In brief:
- Two world-leading investors in the nuclear power services sector are already in Australia
- One fast-tracked a major foothold in our energy sector and is Pacman-hungry for more
- The vocally pro-nuclear Coalition opposition has been engaging both of them
THE NUCLEAR FILES: #3 The Canadian headquartered global mega asset owner and investor Brookfield Corporation, which has a large Antipodean subsidiary Brookfield Australia, was part of a 2023 nuclear study tour to North America.
Led by the Coalition Opposition’s go-nuclear frontman Ted O’Brien MP, the six-person study tour group included key figures from Australia’s unofficial nuclear club.
Another listed stopover was one of the world’s leading uranium companies, Canada’s Cameco, which owns two big uranium mine development projects in Western Australia through its Australian subsidiary.
Less than two years ago Cameco partnered with Brookfield Renewable Partners to jointly own iconic US nuclear services provider, Westinghouse Electric Company*, another key stopover for the study tour.
(*Not to be confused with Westinghouse Australia, which many Australians will know as a home appliances/white goods company.)
This self-described “due diligence” study tour in January and February 2023 was at least part funded by pro-nuclear, Coalition-linked Australian lobbyists! As well as the Opposition’s O’Brien, the tour group included three nuclear club regulars, a global big four consulting firm representative, and even its own filmmaker.
They weren’t representing the current Australian Labor government, which is committed to a renewables-led energy transition! Nuclear power is banned in Australia and has been since 1998!
So what was this nuclear power-focused frolic all about?
The simple answer is to turn Australia into a nuclear power nation. Something Australia has opted out of for over half a century, overwhelmingly for economic reasons. But now that is in play again for the next Australian elections, due by May 2025.
A busy tour itinerary
The slide below, which comes from both private and public presentations, delivered in May and October 2023 respectively, was compiled by one of the study tour’s participants. He is University of Queensland Adjunct Professor Stephen Wilson, now a Visiting Fellow with the Institute of Public Policy (IPA), which was the focus of The Nuclear Files last week.
Wilson, a keen public speaker who has numerous videos, has been telling his audiences that it shows where they went, and what organisations they met, in Washington DC at the top, and then the US-Canada coast-to-coast broader itinerary at the bottom.
There’s a story in every stopover. But this article focuses – with one diversion for a Bill Gates-owned nuclear play, TerraPower – on the Brookfield conglomerate, its investment partner uranium behemoth Cameco, and their now jointly-owned nuclear services giant Westinghouse.
As the Opposition’s Shadow Minister for Climate Change and Energy, O’Brien has emerged politically, over the past two years, as the tireless champion for the Liberal-National Coalition’s push for Australia to “go nuclear”.
His enthusiastic advocacy is matched by his appetite for globetrotting to build the Coalition’s case for nuclear power.
Brookfield? Nuclear? Who knew?
Well, anyone paying close attention to business news out of North America towards the end of 2022 could have known. Because there was plenty of news about Brookfield’s nuclear industry asset reshuffling, centred on a company it owned, the iconic US-based player Westinghouse.
In fact, Brookfield has been a serious nuclear industry investor since 2018, when it rescued Westinghouse from hard times in the nuclear sector. The Westinghouse name is synonymous with traditional large scale nuclear power, and these days it’s also in the emerging-but-troubled small modular reactor (SMR) space.
Brookfield, a mega-investor in renewable energy too, is already a major presence in Australia’s energy sector, and is in corporate Pacman mode to gobble up more. Just last week it announced a $10 billion deal to buy leading French renewables developer
Neoen, which has major assets in Australia including the famous “Tesla big battery” at Horndale in South Australia, billed as the world’s first big battery.
Brookfield bought the big Victorian electricity and gas network and transmission business AusNet for $10 billion-plus in 2022.
It also paid around $1 billion for a 50 per cent stake in Australian based smart energy metering company Intellihub in 2021 – alongside Pacific Equity Partners (PEP) – which is buying (GreenSync and Pooled Energy), investing in (EVSE) and partnering with (Evergen) among a growing list of tie-ups with digital energy technology startups and scale-ups.
In addition, Brookfield is long-established as a major property and construction player in Australia, including having owned Multiplex since 2008. It also bought and later resold multi-utility embedded networks solutions company Flow Systems (now the Altogether Group), as The Fifth Estate reported at the time.
Global powerhouse
So however you cut it, the Brookfield conglomerate is simultaneously big in energy in Australia, and big in nuclear in North America and globally, and it’s big in lots more too. A global investment powerhouse!
Furthermore, Brookfield has failed in recent mega bids to buy “big three” energy generators and retailers (so-called “gentailers”, both generation and retail electricity companies) in Australia.
First, $4 billion was offered unsuccessfully for AGL Energy in 2022, jointly with billionaire Atlassian co-founder Mike Cannon-Brookes, who is still an 11 per cent major shareholder in AGL. Then came a $10.6 billion Brookfield led final offer for Origin Energy in 2023, which also failed, ultimately, in December 2023, having earlier looked to be a near certainty to proceed.
Even with last week’s Neoen move, the market will continue to watch closely: what’s next for Brookfield and energy in Australia?
Retiring coal sites are highly strategic
Whether coincidental or otherwise, winning either of AGL or Origin would have delivered ownership of one or more major retiring or retired coal-fired power station sites to the Brookfield corporate octopus.
The Liberal-National Coalition’s still-emerging nuclear policy is aimed squarely at developing new nuclear power stations on established coal sites as they are retired, eventually, using gas-fired generation to fill the gap between coal exiting the grid and nuclear entering. (O’Brien has said nuclear power replacements could be delivered in a decade, the CSIRO has calculated around 15 years at best, and many analysts say 20 years or longer, pushing them into the mid 2040s.)
The Coalition says this is aimed at reducing the need to build costly new transmission-line infrastructure, which often impacts on politically-sensitive regional communities, which coalition partners the National Party hate.
O’Brien has even fronted a slick video on this coal segueing to nuclear power concept. (I’m hoping it’s not an “AI Ted”.)
The Bill Gates-owned TerraPower connection
This video features the mega-wealthy, pro-nuclear Microsoft founder Bill Gates-owned company TerraPower, and its push for nuclear power plants to succeed coal-fired ones in the US state of Wyoming.
TerraPower also was on the O’Brien-led study tour’s itinerary, as was its super-connected lobbying firm, Boundary Stone Partners (BSP), which describes itself as “the leading climate change government affairs firm working at the intersection of technology, finance, and policy”.
Also appearing in the video is BSP’s co-founder Jeff Navin, a Washington DC insider who is a former senior energy figure in the Obama Administration, and who doubles as TerraPower’s chief spokesperson.
The O’Brien study tour group met Navin in the US early in 2023. Navin subsequently came to Australia in October 2023 for the nuclear club’s main formal gathering, the Australian Nuclear Association annual conference, where he spoke on behalf of both BSP, addressing the US “playbook” for building popular support for nuclear power, and TerraPower.
O’Brien also was a speaker (see the transcript) and panellist. As was study tour participant, key nuclear club member and now IPA operative, Stephen Wilson. And as was the Brookfield majority-held subsidiary Westinghouse’s senior executive Rita Baranwal, who the study tour also visited in the US, and the nuclear club has courted ever since (related articles to come)
The point is not just that all of these nuclear players and wannabes have become connected. It’s that they are staying connected, and promoting a common cause, which is now a highly- contested in Australian politics.
Questions to Brookfield and its response
The Fifth Estate spoke with a Brookfield Australia/Asia Pacific communications representative at length, and provided detailed questions in writing, including those below (some questions provided to Brookfield relate to next week’s articles in The Nuclear Files series, and will be shared then).
We also asked for an interview with the company’s Australian-based head of renewable power & transition, Luke Edwards. This interview request was declined and the company elected not to respond to The Fifth Estate’s questions. Brookfield did point us to a nuclear related quote from an international executive, Mark Carney, former governor of the Bank of England, which is included in the next article.
Our questions to Brookfield’s representative most related to this week’s articles are:
- Brookfield and Cameco in Canada, and Westinghouse Electric in the US, are all listed as stopover visits for the nuclear power study tour led by the Australian Opposition’s shadow minister for climate change and energy, Ted O’Brien MP, in January-February 2023. Who did O’Brien and the study tour group meet at Brookfield? And what was discussed? To what purpose?
- The study tour also visited Westinghouse Electric (Waltz Mill site in Pennsylvania) and met with Dr Rita Baranwal, senior vice-president AP300 SMR (then chief technology officer). Is Brookfield in Australia aware of this visit, and is it across and able to share the details of its purpose, the nature of the discussions, everyone who was involved and their roles and could you explain such details? (Noting that this was occurring at a time when Brookfield’s bid for Origin Energy was in play.)
- Given the very active nuclear power discussion in Australia, does Brookfield/Brookfield Renewable Partners have a position on whether or not it would consider providing nuclear technology solutions in Australia, including via Westinghouse Electric, or other pathways?
- In that regard, does Brookfield rule in or rule out ever being involved in nuclear power projects in Australia, for example if there is a change of government – as soon as the next elections by May 2025 – and, in the scenario where the Opposition wins, the current ban on nuclear power is lifted and investment is invited by the government of the day?
The Fifth Estate also contacted Cameco Corporation in Canada, a senior spokesperson for which declined to respond to questions.
Properly built and maintained nuclear power stations are safe. There are over 400 safely operating. The three “accidents” were all due to unnecessary faults – poor design, silly faults and/or total lack of maintenance.
As to whether nuclear is economical is another matter but incompetent journalism has produced a fear of nuclear energy. Trouble is that nuclear physics is usually not taught until tertiary level meaning that only a small minority of the population understand it. I and my engineering colleagues do understand it and are comfortable with it.
So you mean the accidents were from human error? Phew …We’d be safe then. But to be serious I don’t trust human precision, and I trust human politics even less (or we wouldn’t be in this mess). Thankfully nuclear doesn’t make sense for Australia on economic grounds. (not that this will stop industry asking for gov handouts) What it does very well though is delay decarbonisation – and people on the street are now saying they want to get nuclear so they don’t have to cut back on burning carbon. Someone the other day said that to understand what’s really going on you should ask who benefits?
You got it wrong. The Mile End was because of lack of maintenance causing overheating due to the cooling pumps failing. That possibility was eliminated in the future by a law insisting that all of their reactors have a large tank of cooling water to gravity feed the reactors for cooling. It cannot happen again. It needs to be added that the cooling pumps ate always duplicated so that there is always a spare. That is normal practice amongst engineers.
Chernobyl was like no other nuclear power station. It was designed as is normal in nuclear statins to automatically close down when it overheats, but the Russians did a stupid thing. That had a pushbutton on the control panel allowing the shutdown to be overwritten. This would never be allowed in any of the Western power stations. At an international post mortem the Western engineers could not believe that the Russian design had allowed that.
The situation was made worse by the Russian use of carbon in the control rods which can be set on fire. The Western reactors all use a less inflatable material. Then to top it all the Russian reactors do not have a protective outer concrete shell which all of the non Russian reactors have.
Fukushima was different. In an area notable for tsunamis the designers put the switch gear that controls the cooling pumps in the basement where they could be flooded and put out of action. This ridiculous mistake was noticed by the installation engineers who suggested that they be placed on higher ground. The management insisted instead of a protective wall high enough to stop flooding but the tsunami was more than usual and that was significant.
Three very bad designs and not at all typical. Worse events have occurred with dams in hydro systems breaking down.
Several hundred successful designs using standard well known safety techniques have proven their success. As an engineer with years of experience in power station design I have the knowledge to know this. Unfortunately the newspaper journalists lack this knowledge and experience and have written lies and nonsense on the subject. Scientific American is a recomended reliable reporter on engineering subjects.
Certainly nuclear power is very much safer than extreme climate warming.
Well, yes, so human error is also responsible for Fukushima in Japan where engineering is excellent.
I also see that one of the most highly regarded engineering companies in the world, Boeing, failed miserably to enforce its own (voluntary) standards, and it’s directly entrusted with hundreds of lives at a time.
Over 15 years at The Fifth Estate we’ve seen several very well intentioned brilliant engineering solutions fail thanks to unintended consequences and the inability of humans to accurately read the future.
Today, sadly technology and science is no longer our north star. No matter how brilliant the science and logic, we make economics and cost cutting the priority. This is part and parcel of the ideology and politics of small government, low regulation or self regulation, little to no enforcement and the rule of the market. So no, I do not trust brilliant engineering or excellent laws for these reasons.
By the way brilliant engineering also says we can save the planet now by drastically slashing our demand for energy to near zero by demand management, total rollout of solar on all suitable roofs and extreme energy efficiency like Amory Lovins says. But it doesn’t happen.
Human error and human weakness again.
And wow if we could access the enormous funds going into the nuclear push right now and redirect them to low tech human behaviour change and high tech extreme energy efficiency we could stop climate change in its tracks. (Well stop it worsening at least)
Yes engineering, medicine and other science based technologies make mistakes. But the successes far, far exceed the failures. Otherwise we would be still living in caves and living mainly for only 50 years if we were lucky.
Aircraft still fly in our skies. We have cures for most diseases despite the failures. Modern technology works to eliminate the human errors as far as possible. We are able to cut down drastically car accidents with technology that overcomes human mistakes.
What happened with Boeing and Fukushima were not due to human error but a failure of management. The problems were not technical, the solution was there but human lack of action failed. The wrong people were able to make the decisions. This is a difficulty of humans and not technology.
And engineers have never claimed that the planet can be saved by slashing our demand for energy to near zero. It is zero carbon emissions, that is not the same as zero energy. Nuclear stations can and do help in that.
I agree with you entirely Peter. And I guess that’s what I wanted to say – humans are highly fallible! Which is why we can take the risk with some tech that things will fail but with nuclear the consequences are catastrophic. I guess we can say the same for fossil fuels and the toxic chemicals we’ve unleashed on the planet, TBH.
I have tried to explain to you as an engineer with many years experience that over 400 nuclear power stations are in existence and have been made safe, some with nearly 60 years of experience behind them.
The few failures were caused not by human error which but by non engineers ignoring well tested and proven automatic safety measures. These measures include duplication of safety techniques to make sure one at least will work. And the properly designed ones are further protected with concrete enclosures which in the case of Mile Island worked perfectly and no one was hurt.
The real danger is not from nuclear stations but from fossil fuelled ones, which are guaranteed to be unsafe to the environment.
You said it again Peter! Failures occur because of people failing to do the right thing. Did not mean to ping engineers. And yes our biggest common enemies are most definitely fossil fuels. However the focus on nuclear will allow oil coal and gas to proliferate as, for Australia, it’s a distraction that asks us not to worry till we get the yellow (not silver) bullet. By which time we’ll be in a very bad way indeed.