David Gillespie (Lyne, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise today to speak about the wonderful happenings in the Lyne electorate and matters in this wonderful place I'm privileged to stand in. This morning, I moved a motion in favour of recognising the amazing nuclear capability that our nation has through ANSTO and ARPANSA and operating three nuclear power plants. We are a world leader in radio isotope production. In fact, we supply 27 per cent of the world's medical isotopes for diagnosis and treatment. Not many people realise that. We have been irradiating silicon, to make silicon chips for the computer market, for decades. We have a huge slice of that, and the world depends on us to do that work at Lucas Heights; otherwise, there wouldn't be enough chips.

The amazing thing about the Australian nuclear potential is that we have the possibility of the whole box and dice, with new, modern small modular reactors replacing our retiring coal fleet. To put things in perspective, that is quite urgent. We saw what happened to the electricity market when one power station closed one of four units. That was Liddell—but there are three more units to close. By 2030, if any more coal-fired power stations bring their closure plans forward, we could be losing up to 60 per cent of our base-load generating capacity.

We know that, because of the percentage of time that renewable energy generators produce energy, whether they are wind or solar farms, their capacity factors vary from full on. For solar, they're available on average 24 per cent of the time in a really sunny country like Australia, but there are plenty of times when they produce none, like every night and every evening, and at dawn, when there's not enough to generate electricity. And there are weeks and months when there is low wind activity, even in the high-wind areas. That's why the capacity factor, or the percentage of time that renewable wind farms produce energy is, on average, about 30 per cent on land. Offshore, you might get to 35 per cent. They also have a finite life span. These wind turbines and solar panels only operate for so many years. After about 10 years, 15 per cent of wind turbines will have some mechanical problems. They've got a design life of 20-plus years, but, from experience overseas, it turns out that it's much shorter than that. That's why we need to replace base load with base load.

In Australia the transition, which is now enforced by legislation, means that these coal-fired power stations will close, unfortunately, without any adequate replacement. That's why the whole motion I moved was aimed at removing the blanket prohibitions that exist at the federal level—because we're dealing with federal legislation in the ARPANS Act—that prevent ARPANSA licensing a nuclear power plant to produce electricity. The paradox is that we've had three nuclear power plants in this country. The one at Lucas Heights is an open reactor, so it doesn't have a pressure vessel that stores the heat, but it is the same technology. And we're quite comfy with Lucas Heights operating.

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