Nuclear: Coalition remains trapped by climate and technology denial

The nuclear war drums are beating again: Not just in the Ukraine, which now has to fact up to the threats from Vladimir Putin and the chest-beating of his Belorussian puppet Alexander Lukashenko, but also in Australia’s energy debate.

And make no mistake, in Australia, it is a war – a political one raging between science, engineering and economics on one hand, and single minded ideology on the other.

The nuclear push by the federal Coalition and its industry backers has been brewing for some time, and has now reached a crescendo with Opposition leader Peter Dutton calling for nuclear to be included in Australia’s mix, and accusing Labor of being “mesmerised” by renewables and storage.

Dutton’s position is sadly inevitable, and entirely predictable.

Having been the author of the Aukus deal which has committed Australia to spending up to $360 billion on half a dozen nuclear submarines – none of which would be delivered within 20 years – it follows that the Coalition should be signing up to another technology that could cost just as much and be just as delayed.

Dutton’s comments on Friday – in a speech to the rabid anti-renewables and climate “think tank”, the IPA – is yet more confirmation that the Coalition has no interest in doing anything about climate change.

This week the planet experienced its two hottest days on record, likely its hottest week, and is facing its hottest year in 2023 or 2024 as the El Nino strengthens its influence.

The need to accelerate emissions cuts, and finally deliver policies consistent with a 1.5°C scenario, has never been clearer. But the Coalition – after 10 years in power doing absolutely nothing – is still running in the opposite direction.

The Coalition denies the science. “Climate change has always been a scam,” LNP Senator Gerard Rennick tweeted last month, not for the first time echoing the thoughts of a majority of his Coalition colleagues.

The Coalition hates renewables: “It’s a trifecta of idiocy,” said former and still aspiring Nationals leader Barnaby Joyce on Labor’s 82 per cent renewable target, before putting a call out to groups to join a mass protest against wind and solar on the steps of Parliament House.

Now the Coalition is is hoisting its petard to a plan to fritter away tens of billions, if not hundreds of billions, on a technology that – as former chief scientist Alan Finkel pointed out in a recent episode of the Energy Insiders podcast – would be impossible to deploy in Australia within 20 years.

Make no mistake, Finkel is a fan of the technology. “From a purely engineering point of view, nuclear is fantastic,” he told the podcast.

But he says while the technology works, and he believes the safety issues can be managed, building big nuclear is “insanely slow to do”, and “very, very expensive.”

“There’s a big one under construction at the moment, a 3.2 gigawatt gigawatt system under construction in England called Hinkley, C, and the price per gigawatt is north of $15 billion,” Finkel said. “It’s just the most expensive capital expenditure that you could imagine.” (Apart, maybe, from Australia’s submarine order).

As for SMRs, or small modular reactosr, Finkel notes that the most advanced company is called NuScale in the US. Approvals for its technology are being fast-tracked by nuclear regulators, but it’s already taken seven years.

At best, its first pilot plant will be operating by the end of the decade. And Australia will have to wait and see how that plant operates, and hope for cost reductions and production to be achieved, before it could commit to going down the same path.

“I cannot see any possibility of Australia, even if we went at full speed ahead, having small modular reactors before 2040,” Finkel said.

And by then, Finkel says, Australia will have a  zero emissions or a near zero emissions and reliable, affordable electricity system based around wind, solar and storage. And expensive nuclear would then have to compete with cheaper, reliable renewables power.

Just to reinforce that assessment, IEEFA reported earlier this year the eyewatering cost blowouts of NuScale’s proposed SMRs, now more than doubled the estimated price flagged in 2021.

“No one should fool themselves into believing this will be the last cost increase for the NuScale/UAMPS SMR,” IEEFA wrote.

“The project still needs to go through additional design, licensing by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, construction and pre-operational testing.

“The experience of other reactors has repeatedly shown that further significant cost increases and substantial schedule delays should be anticipated at any stages of project development.”

It would be insanity to do what the Coalition wants Australia to do – keep coal burning, and slow down the rollout of renewables and other technologies such as EVs, and wait for nuclear, just to keep the mining lobby and other powerful interests onside.

But of course that’s exactly what the Coalition intends to do. It is keenly aware of one important part of the path to net zero: it can be done, and it can be done at low cost, but it’s biggest hurdle is the lack of political will. And the LNP intends to make that hurdle as big as they can.

Labor has, of course, rejected the nuclear push. Jason Clare said the government does not support nuclear power.

“They cost about $400 billion bucks and take years and years to build,” Clare told Nine’s Today Show, which the Coalition might argue didn’t seem to be a problem when it came to nuclear submarines.

Labor’s test will be to have the gumption to introduce policies that do get the country closer to its share of the 1.5°C target. As is clear, resistance from the fossil fuel industry, the one now orchestrating the nuclear push, is fierce.

Former UN climate chief Christiana Figueres wrote a sobering piece this week, noting the back-tracking of big oil on climate targets as it focused on pocketing windfall profits and ignoring climate science.

Figueres’ piece was titled “I thought fossil fuel firms could change. I was wrong.”

She basically admitted that she had been seduced by the thought that she could change their focus, and that they would do the right thing in the fact of a climate crisis: “Their unprecedented profits over the past year have shown their unwillingness to adapt,” she said.

“What are the leaders of the fossil industry thinking? As we evolve the global economy, we have one way forward: decarbonise quickly enough to avert the worst of climate impacts, especially the impacts upon the most vulnerable.”

The emphasis is on quick. In Australia, we have the best opportunity to do it. But like the global fossil fuel industry, conservatives and their media are doing their very best to stop that from happening.