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The event — billed as an information evening featuring a panel of experts — is off to a rocky start. A protester steps in front of the audience and speaks into a microphone.
Grace Stanke is a former American beauty queen and a nuclear engineer. Source: Supplied
“All of the organisers, presenters and sponsorship of this event tonight has a very deep vested interest — ” he says, before he’s drowned out in a chorus of boos and the mic is seized from his hand.
Among them is Di Tucker, a retired psychologist concerned about climate change. She said she became upset after submitting half a dozen questions online to be answered by the panel — and felt like they were being deliberately ignored.
Di Tucker became frustrated when she felt her concerns about nuclear energy were being ignored. Source: Supplied
“I felt so frustrated by the lack of factual information in that so-called information session forum on the safety, the timescale and the reality of nuclear energy,” Tucker told The Feed.
He labelled their behaviour “simply unacceptable and … not in the interest of a fair discussion”.
Several people who interrupted the Nuclear for Australia event were escorted out by security. Source: Supplied
“They were yelling abuse at us on stage. We had people come up to Grace at the end, call her a clown,” he claimed.
The words “Nuclear energy distracts from the climate emergency” are projected onto The Gabba over the image of a red herring.
Activists projected this image onto The Gabba sports stadium outside the event. Source: Supplied
The teen and the beauty queen
“I’d just done a school assignment on nuclear energy when I realised it was banned. And that, as a 16-year-old kid, was pretty shocking to me,” he said.
Shackel’s advocacy has taken him all over the world, including tours of nuclear power plants overseas and the COP28 climate conference in Dubai. Source: Supplied
Australia is one of the few countries where using nuclear energy to produce electricity is illegal. The ban was introduced in 1998, when the Howard government made a deal with the Greens in order to build a nuclear reactor in Sydney for research purposes.
As well as launching Nuclear for Australia — which describes itself as “the largest nuclear advocacy organisation in Australia” with over 80,000 supporters — he’s addressed a Senate committee and interviewed French President Emmanuel Macron for his organisation’s social media at the COP28 climate conference in Dubai in 2023.
“We have one option that is not available when it comes to decarbonising the electricity sector … it’s like having one hand tied behind your back when you’re trying to combat climate change,” he said.
Responses to a poll conducted by DemosAU for the Australian Conservation Foundation. Source: SBS
There’s also a gender gap — in the same poll, just over a quarter of women thought nuclear would be good for Australia, compared to half of men.
Baldwin speculates the rise in support for nuclear power is due to shifting demographics.
A group of anti-nuclear protesters picketed Nuclear for Australia’s Brisbane event. Source: Supplied
He said older generations are more likely to have historical hangups around the dangers of nuclear power, having lived through the British and French weapons tests in the Pacific and nuclear catastrophes like the 1986 accident in Chernobyl and the 2011 accident in Fukushima. He said in countries with good regulation and governance, the risk of accidents is extremely low.
Nuclear for Australia hopes Grace Stanke can convince the sceptics. Dubbed “the real-life Barbenheimer”, she works for the operator of the largest fleet of nuclear power plants in the US, Constellation. (The company operates 21 of the US’s 94 nuclear reactors).
“No, I don’t think it’s a desperate plea in any capacity. I think it’s a matter of bringing somebody who works in nuclear, who is a young person who cares about this.”
Accusations that group is trying to ‘creep around the country’
It also targeted regional areas near the Coalition’s proposed sites for future nuclear power stations — including Morwell in Victoria, Collie WA, Port Augusta SA, Callide and Tarong in Queensland and Lithgow in NSW. The Coalition says its taxpayer-funded plan is for five large and two smaller reactors, with the smaller ones to come online in 2035 and the rest by 2037.
She accused Nuclear for Australia of blacklisting known anti-nuclear activists and trying to avoid criticism by attempting to “creep around the country”.
Mia Pepper is an anti-nuclear campaigner in Western Australia. Source: Supplied
“If they were really genuine about having a mature debate, they would do their best to invite some people like myself that have engaged really respectfully in the debate over many years to answer the tough questions,” she said.
“We care about the safety of our attendees, we care about the safety of our experts,” Shackel said.
“The idea that because you are opposed to nuclear power, you somehow would be aggressive or violent is absolutely outrageous.”
Locals left with more questions than answers
“Their whole speech was very generic. They were probably using the same speech for every single area,” she said.
Collie’s 9,000 residents could soon face the prospect of having a nuclear power plant built in their backyard if the Coalition is elected. Source: Supplied
Parkin asked one of the experts where the water for a nuclear power plant would come from — with large amounts needed to cool the radioactive core.
Shackel told SBS that while there have been protesters at Nuclear for Australia’s previous Collie event, including those he claimed were abusive and disruptive, there was calm this time around.
Some of Collie’s residents aren’t happy about the prospect of nuclear power. Source: Supplied
“We did have a gentleman holding up a sign the whole time and we had a group at the back who was clearly not too impressed by nuclear power, but the great thing about it was they were respectful, they were listening,” he said.
“We had people come up to us and say they started off anti-nuclear but changed their minds afterwards,” he said.
Alleged links to political parties
GetUp reported at least 36 of Shackel’s connections, including 11 current or former politicians, were directly linked to the Liberal Party — with the party having the highest concentration of current employees from a single organisation in his network.
The Feed has contacted the Liberal Party of Australia for comment, but did not receive a response.
How viable is nuclear energy for Australia?
Professor Ken Baldwin said nuclear is “not really viable” as an option for decarbonising Australia by 2050, as it would take 15 years at the very minimum to develop the necessary regulations and build a nuclear power station.
Ken Baldwin thinks nuclear power, if adopted, would come too late to make a difference in achieving Australia’s net zero target by 2050. Source: Supplied
“We will have, according to the current plans, converted our current energy system to almost an entirely renewable energy system by that time,” Baldwin said.
Additional reporting by Christopher Tan.
