Wooley: The only thing clear about our nuclear policy is that it’s unclear

Coal and gas, or wind and solar … or going nuclear. It seems everyone has a different opinion when it comes to our country’s energy future.

The Coalition will pledge to build seven nuclear power plants across Australia. Multiple Coalition MPs said the proposed former coal-fired power station sites for the reactors included Loy Yang in Victoria. Picture: Jake Nowakowski

I have noted this irony before, that nuclear is an anagram of unclear.

It certainly seems unclear why Australia has the world’s largest known deposits of uranium, but we don’t have any nuclear power stations.

It can’t be purely an ethical matter because in the past decade we have exported 6000 tonnes of uranium to other nations. We are the world’s fourth-ranking producer with the potential to be so much bigger. In terms of who has the most uranium in the ground we take the (yellow) cake with more than 1.7 million tonnes or 28 per cent of the world’s known reserves, easily beating the two other major holders, Kazakhstan and Canada.

Nuclear power produces 15 per cent of Canada’s electricity with 60 per cent coming from hydro. While Kazakhstan, with four nuclear reactors, has as yet no nuclear power plants.

The Kazakhstan president, Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, is an enthusiast for nuclear power, but the mood of the nation is (that word again) unclear. Before independence the country was part of the Soviet Union, and the Russians conducted 456 nuclear tests there resulting in thousands of birth defects and cancers. The president has assured his people that modern nuclear power stations “are entirely safe and not at all the same as letting off an atomic bomb”.

Like the Indigenous people of outback Australia who endured 12 nuclear weapons tests in the 1950s, the people of Kazakhstan are not so sure and next month the central Asian republic will hold a referendum on the issue.

According to Charles Wooley, the Liberals will argue that by recycling old power stations – such as Loy Yang, in Victoria – existing power transmission infrastructure can be re-used, saving money and also having the added benefit of not annoying rural landholders. Picture: Jake Nowakowski

We can’t do that in Australia, where even a referendum on free beer would be unlikely to pass.

No. Stop the presses. It is now actually looking like cheaper beer will be one of Opposition Leader Peter Dutton’s election promises, along with building seven nuclear reactors across five states to replace the gradually retiring coal-fired stations. The Liberals will argue that the recycling of the old power generation sites means that the existing power transmission infrastructure can be re-used, saving money and not annoying rural landholders.

Even if you will drink to that, just how beer and nuclear will be sold as election policy is unclear, but I remember being introduced to an American beer in Washington state produced by an outfit called Doomsday Brewing.

It was a malty amber ale, and I remember it had a half-life of two days.

Clearly whatever the downside, nuclear energy has the advantage of producing power without CO2 emissions, which is certainly worth toasting if only for stopping the planet getting toasted.

Opposition Leader Peter Dutton addresses a CEDA lunch on nuclear policy: A Nuclear Powered Australia – could it work? in Sydney on September 23, 2024. Picture: NewsWire / Gaye Gerard

The United Nations Secretary General, Antonio Guterres, says: “Earth is becoming hotter and more dangerous for everyone, everywhere. Billions of people are facing an extreme heat epidemic with temperatures topping 50 degrees Celsius around the world. That’s halfway to boiling.”

Now the Sec Gen is just a little busy at the moment, but if we don’t blow ourselves up in a nuclear war he warns rising temperatures will fry us anyway.

“We know what is driving it: fossil fuel-charged, human-induced climate change.”

What is unclear to me is how Albo can embrace solar and wind and refute nuclear without giving us a carbon accounting of how much CO2 is released during the production and shipment from China of the 400 million solar panels needed to power Australia, according to proponents of solar power.

Recently, Energy Minister Chris Bowen said Australia also needs to be building 40 wind turbines every month until 2030 to meet our renewable energy target.

So maybe it is not really too unclear why Albo has promised Australia “will still be a reliable supplier of energy to the world” in terms of gas and coal.

We remain the world’s second largest exporter of coal – 335 million tonnes last year and mostly to China, which does the bulk of our manufacturing dirty work for us.

Are we in the position of a drug dealer who has decided to get off the stuff personally but will continue to run the thriving business of selling it to others?

Now why do we do this?

Recently, Energy Minister Chris Bowen said Australia also needs to be building 40 wind turbines every month until 2030 to meet our renewable energy target. Picture: NewsWire / Nikki Short

Realistically to stop mining coal would destroy communities and many associated industries along with hundreds of thousands of jobs in northern Australia.

We are a democracy and even if we are aiding and abetting a form of global suicide, politicians of the major parties cannot ignore the social and political cost at home.

The Greens and Teals can go their own way with the luxury of not ever having to govern, but someone has to make a fist of running the show. Though not always wisely.

Remember Scomo’s foolish posturing in parliament with a lump of coal: “This is coal. Don’t be afraid. Don’t be scared. It’s coal.”

Former treasurer Scott Morrison on the day he brought a lump of coal into parliament back in 2017.

Mr Dutton would clear the chamber if he did the same today with a uranium isotope. Back then he was a climate sceptic, and it is unclear now if he has changed his views or just seized a perceived political advantage on the back of Australia’s agreement to spend almost $400bn on three or four Virginia Class submarines. The exact number is again unclear but clearly we have already gone nuclear and possibly ballistic, and the public have accepted that.

It might be still unclear why we sell coking coal and iron ore to military expansionist China, the assumed enemy, which is the real reason we need those submarines.

Perhaps we need the money to pay for the subs.

Again unclear.

And finally, is it unclear or am I wilfully obtuse?

If we have 335 million tonnes of coal to export, why don’t we just burn it at home, generating cheaper power and profit from more competitive industrial manufacturing until a mix of renewables and possibly nuclear energy is phased in?

We could even make our own solar panels and wind generators.

If you have stuck with me this far I trust that I couldn’t have made the energy options any more unclear than they already were.

But remember we need to know more because we will have to vote on it next year.

Unless you want a re-run of “If you don’t know, vote NO”.

Charles Wooley is a Tasmanian-based journalist