Sam Hawley: Decades later, when other countries were resorting to nuclear force, Australia banned it. Now, the federal opposition needs to lift the ban and build nuclear power plants on the sites of former coal-fired power plants. Today, we take a look at the feasibility of this concept with Dylan McConnell, a force systems analyst at the University of New South Wales. And we ask ourselves, why do we have to follow this path when renewables are booming?I’m Sam Hawley on Gadigal land in Sydney with this, the 500th episode of ABC News Daily.
Dylan, the nuclear force is a little scary, rarely is?There have been some disasters, haven’t there? I guess the challenge is that when things go wrong, they can go wrong.
Dylan McConnell: yes, that’s right. There have been some high-profile incidents.
ABC News report: Massive amounts of radiation were released in a twist of fate at the Chernobyl power plant in Ukraine.
Dylan McConnell: And also the Three Mile Island incident in the United States.
ABC News report: At Three Mile Island, power plant personnel are trying to figure out how to cool the malfunctioning reactor. But the heat from the plant has exacerbated the challenge of radioactive fuel leaks.
Dylan McConnell: But it has to be said that all technologies have their costs, dangers, and challenges, and I’m not too concerned about our ability to manage those dangers. They incur additional costs. Compromises need to be made, and all technologies have their challenges.
Sam Hawley: Yes, of course, of course, nuclear power plants are operating all over the world and they’re absolutely safe. The U. S. has a lot of power plants that power tens of millions of homes, right?
Dylan McConnell: yes, that’s right. There are about 30 countries around the world that have nuclear plants. In the United States, for example, just under 20% of its electricity comes from nuclear power. But in other countries, such as France, 65% of their energy comes from nuclear power. In many of these countries, this accounts for less than 30 percent of their total electricity production.
Sam Hawley: And we Australians gave a chance to nuclear force in the late 1960s at Jervis Bay on the south coast of New South Wales, right?Tell me about that.
Dylan McConnell: yes, that’s right. We built a 500-megawatt plant in Jervis Bay in 1969 and put some money into the budget to start the first paintings in that area.
ABC News report: This is Australia’s first nuclear power plant. The Prime Minister announced a year ago that Australia would enter the atomic age by building a power station at the southeastern end of Jervis Bay.
Dylan McConnell: It’s not too early because I was politically unpopular at the time. Then there was a crusade by the local opposition on the issue. A replacement for the prime minister, not a replacement for the government, simply a replacement for the prime minister within the coalition who then suspend the commission. They basically come to the conclusion that it’s too expensive compared to our competitive herbal merit back then: charcoal.
Sam Hawley: And I heard a little rumor that you recently took your circle of family members to stop at the site in Jervis Bay where this power plant might have been. . .
Dylan McConnell: yes, you can go in and see where they started doing some of that early work. I believe that, first of all, the parking lot was leveled in anticipation of the structure of this power plant.
ABC News report: The road from Nowra to Jarvis Bay is like any other Australian country road. But when you reach the last bend before Jarvis Bay Naval College, a dramatic and completely unforeseen change occurs. Season, asphalt road of two lanes and after 3 and a half kilometers of elegant driving, as at the beginning, the road inexplicably stops.
Sam Hawley: All right, just for me, Dylan, why don’t we approve nuclear power here. I know you said they thought it was too expensive, but given that countries like the United States, the United Kingdom, and France, as you mentioned, were doing why not?Why didn’t we?
Dylan McConnell: yes, I mean, so the generation banned during John Howard’s administration in 1998. It’s kind of a compromise around the expansion of the reactor studios in New South Wales, at the Lucas Heights facility, with the Greens. Banned from 1998.
Sam Hawley: But Dylan, now we’re back to it, because the Coalition believes that, after all, it’s not such a bad thing to approve nuclear power. So tell me exactly what Peter Dutton is proposing.
Dylan McConnell: I guess I can’t tell you precisely what you’re proposing, because the main points are pretty transparent at the moment. They need to lift the moratorium on nutransparent strength and advance the progress of traditional nutransparent strength plants, i. e. large ones. nutransparent power plants to scale, or potentially, if they come to fruition, small modular reactors. The other component they communicated was their preference for installing them on the site of former coal-fired power plants. Other than that, there are a lot of main points about how you can just pay or anything else.
Peter Dutton: Our plan is to make sure we have a solid energy base. This means we want renewables in the system, but we want them when the solar panels aren’t running at night, when the wind turbines aren’t blowing. they want basic energy, which in 19 of the 20 G20 countries is nuclear.
Sam Hawley: The Coalition announces that it will announce its formal policy of force in the coming weeks. The shadow minister for climate replacement and force, Ted O’Brien, says the nuclear force could be operational in Australia within a decade, which is fast. . In an interview at 7:30 p. m. This week he referred in particular to recent projects in the United Arab Emirates.
Ted O’Brien: So, the UAE went from a resolution to having nuclear power on the grid in 10 years.
Sam Hawley: What’s going on there?
Dylan McConnell: There’s a pretty giant nuclear power plant that’s in the final stages of completion. It’s also true that they approved nuclear power long before they started the structure, I think about five years earlier. Second, I think perhaps a more vital challenge is that we live in a Western liberal democracy. We have various degrees of passoverment that want to be neutralized. The relevance that an autocratic regime in the Middle East might have in the Australian context is limited, I think. Say.
Sam Hawley: yes, that’s the point that the host, Sarah Ferguson, made to Ted O’Brien. The 10-year term may be a bit ambitious at first glance. . .
Sarah Ferguson: We’re talking about a country that’s partly a command economy, so it’s not a country like Australia. This is not a country where other people can oppose a nuclear reactor.
Ted O’Brien: So, the United Arab Emirates is the last participant. Now, when you look at the inclusion of COVID that supposedly took them off the grid for two years, they went from a resolution to having nuclear force on the grid for a period of 10 years.
Sam Hawley: But Dylan, how temporarily do you think Australia could build a nuclear reactor then, if 10 years from now?
Dylan McConnell: I think we’d be very fortunate to be able to have electricity from a nuclear generator before the 2040s. Very lucky.
Sam Hawley: Ted O’Brien, you also talked about small nuclear reactors, which you think could be built even faster.
Ted O’Brien: The recommendation we have is that you can really, if it’s a small modular reactor, be up and running within a decade.
Sam Hawley: But also some upheavals with this proposal, right?
Dylan McConnell: yes, that’s the hope of small modular reactor technologies, which will be delivered faster. That hasn’t happened yet. They are still theoretical. They don’t exist.
Sam Hawley: Well, the coalition says that if they were to implement this plan, they would look at sites in the Gippsland region of Victoria, in the Hunter Valley in New South Wales, those kinds of spaces for those plants. But the question is whether this is a viable option or a global solution, as the government and Energy Minister Chris Bowen claim.
Chris Bowen: The United States, with a highly evolved regulatory regime, with a highly evolved nuclear industry, the world leader in nuclear strength, the average time to build a nuclear power plant in the U. S. UU. es 19 years old. O’Brien thinks he can. in Australia from 10 a. m. , with a start-up status, unregulated, banned not only nationally but also in the 3 most populous states. I mean, tell him he’s dreaming.
Sam Hawley: The Prime Minister, of course, has rejected that idea.
Anthony Albanese: Every 10 years these proposals come up. What never arrives is an investment, because it has no advertising value.
Sam Hawley: Tell me, Dylan, is this a furphy or something that can take place here in Australia?
Dylan McConnell: yes, look, I mean, in theory, those are smart sites for big nuclear power plants. In practice, as I mentioned earlier, timing is meaningless. But yes, I think a bigger challenge is that those plants we’re decommissioning long before a nuclear plant supplies its first electric power to the grid, we want to upgrade that generation and that capacity in the short term. So we want to do all those other things that we’re doing now, expand renewables. , expand the grid. We will have to continue to do so. There is some merit to the theoretical appeal of employing such sites. When you start thinking about the practical realities, there are some pretty significant limitations.
Sam Hawley: According to Energy Secretary Chris Bowen, replacing Australia’s fleet of retired coal-fired power plants with nuclear power would cost around $387 billion. So yes, it’s not cheap. Dylan, at the end of the day, of course, it’s all political too, because it’s the Coalition that’s proposing a politics of choice to the electorate in the next election. Barnaby Joyce has been an active protester against renewable force policies.
Barnaby Joyce: Look what’s going on. The value of your electrical energy is skyrocketing. Your reliability starts in the field. And your cash on your bill, overseas. So what does this look like an environmental solution?
Sam Hawley: And Nationals leader David Littleproud is advocating for a moratorium on Australia’s energy deployment.
David Littleproud: We shouldn’t be going down a completely renewable path. That would be dangerous for Australia. There is a position for renewables. We use renewable energy, but we only use it if it’s done correctly.
Sam Hawley: Is it feasible? Can we put this on hold?
Dylan McConnell: It wouldn’t be a good idea to think that we have a reliable, cheap system, that’s for sure. Like I said, we have all those old coal-fired plants that are now at the end of their useful life and no longer working. that’s why we want to update them. And right now, the cheapest and most cost-effective way to do that is to combine renewables, storage, transportation, and some of those other balancing technologies. And this is independent of our climate considerations. We want to reduce emissions and act temporarily and intelligently.
Sam Hawley: Dylan, what would you say to those who think nuclear power is a smart choice for Australia right now?
Dylan McConnell: What I wouldn’t want to see is that it’s used to slow down the transition that’s coming right now. There is merit in keeping our functions open. The concept of lifting the ban, I don’t think it’s a terrible thing. Actually, maybe in two decades prices will come down, it would make sense for us to have nuclear power at that time, but now it turns out to be a distraction and a waste of time.
Sam Hawley: Do you think we lost the nuclear ship?
Dylan McConnell: I think so, yes. I guess. From the point of view of inertia and momentum, the renewable energy industry is fleeing the nuclear industry. So yes, I think it’s fair to say that we missed the boat on this energy transition around nuclear power.
Sam Hawley: Dylan McConnell is a senior research associate and energy systems analyst at the University of New South Wales. This is our 500th episode. Whether you’ve been with us since the beginning or you’ve joined us recently, thank you for listening. All of our episodes beyond are on the ABC Listen app. This episode was produced by Bridget Fitzgerald and Nell Whitehead. Audio production by Sam Dunn. Our supervising manufacturer is David Coady. To get in touch with the team, please email us. My call is Sam Hawley. Thanks for listening.
While countries resorted to nuclear force decades ago, Australia banned it.
Federal opposition is now in favor of lifting the ban and building nuclear power plants on the sites of former coal-fired power plants.
Today we explore the feasibility of this with Dylan McConnell, a power systems analyst at the University of New South Wales.
We asked ourselves: why would we go down this path when renewable energy is booming?
Presenting:
Dylan McConnell, Energy Systems and Renewable Energy Analyst at UNSW Sydney
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