The ‘scared’ green activist who is now embracing a nuclear future

Arnold Dix, the Victorian polymath who rose to prominence when he helped rescue 41 Indian workers from a collapsed Himalayan tunnel, considers himself an environmentalist.

His home in Melbourne’s Dandenong Ranges is powered by solar and batteries, he protested the damming of the Franklin River and even lays claim to being the first person in Australia to own a hybrid Toyota Prius.

Arnold Dix (left) travelled to India to spearhead a successful rescue of 41 workers in the Himalayas.

At university, he was involved in the anti-nuclear movement and did post-graduate research on the impact of uranium mining in the NT’s Kakadu National Park. He said he once campaigned against thorium-containing gas lantern mantles due to the unknown risk of radiation exposure.

“Growing up in the 1970s, we were taught, and I was taught this particular narrative about how horrible nuclear was, and it seemed really horrible,” he said.

Dix says the threat of climate change terrifies him – so much so, he’s had a major change of heart.

He now believes nuclear power must be considered in Australia.

“I’m scared of climate change, and I’m scared that generations to come will ask why we didn’t react faster and with more authority,” he told The Sunday Age from his property in Monbulk.

“Things have changed, the technology, and state of the world has changed and the need for a non-emitting sort of greenhouse-friendly, baseload power supply is more pressing than ever.

“We’ve got a real, demonstrable, calculable, global risk right now to the world as we know it ... and we’re balancing that with an incredibly intellectual risk out hundreds of thousands of years, which we can well manage, which is hypothetical, like almost fanciful.”

Dix studied science, engineering and, later, law. He boasts an array of job titles and has an impressive string of letters tacked on to the end of his name.

He’s a flower grower, barrister, engineering professor and the president of the International Tunnelling and Underground Space Association, which is a consultative body to the United Nations – just to name a few of his activities.

Last month he retuned from a meeting in China on high-level nuclear waste disposal and is now advising countries on deep nuclear waste repositories.

The Coalition wants small modular reactors such as this design by Westinghouse proposed for the UK.Credit: AP

He describes the current debate in Australia – often pitched as a choice between keeping the lights on and having rivers full of three-eyed fish – as “silly”.

Dix is staunchly apolitical, but his intervention comes after federal Opposition Leader Peter Dutton promised to build seven nuclear power stations by 2050 as a way to provide a reliable supply of electricity quickly and at a reasonable cost.

So far, the Coalition has failed to address mounting concerns about the disposal of nuclear waste, which lasts thousands of years and requires burial below ground in concrete bunkers.

Australia has also struggled to find suitable long-term storage of small quantities of low- and intermediate-level nuclear waste from nuclear medicine and the Lucas Heights reactor.

Then there is the cost. The CSIRO estimates the first large-scale nuclear power plant in Australia could cost as much as $17 billion and would not come online until at least 2040.

Dix says nuclear energy should be “in the toolkit”.Credit: Paul Jeffers

Dix admits he is not an economist, but on disposal, he describes Australia as a “nuclear storage dream”.

He believes the debate is too focused on “esoteric risk to a hypothetical human who still exists on the planet in a million years time” – not the more immediate risks facing humans.

“We’re on a continent ... which is the most ancient rock floating around up on the surface of the Earth. It’s incredibly stable,” he said.

“From my perspective as a geologist, it isn’t an issue. It’s just a question of which one would you want to use?” Dix remains passionate about – and invested in – wind and solar technologies, but is concerned that renewable energy sources won’t meet Australia’s future baseload demand.

“We are assuming that our power needs won’t change. Can have fast rail without nuclear? Well, you could but your schedule has to say things like, ‘Bass Strait’s experiencing a bit of a lull, we’re just going to park the trains’.

“It requires big juice, and it requires it unconditionally.”

While recently addressing a meeting of nuclear powers on safe storage, he said other nations were “amused” by the debate in Australia given both our regional security concerns and our position as a uranium producer.

“The technologies for stabilising the nuclear waste are really advanced, and I’m content with them. And I suspect part of the problem is an intellectual problem, the risk from radiation you can’t see,” Dix said.

He said he tried to focus on what was “real”.

“We have a real possibility of a climate emergency, which, if it gets away from us, could result in the poles melting and sea levels rising,” he said.

“Assuming that happened, I would have thought the question is the likelihood of the whole world not descending into chaos.

“Then there are people who are being affected right now by climate change, everybody, the whole planet.”

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