‘If it can power our defence, it can power our nation to!
From the Weekend Australian Newspaper Associate Editor Chris Kenny, March 18-19, 2023
Chris Kenny’s article on page 22 of the above titled “If it can power our defence, it can power our nation to” referring to the recent announcement of the AUKUS nuclear-powered submarine pathway.
This agreement between Australia, Britain and the United States is to design and develop a robust defence industry in Australia and future-proof the nations security with nuclear powered submarines.
Kenny like many of us is concerned about the future effectiveness of renewable energy, its long term costs, and the probability that it won’t meet future needs in this country.
He points out, that our nations prohibitive stance on nuclear energy has long been an absurdity in view of our use of the Lucas Heights reactor on the fringe of Sydney’s suburbs which has been operating for many decades.
The paradox here, is the AUKUS initiative is now of running and building nuclear powered submarines for Australia.
Having, run a research and medical nuclear reactor for many years, hosted nuclear weapons testing and mining and exporting uranium, the Federal Government won’t avail itself of the proven, reliable emission-free energy generated from nuclear fission, because of our nation’s prohibitive stance on nuclear energy!
Instead we export all of our energy, coal, gas and uranium reserves to other countries including our strategic adversaries for them to grow rich and powerful.
In part one of this series, Federal Climate Minister Chris Bowen outlined the enormous cost and challenge it’s going to be, to manufacture the infrastructure involving renewables to meet World emissions targets and to provide our country with sufficient energy in the future.
Kenny points to the old arguments being rolled out regarding the cost of nuclear energy, when the minister is actively involved in grants for trial cattle feed supplements to reduce methane emissions! He believes that politicians like Bowen should stop hiding from a rational nuclear debate as they should be made to justify the cost of the ‘renewables experiment’.
He cites cost of geographical locations, weather variations, transmission lines and purchase of their sites and back-up storage that are expensive and inadequate and with no guarantee that power will be there when wanted.
The cost of delivering energy over the distances we Australians are familiar with is another issue.
Energy Minister Bowen continues to reject a domestic nuclear based industry based on cost and the usual old arguments about safety, forgetting that technology has improved somewhat since the first nuclear power stations were built decades ago.
Recently he stated that nuclear would be particularly expensive in Australia because we don’t have a nuclear industry to start with and ‘we’d be starting from scratch’.
Well what are we going to do when we start operating nuclear submarines from our country? Are we going to use a crank handle to start them up!
While politicians continue to hide from a rational debate regarding nuclear energy citing cost’s, they should be made to justify the costs involved in the renewables experiment. Kenny alludes to the Snowy 2.0 project, embraced by Labor and hailed by Malcolm Turnbull former leader of the Liberal Party, that was originally costed at $2bn and is now running 3 years late in its construction and set to cost 5 times that amount!
Three years ago a Reserve Bank Bulletin suggested $20bn had been invested in renewable energy across the nation. Last year an AAP Factcheck said $25bn had been spent in the previous three years and in the first Albanese/Charmers budget , $25bn was allocated over the next four years. This among other things is designed to underpin a $100bn spend on 28,000km of transmission lines!
Clean Energy Australia also claims more than$18bn of private investment is currently committed to renewable projects. These figures alone are likely to include the countless billions in subsidies from state and federal governments for small and large-scale solar.
Conservative estimates would suggest we have already spent something in the order of $60bn with at least $100bn to go – and for what. Increasingly expensive electricity supplies and a looming energy security crunch?
Kenny believes that a similar investment in nuclear might already have replaced all the output lost from gas and coal so far and criticizes Bowen for dismissing nuclear on the grounds of cost!
He believes as I do, that we have the answer to this dilemma with small modular reactors (SMR’s) that improve the practicalities and economics of nuclear. He suggests they could be installed into places like the Hunter Valley in NSW, Latrobe Valley in Victoria and the iron Triangle in South Australia, where they can plug-in to existing transmission networks near mothballed coal plants.
See: These Mini Nuclear Reactors Can be Built Anywhere - YouTube
In the Stop Press section of ‘It’s our own fault’ in part 4 of this blog, our Energy Minister Bill Johnston probably wishes he had a SMR currently running in Collie!
Kenny argues in this article, that If Australian uranium can fuel nuclear generation in France, China and India in a cost-effective manner, the same can happen here if we are running power plants for our floating defense, we can do the same onshore.
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