Australians are warming toward nuclear in the context of climate change

Dear ,

You are receiving this email because we understand you are interested in nuclear energy.

The Australian Institute for Progress is an Australian think tank based in Brisbane. Energy is one of the policy areas we have embraced as the current rush towards wind and solar threatens our ability to produce reliable and affordable electricity.

This email is to alert you to polling research we have undertaken. If you do not wish to receive any further emails from us, please use the link at the bottom to unsubscribe from this list. We will only send you emails on nuclear power issues.

We have become convinced that the Australian public is ready to talk seriously about nuclear, and that small modular reactors are a game-changer for this conversation.

In late May and early June of this year we conducted polling (please click here to download), which found that 47% of Australians favour nuclear power generation, and only 39% reject it, 11% are neutral and 3% unsure. This is statistically close to findings in 2019 by Essential Media that 44% support and 40% oppose, and Morgan, that 51% support and 34% oppose.

Both organisations' polling also shows an increasing acceptance of nuclear over the last 10 years. (Morgan also found more recently that 57% of Australians approve of nuclear-powered submarines).

In our poll support for nuclear generation became even stronger when it was restricted to fourth generation, small modular reactors, which are of a similar size to the nuclear reactors for warships.

The clearest driver of this change in attitude is climate change. 59% of voters think CO2 emissions are an existential threat that needs to be dealt with urgently, while only 31% disagreed. Coupled with a broad-based concern about reliable power generation, and both sides of the climate change argument had reasons to support nuclear.

There were of course lots of reasons to oppose nuclear – safety, long-lived radioactive waste, perceived expense, and the fear that nuclear would pre-empt and marginalise wind and solar.

Modular reactors reduced perceptions of risk - at somewhere around 50 -70 MW they are only 5% the size of a small 1 GW nuclear reactor, so threats of explosion and radioactive waste seem more manageable.

The party splits were particularly informative. The strongest supporters of nuclear were the nationalist parties – One Nation, Liberal Democrats, Christian Democrats and so on, as opposed to the cosmopolitan parites. The strongest opponents were the Greens. Liberal voters were also supportive, while two-thirds of Labor voters opposed it.

On climate change, those most concerned were Labor (96%) and Greens (98%). The least concerned were the nationalists (7%). Liberals were in-between, with 24% of supporters concerned.

We think that nuclear has the potential to be an issue in the next election, but it will need to be raised and prosecuted by someone outside the political parties.

Both the two major parties are vulnerable in that they have climate change policies promising emissions reductions that are aspirational, not realistic. The argument between them is likely to be about costs, ability to achieve targets, and re-employability of existing workforces. SMRs provide better answers to all these questions than wind and solar.

A well-timed campaign might convince one, or both, of them to agree to move nuclear forward.

Regards,

GRAHAM YOUNG
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR