Sorry SA, you’re wrong on nuclear: Albanese

Anthony Albanese has scotched a push by Premier Peter Malinauskas to restart the nuclear debate in Australia.

Anthony Albanese has scotched a push by South Australian Premier Peter Malinauskas to restart the nuclear debate in Australia, citing waste and safety concerns as key reasons nuclear should not be considered as an energy option.

In a blunt rebuttal, the Prime Minister said Mr Malinauskas was “wrong” to argue that nuclear should be considered as a carbon-neutral energy source in Australia if its prohibitive costs could be ­resolved.

Mr Malinauskas said the pending construction of at least eight nuclear-powered submarines at SA’s Osborne Naval Shipyard under the AUKUS pact would be a powerful tool to dispel the myths surrounding nuclear power.

The SA Premier, who hails from Labor’s Right faction, also said that those on the left of politics hostile to nuclear power needed to be more open-minded, saying the issue had become a culture war.

But the Prime Minister told Adelaide radio he was not prepared to shift his longstanding opposition to an Australian nuclear industry.

“I have a great deal of respect for Mali, but everyone’s entitled to get one or two things wrong,” Mr Albanese told Radio FiveAA.

“I haven’t changed my view that it’s a huge distraction from what we need to do. It just doesn’t add up. That’s essentially the problem. Every five years or so we have this economic analysis of whether nuclear power stacks up and every time it’s rejected.”

Mr Albanese cited waste storage as a key problem. “You’ve got the issue of waste, and you’ve got where it goes,” he said. “So I think it’s a distraction from what we need to do. That’s my position. And it hasn’t changed.”

Mr Albanese’s comments were also echoed by Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek who also said she would not support a nuclear industry in Australia.

Ms Plibersek, who like the PM hails from Labor’s Left, went even further in her remarks by labelling the nuclear debate “nonsense” and saying there was no economic case for a domestic nuclear industry.

“It is slow to build and is really expensive,” she said.

“All this nonsense about small-scale nuclear reactors and every summer, I don’t know if there are people on your street who want a nuclear reactor in the local park.”

Mr Malinauskas said it made little sense that Australia would embark on the construction of ­nuclear-powered subs while ­remaining wedded to a hostile position towards nuclear power.

He said he hoped the Osborne project, details of which will be announced in March, would dispel the myths around nuclear energy.

“It will go a long way to allaying some of the fears that exist around safety,” he said. “I think it’ll demonstrate that the safety concerns are more based on things from decades and decades ago.

“That’ll be good in terms of community sentiment, and help bust a few myths. In respect of my position on nuclear power for civil consumption, or use, I’ve always thought that the ideological opposition that exists in some quarters to nuclear power is ill-founded. Nuclear power is a source of baseload energy with zero carbon emissions. So, for someone like myself, who is dedicated to a ­decarbonisation effort, I think we should be open-minded to those technologies and I think it would be foolhardy to have a different ­approach.”

Mr Malinauskas said both sides of politics needed to be more mature and honest in their approach to the nuclear question.

“I get frustrated with a nuclear debate that has emerged in Australia recently because you’ve got people on the left who seem to be flat out opposed to nuclear power for ideological reasons, despite the fact we’ve got a climate challenge and (are) wanting to decarbonise,” he said.

“Then we’ve got people on the right who seem to be utterly in favour of nuclear power, without any reference to the cost of it.

“It strikes me as starting to ­become one of these polarised ­debates that has been consumed by the culture wars, rather than an evidence-based discussion.”