Energy Minister Chris Bowen has called Nationals leader Matt Canavan “honest” after the Queensland senator conceded a technology key to the Coalition’s nuclear ambitions might not “make it” commercially.
In its nuclear pitch to voters last year, the Coalition touted small modular reactors (SMRs) as a quick and easy way to pump atomic energy into the grid.
Two of the proposed seven nuclear sites were earmarked as SMR only.
But the technology is expensive and still in development, with the most advanced projects in the US and Canada expected to come online in the next decade.
“Only continent on Earth”
Senator Canavan, one of the Coalition’s staunchest backers of nuclear, admitted on Sunday he did not know if there was a commercially viable future SMRs but said “you don’t close pathways and doors before they’re necessary”.
“I don’t know whether small module reactors will make it, so to speak, in the commercial space, but we shouldn’t close our eyes to that … given these enormous energy demands that are coming down the tracks through artificial intelligence and data centres,” he told Sky’s Sunday Agenda.
“Though, we do know now … that large scale nuclear reactors do work.
“They do work – 30 countries around the world building them.
“We remain really the only … continent on Earth without a nuclear reactor, except for Antarctica.”
Appearing on the same show a short time later, Mr Bowen dismissed the idea of nuclear energy as “a massive distraction” and SMRs as “the next big thing” that never came.
“It hasn’t happened, and there’s been no small modular reactor built anywhere in the Western world,” he said.
“It’s always just about to happen. It’s been about to happen for 40 years.”
Mr Bowen said those “who promote nuclear, like Matt, are just trying to distract from the progress that we’re making on renewables”.
“Matt’s probably more honest than most when he says, ‘Yeah, I want to slow renewables.’
“He doesn’t really like them, doesn’t support them. So, you come up with this nuclear distraction.
“Now, nuclear is not an answer for Australia any time when we have such cheap and abundant renewables we can harness with the right policy approaches.”
While SMR projects have proven difficult to get off the ground, nuclear development firm SGE this month revealed plans to build 14 across the UK.
The SMRs would produce enough energy to power some eight million homes for 60 years.
During his appearance, Senator Canavan also said Australia should make use of its enormous uranium reserves.
“We’ve got one-and-a-half million tons of uranium,” he said, adding that Kazakhstan holds the world’s second-largest deposits at 800,000 tons.
“We export that to other countries. Why wouldn’t we use that ourselves?
“And particularly, given this need to build data centres to take advantage of opportunities like artificial intelligence.
“You can see the Googles, the Amazons, the Microsofts of the world are all building nuclear, or supporting the building of nuclear power stations to power their data centres.”
He questioned why Australians should trust that the Albanese government has “got it right and Microsoft got it wrong”.
“Why is Chris Bowen right to say no to nuclear, but Google is supporting them in the United States?” he asked.
“I think we might just have to drop this bloke who’s just remains obsessed with … a failed plan and start again.”
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