Why Not Nuclear?

Solving our energy crisis may help elect a government

If you’re one of the vast majority of average Australians who feel they’re working longer and harder than they’ve ever worked before but aren’t really getting ahead and, in fact, are slowly going backwards, there’s a very good reason.

Successive Australian governments over the past 20 years have failed to implement new proven, affordable and reliable energy technologies because they surrendered to bullying by international activists who gravitated to this country, while the rest of the world installed nuclear reactors and new high-tech coal-fired systems.

Labor and Liberal governments have been equally guilty in this failure and we’re all paying the price.

Foreign activists funded by government grants and contributions from well-meaning Australians have successfully brainwashed our youth and a sizable proportion of concerned city people into believing that, because sunshine and wind are free, these sources provide cheaper electricity than high-tech solutions adopted by advanced nations in the northern hemisphere.

These countries are equally concerned about the health of the planet; but they’ve done their numbers properly and refused to sacrifice their competitive edge in manufacturing and processing for alternative energy solutions that are only illusions created by activists who live the high life by milking public guilt

It’s no coincidence that European countries with the highest percentage of nuclear capacity have the lowest emissions, the lowest electricity prices, and the most competitive industries.

By contrast, Australian industry has been decimated and replaced by imports from countries like India and China who buy Australian coal to produce cheap electricity which allows them to manufacture solar panels that we can’t produce economically in Australia. If solar electricity was a cheaper source, China would simply install those solar panels in their own country, and reduce the purchase of Australian coal. They are in fact building more coal and nuclear plants.

Unfortunately, the brainwashing has been so successful that private capital will not invest in new generating capacity in Australia, and no amount of stick- waving by government will convince commercial companies to lower their electricity prices when there is a real shortage of supply.

Australia is on the brink of an irreversible plunge into renewable energy that has already proven intermittent and unreliable in states with the highest renewable targets.

Having sold off state- owned electricity generators to private enterprise, the Victorian government is going to hand out highly subsidised solar panels and batteries to solve a problem they created themselves.

Voters in wealthy Sydney suburbs like Malcolm Turnbull’s old seat of Wentworth seem to get all warm and fuzzy about giving refugees more help and shutting down coal-fired generators to save the reef,  while everyone else is struggling to maintain business and production that can keep enough money coming in to pay the bills for energy costs that have doubled in the past couple of years!

People who haven’t had a wage increase in the last 10 years can blame soaring energy costs for stealing their wage increase.

Parents who went without and saved to give their children a university education are very unhappy to see the limited career opportunities as Australian industries die.  A coffee barista or hotel cleaner doesn’t need a University degree, but there are plenty of university graduates caught in this trap.

 Pensioners who retired with a sizable nest egg but then had to go back to work can directly blame government because their nest egg wasn’t big enough to pay fuel and electricity bills that crept into all other living costs, while interest rates went the other way.

Surely, it’s time for some of our more courageous politicians, irrespective of party loyalty, to ignore the self-interest demands of foreign activists dragging this country down a path of economic and energy degradation and agree on a real energy policy that can take this country into the 21^st century and, once again, compete with the world’s best.

No doubt the foreign climate-activists will mount ferocious scare campaigns and refer to global warming, reef destruction, Hiroshima, Fukushima and Chernobyl. The federal government owes it to the Australian people to meet this challenge head on with verified statistics and credible facts from countries with nuclear energy plants that have never had a failure and are equally committed to the safety of their people – and to saving the planet.

Fact checks:

1. Australian taxpayers will pay more than $60 billion through federal renewable energy subsidies by 2030, enough to build about 10 large ­nuclear reactors. (1)
2. The wholesale cost of electricity has trebled in Victoria from $20 a megawatt hour to more than $60. In South Australia it has risen from $50 a MW/h to $110, leaving consumers paying the highest electricity costs in the world. (1)
3. Nuclear reactors emit no greenhouse gases during operation.  Over their full lifetimes, they result in comparable emissions to renewable forms of energy such as wind and solar (2)
4. Today, nuclear-generated electricity powers electric trains and subway cars and autos. It has also been used in propelling ships for more than 50 years. (2)
5. India plans to triple its nuclear capacity by 2024 to wean Asia’s third-largest economy off polluting fossil fuels (3)
6. As at November 2016 there are 186 nuclear power plants in Europe with a further 15 under construction (4)

1/ https://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/inquirer/nuclear-the-energy-alternative-for-australia-none-dare-name/news-story/34bb25412a576fbb343ae02d4365b0c2

2/ http://nuclearconnect.org/know-nuclear/talking-nuclear/top-10-myths-about-nuclear-energy

3/ https://www.businesstimes.com.sg/energy-commodities/us-and-india-commit-to-building-six-nuclear-power-plants/

4/ https://www.euronuclear.org/info/encyclopedia/n/nuclear-power-plant-europe.htm

Acknowledgement of Nation

We acknowledge the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples who have lived here since the Dreamtime.

We acknowledge the explorers and pioneers and their descendants who planted the British flag and Christian values on this continent, creating the Australian nation.

We acknowledge the Federal Commonwealth of Australia, created by the nation, under the Crown, to guard the liberty of ALL our citizens.

And we acknowledge those ‘New Australians’, who came here for a better future, and made this nation strong and prosperous.