TC: Again, no. It is the highest of any energy source, but it is about 90 per cent because it, too, has maintenance downtime, where it is pulled back from full throttle. But the factors against building nuclear power stations in Australia right now are incontrovertible. The International Atomic Energy Agency publishes a guidelines handbook – basically a step-by-step guide on how to go nuclear in your country. It is the internationally recognised manual on what you have to do to go from zero to a functioning nuclear energy power plant. That manual says that the minimum time of establishment, starting from it being legal – which I might add, it is not in Australia at the moment – is 15 to 20 years. So the first big problem with nuclear in Australia is, what do we do to have reliable power in the 10-year gap between when most of the coal exits and only the first nuclear power plant could possibly be commissioned?
TC: Anyone telling you for political reasons that we can do this as a nation in less than 20 years or that that delay won’t cause terrible problems is divorced from reality in what they’re saying, Peter. I say this from the point of view of being an engineer who’s delivered billions, literally billions of dollars worth of energy projects throughout my life. Even 20 years is very optimistic. And then, with nuclear, you still haven’t solved the problem of cost. The most recent CSIRO annual report shows that the cost per gigawatt out of nuclear is five times more expensive per gigawatt than out of wind.
Fitz: Do you foresee the electricity bills in NSW and Australia going lower, as renewables keep coming online?
TC: Yes. And the more renewable energy there is, the lower those bills will be.
TC: When people ask me, am I anti-nuclear, I look them in the eye and I say “no, I’m anti-bullshit”. And what we’re hearing at the moment from the Coalition in terms of the timing and the costs of nuclear and where it fits into the energy grid … it is largely bullshit. We need to pull back from all of this. Renewables are the cheapest. They are reliable enough for what we need, they are the best way to bring down customer bills, and they are the best way for us to decarbonise our economy, which is what we have committed to do.
TC: I have looked at academic papers all across the world, as have my colleagues at the University of Wollongong. I remain unable to find any scientific studies that show that offshore wind energy technology has a negative impact on whales once it’s been constructed. That’s not to say that we don’t need to do more detailed environmental studies for the specific locations of these offshore wind farms in Australia. But without wanting to be too flippant, I do note that before any whale has reached the coast of the Illawarra or the Hunter, that whale has had to navigate icebergs, ships, offshore oil and gas rigs and undersea reefs. The ocean is very big, and whales are very good at navigating.
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