Peter Dutton’s plan is like cheese from Chernobyl

Peter Dutton is having a Walter Mitty moment and imagining himself to be the genuine article — the strong, decisive alternative PM to the encumbered one that struggles to summon a modicum of motivation. Notably, according to Mark McGlashan and John Mercer and their 2023 book Toxic Masculinity: Masculinity, Sex, and Popular Culture, in our current state of polarising the planet, politicians have made “an unapologetic, rugged masculinity central to their election platforms”.

Dutton indubitably fits the bill, but his nuclear powerplay is not just a case of toxic masculinity in an endeavour to improve his electability. It’s much more complex than that.

Is it possible to have a mature conversation about anything bordering on provocative, prickly, or positively novel? Nuclear power plants in Australia fall into all three of these anathemas to our cultural heritage: beach life, barbeques, and our all-around love of the outdoors and carefree approach to life. At least, that’s how we like to view ourselves. But life in the 2020s is just not so simple.

Suspending the clash of complexity and our carefree culture for a moment, is it even worthwhile having the nuclear powerplant conversation? I would say, “Of course it is,” but only if we stick to the science-based facts and do not stray into a state of denial, misinformation, and disinformation, as we have with climate change over the past several decades.

She won’t be right, mate

Most importantly, we must not lose sight of the science-based fact that, with respect to any source of energy, we have progressively placed ourselves in a most precarious predicament. Our love affair with fossil fuels, which have powered our economy since its inception, has culminated in a climate crisis that does not augur well with a carefree culture and a “she’ll be right, Mate” solution.

Mindful also that the convenience of power to the home is not lost on those who can no longer afford it, let alone afford to buy their own home. According to the US consultancy group Demographia and their 2024 International Housing Affordability report that evaluates housing affordability using a median price to income ratio and covering 94 major markets across eight nations, including Australia, Canada, China, Ireland, New Zealand, Singapore, the UK, and the US, housing in Australia is at the pointy end of the global unaffordability index at “impossibly unaffordable”.

The cost of energy worldwide

Power to the home hasn’t reached such prohibitive heights but remains a prickly point of political friction. According to Statista’s global household electricity comparison, the cost of electricity in Australia is currently around $0.42 a kWh, which is significantly higher than the US ($0.26 a kWh) and China ($0.12 a kWh) but way lower than Ireland (0.80 a kWh), Italy ($0.69 a kWh), and the UK (AU$0.66 a kWh). Note that these figures have been converted from $US to $A and include all items in the electricity bill.

Still, the energy cost to Australian homes and businesses and, in particular, net zero by 2050 doesn’t mean much when you’re living in a tent in the local park. Or a mother with two kids fleeing domestic violence and forced to live in a car. But if you are lucky enough to have a roof over your head, heating the home becomes a hot topic when winter strikes and temperatures plummet.

Poor housing – a major issue with our heating bills

Many of our homes are not built for a prolonged winter chill; similarly, for a blistering summer heatwave. A 2023 study found that 81 per cent of Australian homes were below WHO’s Housing and Health guideline for a minimum indoor temperature of 18 °C throughout winter (June to August 2022). Average winter indoor temperatures hovered around 16.5 ± 2.7 °C across all homes, with little variance between locations.

Inadequate insulation installed incorrectly was the main culprit. Hence the broad use of outdated heaters and the adoption of airconditioning to heat and cool internal environments requiring vast amounts of electricity and the subsequent burning of vast amounts of fossil fuels that produce vast amounts of CO2.

So, as a clean form of energy, what’s all the kerfuffle over nuclear power that has existed since the 1950s? First, in Australia, ignorance is bliss. The First Nations Voice to Parliament referendum in October 2023 proved that with a majority adopting the nonsensical ethos “if you don’t know, vote no” — how embarrassing for a supposed learned nation to remonstrate under a positively infantile oxymoron.

Second, and a particular maddening case in point, “learned”, or lack thereof, is the operative word here. Post Peter Dutton’s policy announcement to build seven nuclear powerplants with multiple rectors, we similarly find that according to the latest poll conducted by a News Corp survey of 923 random voters over the weekend of 22/23 June 2024, six out of 10 participants said they supported nuclear in the energy mix as a cheap and reliable option.

Third, it’s no secret that News Corp’s Sky News and the Liberal Coalition operate in synchrony.

The Liberal Coalition can be considered News Corp’s political arm. In the same way, Sky News is considered News Corp’s propaganda arm. Not surprisingly, then, News Corp, the propagator of diversion, distraction, and denial, is a principal advocate of going nuclear. Its true intent for this is unclear. Delaying the transition to renewables to appease the fossil fuel fraternity is a likely clandestine goal.

Nuclear is twice the price of renewables

But nuclear power must pass more than News Corp’s proverbial pub test. There are social, economic, and environmental hurdles to overcome. Combined, they represent a serious challenge, especially when the CSIRO (the Australian government’s peak scientific body), in its recently published 2024 GenCost report, has already ruled nuclear powerplants a no-go: too costly, too late, and the electricity they generate too expensive at about twice the cost of renewables.

Yes, twice the cost! This is no less than an in-your-face prohibitive factor that seems lost on the Liberal Coalition and a good proportion of News Corp’s cohort of survey participants. Nonetheless, there is support, even if it makes no sense and the rationale is paper-thin.

Let’s not also forget that major infrastructure projects, much less contentious than nuclear powerplants, require between five and 10 years of approvals and consultancy before construction begins. Even if approvals are expedited, and construction starts within five years, the process from construction to online operation of a nuclear powerplant would take at least six to eight years, with the former considered a relatively good build time.

Build time, however, can vary significantly depending on the availability of a skilled workforce, environmental and safety standards, good governance and best practices, cultural factors, and levels of litigation. The latter is commonly the most challenging hurdle to negotiate successfully. Seven multiple-reactor nuclear powerplants would presumably blow out costs and timelines. Cost and timeline blowouts seem inevitable these days.

Moreover, to achieve a mandate to go nuclear and implement their proposal, the Liberal Coalition must win the next federal election, which could be as much as 12 months away. In the meantime, the Liberals have once again successfully stalled the renewables rollout by creating investment uncertainty.

If things do go to plan, a best-case scenario would see the first nuclear power plant come online around 2037, roughly in line with the Liberal Coalition’s projections of 2035 to 2037. Suffice it to say that things rarely go to plan for projects with so many multifaceted and contentious variables attached. Twenty-forty to 2050 is a more realistic completion date.

In the “here and now” climate emergency, however, that’s like asking someone to postpone lifesaving medical treatment for 12 months when they only have a month to live. And the transition to clean, renewable energy via solar, wind, and hydro is well underway, albeit encountering both real and hyped-up community resistance. Transitioning to renewables was always going to be a massive task but consider the downside if we don’t get it done.

There’s something natural, even spiritual, about getting our energy from the wind and the sun. The sun powers everything, including us. That might not suffice for a sound socioeconomic argument, but purposefully storing toxic radioactive waste on the Earth seems unnatural and anti-biophilic, especially at a time when we must mature spiritually and socially, and at a rapid pace, to overcome significant challenges like poverty, domestic violence, cybercrime, and the climate and environmental crises.

Radioactivity is released at every phase of nuclear power production – Indigenous people may well be bearing the brunt…again

Conversely, radioactivity is released at every phase of nuclear power production — from mining uranium to electricity generation to radioactive waste production and its safe storage. Radium-226, polonium-210, and radon-222 (a gas) are just a few deadly by-products. Mill tailings that come from processing the ore contain toxic heavy metals, including molybdenum, arsenic, and vanadium, that find their way into our atmosphere, oceans, and rivers and which disproportionately impact children, women, especially pregnant women, and Indigenous communities.

Finally, a long-argued polemical point of public concern is where to store high-level radioactive waste. Safely storing radioactive waste, usually in deep geological locations, must endure hundreds of thousands of years of planetary and societal change, lest we forget exactly where it’s buried.

This brings us to the most vulnerable. Compounded by discrimination and socioeconomic and cultural factors, Indigenous communities invariably bear the brunt of nuclear power production.

The Ranger Uranium mine

There is convincing evidence, albeit yet to be proven, that after 40 years of mining the Northern Territory’s Ranger Uranium mine, which is surrounded by the Kakadu and was closed in 2021, Indigenous Australians living in the region experienced stillbirth rates double those of Aboriginal people elsewhere in the Top End, and cancer rates almost 50 per cent higher. There is a decided distrust of large mining multinationals that legally loot our natural resources, leaving toxic cesspools that are a blight on the country. Future uranium miners should be considered likewise.

How long do we, the people, acquiesce to the diminishing returns of our political leadership? The numbskullery and deceit of decades of puffery and policy have created excessive inequality that increases each time the RBA raises interest rates to avert inflation, destroying lives and families as they facilitate the flow of wealth from the poor to the rich by instigating a recession that the impoverished had to have?

Peter Dutton’s nuclear powerplay is full of the same numbskullery and puerile puffery — bordering on bullshit — that we have become accustomed to. Let’s not fall for it this time.