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Crippled by its suicidal obsession with wind and solar, Australia is screaming out for politicians with the wit and temerity to push the nuclear option.

Power prices will continue to rocket, and the routine load shedding and blackouts suffered in SA will eventually burst across the border, plunging Victorians, among others, into Stone Age gloom.

Blessed with abundant reserves of coal and gas, Australia’s energy crisis sounds as nonsensical, as it is perfectly avoidable.

Try getting an Australian politician to explain why Australia, as the world’s largest exporter of uranium, is the only G20 Nation without nuclear power, going so far as to legislate to prohibit the processing of uranium and its use as a fuel for power generation. The Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act and the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Act, specifically prohibit nuclear fuel fabrication, power, enrichment or reprocessing facilities.

So far, so ridiculous.

Sure enough, coal-fired plant will continue to power Australians for the foreseeable future. But, for as long as politicians on both sides of the fence remain wedded to the concept that carbon dioxide gas is ‘pollution’, responsible for killing the planet (rather than greening it), energy sources that emit CO2 will have plenty of ill-informed enemies.

That Australia does not have any nuclear power plants astonishes the French, Americans, Canadians, Japanese and Chinese; just to name a few of the 30 countries where you will find nearly 450 nuclear reactors currently operating – their combined output accounts for over 11% of global electricity production – with another 15 countries currently building 60 reactors among them.

Maybe one day, Australia will grow up and join the rest of the world.

STT cops plenty of flak for promoting nuclear power, our response to which is that we’ll stop advocating for nuclear power just as soon as we’re presented with a sensible argument against it.

Here’s The Australian’s Adam Creighton with a pretty sensible argument in favour of it.

South Australia could lead nation with nuclear power development

The Australian

Adam Creighton

16 March 2018

South Australia is crying out for a new industry to replace car manufacturing and give a once-great state some self-respect and influence again. South Australian wine is great, but it hasn’t been enough to wrench Adelaide out of the orbit of Melbourne and Sydney, which have progressively bought out its biggest companies, sucking away much of its managerial and professional class.

Becoming the state that ­powers the nation would be one way to restore self-esteem. The big disappointment in South Australia’s election campaign is that none of the major political parties has had the courage to declare South Australia a perfect site for Australia’s first electricity-generating nuclear reactor, one that could help power the eastern states.

Let’s face it, whoever wins the state election tomorrow won’t make much difference to the state’s long-term fortunes. A look at the major parties’ electoral platforms reveals the same rats-and-mice populist so-called policies that animate most state elections. Erode the payroll tax base here, a few tokenistic handouts there.

There’s not much difference between Liberal and Labor on ­energy. The Weatherill government wants to subsidise a big ­battery, the Liberal opposition wants subsidised small ones, ­having announced a $100 million plan to help households buy them.

Any of the three parties could have declared South Australia’s economic renaissance lay not in wind turbines and batteries, giant or small, but in a hi-tech nuclear reactor with a research facility hooked into the University of ­Adelaide. The bigger the better, ensuring the power could for ­generations provide no-emission, readily available energy to the ­National Electricity Market.

States have lost much of their financial clout to Canberra, but they do have freedom to zone, commission and subsidise.

South Australia could lobby the federal government to end the crazy law that makes Australia the only G20 country with a ban on nuclear energy, despite having among the largest uranium ­reserves in the world.

It could make the commonwealth’s life a lot easier by volunteering a site for a nuclear reactor. It could pick, say, Port Augusta, which would provide any reactor water access. It would also provide scope in decades to build or host a nuclear submarine fleet, if geo­politics developments required it. Port Augusta is a city suffering from huge economic and social problems, which could be allayed by the construction and operation of a state-of-the-art reactor.

None of the three major parties have even mentioned the “n” word in their policy platforms. Yet it’s not the political poison some think. A 2017 survey of households conducted by the Australian ­National University — the Beliefs and Attitudes Towards Science Survey — showed more than 41 per cent of Australians were in favour of nuclear power plants to generate electricity. Only 25 per cent were “strongly opposed”, and less than half were “against”. You read that correctly.

Remarkably, only 16 per cent of respondents were in favour of ­increased use of fracking, and ­almost 50 per cent were strongly against it. So why are we pursuing fracking and coal-seam gas?

A nuclear power station would cut long-term carbon emissions (some smarter Greens might even support it), bolster high-income STEM jobs, enhancing Australia’s national security and diversifying our energy supply. SA Labor had the foresight to have a royal ­commission into ­nuclear power. Its 2016 report sadly excited much debate. “The commission did not find that ­nuclear power is ‘too expensive’ to be viable or that it is ‘yesterday’s technology’. Rather, it found that a nuclear power plant of currently available size at current costs of construction would not be viable in the South Australian market under current market rules,” it ­reported.

Nuclear energy isn’t being phased out. Nuclear power generation makes up a fifth of US electricity supply. China has 37 plans in operation and 20 under construction. About 40 new countries are showing strong interest in launching a nuclear power program for the first time, according to the World Nuclear Association.

Bangladesh has already poured concrete for its first nuclear reactor — with know-how supplied by Russia. Wouldn’t it have been nice if Australian engineers were being put to good use in that country of 170 million people? Of course, Britain is building nuclear reactors too.

Yes it’s expensive. But so are the subsidies to renewable energy, which don’t show up on government budgets but are no less real. The cost of federal and state subsidies to renewable energy are very hard to quantify in dollars, but they are large. And they are certainly large enough to have paid for construction of a nuclear power station by now, which would have solved many of our energy problems.

To build Australia’s first major nuclear reactor might even attract cut-price offers from firms eager for the knowledge. Nuclear energy is it’s 100 per cent reliable and 100 per cent emission-free. This is why countries like France, a big chunk of whose electricity is powered by nuclear fission, has such low per capita emissions and can sanctimoniously host summits about reducing global emissions.

South Australia couldn’t ­become a nuclear hub overnight. It’s a long-term goal. But preparation for it would lift the state’s importance within the country.

The Australian

In an otherwise brilliant article, Adam Creighton falls for the line tossed about by the anti-nuke crowd (read wind and solar subsidy seekers) that nuclear power is expensive. Yeah, right…

In nuclear powered France (the French get almost 75% of their power from nuclear plant), average retail power prices are around half those suffered in Australia’s wind and solar capital, South Australia.

Americans plugged into nuclear power from the beginning.

The USA, the world’s largest nuclear power generator, has 99 nuclear power reactors in 30 states, operated by 30 different power companies, and in 2016 they produced 805 TWh. Since 2001 these plants have achieved an average capacity factor of over 90%, generating up to 807 TWh per year and accounting for about 20% of total electricity generated.

Is it any surprise then, that average retail prices across the US are 1/3 of those in wind and sun powered SA?

The state of Pennsylvania recently sent a delegation to Australia, attempting to lure Australian industries there, with a sales pitch primarily based on cheap power, reliably delivered. Something Australian businesses no longer take for granted, here.

Pennsylvania is one of USA’s biggest nuclear power generators, with almost 40% of its power generated by nuclear plant.

According to the Energy Information Administration, commercial users in Pennsylvania are paying 8.85 cents per KWh, equating to US$88.50 per MWh. Industrial users are paying 6.67 cents per KWh, equating to US$66.70. Depending on the State they’re in, Australian commercial users are paying upwards of A$0.35 per KWh, or A$350 per MWh hour.

So, those claiming that nuclear power is expensive, need to try another angle.

Australia is destroying itself with an ideological obsession with the wind and sun. Which means that there’s no time like right now for leaders to step up and deliver a nuclear powered future.

Who knows, it could even work?: just like in the USA, France, China, India, South Korea, Sweden, Russia, Slovakia, Ukraine, Belgium, Hungary, the UAE, the UK, etc, etc…

We could go on to name all 30, but we’ve made our point. The sooner Australia’s gets with the program and features on that growing list, the better.