Businessman Dick Smith backs Peter Dutton’s plan to build the first of seven nuclear reactors in just over a decade, calling it good leadership.
The 80-year-old philanthropist and adventurer has compared the opposition leader’s plan to have nuclear power in Australia by 2035 to former Liberal prime minister John Howard’s successful re-election campaign for the GST in 1998.
“I’ve never used the word risk at all, I think it’s just leadership,” he told Daily Mail Australia from the remote Birdsville Track in South Australia.
“It will be like John Howard’s successful entry into the GST, that’s what I compare it to and that’s why I think Peter Dutton is showing really good leadership.”
The Liberal Party leader proposes to have Australia’s first nuclear reactor by 2035 and a second up and running by 2037, and has announced seven possible locations in each mainland state.
Smith predicted that the ALP at federal and state level would support nuclear power, arguing that Prime Minister Anthony Albanese now supported nuclear-powered submarines as part of the AUKUS agreement.
Businessman Dick Smith (pictured left with wife Pip) backs Peter Dutton’s plan to build seven nuclear reactors in just over a decade, describing it as good leadership.
Tarong and Callide in Queensland, Liddell and Mount Piper in New South Wales, Port Augusta in South Australia, Loy Yang in Victoria and Muja in Western Australia have been noted as station locations.
“I think the Labor Party will come to our side. “I am absolutely sure they will do it, just as they sided with nuclear submarines,” said Mr Smith.
“In the end it will be identical to nuclear energy: it is the only way forward.”
Tarong and Callide in Queensland, Liddell and Mount Piper in New South Wales, Port Augusta in South Australia, Loy Yang in Victoria and Muja in Western Australia have been earmarked as locations for the stations.
The Labor state governments of Queensland, New South Wales and Victoria have laws blocking nuclear power, but Smith predicts they will end up legislating to repeal these bans when they realize that renewable energy is unreliable.
“They will be convinced because there is simply no alternative,” Mr Smith said.
‘We will have blackouts: you cannot govern a country with intermittent solar and wind energy; It is impossible.
‘I understand that every state has a ban on nuclear power, and we also have a federal ban on nuclear power, so those bans will have to be lifted.
‘We are one of the biggest sellers of uranium in the world, but we have legislation that says you can’t even consider that and that is completely ridiculous.
“We will have to change the legislation in each state and federally.”
Smith said that while it made sense to convert coal-fired power plants into nuclear reactors, it could take longer to establish a nuclear power industry.
“I think it could take 10 to 15 years,” he said.
“Without a doubt, the best thing to do is to put the nuclear plants where the existing coal plants are; in fact, the only thing we are doing is that instead of generating energy by burning coal to heat water, we are going to use uranium to heat water.
“Far fewer additional power lines will be needed if we go to nuclear power.”
The 80-year-old philanthropist and adventurer has compared the federal opposition leader’s (pictured) plan to have nuclear power in Australia by 2037 to former Liberal Prime Minister John Howard’s successful re-election campaign for the GST in 1998.
The United Arab Emirates established a nuclear reactor in Barakah in 2020 after eight years of construction work using South Korean technology.
Dutton tweeted an image of a Rolls-Royce small nuclear reactor concept on Wednesday.
But no country in the world has yet operated small modular reactors that produce 300 megawatts, or 300 million watts of power.
Canada is not expected to have this technology until the late 2020s, when Ontario’s state power company installs a reactor designed by General Electric and Hitachi.
Smith said larger-scale reactors were probably more likely to occur.
“I’m not suggesting that we are going to have small modular reactors; my suggestion would be that we just follow something like Barakah in the United Arab Emirates, and get the South Koreans to build it, they are experts,” he said. saying.
Labor and the Greens want Australia to get 82 per cent of its energy from renewable sources by 2030, but Smith predicted there would be more community opposition to wind turbines.
“I think you’ll find that the majority of people in this country are sensible and will openly support nuclear energy; we don’t want this incredible environmental destruction that’s happening because of these industrial wind farms.
Dutton tweeted an image of a Rolls-Royce small nuclear reactor concept on Wednesday. But no country in the world has yet operated small modular reactors producing 300 megawatts, or 300 million watts of power.
‘A nuclear power plant probably means 2,000 fewer wind turbines, so all those people will support nuclear energy.
‘Wind farms are intermittent and unpredictable, so you could never govern a country, especially now that Anthony Albanese says we are going to industrialize more and make things like solar cells. It takes an incredible amount of energy and that is impossible without nuclear energy.’
Australia banned nuclear power in 1998 after the Howard government accepted a Greens amendment to win support for a new research reactor for nuclear medicine at Lucas Heights, south of Sydney.
As for nuclear waste storage, Mr Smith suggested the Olympic Dam in South Australia, which is also a well-known uranium deposit.
“I’ve been to the Olympic Dam mine; there are huge, big cavities where we extracted the uranium, and that’s where we should store the uranium,” he said.
Smith was unsure whether Dutton would win the next election with a nuclear energy policy.
“I don’t know, I think he will be a good prime minister,” he said.
“I think we now have a good Prime Minister and I hope that, before the next election, the Labor Party will change its mind and support nuclear energy.”
Both sides of politics are committed to a net-zero climate goal by 2050.
