This week, a young Queenslander, William Shackel travelled to Canberra to appear at the Senate inquiry into my legislation to legalise nuclear energy. William is a grade 11 student and just 16 years old.
He has become passionate about the need to adopt nuclear power to lower emissions and provide reliable power to Australia. On his own bat, he established a new organisation, Nuclear for Australia, to push for change.
Not only did William star before the Senate he appeared live on the Sunrise show and Sky News. He is a young kid with a bright future.
He is also representative of the generational divide on nuclear power. Young Australians are increasingly supportive of the idea of going nuclear. Many of them like nuclear because it has next to no carbon emissions. Many are attracted to the exciting nuclear scientific developments, like small modular reactors and fusion technologies.
Others can just see, like many of us, that wind and solar cannot power our modern lives alone.
At the other end of this generational divide is the Energy Minister, Chris Bowen. Late last week, he posted a hysterical, anti-nuclear screed to twitter. He used a ridiculous picture of rusty, yellow 44-gallon drums dumped in a field to scare people about radioactive waste. Twitter has now fact-checked this element of his video calling it an “inaccurate representation of nuclear waste.”
It turns out the image he used is a stock photo that was probably generated by artificial intelligence. At least that meant there was something resembling intelligence about his arguments.
Mr Bowen went on to claim that Australia did not have “a regulatory or safety framework.” He is wrong. Australia has successfully regulated a nuclear reactor in Sydney (which produces nuclear medicines) for over 60 years. The independent government regulator, the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency, is well respected around the world.
In fact, Mr Bowen’s own government respects ARPANSA so much that it is trusting it to regulate Australia’s nuclear powered submarines. Last week the Government introduced a bill that would provide an exemption to our nuclear ban for nuclear powered submarines. Their bill is almost exactly the same as mine. It amends the same sections of various Acts, and uses our existing nuclear regulatory framework to regulate the purchase of nuclear submarines.
But unlike my bill it would continue our nonsensical ban on nuclear energy made more absurd by the nuclear submarines decision. It is apparently perfectly safe for nuclear power reactors to sail 20,000 leagues under the sea all around our coastline, but apparently we risk nuclear armageddon if one of them is placed on land.
This lunacy leaves Australia increasingly isolated. The US, UK and Canada are all investing in modern small modular reactors. Italy and Denmark have announced that they are looking into building nuclear power stations for the first time. Indeed, 50 countries around the world are looking to build nuclear.
Meanwhile, Australia remains the only settled continent on Earth without a nuclear power station. It is us and the penguins of Antarctica without nuclear power, and we might be about as cold as them soon unless we fix our energy crisis.
As young Will told the Senate this week, “Australia is experiencing an energy and climate crisis. The cost of choosing not to do everything in our power to address these challenges is simply incomprehensible, and it’ll be my generation that bears the brunt of the consequences.”
Since the Liddell coal fired power station shut 3 weeks ago, electricity prices have increased by more than 50 per cent. Despite record investment in solar and wind power they cannot affordably replace the reliable power from a coal fired power station. A plan to continue to shut down our coal fired power stations, and not consider nuclear power, is a plan for blackouts and expensive power bills forever.
With the world’s largest reserves of uranium, it is time for Australia to join the rest of the world and go nuclear.
