Finally, Australia has a political leader with the gumption to say what everyone knows, but no-one is allowed to say: Australia needs nuclear energy.
The opposition leader, Peter Dutton, has ramped up calls for nuclear power in Australia, casting the move as a way to avoid dependence on wind and solar technology from China and a natural next step from the Aukus pact.
Every single point in that argument will, of course, drive the green-left into a feral frenzy. Anti-nuclear was, of course, the founding dogma of the green movement. Wind and solar are their greatest fetishes. The Aukus pact is an existential challenge to their fawning admiration for communist China.
Dutton couldn’t do more to rile up the green-left if he punched Greta Thunberg in the nose with a lump of coal.
But that’s not who the speech is aimed at. The speech is aimed at middle Australia, whose mortgage struggles are only being exacerbated by spiralling electricity costs.
Dutton is also trying to remind the Coalition of what it’s supposed to stand for — and throw down the gauntlet to the dripping-wet blue-greens who’ve done so much to sink the party.
Dutton’s pitch comes just days before the Liberal National party in Queensland holds its state conference, where delegates are expected to propose several pro-nuclear resolutions […]
The idea appears popular within parts of the Coalition’s base. Three pro-nuclear resolutions are set to be debated at the Queensland LNP conference this weekend, including one urging a Dutton-led government to provide “baseload energy, such as nuclear as an adjunct to coal”.
Another proposed resolution wants the next LNP state government to “review the education curriculum to ensure that energy supply, including nuclear energy, and impacts of renewable energy are taught factually”.
What’s already driving the Climate Cult loons at the Grauniad into spittle-flecked fury is that Dutton has the facts on his side.
In the speech, Dutton will argue that most of the leading solar panel manufacturers and wind turbine companies are based in China.
“So in the Albanese government’s massive rollout of renewables, it is inevitable we will become heavily reliant on the Chinese market,” he will say.
The only quibble here is “become”: we already are over-reliant on China. Because the greedy cretins of the Australian elite learned nothing from the pandemic years.
Dutton will say “there is no better example of the risk of over reliance on one market than what we saw with many European countries’ dependence on Russian gas”. After Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, he says, “things turned sour overnight”.
Again, absolutely true. And it’s not like they weren’t warned for years.
By contrast, Dutton will say that Australia could source Small Modular Reactors (SMRs) or Micro Modular Reactors (MMRs) from the US, UK, France “and other trusted partners”.
Dutton will point to the bipartisan commitment to building nuclear-powered submarines in Australia under the Aukus deal.
“The submarines are essentially floating SMRs,” he will say.
Cue demented screeching from the green-left.
Of course, Dutton is throwing them something of a bone — one cannot, of course, be an absolute heretic to the Cult of Climate Change.
Dutton will say he sees nuclear “not as a competitor to renewables, but as a companion” and he wants “an Australia where we can decarbonise and, at the same time, deliver cheaper, more reliable and lower emission electricity”.
This is just a sop. Renewables are a disaster. The only sane path ahead is to adopt nuclear and just let the ineffecient, unreliable, destructive, polluting “renewables” fall quietly by the wayside.
Unfortunately, though, this appeal to reason will fall on deaf ears, with an ignorant buffoon currently sitting in the energy policy chair.
Last year Chris Bowen ruled out consideration of nuclear power because he said “it is by far the most expensive form of energy”.
The Guardian
The only question here is whether Bowen is knowingly lying, or completely, utterly ignorant. Even with the cost of construction factored in, nuclear is the second-cheapest source of electricity.
We are led by liars, frauds, and ignorant buffoons.