This webpage aims to correct some of the misinformation promulgated by Will Shackel, Adi Paterson and others involved in the lobby group ‘Nuclear for Australia’.
‘The world is going nuclear’
Shackel claims that “the world is going nuclear” despite being aware of evidence to the contrary. When held to account for making that false claim, Shackel claims that no credible evidence has been presented to justify the criticism even though he knows that evidence has been presented. Shackel lies and then lies about lying.
Here are some facts that Shackel is aware of:
- Nuclear power’s contribution to global electricity production is 9.1 percent, barely half of its peak.
- Global nuclear power hasn’t grown at all for 20 years.
- In 2024, nuclear growth of 4 gigawatts compared to renewables growth of 666 gigawatts
- The number of countries operating power reactors is the same as it was in the late 1990s.
- The number of countries building nuclear power reactors fell from 15 to 13 in 2024. 7 percent of the world’s countries are building reactors, 93 percent are not.
- Only three ‘newcomer’ countries are building reactors for the first time – Egypt, Bangladesh and Turkiye – and those three projects are largely funded by the Russian state.
- No other potential newcomer country has approvals and funding in place let alone reactors under construction.
So will Shackel continue to claim that ‘the world is going nuclear’ despite being aware of contrary evidence? It’s a safe bet.
Fascists
Adi Paterson, Chair of Nuclear for Australia, repeatedly claims that critics of nuclear power and supporters of renewables are fascists.
Paterson: “When you actively support ending the ban on nuclear, while retaining your inaccurate views on the utility of intermittent dilute renewables + some gas I will reconsider your designated role as an Australian Energy Facist [sic].”
Paterson thinks Australia’s leading scientific agency CSIRO is infested with fascists.
Absolute lunatic.
Why hasn’t Nuclear for Australia cut him loose? Because no non-lunatic scientists would front for Nuclear for Australia?
From The Guardian:
Renewables caught in misinformation crossfire from Australia’s nuclear cheerleaders
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/jul/18/renewables-caught-in-misinformation-crossfire-from-australias-nuclear-cheerleaders
Those pushing the nuclear option are making some questionable claims about the capacity of renewable energy
18 July 2024
Advocacy for the Coalition’s hopes to build nuclear power plants is increasingly coming with large side-orders of misinformation, not just on the speed or costs of nuclear but on renewables.
Dr Adi Paterson, the chair of the Nuclear for Australia advocacy group, has taken to attacking the credentials of CSIRO experts while going hyperbolic with his rhetoric.
When Paterson told Sky News he thought the agency’s report on the costs of different electricity generation technologies was “a form of fascism” there was not a whisper of disapproval from the surrounding studio panel. Mussolini would be turning in his grave.
The definitely-not-fascist GenCost report has found electricity from nuclear would be far more expensive than solar and wind, taking into account the cost of extra transmission lines and technologies to connect, store and rerelease renewable power.
Paterson claimed on the Sky news show Outsiders that the GenCost report “looks at one reactor in Finland”. In fact, the report had based the cost of large-scale reactors in Australia on South Korea’s long-running nuclear program – one of the most successful in the world.
Entrepreneur Dick Smith, a patron of Nuclear for Australia, has also tried to claim CSIRO used a “worst-case scenario” for nuclear costs. One leading energy analyst has previously told Temperature Check the opposite was more likely the case.
Paterson, a former boss of the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation, said in any case, he wanted to see Australia consider 5MW micro-reactors (less than the size of a large wind turbine, suggesting Paterson would like to see Australia scattered with tiny nuclear reactors).
He then pointed to Bill Gates’ Terrapower company and its project in Wyoming (which has a much higher proposed generation capacity of 345 MW), saying it was currently licensed and “being built now”.
In fact, as Terrapower’s chief executive told CNBC a couple of months ago, the company has only just submitted its construction permit application to the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission and hopes to get approval in 2026. They are doing some construction at the site, but none of it relates to the nuclear aspects of the plant. …
Adi Paterson at a far-right forum
Andrew Williams collated some of the nonsense peddled by Adi Paterson at a forum organised by the far-right Centre for Independent Studies. Not one of these claims was corrected by anyone involved in the forum.
- Every Australian will have at least one nuclear medicine procedure during their life and we think now with the new therapeutic ones probably two … so we live in a nuclear world where radiation is taken to hospitals every day
- [nuclear] waste is sorted out, we have the world’s first synroc plant ready to go
- the frequency [of the electricity grid] is already completely destroyed.. and we are losing businesses
- when the lights start to go out in the offices of people in politics they will get an urgent need to get this done
- Fukushima was not a nuclear accident. All of the calculations show that nobody will die from Fukushima apart from a couple of really brave people
- 56 people .. died from Chernobyl
- we are replacing a reliable system with buying everyone in Australia a bicycle, that’s what intermittent renewables are
- we have got a captured cult defining our energy future because there is no plausible basis for [renewables]
- when anyone says that the climate is changing you say which 60 years are you talking about
- [as carbon dioxide in the atmosphere continues to increase] the deserts of Australia will gradually become light green
- drop the word environmental because it does not mean anything.. nuclear is the best for the ecology of our country, renewables are destroying the ecology of our country
“Less than 10 years” to bring a nuclear power program to the grid?
Adi Paterson claims that it takes “less than 10 years” to bring a nuclear power program to the grid. Instead of removing him from the organisation for talking nonsense, Nuclear for Australia promoted Paterson’s misinformation.
Here is some of the evidence that gives the lie to Paterson’s claim:
* Construction of the two AP1000 reactors in the US state of Georgia took 10 and 11 years (2013 to 2023/24) despite initially promising a 3-4 year construction period.[1] Georgia Power announced it was evaluating the project in 2005 (with the first license application submitted in 2006); if that is taken as the planning start-date, it was 18 years for planning and construction. Work on the AP1000 reactor project began in the 1990s so planning plus construction could be said to have taken 25+ years.[2]
* In the UK, the only reactor construction project is the twin-reactor Hinkley Point EPR project in Somerset. Construction began in 2018 and the completion date has been pushed back to 2030/31, nearly a quarter of a century after the plan to build new reactors was announced in 2006. Construction will take at least 12-13 years on the current schedule with a high likelihood of further delays.
* The only reactor under construction in France is the Flamanville EPR. Construction began in 2007 and the project remains incomplete 17 years later (test operations have begun and EDF hopes the reactor will be fully operational by the end of 2024[3]). Design work on the EPR reactor began in 1989 ‒ 35 years ago.[4]
* In Finland, construction of one EPR on Olkiluoto Island began in 2005 and completion was expected in 2009. However grid-connection was not completed until 2022 (and getting from grid connection to commercial operation took one more year).[5] A four-year construction project became a 17-year project. The first license application for the reactor was filed in the year 2000 so planning plus construction took 20+ years.
[1] https://reneweconomy.com.au/cold-turkeys-the-demise-of-nuclear-power-in-australias-aukus-partner-countries/
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AP1000
[3] https://www.enerdata.net/publications/daily-energy-news/edf-begins-operations-165-gw-flamanville-epr-nuclear-reactor-france.html
[4] https://gala.gre.ac.uk/id/eprint/4699/3/(ITEM_4699)_THOMAS_2010-11-E-EPR.pdf
[5] https://pris.iaea.org/PRIS/CountryStatistics/ReactorDetails.aspx?current=860
Adi Paterson versus science
From The Guardian:
Chair of Nuclear for Australia denies that calling CO2 ‘plant food’ means he is a climate denier
Graham Readfearn, 17 Aug 2024
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/aug/17/dr-adi-paterson-nuclear-for-australia-climate-change
The chair of a leading Australian nuclear advocacy group has called concerns that carbon dioxide emissions are driving a climate crisis an “irrational fear of a trace gas which is plant food” and has rejected links between worsening extreme weather and global heating.
Several statements from Dr Adi Paterson, reviewed by the Guardian, appear at odds with statements from the group he chairs, Nuclear for Australia, which is hosting a petition saying nuclear is needed to tackle an “energy and climate crisis”.
Nuclear for Australia was founded by 18-year-old Queensland nuclear advocate Will Shackel, who has said repeatedly he believes reactors are needed to fight “the climate crisis”.
Two climate science experts told the Guardian that Paterson’s statements were misguided and typical of climate science denial.
Paterson defended his statements, telling the Guardian he was “not a climate denier”. He described himself as “a climate realist” and an “expert on climate science”.
In May, Paterson, who resigned in 2020 as the chief executive of the government’s Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation, suggested on LinkedIn that concerns about climate change were “an irrational fear of a trace gas which is plant food”. He has been a regular guest on right-wing media outlets since the Coalition earlier this year said it wanted to lift the ban on nuclear and build reactors in seven locations.
On his Facebook page, Paterson has said that “cold is more dangerous than warm” and described a leading scientist as a “climate creep”.
On LinkedIn, he said US space agency Nasa was “deliberately confusing public understanding by publishing ground surface temperatures”, saying the agency’s climate work “should be given to a credible independent group. Defund NASA!”
In April, Paterson told an audience at the Centre for Independent Studies that “you can’t make a correlation between extreme events and climate” and said “no matter what you believe about carbon dioxide – it is plant food”.
“Increasing carbon a little bit is not going to dramatically change the climate. The plants will grow better,” he said, saying the planet was in a period of low CO2.
Prof David Karoly, a councillor at the Climate Council and a respected atmospheric scientist who has been studying the affects of CO2 on the climate since the late 1980s, said Paterson’s statements were typical of those from climate science deniers.
He said while CO2 levels were currently low in comparison to other times in Earth’s history, they were higher than at any time since the emergence of homo sapiens.
“He is misguided,” Karoly said. “CO2 has led to increases in temperature extremes, extreme rainfall, sea level rise and increases in bushfires and fire weather. CO2 has already dramatically changed the climate.”
Dr John Cook, an expert on climate change misinformation at the University of Melbourne, said Paterson was “regurgitating arguments” across a range of “thoroughly debunked talking points”.
He said: “It’s inconsistent to argue that CO2 is a trace gas which can’t possibly make any difference but at the same time claim that CO2 is going to green the planet.”
Shackel did not respond to questions. In an interview with the Guardian, Paterson argued the UN’s climate change panel “has made it very clear” that it was “not possible at this point” to link extreme events to changes in the climate.
But the panel’s latest report said it was “an established fact that human-induced greenhouse gas emissions have led to an increased frequency and/or intensity of some weather and climate extremes”, with evidence for rising temperature extremes, extreme rainfall, droughts, tropical cyclones and more dangerous fire weather.
Paterson said he did think rising levels of CO2 were a problem and that fossil fuels needed to be limited “as soon as we can”. “It is a very, very serious problem but it is not a climate crisis,” he said.
He said he had been concerned about climate change for many years but said unduly worrying children over the issue was “a form of child abuse”, and “the chance of significant catastrophic events” occurring in the next 30 years “related to an increase of CO2 in the atmosphere in the southern hemisphere” was “small”.
Paterson added he was more concerned about the “ecocide” from building wind and solar farms” than about climate change.