Keith Woods opinion: Why Australian politicians won’t touch nuclear energy

Technology to provide baseload power to the nation while producing zero emissions already exists, writes Keith Woods. But pollies don’t want to touch it. Here’s why.

IMAGINE, if you will, what might be said if a new technology was suddenly discovered that had the potential to provide baseload power to the nation while producing zero emissions.

In the context of the current debate over the pollution caused by coal-fired electricity generation, it would surely be hailed as a miracle.

Such technology already exists, yet despite the fact that all major political parties claim they are eager to reduce emissions, none wants to touch it.

Nobody will even discuss the possibility of pressing the nuclear button.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison was caught off guard when asked on Tasmanian radio last week why nuclear power was not on the agenda.

Plumes of steam drift from the cooling tower of FirstEnergy's Davis-Besse Nuclear Power Station in Oak Harbor, Ohio. PHOTO: RON SCHWANE/ASSOCIATED PRESS

“It’s not, not on the agenda … but it’s got to be self-sustaining,” he said.

Mr Morrison’s failure to definitively rule out the idea caused Labor to, well, go nuclear.

“Nuclear power is against the law in Australia. It is extraordinary that Scott Morrison is now contemplating changing the law to allow nuclear power stations in Australia,” Opposition environment spokesman Tony Burke said.

The Prime Minister quickly distanced himself from his own remarks.

“This (nuclear energy) is not our policy and we have no plans to change that,” Mr Morrison said on Twitter.

So in a federal election campaign in which climate change supposedly looms large, the debate about a zero-emissions energy source started and ended within hours. Why?

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To understand why the issue is politically toxic, look to a three-eyed fish called Blinky. The deformed character, an inhabitant of waters beside the power plant in The Simpsons, is the cartoon embodiment of deep-seated fears about nuclear energy.

Some examples of clean energy.

Courtesy of the terrible outcomes of nuclear accidents, particularly at Chernobyl, nuclear energy in popular culture is associated with dangerous forces over which we have limited understanding or control.

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And yet, nuclear accidents are rare. Despite the portrayal in The Simpsons of the local nuclear power plant as a place of low standards and high danger, the US has safely run more than 100 such facilities across four decades. According to the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the only major incident recorded in that time — a partial meltdown at Pennsylvania’s Three Mile Island reactor in 1979 — exposed the surrounding population to less excess radiation than they would have received from a single chest X-ray.

There are obvious possibilities in Australia to mitigate risks by having reactors far from major population centres. There is also a plentiful supply of uranium. And yet the option is excluded from all debate.

Logically, the hundreds of greenies driving to Queensland to protest about the Adani coal mine should be most interested. But they won’t have a bar of it.

Their convoy is headed by a handful of electric vehicles.

Stray dogs hang out near an abandoned, partially-completed cooling tower at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. The dogs are also being outfitted with special collars equipped with radiation sensors and GPS receivers in order to map radiation levels across the zone. (Photo by Sean Gallup/Getty Images)

As a reader who is among the few Gold Coasters to own an electric vehicle pointed out to me last week, these vehicles take a hell of a lot of power to fully charge. While the average household uses about 10kWh of electricity per day, a new Tesla Model S requires at least 60kWh to charge up.

If we are all to switch to electric vehicles, a lot of extra electric power will have to come from somewhere.

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Renewables will help but in Queensland at least, most of the energy will still come from coal — which ironically emits more than petrol or diesel.

If those cars were powered by electricity generated by nuclear means however, they would truly become zero emissions vehicles.

Another objection to nuclear energy is the high cost involved.

But we are told that the threat of high emissions poses an existential threat. And many activists have no objection to the idea of sending billions abroad in the form of “carbon offsets”.

This is a publicity photograph from SCE&G showing V.C. Summer Nuclear Station Unit 1. This photo shows the Reactor Building, which is the concrete cylindrical structure, Turbine Building, which is the large blue building, and the Switchyard, where the electricity is sent from the Nuclear Plant to the grid. Picture: Wikipedia

Would it not be better to spend those billions creating clean energy, and jobs, here in Australia?

The nature of the debate leads to a strong suspicion that, as American writer Michael Shellenberger contends, the modern Green movement is more about anti-capitalism than the environment.

“After World War II, the working class in developed nations became materially rich, undermining the case that only a radical, socialist transformation of society could end poverty,” Shellenberger writes.

“ … In response, radical critics of capitalism shifted their focus. The problem was no longer that capitalism was causing material poverty but rather that it was destroying the environment.”

Schellenberger’s thinking would appear to be borne out by the many activists in Australia who use environmental concerns to push an anti-business agenda.

If you believe shutting down all coal production makes no sense because it would kill off the nation’s biggest export earner and result in massive job losses, you’re missing the point. For true believers, impoverishing the nation is not necessarily a negative. Rather, they appear to secretly relish seeing capitalism fail.

The parties of the centre, both Labor and Liberal, need to do a lot more to reclaim the debate from those who would lead us down this path.

If we must reduce emissions, as both parties have committed to doing, we need to engage in a serious and honest debate about how we meet the nation’s future energy needs.

Sadly, we’re not getting anything close to that in this election campaign.

That was seen in Labor’s opportunistic attack on Mr Morrison over nuclear power, and the Prime Minister’s cowardly retreat in the face of that attack.

It may be that we conclude, once more, that its risks outweigh its benefits, but nuclear energy should at least be part of the debate during this election campaign.