The head of Australia’s nuclear research agency has confirmed that the country could meet the challenge of building and operating nuclear reactors for electricity generation if required.
At a recent inquiry hearing, Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO) CEO Shaun Jenkinson was questioned about Australia’s current capabilities.
In response, the CEO said he was impressed by what the country could deliver.
“I’m sure if we were required to do so, we could meet the challenge,” he told a parliamentary committee.
However, Jenkinson noted that Australia currently had a “smaller, sophisticated nuclear workforce,” and thus, it would need to be expanded if it were to pursue nuclear energy development.
The federal opposition has pledged to build seven reactors if it wins office as an alternative pathway to net zero.
Australia’s Largest Nuclear Workforce
According to the ANSTO CEO, there were currently 1,400 people employed in the organisation.Among them, 450 people were scientific and technical personnel, with 250 having a PhD degree.
“We’ve got a very large engineering cohort across all of the engineering disciplines. And, of course, we’ve got those very important support functions [such as] legal, HR, finance that you would expect in any organisation,” Jenkinson said.
“We are an attractive place to work for people who are interested in science and STEM [science, technology, engineering, and mathematics] because we have remarkable scientific infrastructure.
“And often, we have people with quite a long tenure.”
Despite not possessing any nuclear power plants, Australia still has a single reactor, OPAL, in Lucas Heights, Sydney, which is used for medicine production, scientific research, and other industrial purposes.
Due to an increase in global demand for nuclear expertise, Jenkinson said Australia was now competing with other countries.
However, he added that ANSTO was able to recruit people with an apprenticeship or engineering background and provide training to help them become qualified.
Energy Department Says 10-15 Years Needed
Meanwhile, Simon Duggan, a deputy secretary at the Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water (DCCEEW), told the committee that if the federal parliament lifted the moratorium on nuclear power, the country needed to solve a number of issues first.“[The experts need] to set up the capability around assessment and management frameworks for health safety, social security, and environmental impacts of any proposed nuclear power plants or related facilities,” he said.
“They then go to the equivalent frameworks around transport, processing, storage, nuclear fuel, and radioactive waste, and they also talk about the adequate workforce capability to build, operate, maintain and regulate civil nuclear power plants and other related facilities.”
Duggan noted that based on assessments of organisations such as the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) and the International Energy Agency, the timeframe for Australia to put all of those prerequisites into place would be around 10-15 years.
Echoing the sentiment, Clare McLaughlin, the head of the DCCEEW’s energy performance and security division, said the soonest Australia could be producing nuclear energy would be the late 2030s.
“The additional aspects that would be required would be consultation with communities to establish social license, the establishment of governance, legal and other frameworks to ensure the safety and security of any plants, as well as any environmental impacts, and considerable work to set up the regulatory structures that would be required to operate a civil nuclear industry,” she said.
