The debate around nuclear power in Australia isn'tjust political. There's also a generational divide
For Sue Hazeldine,the fight against nuclear energy is personal and goes back decades. (ABCNews: Carl Saville)© Provided by ABC News (AU)
Driving her trusty red Camry, wearinga T-shirt emblazoned with "Australian Nuclear Free Alliance", AuntySue Hazeldine is on a cross-country mission.
"We've travelled a long way and a lot of miles," shetells 7.30 somewhere between her home at Ceduna inSouth Australia and Port Kembla in New South Wales.
Her latest target is AUKUS,specifically the part of the security pact between Australia, the US and UKthat will as one pillar see Australia acquire a fleet of nuclear-poweredsubmarines that could one day rotate through "thebeautiful waters" of Port Kembla.
For Aunty Sue, this is deeply personal.
"I was about two years old when the atomic tests started atMaralinga … I was on a mission called Koonibba," she recalls.
"I don't remember much of the tests, of course, but my oldies toldme things about the Nullarbor dust storm.
"The kids all thought it was a dust storm coming in and the oldiesare yelling at them to get in the house because they knew it was poison."
She later developed thyroid cancer and from then on, she decided to"fight anything nuclear".
In the 1950s and 60s, Britain conducted a dozen nuclear tests atMaralinga in South Australia and the Montebello Islands off Western Australia,scarring a landscape and a people, while helping to sow the seeds of a deepanti-nuclear movement.
Palm Sunday rallies drew hundreds of thousands of Australians protestingthe proliferation of nuclear weapons, and later, France's controversial nucleartesting program in the Pacific — a campaign fuelled further by the sinking ofGreenpeace's Rainbow Warrior boat by French agents in Auckland.
The Cold War also cast a long shadow.
It would influence a generation of trade union and Labor leaders andultimately, state and federal policies too.
To this day, Australia — a major uranium exporter — has just one nuclearresearch reactor at Lucas Heights in Sydney that produces life-saving medicinesfor cancer detection and treatment.
All other installations — including nuclear power — are banned.
Ban on nuclear'stunted' the debate
Sydney-based lawyer Helen Cook has just finished drafting a nationalnuclear law for the Philippines government, one of several in the regionconsidering nuclear to cut emissions and increase energy security.
She spent over a decade working overseas, including the United States —home to more than 90 nuclear reactors — and says colleagues would often hearher Aussie accent and immediately ask why Australia had banned nuclear energy.
"I found it a very difficult question to answer other than simplyto use my own experience, which was to say that when I left Australia, I didn'tknow anything about nuclear energy," she says, emphasising:"Literally nothing."
Now recognised as an international expert, Ms Cook says she's found mostAustralians she talks to are curious about nuclear and she hasn't received thenegative reaction she expected.
2024, it seems, is a different time to just two decades ago.
The year was 1998 and prime minister John Howard needed the support ofthe Greens and Democrats in the Senate to pass new laws upgrading the LucasHeights reactor.
They would only agree if he added an amendment prohibiting "certainnuclear installations" including a nuclear power plant.
The same ban was later added to federal environmental laws andQueensland, Victoria and New South Wales doubled down, forbidding nuclear powerin their states too.
When asked what impact these bans had on the nuclear debate inAustralia, nuclear engineer and Australian Nuclear Association presidentMark Ho has a simple answer. It's stunted the conversation.
"A lot of countries are using nuclear to decarbonise. The questionis whether we should lift the ban," Dr Ho says.
"I think we should. It's [been] a long time coming."
Thirty-two countries currently operate around 440 nuclear reactors,supplying 10 per cent of the world's energy.
'Plan B'?
The Coalition, now led by Peter Dutton, wants Australia to be amongthem.
He's preparing to take an energy policy to the next election thatincludes a promise to lift the ban and explore the use of both large-scale andsmall modular reactors, or SMRs, possibly on the site of retiring coal-firedpower stations.
Mr Dutton believes the world has changed since Australia last reallyconsidered the question of nuclear power under Mr Howard.
Australia has committed to achieving net zero emissions by 2050, coal isexiting the grid, power prices are rising and there's a growing backlash in parts of regionalAustralia to the massive expansion of wind, solar andtransmission projects.
Nuclear power plants, conversely, have a small footprint and perform asimilar "firming" or "baseload" role to coal and gas,without the emissions.
But few have been built since the 1990s and the ones that have, havetypically been beset by delays and huge cost blowouts. And that's what thepolitical debate has boiled down to: cost and time.
Labor — long opposed to nuclear — isn't considering any use of atechnology it believes is eye-wateringly expensive and too poisonous to sell tothe electorate. It's banking on a grid dominated by renewables to meetAustralia's future energy needs and mandated climate targets.
Tony Wood is the Grattan Institute's energy director and agrees thatright now, the economics for nuclear power "are terrible".
But in the midst of a challenging, once-in-a-century energy transition,Mr Wood is also technology agnostic and reckons Australia would be wise toconsider a plan B, just in case.
"Personally, I think Australia should have a grown-up discussionaround the role of nuclear and I don't think the ban helps that," he says.
"There are some significant unknowns about nuclear, but the promiseof small modular reactors [SMRs] is quite attractive to Australia because ifyou could dramatically drive down the cost, then that could be interesting inthe future and so we should watch that."
According to Dr Ho, SMRs are an attractive prospect because they'resmaller, safer, cheaper to build and easier to deploy than large-scalereactors.
"Their targeted time frames are about 3 to 5 years for constructioncompared to say 5 to 8 years for large nuclear," he says.
Several designs are in development, with the most advanced aiming to becompleted around 2030.
In its GenCost report, the CSIRO estimated the capital costs of an SMRwould top $31,000 per kilowatt, compared with $3,040/kW for wind and $1,525/kWfor large-scale solar.
However, those figures are contested.
A peer-reviewed 2020 study by the University of Queensland estimated thecost would be between $4,700/kW and $9,900/kW. The report says the capitalcosts would be recovered over the lifetime of the project.
On the question of timing, Ms Cook cites the International Atomic EnergyAgency's own figures, which suggest a country can go from considering nuclearenergy to having nuclear energy in its grid within 10 to 15 years.
"And that is starting from scratch," she adds.
"Australia is not starting from scratch. Australia has existingnuclear infrastructure that we would build up if we decided to go down anuclear path."
Are attitudeschanging?
The biggest obstacle to change, as Tony Wood sees it, is that nuclear bydefinition "sounds scary".
But as Ms Cook points out, the three countries where the worst nucleardisasters have taken place — the United States, Japan, and Ukraine — are notjust doubling down but "trebling down on their nuclear generationcommitments".
"The United States, Japan and Ukraine are signatories to the pledgethat was made at COP28 to triple our global nuclear energy capacity by2050," she says.
"To me, that is significant."
There are signs too that attitudes might be shifting — albeit fordifferent reasons.
While the labour movement is broadly anti-nuclear, the AustralianWorkers' Union has always been open to nuclear energy for the jobs andenergy-intensive industries it could support.
The Victorian branch of the Mining and Energy Union also becamepro-nuclear following the shock closure of the Hazelwood coal-fired powerstation in 2017, leaving nearly 1,000 workers without jobs.
Essential polling suggests about half of Australians back thedevelopment of nuclear power and a recent Newspoll found 55 per cent ofrespondents supported the use of small modular reactors on the site of retiringcoal-fired power stations.
Support was highest among younger Australians.
"Young people are very open to it," says associate professorEdward Obbard, the head of nuclear engineering at UNSW.
"They don't have the same kind of social upbringing that the Boomerand Gen X's did of living through the Cold War and nuclear disarmament and thatwhole tumultuous period.
"Nowadays people think the greatest threat to their future isclimate change and they're willing to consider all good solutions tothat."
Dr Obbard is training the next generation of engineers who will be ingreater demand thanks to AUKUS — a pact that will force Australia to build up anuclear workforce and settle on a location to store the waste, regardless ofwhether it pursues nuclear power.
He was "amazed" by the "deafening silence" when thesubmarine plans were announced and believes it has, unquestionably, changed thescene for nuclear more broadly.
"For me, the case to use nuclear energy is actually a moral casebecause it is an environmentally low-impact way to decarbonise," Dr Obbardsays.
For Aunty Sue Hazeldine, nuclear power would leave quite a differentlegacy.
"We must think about the next generation and what are we going toleave them. Are we going to leave them nice clean fresh air? Or nuclear minesand waste dumps?" she asks.
In her opinion, there's no place for nuclear anywhere. Her mission isfar from over.
