Why the Australian Opposition Party is not genuinely interested in nuclear power, (just in prolonging fossil fuels)

This is the truth at the heart of the Coalition’s latest climate fantasy: it gives people concerned about the speed and impact of the energy transition an alternative reality where this change doesn’t have to happen.

The Coalition’s nuclear fantasy serves short-term political objectives – and its fossil fuel backers

This is the truth at the heart of the Coalition’s latest climate fantasy: it gives people concerned about the speed and impact of the energy transition an alternative reality where this change doesn’t have to happen.

Dutton’s policy latches on to genuine concerns about power prices and disruption evident in the latest Guardian Essential report, but what are its real motivations?

Peter Lewis, 2 July 24 https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/commentisfree/article/2024/jul/02/coalition-nuclear-policy-peter-dutton-power-plants

In 1959 the US government hatched a covert scheme to replace every single bird with a replicant surveillance drone to spy on its own citizens. This is only the second silliest theory flying around the internet right now.

Peter Dutton’s make-believe nuclear plan bears some of the hallmarks of Peter McIndoe’s actual piss-take, “Birds Aren’t Real”, which became so real he wound up doing interviews with Fox News and running large-scale community rallies where only some of the participants were chanting his nonsense slogan ironically.

There’s not too great a distance from ‘bird truthers’ to the Coalition’s latest permutation of fossil-fuelled climate skepticism.

In a world where information is driven by platform algorithms designed to maximise attention and reinforce existing prejudices, any theory can find a home; the crazier and louder the claims, the more likely they are to take off.

This is the truth at the heart of the Coalition’s latest climate fantasy: it gives people concerned about the speed and impact of the energy transition an alternative reality where this change doesn’t have to happen.

As this week’s Guardian Essential Report shows, support for renewable energy is contested. Lining up renewables, nuclear and fossil fuels, we found a lack of consensus on price, environmental impact and economic consequence.

While renewables are seen as the best energy source for the environment and most desirable overall, fossil fuels are seen as cheaper and better for jobs. It is here that the Coalition’s nuclear fantasy plays a critical bridging role.

The rollout of the renewable energy grid is a genuinely disruptive development; coal communities genuinely fear for their long-term economic future; consumers genuinely feel power prices rising as the rollout of renewables gathers momentum.

Coalition energy spokesperson Ted O’Brien is tasked with convincing those who have genuine concerns that if they just embrace nuclear, they can stop all these things they don’t like and still hit net zero by 2050.

Just like the bird conspiracy, this nuclear policy isn’t real: it has no scope, no production estimate, no costings, no timeline. But it’s a device that serves a flock of short-term political objectives.

It creates a reason to delay decommissioning coal and gas because, like magic, nuclear will provide a short cut. That’s good for the LNP’s fossil fuel backers and communities that rely on the production of these energy sources.

It offers hope to coal communities that they can become home to a new heavy industry. While critics of nuclear can make fun of the three-headed fish near the Springfield, the truth is Homer Simpson enjoyed the sort of secure job these communities fear will soon disappear.

And it sends a message to every regional community that they might not need to host the new renewable energy grid that is being rolled out. Because if you have a choice between looking out across a valley or looking out across power lines, who wouldn’t take the valley?

The problem for the Albanese government is that while each of these justifications is patently false, attacking them head-on risks a rerun of the voice referendum dynamic where “two sides” reporting creates a false equivalence that ends up defining the contest as a coin toss.

Exacerbating this challenge is the fact that fewer people trust the main proponents of the energy transition – the government and energy companies. Instead, trust is anchored at the level of the local.

The only people we really trust are those who we know personally – our friends and family and members of our community. Which raises the question, who do the people we trust get their information from? Perversely, the answer can only be “us”.

As McIndoe riffs in a hilarious piece of performance media: “Just because it’s a theory doesn’t mean its fake. It’s on the media, you can find it … Truth is subjective … There’s different proof out there for different things and if you do your research, you just might find it.”

Given this environment, the choice for Labor is whether to get dragged into a nuclear showdown where alternate facts will be wished into existence or simply dismiss the whole charade as the piece of political theatre it is.

A final question in this week’s report suggests the more effective way of confronting the nuclear “debate” is what disinformation experts call “pre-bunking” by calling out the opposition’s real motivations.

These findings show that half the electorate – and nearly two-thirds of young people – will reject the idea that this is a legitimate debate at all. Taking these people out of the equation before embarking on any merit analysis drastically reduces the number of votes in play.

Rather than trading economic models or platforming nuclear safety fears, the best approach might actually be the most honest one: to drag nuclear back into the political swamp from which it has risen.

First, expose the interests that will benefit from Dutton’s nuclear fantasy. Put the spotlight on the fossil fuel and nuclear players, who runs them, where they converge, who they pay to keep their dream alive and how much they stand to make by delaying the energy transition for a couple more decades.

Second, take away the oxygen for nuclear by doing the hard work required to build social licence for renewables, responding to legitimate concerns by giving communities a greater say in the way development occurs and how both costs and benefits are distributed.

Finally, turn the opposition to renewables back on to the LNP. While the political opportunism of the Dutton nuclear play is obvious, there are also risks that this decision comes to define not just him as a leader, but his entire political apparatus.

In a world where younger generations just want to get on with the job of addressing climate change, a major political party is walking away from this challenge in the interests of its corporate masters.

That’s the real conspiracy. And it’s not just a theory.

• Peter Lewis is the executive director of Essential and host of Per Capita’s Burning Platforms podcast

July 3, 2024 Posted by Christina Macpherson | AUSTRALIA, spinbuster | Leave a comment

Australia’s Nuclear debate is getting heated, but whose energy plan stacks up?

by Mike Foley, June 24, 2024,   https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/nuclear-debate-is-getting-heated-but-whose-energy-plan-stacks-up-20240624-p5jo45.html

The Coalition’s nuclear power policy is less than a week old, but the political debate about Australia’s energy future has been raging since. The opposition’s claims about both its policy and the renewables-focused government plan have prompted plenty of questions about their veracity.

We take a look through the biggest of those talking points to see whether they stack up.

*** Labor’s ‘renewables-only’ plan will cost more than $1 trillion: False

The opposition says it will cost more than $1 trillion for the Albanese government to reach its target of boosting renewables to 82 per cent of the electricity grid by 2030. Currently, about 40 per cent of the grid is renewable electricity.

Nationals Leader David Littleproud on Sunday attributed the numbers to Net Zero Australia: a think tank of academics from University of Melbourne, University of Queensland and Princeton University.

The think tank calculated the estimated cost of reaching net zero across the entire economy, not just the electricity grid.

They found that it would cost more than $1 trillion by 2030 and up to $9 trillion by 2050, largely driven by private investment. The figure includes a range of actions, from integrating electric vehicles into the transport fleet to heavy industry, such as smelting switching from gas to electric power.

The Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) forecasts that the cost of reaching 82 per cent renewables, again largely driven by private investment in wind and solar farms and transmission lines, will cost $121 billion in today’s money.

The Albanese government has also committed $20 billion to underwrite transmission-line construction and has set up a fund called the Capacity Investment Scheme, estimated to be worth tens of billions of dollars. It will underwrite new renewable projects, and if private investors fail to achieve forecast returns, taxpayers could be on the hook to subsidise operations but will get a cut of the profits when they exceed a set threshold.

*** Nuclear energy will deliver cheaper power bills: False

Dutton said on Wednesday last week his plan would “see Australia achieve our three goals of cheaper, cleaner and consistent power”.

The opposition has committed to release the costings of their plan before the next election.

Many experts disagree, arguing nuclear power delivers the most expensive form of electricity.

The same report cited by the opposition for a $1 trillion cost of the renewables rollout said there is “no role” for nuclear power in Australia’s energy mix.

“We only see a potential role for nuclear electricity generation if its cost falls sharply and the growth of renewables is constrained,” Net Zero Australia’s report in July last year said.

Internationally recognised financial services firm Lazard also found renewable energy sources continued to be much cheaper than nuclear. It said onshore wind was the cheapest, with a cost between $US25 and $US73 per megawatt hour. The second cheapest was large-scale solar at between $US29 and $US92. Nuclear was the most expensive, at between $US145 and $US222.

The CSIRO found the cheapest electricity would come from a grid that draws 90 per cent of its power from renewables, which would supply electricity for a cost of between $89 and $128 per megawatt hour by 2030 – factoring in $40 billion in transmission lines and batteries to back up renewables.

CSIRO calculated that a large-scale nuclear reactor would supply power for $136 to $226 per megawatt hour by 2040.

** The renewables rollout needs 28,000 kilometres of transmission lines: False

“Labor has promised 28,000 kilometres of new poles and wires, there’s no transparency on where that will go, and we’ve been very clear about the fact that we don’t believe in that model,” Opposition Leader Peter Dutton said last week.

The AEMO releases a document each year called the Integrated System Plan, after consulting private industry, that details a road map of what the most efficient energy system will look like in coming years, including new infrastructure, up to 2050.

The Integrated System Plan includes directives set by policymakers, like the Albanese government’s commitment to reach 82 per cent of energy generation coming from renewables by 2030, and to hit net zero emissions by 2030.

The most recent plan, from January, says around 5000 kilometres of transmission lines are needed in the next 10 years to deliver the Albanese government’s goals, including 4000 kilometres of new lines and upgrading 1000 kilometres of existing lines. AEMO said 10,000 kilometres of transmission lines will be needed for Australia to reach net zero by 2050.

The 28,000-kilometre figure cited by the opposition resembles the 26,000 kilometres of transmission AEMO said would be needed by 2050 if Australia was to transform its economy to a clean energy export powerhouse, including large-scale production of green hydrogen and decarbonisation of other industrial processes.

*** The first reactor would be built before 2037: Questionable

The opposition says if elected, they would build a nuclear reactor and have it hooked up to the grid within 12 years of forming a government.

Its nuclear energy policy document, released last week, states that depending on what technology it chooses to prioritise, a large-scale reactor would start generating electricity by 2037 and a small modular reactor (SMR) by 2035. SMRs are a developing design not yet in commercial production.

This rollout would be as quick as anywhere in the world. The United Arab Emirates has set the global pace. It announced in 2008 that it would build four reactors under contract from Korean company KEPCO. Construction began in 2012, and the first reactor connected to the grid in 2020.

There are significant differences between the UAE and Australia. The former is a dictatorship without comparable labour laws or planning regulations that relies on cheap imported labour, whereas the latter has rigorous workforce protections, environmental laws and planning processes.

Opposition energy spokesman Ted O’Brien said a Coalition government would establish a Nuclear Energy Coordinating Authority that would assess each of the seven nuclear sites it has identified and determine what specific type of reactor would be built where, while also committing to two and half years of community consultation. A new safety and management regime would need to be developed, and parliament would have to repeal the current federal ban on nuclear energy within this timeframe.

If the Coalition forms government in May next year, following the consultation phase, it assumes construction could begin in late 2027 and would take 10 years for a large-scale reactor. That is far quicker than other Western nations have achieved recently.

The UK’s Hinkley Point nuclear plant began construction in 2018 and is not expected to be completed until at least 2030. The only reactor now under construction in France is the Flamanville EPR. Construction began in 2007 and is currently incomplete. A reactor at Olkiluoto Island, Finland, began in 2005 and was completed in 2022.

*** The annual waste from a reactor fits into a Coke can: False

Opposition Leader Peter Dutton’s claim that the annual waste generated by an SMR amounts to the size of a Coke can is incorrect, experts say, with such facilities likely to generate multiple tonnes of high-level radioactive waste each year.

“If you look at a 450-megawatt reactor, it produces waste equivalent to the size of a can of Coke each year,” Dutton said on Tuesday.

Multiple experts told this masthead a 450-megawatt reactor referenced by Dutton would generate many tonnes of waste a year.

Large-scale reactors, which have been deployed in 32 countries around the world, have a typical capacity of 1000 megawatts and generate about 30 tonnes of used fuel a year. This includes high-level radioactive waste toxic to humans for tens of thousands of years and weapons-grade plutonium.

SMRs are still under commercial development, and expert opinion is divided over whether they would produce more or less waste per unit of energy compared to a large reactor.

Emeritus Professor Ian Lowe of Griffith University’s School of Environment and Science said it was safe to assume an SMR would generate many tonnes of waste per year, and it was likely that waste would be more radioactive than the waste from a large-scale reactor.

“For a 400-megawatt SMR, you’d expect that to produce about six tonnes of waste a year. It could be more or less, depending on the actual technology, but certainly multiple tonnes a year,” he said.

Mike Foley is the climate and energy correspondent for The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald. Connect via email.

June 24, 2024 Posted by Christina Macpherson | AUSTRALIA, spinbuster | Leave a comment