Australia’s nuclear future: a new discourse for the 2040s

1316th Ordinary General Meeting and Open Lecture — 4 October 2023
“Australia’s nuclear future: a new discourse for the 2040s”
Helen Cook (1) and Dr Adi Paterson FRSN FTSE (2)
(1) Principal, GNE Advisory
(2) Former CEO, Aulstralian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO)

https://royalsoc.org.au/blog/1316th-ogm-and-open-lecture

The presentation commences at 00:05:01

Timing Marks:
00:00:00 Introduction to the Speaker: Dr Susan Pond AM FRSN FTSE FAHMS, President, Royal Society of NSW
00:05:01 Presentation: Helen Cook
00:28:42 Presentation: Dr Adi Paterson
00:43:12 Audience Q&A moderated by Emeritus Professor Christina Slade FRSN, Royal Society of NSW
01:10:35 Vote of Thanks: Emeritus Professor Christina Slade

Summary: The debate about nuclear power in Australia has been deeply divisive, with pro- and anti-nuclear lobbies failing to engage with each other. Helen Cook, the author of the canonical work on legal regulation of the rapidly-innovating nuclear industries, The Law of Nuclear Energy, and Dr Adi Patterson, former CEO of ANSTO, bring new perspectives and argue for a more nuanced understanding of the issues.

Helen Cook discusses the proactive role that nuclear law can play in addressing key challenges for global governance of nuclear power. Adi Patterson argues that the assessment of options for power generation should be technology-neutral. It is a mistake, he argues, to focus only on renewables to achieve carbon zero by 2040. He notes that there is geopolitical pressure, in particular in our region, to be engaged in nuclear industries. Cook notes that 50 countries are currently considering or actively implementing new nuclear power programs, recognising the role that nuclear energy can play as a proven, clean, dispatchable, and economical technology to improve energy supply security and mitigate climate change.

And now I’ve turn to the main event for tonight which is the uh the open lecture to be presented by Helen cook and Addie Patterson the topic is most important in these days of the energy transition their subject Australia’s nuclear future a new discourse for the 2014

I should take a little minute to say that the very first Royal Society of New southwes lecture I attended was in 2010 at the University of Sydney I was on the anow board and Ziggy zarski was the chair I hadn’t heard of the Royal Society in New swh else but uh

Ziggy was giving a lecture at the University of Sydney on nuclear energy the room was full of students and it seemed like it was going to be a great audience Ziggy started to speak the audiences one stood up with the placards and started a protest so it was a very

Dramatic Royal Society lecture back in 2010 I think this one is uh paying more respect to the speakers who I will now introduce who are eminent in their field you can read their formal bios there Helen graduated with a first class honors law degree from the University of

Sydney she told me that she then soon after replaced her books with a backpack and headed overseas where in addition to exploring the world she also worked at the international criminal court in the hag she was back in Australia for a short time before being head hunted to Dubai

To join one of the largest law firms in the world and it was there that she developed rare and deep expertise in the law of nuclear energy she worked on nuclear energy projects in the Middle East and uh on uh projects around the world in a sub

Subsequent role for many years as a nuclear energy lawyer in Washington D.C fortunately for us Helen has returned to Australia where she’s established her own practice with Associates both here in Australia and in the US she tells him that she first met Addie when he was director of ano at an

International Conference about six years ago in Vienna I’ve obviously kept in contact since add Patterson is a fellow of the society and of the Academy of Technology and Engineering a chemist and engineer he migrated to Australia in 2008 from South Africa to take up the position of director of the Australian

Nuclear Science and Technology organization or Anto under his leadership Anto delivered on his clear mandate for the expansion of nuclear medicine infrastructure and C cap abilities throughout Australia and the Australian sron project which is based main premises are based in Victoria he also created a viable project to build the first sinrock

Nuclear and nuclear waste plant globally using Australian Technology and Engineering Talent he also works at the Nexus of public science investment and practical innov ation and it’s made a great impact on the health industry and the environment on a personal level I had the joy of working with ADOT ano and I

Was on the board there for four years he’s one of those rare people with off the charts IQ EQ and ctq which is uh something that fits in perfectly ctq standing for the clear thinking quotient he remains a friend to me to the society and to many in this room

Tonight Helen will take the line share of the discussion before the Q&A uh talking about a new discourse for the 2040s uh Christina slay chair of our program committee will join them on the stage to conduct the Q&A so Helen and add over to you thank you so much it’s um it’s

Wonderful to be here tonight I’m also a single mom of a 2-year-old and a twomon old and so as you um you might expect I don’t get out much so it’s a real um treat for me to to put on a suit and get out of the house and to be with you

Tonight so thank you very much to the society for the invitation and I will also say that it’s an absolute honor to be here with Dr ad Patterson ad I consider to be a friend a colleague a mentor and a National Treasure so I’m really honored to be up here with you

Tonight A thank you so um I don’t know how this quite happened but at this point I am 15 years into a specialization in nuclear energy law and I am one of very few lawyers in the world with this particular specialization and I do often get asked

The question of how an Aussie came to have this particular specialization considering that in Australia we do not have nuclear energy and the answer um Susan has already probably given given away which is I did not develop this specialization through living and working in Australia I actually left

Australia very early on in my career and I did move to Dubai uh to work with what at that point was one of the largest law firms in the world and I did a lot of energy and infrastructure projects in the Middle East and I just got lucky I think one

Day when uh the then head of of freshfields nuclear sorry then head of freshfields energy and infrastructure practice worked into my office and said Helen what are you doing tomorrow and I said I don’t know Joe what am I doing tomorrow and he said well I’ve just been

Called over to a meeting in Bahrain with the Deputy Prime Minister I’d like you to to come along with me so over we flew the next day and and anyway to cut a long story short and a very memorable Day short um this ended up being the first meeting of the National Committee

For nuclear energy in Bahrain and they subsequently appointed the law firm that I was working with as the law firm to help them consider the prospects for nuclear energy and its deployment in Bahrain and that is where I learned uh so much about nuclear energy and so much

About the law and that’s really where I developed my passion for nuclear energy I can’t imagine uh practicing law in in any other field for me it’s a perfect combination of international law there’s a lot of national law and and nuclear regulation and then it’s also about building critical infrastructure and for

Me as well it’s also about making a hopefully a difference and supporting an industry that actually has the potential to achieve the deep decarbonization that that I believe that we need going forward so as um as Susan said I I then spent 13 years uh living and working

Overseas four of them were based in the Middle East and I then moved to Washington DC where I spent 9 years working and getting to know the US nuclear industry as well as advising on all sorts of different projects and transactions all over the world in the nuclear energy

Sector then about 5 years ago um many people called me crazy at the time but I decided to go Rogue and I set up my own Law Firm that I do believe is the only law firm in the world dedicated to nuclear energy and um even more maybe

Crazily I decided to relocate home to Australia and I am I feel just so lucky to be able to do the work that I do uh the majority of the time from my desk in Sydney Australia um the only downside is that it really is a 24/7 job for me

Because my clients are all on different time zones and so I find myself on um virtual meetings at all hours of the day or night which is probably okay because I have a two-month old so I’m I’m not sleeping much anyway um so to give you a little bit of

A flavor for some of the work that I do which also gives a bit of a flavor for some of the things happening out there in the world of nuclear I advise two governments on their nuclear energy programs that are in North Africa and the Middle East these are both large

Reactor programs in newcomer nuclear countries I have recently completed a large project for the government of Estonia um a tiny country in northern Europe with some pretty serious energy uh issues that they need to solve and they are currently working through the process to determine whether nuclear is

Right for them and as part of that I did a study with a one of the world’s leading regulatory experts on what their legal and Regulatory regime should look like uh what’s happening in the world of like modern thinking in nuclear law and Regulation and we also did a very

Interesting study on what human resources plan would look like like for Estonia if they were to move forward with a nuclear program I also work with um the government of Romania they have a national utility that is finishing off some large reactors as well as looking to build small modular nuclear reactors

Closer to home I just drafted a national nuclear law for the government of the Philippines and that law is currently going through the Parliamentary process in the Philippines hopefully it will be passed sometime soon and that law will set up a new nuclear regulatory body in

The Philippines and pave the way for the safe secure and proliferation resistant um utilization of nuclear energy in the Philippines I also work on three of the um demonstration projects for these small small modular nuclear reactors in the United States and Canada and these projects are I think vitally important

Because a lot of the world is talking about SMR and there is a lot of promise there but it’s these demonstration projects which are really going to prove whe whether or not they can deliver and on what time and on what budget and then start Paving the way for hopefully a

Roll out of smrs around the world potentially including in Australia so that’s just a snapshot of what I do which is just a tiny portion of what’s going on in the world of nuclear and I just thought I’d spend a few minutes and I’ve got some slides here they’re they’re quite detailed I’m

Not going to talk through any of the details on the slides I’m just going to highlight a few things as I move through um I’m assuming they’ll be made available and if not please um if you’d like to have a closer look just email me so firstly to have a look at the

United States the United States is relevant in any discussion of civil nuclear because it has the world’s largest nuclear Fleet and um it generates a significant amount of its energy from from nuclear energy I also think it’s interesting from Australia’s perspective because there is currently bipartisan support for advanced nuclear

Energy in the United States and this has led to just a a full spectrum of different types of government initiative and government Appropriations to um Revitalize the US nuclear industry to build new units to get these demonstration units for new technologies up and running and and there’s also a

Big Focus for the United States on the export of their their technology now historically the US has exported their technology to many many countries around the world but at the moment the export Market if we’re being real is actually being dominated by Russia obviously with geopolitical intentions behind it we

Know what they are but if you look at the countries that are building reactors in foreign countries um it’s Russia that is doing the most the most building at the moment um then I would also just point out the as I said the the technologies that are being um deployed

In the US for the first time we’re all watching them um I’m working on some of these projects and with the hope that you you know the these will be the projects that will set the foundation for the future deployment of SMR around the world Canada is a very interesting

Country when it comes to nuclear and if we zoom in on one province in particular that’s the province of Ontario which achieved a coal really to Nuclear So phased out coal and replaced 25% of of their generation which was from coal predominantly with nuclear they built 20

Plants in about 20 22 plants I think in about 20 years and they were able to achieve a significantly decarbonized uh grid and energy system through phasing out coal and nuclear did the majority of the heavy lifting there it um came on with an an extra 18 to 20% um in that in

That coal phase out it’s also a very interesting country because it has a very modern and sophisticated nuclear regulatory body and a lot of the technology vendors are actually going to Canada to put their Technologies their new technologies through the Canadian life licensing process um with again the

Idea that using that as a Launchpad for then rolling their Technologies out around the world the UK we need to talk about the UK of course uh it’s always relevant um and it is a nuclear country it has a rather old and aging existing nuclear power Fleet it needs to and is replacing

That large generating capacity with new large generating capacity and that is it is also investing heavily in small modul nuclear reactors not only their homegrown technology that Rolls-Royce is developing but also many of the foreign Technologies are actually being invited to participate in opportunities for government funds and the UK is really

Looking at what it can do to revitalize its own Supply chains as well looking to potential export markets and I’ll just read you out the um the most recent announcement around the what they’re calling Great British nuclear announced in July 2023 which is the government push push to drive a rapid expansion of

Nuclear power at an unprecedented scale and pace so um yeah that sums up the UK’s position currently on nuclear where again there is um broad political support across different spectrums of the political landscape now here I’ve just got a few slides that cover um other other uh technology vendor home

Countries and what they’re doing and I’ll just point it out again that it’s essential when we’re looking at um these countries to look at the countries that are doing significant builds at home and so I was delighted to hear that France recently um committed to a significant new build program for their large

Reactor Fleet as well as also investing significantly in small modular nuclear reactors France of course has had up to 80% of their electricity coming from nuclear they built about 56 plants in 15 years and kind of accidentally decarbonized a number of decades ago uh so it’s great to see France sort of

Coming back as a as what it having its place that it should be as an ongoing leader in the nuclear nuclear sector as I mentioned Russia and China these two countries are building out their fleets at home and Russia is currently the most significant nuclear exporter in terms of

The number of foreign foreign projects that the Russian nuclear industry is building China interestingly by mid this decade is going to outpace the US in terms of the number of units online and the the the megaw capacity of their Fleet and it is also expected that China

Is going to be a major nuclear exporter going forward and I think that’s particularly relevant for our region a quick look at the European Union that’s always an interesting place to to talk nuclear because of course we have some countries in the EU that are quite vocally particularly post Fukushima anti-nuclear Germany Austria

And Luxembourg but if you look you’ve got 26 % of electricity in the EU generated from nuclear you’ve got 12 countries that currently operate nuclear power plants and the majority of them have new build plans both large and small in some cases and then you have a

Whole number of other countries in the EU that for reasons of energy security reasons of meeting their climate commitments um are turning to nuclear energy and there are some very active new nuclear programs in in in Europe now turning to our own uh region or a set of countries that are at least

Closer to home and this is really the slide that I that I look at and sort of scratch my head a little bit when I when I think about it so the countries here that are shaded in Orange are countries that have worked through a the first

Phase of a of a process that is known as the international atomic energy agency’s Milestones approach to the development of a nuclear power program basically the iaea has developed a road map or a toolkit that countries use when they are contemplating moving ahead with a nuclear energy program and phase one is

All about doing all of the um the Preparatory work the pref feasibility studies developing a a national road map to understand how a country would move forward with implementing a nuclear energy program and all these countries that are highlighted in Orange Indonesia Philippines Vietnam Thailand Malaysia Sri Lanka they have all already

Completed phase one some of them are now in phase two having made a national commitment to pursue a nuclear energy program and Indonesia and and the Philippines I would note in particular as the the kind of FrontRunner uh countries there and as I said I’m doing

Some work at the moment uh helping to get the legislative infrastructure uh in place for the government of the of the Philippines if you want to do a little bit more of a deep dive on this topic um I’d direct you to take a look at some

Maps that um a NGO out of Washington DC called Third Way has produced uh they show the I think uh extensive activity in the nuclear sector all around the world and they they’ve done an interesting project of mapping countries by their Readiness to receive Advanced nuclear um Technologies and all the

Countries that are in that dark green color are ready essentially as soon as the technology is ready and then we have some countries also in green that are ready around 2030 others that are potentially ready around 2050 some that are unlikely to be ready and then

There’s um a handful that have a light gray Circle and Australia obviously is one of them and these are countries that currently have a policy or a legislative prohibition on nuclear energy and I will pause and say that there are few of those countries also sitting in Europe

But a number of these countries Denmark Sweden Italy are currently reconsidering their position on nuclear if they haven’t already changed it like Sweden has determined that Sweden an existing nuclear country is going to build more reactors in Sweden so this this needs to be updated

And looking at our region this is just a zoom in just to to um our region and some countries closer to home and I’ll just leave you leave you with that um so I want to talk then a little bit about Australia and um you know very very quickly just to

Offer a few thoughts so what I hear um most recently in terms of an anti-nuclear position or a questioning questioning attitude towards nuclear really focuses now on three three topics the question of what about the waste would it cost too much and won’t it take too long now we probably have an expert

Sitting here uh when it comes to nuclear waste so I won’t I won’t go there but if that question comes up you know in the discussion I’m sure we can we can talk to that the question of won’t it cost too much you know that’s a really difficult question to answer because we

Are in a world where have just rolled out the first of aind builds of large reactor technologies that are next in their generation so they’re Technologies we’ve built before but these are the new designs of those Technologies we’ve also had a Hiatus when it comes to building new reactors we’ve just been operating

Them not building new ones so there was a large learning um involved in developing anything sort of for the first time and what we have seen around the world in these uh large reactor projects that have got a lot of attention recently uh for being overcost

And overtime we these are the first of a kind of the new technologies and in large in large part they are being done by a first of a Kind Workforce as well because we’ve lost a lot of the experience that we had from when France built those 50 reactors in 50 plus

Reactors in 15 years so there is a there’s a large learning curve that the industry has been going on in the world of life reactors and when the question comes up of well how much are the small ones going to cost um we haven’t built them yet so you

Know it’s a very difficult topic to to discuss but what I will say is two things first we don’t we don’t know how much the L the small reactors will cost today we can model we can guess we can talk to the vendors and get their get their best

Guess but what we do know is that they smrs are specifically being designed to capture what we know about building large reactors which is the more you build the cheaper and quicker you can build them that is what France did when it rolled out 56 reactors in 15 years it

Built a fleet of them all the same and it just built them over and over and over and over again that is what if you talk to anyone in the United Arab Emirates that had the most ambitious nuclear energy program in the world when I was living there a newcomer country

They had had one uh nuclear engineer in that country when they started their program they have built four reactors the fourth one is about to come online and if you talk to anyone from that program they will tell you that it was an incredible learning curve to go from

The first one to the second one the third one and then the fourth one and how much easier it was going from one to even two let alone three and four I’m currently working on a project in North Africa with a country that is building four uh large reactors and I recently

Ted the construction site they have poured the first safety nuclear safety concrete for unit 1 2 and three they’re about to pour the concrete for four you talk to anyone on that project and they will tell you that the lessons that they have learned and the speed at which they

Can do the second one and then the third one and then the fourth one it’s just transformative so what are smrs all about smrs are all about building many many many of as close to the same thing as we can over and over and over and over again standardizing everything that

We possibly can doing a lot of factory manufacturer um and hopefully achieving economies of replication that is the essence of the business case around small modular nuclear reactors so yes we need to do it as I said I’m a realist and a practical person and I’m working on some of these demonstration projects

And we have to demonstrate them and then we have to achieve that roll out but I I very much hope that we can do what we have done before and that the nuclear industry can actually fulfill its promise in this sense and finally to just talk a little bit about the

Question of how long will it take and will it take too long you know we’ve got the 2040s here um as the the sort of the The Horizon time Horizon that we’re talking about and I often get the question of you know will it take that

Long does it have to take that long now the international atomic energy agency in that document that I mentioned that road map um the the Milestones approach says a country can take 10 to 15 years from the moment it considers nuclear energy as an option to having on the

Grid that’s their guess for a large reactor program for a country starting from nothing the UAE starting from nothing with a large reactor program did it in 12 years we are not starting from nothing so I think with the infrastructure the knowledge what we already have here Australia being a

Highly sophisticated country I feel like we can move a lot more quickly and I will say that there are 50 countries in the world that are currently working through this iea Milestones process 50 countries that are currently considering nuclear energy in in addition to the 32 currently

Operating nuclear power plants so a lot of the world is considering and actively looking at this topic um to me though the key point that is missed by people who say let’s just wait and see if these projects can be demonstrated let’s just wait and see if nuclear is e economical

Let’s just wait and see if we can achieve that enth of a kind and what those economies are repetition look like let’s just wait and see and if we need it well we’ll have it that’s not how nuclear works and I know that from my day job because that

Is part of what I do is advising countries that are working towards their nuclear energy Ambitions and it can be a lengthy walk and it can be in for some quite an ambitious walk um a successful program putting in place the foundations of a successful nuclear program isn’t an overnight proposition so you

Can’t wake up one morning and say ah yeah nuclear is great now let’s have it tomorrow that’s just not how it works we do need to take the time to do the planning to think about the legal infrastructure the regulatory infrastructure the institutional infrastructure the human resource development the sighting issues ETC work

Through all these issues so that when these new technologies are available or if we decide we want to buy existing nuclear technologies that are available today we are ready to procure them and we have set the foundation for a successful nuclear program we need to

Start that work today if we want in 5 to 8 to 10 years by 2040 to have nuclear energy as an option for Australia so that’s that’s really my key message I want to see the prohibitions overturned but I really want to see us start the

Work that is necessary to position us to have the option to have nuclear energy in the future to me at the moment Australia is out of Step with most other industrialized nations and we’re out of step with many many of our regional neighbors and I’m concerned about Australia’s not only leadership in the

Region on issues of nuclear safety nuclear security and non- proliferation but as well as the Mist opportunities that Australia could have not only for our own energy security affordability decarbonized Energy Systems but also our ability to to take advantage of what’s happening in our region be maybe a a hub

For future deployment of nuclear in our region which will happen and will happen on a timeline that is here and now and with that I will pass over to Dr Ed Patterson thank you very much and good evening everybody um it is a privilege to be here um it’s also quite daunting

To follow Helen as a speaker uh she is in the awesome category and she’s uh you know I think able to to do things in the nuclear space uh that are remarkable it’s it’s a tough gig to be in nuclear I remember coming to Australia um and I think the only reason

That I could do a reasonable job of of ansto and Susan was a great mentor to me I thank you for that Susan uh was because I’d been through the anti- apartate struggle um uh for the first four years that I came into Australia I had to sit

In a little chair because I still had a a criminal record from my AP anti- apate activism and because the Australian authorities recognized the authority of that criminal record I used to have you know that little box you tick in the in the form I at a certain point they voided my

Criminal record so I no longer have a criminal record so I’m really glad to be here tonight um and it’s it’s a privilege I think also to to speak to the society which has been uh such a an inspiration to me in looking for a diverse set of voices across Australia

That are authentic and respectful and ongoing um it’s a beautiful tradition and and to you know our president and to the team that supports her uh it’s been a privileged to help with that as well um and and I thank you for that you know it hasn’t been easy for

The opal reactor many of you will be listening to Helen and thinking yeah but we just put up the opal reactor well we had the high-fire reactor before before that and the hire reactor was a a fleet of six reactors one of them was in

Germany two of them were in the UK one of them was in Denmark uh one of them was built in Australia and the highi reactor was a fleet of reactors which were to prepare countries for nuclear excuse me nuclear power so even the op opal reactor you think

Well there wasn’t a fleet of opal reactors but the vendor we chose and one of the reasons we chose show the argentinians of the vendor was because they had already built seven uh research reactors in Argentina and so on the back of ra7 uh they built a re research reactor

In Egypt which was the basis of their nuclear power project and uh our reactor followed the building of that um that that that plant in Egypt so even in uh research reactors there is a fleet effect and we couldn’t have built uh the opal reactor in fact if we had chosen

The Canadian design it would have failed because they tried to build them in Canada and that was another one that actually bid to do the job and the maples were never built or switched on so I’m really glad that we went with the Argentinian design uh and that we built

It and that it works the other thing that is interesting just as an opal fact before I get into uh nuclear just to remind you that even in the nuclear world that we’re in today of nuclear medicine and a research reactor there are issues the current fuel sitting in the reactor was

Fabricated with 19.6% enriched uranium now normal reactors are about 5% they’re moving up to 6% now uh with so-called accident tolerant fuels but ours is 19.5% it’s called Halu high saay low enriched uranium the uranium in that reactor was enriched in Russia in fact at the start

Of the Ukraine Russian war there wasn’t a single place in the world that could produce 19.6% High sa low in Rich uranium apart from Russia uh and so even in the world of keeping research reactors going the art of geopolitics and a long supply chain for fuel the supply chain for fuel from

The day we place the order until the fuel actually arrives with us uh can be a minimum of 7 years and it has been as long as 12 so just to keep that reactor going to 2045 is itself a very sophisticated geopolitical negotiating environment which is why you meet people like Helen

In the United States uh annual um cocktail party at the palace in Vienna I don’t know if you’ve been to the Palace in Vienna but there is an annual cocktail party in the Palance in Vienna on the Monday night of the um annual meeting of the international atomic

Energy agency and that’s where you see Helen in one corner and the Secretary of State of energy or a more senior person from the United States gives a speech and during the time that Helen developed her career uh the um Secretary of State for energy in the United States moved

The place they talk from because there’s a place where Helen talks to people which is just as important so she’s very famous I think give her a big hand cuz is a National [Applause] Treasure she’s also published this amazing book uh which is the best book

On nuclear law um and I’m hoping soon that uh on the basis of this talk and some other things we can induct in some way into this Royal Society of New South Wales and we can be honored by her presence uh in this esteemed group I want to say three things before

We get into a Q&A mode uh you know the geopolitical setting of 2040 is really important to think about Helen has hinted at it nearly every country in our region that we now see as a supply of students to us to be educated so that they go back and

Think nice things about Australia will be a nuclear power country they will want to be able to study engineering and understand how nuclear power is deployed about around the region they will want to to hopefully build English-speaking reactors and not Russian speaking reactors uh the Philippines has already

Tried historically to build a Russian reactor and didn’t build it I have a scenario dream that keeps me awake at night which is China and Russia building all the reactors in our region that will be built this is not a debate Helen’s just indicated to you that it’s not a

Debate uh we’ll speak Chinese and Russian and they won’t be based on any of the English fleets small medium siiz reactors big reactors they will go to jurisdictions that can efficiently license and build these and they will build them because they need the low carbon electrons that are going to be

Necessary to do it the reason that we picked 2040 for this date is that if we think that we can escape the consequences of living in a dominantly uh electricity and even industry-based um region that is decarbonized with nuclear we’re living in a Fool’s Paradise and the danger is that by

Continuing these irrational bans today if I tripped over a lump of uranium somewhere in New South Wales picked it up and took it to a geology Department I will have broken the law it is against the law to look for uranium in the great state of New South Wales did you know

That it is true it’s a I’ve discussed this with previous Premier who were involved in putting that law in they’re quite proud of it I think it’s disturbing I think it’s a it’s a kind of intellectual suicide that you committed years ago that is committing generations of people

Uh to isolation from the mainstream Energy Future of our region the other thing that I’ll just say is that uh a lot of reactors will be late and too expensive and the most wonderful example for me is the one in Finland it’s very like the French reactors that France

Wants to build now is a French design The Finnish were too smart to use the French contractors so they set up a firm to do the Contracting and got into trouble so the uh the Finish reactor uh was late uh by about 4 years over the

Total period um and it was much much more expensive it was about two and a half times more expensive than it was expected to be so Finland must be really ropable about that well actually they’re not they had been persuaded by their greens party before it became a

Pronuclear party uh to build a lot of wind turbines now in Finland it’s very cold the wind turbines don’t last very long they freeze up in in the winter solar panels don’t do well in Finland so they didn’t even try that um and they were having real trouble keeping the

Lights On by the time they they switched on this reactor it was late it was over budget by by a very significant margin 3 days after they switched on that reactor the price of electricity in Finland went negative and they started to curtail the wind to bring it up so that people would

Actually pay for the electrons again the effect of having secure predictable always on base load power in your grid is a universal law based on engineering you can be an economist and have all the spreadsheets you like the premier recently said that he’s hoping to get to 90% intermittent Renewables I’m an

Engineer I can tell you now that there’s a law called saturation and it saturates at 40% and after 40% you cannot use intermittent Renewables Plus batteries and have economic electricity so I’ll tell you now about the iron law of saturation says that anybody in Australia who says that you can build intermittent

Renewables to a saturation of 80% and back it up with batteries and gas that is the aimo plan is not rooted in engineering reality it is a fantasy and it has already been shown not to be true by Germany because Germany shut down 27 reactors and started to build wind and

Solar they have only just replaced only just replaced uh the effect of shutting down those reactors with all of the Renewables they built they have opened Brown coal plants in the last 12 months because the law of saturation which wasn’t explained to them by the frown

Hofer solo Institute which is a bit like csro and the Gen cost report by the way just a joke um actually not a joke really actually uh real because the person who writes the Gen cross report is an economist and the person who supports him is interested in in wave power the

People who understand how grids operate the people understand how real grids work in the real world will tell you you will not decarbonize the Australian grid with wind solar and batteries and therefore the proposition I want to put to you and which we can take questions on is a very simple

Proposition if the Mantra of the current government which is it’s too expensive I and it takes too long is actually not true and I’ve just proved to you it’s not true because it wasn’t true in Finland so if that is actually not true that’s a very bad argument not to

Lift the ban in fact it’s a terrible argument not to lift the ban because if it is true then why don’t you lift the ban and we can find out so we living in a democracy a postmodern democracy which is tolerating uh really totalitarian tactics to exclude from the discourse in

Our society something that as Helen has indicated Many Many Nations emerging economies established economies uh Regional economies are economically adopting these into their grps government’s making economic Reas uh reasons not to lift a totalitarian ban on a primary form of energy which will save us from the carbon

Consequences that we face and I’m not a denialist you’ll be glad to hear I am interested in the atmosphere and I’m am interested in the fact that the temperatur is a bit higher because of the underwater volcano that we had so two years we’re going to have high

Temperatures and it’ll be back on the curve of getting higher and higher all the time it is so important it is so important that we distinguish between our antipathy to nuclear and totalitarian banss that sterilized debate inhibit thought I came out get the struggle against the

Pate the thing that makes me feel most viscerally worried about New South Wales and Australia more generally is that energy aate is a real thing we may be condemning the young people of this generation to our historical antipathy to equality of access of all reasonable power sources

To a reasonable future Grid in a Democratic Society it is a totalitarian act to ban something that most rational countries Democratic and non-democratic in the world are trying to use the arguments that being used I have just proved to you are not true in a real life example but more deeply do we

Tolerate totalitarian behavior in others in other settings when it’s not about energy we represent the intellectual leadership of a postmodern inclusive embracing Multicultural Society except for energy Chris Bertram uh Dr Patterson you ask us to accept as fact that Batteries Plus wind plus solar cannot um manage AG um more

Than 40% of um energy required in Australia you have to do better than that if this is going to be um a rational discourse you have to provide chapter and verse which actually proves it to us at the moment what you have said is interesting but it’s simply at

The level of it of assertion yeah I I think you’re absolutely right and and I think we haven’t been very good at proving that would it help if I am a battery expert and a wind expert as well I am uh I used to run an Energy Research

Institute in South Africa that joined to the materials Institute that I was running and my Institute uh the materials one uh developed lithium battery technologies in the 1990s that I licensed to Japan so I know a lot about lithium batteries I know about the energy density of lithium batteries I

Know uh and uh briefly met John good enough who got the Nobel Prize because the head of our battery group um in South Africa studied directly under him I worked on the so-called zebra battery which was a high temperature sodium chloride battery I develop the camic

Materials for that uh when we took over the Energy Research Institute I I was very interested because this was before I was nuclear at that stage I was pretty anti-nuclear actually um and and we were looking at wind maps for the eastern part of of South Africa that could be

Combined with pump hydro which is pretty much the snowy scheme uh to see if we could provide rural electricity to communities in in the trans Sky Region and we demonstrated quite quickly with uh proper engineering and not just spreadsheet engineering uh that it wouldn’t be possible uh and in fact the

Place where that dam is luisi Dam does in fact in the community next door now I have a wind turbine but the wind turbine has never been used for Pumped Hydro but the hydro there has been used to produce reliable electricity so I think I’ve got a background enough in the systems

Approach uh to these things to say that the question I would ask is where are the published engineering reports from AO because I’ve searched for them and not found them and has anybody studied why Germany which had substantially the same plans has not been able to achieve

Them why in 2018 did the fr alha Institute for solar energy indicate that it had calculated the number of solar panels required um for the uh full expansion uh to achieve 100% 90% was their real number of solar penetration and they were wrong by what they called

40 uh 50% there’s a little diagram you can look it up on one of their reports and it says 50% and it’s a gap but actually if you look at it it’s 100% because that only Built half the solar panels that were required and they now know because they’ve integrated the grid

Um uh understanding that they cannot do it in fact I this week we’re importing electrons from France to support the current situation which is 45% than you chrisan thank you Ai and Helen I enjoyed it immensely I’m a True Believer um I won’t make any comment

About uh some of the things I was going to say but uh Chris bow has come out with these figures which are so spacious I’m wondering what your comments on those are there was an article in both papers both the AFR and the uh Australian today I think about the cost

Of a modular nuclear reactor which is miles miles less than what they have what bow has estimated yeah um I I I once briefly met um the energy Minister and I I think for about 3 weeks and I can’t remember exactly he might have been the minister for ansto before there

Was an election um but we didn’t meet during that time I think it’s it’s clear that he has a very firm view about these things um and I think that if you look at the people who advise him you can see how you could sustain that view um and this is the disappointing

Piece of the puzzle is that the Australian energy Market operator which is meant to give us the lowest cost electrons uh feels that it has to commit to the government policy so it doesn’t run scenarios that include nucleus so there are no detailed engineering scenarios the ones you’re asking for in

Anybody’s in basket anywhere in the Australian government that answers the question that you asked now why should I have to do that work I’m a humble retiree trying to make a dollar right um but I have worked with people around the world who have done this work with the

Limited resources that they have and we have proved it and we have published it and we have talked about it and it is largely ignored so I’m talking to you about the risk of a conviction about something that is not true okay um uh it’s called confirmation bias I think in the

Literature we suffering from that um Steven Burns um could you please one of the big issues is uh waste disposal um could you give us a bit of a background on the sinrock and also potentially the outcome of the South Australian investigation into nuclear disposal industry which is published

About two years ago and how uh potentially it could be a very very viable industry there and the cost of the development of it would effectively be paid by overseas countries who would want to um store their waste there great so question about syrock what is syrock

Synrock is the famous uh Ted Ringwood invention at a&u on how you take the waste from nuclear medicine production or anything else actually and uh combine it um as if you’re putting it into an original mineral Rock and you synthetically make That Rock And so it’s

Like putting it back into the geology of the earth and therefore it’s really really safe that waste cannot be released so that’s a quick summary of Sunrock when I came to Anto and I spoke to zigi saski my chair I said the syro thing’s been going on a bit hasn’t it he

Said yes I said can we discuss it he said yes I said I am either going to kill syck or I’m going to make it happen what do you think he said I was going to say the same thing to you because we’d been talking about syrock

In fact we had people working in the United States on syrock and so so we formulated a team and for 5 years we had a weekly meeting setting up the first of all the scientific basis getting all of that done we then set up a pilot plant a

Cold pilot plant where we piloted everything we then specified the engineering and the control room this was all done in ano to prove that we can do a nuclear development project in the country we then uh went out and specified the hot ISO static press that

Would be used and we specified the plant we went to government we asked for the money and they gave it to us it came in just about on budget it’s a little bit more within the the the factor that you would give for a first of aind globally

Unique uh uh nuclear development and so the plant is ready to operate why did we do it we could show from the economics that putting the waste into cement and not being able to finally dispose of it in a final disposal and keeping it would have a much increased volume and volume equals

Cost and waste by putting it into synr the volume would go down and it could go to a final disposal in one step and the economics of those savings made it the best waste project that you could ever do anywhere in the world and the syro

Plants ready to go I hope we build 30 40 of them around the world we own the tech technology let’s do it that is the story of waste is get the minimum volume and get it in a form where its final geological disposal is possible or reuse the spent fuel in

Another generation of reactors and reuse the spent fuel in another generation reactors for approximately 3,000 years there is no nuclear fuel waste there’s waste from nuclear medicine production there’s wayte from all sorts of things but nuclear fuel spent nuclear fuel is not waste it’s opportunity it’s opport even the waste

We had in the tanks at an Stone was opportunity because we’ve done a world first project we I know I know you can’t celebrate it because people don’t want to celebrate you know great successes in nuclear in Australia who would want to do that but it’s a global first and it’s

Been done in our backyard can I just ask Helen if you’ve got a comment on that one I was going to ask actually a question syrock sounds amazing what are we doing with it and why aren’t we building it around the world when nuclear waste is a topic that has such Global

Prominence I I think it’s because the political atmosphere who would buy a syrock plant from a country that doesn’t do nuclear power and so I would ask you a question back my ask you a question back Helen if we assumed that we didn’t want this sort of total Arian approach

What is the quickest way for Australia to embrace this journey so you could go for me personally this is a very personal comment I could go either way on the prohibitions and whether we need to abolish them tomorrow that to me is kind of a s show to what we really need

To be doing which is starting the work that is necessary to position Australia to be able to have a successful nuclear program if we want it end of this decade mid 2030 s heading into the 2040s there is a number of years worth of work that

Needs to be done and that is what I would like our country to start tomorrow because we are always going to be 5 to 8 to 10 years away from having nuclear energy if we sit behind our prohibitions and do nothing now the next question was Robert

Clancy I I was going to and wanted to ask a much more interesting question what I’m going to ask it as a just an ordinary Australian I’m devastated to hear what I’m hearing and it’s not surprising when becoming in this country uh a country driven by ideology which in

Turn has been driven by usually vested interests uh and that’s occurring across the board I’ve personally been more involved in the co story and it breaks my heart to see people ding unnecessarily so when we come to nuclear power uh it seems that uh you can’t always blame the politicians I mean by

And large they they got ideology but they’ve got to be advised and you touched on the fact that advice is important uh it seems to me that our politicians are being very corly advised uh and if that’s the case um how can that be changed how can we put in place

An advisory program that can do what Helen is suggested that would can I mean you couldn’t the moment even initiate the types of thinking and plan that Helen’s talking about because it it’s a a total so how do we where how do we go I don’t necessarily have the answer but

I have just the I would Echo the frustration of when I returned to Australia um I was I mean I always knew we had prohibitions um but what surprised me was that I felt that in every conversation I had and I talk about nuclear all the time I can’t help

It I love it um it’s my personal and professional life I talk about it all the time whether it’s a dinner party or coffee with a friend and I’m surprised bys I got some yeah um I’m surprised by the response that I receive 90% of the time which is that’s very interesting

Tell me more um oh I didn’t know that oh we have nuclear Pro well why do we have that it I think Australians are pragmatic people I think we have open minds I think with pres when presented with some basic facts we can make rational reasonable decisions and I

Think most people would say let’s let’s consider it are we not even considering it can’t we have it as an option if we wanted every other country well every other but many many other countries in the world are working towards having it op as an option why can’t we so in my

Naivity returning to Australia I thought I might be able to go and have a chat and share my experience from overseas with what I am doing with other countries my experience living and working in the United States what the US industry is doing with our leaders down

In CRA couldn’t get a meeting with most of them I’ll say no more I’ll say just a couple of things about it the country of Finland has been a study for me South Korea and Finland when I was in South Africa and looking at at technology policy and the sorts of

Things that came out of my history I realized that both Finland and South Korea for different reasons had the longest term technology policies of any countries in the world and so I spent a lot of time trying to understand Finland and I spend quite a lot of time

In Finland the one thing that distinguishes the Finnish Parliament from any parliament in in Australia is you not allowed to take up your seat until you have a three we course that you have to complete on every as aspect of the society that you are going to legislate

For and that includes at least a few days on how energy is produced and why you can’t get to 90% saturation and so nobody will sit in the Finnish Parliament and make the sorts of statements that Minister bone for example makes so confidently because they have to connect it back to reality

And that is why the green party in Finland is pro- nuclear because the people who sit in the parliament who are Green have to go through that education and if you don’t take education seriously in Finland you die in the cold in the winter but B relies on the

Csir surely they are great s some great advice every every meeting that I had in Kim car set up the first one I I have an enormous respect for Kim car I learned so much from him so I don’t want to be I want to be absolutely triartisan try any

Politician I’ll be partisan okay um I I basically what I learned from Kim car is the power of discourse in a small room and and he brought the csro people at the time to sit in the room with the Anto people what was fascinating is the energy people in in csro the

Photovoltaic people and the genos people and the others had never met each other the first time they met was when they sat at Anto to meet with Anto on nuclear power they don’t regularly meet together to discuss anything so the whole gen cost report is an economist and a wave

Expert like and a spreadsheet which they Outsource to a financial company um and and and so I remember talking to the person at the time who headed that thing and he had a model which he had developed a very elegant model the best model by the way that I’d seen a our

Grid I won’t give his name because he’s he’s working in a setting where he won’t appreciate that um but he had a model in which he showed how nuclear would transform form minimize the cost of future electricity and decarbonize it in when Kim car was Minister which was some time ago two two

200 what so 18 17 because when he appointed me I had to sit in his office in in Melbourne and we agreed that we both like John lare and his books um um and and so it’s really important to recognize that that modeling has been done but the the csro would never allow

That to be published it’s it’s against their interest um we are in a mind control setting in our federal research agencies and it extends by the way all the way into a&u I hope that the new Vice Chancellor for whom I have a very think have a holder in very high esteem

Might change that because I think she’s an open discourse person um but but to be frank it’s sterile it’s it’s just you know eventually you you stop because it’s just too difficult and and to realize that we have got that sort of crusty um sort of I don’t it’s like

Empire it’s a bit I remember when Maggie Thatcher came to visit us at csar in South Africa and I just tell this little an Maggie Thatcher wanted to show that apartate wasn’t too bad so she came out on a visit against everybody’s advice and one of the places that she wanted to

Come and visit was um the csir where I was an executive there at the time before I moved into government running my energy Institute and I met with her and we we had a one of those whole bits of stuff in your hand lunch with her and I remember her

Saying to me um you know what is it about South Africa that you’ve you’ve got um you’ve got this ability to deal with difficult and intractable problems I said it’s because it’s it’s basically it’s an embattled small population of people who are trying to hold back the

Waves of change that you are not prepared in code to accept because I didn’t really want it to be there either um and and and and that you can convince yourself in a reasonable size group of people that you are right when you are wrong and that’s what a pate was and

That’s what anti-nuclear Australia is got exactly the same characteristics you can’t change people’s minds um no matter what intelligence knowledge spreadsheets anything you want to do and you have to realize that that mindset is actually needs a revolutionary change or an intergenerational change young people don’t agree with most of the people in

The room people Susan thanks uh Susan Pon we’ve been talking about the Civil the Civil sector why is the us talking to Australia about nuclear submarines do you want and what are we going to do with them these are going to pull into Port Sur it’s a mechanism or a spearhead to changing

Mindsets uh at a minimum it’ll be a parallel universe let let’s assume that that the Congressional politics uh the UK US Nexus will all work it’s a very complicated program um we will build a parallel universe there will be a separate regulator mhm um that regulator will regulate according to the standard of

The US Navy which is somewhat more sophisticated than the Nic that could be good for us because we could learn some things about properly regulating what’s the NC uh the nuclear Regulatory Commission uh yeah regulator in the US yeah it was it was never let a reactor

Get built again it came up out of out of Carter and others who didn’t want to do it um but basically if you want to build a submarine program um you have to have all of the architecture that we would need for a civilian nuclear program so my estimate the the the

Navy’s estimate and the government’s estimate is that at the height of this program in the 2040s um there will be about 15,000 to 20,000 direct jobs I estimate that’ll be 45,000 okay so that’ll be a lot of jobs um when those first generation underwater Sailors come out of those uh

Those submarines what do you think they’re going to do they are nuclear trained people 2040 all submarines will be drones we don’t need them that’s another debate which you can have afterwards um yeah I I I’m I’m involved in the drone company so I declare my interest um but

What you said ad that that’s spot on you know everywhere you move in the US Civil nuclear industry you run into ex Mariners they’re they’re everywhere they make fantastic nuclear ener lawyers they yeah they’re everywhere so so again let me come back to the real root cause root

Cause analysis is was invented by by nuclear people the root cause of all of this is that because of the threeyear cycle of government in the federal setting there is no strategic thinking in the bureaucracy of canra and I can prove it because when I came to join ano and I

Wanted to put in a plan and Susan will remember this my first planning cycle I was told there was a three-year planning cycle and I got to get ready for that and zigy trained me and Susan trained me for that but I wanted a plan to

2055 why did I want to plan to 2055 okay yeah it’s hysterical isn’t it the man is mad well 2055 is 10 years after we shut down the opal reactor so that’s your decommissioning period 2055 was the first year that we wouldn’t have a nuclear research reactor

In Australia and that was my planning Horizon so in my first meeting at ano with 40 people in the room because they excitingly came to visit the new CEO by the time I I left ano 750 people used to come to my talks um we had a planning

Horizon for 2055 it was actually 2056 cuz I’ll be 1256 but I took a year old um now once you have an institution that can plan against a horizon of 2015 and I can talk to other people about this afterwards we changed the policy of the federal government because we had all of

These plans and we kept arriving with these documents and they would do a review and the numbers were right and the timing was right and all of it was right the government introduced the first first 10-year planning framework uh during my tenure at Ana at

Anto during the time that I was in Anto and they used the planning framework of Anto to introduce the first 10-year long range planning framework for large infrastructure in Australia it’s really important to recognize this the capacity to understand the future profoundly cannot be a linear process you must consider all possible

Futures and if you don’t consider a future that includes nuclear and you don’t do that as a government you should not be in power now I’ve just I’ve just heard that we’ve only we’ve got a very short we’ve got more questions but I am actually going to ask in the interests

Of balance yes and of somebody who would like to put a contrary view because we’ve all been very positive I’ve got two hands up the back but well look are you prepared to be contrarian on this I can be if you want me to be no

Look I can too but I’m really looking for someone else um yes okay on the back corner about about um the percentage uh of Renewables that you can have on the grid because your answer to the other gentleman up here was that Amo hasn’t done a report but I just found an Amo

Report from December called engineering Road map to 100% Renewables so this is written by Engineers explaining how we get to 100% hard to hear no I written by Engineers explaining how we took 100% from emo last year and and all the engineers I I talked to say this so

How is it that all these Engineers don’t know if there’s an iron law saying we can’t go above 40% and and also given that we already sometimes reach 70% in New South Wales not not for not you know at night or whatever uh doesn’t that show that in 10 years from now we’re

Basically going to be there um I think it I think it’s great um I I have offered to uh review those reports and have not been accepted uh as a reviewer I think it’s possible to do what I would call desktop engineering um and convince yourself that you can do

This uh remember AO uh looks at the power generation side but it it it really aimo um doesn’t understand a tremendous about what that future grid architecture looks like all of that planning has been done uh when you do the costing on that planning um let’s assume that it was

True uh one thing that you’ll find about that costing and this this is um work that has been completed uh and it’s done by been done by Dr Robert bar who has a detailed highresolution model uh that can model all of these future grids in Australia I remember him making a presentation to

The previous Premier Dominic per um and that model Dr Robert Bar’s model needs to be um uh put into a competition with with that model to see if it is based on the actual weather conditions at a subday basis over a period that they’re talking about because that’s what Robert

B has done and he has demonstrated that by the time you get to 40% it saturates and that has been accepted internationally around the world he’s consulted about this around the world it’s been presented to uh a government a series of times the only people who’ve never invited us to make those

Presentations as a emo but I look forward to the invitation I think it’s been an extraordinary presentation in that it’s been not entirely expected I’m really proud that we as a society can have these rather civilized areas where people disagree I think this is terribly important

I should say that when ad first proposed this this um panel about a year ago I hadn’t had any idea just how relevant it was going to be it’s become more and more and more relevant over the period And I think that these issues around the smrs and the New Power Generation

Landscape hadn’t become terribly clear a year ago in spite of Ukraine in spite of the the issues so I think it’s become such a topic and I think it was on what yesterday or today that uh there was a discussion uh with Alan fle saying we should have 90% Renewables and 10% gas

So this is this is we’re right on the money here I think that’s really important and I’m extremely grateful to you both particularly for understanding that broader International landscape I do want to say one other thing over the last four months or three months we’ve had a series of events with very

Controversial issues discussed online and face to face Peter b l a panel with Megan Davis with Chris Plick people taking different views on The Voice Katherine uh ball and Maria McNamara focused on highly topical issues of convergence and new technologies actually arguing that AI was something we shouldn’t be quite as

Frightened of as we are um professor Emma Johnston from the University of Sydney talked at government house about ideas for Marine Stewardship with the shocking figure that 40% of marine life in Australia has been affected by heat stress and then in September Professor Alan Davidson actually rather radically qu questioned

The lack of critical thought in the in the in the social sciences first of all I want to mention them because I was away I was overseas and I have to thank Lindsay and uh guy luks and the president and all of those who managed those events I

Listened to them riveted but secondly I think what’s striking is that people are looking for Solutions I think that this Society needs to have these discussions we need to face controversial discussions allow voices to come out as long as they’re evidence-based and reason so that’s why I’m really delighted

To say thank you to you two for for coming out with what is a very different angle on the world for many of us who I’m afraid have been controlled by our totalitarian state I do think totalitarians a bit hard