Vikki Campion: Green lobby fury at idea of nuclear is unplugged

There has always been silence about the risks of renewables and the damage it does in regional communities but the media suddenly found a heart for the bush after Peter Dutton’s nuclear proposal.

Last week, the intermittent power lobby could and were putting wind towers and photovoltaic fields wherever they pleased with moral impunity but, this week, you can’t boil the water that coal used to cook with a different rock from the ground.

Last week, trillions spent on intermittent power to get us to 2050 nirvana were fiscally unquestionable on the moral premise of impending self-immolation but, this week, zero-emissions tech is too expensive.

Last week, rural communities struggled to find a mainstream news presenter to pick up the phone or read out a text on radio. This week, they moan faux sympathy for bush coal mines named as nuclear sites under a Coalition energy plan.

How would nuclear affect their property prices? What would we do with the waste? How will they get insurance? How much will it cost?

All pertinent questions to any development anywhere, however, ones that Prime Minister Anthony Albanese or Energy Minister Chris Bowen have never been grilled with the same fervour on wind, solar, batteries, green hydrogen or transmission lines as their opposition counterparts Peter Dutton and Ted O’Brien are on nuclear.

Last week, the fourth estate was mysteriously silent about the risks of wind, solar, transmission lines and batteries, yet suddenly, this week, they found a heart for the bush as long as it’s about nuclear.

The proposed former coal-fired power station sites for the reactors included Loy Yang in Victoria. Picture: Jake Nowakowski

One Canberra-based press gallery reporter said to National Rational Energy Network Secretary Katy McCallum, warning of mammalian wipe-outs for wind factories on mountain tops: “Surely, you must realise that some species have to die to stop global boiling?”

Last week, our letters and texts warning of the impact on our homes and farms, how we are becoming uninsurable, the mounting waste crisis, the fire risk and the crews unable to fight them were left on the editing floor.

Stakeholder numbers provided to so-called investigative crews, such as ABC Four Corners for its wind special, were never contacted.

Not once has Chris Bowen answered what happens to the enormous volumes of waste under his plan: The 15,000 tonnes “blade composite waste will have been created in Australia due to decommissioned wind farms” by 2034, according to the Clean Energy Council, the hundreds of thousands of tonnes to come, or the 100,000 tonnes of photovoltaic waste each year by 2030, as forecast by UNSW.

Apparently, that toxic waste is politically correct.

People in Gundary Plains, near Goulburn, cannot sell their farms because of the 700-hectare proposal for black glass.

More than 120 residents, some as close as 150m from the site, have been warned by property valuers that their properties will fall in value from 10 to 50 per cent.

One seller had three buyers abandon the purchase of her nest egg once they became aware of the solar proposal. Neither the mainstream or taxpayer-funded media nor Mr Bowen has ever commiserated or advocated for them.

There is a proposal for a 700 hectare solar farm near Goulburn.

So-called green groups such as the Australian Conservation Foundation flooded Sookbook with antinuclear sentiments, claiming “nuclear is an uninsurable risk”. Obviously, they have never tried to insure a working property besides a solar, wind, battery energy storage system or transmission transformer line.

It’s so hard that a motion before the NSW Farmers Conference will call for wind and solar developers to be forced to provide neighbours with indemnity insurance because they are otherwise left uninsurable. Yet, where is the media talking about that?

Specialist nuclear insurance however, has existed since 1956, covers almost every country in the world, and is on record as “more than happy to support Australian insurance companies to provide cover for new civil nuclear power plants in Australia”.

The Fourth Estate is understandably demanding how much nuclear power will cost, yet it has never put the same energy into demanding Mr Bowen reveal how much is being spent on his playthings.

Why won’t he tell us how much we are underwriting private businesses for in the capacity investment scheme? If it’s such a worthy investment, why not be transparent?

Recent budgets have led Australian taxpayers to spend at least $58 billion over three years.

Last week, the Coalition’s great sin was selling the power stations. This week, the Coalition’s taking back the supply of power is socialism.

The truth is that the intermittent power lobby will lose money if nuclear power owned by the government comes online – even the mere prospect of it coming is enough.

It will lose money because it will lose in the commercial field of competition, as one piece of capital in one place, already wired, already proven, beats thousands to be wired up across the countryside and billions spent to back them up when they don’t work.

DUTTON BREATHES HOPE INTO BELEAGURED BUSH

Coalition supporters are invigorated for the first time in what feels like an age.

Following Opposition leader Peter Dutton and shadow energy spokesman Ted O’Brien’s nuclear press conference, those whose land is taken for transmission lines, whose homes will lose value as industrial intermittent power encroaches upon them, were given back something they had long lost with the Liberal National Coalition, a buoyed sense of hope.

Peter Dutton has given conservatives reason for hope. Picture: NewsWire / Nikki Short

Peter Dutton’s old coal-to-nuclear conversion is a game-changer that could shape Australia’s future.

This is why he must be Australia’s next prime minister.

No one since John Howard has been as bold or as underestimated.

With firm baseload power, carpeting the country with subsidy-mining wind and solar factories is unnecessary.

Finally, party supporters have a point of difference. Reliable, affordable energy is everything: cost of living, manufacturing, jobs, and small businesses.

It is crucial to acknowledge the pivotal role of Dr David Gillespie, the architect of this policy.

The Member for Lyne founded the parliamentary bipartisan friendship group Friends of Nuclear Industries in 2021, laying the foundation for our nuclear future, and beforehand was trying to educate his colleagues. It is a shame he was not at the podium on Wednesday. His efforts, from bussing his colleagues from across the political spectrum to ANSTO in Lucas Heights to see nuclear in action, to introducing them to the pro-nuclear Nordic Greens leaders, and drawing international nuclear physicists with lived experience operating nuclear in other nations into the parliament, paved those first baby steps towards nuclear acceptance.

Originally published as Vikki Campion: Green lobby fury at idea of nuclear is unplugged