‘Riddle me this Batman’ (the Riddler) the famous question was often asked in the farce 1960’s TV Show Batman. But here in Australia in 2023 we have our own home grown farce.
What country has the world’s largest reserves of uranium?
What country is in the unusual position of being a major uranium exporter while also explicitly ruling out using nuclear power itself.
What country is in the unusual position of having the means at hand to supply (just from our exports about 6,000 tonnes of uranium) enough to provide for 75 per cent of Australia’s national energy market needs with zero emissions?
What country is now in a situation where under AUKUS (trilateral security partnership for the Indo-Pacific region between Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States) and as a signatory to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of nuclear weapons we are going to build nuclear-powered subs, house their waste, but apparently aren’t even allowed to talk about a domestic nuclear industry?
If you answered Australia to all the above, you’d be right.
Australia has the world’s largest reserves of uranium and is the world’s fourth largest uranium exporter. Two uranium mines operate here – BHP’s Olympic Dam and Heathgate’s Beverley facility, both in South Australia. A third mine, Boss Energy’s Honeymoon project, is set to restart production.
Russia’s war on Ukraine – and its willingness to shut off gas supplies to Europe – means uranium is in high demand. In March this year, refined uranium was A$86 a pound, up from A$27 a pound in late 2017.
As countries scramble to shore up energy security, some are turning to nuclear. Japan plans to reopen closed nuclear reactors. France is planning new reactors to begin replacing its ageing and troublesome fleet of 56 reactors. Belgium has kept reactors from closing while Poland is planning new ones.
This is triggering fresh uranium investment. That includes in Queensland’s sparsely populated northwest, where Australian and Canadian mining companies are acquiring new mineral leases and quietly adding uranium to their ore inventories.
Australia is unusual in being a major uranium exporter while also explicitly ruling out using nuclear power. Some nuclear proponents, such as the influential Minerals Council of Australia, are quick to point out this apparent contradiction.
The council is lobbying for an expansion of uranium exports. It says the existing industry is one of several factors making Australia “a partner of choice for private venture capital-funded new nuclear power”.
And Boss Energy Managing Director Duncan Craib said in May the opportunities to expand Australia’s uranium mining industry are “immense” and would help decarbonise our energy sector. He told the ABC:
“Last year, we exported about 6,000 tonnes of uranium. That’s enough to provide for 75 per cent of Australia’s national energy market with zero emissions”.
Do you remember the first four questions? Well, here’s why.
Nuclear power is prohibited in Australia, principally by two pieces of Federal legislation – the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 (EPBC Act); and the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Act 1998 (ARPANS Act).
Historically
Nuclear weapons testing, uranium mining and export, and nuclear power have often been the subject of public debate in Australia, and the anti-nuclear movement in Australia has a long history. Its origins date back to the 1972–1973 debate over French nuclear testing in the Pacific and the 1976–1977 debate about uranium mining in Australia.
Several groups specifically concerned with nuclear issues were established in the mid-1970s, including the Movement Against Uranium Mining and Campaign Against Nuclear Energy (CANE), cooperating with other environmental groups such as Friends of the Earth and the Australian Conservation Foundation. The movement suffered a setback in 1983 when the newly elected Labor Government failed to implement its stated policy of stopping uranium mining. But by the late 1980s, the price of uranium had fallen, the costs of nuclear power had risen, and the anti-nuclear movement seemed to have won its case; CANE was disbanded in 1988.
Today
But then came the 82% Labor promise, that by 2030, Australia would be powered by renewable energy. Well, we won’t hold our breath on this ever happening.
However, the wind seems to have changed direction. The recent spat between the federal government and the South Australian government has shown that not all are in favour of these strict policy. As recently reported by David Penberthy.
It was this ideological clash that exposed the divide between the Cold War-influenced journeymen of Labor’s Left and the pragmatic approach of new Labor figures unencumbered by the weight of history. When South Australian Premier Peter Malinauskas called for a national conversation about the merits of nuclear power last December, Anthony Albanese responded with near-nuclear force.
“I have a great deal of respect for Mali but everyone’s entitled to get one or two things wrong,” the Prime Minister said when Malinauskas showed his hand as a nuclear agnostic and possible advocate. “It just doesn’t add up. That’s essentially the problem. Every five years we have this economic analysis of whether nuclear power stacks up, and every time it is rejected.”
Just a few clicks east from Albanese’s inner-western Sydney seat of Grayndler – which local councillors declared a nuclear-free zone in the 1980s, thus averting any Chernobyl-style meltdowns on Marrickville Rd – emotions were running even hotter in Tanya Plibersek’s seat of Sydney. Plibersek – who like fellow Left faction member Albanese cut her political teeth fighting Trotskyists across Sydney university campuses in the ’80s and ’90s – extrapolated a nightmare scenario from Malinauskas’s remarks.
“I don’t know if there are people on your street who want a nuclear reactor in the local park,” she warned. I fear she might be worried of losing the support of the inner city caffè latte swilling greenies.
Their reactions were rendered more over the top by the fact Malinauskas had not said Australia should create a nuclear industry overnight. He simply said we should talk about it, especially given the need to decarbonise our economy when renewables do not yet provide a reliable and affordable substitute for fossil fuels.
It’s a long stroll from last December to the present day, with Australia’s nuclear debate having been up-ended by one seismic development – the signing of the AUKUS deal, which stipulates that by 2050 Australia must have the technology and site to process spent nuclear fuel used to propel submarines.
Against that backdrop, the Albanese position on nuclear energy looks even more farcical, almost a continuation of Labor’s risible and half-pregnant three-mines policy.
We now have a situation where under AUKUS and as a signatory to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons we are going to build nuclear-powered subs, house their waste, but apparently aren’t even allowed to talk about a domestic nuclear industry. This is in breach of Federal legislation – the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 (EPBC Act); and the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Act 1998 (ARPANS Act). But I suppose if you’re the Prime Minister you’re above the law.
There was a major shift in South Australian politics this week, which means the state is at the forefront of this logically inevitable debate about the creation of a local nuclear industry. SA became the first state in Australia where both sides of politics are on a unity ticket when it comes to exploring the merits of going down the nuclear path, with SA Opposition Leader David Speirs using his budget in reply speech on Tuesday to call for a re-run of the SA Royal Commission into the Nuclear Fuel Cycle.
In his original comments last year, Malinauskas said as far as he was concerned the only argument against a nuclear industry was an economic one, in that he wasn’t sure the business case for nuclear power stacked up. “I get frustrated with a nuclear debate that has emerged in Australia recently because you’ve got people on the left who seem to be flat-out opposed to nuclear power for ideological reasons, despite the fact we’ve got a climate challenge and wanting to decarbonise,” Malinauskas said.
“Then we’ve got people on the right who seem to be utterly in favour of nuclear power, without any reference to the cost of it.
“It strikes me as starting to become one of these polarised debates that has been consumed by the culture wars, rather than an evidence-based discussion on what is good for decarbonisation and what is good for price.”
Now, Speirs is arguing that with energy prices spiralling beyond the reach of many people, and governments unwilling or unable to provide meaningful relief for families and businesses trapped in the middle, the de facto ban on discussing nuclear power has to end forthwith.
“We could end up with an energy-based underclass in this nation if we do not get energy policy right,” Speirs said. “It may very well be that consideration of nuclear energy in some form, likely small modular reactors, will be necessary.
“Perhaps it is the time to reopen that royal commission again – have a royal commission 2.0 – and start thinking about what South Australia’s role could be in that fuel cycle, some seven years since we last considered it.”
Speirs’s reference to the 2017 royal commission headed by defence expert, former SA governor and retired rear admiral Kevin Scarce was an important one, as it reflects what is majority thinking in the SA Liberal Party – and probably also in the SA Labor Party. There is a view in SA politics that the Scarce royal commission was a huge missed opportunity for the state, cruelled only when then Liberal opposition leader Steven Marshall withdrew bipartisan support, forcing then premier Jay Weatherill to shelve the idea for fear of going it alone ahead of the 2014 poll.
Weatherill is of the view that public understanding of the issues became so advanced during the royal commission process that there would have been majority support for the nuclear waste storage plan in SA – and an open mind about the commission’s finding that nuclear should be explored as an energy source provided the numbers stacked up.
Seven years on, with a bipartisan consensus in SA that these ideas are well worth pursuing, there is a risk for federal Labor that it looks dated and myopic because of its steadfast refusal even to countenance discussion of the topic.
It’s an opportunity already identified by Peter Dutton, who used his own budget reply speech to advocate nuclear energy. And amid a cost-of-living squeeze, the biggest kick-along for the nuclear debate will have come in the form of letters sent to every household this month by AGL, Origin and every other power provider showing that bills have gone up by 30 per cent. Right now, many Aussies probably wouldn’t care if you could generate power by burning whale blubber or old car tyres, let alone a safe and sophisticated nuclear industry that bears no resemblance to the Chernobyl and Three Mile Island era that Labor’s Left faction warriors still remember so well.
