The Australian Government's AUKUS nuclear propelled submarine decisions may eventually boost Australia's defences against China.
As I expressed in September 2021 there are also more immediate political benefits for the Australian Government in starting the AUKUS process. The AUKUS submarine decisions have occurred in the runup to Australia’s next Federal Election to be held by on, or before, May 21, 2022.
The Australian Government, by establishing a nuclear submarine future aims at "wedging" the major Opposition parties. "Wedging" most immediately means politically dividing the Pro-Jobs, Pro-Local manufacturing Australian Labor Party (ALP)
from the the strongly anti-nuclear, anti-nuclear submarine leftwing Australian Greens Party (whose support is often required for the ALP to win power and govern).
Submarine Matters likes to air both sides of the debate., particularly on hugely expensive submarines.
In this volatile nuclear submarine political situation here are 2 Greens anti nuclear submarine links.
1. https://greens.org.au/campaigns/no-nuclear-subs
“NOT HERE, NOT NOW AND NOT EVER"
2. "Greens Announce Plan for Peace, Demilitarisation and Rejection of AUKUS Submarine Deal"
Thanks Pete. Appreciating the intention of this article, I will once again try to respond with counter arguments. In both cases I think we can demonstrate why support for AUKUS SSNs remains robust. AFAIK opinion polls put support consistently around 60+%. That is better than most governments ever get.
ReplyDeleteRegarding Labor, I think you have miscategorised their factions slightly. You refer to “ Wedging is going on between the Australian Labor Party (ALP) Left from the pro-Jobs, pro-Economic Growth ALP Center-Right faction.”
An important clarification is that the Labor Left is the pro-jobs bit that supports local manufacturing, whereas the Labor Right is the economic rationalist bit that supports economic growth. For example, manufacturing industry advocate Kim Carr is in the Labor Left faction. So is Albanese. I live in Adelaide and the area around ASC near Port Adelaide is in Labor heartland. It would be incredibly har for SA Labor identities like Pennie Wong to oppose AUKUS SSN jobs.
This is significant in getting support for AUKUS. The Labor Right is pro-defense (Beasley pushed for Collins Class). The Labor Left is pro-local manufacturing jobs. Provided the SSN build can be shown to have similar local content and jobs to the Attack Class, Labor has very little room to oppose the project. So I am optimistic that Labor, whether they like it or not, will not oppose AUKUS< even if they win government.
The Greens are less likely to support the project, but also less of a threat. Realistically, most of their voters are to the left of Labor, making them unlikely to vote Liberal under any circumstances, especially given LNP climate change policy. The credibility of most of the Greens’ arguments against AUKUS can be easily challenged.
Adam Bandt’s line about “Floating Chernobyls” is easily disproven based on RN and USN safety records. I note it has not been repeated. Attacking AUKUS on the basis of increased risk of nuclear proliferation would have been a more credible line of attack, but the Greens have not taken this up. I think that that has been a tactical mistake and I do not think the Greens have gained support.
The Greens stated positions you have quoted are easily disproven. Their claim that AUKUS does not make Australia safer is contradicted by statements from Philippines, Vietnam, Taiwan, South Korea, India and Japan. The Greens can hardly claim AUKUS only benefits the Anglo-sphere when so many non-anglo countries support AUKUS. Likewise suggestions that Australia can ignore defense spending ring hollow when the Greens themselves have expressed concern about authoritarianism and militarism in China, and opposed Chinese treatment of Uighurs and Hong Kong citizens.
Stripped of those justifications, the Greens opposition boils down to an ideological opposition to nuclear power. I see the Greens as highly unlikely to depart from that position but, equally, I do not see that as a sellable position to mainstream Australia. Again, as long as AUKUS remains strictly about nuclear powered submarines and any actors like Rolls Royce are stopped from trying to sell domestic nuclear power in parallel, I do not see how the opposition will amount to a majority. By that I mean, I expect AUKUS will retain majority support whether Labor or Liberals are in power.
For the record, I was involved in the SA inquiry into nuclear waste disposal in SA. Technically it is easily feasible; SA geology is perfect. But it does not stack up as an economic proposition. That is even more the case for domestic nuclear power. The latest UK nuclear power reactor, Hinkley Point C, is costing over 20 billion pounds (over budget by >100%), which is more than the cost of the entire Astute Class submarine program (all 7 subs combined). By comparison, a 1GW coal station is $5 billion, 1GW of wind about $2 billion.
Hi Anonymous [Jan 28, 2022, 7:39:00 PM]
ReplyDeleteThanks for comments. I've altered the wording on Labor's Left and Centre-Right factions accordingly.
I've also responded to your helpful comments with an article "Australian Pro & Anti Nuclear Very Ciomplicated"
of January 31, 2022 at https://gentleseas.blogspot.com/2022/01/australian-pro-anti-nuclear-politics.html
Regards
Pete
There's been enough poor information provide in relation to the power debate without adding to it. The SA Government report mentioned does a poor job in many areas, for example excluding waste generated by the US and Europe which, given the poor state of the long term storage isn't particularly helpful. The US has a fund which provides for waste disposal plus reactor companies pay significant insurance premiums to store waste onsite.
ReplyDeleteFor the record, while Hinkley is 50% over budget which only will add about 6% to the cost of power over it's projected lifetime.
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-somerset-61519609
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hinkley_Point_C_nuclear_power_station
The cost of the coal plant that you mentioned doesn't include carbon capture cost or ongoing operational costs, and the wind power doesn't acknowledge the cost of reliable power and power lines so they're really not helpful. The price is MW of dispatchable power without producing CO2 emissions. The reality is that CO2 targets are becoming more demanding not less so. Another misconception in the SA report is that of baseload and dispatchable power. France has been operating it's nuclear plants in a load following manner demonstrating that they can provide dispatchable power.
Nuclear power has a higher up front cost and lower running costs than most other forms of power generation so simply mentioning plant costs isn't particularly helpful.
The only countries which has significantly de-carbonised their power generation have done so with nuclear. European nations with significant renewables footprint also import significant amounts of nuclear power. Australia doesn't have that option.
Germany has pushed hard on the renewable approach to power and has some of the highest power costs in the EU. Dispatchable power, powered by intermittent sources is also very expensive, long distance power lines are also very costly with over 1B spent on the short 1MWe UK-France HVDC link alone (IFA-2). The Australian Government has provided 25B for grid upgrade to support renewable proposals such as the Marinus link which is only 1.5MW. Hinkley is a 3.2MWe plant, which in the Australian context could be sited where there is an existing grid infrastructure lowering the solution costs.
I like renewables however the current proposals around a zero emission economy are hopelessly optimistic. Hydrogen from gas is about $2.20kg whereas green Hydrogen is about $14.00, with a projected price of $11.00 by 2030.