May 2, 2024 • 17 mins
A lot of is going on to fill the Upper Hunter, from Liddell up past Merriwa, full of solar power generation but is that the only solution to replace our old coal fired power stations? We talk to former Prime Minister Malcom Turnbull about his push to use two local dams to keep the lights on.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
iHeart Upper Hunter.
Speaker 2 (00:03):
It is a debate quote unquote in Australia that is
almost devoid of facts.
Speaker 3 (00:08):
Gooday, I'm Darren KATRUPI well you do have to wonder
our renewables really the only way to go in resetting
the Upper Hunter's energy focus away from its past five
decades as a coal fired powerhouse. On this episode we
pivot from solar and batteries to hydro power. The Upper
Hunter has quite a few VIP property owners and you
(00:30):
might have heard of the Turnbulls. Yes, the very same
Malcolm and Lucy Turnbull. One of their private companies has
been selected by Water in New South Wales to conduct
a detailed feasibility study into building a hydro power system
between Scone and Singleton. The proposer would make use of
the water from Glenbourne and Glenny's Creek dams and we're
told it would deliver long duration storage capacity totaling more
(00:53):
than one point four gigawatts for eight to twelve hours,
powering a million homes. I caught up with the former
Prime Minister to find out more and started by asking
him how long he's had the idea for this project
with you and Lucy yourself long time up a Hunter people,
how long have you actually had this idea?
Speaker 2 (01:13):
Oh, for all, I've thought about this for a long time,
because I've you know, I started I started thinking seriously
about pump hydro in twenty sixteen, actually when I was
Prime Minister and it dawned on me that we were
putting more and more renewables i e. Wind and solar
into the grid and weren't doing enough to store it
(01:37):
or firm it for you know, when the wind wasn't
blowing and the sun wasn't training, etc. And that's what
inspired me really to get cracking with Snowy Hydro two
point zero, which we started the work on in twenty seventeen.
But I've always thought there was potential in the Hunter
as well, not least because of the transmission.
Speaker 1 (01:58):
The skills base.
Speaker 2 (02:00):
We've got a community and Upper Hunter community with hundreds
of people that are very experienced in building civil works,
you know, whether it's dams or mines or tunnels, roads,
you know, all of that. Those skills are there in
the Hunter. And clearly, as culified generation comes out, we're
(02:21):
going to need new forms of generation.
Speaker 1 (02:24):
So the wind and the.
Speaker 2 (02:26):
Solar, particularly the solar is rolling out abundantly solar especially,
but the firming is not enough firming or storage being built.
So when Water New South Wales called for expressions of
interest on these projects, you know, we started entered the process,
which is over two years ago now or about two
years ago i think, and eventually we're able to reach
(02:51):
agreement with the mon A Development Agreement.
Speaker 3 (02:54):
So what will the feasibility study involve.
Speaker 2 (02:57):
Essentially, what we're doing is proving up the concept of
building a pump hydro project at each of Glenbourne and
Glenny's Creek dam. The concept is pretty straightforward. It's building
a reservoir, a new dam if you like, on top
(03:17):
of a ridge next to the existing big reservoir. And
you know, and then in times when electricity is plentiful
and cheap, so in the middle of the day a
sunny day, you pump water up to the top of
the hill and then when the market is short you
run it.
Speaker 1 (03:36):
You supply the market.
Speaker 2 (03:37):
By running water down the hill through a turbine. So
this is pumped hydro storage. It's been around for a
very long time, but it's becoming more important than ever
as our energy generation, our primary generation becomes dominated by
solar and wind, which of course are variable, so that
(03:58):
dispatch ability hydro is more important than ever.
Speaker 3 (04:02):
How long will the study take, Well, there's.
Speaker 2 (04:05):
A whole lot of work going on, but some years
to some years. But we've got a lot of planning
work to do. Design work, we've obviously already done quite
a lot, but we've got to do geotechnical work. You know,
it will take some years before we get to the
point where we can say we want to go ahead,
(04:25):
and that is you know, that's that's just in the
nature of these things, these big infrastructure projects, they do
take time and a lot of investment upfront.
Speaker 3 (04:35):
So it doesn't sound like you've said a sort of
hard and fast headline at this stage.
Speaker 1 (04:40):
I know I've I've sort of learned the hard way.
Speaker 2 (04:45):
I'm not going to give the time estimates or dollar
estimates at this early stage because you know, whatever you forecast,
you're going to be wrong. So we'll just you know,
we'll move as quickly as possible and you know, seek
who develop a project that will be as as efficient
(05:05):
as cost effective as it possibly can be.
Speaker 3 (05:08):
Will there be many local jobs involved at the study phase?
Or is that more if it actually proceeds to actually happening.
Speaker 2 (05:17):
Well, the study at the study stage that if you
like the development stage, yes there are that there are
some local jobs. You already have some local people working
with us in addition obviously in addition to ourselves. But
you know, the major employment obviously occurs when you start construction.
Speaker 3 (05:36):
Will the local community actually notice any think during the
study it sounds to me like a lot of it
is dare I say, desktop type of work and really
technical stuff.
Speaker 2 (05:46):
I don't think, well, you know, they might see some
drill rigs doing some core sampling, but I don't think
the pre you know, the pre construction phase is not
going it's not going to be very noticeable. No, you know,
it's again, people in the Hunter are very familiar with this.
(06:07):
It's a centrally preliminary work. A lot of it is
on the ground, you know, whether it's worked by geologists
or environmentalists or engineers. But it's not you know, it's
not you know, big yellow machines moving large amounts of
dirt around.
Speaker 3 (06:23):
I imagine one of the issues that will come up,
based on various projects over the years, is about the water.
And you know, because it is obviously the both dams
are water sources here, will there be much water lost
in the process that that you're proposing to actually do.
Speaker 2 (06:42):
No, no water is lost at all. It's essentially pump
hydre is a closed loop. So say if you take
Glenbourne for example, Glenbourne's a damn its capacity is about
seven hundred and fifty million cubic meters, so seven hundred
and fifty kik alters, So that's that's one and a
half time Sydney Harbor. The dam that you would build
(07:04):
on top of the hill next door would be about
eight million cubic meters or eight eight billion leaders, eight
kick leaders, so it's about one percent of the volume.
And that water effectively goes round and round, goes up
the hill when electricity is cheap, and comes down the
hill when electricity is in demand. So it doesn't but
(07:26):
it doesn't leave, you know, so there's no there's no
net loss. Or The thing about pumped hydra that makes
it very I think very appealing is that it doesn't
actually use a lot of water. Now, obviously eight billion
leaders does sound like a lot of water, but in
the scheme of things and the scheme of the big reservoir,
it's not a lot of water, and of course it's
(07:48):
retained in the system.
Speaker 1 (07:50):
But secondly, it doesn't use a lot of real estate.
Speaker 2 (07:53):
So if you think of a you know, a dam
that is going to contain eight million cubic meters of water, well,
you know, its shape will depend on the topography and
so forth. But it's say it's forty hectares in area,
which is less than one hundred acres.
Speaker 1 (08:11):
It's at twenty meters deep.
Speaker 2 (08:12):
Now you know, I'm not suggesting one hundred acres isn't
a large space, but it's not the type of vast
hydro schemes that you know, we read about and are
used to and sometimes people are concerned about. So it's
very it's very efficient in terms of its use of
land and its use of water.
Speaker 3 (08:33):
Where will you access power from to I imagine you
need that to get the water from back up the
hill so to speak.
Speaker 1 (08:40):
Oh, well the.
Speaker 2 (08:43):
Power Clearly, it's a power station you're building, so it's
connected to the grid. And when it is pumping water uphill,
the turbine is running effectively, running in reverse, it's running
as an electric effectively. And then when it's generating, it's
(09:03):
running in the other direction, and it's generating electricity.
Speaker 1 (09:06):
So so.
Speaker 2 (09:09):
Where would you draw the electricity from. You draw it
from the grid, But you could have and we may
well have an integrated wind farm. I mean, there is
the potential obviously to build wind in that area, but
that's you know, there's a lot of a lot of
other landowners that have to get involved in that. But
you know, there's a lot of renewable energy in the grid.
(09:30):
I mean, if you look at the at the open
neem for example, you'll see in the middle of the
day your spot prices are often negative because there's so
much solar. So you know, projects like this are really important,
not just to provide electricity when the sun isn't shining
and the wind isn't blowing, but also to be able
(09:53):
to buy electricity from renewable generators at times of high supply.
You know, they kind of act like a balancing factor.
So in the middle of the day, huge amount of
soul is coming into the market, a lot of it
from rooftops, the pumped hydro.
Speaker 1 (10:10):
You know, installations will be able to.
Speaker 2 (10:12):
Soak that up, and so they provide a market for
that excess electricity. And then when the sun goes down,
particularly if the wind isn't blowing. The pumped hydros are generating,
and you know, this is the rationale behind this is
the same as as it is for all the other
pump hydro projects. And there's obviously a lot of projects
(10:34):
under development at the moment, but there's still only two
that's Snowy two and the gen X project in North
Queensland that are being built. Queensland Government, as you know,
is building two huge pumped hydros, and there's a bunch
of private sector projects like ours in different stages of
(10:54):
planning and development in New South Wales.
Speaker 3 (10:58):
So you mentioned earlier about Snowy High Joe as well,
and you're being the Prime minister who kicked that off.
Is this as much about, I suppose, leaving a bit
of a legacy as well as obviously making some money.
Speaker 2 (11:12):
Well, it's I don't know about legacy, but it's I
am very committed to the clean you know. So I'm
very committed to the transition from burning fossil fuels to
renewables because we need to do that to save the planet.
Despite Elon Musk's best efforts, we've still only got one
planet and we don't want to fry it. So I'm
(11:33):
very committed to that as a both as a as
a former prime minister or and as particularly as a grandfather.
Speaker 1 (11:41):
So that's important mission. I'm very committed to the Hunter.
Speaker 2 (11:47):
And I can see, I know that the need for
long duration storage is a key because you see, it's
it's it's relatively it's relatively easy to roll out solar.
It's not as easy, but it's you know, it's very
feasible to roll out wind once you've got your planning
permissions and so forth. But pumped hydro takes time because
(12:11):
it's a lot of civil works, because it involves building
a dam, tunneling to our technical work and risk and
all those things.
Speaker 1 (12:18):
And so you that's why you have to get That's
why you have to get on with it.
Speaker 2 (12:22):
And you know that well with all of these projects,
whether it's snowy too or this one or anything else,
I'm sure that you know, we will say, gosh, I
wish we'd started this, you know, in two thousand and four,
not twenty twenty four.
Speaker 1 (12:38):
But you can't live your life backwards.
Speaker 3 (12:40):
Yeah, I think we've all been saying that for a
little while here in the Upper Hunt Way. So is
this really like we're not potentially we're not going to
really see this thing pumping water for what we're looking
at close to a decade or something by the time
you do all that.
Speaker 2 (12:57):
Yeah, work, but it could well hopefully won't be as
long as a decade, but it'll be, you know, it'll be.
It'll be a while, you know, it'll These things take time,
they all do. And you know, some look, some big
infrastructure projects go.
Speaker 1 (13:13):
On time and on budget.
Speaker 2 (13:14):
Some of them are even a below budget, very rarely,
but generally they take a bit longer and cost a
bit more than planned. But you know, if you're not
prepared to face up to that, then you wouldn't try
to build anything. So it'd be in a bit of
a mess if we took that approach.
Speaker 3 (13:30):
So if we stop and look at the politics of
Australia's energy future, mister turnbull side, the Liberal National Coalition
clearly has its wagon hits to nuclear, but it agrees
with Team Albin EASi. The Upper Hunter seems to be
the preferred location. Peter Dutton, David Little Proud, even Barnaby
have basically they've named Liddell as a location for this
(13:52):
under a future coalition government. Do you think this should
form part of the mix to replace coal.
Speaker 2 (14:00):
Well, look, not really. I mean I'm all for having
an open mind on everything. Okay, so I'm not you know,
I'm not I'm not remotely interested in getting into a
cultural war ideological argument about this. But the reality is,
with small modular reactors, there isn't one of them in existence.
I mean, they're talking about something that doesn't exist. You know,
(14:24):
there was one sort of SMR project in the United
States that got abandoned recently because it was costs were
just blowing out. Nuclear is notoriously complex and expensive. We
have no nuclear power industry in Australia, so you know,
the chances of being able to build a nuclear power
(14:44):
station of any size in Australia in any realistic timeframe
so low. So it's it's look at To be honest,
I think it's I think it's more of a distraction,
you know, if you want to get on with things
that you can do and where we do have a
comparative advantage. We do have a comparative advantage in renewable
(15:05):
generation because we've got a lot of good sunshine, a
lot of good radiation, a lot of good wind, got
a big country. So there's plenty of landscape and places
to put the renewable generation. And we have the opportunities,
plenty of opportunities for pumped hydro. Now you've got to
pick the right places, you know, with the right geology
(15:26):
and proximity to transmission and all those things. But you know,
we can get the job done with the renewable technologies
we have. I mean, I think, you know, talking about
nuclear power, I mean this is literally something. This is
literally vaporware. They're talking about small modular reactors. A don't exist,
(15:47):
and B. The only thing we know about nuclear power
is it's massively more expensive than the alternatives we have today.
So but it's you know, and as to the pole,
I could just say that this debate is so lacking
in information.
Speaker 1 (16:02):
Any polling on it today is meaningless.
Speaker 2 (16:05):
There are there are plenty of nuclear reactors in the world.
Speaker 3 (16:10):
They specified school module.
Speaker 1 (16:12):
Well they don't.
Speaker 2 (16:14):
There's certainly none, no that there. You know, there might
be some in Russia, you know, but certainly in the
developed world. The countries we you know, whose nuclear standards
we would.
Speaker 1 (16:26):
Want to be emulate, No, they don't exist.
Speaker 2 (16:29):
The nuclear and you see the the you know, if
you're talking about building a nuclear power station. By the
time you've got all of that cost and design and
planning and so forth, you're probably going to want to
build one that's quite large. So anyway, leaving that, leaving
that by the bye, I think it's it is a
(16:51):
debate quite unquote in Australia that is almost devoid of facts,
so which is why it's so attractive to so many people.
Speaker 3 (17:00):
Unlike snowy two point zero, which has had major budget blowouts,
if a hydropower project gets the green light, tax payers
will be spared the cost. E Turnbulls themselves will be
funding it alongside some key investors, so it's got to
be profitable. I guess there's still a bit of water
to flow under the bridge on that. I'm Darren Katrubi
and thanks for listening to iHeart Upper Hunter. I'll be
(17:22):
supported by the new South Wales government. Catch you next time.
Speaker 1 (17:27):
iHeart Upper Hunter.
iHeart Upper Hunter.
Speaker 2 (00:03):
It is a debate quote unquote in Australia that is
almost devoid of facts.
Speaker 3 (00:08):
Gooday, I'm Darren KATRUPI well you do have to wonder
our renewables really the only way to go in resetting
the Upper Hunter's energy focus away from its past five
decades as a coal fired powerhouse. On this episode we
pivot from solar and batteries to hydro power. The Upper
Hunter has quite a few VIP property owners and you
(00:30):
might have heard of the Turnbulls. Yes, the very same
Malcolm and Lucy Turnbull. One of their private companies has
been selected by Water in New South Wales to conduct
a detailed feasibility study into building a hydro power system
between Scone and Singleton. The proposer would make use of
the water from Glenbourne and Glenny's Creek dams and we're
told it would deliver long duration storage capacity totaling more
(00:53):
than one point four gigawatts for eight to twelve hours,
powering a million homes. I caught up with the former
Prime Minister to find out more and started by asking
him how long he's had the idea for this project
with you and Lucy yourself long time up a Hunter people,
how long have you actually had this idea?
Speaker 2 (01:13):
Oh, for all, I've thought about this for a long time,
because I've you know, I started I started thinking seriously
about pump hydro in twenty sixteen, actually when I was
Prime Minister and it dawned on me that we were
putting more and more renewables i e. Wind and solar
into the grid and weren't doing enough to store it
(01:37):
or firm it for you know, when the wind wasn't
blowing and the sun wasn't training, etc. And that's what
inspired me really to get cracking with Snowy Hydro two
point zero, which we started the work on in twenty seventeen.
But I've always thought there was potential in the Hunter
as well, not least because of the transmission.
Speaker 1 (01:58):
The skills base.
Speaker 2 (02:00):
We've got a community and Upper Hunter community with hundreds
of people that are very experienced in building civil works,
you know, whether it's dams or mines or tunnels, roads,
you know, all of that. Those skills are there in
the Hunter. And clearly, as culified generation comes out, we're
(02:21):
going to need new forms of generation.
Speaker 1 (02:24):
So the wind and the.
Speaker 2 (02:26):
Solar, particularly the solar is rolling out abundantly solar especially,
but the firming is not enough firming or storage being built.
So when Water New South Wales called for expressions of
interest on these projects, you know, we started entered the process,
which is over two years ago now or about two
years ago i think, and eventually we're able to reach
(02:51):
agreement with the mon A Development Agreement.
Speaker 3 (02:54):
So what will the feasibility study involve.
Speaker 2 (02:57):
Essentially, what we're doing is proving up the concept of
building a pump hydro project at each of Glenbourne and
Glenny's Creek dam. The concept is pretty straightforward. It's building
a reservoir, a new dam if you like, on top
(03:17):
of a ridge next to the existing big reservoir. And
you know, and then in times when electricity is plentiful
and cheap, so in the middle of the day a
sunny day, you pump water up to the top of
the hill and then when the market is short you
run it.
Speaker 1 (03:36):
You supply the market.
Speaker 2 (03:37):
By running water down the hill through a turbine. So
this is pumped hydro storage. It's been around for a
very long time, but it's becoming more important than ever
as our energy generation, our primary generation becomes dominated by
solar and wind, which of course are variable, so that
(03:58):
dispatch ability hydro is more important than ever.
Speaker 3 (04:02):
How long will the study take, Well, there's.
Speaker 2 (04:05):
A whole lot of work going on, but some years
to some years. But we've got a lot of planning
work to do. Design work, we've obviously already done quite
a lot, but we've got to do geotechnical work. You know,
it will take some years before we get to the
point where we can say we want to go ahead,
(04:25):
and that is you know, that's that's just in the
nature of these things, these big infrastructure projects, they do
take time and a lot of investment upfront.
Speaker 3 (04:35):
So it doesn't sound like you've said a sort of
hard and fast headline at this stage.
Speaker 1 (04:40):
I know I've I've sort of learned the hard way.
Speaker 2 (04:45):
I'm not going to give the time estimates or dollar
estimates at this early stage because you know, whatever you forecast,
you're going to be wrong. So we'll just you know,
we'll move as quickly as possible and you know, seek
who develop a project that will be as as efficient
(05:05):
as cost effective as it possibly can be.
Speaker 3 (05:08):
Will there be many local jobs involved at the study phase?
Or is that more if it actually proceeds to actually happening.
Speaker 2 (05:17):
Well, the study at the study stage that if you
like the development stage, yes there are that there are
some local jobs. You already have some local people working
with us in addition obviously in addition to ourselves. But
you know, the major employment obviously occurs when you start construction.
Speaker 3 (05:36):
Will the local community actually notice any think during the
study it sounds to me like a lot of it
is dare I say, desktop type of work and really
technical stuff.
Speaker 2 (05:46):
I don't think, well, you know, they might see some
drill rigs doing some core sampling, but I don't think
the pre you know, the pre construction phase is not
going it's not going to be very noticeable. No, you know,
it's again, people in the Hunter are very familiar with this.
(06:07):
It's a centrally preliminary work. A lot of it is
on the ground, you know, whether it's worked by geologists
or environmentalists or engineers. But it's not you know, it's
not you know, big yellow machines moving large amounts of
dirt around.
Speaker 3 (06:23):
I imagine one of the issues that will come up,
based on various projects over the years, is about the water.
And you know, because it is obviously the both dams
are water sources here, will there be much water lost
in the process that that you're proposing to actually do.
Speaker 2 (06:42):
No, no water is lost at all. It's essentially pump
hydre is a closed loop. So say if you take
Glenbourne for example, Glenbourne's a damn its capacity is about
seven hundred and fifty million cubic meters, so seven hundred
and fifty kik alters, So that's that's one and a
half time Sydney Harbor. The dam that you would build
(07:04):
on top of the hill next door would be about
eight million cubic meters or eight eight billion leaders, eight
kick leaders, so it's about one percent of the volume.
And that water effectively goes round and round, goes up
the hill when electricity is cheap, and comes down the
hill when electricity is in demand. So it doesn't but
(07:26):
it doesn't leave, you know, so there's no there's no
net loss. Or The thing about pumped hydra that makes
it very I think very appealing is that it doesn't
actually use a lot of water. Now, obviously eight billion
leaders does sound like a lot of water, but in
the scheme of things and the scheme of the big reservoir,
it's not a lot of water, and of course it's
(07:48):
retained in the system.
Speaker 1 (07:50):
But secondly, it doesn't use a lot of real estate.
Speaker 2 (07:53):
So if you think of a you know, a dam
that is going to contain eight million cubic meters of water, well,
you know, its shape will depend on the topography and
so forth. But it's say it's forty hectares in area,
which is less than one hundred acres.
Speaker 1 (08:11):
It's at twenty meters deep.
Speaker 2 (08:12):
Now you know, I'm not suggesting one hundred acres isn't
a large space, but it's not the type of vast
hydro schemes that you know, we read about and are
used to and sometimes people are concerned about. So it's
very it's very efficient in terms of its use of
land and its use of water.
Speaker 3 (08:33):
Where will you access power from to I imagine you
need that to get the water from back up the
hill so to speak.
Speaker 1 (08:40):
Oh, well the.
Speaker 2 (08:43):
Power Clearly, it's a power station you're building, so it's
connected to the grid. And when it is pumping water uphill,
the turbine is running effectively, running in reverse, it's running
as an electric effectively. And then when it's generating, it's
(09:03):
running in the other direction, and it's generating electricity.
Speaker 1 (09:06):
So so.
Speaker 2 (09:09):
Where would you draw the electricity from. You draw it
from the grid, But you could have and we may
well have an integrated wind farm. I mean, there is
the potential obviously to build wind in that area, but
that's you know, there's a lot of a lot of
other landowners that have to get involved in that. But
you know, there's a lot of renewable energy in the grid.
(09:30):
I mean, if you look at the at the open
neem for example, you'll see in the middle of the
day your spot prices are often negative because there's so
much solar. So you know, projects like this are really important,
not just to provide electricity when the sun isn't shining
and the wind isn't blowing, but also to be able
(09:53):
to buy electricity from renewable generators at times of high supply.
You know, they kind of act like a balancing factor.
So in the middle of the day, huge amount of
soul is coming into the market, a lot of it
from rooftops, the pumped hydro.
Speaker 1 (10:10):
You know, installations will be able to.
Speaker 2 (10:12):
Soak that up, and so they provide a market for
that excess electricity. And then when the sun goes down,
particularly if the wind isn't blowing. The pumped hydros are generating,
and you know, this is the rationale behind this is
the same as as it is for all the other
pump hydro projects. And there's obviously a lot of projects
(10:34):
under development at the moment, but there's still only two
that's Snowy two and the gen X project in North
Queensland that are being built. Queensland Government, as you know,
is building two huge pumped hydros, and there's a bunch
of private sector projects like ours in different stages of
(10:54):
planning and development in New South Wales.
Speaker 3 (10:58):
So you mentioned earlier about Snowy High Joe as well,
and you're being the Prime minister who kicked that off.
Is this as much about, I suppose, leaving a bit
of a legacy as well as obviously making some money.
Speaker 2 (11:12):
Well, it's I don't know about legacy, but it's I
am very committed to the clean you know. So I'm
very committed to the transition from burning fossil fuels to
renewables because we need to do that to save the planet.
Despite Elon Musk's best efforts, we've still only got one
planet and we don't want to fry it. So I'm
(11:33):
very committed to that as a both as a as
a former prime minister or and as particularly as a grandfather.
Speaker 1 (11:41):
So that's important mission. I'm very committed to the Hunter.
Speaker 2 (11:47):
And I can see, I know that the need for
long duration storage is a key because you see, it's
it's it's relatively it's relatively easy to roll out solar.
It's not as easy, but it's you know, it's very
feasible to roll out wind once you've got your planning
permissions and so forth. But pumped hydro takes time because
(12:11):
it's a lot of civil works, because it involves building
a dam, tunneling to our technical work and risk and
all those things.
Speaker 1 (12:18):
And so you that's why you have to get That's
why you have to get on with it.
Speaker 2 (12:22):
And you know that well with all of these projects,
whether it's snowy too or this one or anything else,
I'm sure that you know, we will say, gosh, I
wish we'd started this, you know, in two thousand and four,
not twenty twenty four.
Speaker 1 (12:38):
But you can't live your life backwards.
Speaker 3 (12:40):
Yeah, I think we've all been saying that for a
little while here in the Upper Hunt Way. So is
this really like we're not potentially we're not going to
really see this thing pumping water for what we're looking
at close to a decade or something by the time
you do all that.
Speaker 2 (12:57):
Yeah, work, but it could well hopefully won't be as
long as a decade, but it'll be, you know, it'll be.
It'll be a while, you know, it'll These things take time,
they all do. And you know, some look, some big
infrastructure projects go.
Speaker 1 (13:13):
On time and on budget.
Speaker 2 (13:14):
Some of them are even a below budget, very rarely,
but generally they take a bit longer and cost a
bit more than planned. But you know, if you're not
prepared to face up to that, then you wouldn't try
to build anything. So it'd be in a bit of
a mess if we took that approach.
Speaker 3 (13:30):
So if we stop and look at the politics of
Australia's energy future, mister turnbull side, the Liberal National Coalition
clearly has its wagon hits to nuclear, but it agrees
with Team Albin EASi. The Upper Hunter seems to be
the preferred location. Peter Dutton, David Little Proud, even Barnaby
have basically they've named Liddell as a location for this
(13:52):
under a future coalition government. Do you think this should
form part of the mix to replace coal.
Speaker 2 (14:00):
Well, look, not really. I mean I'm all for having
an open mind on everything. Okay, so I'm not you know,
I'm not I'm not remotely interested in getting into a
cultural war ideological argument about this. But the reality is,
with small modular reactors, there isn't one of them in existence.
I mean, they're talking about something that doesn't exist. You know,
(14:24):
there was one sort of SMR project in the United
States that got abandoned recently because it was costs were
just blowing out. Nuclear is notoriously complex and expensive. We
have no nuclear power industry in Australia, so you know,
the chances of being able to build a nuclear power
(14:44):
station of any size in Australia in any realistic timeframe
so low. So it's it's look at To be honest,
I think it's I think it's more of a distraction,
you know, if you want to get on with things
that you can do and where we do have a
comparative advantage. We do have a comparative advantage in renewable
(15:05):
generation because we've got a lot of good sunshine, a
lot of good radiation, a lot of good wind, got
a big country. So there's plenty of landscape and places
to put the renewable generation. And we have the opportunities,
plenty of opportunities for pumped hydro. Now you've got to
pick the right places, you know, with the right geology
(15:26):
and proximity to transmission and all those things. But you know,
we can get the job done with the renewable technologies
we have. I mean, I think, you know, talking about
nuclear power, I mean this is literally something. This is
literally vaporware. They're talking about small modular reactors. A don't exist,
(15:47):
and B. The only thing we know about nuclear power
is it's massively more expensive than the alternatives we have today.
So but it's you know, and as to the pole,
I could just say that this debate is so lacking
in information.
Speaker 1 (16:02):
Any polling on it today is meaningless.
Speaker 2 (16:05):
There are there are plenty of nuclear reactors in the world.
Speaker 3 (16:10):
They specified school module.
Speaker 1 (16:12):
Well they don't.
Speaker 2 (16:14):
There's certainly none, no that there. You know, there might
be some in Russia, you know, but certainly in the
developed world. The countries we you know, whose nuclear standards
we would.
Speaker 1 (16:26):
Want to be emulate, No, they don't exist.
Speaker 2 (16:29):
The nuclear and you see the the you know, if
you're talking about building a nuclear power station. By the
time you've got all of that cost and design and
planning and so forth, you're probably going to want to
build one that's quite large. So anyway, leaving that, leaving
that by the bye, I think it's it is a
(16:51):
debate quite unquote in Australia that is almost devoid of facts,
so which is why it's so attractive to so many people.
Speaker 3 (17:00):
Unlike snowy two point zero, which has had major budget blowouts,
if a hydropower project gets the green light, tax payers
will be spared the cost. E Turnbulls themselves will be
funding it alongside some key investors, so it's got to
be profitable. I guess there's still a bit of water
to flow under the bridge on that. I'm Darren Katrubi
and thanks for listening to iHeart Upper Hunter. I'll be
(17:22):
supported by the new South Wales government. Catch you next time.
Speaker 1 (17:27):
iHeart Upper Hunter.
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