Send in the clowns

Last Monday, the Australia Institute's Rod Campbell appeared before a parliamentary committee on nuclear power to argue for the rapid phasing out of fossil fuels, "which is what climate science demands".

Nuclear power was a distraction, he claimed. Campbell said he had "spent a lot of time looking at economic modelling" and concluded that "the capital costs of nuclear are very high and very uncertain."

Ted O'Brien asked Campbell what his extensive knowledge of economic modelling had told him about the total system cost of the government's renewable—only plan.

Campbell: "I don't know. I haven't researched that."

O'Brien: "But aren't you arguing that including nuclear as part of the mix would be more expensive than that?"

Campbell: "It would be more expensive."

O'Brien: "You started off explaining that you've spent a lot of time doing modelling. So, do you know what the total system cost is for Labor's plan to get to net zero by 2050?

Campbell: "No, I've never modelled that. I've done a lot of economic modelling through my career. I haven't done much of it on the NEM itself and the ISP. "

O'Brien: "How have you drawn that conclusion then?"

Campbell: "Because, as I said at the top, you don't need to do a lot of modelling to see that capital costs of nuclear energy are really high and really uncertain."

Tellingly, the Australia Institute posted a video of Campbell's testimony on YouTube, suggesting they weren't aware that he'd made a clown of himself. The anti-nuclear left is immune to contrary facts, paying homage to "the science" while disregarding the laws of physics, urging us to abandon fossil fuels by this time tomorrow while never once considering the constraints of engineering.