Australian philanthropist and businessman Dick Smith has called on Prime Minister Anthony Albanese to reconsider his opposition to nuclear energy.
While the Liberal Party is open to establishing a nuclear industry in Australia, Labor and the Greens are resolutely opposed, preferring renewable energy sources to achieve net-zero carbon emissions by 2050.
Smith criticized Labor’s stance during an interview with Will Shackel, the 17-year-old founder of Australia’s first youth-led campaign for nuclear energy.
He believes Mr Albanese’s opposition to nuclear energy is a wrong decision that negatively impacts Australia’s young people.
‘Please look at it objectively, because I think it is the only answer for the future and we must do something as quickly as possible.
“We won’t be there when problems occur.”
His comments come after Climate Change Minister Chris Bowen previously admitted that to meet the government’s net zero emissions target, Australia would need to install 40 large wind turbines a month and 22,000 solar panels a day.
Meanwhile, Patricia McKenzie, chairwoman of AGL, the country’s largest coal-fired power generator and CO2 emitter, warned it would need around 98 gigawatts of new capacity to accelerate the closure of its coal-fired power plants.
He said new capacity would be needed by 2030 to “keep the lights on”, which would put “unacceptable pressure on energy security and affordability”.
The nation has added only about 2.2 GW of capacity in each of the last five years.
Smith said it was unrealistic to expect renewable energy to supply all of Australia’s power as coal was phased out and gas remained a back-up source until 2050.
‘I have always thought that renewable energy is fantastic, but common sense alone told me that you cannot govern an entire country exclusively with renewable energy. If so, I would support it. But I am absolutely sure that is not the case.
“It’s never been done anywhere in the world, and to be able to make it run industry, transportation, hospitals and everything continuously, with the wind and the sun. Wonderful if it were possible, but it’s not possible.
Smith revealed he has a way to resolve the controversial issue of nuclear waste and said it could be stored at the military-restricted Olympic Dam mine in northern South Australia.
“When you enter the mine, there are huge caverns where they have extracted the uranium ore, and there we could store our waste safely.”
Smith said France uses nuclear energy for 70 percent of its electricity and the waste is stored in power plants.
‘Are you warned not to go to France? Of course not, it’s a very safe place.
Smith revealed that it was in fact Bob Hawke, Labor’s longest-serving prime minister, who converted him to the nuclear cause on Australia Day 1988 at Kirribilli House.
“Bob Hawke said to me, ‘Dick, you’re going to be against nuclear power,’ and I said no, because I was helping Bob Brown and the blockade and was known as an environmentalist.”
“Bob said, ‘We need to go nuclear, it’s very obvious.’
“So here is the Labor prime minister, one of the best and most famous Labor prime ministers, telling me that you should support nuclear energy.
Opposition leader Peter Dutton said nuclear power had the potential to reduce electricity prices and achieve zero carbon emissions.
“Coal generators can be replaced by smaller modular reactors or larger modular reactors,” he said.
‘The latest technology, it is zero emissions, is lower cost and means you can distribute energy with the existing grid network.
“It means that there is reliability to consolidate renewable energies in the system.”
Smith has called on Prime Minister Anthony Albanese (pictured) to reconsider his opposition to nuclear power.