by MONICA O’SHEA – FORMER Liberal PM Malcolm Turnbull has opposed nuclear energy; instead promoting solar, wind and hydro – in which he has pecuniary interests.
Mr Turnbull, who served as prime minister from 2015 to 2018, said even if nuclear plants were not “hugely expensive” and take “decades to build,” they were “not the right fit for Australia’s energy mix”.
- Malcolm Turnbull 100 per cent supports Albanese’s opposition to nuclear.
- Disgusting former PM craves personal wealth ahead of families struggling with “renewable” power bills.
- Turnbull is a creature of the Left, yet not smart enough to disguise the fraud.
“Regarding nuclear: our big advantage is solar and wind. Especially solar, which is cheap and getting cheaper and easier to install,” he said on social media.
“However, that means we need to store excess electricity when it is in abundance and use it when it is not – hence batteries and pumped hydro.”
ON & OFF
Mr Turnbull said flexible and dispatchable generation was needed to complement renewables, which you can turn on and off.
“Nuclear plants do none of that. They run continuously. Cannot be turned on and off at the flick of a switch,” he said.
The former PM also criticised the Coalition’s reference to nuclear-powered subs to justify the move to nuclear energy.
“The reference to nuclear-powered subs is fatuous,” he said,
“The submarines to be acquired under AUKUS will use weapons-grade uranium in sealed reactors which deliberately cannot be maintained in Australia.”
Mr Turnbull supports P< Anthony Albanese’s opposition to nuclear, who aims to achieve net-zero with 100 per cent renewable energy supported by gas.
In contrast, Opposition Leader Peter Dutton has proposed building seven nuclear reactors in Australia if he wins the next federal election.
Speaking at the Liberal National Party State Convention in Brisbane this month, Mr Dutton said Australia would join the other top 19 economies in using zero-emission nuclear technology.
“It’s a choice between Labor’s recklessness that will see energy bills soar even more, or the Coalition’s plan for cheaper, cleaner and consistent energy – which includes Australia becoming a nuclear-powered nation,” he said.
“This is visionary policy unlike any put forward by a political Party this century.”
The Coalition has said that no country in the world relies entirely on solar and wind, but 32 operate zero-emissions nuclear plants and 50 are considering it.
Climate Change Minister Chris Bowen, however, has reiterated that nuclear power does not “stack up” and that it’s not a path he supports.
CRAZY
“Australia with our renewable resources would be crazy to go down—it would be a massive act of economic self-harm to go down the path of instituting the most expensive form of energy when we can capture the cheapest form of energy with our world-class, world-beating renewable resources,” Mr Bowen said.
The Labor Party aims for net-zero by 2050 and to reduce emissions by 43 per cent by 2030. The Coalition argues that the 2030 target is unachievable but supports the goal of net-zero by 2050.
In February, Mr Turnbull’s renewable energy company, Upper Hunter Hydro, won a competitive tender to explore hydrogen power storage in NSW.
Hydropower uses the energy of moving water to generate electricity. A pumped hydro scheme pumps water from a lower reservoir to a higher one to store energy when plenty of power is available and then pumps it back down when needed.
The company was founded by Mr Turnbull and hydro engineer Roger Gill. Mr Turnbull, his wife Lucy, and Mr Gill are among the company’s directors.
Mr Turnbull said he started Upper Hunter Hydro to deliver the “deep energy storage essential for a net-zero carbon world”.
“Wind and solar are both intermittent sources of generation and once coal-fired generation is phased out, we will be left with abundant, and much cheaper, variable generation but no continuous, baseload generation.
“That’s why long-duration energy storage in the form of pumped hydro is critical to ensuring energy is affordable and reliable,” he said earlier this year.PC
Hypocrites like Turnbull completely ignore the ecological destruction and land area required for solar, wind, hydro, battery and the long transmission lines required – which alone need 500,000 acres of cleared land. Apparently, you have to destroy the environment to save it from plant food producing CO2 emissions which are greening the planet https://www.nasa.gov/technology/carbon-dioxide-fertilization-greening-earth-study-finds/.
Implementing solar and wind (that I call unreliables) as primary power sources will at least triple our power costs, but more likely increase them 5-10 times and make no significant difference to global CO2 levels. That wind and solar need replacement every 20 years from Chinese made components is disgraceful pollution and resource destruction.
France transitioned to nearly all Nuclear power in only 20 years from the mid 1970s to 1990s and have the lowest electricity costs and emissions in Europe. Compare that to Germany who have the highest due to going down the unreliables path.
Except for stupid bureaucracy we could have 7 reactors running before we have to throw out all the millions of solar panels and wind turbines installed already and have to replace them all again.
CIS has some good discussions on Nuclear
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7qbrgcTKXPQ
https://youtu.be/Mw_AX9WaJ08?si=19tnQJgFvSiAPr9A
When will the Liberal Party grow a set and expel both Turnbull and Kean from the Party?
Where and who is the stumbling block for this to happen?
And why is it that someone from a faction has complete control? Hardly democratic.
The basics of energy are not understood by people like turnbull, or if they are then they are liars.
A modern grid can never be powered by wind & solar because they are weather dependent. That means they are unpredictable and unreliable. Over a year W&S only produce power for ~ 30% of the time. 30%!
Despite the CSIRO’s disgraceful report saying nuclear is more expensive than W&S, in fact W&S are prohibitively expensive because:
1 As above they only work 30% of the time and need massive backup
2 They need a new grid which is currently being built in Australia at a cost of over $1 trillion.
3 W&S produce the wrong sort of power, DC, which needs to be converted into AC, at great expense.
4 W&S have much shorter life spans than fossils and nuclear
5 W&S require rare materials for their construction.
The main objection about W&S is that they are justified by anthropogenic global warming, AGW, being real. AGW is NOT real and has been disproved. Therefore on any and all criteria W&S are not justified.
People who advocate them like turnbull are grifters who are destroying Australia.
Monarchists want Australia’s head of state to be inferior to the person who is the UK’s head of state.
What a disgusting cop out.
Hey Noel, could you please tell us what obsessive compulsive disorder is, and how it betrays a seriously twisted psychological pathology? Is it true that the best way to fix such a condition is to move to Antarctica?
I think you should be asking monarchists.
Why do they want our head of state to be appointed by, and act for, and answer to a foreign monarch?
Why do they want our head of state to be inferior to another country’s head of state?
Why are they too gutless to back Australia?
More from the Senate submission from SMR Technology Australia;
There is an example of a new nuclear reactor project in Australia. On 3rd September 1997 the Hon. Peter McGauran, Minister for Science and Technology, announced a replacement research reactor would be built at Lucas Heights. The construction licence was issued on 4th April 2002 by ARPANSA and the reactor entered production on 12 August 2006 – less than 9 years from decision to production. This multipurpose reactor (later named OPAL) is a much more complicated project than a power reactor and was a First of a Kind (FOAK) project.
An international example of nuclear construction is the four APR-1400 power reactors at the Barakah Nuclear Plant in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). The decision to deploy nuclear power was announced in April 2008 and construction of the first reactor completed in March 2018, again within 10 years. This project was from a “standing start” with no nuclear regulator or nuclear experience in the UAE, unlike Australia which has been involved in nuclear since the 1950’s.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) provided extensive support to the UAE as they did to Australia’s OPAL project and would do again when Australia starts its nuclear power program.
As with the French nuclear power program in the 1970’s, it demonstrates that nuclear projects can be completed in a ten-year timescale, if there is a will to succeed.
When Australia is looking at net zero by 2050, it is clear that there would still be time for nuclear power to make a significant contribution to our low emissions future, particularly as all the existing solar and wind plants will have to be replaced before 2050.
Development times for VRE projects and particularly supporting transmission can be long. In their report for GenCost 2023-24 Aurecon note that the development time for offshore wind is > 7 years.
There was a Senate Inquiry into energy and removing the legislated ban on nuclear power stations, noting that the ANSTO Lucas Heights nuclear reactor was never banned and the AUKUS nuclear submarines have been exempted already.
This is a submission to the Senate;
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
SMR-NT is concerned that the Australian Governments, Federal and State, are not receiving the complete up-to-date information to make an informed choice about the engineering and economic factors for the best mix of technologies for electricity supply.
For the GenCost 2023-24 report, CSIRO has again chosen not to receive expert advice on nuclear costs. Aurecon has again provided expert analysis of all technologies except nuclear. The last time that CSIRO obtained expert advice was from GHD in 2018 and, as raised in every nuclear inquiry since then, the accuracy of that analysis was very much in question, even to the extent that CSIRO admitted that the source of their high overnight cost was unclear.
CSIRO has attempted to prove that nuclear is too expensive to consider by quoting the cancelled UAMPS CFFP, but their analysis is misleading. We suggest that CSIRO should engage a consultancy with nuclear experience to review their analysis before the final version of GenCost 2023-24 is released. For example Hatch Consulting has extensive nuclear experience in Canada, USA and UK.
Quote: Mr Turnbull said flexible and dispatchable generation was needed to complement renewables, which you can turn on and off.
“Nuclear plants do none of that. They run continuously. Cannot be turned on and off at the flick of a switch,” he said.
The former PM also criticised the Coalition’s reference to nuclear-powered subs to justify the move to nuclear energy.
Please Note
For well over one hundred years coal fuelled power stations generated essential base load electricity, meaning minimum in the electricity transmission grid to supply on demand all consumers.
The power stations also generated the extra electricity for peak demand periods.
Power stations have steam powered turbines running the electricity generators/alternators and each location has multiples, for example recently closed Liddell NSW has 4 generator units each of 500 MW capacity. The grid controllers manage supply as needed and from whatever locations they need supply from – the grid interconnected spans SA TAS VIC NSW/ACT QLD.
To claim the nuclear cannot do the same or better supply is nonsense, only the coal heated boiler technology changes and related equipment to nuclear reactor and far more continuous heat available.
Each generator can be varied or stopped based on steam control.
Wind-Solar rely on uncontrollable conditions, when the wind doesn’t blow, when the Sun is clouded or at night, no electricity.
Please read the Dutton Plan for much more detailed information.
Dutton Plan
https://www.australianeedsnuclear.org.au