Necessity, they say, is the mother of all invention. The gargantuan energy needs of AI has created a race for energy so fierce that America built a functioning nuclear microreactor in less than a year.

Last week, America announced that the Antares Mark-0 microreactor achieved criticality at Idaho National Laboratory. This is the first advanced reactor to reach this milestone under a Department of Energy program designed specifically to accelerate nuclear technologies.

This announcement is fresh off the heels of news that Kairos Power broke ground on the first small modular reactor in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, to supply Google.

The significance of these events is grasped by industry, although I suspect it is lost on Energy Minister Chris Bowen, whose renewables-only obsession has left our grid unstable and our future precarious.

Before ChatGPT burst into mainstream consciousness, achievements like these would have been impossible to imagine. Now they feel inevitable, everywhere except here.

I visited Idaho National Laboratory and Oak Ridge National Laboratory on a study tour last year. Both act as incubators for advanced nuclear technologies in partnership with the private sector. The scale of what I saw was remarkable.

The Americans are incubating dozens of reactor configurations, exotic coolants like liquid sodium instead of water, and designs built for speed and replication. They have a clear, overarching philosophy: more energy is better. They understand that whoever secures the most abundant energy resources secures technological dominance, and they are clear-eyed about what is at stake.

I departed convinced that Australia is dangerously behind the curve. Energy is to AI what shovels were to the gold rush of the 1850s, and Chris Bowen’s renewables-only approach is the policy equivalent of Kodak doubling down on film rolls just as the digital camera was invented.

There is a myopia among the renewables-only crowd that simply refuses to acknowledge that technology, along with the world, is changing, and that we have natural resources that allow us to leapfrog ahead of others and capitalise on this fourth industrial revolution.

When I was in America, the scientists I met were confident the first commercial technologies would be deployed by 2027, and with the recent announcements being only the first of what is to come, they are on track.

What makes this so powerful is that these new reactors can be built using standard production-line techniques, the same methods we use to manufacture cars and trucks. Costs fall rapidly when you industrialise production.

The familiar objections around nuclear’ s cost are fast becoming obsolete, and CSIRO’s GenCost modelling, repeatedly cited by Chris Bowen to kill the conversation, is so systematically biased that it cannot be considered a valid source of information.

Here is what American officials told me, repeatedly, when I visited. They are worried about securing enough uranium to fuel their nuclear ambitions. Every time they raised it, I found myself thinking about the natural synergy between what Australia can offer – our abundant uranium reserves, and what America can offer us in return: the cutting-edge technologies we need to join the AI race on our terms.

But this is bigger than AI, or even quantum if that comes next. It is about diversifying our energy supply chains, restoring affordability and abundance, and building resilience against international energy shocks such as those we are seeing with the conflict in the Middle East.

From a bird’s-eye view, the standard anti-nuclear objections do not survive scrutiny.

“Nuclear would have been great twenty years ago; it is too late now.”

The best time to plant a tree was yesterday. The next best time is today.

“It is too expensive.”

Standardised mass production will take care of that, as it always does.

“It is dangerous.”

Nuclear energy is statistically the safest form of large-scale energy generation. We keep invoking Fukushima despite there being no deaths from a commercial nuclear accident since 1986.

“We lack the expertise.”

Well, let us build it, then.

When I spoke with Singapore’s energy architects, who also visited Idaho and Oak Ridge, they told me they have a dedicated team inside their energy market operator to evaluate new nuclear technologies. They have formal agreements with both laboratories to train their staff. Singapore, a city-state with no natural resources, is preparing seriously. What exactly is our excuse?

Do we not want high-skilled jobs?

Do we not want to power our datacentres?

Do we not want to give Australian entrepreneurs a fighting chance in the AI race?

Nuclear’ s extraordinary energy density and ability to power facilities entirely off the grid give it advantages no other energy source can match at scale. Instead of recognising this, we have Chris Bowen and his merry band of technological Luddites, with their profound lack of vision, putting our nation at risk of losing the AI race before it has properly begun.

ENDS

Media contact: Phil Connole M | 0417 063 605