Like the referendum, we must get lower power prices

The power of ordinary Australians living outside the so-called woke electorates has been mobilised to block a massive and dangerous constitutional change. They must again mobilise to reduce power prices and modify the disastrous industrial relations changes.

There is no time to waste. The forces that mobilised ordinary Australians to reject a potential constitutional disaster, including the Advance group and the Coalition, need to direct their skills and energy to reducing power prices and industrial relations chaos. And maybe the ALP government will wake up to what is happening.

Reducing power prices along with carbon emissions requires new energy policies in both the states and the Commonwealth. Other countries have worked out how to do it. Australia needs to follow.

The western world has discovered that small modular nuclear reactors must be in the mix and is embracing these plants at a fast pace. This is too important to be the subject of arguments between our major political parties.

The first task is to demand that Energy Minister Chris Bowen get on a plane and discover for himself the reasons for this new nuclear boom, so we can also enjoy the lower costs.

Energy Minister Chris Bowen. Picture: Lukas Coch/AAP Image

Bowen’s first US stop on his trip should be to see Bill Gates, who understands the new nuclear era and is investing in it. Bowen next needs to get the US president’s energy people to explain to him how the US is being caught with old renewable projects that are not going to be renewed when their life expires.

New nuclear will fill the gap. And then it is off to Canada to see President Trudeau. Like Australia, Canada is a major uranium producer but, unlike Australia, they developed their own nuclear technology which is different to the US. The Canadians believe they will have an advantage over the US.

The power prices Canadians are quoting for BHP’s potash project in Saskatchewan are dramatically below anything being considered in Australia because Canadians will harness small modular reactors for the Big Australian.

Then it is off to Poland and Eastern Europe, where they also understand the new development. And finally, Bowen should call into UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and discover that UK power is also to be revolutionised. China, of course, has already embedded nuclear into its long term strategies.

And on the way back, it might be worth calling into our Asian neighbours, some of whom are now realising that the modern nuclear technology will enable them to combine carbon reduction and lower power prices. There are many reasons why Australia is missing this boom.

The first is that we keep talking about the construction and operating costs involved in the old style giant nuclear power stations.

The CFMEU would never allow Australia to build an old-style large nuclear power plant, but now there is no longer any need to consider them.

However, the great legacy of these plants is that the three nuclear catastrophes that have taken place have been examined and out of that research has come the new technologies which simply do not carry the old risks.

A second reason holding back nuclear is that the CSIRO put out a technically correct but highly misleading statement on the cost of wind and solar power. And that has led Bowen and state politicians to think that if they pour money into more solar and wind, it will lower the cost of power. That is simply wrong and while wind and solar must be part of the lower carbon mix, the cost of power will rise if we don’t embrace alternatives. We are already seeing this happen, but there is much more to come.

In short, the CSIRO did not take into account the cost of the massive power lines required to bring power from remote areas like western Victoria and the enormous social and community protests that are delaying these projects and may even make them impossible.

Another reason large scale wind and solar is so expensive is that the plants have a short life and must be supplemented by around 60 to 70 per cent of additional power via batteries, hydro, coal, gas and other sources. Providing this additional power can be costly and, in the process, is destroying our coal-fired stations before replacements are in place, making small modular reactors even more urgent.

The new nuclear technology is very different to the giant nuclear stations. The technology in small modular reactors can provide as little as 15 megawatts to 300 megawatts a year. They are networked so that at any one time, one of the units can be out of action for maintenance and repairs, but the remaining reactors can supply the required demand.

Although they emit no carbon, they are like coal-fired power stations and work best operating 24 hours a day. The old nuclear reactors had a fundamental flaw in that their shutdown provisions were often manual, and the stations could reach a level of heat that would melt the nuclear reactors before shutting down.

The new stations shut down at temperature levels that are around a quarter of the danger levels. The risk factor become negligible and indeed in some areas of Canada and the US, residents are allowed to virtually adjoin the stations.

It’s true that they produce nuclear waste, but part of the boom is intensive work to improve storage. But nuclear waste is far better than carbon, and both solar wind are creating their own waste problems via the panels and the blades.

The next step in nuclear technology will be based on thorium, but the world has set time frames for carbon reduction, so we will need to use both nuclear and gas to achieve those targets unless we are prepared to explode power prices and slash the living standard of ordinary Australians.

It’s time for Bowen to set aside the woke agenda and start thinking about ordinary Australians, most of whom happen to be ALP voters. The job of Peter Dutton is to beat him to it.