the Coalition’s claim that nuclear will be cheaper than renewables; instead, they have shown the energy produced by Australian reactors would cost approximately eight times more than the same amount of energy produced by renewables. If this cost is passed on to consumers, the average household would pay $590 per year more on their power bill. Unsurprisingly, Australia Institute polling has found that fewer than one in twenty Australians (4%) are prepared to pay this nuclear premium.
The cost alone should be enough to bury this nuclear proposal. But it is also important to recognise how the Coalition’s plan will impact – and fail – workers.
False promises
The Coalition has proposed that large nuclear reactors would be built on the sites of five operational or recently decommissioned coal fired power stations: Liddell and Mount Piper in New South Wales, Tarong and Callide in Queensland, and Loy Yang in Victoria. In doing so, the Coalition has promised that nuclear energy would be a source of stable and plentiful work for the communities where coal-fired power plants are phasing down.
This is a false promise. Six coal fired power stations have already closed in the past decade, with 90% of Australia’s remaining coal-fired power stations set to close in the next decade. These communities are already undergoing structural adjustment, and they need new sources of employment now. But this is not what the Coalition’s plan delivers. The Coalition outlines that the first two nuclear reactors would not come online until the mid-2030s – more than a decade from now – while the remainder would be completed by 2050.
And energy and technology experts agree that even this timeline is impossible. On average, a nuclear reactor takes 9.4 years just to build in countries with established and capable nuclear industries. Former Australian Chief Scientist Alan Finkel has estimated that it would take until the mid-2040s at the earliest for Australia to build an operational nuclear reactor. Moreover, analysis from the Institute for Energy, Economic & Financial Analysis (IEEFA) has found that, in economies comparable to Australia’s, every single nuclear reactor project experienced multi-year delays and cost blowouts of up to three and a half times over budget. It is hard to see how Australia, which lacks the experienced workforce, training and research base, or regulatory framework, would buck this trend.
Lost jobs
While the Coalition’s nuclear plan would not bring jobs to the communities that need them, it might have the real effect of depressing investment in renewables.
Renewable energy already generates approximately 40% of Australia’s energy and is by far the cheapest form of electricity. Renewable energy industries already account for the employment of tens of thousands of workers, and Jobs and Skills Australia estimates that approximately 240,000 new workers will be required in industries associated with clean energy by 2030.
But this requires ongoing and expanding investment in renewables, which the Coalition’s nuclear policy is likely to derail. The Clean Energy Council has estimated that by capping renewable energy to 54% of total use (as the Coalition’s modelling has assumed), 29GW of renewable energy generation projects would not be built – squandering an expected 37,700 full-time-equivalent construction jobs and 5,000 ongoing jobs in operations and maintenance. By limiting renewables investment, prolonging fossil fuel usage, and diverting investment towards nuclear energy, the full employment opportunities of the renewable energy transition are lost.
Scarce and dangerous work
If the Coalition’s nuclear plan does come to fruition it will hardly create any ongoing jobs for the communities that have undergone structural readjustment. According to analysis from the Nuclear Energy Agency, while the peak period of construction of the average 1GW nuclear power plant can demand up to 3,500 workers, ongoing operations and maintenance will only require about 400 workers – with only a quarter of these being onsite blue-collar jobs that might provide work for the people who will have lost jobs with the closure of coal-fired power stations. Most jobs will be in administration, regulatory compliance, energy, marketing, sales, science and emergency personnel – and many of them are likely to be located away from the nuclear facility itself.
Disturbingly, any jobs on-site may put the health of workers at risk. Recent analysis of multiple studies of the health impacts of nuclear power plant employment across multiple countries found that workers have a significantly higher risk of mesothelioma and circulatory disease due to exposure to radiation. Nearby residents also exhibit a significantly higher risks of cancer, with children under the age of five at particular risk. And this does not even factor in the risk of sudden plant failure and reactor meltdown on workers and communities – a risk sharpened by the Coalition’s plan for these reactors to be built on geological fault lines with heightened earthquake risk.
Australian workers have much to gain from the renewable energy transition, including cheaper power, new clean technology industries, and hundreds of thousands of new jobs. The Coalition’s nuclear plan only brings false promises, lost jobs, and – if the plan comes to fruition – few jobs and potentially dangerous work.
Coalition’s nuclear power pitch falling flat with some voters, Vote Compass data suggests
ABC By Vote Compass reporter Isabella Higgins and Claudia Williams, Topic:Australian Federal Elections, Sat 12 Apr 25 [excellent tables]
The Coalition’s pitch for nuclear power in Australia appears to be struggling for support among some key voters, as the nation prepares to vote on its energy future.
New data from the ABC’s Vote Compass survey shows respondents are divided on nuclear energy, while support for climate change action appears to have softened.
About 47 per cent of ABC Vote Compass respondents said they strongly disagreed or somewhat disagreed with building nuclear power plants, while 38 per cent were somewhat or strongly supportive.
Perth local Gabriel Maddock said she’s made up her mind on nuclear energy, and it is a decision she is making with her young children in mind.
“I don’t think it will be better for the environment, it’s going to be hugely expensive, and I think there’s serious safety risks,” the 35-year-old told the ABC.
ABC Vote Compass found views towards nuclear were split along party lines, while men were more supportive, and those over 65 were the age group most likely to be unsupportive.
According to Vote Compass data, 29 per cent of males strongly disagree with the plan while 41.9 per cent of females disagree.
However, the data shows strong support from those who intend to vote for the Coalition with 44 per cent saying they agree Australia should build nuclear power plants.
This contrasts with those who plan to vote for independents, Labor and the Greens — with just 7, 5, and 4 per cent respectively in strong agreement.
This data comes from a sample of more than 270,000 and has been demographically weighted…………………………………………………………………………………………………
The Coalition is promising by 2050 Australia will get 38 per cent of its power from nuclear energy, 54 per cent from renewables, and 8 per cent from storage and gas.
Some experts have questioned the projected cost and timelines of the Coalition’s nuclear plan.
Meanwhile, Labor plans to have a grid almost totally powered by renewable energy, with the target of reaching 82 per cent of renewable energy by 2030 and fully renewable by 2050.
Ms Maddock is concerned that a switch to nuclear power would lead to more carbon emissions in the shorter term.
“From a climate perspective, it seems like it’s solving one environmental issue with another, because nuclear waste is a very difficult thing to deal with,” she said.
“Why would we do that when we could continue developing our renewable power, something Australia is really in a position to be a leader in.”……………………………………………………………………………
Vote Compass is an educational tool designed to promote electoral literacy and civic engagement. While not a conventional public opinion poll, Vote Compass responses can be analysed using statistical methods similar to those used in polling to try to adjust for sampling bias.
Responses have been weighted by gender, age, education, language, religion, place of residence and past vote to account for the selection effects of the sample, enabling us to make statistical inferences about the Australian population.
Nuclear news – not the industry handouts
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TOP STORIES.
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AUSTRALIA.
- Community groups furious Coalition nuclear plan would go ahead even if locals oppose it.
- As the debate around renewables and nuclear continues, here is what the experts say.
- How US Dependence is Not in Our Best Interest.
- What if a Fukushima-sized nuclear accident happened near you? – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIModFC_9kI
- Nuclear would funnel up to 200 Gigalitres away from Australian farms annually.
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- Israeli Defence Force courts Australian universities amid anti-war protests.
- More Australian nuclear news at https://antinuclear.net/2025/04/10/australian-nuclear-news-7-14-april/
ATROCITIES. Israel is About to Empty Gaza . How Israel hunts and executes Palestinian medics.
| ETHICS and RELIGION. The Journey Beyond Nukes Begins with an Apology. |
| EVENTS. In Chicago: Testimonies of Korean Atomic Bomb Victims and International People’s Tribunal Promotion Events. |
| HISTORY. We thought it was the end of the world’: How the US dropped four nuclear bombs on Spain in 1966 |
| LEGAL. The top Republicans in the Arizona Legislature want the federal government to cut back regulations on the nuclear energy industry. |
| MEDIA. Media Find Ways to Minimize Israel’s Murder of Paramedics. When will progressive media acknowledge and condemn US enabled genocide in Gaza. |
| OPPOSITION to NUCLEAR .Attacked, demonized and forced into hiding. Nuclear waste returns to Germany amid protests. The 2025 Nuclear-Free Future Awards. Youth Leading the Charge for a Nuclear-Free Future. Raising Funds to Stop Lake District Coast Sub-Sea Nuclear Dump. NFLAs ‘shout up’ for National Parks to be spared from nuclear development. |
| SPACE. EXPLORATION, WEAPONS. ESA’s new documentary paints worrying picture of Earth’s orbital junk problem. |
| TECHNOLOGY. The Flamanville EPR nuclear reactor will not be able to deliver its full power without major works – ALSO AT https://nuclear-news.net/2025/04/12/1-a-the-flamanville-epr-nuclear-reactor-will-not-be-able-to-deliver-its-full-power-without-major-works/ Radiation Monitoring – Scottish university in ‘world-first’ for nuclear technology. UK Government convenes AI Energy Council, but could be ignoring hidden climate impacts in supply chains. |
| WASTES. Nuclear waste sparks fury in Germany. |
| WAR and CONFLICT. Russia holds all the cards. |
| WEAPONS and WEAPONS SALES. Inside the New Mexico lab where the U.S. is moving into the most terrifying chapter of the nuclear arms race. Walt Zlotow: Trump, Hegseth off by nearly 1 trillion on national security budget. To Secure U.S. Energy Dominance, the Department of Defense Selects Eligible Companies for the Advanced Nuclear Power for Installations Program. |
Rightwing lobby group Advance says it makes ‘no apology’ for support given to anti-Greens groups
Advance has also focused on the anti-renewables movement, appearing at “energy forums” across the country and events held by groups set up to oppose the roll-out of offshore wind and solar energy.
Ariel Bogle, 13 Apr 25 https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2025/apr/13/rightwing-lobby-group-advance-says-it-makes-no-apology-for-support-given-to-anti-greens-groups?CMP=share_btn_url
Spokesperson acknowledges supply of flyers, T-shirts and corflutes to ‘dozens of community groups’ seeking to defeat party’s candidates.
The rightwing advocacy group Advance has acknowledged it is paying for election materials attacking the Greens to be used by third-party groups during the election campaign.
“Advance is working with hundreds of volunteers from dozens of community groups to defeat Greens candidates and we make no apology,” a spokesperson said.
The spokesperson said Advance did not fund groups directly but “we absolutely pay for anti-Greens campaign material to be at the disposal of volunteers”.
“This includes 2m flyers and thousands of T-shirts and corflutes.
“Again, we make no apologies.”
The group’s plan to focus its election campaign on reducing the Greens vote has been no secret. Advance’s executive director, Matthew Sheahan, claimed in a February email to supporters it had already raised $7.6m to “smash the Greens” and about $2m to target Labor. The group has spent more than $200,000 in the past week to promote posts from Facebook pages with names such as “Greens Truth”.
But it has not previously talked publicly about the extent of its support for other groups hostile to the Greens, including those that take exception to the party’s position on the Israel-Gaza war or on renewable energy.
The type of assistance Advance has on offer was revealed by two Jewish advocacy groups at a forum hosted by the Australian Jewish Association (AJA).
Simonne Whine of J-United, which campaigned against the Greens in the recent Prahran byelection in Victoria, said her group had reached out to Advance to get its campaign started.
“They were fantastic, efficient, strategic, well resourced,” she said. “They supplied the flyers, the T-shirts and the corflutes, and shipped everything to Melbourne, helping us hit the ground running.” Advance even paid for a picnic to thank volunteers, Whine said.
During last year’s Queensland state election, the Queensland Jewish Collective (QJC) also focused on the Greens vote in Brisbane seats such as Maiwar and Moggill. One of the group’s directors, Roz Mendelle, told the AJA forum QJC had spoken with Advance after seeing its work during the campaign against the Indigenous voice to parliament.
“When time came … to do something against the Greens here in Brisbane, I knew who to turn to,” Mendelle said, claiming that Advance kept “a healthy distance” while the campaign was under way. According to an event invitation seen by Guardian Australia, QJC held a volunteer event with Advance in February.
Mendelle is a co-director of a new group, Minority Impact Coalition (MIC), which has started a billboard campaign against Labor and the Greens in multiple states. A spokesperson for both groups said neither QJC nor MIC had received materials or funding from Advance.
“We had agreed to share volunteers for the federal election,” she said. “However, our volunteers do not want to work with Advance at the federal election so we have made the decision to do our own groundforce campaign.”
During the AJA briefing, Mendelle showed an image of a billboard paid for by QJC that read: “The Greens: They’ve changed for the worse.”
“This is also inspired by the Advance messaging,” she said. “But from there, we gained our footing, and we decided to just speak our truth.” MIC is using the same mobile billboard provider as Advance in Queensland, NSW and Victoria – STT Advertising.
In return, Advance has also used content from groups such as J-United on social media, sharing pictures of its “local grassroots community members” on its Greens Truth Facebook page.
The likely electoral impact of the anti-Greens strategy remains somewhat elusive. The Greens hold only four seats in the lower house, of which the three they won in Brisbane at the last election appear vulnerable. They have six senators up for re-election. By contrast, six new teal independent MPs were elected in 2022 – if they hold those seats or even increase their numbers, they might be expected to have a greater say in the event of a hung parliament.
“They’ve clearly worked out how to get conservative people fired up enough to throw money at them, and the way to do that is by attacking the Greens,” said Peter Lewis, the executive director of Essential, which is conducting qualitative research for the ALP. “But it’s not going to do anything to help the Liberals win back teal seats.”
The Advance spokesperson said: “Our campaign against the Greens won’t defeat teals because it was never meant to. We have been crystal clear for the past 18 months that our focus is on the Greens this election.”
Sheahan told an Australian Jewish Association forum in 2024: “Our goal is to just expose the Greens policies so that people don’t vote for them … A partial benefit will be that we think that will also reduce the teal vote.” His logic for that claim was unclear.
Anti-renewables
Advance has also focused on the anti-renewables movement, appearing at “energy forums” across the country and events held by groups set up to oppose the roll-out of offshore wind and solar energy.
As Guardian Australia has previously documented, the Facebook account for Advance spokesperson Sandra Bourke is active in dozens of local Facebook groups and pages opposing renewable projects in places such as Lake Borumba and Mount Fox in Queensland, regularly sharing Advance content.
Bourke is a regular speaker at these rallies and events – unusually for the outfit, which generally avoids a public-facing presence.
Grant Piper is the former chair of the National Rational Energy Network (NRen), which brought together community groups opposed to renewable energy projects and hosted events including the Reckless Renewables rally in Canberra last year.
That’s where Piper first met Advance. “We didn’t tie any formal knots, but we could tell we were pushing after the same thing when it comes to renewables,” Piper said.
NRen, which has rebranded as Let’s Rethink Renewables, has had discussions with Advance “all the way through”, he said, although it has remained independent. Bourke, one of NRen’s original members, is now Advance’s spokesperson and the face of its campaign against the Greens.
According to Piper – who appeared in Advance’s anti-renewables Dollars & Destruction video series – the organisation is a natural ally for groups that feel they are mostly excluded from the conversation taking place in parliament and the media.
“Advance is helping get publicity for the grassroots people who have been shut out of everything,” he said.
Others who have teamed up for the Greens Truth campaign include groups that emerged from the anti-lockdown movement, the Freedom party and Reignite Democracy Australia – which makes clear to prospective volunteers that their details will be shared with Advance.
Another NRen member and former One Nation candidate, Katy McCallum, was the MC at a “Goodbye Greens Rally” in Brisbane in late March, where QJC also appeared. Along with other event backers such as the Libertarian candidate Jim Willmott, she thanked Bourke and Advance for their help at the event.
“If our other good mate Sandra Bourke … from Advance hadn’t have jumped on, this would not be happening today,” she said.
1 This month
of the week – Disrupting War & Militarism in Oceania. Active solidarity. Radical practice.
Antinuclear 