Climate Cult and Blackout Minister Chris Bowen is turning Australia into an energy backwater with his nuclearphobia. It’s a very serious ideological condition, from which Bowen may not recover.
And things are set to get worse when the professional champagne class arrive in Australia next year for COP31.
Surely a climate-fest sounds like a healthy social event for Bowen? Well, not really. At COP28, 20 countries promised to triple nuclear capacity by 2050 because they believe it ‘plays a key role in reaching Net Zero’. These countries also did unspeakable things, like label nuclear energy the ‘second-largest source of clean dispatchable baseload energy’.
Even the United Nations, architects of the Net Zero religion, describe nuclear as ‘an important source of low-carbon electricity and heat that contributes to attaining carbon neutrality’.
But according to Australia’s Climate Change and Energy Minister, nuclear is a ‘fantasy’ and ‘risky scam’.
He’ll have to frisk the signatories for nuclear-friendly views at the COP31 door and pass around biodegradable wind-turbine-themed cocktail swizzles to remind them why they’re there … to prop up China’s renewable energy industry with Australian taxpayer money.
While it is true that Bowen’s irrational fear of efficient, reliable, and zero-emission energy is embarrassing, it might also be a threat to national security.
Australia was given a really big hint last week that a geopolitical incident we can’t talk or handshake our way out of is on the horizon.
The Executive Order Deploying Nuclear Reactors for National Security was signed on May 23 by President Donald Trump. It was launched in tandem with another Executive Order, Usher in a Nuclear Renaissance, Restore Gold Standard Science.
Together, these instruct US partners to deploy advanced nuclear technologies to meet national security objectives and stop wasting money on pointless green tech.
This means bye-bye lucrative grants. Roughly $3.7 billion-worth across 24 green projects such as carbon capture, climate-friendly cement production, and green glass furnaces was axed today. Trump insisted these grants ‘failed to advance the energy needs of the American people’ and was basically a waste of money.
In other words, America is gutting the Net Zero sham to fund a nuclear future.
Strange that we don’t have a comment from Chris Bowen about why the most powerful nation in the world is investing in something his department has written off as a fantasy.
Perhaps the minister doesn’t have an answer…
Between American and the Labor Party, only one can be correct about nuclear and it is probably the entity in charge of global security.
For Australian journalists to ignore this is, frankly, insane.
We should be reading headlines such as, Obsolete Bowen left behind by US nuclear age or Backward Bowen’s energy nightmare.
Trump’s Executive Orders insist that enormous nuclear power banks will be built at speed to power AI computing infrastructure, which coincides with a series of deals done with the UAE earlier this month.
America’s Open AI is set to build the largest AI data centres in history in Abu Dhabi thanks to a deal brokered by Trump worth hundreds of billions. China is said to be deeply rattled.
Why the UAE? Because it has cheap, reliable energy – something Australia can no longer claim thanks to the political sabotage of Net Zero and China’s truly crap wind turbines, solar panels, and batteries whose only future is a rubbish tip.
As a fan of the Stargate TV series, I couldn’t help but grin at the name of one project worth $500 billion: The Stargate Project.
This project will not only support the re-industrialisation of the United States, but also provide strategic capability to protect the national security of America and its allies. The initial equity funders in Stargate are SoftBank, OpenAI, Oracle, and MGX.
America is going to sit on the shoulders of UAE money and energy so that it can stay ahead of China in the AI race while building nuclear reactors to repair its energy infrastructure and guarantee that if China, the Middle East, Europe, or the Pacific go tits-up, America’s defence will remain unwavering.
(Personally, I doubt the whole ‘compute, not crude’ philosophy coming out of Washington DC alongside this story. That’s likely a marketing initiative and a bit of green pandering to the weeping Democrats.)
‘Over the last 30 years, we stopped building nuclear reactors in America. That ends now. Today’s Executive Orders are the most significant nuclear regulatory reform actions taken in decades. We are restoring a strong American nuclear industrial base, rebuilding a secure and sovereign domestic nuclear fuel supply chain, and leading the world towards a future fuelled by American nuclear energy. These actions are critical to American energy independence and continued dominance in AI and other energy technologies.’
That was a message from Michael Kratsios, the Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology.
Here’s a bit Bowen will love, and maybe even the Sussan Ley ‘modern’ Liberals. From the US Energy Secretary, Chris Wright:
‘For too long, America’s nuclear energy industry has been stymied by red tape and outdated government policies, but thanks to President Trump, the American nuclear renaissance is finally here. With the emergence of AI and President Trump’s pro-American manufacturing policies at work, American civil nuclear energy is being unleashed at the perfect time. Nuclear has the potential to be the greatest source of energy addition. It works whether the wind is blowing, or the sun is shining, is possible anywhere and at different scales.’
Are we supposed to believe that the anti-nuclear establishment in Australia are better informed than these individuals?
It seems unlikely.
And just because Dutton and his team were incapable of promoting nuclear to the masses, it doesn’t mean the technology was wrong, only that they were incompetent campaigners.
Included in Trump’s order is a critical direction to the Secretary of the Army ‘to establish a program of record to build a nuclear reactor at a domestic military installation to commence operations within the next three years’.
The Secretary of Energy has been told to ‘designate AI data centres’ to be operated within or alongside the Department of Energy. These will include infrastructure critical to defence. They have been given 30 months to complete national security objectives.
To ensure this can be done on time, nuclear is being given certain exclusions from the National Environmental Policy Act.
The US’s nuclear plan centres around military installations, defence AI, and critical energy networks.
If you read between the lines, Trump wants defence systems independent of fossil fuels and Chinese-owned renewables. Let’s see if Chris Bowen can work out why.
Considering Australia has one of the richest uranium sources in the world, it’s astonishing the government aren’t chirping up and trying to offer a way out of the financial crisis through major export deals to the US.
From this point forward, nuclear energy and Artificial Intelligence military-grade technology are joined at the hip.
It is impossible for the Australian Labor Party to make bold claims about being a global energy power or leader in AI without the inclusion of nuclear.
So, what’s our progress?
If you go to the Australian Department of Industry, Science, and Resources, you will find the following message:
Artificial Intelligence: We are committed to ensuring all Australians share the benefits of artificial intelligence (AI).
Our goals as a nation are to ‘quickly do simple tasks like writing emails’, automating the manufacturing and agricultural industries (if they still exist), improving decision-making (about what?), and ‘introducing new ways of tailoring services’.
Then there is a whole panic about the pervasive risk AI poses and how that can be regulated by yet more government intervention. While America is focused on building nuclear plants to power defence industry AI we’ve got two clickable options about a Voluntary AI Safety Standard, and Proposed mandatory guardrails for AI in high-risk settings.
This isn’t a joke.
We have committed $1 billion to this in the 2022-23 Budget.
There is even a new government initiative (surprise) under the Department of Industry, Science, and Resources called the National Artificial Intelligence Centre.
It is very difficult to see what, if anything, all this money has produced.
We appear to be trapped in this weird universe of shiny government brochures, half of which say, The world is nigh, we need Net Zero and the other half read, The future is coming, we need AI.
The answer to both of these things would seemingly be nuclear energy but Labor, the Greens, and most of the soggy Liberals are sitting atop their climate change money like a nest of brooding dragons.
Flat White is written by Alexandra Marshall. If you would like to support her work, shout her a coffee over at donor-box.