Can Australia get lucky?

John Mikkelsen I 15 December 2024 I Spectator Australia

A few short years ago, Australia was known as The Lucky Country; now in the eyes of the developed world, we are rapidly becoming The Dumb Country.

Much of this perception is down to the fact that our Labor Federal government refuses to acknowledge that the rest of the world’s industrialised nations are rapidly embracing clean, reliable nuclear energy under bipartisan agreements. Our leaders seem incapable of having a rational debate about lifting Australia’s totally irrational ban.

Opposition Leader Peter Dutton, flanked by Nationals Leader David Littleproud, The Shadow Minister for Climate Change and Energy Ted O’Brien, and Shadow Treasurer Angus Taylor, last week finally released the long-awaited costings of their plan to integrate nuclear plants into the energy grid with a claimed 44 per cent cost-saving over Labor’s rush to an unreliable renewables-only future.

The new independent analysis from Frontier Economics revealed that including nuclear power in Australia’s energy mix could save $263 billion, which aligns with a recent US Department of Energy’s Nuclear Liftoff Report showing an estimated 37 per cent cost reduction with nuclear.

Under the Coalition’s plan, nuclear power could supply 38 per cent of Australia’s energy needs by 2050, together with 53 per cent of renewables, delivering reliable baseload power and significantly reducing emissions.

Meanwhile, we have bipartisan agreement to purchase eight nuclear submarines under the Aukus agreement, which will be operated by Australian Navy personnel who will eat, sleep, and breathe alongside nuclear reactors for weeks at a time. Any nuclear waste will be disposed of in Australia and the subs will be housed and serviced in Australian ports. No worries, all good, according to Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen.

We also have one of the world’s largest uranium mines at South Australia’s Roxby Downs and remain a significant exporter of uranium oxide ore to other countries utilising nuclear energy.

But we don’t do any processing to produce enriched uranium and fuel rods and we recently banned the development of further rich uranium deposits at Jabiluka in the Northern Territory after opposition from local Indigenous groups and the usual Woke lefties.

The reaction from Labor, the Greens, and the Teals to the Coalition’s costings came as no big surprise to anyone. Chris Bowen and Greens Leader Adam Bandt were apparently singing from the same recycled renewables hymn sheet when they called it a ‘con job’ and Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek claimed the only person who believed nuclear energy would be cheaper was the Nationals’ Barnaby Joyce stating: ‘Well, we know Barnaby’s just wrong on the cost. It’s the most expensive. Nuclear is the most expensive form of power and it won’t be available for 20 years … every expert agrees with that. The only person who doesn’t agree is Barnaby Joyce.’ Meanwhile the Teals seem to think it’s all just an excuse to keep coal generation in the system longer. Education Minister Jason Clare said the nuclear plan would ‘last as long as a seafood milkshake’.

Their contributions to rational debate were about as puerile and pathetic as the memes posted when the Coalition first announced their policy to include seven new nuclear plants at existing coal-fired power station sites and utilise existing transmission networks.

We were greeted with images of three-eyed fish and Blinky Bill the Koala, along with warnings of how unsafe any move to nuclear energy would be.

Bowen and others in the Labor government have expressed a desire not to isolate Australia by using nuclear.

But according to Statista.com, nuclear reactors connected to the grid in 2022 had a median construction time of 89 months or almost 7.5 years.

The World Nuclear Association (WNA) says nuclear is the world’s second largest source of low-carbon power (26 per cent of the total in 2020 and growing since then). There are 440 operable reactors, with 61 under construction.

More than 50 countries now utilise nuclear energy in 22 research reactors, which are also used for the production of medical and industrial isotopes, as well as for training.

This includes the Lucas Heights facility which has operated nuclear plants successfully since 1958, with an update by the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO) to an Opal Multipurpose reactor in 2007.

That’s in the heart of Sydney, but I’m unaware of any three-eyed fish or mutant koalas there.

Actually, thousands of Australians have been the beneficiaries of radium treatments thanks to the Lucas Heights output.

It reminds me of the time as a young teenager, a specialist performed an operation to remove an encroaching opaque growth known as a pterygium from one of my eyes. Too much time fishing and surfing under the tropical Queensland sun, apparently, and back then radium was used to help prevent any re-growth.

After the delicate op performed under local anaesthetic, I was still on the operating table when a nurse arrived and placed a slide containing a radiation isotope over my eye.

‘I’ll be back shortly,’ she assured me.

I closed my eyes and relaxed and I’m not sure how much time passed before she re-appeared and sounded all flustered and apologetic.

‘Oh, I’m sorry I got held up and couldn’t get back sooner when I should have.’

Great. Should I be worried? Should she tell the surgeon?

Anyway, I was discharged and didn’t think too much about it until my mother and I were on a steam train headed back to my old hometown of Bundaberg.

I was still groggy from painkillers and with a patch over one eye, I dozed off. Then something woke me, I opened my one good eye but everything was pitch black.

‘Mum, I can’t see, I’m blind!’ I blurted.

Why was my lovely mother laughing?

‘Don’t worry, John, we’re just going through a tunnel.’

Well I never did grow a third eye like the Blinky Bill meme, these days I still have 20/20 vision as confirmed by my driver’s licence renewal test a few days ago, while Labor, the Greens, and the Teals are the only ones with tunnel vision.

It’s incomprehensible they continue to claim we should be the only industrialised nation to attempt to get anywhere near the fabled ‘Net Zero’ by 2050 by relying totally on unreliable renewables. This will involve destroying an area greater than the size of Tasmania, including arable farmland, native forests, vast koala habitats, offshore fishing grounds and whale migration routes.

But there is some hope on the horizon if a majority of Australians actually recognise the facts from the spin when we elect a new government next year. However, if Labor is returned possibly with a minority Greens alliance, we are in for a very bleak future with blackouts and load-shedding becoming the new norm and power bills inevitably continuing their rapid upward spiral.

Can we become The Lucky Country again?

John Mikkelsen is a former editor of three Queensland regional newspapers, columnist, freelance writer and author of the Amazon Books Memoir, Don’t Call Me Nev.