Tim Blair: Anthony Albanese’s nuclear position replaces science with superstition
Led by Anthony Albanese, Labor’s opposition to nuclear energy is infantile, free of facts, ignorant of history and based on panic in previous eras, writes Tim Blair.
Opinion
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Labor is “the party of science and the party of the future”, according to the PM.
But when it comes to nuclear power, Anthony Albanese replaces science with superstition and throws his party back to the atomic panic 1980s.
Albo’s the 2022 parliamentary equivalent of 40-year-old “nuclear free zone” signs in stupid inner-city councils. Except he uses more words and makes even less sense.
On August 3, for example, the Prime Minister came up with what he thought was a devastating line to counter pro-nuclear moves from the Coalition.
“No one loves a reactor like a reactionary, which is no wonder they’re so obsessed with nukes over there,” he said, comparing the Coalition’s nuclear review MP Ted O’Brien to Montgomery Burns – a Simpsons character who has been around since 1989 and was last funny in about 1994.
Albanese so adored his reactors/reactionary gag that he gleefully repeated it last week.
“The shadow minister is looking at the nuclear option,” Albanese sneered. “No one likes a reactor like a reactionary.”
The PM then expanded on his anti-nuclear feelings.
“Remember during the last term when they were in government, they came in here and carried around a lump of coal. Remember that? They handed it around,” the PM said.
“I’ll give them bit of advice now they’re going down the nukes option. Don’t bring in a bit of uranium and pass it around, because that won’t work well.”
He really brought the house down with that – or at least the Labor side of the house. But Albanese was wrong. Handling raw uranium isn’t particularly dangerous at all.
All any uranium-toucher needs to do is wash their hands afterwards. And that’s not because of radiation. It’s because uranium is a chemical-loaded heavy metal.
To be ultra-cautious, I suppose any “bit of uranium” passed around in parliament could be enclosed within some kind of hi-tech protective barrier. Like Glad Wrap.
As for all those reactor-loving reactionaries, let’s check the list.
“Nuclear power would be a win for the environment,” former Labor PM and Albo idol Bob Hawke declared in 2016. “It would be a win for the global environment and a win for Australia.”
Albo’s socialist mate Jeremy Corbyn ran on a pro-nuclear platform for Labour during the 2019 UK election.
“Climate change is so catastrophic and imminent that only nuclear power can save us,” Tim Flannery announced in 2006, before returning without explanation to the anti-nuke church in 2007. The wimp.
And former Extinction Rebellion member Zion Lights will shortly arrive in Australia from the UK to continue her informed and illuminating pro-nuclear campaign.
So, no reactionaries in that crew.
Albanese’s other line of attack on nuclear is to demand of the Coalition “where the plants are going to be”.
Easy. Put them where coal plants used to be. Nuclear is cleaner, which would benefit any areas so blessed.
Or just put them any old place. France, which generates some 70 per cent of its power from atomic energy, has 56 nuclear reactors scattered across a nation that is just one-fourteenth the size of Australia, and with 2.6 times our population.
It should give Australia pause that the French aren’t scared in the slightest of nuclear energy – while our PM is terrified of even its most basic element.
At least he isn’t carrying on about nuclear meltdowns. Albanese leaves that to Greens leader Adam Bandt, who believes our future fleet of nuclear subs will be “floating Chernobyls in the heart of Australian cities”.
Odd place to put a submarine. Anyway, let’s indulge the little bloke with some comparative risk analysis.
History’s four worst nuclear energy incidents occurred at Windscale in the UK in 1957, Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania in 1979, Chernobyl in the former Soviet Union in 1986 and Fukushima in Japan in 2011.
A total of 31 people died of nuclear-related causes in those incidents – all of them at Chernobyl. Or maybe 32 people, if you count one man who died from lung cancer four years after the tsunami that caused Fukushima’s issues.
So we’ve got 32 deaths throughout 54 years. To put that in perspective, this year 32 people are being murdered every 16 days or so in the US city of Chicago alone.
Locally, 31 people died on NSW roads every 40 days in the 12 months to the end of August 2022.
And more people – an average of 40 – die every two years in horse riding accidents across Australia than have ever died all over the planet in nuclear energy disasters.
You’d think a “party of science” would look at nuclear energy’s relative safety and conclude that it might be worth a shot in Australia.
They are, after all, going to need something besides sunshine and a gentle breeze to power all of Chris Bowen’s electric cars.
But instead, Labor appears to be following California’s dire example. California’s Air Resources Board last month approved a rule that would ban the sales of all new petrol-powered cars by 2035.
A few days later, Californians – who are down to their last nuclear reactor, and even it is scheduled for closure – were told to “avoid using large appliances and charging electric vehicles” due to electricity shortages.
A “party of the future” should consider what that clean, electrified future will look like without nuclear energy to power it.
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