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Speaker 1: The federal opposition says it will release the cost of

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Speaker 1: its nuclear proposal before the next election for seven nuclear reactors,

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Speaker 1: mostly on the sites of aging coal power stations, if

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Speaker 1: it wins government and it believes it can get two

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Speaker 1: generators up and running by twenty thirty seven, the CSIRO

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Speaker 1: saying well more likely by twenty forty. As I said

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Speaker 1: before the break, I think it's on the coalition to

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Speaker 1: show us it's not going to push bills up further,

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Speaker 1: because if our power bills only rise more as a

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Speaker 1: result of this, then I don't think the support for

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Speaker 1: nuclear will be standing anywhere in the room. I think

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Speaker 1: it's going to fly out the window very very quickly.

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Speaker 1: Doctor Ady Patterson, former CEO Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organization,

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Speaker 1: joins me. Now, good morning, eighty. Do you welcome this?

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Speaker 2: I welcome, you know, a positive discussion about nuclear power

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Speaker 2: right across Australia. We're a global outlier. We're building a

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Speaker 2: very extensive dilute good. The idea that nuclear power will

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Speaker 2: increase electricity prices has been discredited and unvalidated in at

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Speaker 2: least seven countries. So the comage is just made us wrong.

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Speaker 1: How are they paying for it, then how do they

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Speaker 1: pay for the plant to be built? Because somebody has

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Speaker 1: to pay for it somewhere. So if it's not in

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Speaker 1: electricity bills, it's got to be somewhere.

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Speaker 2: So why are we subsidizing solar panels and wind farms

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Speaker 2: but we're not paying the full prices I was getting built.

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Speaker 2: I totally agree with you and that pase, please please

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Speaker 2: listen to It's thrue. What I'm saying is not only

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Speaker 2: that the wind. Can I finish my sentence, The wind

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Speaker 2: only blows forty percent of the time, so two days

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Speaker 2: out of five on average, where you're getting your electricity from.

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Speaker 2: You're not getting it from the wind. You're getting it

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Speaker 2: from aging gas plants, and you're getting it from you're

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Speaker 2: getting it from cold plants. You haven't shut down. There

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Speaker 2: isn't a country in the world that has got about

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Speaker 2: forty percent intermittent renewables without prices increasing uncontrollably. And the

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Speaker 2: test case is Germany versus France, and the electricity prices

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Speaker 2: in Germany have gone up since they closed their twenty

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Speaker 2: eight nuclear plants, and they will continue to go up

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Speaker 2: as if they close the brown cold plants. In fact,

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Speaker 2: when they close the nuclear plants. Germany reopened brown cold

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Speaker 2: plants to keep the lights on. These are facts, So

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Speaker 2: the mysticism and misinformation around intimate and renewables is discredited

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Speaker 2: by the scientific literature. I could send you copies of

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Speaker 2: papers and you can read them that shows that the

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Speaker 2: lowest cost of electricity is supplied with low carbon using nuclear,

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Speaker 2: hydro and geothermal. Those are your choices, there aren't any others.

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Speaker 2: And therefore the bands on nutrine in Australia will destroy

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Speaker 2: what we've got left of our industrial economy and turn

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Speaker 2: us into an education wasteland because people just won't come

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Speaker 2: here from other countries to get to educated anymore. I

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Speaker 2: deeply worry about the you know, seeing all of the

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Speaker 2: state premiers shouting at the public yesterday on one of

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Speaker 2: our national channels and saying things that are actually factually

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Speaker 2: untrue and lives. It's irrational, it's not acceptable and it's

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Speaker 2: time to have a fact based engineering and science debate

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Speaker 2: where people who are qualified and have worked in this

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Speaker 2: for many years have taken seriously.

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Speaker 1: Do we have a cost a total cost of what

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Speaker 1: subsidies replacement? I understand on a fifteen to twenty year

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Speaker 1: cycle of wind turbines for instance, and solar panels as well.

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Speaker 1: Renewables in general subsidies and future replacement. Do we have

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Speaker 1: a cost of that over say, the life of a

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Speaker 1: nuclear power plant.

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Speaker 2: No, we don't. And we also don't have a waste

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Speaker 2: manager system for the toxic chemicals in solar panels. There's

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Speaker 2: no requirements for the waste management of existing solar panels.

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Speaker 2: That people take off their rooftops and the quickest way

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Speaker 2: to kill kids is to let them play in the

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Speaker 2: increasing wasteland of chipped solar panels after we've had some rainstorms.

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Speaker 2: There is no viable way of economically taking it. Part

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Speaker 2: wind turbine blades which are over one hundred meters long, okay,

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Speaker 2: and the ecological damage of putting wind turbines up on

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Speaker 2: the ridges in Queensland is just it's just devastating, the upsetting.

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Speaker 2: I mean, I don't know if you've seen the films

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Speaker 2: taken with drones of the way they're cutting through the

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Speaker 2: pristine forests of Queensland and ripping through those forests. To

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Speaker 2: get those those things in, you have to you have

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Speaker 2: to bring in those turbine. They're dynamiting the ridges, they're

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Speaker 2: putting pucks of two thy five hundred tons of concrete

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Speaker 2: under each of those wind turbines. It's shocking ecological devastation.

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Speaker 2: And then you've got the bird and the bat populations,

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Speaker 2: which are you know, the basis of the insect population

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Speaker 2: and nobody has done the insects studies yet you know

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Speaker 2: the insects studies tact that he is. So we are

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Speaker 2: playing with an ecological time bomb with wind turbines on

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Speaker 2: Ridges and Queensland. We will only know in thirty years

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Speaker 2: what we're doing, and we think we saving the planet.

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Speaker 2: To me as an ecologist, as a kind of a

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Speaker 2: lefty environmentalist all my life, as somebody who has worked

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Speaker 2: in peaceful uses in nuclear for a big chunk of

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Speaker 2: my life, there's kind of an abusive overconfidence in the

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Speaker 2: Australian media which is deeply distressing because it's not based

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Speaker 2: on facts, and it's deeply damaging to the future economy

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Speaker 2: of this country. We are a serious psychologically damaged outlier

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Speaker 2: and I was deeply upset watching the premiers on the Channel.

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Speaker 2: You need to watch that and see whether those were

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Speaker 2: rational people or whether they were essentially fascist bullies, no

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Speaker 2: indistinguishable from their plats and it has to stop. It

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Speaker 2: really has to stop.

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Speaker 1: How long does a wind turbine last? People ring in

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Speaker 1: saying fifteen years, twenty years? Is that about right?

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Speaker 2: No? I think you know, if you look after them, well,

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Speaker 2: look about ten to fifteen percent fail in the first

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Speaker 2: two years because it's just not made properly. They made

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Speaker 2: really cheaply now, particularly the Semens one. Semens has just

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Speaker 2: gone bankrupt. Their wind turbine company went bankrupt just about

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Speaker 2: the same time we were announcing new wind turbines offshore

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Speaker 2: in the Elawire, which I thought was a useful irony

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Speaker 2: for everybody. So Semens had terrible quality problems and they've

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Speaker 2: gone bankrupt. And so unless they're a proper regulator who

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Speaker 2: can actually assure that the procurement is reliable, I wouldn't

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Speaker 2: be buying winterlines from anybody. I'm investors has been in

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Speaker 2: and out of Baca erupt see a number of times.

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Speaker 2: Ever Older from Spain has been rescued by the state

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Speaker 2: three times. You know, you just have to do a

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Speaker 2: little bit of homework to find out that the winter

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Speaker 2: bine industry is propped up, you know, by media campaigns

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Speaker 2: to try to save the planet while killing the ecology.

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Speaker 1: So Peter Dutton hasn't put a cost on this yet.

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Speaker 1: The CSI ROW and this might have been about the

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Speaker 1: last time we spoke, I think put out a report

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Speaker 1: about eight billion eight point six billion cost for one generator,

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Speaker 1: so if that is close.

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Speaker 2: So look, I know the people in CSIROH and I've

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Speaker 2: spent many hours in the room with them when I

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Speaker 2: was at ANSTO. You're talking about an economist with a

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Speaker 2: master's degree and an expert in wave power who wants

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Speaker 2: us to have waveparer. Okay, these are the people who

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Speaker 2: write that report. There isn't a nuclear competent person in

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Speaker 2: the whole of the cs in the whole of the

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Speaker 2: CSI R. And you know, frankly, proper nuclear people have

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Speaker 2: tried to engage rationally with that report over a decade.

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Speaker 2: We've just given up. It's kind of a national ritual

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Speaker 2: to have a beat up on nuclear with a tiny

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Speaker 2: tot you know, tense spreadsheets. You know, when when you

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Speaker 2: cost the nuclear plant, you have to do a whole

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Speaker 2: range of things. You have to have a law that

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Speaker 2: allows you to build them, because no competent vendor of

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Speaker 2: nuclear power plants are ever going to come to us

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Speaker 2: I mean, we've had westing Us out here and we've

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Speaker 2: sat in the room with them and in the small

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Speaker 2: room to be brutally dranked. They say, you know, until

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Speaker 2: you guys, you know, get to the baseline of being

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Speaker 2: a responsible nuclear nation. You know, we quite enjoy these

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Speaker 2: trips because we get to do a side trip to

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Speaker 2: the Blue Mountains or something. But we're a global joke

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Speaker 2: and we think we serious and we have premiers shouting

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Speaker 2: on the TV. You know, it's like, frankly, to me,

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Speaker 2: as somebody who fought against the Part eight, it is

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Speaker 2: indistinguishable from South African apartheis type of metric, and it's

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Speaker 2: indistinguishable from anybody who lived through the Nasi era and

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Speaker 2: had to listen to Hitler in nineteen thirty two.

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Speaker 1: So the obvious question, why are so many smart people opposed.

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Speaker 2: To nuclear They're not smart. They clever. It's easy to

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Speaker 2: be clever. Smart people consult widely and study deeply. Clever

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Speaker 2: people listen to the local memes and rhetoric and learn

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Speaker 2: the latest time steps in order to maximize their appeal

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Speaker 2: to the public. But that doesn't make them smart. Nuclear

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Speaker 2: is for grown ups. It's for adults who do things

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Speaker 2: like clinical trials instead of feeding their kids, things that

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Speaker 2: they read about in the supplement to the Sunday newspaper.

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Speaker 2: And it's really really important to recognize that. In my

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Speaker 2: humble opinion, I'm prepared to do this in small room

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Speaker 2: with the exact people I'm talking about, is to explain

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Speaker 2: to them why I think they are dangerously disturbed and

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Speaker 2: I think that they are frankly peddling lines to the

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Speaker 2: public of Australia. I think it has to stop. And

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Speaker 2: if somebody is not going to call it out and

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Speaker 2: call it what it is, then they've taken seriously as

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Speaker 2: if they've talked to real experts. I mean that the people,

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Speaker 2: the people who run a EMO, the Australian Energy Market Operator,

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Speaker 2: who've got scenario plans developed in the rooms with people

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Speaker 2: agree with them in so called strategy sessions where when

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Speaker 2: you come in and with an alternative view, you told

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Speaker 2: well that it's banned and so we're not going to

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Speaker 2: look at it. It's just ridiculous. So we're living in

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Speaker 2: a global thought bubble. We wanted two kind of Germany

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Speaker 2: and Australia. Germany, which has got a track record of

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Speaker 2: going down the wrong the wrong Alley and Australia, which

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Speaker 2: has got a track record of irrational fear.

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Speaker 1: Given all of that, do you think Peter Duncan can succeed.

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Speaker 1: I mean, firstly he's got to get elected, and then

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Speaker 1: he's up against all sorts of groups will be trying

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Speaker 1: to block this in courts and whatever.

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Speaker 2: I mean, why would you use a court on something

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Speaker 2: that has got a scientific and engineering basis. I mean,

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Speaker 2: courts have ruled against things historically which has later been

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Speaker 2: proven to be highly valuable. I mean, the original vaccines

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Speaker 2: that we gave to people who are under saved them

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Speaker 2: from small cups smallpox in some states the United States

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Speaker 2: are still banned because of the courts. So you know,

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Speaker 2: the courts are not your test whether something is writer

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Speaker 2: or night. Your courts are the test and whether political

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Speaker 2: power can influence things. You know, if I had the

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Speaker 2: opportunity and we could do what they do in Finland,

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Speaker 2: which is at every politician who goes into power has

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Speaker 2: to have a fifteen day course in which they are

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Speaker 2: introduced to the national system of innovation in Finland, which

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Speaker 2: is one of the best in the world and where

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Speaker 2: they just completed. It's an interesting case study Finland because

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Speaker 2: they just completed a nuclear power plant that was late

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Speaker 2: and over budget o caase. That's everything that we worried about.

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Speaker 2: And when they switched on the when they switched on

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Speaker 2: the reactor, the price of electricity went down to thirty

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Speaker 2: percent of what it was before they switched on the reactor.

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Speaker 2: And that is the real case study that Australia doesn't

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Speaker 2: want to do because it's not the cost of the plant,

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Speaker 2: it's the reliability, predictability and quality of the electricity. How

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Speaker 2: they paid for land. There's hundreds of ways to pay

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Speaker 2: for it. You can get the government to pay for it.

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Speaker 2: You can use structured financing which they use in Europe,

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Speaker 2: which the rules are agreed for everything except renewables, which

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Speaker 2: get get a free pass. You can use all sorts

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Speaker 2: of instruments, you can have bonds, you can so the

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Speaker 2: payment is irrelevant. It's the price to the customer. And

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Speaker 2: I can guarantee and I'll probably still be alive when

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Speaker 2: we build our first plant. If we've started building a

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Speaker 2: plant today and we used the methods that they used

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Speaker 2: in the in the Emirates, we could build the first

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Speaker 2: plant in seven years and the second plant and five

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Speaker 2: Our biggest obstacle would be deciding to reregulate a plant

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Speaker 2: that's already been passed by another regulator. That's a very

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Speaker 2: simple thing that they did in the Emirates, and it

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Speaker 2: saved them five years. They built those plants, they switched

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Speaker 2: them on, and they're operating in the time that a

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Speaker 2: rational economic actor that wasn't influenced politically can do anywhere

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Speaker 2: in the world. If you look at the big building

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Speaker 2: in the United States, when they built footy plants over

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Speaker 2: twelve years, the average built time was five years. So

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Speaker 2: we know that you can build a nuclear power plant

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Speaker 2: in five years when you've got a supply chain and

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Speaker 2: you've got a reasonable intent. In the United States it

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Speaker 2: was the oil crisis in nineteen seventy three. This is

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Speaker 2: all factual history. We know we can build nuclear power

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Speaker 2: plants rapidly, and you know, provided you've got a reasonable

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Speaker 2: deal with the unions, and our unions and Australia are

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Speaker 2: very sophisticated and one decent quality jobs, and most of

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Speaker 2: the unions on the rights are very very pro nuclear,

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Speaker 2: So you know, it's not a left right problem. It's

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Speaker 2: a kind of irrational meme that just gets repeated ad nauseam.

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Speaker 2: And it becomes the day facto. True, it's not left

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Speaker 2: living in a fantasy left, it's not.

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Speaker 1: Left right, but it is the lack of bipartisan support

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Speaker 1: for whatever issue. Call it left right, call it irrational, rational,

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Speaker 1: whatever you like.

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Speaker 2: It's the historical irrational bands. Okay, it's going back to

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Speaker 2: the historical or as soon as something is banned, they're

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Speaker 2: heavy lifting to remove those bands. I wouldn't discuss the

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Speaker 2: nuclear power plants at all. In fact, I don't, and

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Speaker 2: I'm not doing it with you either. As you might notice,

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Speaker 2: I'm saying, lift the bands and let the market and

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Speaker 2: rational governments make the decision. And if it makes economic sense,

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Speaker 2: and if it stacks up against all the other alternatives

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Speaker 2: in a rational design of the grid and the electricity

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Speaker 2: prices for the future, we will build nuclear if somebody

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Speaker 2: can build batteries quicker, or if somebody can do pump hydro,

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Speaker 2: or they can take twenty five years to build snowy

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Speaker 2: hydro and have the bottom fall out of the tunnel,

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Speaker 2: which I've predicted, is you know, that's maybe the route

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Speaker 2: that we want to go down, where you know, the

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Speaker 2: prime mindustry of the country waves of the Hill and

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Speaker 2: says I'm going to build snowy hydro. Is that the

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Speaker 2: way to take a decision. It's the stupidest thing we

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Speaker 2: ever did, and that sucked all the oxygen out of

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Speaker 2: large scale projects.

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Speaker 1: Doctor Rady Patterson got to leave it there. Thank you

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Speaker 1: so much for your.

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Speaker 2: Time this morning talks to you, and thank you for

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Speaker 2: the oppice.

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Speaker 1: Former Chief Executive Officer of the Australian Nuclear Science and

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Speaker 1: Technology Organization and STO