Really, Mr Dutton? What are you hiding behind the nuclear distraction?

 

From the Department of I-Can’t-Believe-We’re-Still-Having-This-Discussion comes Peter Dutton’s plan for Australia’s energy future: nuclear.

Forget that nuclear power plants are being decommissioned and phased out all over Europe, with Germany and Italy now fully nuclear-free and other countries in the process of exiting nuclear capacity.

Forget that the waste from nuclear power plants is radioactive and must be stored, usually underground, for thousands of years, with the ongoing risk of leaks and contamination. Not to mention the danger of transporting said waste.

Forget that nuclear reactors use 35 to 65 million litres of water per day, mostly for cooling so it goes up in steam and can’t be recycled.

Forget that CSIRO estimates found that a 1 gigawatt large-scale nuclear plant would cost about $9bn if it were possible to start building in Australia today and a nuclear industry was already well established, but large-scale generators could cost twice as much – about $18bn – due to a “first-of-a-kind” premium.

Peter Dutton is so ridiculously opposed to renewable energy that he wants you to forget all that because his chief backer, Gina Rinehart, not content with just digging up iron ore, copper and lithium, wants to have a go at the nation’s uranium reserves as well.

The issue of nuclear power in this country was controversial back in the 1970s. Then, with the Cold War approaching its chilliest level, there was the additional concern about the proliferation of nuclear weapons, the deployment of which would have raised the temperature of the Cold War very quickly to roughly that of the surface of the sun. The Fraser Liberal government proposed mining uranium at Jabiluka, on the traditional land of the Mirarr people.

Jabiluka remained a controversial site for decades, with successive conservative governments pitted against environmental and Indigenous protesters until last year, when the current government approved that Jabiluka be absorbed into the Kakadu National Park ensuring that mining will never take place there. Uranium was, however, mined at the nearby Ranger mine, which only closed last year, and, like Jabiluka, is now part of the Kakadu National Park. 

Uranium mining and nuclear power have been consigned to history.

Yet, here we are. An election campaign one quarter of the way into the 21^st Century and an ex-copper from Queensland has exhumed a 50-year old policy in the face of, not protests this time, but ridicule. Really? That old dinosaur again? Who’s he trying to kid?

Apart from pressure from his mining magnate mates, Dutton is terrified that any whiff of approval for renewable energy might make him look ever so slightly green. And we couldn’t have that! It might frighten the flat-earthers, Trumpists and anti-environment mob on whom he seems increasingly reliant for support.

Regardless of the outcome of the election, one thing is for sure: there will be no nuclear power plants in Australia. The cost alone will rule it out. In a country where water security is paramount, any nuclear reactors would have to go on the coast to use sea water and it’s unlikely that very many coastal electorates would be saying “Pick meeee for a nuclear reactor!”

Dutton’s nuclear plan should be viewed for what it is – a distraction. Look behind it for the real policies. The ones he doesn’t want you to see.