It’s time to push nuclear option, says ex-SA governor Kevin Scarce

Australia should scrap its longstanding prohibition on the nuclear industry, says a former governor of South Australia.

‘We have to find a way to restart this discussion’ ... University of Adelaide chancellor Rear Admiral Kevin Scarce. Picture: Roy VanDerVegt

Australia should scrap its longstanding prohibition on the nuclear industry and move quickly to hold a mature and bipartisan national discussion around nuclear power generation and waste storage, a former South Australian governor and university chancellor has urged.

Rear Admiral Kevin Scarce has broken years of silence after heading SA’s groundbreaking royal commission on the nuclear fuel cycle, labelling the shelving of his well regarded 2016 blueprint as “a missed opportunity not just for South Australia but the nation”.

The former SA governor, now chancellor of the University of Adelaide, said it was possible nuclear power could provide more reliable and affordable base load power than renewables, with zero emissions.

He predicted that growing evidence of climate change would force new discussion of the nuclear question.

“We have to find a way to restart this discussion,” Mr Scarce told The Australian. “Whether the answer ends up being for or against, you can trust the Australian people to have a mature discussion.

“At the moment we can’t even have that discussion because it’s not politically acceptable. The longer we go without having the debate, the less options we will have for the future.

“We are not giving ourselves the options we need and we only have a very limited time to do so.”

His comments were strongly backed yesterday by former NSW Labor premier and foreign minister Bob Carr and come amid a growing push within the Berejiklian government to consider both uranium mining and even nuclear power generation in NSW. The Australian can reveal that, next month, a NSW Legislative Council inquiry into legislation ending that state’s statutory prohibition on uranium mining and nuclear facilities will come to Adelaide to interview Mr Scarce about his 2016 recommendations. NSW Deputy Premier and Nationals leader John Barilaro and federal Nationals MP Barnaby Joyce have already stated their support for nuclear power generation in NSW and several state Liberals privately support the concept, with the axing of the prohibition being the first step towards any kind of mining or nuclear industry.

Liberal MLC and nuclear prohibition committee chairman Taylor Martin said that while he would not pre-empt the committee’s findings, the prohibition could be denying NSW “real opportunities” in the nuclear space.

“Since the introduction of the prohibition in 1986 there have been significant improvements in reactor design, technology and also the management of associated waste,” he said.

“The inquiry will consider whether the ban on nuclear power is limiting our ability to secure reliable baseload zero-emissions power.”

The royal commission headed by Mr Scarce proposed the creation of a $5 billion nuclear waste depository in remote SA, saying the state’s stable geology, arid climate and low seismic activity made it the perfect location to house spent fuel rods and other high-level nuclear by-products.

The report also canvassed the leasing of nuclear fuel, the expansion of uranium mining, and while it declared the creation of a nuclear power plant “uneconomic” in a smaller state such as SA, it said bigger Australian cities should consider nuclear power to meet their future low-carbon electricity needs.

In a surprise move, former SA Labor premier and Left faction stalwart Jay Weatherill announced the creation of the nuclear royal commission after his surprise election win in 2014. Its announcement was met with bipartisan support by the then opposition, headed by the man who is now Premier, Liberal leader Steven Marshall. After it reported in 2016, both sides of politics lost their nerve, with Mr Weatherill convening a widely pilloried “citizens’ jury” to examine the commission recommendations, which were rejected out of hand by the jury, prompting the Liberal opposition to withdraw its support for the project fearing an anti-nuclear backlash at last year’s state election.

Mr Scarce said the experience showed that greater political leadership and community engagement were required.

“The citizens’ jury just cut the legs out from under it,” he said. “In the end neither side of politics wanted this hanging over them at the election. We lost a terrific opportunity because if we continued on with the discussion we would have had an answer one way or another, and at the moment we don’t.

“One of our recommendations was to get rid of the nuclear prohibition so you can have the discussion. At the moment, why would anyone invest in that when you have a prohibition on doing anything involving the nuclear fuel cycle? We have got a terrific nuclear record in Australia, we are producing nuclear medicine, we are managing the safety issues associated with its storage, there is no reason to think we couldn’t develop a regulatory system that would be the best in the world. But you have got to have the social will to do it, and that’s the thing that worries the politicians.”

Mr Scarce called on all sides of politics to emulate the original SA approach. “Initially at least we had two sides of politics that were open-minded and a federal government that was very supportive,” he said.

“Emissions control is one of the things that will be a catalyst. There’s a short window in the latter part of the next decade. If we are smart we would be understanding it and researching it now so that when we have to move quickly we would be able to.

“If you were to look at the real cost of renewables and battery storage and compare that to nuclear operation, who knows what you would find? It might be that we accept paying a higher price for renewables, but we would want to know if that was the case. And at the moment we don’t know. We are going down the renewable path with no concept of what it is going to eventually cost to replace fossil fuels. ”

Mr Scarce’s call was backed by Mr Carr. “I’m a believer in the living reality of climate change and for that reason am happy when I hear of India or China building a nuclear power plant to the highest safety standards instead of throwing out more coal-fired power,” he said.

“We are happy to sell them our uranium. It strikes me that we have got an obligation to be part of the solution for nuclear waste. Surely as a smart country we can move towards bipartisan agreement that, subject to the tightest safeguards, it is a viable industry for South Australia, as spelt out in the highly regarded royal commission report.”