MICHAEL USHER: Nuclear could be a game-changer for the EV industry and cost-savvy Australian drivers

If you haven’t dug deeper into the nuclear energy debate yourself, chances are your experience of nuclear power plants comes from popular stories of catastrophe or comedy.

Homer Simpson taught a generation of TV fans that the most dangerous thing in a local nuclear power plant was a haphazard, bumbling cartoon dad, and not the nuclear rods powering America’s mid-west. But if the 1979 film The China Syndrome started your fear of nuclear power, then the real world disaster thrillers at Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima made very real everyone’s gravest fears.

Now while those three nuclear catastrophes can be well blamed on appalling safety breaches, political and corporate failings, and natural phenomenon, we seem to have reached a calm acceptance that nuclear power free of those disastrous triggers can be a reasonable part of Australia’s future.

Although the next election might tell us differently, I’m just not seeing furious popular anger about Peter Dutton’s nuclear plan, besides the usual people you’d expect to oppose it.

The price of energy is THE major issue among Australians right now, I have no doubt. Housing costs are causing heartburn, but most people I think can see the cycles, the explanations, the causes and while hating them, can sort of understand them. Soaring electricity and gas prices however just don’t make sense to many.

Why, in our resource-rich nation are we being gouged and households and businesses struggling with energy bills doubling and more? I base this view on what we cover in our daily 7NEWS bulletins, but also my own running poll. Most weeks I’m lucky to travel around our country and the cost of power is what revs everyone up.

I’ve been in Orange, Newcastle, Sydney and Brisbane over the past few weeks. And hard-to-understand energy bills is what most people reply when I ask the question about what’s breaking the weekly and monthly budget. Small business owners are particularly red hot on this surging cost.

But let’s fast forward. Imagine the electorate has accepted a nuclear future for Australia, and it’s 20 years from now. An optimistic build timeline from Peter Dutton, but let’s take it that in 2044 your house and business is nuclear-powered.

That means that mostly all the previous patchwork plans by previous governments to achieve a clean energy future had been a waste of time and money.

Take for example the current vehicle emissions targets being pushed hard by the Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen. They kick in in January 1.

To help achieve the Government’s 2030 deadline for a 43 per cent net emissions reduction target, he’s forcing us all into electric, hybrid or low-emission cars. Vehicle emissions account for about 13 per cent of national emissions.

To achieve this, Mr Bowen has revealed complicated layers of funding, credits and compensation packages for angry rural communities and heavy industry, and angrier still EV manufacturers like Tesla. I can’t find many who are happy with the plan.

But here’s where nuclear could be a game-changer. And I’m coming at this not as an advocate — because I just haven’t read enough research yet — but as a passionate lover of cars. I don’t like seeing car owners of any engine type penalised.

Consumers will naturally shift to electric or hybrid engines based on price and availability. That is already happening in amazing numbers, and not the because the Government is telling us to.

The Bowen plan in my view is way too late, and way too complex.

Car buyers in Australia have always been savvy. The Government and manufacturers sometimes have been behind the times.

Tariffs created a lazy industry which for too long gave us big engine, heavy cars that didn’t match modern family or business needs. And the Government was happy to gobble up the taxes it made on those out-of-date local vehicles, or impose stupid charges like the luxury car tax. That by the way, needs a spotlight and I might write about that soon.

But I digress. Let’s get to the game changer. Nuke my ride!

Electric vehicles plugged in at home, powered entirely by clean, zero-emission nuclear energy. Is this the leap into the future we need? Doesn’t it reset every other bit of patchwork policy to reduce emissions?

Provided, of course, the back end of nuclear energy and by-products doesn’t cause worse pollution than now and create three-eyed fish in our waterways, isn’t this the clean future we’re trying to reach?

I talk up the electric vehicle being used in its perfect purpose — clean car, no emissions, powered by clean energy, no emissions – because I’m not sure talking up the virtues of a nuclear-powered toaster or washing machine has the same sell.

But the truth is right now, any energy option that means cheaper energy is what people want. That it’s clean is a bonus.

Most people surveyed who have bought or are buying electric or hybrid cars right now in Australia do it to save money on fuel, not to save the environment. That it greatly helps Mother Earth is a very happy consequence.

The Government that finds the best way to provide cheaper energy, that saves you money AND the environment will win any voter. It’s very much a wallet-first, consumer-first time of life.

Beware the governments that penalise and force voters to go green. Everyone wants to do the right things, but not if they’re press-ganged into it.