Public opinion will be hard to change!

_{When will SMR’s be available?}

_{There are no small nuclear power plants in Australia yet, yet there are some 150 designs under way around the world, including Russia, China, Britain and the US. Although the technologies vary, they share a common goal: to design super-safe and relatively cheap sources of electricity.}

This may give us a short time frame to persuade our leaders to think about the benefits of this new technology and change negative public opinion about Small Modular Reactors. 

_{ARC Nuclear Canada, with the assistance of Sydney-based engineering group Worley Parsons, says it plans to start selling a small nuclear power plant in 2028. “The reactor will follow a similar cost trajectory to renewables with costs becoming more competitive each year as manufacturing expenditures are reduced,” a spokesman for the company said.}

_{Other projects are further developed. Canada’s Ultra Safe Nuclear Corp says it plans to start selling very small reactors by 2025 for mines and remote towns. These reactors, which would each fit in standard shipping containers, could be combined into a single power plant that would be operated by 15 to 30 people. The cost, based on the electricity generated, would be similar to solar panels 10 years ago.}

_{Rolls-Royce estimates that Australian demand for small reactors could reach 2000 megawatts of capacity, which is more than Canada, Mexico or south-east Asia currently use. The company wants the British government to allocate 7 gigawatts of electricity demand to small reactors, before 2030 which is about 10 per cent of Britain’s total capacity.}

_{Will they be safe?}

_{ARC Nuclear Canada maintains  its 100’s big selling points would be simplicity and safety. Radioactive fuel would only have to be changed every 20 years. If there are operating problems, the reactor would automatically shut off without any human intervention. Most of the other reactors under development include similar so-called passive safety features.}

_{Despite the notoriety of the disasters at Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima, where a tsunami knocked out power to large ageing reactors, triggering nuclear core meltdowns, nuclear power’s long-term safety record remains strong.}

_{A study commissioned two years after Fukushima by Friends of the Earth found that “overall the safety risks associated with nuclear power appear to be more in line with lifecycle impacts from renewable energy technologies, and significantly lower than for coal and natural gas per megawatt hour of supplied energy”. There were no deaths from radiation poisoning at Fukushima, although parts of the prefecture are now uninhabitable. (Friends of the Earth Australia says the study doesn’t reflect its current view.)}

_{The Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation, which operates Australia’s one nuclear reactor, on Sydney’s western outskirts, has cited NASA research that nuclear power likely prevented over 1.8 million deaths between 1971 and 2009 by replacing coal and gas power plants.}

_{Is opinion shifting?}

_{Convincing Australians that nuclear power can be safe may be challenging. The politics of nuclear power are fraught. “Nuclear free zone” signs dot inner-city suburbs, and environmentalists and the Labor Party are adamantly opposed to ending the nuclear-power moratorium.  “The very idea of new nuclear plants is laughed at by those with a serious interest in the electricity industry and its future,” wrote the editor of the Renew Economy website, Giles Parkinson, recently.}

_{Residents and environmentalists protest near a proposed nuclear storage site in the Northern Territory.} 

_{Parkinson may have spoken too quickly. The chief economist of Industry Super Australia, Stephen Anthony, and former economics professor Alex Coram recently declared that nuclear power would likely have to eventually be adopted, and that opposition was based on irrational fears driven by rare accidents.}

_{“Nuclear power is now the ugly duckling of the power generation industry,” they wrote in a discussion paper for superannuation funds that invest in power. “People somehow dismiss it as immoral, even more immoral than burning coal.” Environmentalists say nuclear is more expensive that wind and solar power, an assertion nuclear advocates dispute.}

_{The parliamentary inquiry into nuclear power will be a test for Australia’s newest, prominent climate campaigner, Zali Steggall, the member for Warringah on Sydney’s lower north shore. Steggall, who is a member of the committee conducting the inquiry, didn’t want to pre-empt it by expressing a view towards nuclear power.}

_{The chairman of the committee, Queensland MP Ted O’Brien, said he had an open mind and wanted to focus on facts rather than “emotion and ideology”. “It’s no secret that the Coalition is focused on affordability and reliability whilst also fulfilling our obligations to reduce emissions,” he said in an interview. “This inquiry is to assess nuclear energy.}

Well there you have it. With a great deal of discussion regarding the future of energy, will we ever see any real action on the future of nuclear energy or will we continue to believe that renewal energy will solve our problems. What’s your point of view?

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