Pity nuclear energy is powering politics rather than our homes

The question of whether Australia should pursue nuclear power has become so politicised that any consideration of the technology is automatically dismissed as partisan. So in discussing nuclear, I find it necessary to establish that I first wrote about the issue five years ago, when both sides of politics had categorically ruled out using the technology in Australia.

That was well before a Resolve poll showed that slightly more Australians support its use than oppose it – 41 per cent for versus 37 per cent against – and that 62 per cent are open to government investigating the option.

Opposition Leader Peter Dutton and Prime Minister Anthony Albanese are at odds over the country’s energy future.Credit: Rhett Wyman, Getty, Alex Ellinghausen

My previous piece was informed by a 2018 McKinsey report (only published in German) analysing the effect of Germany’s decision to decommission its nuclear power plants on its transition to low-emissions power. In short, what the paper found was that, despite 30 years of subsidies for renewable energy development, after decommissioning its nuclear power plants, Germany had been forced to start burning more dirty brown coal. The paper noted that Germany risked not having enough energy to meet its needs, making it more dependent on Russian gas – recognised by many as a geostrategic risk well before Putin invaded Ukraine in 2022.

As Putin’s war drags on, now nuclear-free Germany’s energy woes have intensified. In 2022, in the face of soaring energy prices, the Green Party minister for the economy declared he wasn’t worried about businesses going bankrupt as they could simply “stop producing for the time being”. Germany is now in its second year of economic decline.

The lesson has been well-learnt by many other European nations. The Swiss government has declared its intention to reverse a ban on building new nuclear power stations, allowing it to add to its existing capacity. The Italian government, which, like Switzerland, currently imports nuclear energy from nearby countries, is also moving to overturn its ban on nuclear technology. France, which is exporting nuclear power to countries like these, is expanding its already considerable production. Not without hiccups, but then this is the country in which my toilet cistern flushed hot water for a couple of months while the plumbers of the nation went on a collective summer holiday.

Jokes aside, France’s issues demonstrate that when modern nuclear power production has problems, they are small and do not bear out the fears of the Chernobyl generation.

The proposal to lift the Australian ban on nuclear energy is very much in step with the rest of the world. And yet here it is being painted as a political attempt to kill off a renewable energy future which is (just ask Germany) always one more high-stakes gamble away.

Politicisation has turned what should be a wonkish debate over which low-emissions tech can most effectively be deployed into what activists have damned as a “divisive” debate.

As I discovered when I raised questions in a media briefing organised by advocacy body the Climate Council, it is divisive in part because renewable energy advocates and investors are impugning the motives of anyone exhibiting curiosity on this subject.

During the briefing, the concerns of farmers were labelled political by a presenter. Tim Buckley, founder and director of Climate Energy Finance, a self-described non-partisan advocacy think tank, dismissed attempts by the Centre for Independent Studies, a classical liberal think tank, to calculate all the undeclared public money that has been allocated to the renewable transition – without, as he said at the briefing, having looked at them closely himself. Instead, he resorted to suggesting that the CIS is not as independent as its name implies.

This is telling. Analysts welcome scrutiny; advocates do not. Since the CIS has been challenging the official calculations, Australia’s national science agency, the CSIRO, has shifted from modelling only the cost of small modular reactors (which it estimated at costing six times as much as renewables) to including existing large-scale nuclear technology (which the agency’s latest GenCost report estimates would cost a significantly lower 1.5 to 2.5 times more than firmed renewables).

The CIS argues there is further work to be done to create a realistic tally of the comparative costs of the two types of technology, which it believes will favour nuclear. There is only one way to test whether it’s practising advocacy or analysis: do the work it’s calling for and open up the public books.

That could be politically uncomfortable for the Albanese government’s renewables policy, but it would also not be an easy ride for Peter Dutton’s pro-nuclear push. Scrutiny would reveal some things that are politically awkward for a blue-collar election campaign.

One such truth is that building nuclear in Australia, which has never had a nuclear industry, would be best served by taking an off-the-shelf approach using existing full-scale reactors. Any other approach would contain considerable risk of delay and failure.

That means no South Australian submarines-style jobs auction. Australia’s best bet would be to choose a working model of a reactor from overseas and import teams with experience building them. The plants would have to come first, the skilled jobs a slow second.

The costs would inevitably be enormous. A full and transparent comparison between renewables and nuclear needs to be done; it’s foolish to embark on any big project without knowing the numbers.

And the way nuclear interacts with renewables would have to be considered. Some communities could power themselves with renewables most of the time, but sharing renewable power across a landmass like Australia will be difficult. Whether nuclear and renewables, or renewables only, a grid will have to be conceived around these logistics.

Finally, it could be decades before nuclear would come online. But then, it could take as long to create a renewable energy system capable of keeping Australia powered and protected against an unstable climate and geopolitical world, if it is ever up to the task.

As always, the greatest regret with energy is that we didn’t start yesterday. We were too busy burning our personal energy on turning a technical discussion into a divisive political debate.

Parnell Palme McGuinness is managing director at campaigns firm Agenda C. She has done work for the Liberal Party and the German Greens.