DMcD: Technology has moved on and though there are still potential problems, I’m less concerned on a technical level about safety. I don’t fear another Three Mile Island-type disaster myself. In terms of disposal of nuclear waste, that is a real fear that people have, and it’s very difficult to work out politically as to where exactly you’d put it. But technically, much of the sting has gone out of that in part because of an Australian invention called “synroc”, where you make synthetic rock out of the waste, which is completely stable, and you go and bury it somewhere. I believe the Yanks were a bit annoyed that we’ve got the “IP” on that invention and surprised, given we don’t have an industry, but if you can find a community happy to bury it, it can be safe – at a huge cost.

Fitz: Great. So far, so good. It is encouraging, and I confess real surprise, that on your reckoning both the safety and waste problems have been technically solved. Peter Dutton also says that one reason to put nuclear plants on the spot of dying coal plants is to have the nuclear power going out on established grids. He was cited in The Australian last week asserting that it would cost Australia a TRILLION dollars – which I think is a thousand billion dollars – to build new grids for regional renewable generators.

DMcD: That is not correct. At the moment, the entire high-voltage transmission grid is valued at about $22 billion. And on various estimates, we need to significantly expand that by building transmission lines of about 10,000 kilometres, which is probably about a quarter the size of the existing network. But the cost of that is not just a quarter of the current value of the depreciated old stuff – it will cost more than a quarter of the value, and the current reckoning is it will cost about $12 billion to build the extra lines needed in the short term. But if it blows out, it will still be in this order of magnitude, tens of billions of dollars, not a trillion dollars.

Fitz: OK. Now let’s get to the guts of it. Given safety and disposal problems are technically solved, why not do it?

DMcD: Because of the cost of building nuclear reactors, the time it takes, and the subsequent price of the electricity produced. If they started building a major nuclear plant now at, say, where the Eraring coal power station is – the like-for-like power station would cost between $70 and $80 billion. And you wouldn’t have the first bit of electricity produced until the 2040s. That means it can’t contribute to the power system in Australia on timescales that are relevant to solving the climate crisis.

We’re in the critical decade right now, and Australia can’t wait that long to bring down emissions. And as we replace the coal stations being phased out – as they won’t last until the 2040s – it is renewables that will replace them and by the 2040s, those renewable systems will substantially be in place.

On current prices, the cost of nuclear energy is three to four times the cost of renewable energy, so why would anyone pay this premium? A further problem they have is that while the cost of renewable energy keeps coming down, the cost of nuclear energy keeps going up. So what’s it going to be like in 2040?

Fitz: Well, who puts up the money now for nuclear power stations around the world to be built?

DMcD: Nowhere around the world is the private sector saying, “We want to build nuclear reactors and will fund it,” and certainly not here in Australia. They only get built with direct government involvement – governments going guarantors on the loans, or at least guaranteeing price for the electricity produced. As an aside, I’d note that is quite an interesting philosophical position for our national fiscally conservative [political] party to take, saying they want to build it, and not leave it to the free market.

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Fitz: So it has to be the government that takes the hit?

DMcD: Project developers have to get their money back. So, for example in the UK, they basically have put a levy on electricity bills to pay for their plant there. The latest projected cost of that one, at Hinkley Point, is £46 billion, which is $90 billion. And the electricity that will come from that is roughly $250 per megawatt hour, which is more than twice the cost of wholesale power in Australia at the moment, at least three times the cost of wind power, and four times the cost of solar power.

Fitz: The economics look grim! But what about the point about our bounteous natural resources? Huge chunks of Western Australia are apparently made of uranium. Is it insane for us as a country not to be pushing nuclear when we can sell it to the world and all of us, or at least Gina, can get rich – or richer?

DMcD: But you’ve got to have a market for it. And that market is disappearing because of the economic forces, whether we like it or not. Even if you wanted to, who are you going to be selling the uranium to? In the US, they tried to build one – the VC Summer project in South Carolina – and then it had to be cancelled because it was clear the economies didn’t work. So they spent nine or 10 billion dollars for a hole in the ground. Right now, there are no further plans for construction of nuclear reactors in the United States, and the UK only has Hinkley Point, which is a financial disaster. None are currently in train to be built in comparable countries, like France, Germany or the US. The French have announced intentions to build six, but none of this is contracted. At the moment, very little is planned for construction outside of China, and even there, they’re actually building substantially more pumped hydro and many times more wind and solar than nuclear.

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Fitz: OK, what about the arguments that are still trotted out, along the lines of the sun doesn’t shine at midnight and the wind doesn’t always blow, so in Australia, we need nuclear or coal to assure “base load” if that’s the correct term?

DMcD: Yes, the sun doesn’t shine at night and wind doesn’t always blow, but the idea is to design an electricity system so big and integrated that through a combination of resources – wind, solar, hydro, possibly some small amount of gas – we have a reliable system. And that is what is being done now.

Fitz: The case you have presented so far seems very much against big nuclear. But there’s also a lot of talk of “SMRs” the Small Modular Reactors? Are they at least more feasible? (And what are they, by the way?)

DMcD: There’s a lot of hype around these, and the idea is that they’re smaller, and the constituent modular pieces can be built in factories like the pieces necessary for wind and solar, so they’re easier to build. With the economies of scale you could have the same sort of success story that you’ve had with renewable energy. That was the promise, but in practice, the ones that we have seen developed are not, by any stretch of the imagination, what most people would consider small.

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Fitz: But are they working at all, or well, anywhere in the world?

DMcD: No, and that’s the other point. They’re all still theoretical. There is none operating, and the most advanced project in the world over in America, Nuscale in Idaho, fell over a couple of months ago. They had all these entities lined up to buy the power when it was built, but, over time, as the cost of building just escalated, it got to the point where they all said, “we don’t want this any more, it is too expensive.” And it hasn’t worked anywhere else.

Fitz: Can you, for a moment, be your own devil’s advocate? I clearly haven’t come at you with arguments that have made any headway for nuclear, but there must be some. What are they? Before the interview you acknowledged there were some academics at least open to the option of nuclear, if not gung-ho. What do they say, for nuclear?

DMcD: They talk of the concept called “dunkelflaute” which is the idea that we risk a time where across the system might not have enough wind and solar for a couple of weeks, so nuclear will cover that. The current reckoning, however, is that in Australia, which gets so much wind, and so much sun and will have a system spanning an entire continent, there is limited risk. Look, there are people of good faith, who are nuclear advocates who care about climate change and are worried that renewables aren’t up to the job and that we need nuclear power to do it. But there are more bad faith actors who see it as an opportunity to muddy the waters and essentially undermine the renewable energy rollout, to cause delay and confusion and essentially prolong the existing coal and gas assets. And it has turned into a sort of cultural war kind of thing, but none of that changes the central economic argument against nuclear.

Fitz: Speaking of culture wars, I suspect you’ll get this down the track, so let me go first. I put it to you, Dr McConnell, that you’re a sell-out academic in the thrall of the renewables industry – yes, a renewable junkie, you heard me, getting all your research grants from renewable people, and that’s why you’re saying all this stuff against nuclear!

DMcD: [Laughing, tightly.] I’d love to say that’s the case because it’s actually a bit of a bugbear of mine, how terribly bad the renewable energy industry is at funding research. I don’t think I’ve actually received any money at all from the renewable energy industry. And in the past I have received some funding from the brown coal industry.

Fitz: Thank you, doctor. Your room is up the stairs, first on the left.

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