In recent days, headlines from Net-Zero-inclined publications have become increasingly unhinged. Why nuclear power is ‘madness on steroids’! Peter Dutton wonders when batteries will be ‘discovered’, and if wind turbines are sentient… There are lots more, but those two made me laugh.

Perhaps you have also noticed an online scare campaign doing the rounds asking, Would you live next to a reactor? 

Most appear to be unaware that ANSTO exists, as does the Climate Change and Energy Minister, given some of his bizarre comments about Saos and blenders. (What is Bowen cooking?)

The reason for this panic is a tangible mood-shift in favour of nuclear energy.

As wind farms and solar farms march across the landscape, localised objections have become a nationwide grumble. By now, everyone knows someone whose life has been (or is about to be) destroyed by renewable energy.

It has long been suspected that objection to nuclear energy from the renewable industry has nothing to do with cost, nothing to do with how long it takes to build, and nothing to do with safety.

Rather, nuclear energy is opposed because its existence in the grid invalidates wind turbines, solar panels, and battery backups. All those lucrative government grants … cancelled. Random Net Zero projects like carbon capture and green hydrogen? Bye-bye.

Do nuclear plants need 10s of 1,000s of kilometres of transmission lines? Nope.

Do they need thousands of acres of rainforest or 70 per cent of Victoria’s agricultural heartland? Nope.

Do they need to sit in the middle of whale migration sites? Nope.

Do they enjoy shredding endangered birds? Nope.

Do they cost a bit to set up? Sure. Most things of high value carry a cost, but it is nothing compared to the cheap renewable transition which, at low estimates, is set at $1.9 trillion to reach by 2050 and then repeat that every 20-odd years and increase for an expanding population and demand, such as ecars plugging in.

A handful of reactors, powered by Australian uranium, is all that’s required to create a fully functioning, reliable energy grid with enough fuel for several billion years. It is not only renewable, it is eternal.

There’s no need to bulldoze rainforests.

Destroy coastal waters with wind turbines.

Or cut up farmland with transmission lines.

It also means that renewable energy companies, mining giants, and Labor’s mates in the myriad of Net Zero industries have no reason to drain the Treasury.

As a bonus, it frees Australia from the incalculable risk of relying on China for replacement parts.

Nuclear energy is the saviour of birds, bats, bugs, and koalas.

This a huge problem for Chris Bowen, who runs around pretending that nuclear is some random impossible technology that no one can use despite New South Wales having a nuclear facility for longer than Bowen has been alive. It is so well behaved most people have never heard of it even though it provides lifesaving isotopes to Sydney hospitals for cancer treatment.

We hear a lot of Greens talk about free healthcare, and almost none who realise more than 90 per cent of the pharmaceutical industry is built on fossil fuels, while specialty treatments often come from nuclear science. Just stop oil? Please…

Chris Bowen makes the argument that we have to carpet bomb Australia with wind turbines to ‘save the Pacific’ because Australia has been conned into believing it is a regional saviour with the power to stop the tides. Meanwhile, the Pacific region is full of nuclear power plants and the ‘drowning’ islands are selling their fossil fuel reserves to China who use them to make … wind turbines … for us. It’s an excellent scam.

Opposition Leader Peter Dutton is finally taking good advice and dipping his toes into the nuclear conversation.

‘If there’s a retiring coal asset, so there’s a coal-fired generator that’s already got an existing distribution network, the wires and poles are already there to distribute the energy across the network into homes and businesses, that’s really what we’re interested in,’ said Dutton.

‘We just can’t pretend that solar panels work of a night time, and we can’t pretend that wind turbines – 260 metres out of the seabed – are environmentally conscious. And we can’t pretend that it is a baseload energy It’s just not. Hopefully, the battery technology is about to be discovered, but not yet.’

Comments like these have upset various die-hard renewable publications, countering Dutton with comments like, ‘…actually, the grid is moving away from baseload.’ This is said as if it is some kind of rebuttal rather than a declaration of idiocy.

The entirety of the renewable grid – every wind turbine, solar panel, and battery – will be rotting in landfill by 2050. Think about that for a moment.

Bowen is building a renewable energy grid to reach Labor’s Net Zero 2050 targets with infrastructure that will be in landfill by that date.

So, what exactly is Bowen building?

A renewable money tree for mining companies and wind turbine manufacturers?

A pile of junk?

Why doesn’t the government release energy costing over a hundred-year period?

The rest of the world has embraced nuclear, but for some reason Australia is trapped in a backwards, Cold War mindset that believes ‘the world is ending because of emissions’ while pouring emissions into the atmosphere in one of the biggest mining booms we have ever seen.

Either the world is ending because of carbon emissions, forcing us to destroy our energy grid at huge expense – or it’s not.

Net Zero ideology cannot have this both ways, not while the taxpayer is picking up the bill.

If the world is ending, nuclear is the answer. If the world isn’t ending, then politicians have some explaining to do.

Peter Dutton’s proposal to build traditional nuclear reactors on the sites of old coal-fired plants is an election-winning proposition if he takes his message to the millions of Australians facing the destructive and ugly reality of wind turbines, solar panels, and transmission lines.

They will all vote for Dutton if it means keeping their beautiful valleys, oceans, and forests free of scrap.

Get 10 issues for just $10

Subscribe to The Spectator Australia today for the next 10 magazine issues, plus full online access, for just $10.

SUBSCRIBE 10 issues for $10 REGISTER 3 articles a month

Already a subscriber? Log in