Nuclear Power Debate ‘Utterly Captured by Ideology,’ Says Australian Premier

South Australian Premier Peter Malinauskas attends a jobs and skills summit at Parliament House on Sept. 1, 2022 in Canberra, Australia. Photo by Martin Ollman/Getty Images

Ideology is getting in the way of Australia deciding on the most suitable energy generation for its future, according to South Australian Premier Peter Malinauskus.

“I have strong views about this,” Mr. Malinauskus said. “I hate the idea of a debate about nuclear energy, which is utterly captured by ideology on both the left and the right. The reason why we have got ourselves into such an awful mess in the national electricity market is because we have seen too many decisions driven by unpragmatic ideology,” he told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) on April 5.

He said he wanted his state to be involved in the country’s nuclear power industry, for it is an important means of decarbonising the energy sector, despite his counterparts at both federal and state and territory levels being opposed to the federal Opposition’s plan to build more reactors.

However, he also warned it was not financially viable for the sctate to build large-scale infrastructure in support of a nuclear-oriented power grid, and that “every single objective, independent analysis that has looked at this, has said nuclear power would make power more expensive in Australia rather than cheaper.”

‘A Hundred Years’ Time’

Until the technology evolved to produce cheaper power, which Mr. Malinauskus said might happen “maybe one day in a hundred years time,” he said the country should “stick to pragmatic solutions, and for us, that is renewables and with gas-fired generation firming it.”

That’s a marked difference from his position when interviewed on Sky News on April 4, when he seemed uncertain of the equation, telling host Chris Kenny that “whether or not [nuclear] actually is going to make power prices cheaper or more expensive in this country is what I think we should be debating.”

Additionally, he was confident his state would have a role to play. “We are going to have a nuclear industry in South Australia, and it’s one that my government supports, and I certainly embrace, because only a few kilometres [from] where we are right now we’re going to be building nuclear submarines (AUKUS) which is the most advanced of the technology as far as the nuclear fuel cycle goes,” he said.

An undated visualisation of what an SSN-AUKUS submarine might look like at sea, issued on March 13, 2023. BAE

With the state now relying on renewable resources, particularly wind and solar, for up to 75 percent of its energy generation—and despite constant levels of sunlight and high wind speeds helping to put the state’s power supply into surplus—power prices for consumers and businesses in SA are currently the most expensive in the world.

But Premier Malinauskas told Sky News that so far, these have appeared “far more economic than a nuclear solution.”