Trump’s energy chief wants Australia to go nuclear
By Mike Foley
Donald Trump’s top energy official has urged Australia to overturn its self-imposed ban on nuclear energy and begin exporting enriched uranium.
United States energy secretary Chris Wright singled out Australia when he spoke to an international conference on Monday, fuelling the political clash between the Albanese government and its renewable energy plans and Opposition Leader Peter Dutton’s pledge to build seven nuclear plants across the country.
US energy secretary Chris Wright. Credit: AP
“I would love to see Australia get in the game of supplying uranium, maybe going down that nuclear road themselves,” Wright said in a remote appearance at the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship conference, in an interview with Sky News contributor Chris Uhlmann.
He said the US would “absolutely” work with Australia to establish a uranium enrichment process and it would welcome development of a nuclear energy industry.
Wright, a former executive of a fracking company, claimed the risks of global warming were greatly exaggerated and declared the pursuit of net zero emissions a “sinister goal”.
He has denied the science of climate change and is expected to be a prominent exponent of Trump’s “drill, baby, drill” pitch for fossil fuel expansion.
“Net zero 2050 is a sinister goal. It’s a terrible goal,” Wright said. “It’s both unachievable by practical means, but the aggressive pursuit of it … has not delivered any benefits, but it’s delivered tremendous costs.”
Australia’s federal and state governments have long-standing bans on nuclear energy. The federal laws, imposed by the Howard government in 1999, prohibit the construction of uranium enrichment facilities and the export of uranium for weapons manufacture is banned.
Dutton has committed to overturning the federal ban on domestic nuclear energy and to working with state governments to build nuclear plants, including in NSW’s Hunter Valley and Lithgow and Victoria’s Latrobe Valley.
Opposition energy spokesman Ted O’Brien echoed Wright’s remarks, declaring that Australia has a “moral obligation” to boost its uranium production and nuclear energy was critical to reaching net zero emissions.
He said Australia should remove the current bans on uranium mining in NSW, Victoria, Tasmania and Queensland.
“This goes far beyond an economic opportunity for Australia. I believe if we are serious about tackling climate change we have a moral obligation to use our uranium reserves,” O’Brien said.
Uranium mining is permitted in South Australia, Western Australia and the Northern Territory. The nation’s three operating uranium mines exported 5742 tonnes of uranium to the US in the past financial year, valued at $1.2 billion, or around 10 per cent of the country’s imports of the metal.
The conference Wright spoke at is led by Canadian academic and anti-woke campaigner Jordan Peterson.
Former Liberal prime ministers John Howard and Tony Abbott are on the board and speakers include former prime minister Scott Morrison, former treasurer Peter Costello and former deputy prime minister John Anderson – as well as several News Corp and Sky News contributors.
Australian Conservation Foundation nuclear-free campaigner Dave Sweeney said the US’s record on nuclear energy should be a lesson for Australia, including the cost blowouts on its most recent power plant, Vogtle unit 3, which was costed at $US13 billion in 2005 but blew out to $US34 billion by the time it opened in 2023, a seven-year delay.
“The lesson from the nuclear industry in the US would not be to follow it, it would be to avoid it,” Sweeney said.
Wright was nominated to head the powerful federal energy agency by the US president in November. He is an engineer and founder of Liberty Energy, one of the US’s largest hydraulic fracking companies servicing the shale gas industry.
Liberty Energy has a stake in Tamboran Resources, a US company that is exploring for gas in the Northern Territory’s Beetaloo Basin. Prior to his appointment, Wright was also on the board of nuclear energy technology company Oklo.
Australia’s largest mining company, BHP, said on Tuesday it was open to nuclear energy in Australia as part of its technology-neutral approach to cutting emissions.
“Are we supportive of nuclear being part of the mix for consideration? Yes,” chief executive Mike Henry said.
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