Nuclear for Australia Chair Dr Adrian Paterson AM appeared on Jonesy & Amanda to discuss nuclear power.
Amanda (Host): Well, as we head into winter, energy prices are soaring, having huge impacts on the Australian people. Despite the government announcing power payment relief in the budget, the coalition is saying it won't be enough to deal with further hikes.
Jonesy (Host): You know, I was talking to my local bottle shop guy yesterday and his power bill this time last year was $100,000 already at this time. Now, it's $140,000. So, it's $40,000 more already.
Amanda (Host): Wow.
Jonesy (Host): In May.
Amanda (Host): Well, nuclear power has been thrown into the conversation. The coalition says we need to consider it as a safe, reliable, and cost-effective solution. The government is remaining anti-uclear. But what does nuclear power mean for us if that option is on the table? Dr. Adi Patterson is widely recognised as an international leader of nuclear science and technology and joins us now. Adi, hello.
Dr Adi Paterson AM (Chair of Nuclear for Australia): Good morning. It's great to talk to you.
Jonesy (Host): Well, it's great to talk to you.
Amanda (Host): Look, we've grown up in an era where we've had Fukushima, we've had Chernobyl. I remember all the concerts, the rock concerts, the no nukes. It seems it seems terrifying that nuclear power is back on the table, but maybe it is time to discuss it.
Dr Adi Paterson AM (Chair of Nuclear for Australia): Well, I I think we were quite late to that party. I mean, there are 40 countries in the world which are busy adopting nuclear power at the moment. And there's about 38 countries [Correction: 31 countries] that have got it. And so, if we have to join the back of that queue, we might have to wait quite a while. And that'll be really, really bad for what we do to the environment.
Amanda (Host): So on the pros and cons side, on the pros, it doesn't burn fossil fuels. On the cons, what how do you deal with the waste and the danger which is so terrifying?
Dr Adi Paterson AM (Chair of Nuclear for Australia): Yeah. So basically, if uh if you for your whole life with your whole family uh used only nuclear power, including to drive a new electric vehicle and so on, you'd be responsible for about a fistful of nuclear waste. If you were to do that with coal, you'd be responsible for about 3 kilograms of uh coal ash every day of your life.
Amanda (Host): Wow.
Dr Adi Paterson AM (Chair of Nuclear for Australia): So, which you going to choose? The highly concentrated easy to manage. It's being managed all over the world. I mean people in in fact in Finland they've opened their first waste repository uh in Finland today their electricity. Let's have a quick look here. 46 g of carbon intensity in their electricity. If I kind of let's have a quick look at New South Wales, 681 gram. So if for for every kilowatt hour of electricity that we're burning in um New South Wales today and using as electricity, we're producing more than half a kilogram of coal. Uh and a lot of that will be waste. Now that's really really high. Um, South Australia, which is our renewables capital, uh, at the moment is doing 427 grams. Not very good. Um, you know, we making these massive investments in new grids, very very expensive, very very um, uh, difficult for rural communities are going to have poles and wires going through their backyard. And we could with the money that we spending on the grid, we could begin to really reduce our carbon footprint and change the world. South Australia at the moment half a kilogram um uh of of uh of essentially waste produced from coal uh for every kilowatt hour that they're using.
Jonesy (Host): What would a fistful of nuclear waste do if it was say just fell off the back of a truck?
Dr Adi Paterson AM (Chair of Nuclear for Australia): Yeah. Okay. So, um basically even if it fell off the back of the truck, nothing would happen because it's always contained in multiple layers um of of of support. In fact, you could go out onto the internet and and and looking at a high-speed train crashing into a container of nuclear waste and the train loses, right? So, this is this is really easy to contain. The volumes are very small to compared to what we used to. And so, I always say to people that the the problem of of nuclear waste has been solved and it's been solved for many years. However, the meme, the kind of the Simpsons meme and the, you know, the scary stuff seems to live in in our minds even if we didn't experience it. I mean, I've spoken to people who were born after Chernobyl and they really really worried about it. But actually, um, you know, the people in the area of Chernobyl, many people have been living there post uh, uh, that accident and so on. And and the same is true for for for Fukushima. It it it it was a really big mistake by the people who were who placed that plant too close to where there could be a big big tidal wave but Fukushima was a tidal wave and you know nobody in the plant died but we all we forgotten you know the 18,000 people who died from the tidal wave but we talk about Fukushima all the time. So it it's sort of it's a lock in effect. But the great benefit of nuclear is that it's really really low carbon and it's uh it's always on. You're not depending on weather dependent sources. I mean most people don't know that there's been a wind fail in Europe this year. Europe this year has got 15% less wind than last year. Just year to year wind is unreliable. From the morning to the afternoon wind is unreliable. the sun goes down at night. And so we should be looking for a future where energy is one of the things that goes back into the wall and is one of the smallest amounts on your uh bill at the end of the month. But we're actually going to live in a world where Australia is trying to do something that no other country has tried to do. Germany uh has tried to do it. They have failed. Currently France is selling electricity to Germany. I can see the arrow going across the border. um you know Germany which is the poster child of of renewables in the world is producing half a kilogram um of carbon intensity uh whereas France is at 32 g you know a tiny fraction.
Amanda (Host): I guess until we get batteries that can store that stuff
Jonesy (Host): cuz you're going to make the batteries
Amanda (Host): but can we guarantee though that as you say
Dr Adi Paterson AM (Chair of Nuclear for Australia): I must talk to you about batteries in my background I I sold patents to Toshiba for lithium batteries back in the 90s batteries buckets of electrons. You have to produce the electrons somewhere. Batteries are really heavy. They're really really resource intensive and uh they will not store enough electrons uh to save us from this. Batteries are not cheap. They are literally very expensive buckets. So we're doing two things with expensive. We're going to try to bet on batteries and we're betting on a longer thinner grid right across the rural and regional parts of a Australia where people currently go for tourism and where they'll now go to watch the poles and the wires. All of that expenditure could actually be directed at um first of all not being one of the very few countries in the world that is banned nuclear get into the room with the grown-ups and begin to talk about an intelligent energy strategy where all of the options are on your table. You know Obama said when he was asked this question I was in the room in Washington at the time uh and they said to President Obama what would you choose nucle all the way down the list? His answer was all of the above. The wisest energy statement ever made. If we don't have all the options, we don't have all of the possibilities of the best future for Australia. We've got a crazy ban which is imposed at a moment of fear across the country. If we were a grownup democracy, we would say you don't ban things that are part of the future of now going to be nearly 100 countries which will have nuclear in 20 years time. If we're still talking about the ban and building bigger grids or thinking that batter is going to solve the problem, we're not talking to the scientists and engineers who really understand this. You know, I'm I'm so passionate about the idea not that we force nuclear on people, but that we have an option to choose. If we choose once the ban is lifted not to have nuclear, that will be the future that we decide to have for ourselves. But we can't even decide that future. We're meant to be one of the greatest democracies in the world. And yet the democratic right to choose the lowest carbon safest form of electricity in the world where everybody else is building it. Uh we denied that and we denied it with spin. We not denied it with reality. We will never be 100% renewables country. It the laws of physics and the laws of engineering do not permit that. That's what we've been sold.
Amanda (Host): Well, fascinating.
Jonesy (Host): Adi I'd love to talk to you all day about this, but we've run out of time.
Amanda (Host): So, we can guarantee it's it can be safe. We don't have to bury it in the middle of the country or anything.
Dr Adi Paterson AM (Chair of Nuclear for Australia): It it's a tiny hole in the ground in in something uh in the back corner of a small farm in South Australia. It does not It's not, you know, the Simpsons. It is actually the sanity of the future that we're looking for.
Jonesy (Host): Well, thank you for that, Adi. Thank you for joining us, Dr. Adi Patterson there.