Nuclear power is becoming a rather popular pariah in Australia. But the fear mongers are out in force to try and shift public opinion back their way.
So far, we’ve heard about three eyed fish, nuclear accidents and nuclear waste that’s impossible to deal with. Not to mention the funny cost projections from AEMO.
It’s as if the world isn’t using nuclear power safely and cheaply already…
But if you can’t beat them, join them.
Today, it’s our turn to fearmonger.
You shouldn’t fear nuclear power. You should fear the lack of it. At this rate, we may be the last developed country without it. Our mad hat energy policy is already hurting our economic growth and potential…and the stock market.
‘We are the only OECD country that doesn’t utilise this type of technology’, said Federal Liberal National Party MP Keith Pitt in 2019.
Nationals MP Barnaby Joyce repeated it in 2022.
The Australian Associated Press helpfully fact checked them. Of the OECD countries, ‘18 of the 38 do not produce nuclear power’.
So Keith and Joyce were a little bit off.
Then again, ‘produce’ and ‘utilise’ are two very different words…
Powerful hypocrisy
The 18 ‘holdouts’ are Australia, New Zealand, Austria, Denmark, Estonia, Greece, Iceland, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Latvia, Luxembourg, Norway, Poland, Portugal and Turkey, plus Chile and Colombia in the Americas.
But this list is just as misleading as the original quotes from our politicians…
Countries can share their power supply. In other words, nuclear countries produce electricity and send it over the border.
The importer looks like it doesn’t have nuclear power…because the plants are in another country.
You probably know many countries rely on France’s baseload nuclear, as an example.
We saw this in action when outages at French nuclear power plants caused havoc in Europe in 2022 and 2023.
These days, French nuclear is keeping local power prices at a tiny fraction of their neighbours’.
So, which countries use nuclear power instead of produce it?
Once you include imports, the figures look different….
The Austrian Kurier newspaper has this hilarious headline: ‘Atomkraft in Österreich: Verboten, verdammt, importiert’. I don’t even need to translate it.
Denmark, Estonia, Poland and Norway all import power from Sweden.
And Sweden which uses nuclear for 40% of its supply. Probably more for its exports given nuclear is likely to be needed by everyone at the same time – when renewables are underperforming.
Greece and Turkey use Bulgarian nuclear power, and Greece is negotiating for more of it.
Latvia imports electricity from Russia, which uses nuclear power.
Portugal imports power from Spain, which uses seven reactors to provide a fifth of its own power.
About 7% of the power sold in Luxembourg is nuclear, despite producing none of it themselves.
Ireland imports nuclear power from the UK and is building a subsea cable to get access to France’s for good measure.
Italy imports nuclear power for about 6% of its needs.
You get the point.
Of course, some countries don’t need nuclear to provide dispatchable baseload electricity. Colombia and Chile rely on vast amounts of hydropower, for example. Iceland has geothermal.
We’re not saying these countries should use nuclear. But is Australia’s energy context comparable? Or are we more like the other countries on the list?
Israel’s refusal to join the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty prevents the country from importing the nuclear technology needed.
Of course, many of those countries have begun their transition to nuclear reactors. All sorts of projects are underway. Including Small Modular Reactors and joint nuclear plants that’ll serve more than one country.
So, if you stick to comparable countries that are actively avoiding any nuclear power, Australia and New Zealand really do risk being the odd ones out in the future, by any measure.
Unfortunately for us, we don’t have nuclear neighbours to sell us their power when we need it. That makes us far more vulnerable than the hypocritical holdouts in places like Greece.
We may want to pretend we can be nuclear free. But we can’t just fudge the numbers like the fact checkers and the Austrians do. ‘Verboten’ really means it, in Australia. Outside of submarines, anyway.
Where does this leave us?
At least we have plenty of gas to burn…right?
‘Gas outages in Victoria now inevitable’ says the Brickworks CEO in the Herald Sun.
Is the renewables rollout on target? Not really.
Do renewables work reliably? The Australian Financial Review has the answer:
‘Since 2020, wind power capacity has increased by about half, or almost 4000 megawatts, but total production of electricity from wind this June quarter may only be up about 15 per cent, the analysis finds. In fact, June quarter wind generation in the NEM may be the lowest since 2017, it said.’
Is the grid ready for renewables if we could roll them out? Nope.
The last businessman to leave Australia won’t have to turn out the lights
We risk becoming like the Balkans, which were lauded for their energy transition to renewables one month, lights out the next.
Or perhaps we’ll be like the Germans. Lauded for renewables one year, deindustrialised the next.
And by then it’ll be too late to consider reversing our ban on nuclear. As several Balkan countries and Germany began doing once their aircons and heat pumps clunked out.
Our best hope is that Israel holds out against nuclear power too. Nothing would convince the Australian left of the virtues of nuclear power faster…
Don’t forget, all this is part of our descent into a decade of decimation.
An investigation into how bungles across energy policy, monetary policy, housing policy and more risks dragging Australia back into the dark ages. In the case of energy policy, literally.
Until next time,
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Nick Hubble,
Editor, Strategic Intelligence Australia
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