Australian philanthropist and entrepreneur Dick Smith believes there is no time to waste when it comes to rethinking the nation’s anti-nuclear power stance.
So when he received an email from young Year 6 Sydney student Lachlan Kidd asking if he would come to his school to discuss the issue, he decided to skip the traffic and make a quick flying visit instead.
That is when Daily Mail Australia heard the keen aviator had been spotted landing his helicopter on a school oval in the city’s west on Friday.
‘What happened was I received an email from Lachlan, a 12-year-old young man, about nuclear energy,’ Mr Smith said when asked about The King’s School sighting.
‘His class had been studying nuclear energy and they wanted me to come and talk about it.
‘He’s a really smart young lad and the work his class has been doing sounded quite amazing.
‘I think it’s nothing short of criminal that the silver bullet that could solve our country’s energy problems is illegal to even discuss, just ridiculous, and I that has to be changed as soon as possible.
‘So I arranged to go by helicopter because I’d given a talk there once before with Cate Blanchett, and there’s plenty of area for my helicopter to land.
Dick Smith jumped in a helicopter after getting an email from a Year 6 student – and went and lectured his class about nuclear energy
The millionaire philanthropist says he made a flying visit to the school because he feels it is important to engage in serious conversations with the next generation of Australians
Chopper is Dick Smith’s mode of transport of choice when there is no time to lose
‘Instead of driving an hour in the traffic, I jumped my helicopter at my home in Terrey Hills and I was there in seven minutes.
‘I explained to the kids, “In a helicopter, there’s no speed limit, no traffic lights and no radar guns, so I cruise there at 280km/h!”
‘So I went out and I’ve given about a 25-minute talk about how we should have (nuclear energy) on the agenda – it really should be on the table – and now I’ve just landed back home at Terrey Hills about 10 minutes ago.’
Despite his hectic schedule, Mr Smith said he felt it was important to take the time to engage with the next generation of young Australians about critical issues involving renewable energy and their future.
‘The nuclear issue is incredibly important for our young kids,’ he said. ‘I’m a believer in climate change, and I’m concerned for my grandkids.
‘I believe the only answer for the world to tackle climate is by going nuclear, by embracing it.
‘Thirty-one countries already have nuclear, which I explained to the young school boys, and it’s the silver bullet. It’s the way of solving our problem.
‘And we have a government which says, not only that you can’t have it, but you can’t even put it on the table.
‘I explained to the boys how it wasn’t logical.
‘The government claims that it’s too expensive, but I said countries like Bangladesh and Pakistan have embraced nuclear, and they’re poor countries, so it’s not logical that Bangladesh can afford nuclear and Australia can’t.
‘It just doesn’t meet the commonsense test, I explained to the boys.’
It was a message that seems to have found a receptive audience.
‘We had a vote on nuclear power at the end of the talk and I think about 90% of the kids agreed,’ he said.
‘Now, they are only 12 today – and not of voting age – but they are the next generation that will carry this country forward.
‘That’s why I’m a strong supporter of young people like Will Shackel, who’s an 18-year-old school boy from Brisbane, who’s pushing to legalise nuclear power, and running a petition on a website called Nuclear for Australia.’
Mr Smith slammed Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s anti-nuclear stance during an interview with Shackel, the founder of Australia’s first youth-lead campaign for nuclear energy, earlier this year.
While the Liberal Party is proposing to establishing a nuclear industry in Australia, Labor and the Greens are resolutely opposed, preferring renewable energy sources to achieve net zero carbon emissions by 2050.
Mr Smith says he is a supporter of similarly youthful activist Will Shackel’s pro-nuclear advocacy
It is not the first time Mr Smith has landed his chopper on a school oval in recent years
Mr Smith said Mr Albanese’s opposition is misguided and negatively impacts Australia’s youth.
‘Please look into it in an objective way, because I believe it’s the only answer for the future and we need to do something as quickly as possible,’ Mr Smith said.
‘We won’t be around when the problems occur.’
His comments came after Climate Change Minister Chris Bowen previously admitted that, to meet the government’s net-zero goal, Australia would have to install 40 large wind turbines a month and 22,000 solar panels a day.
Patricia McKenzie, the chair of the country’s biggest coal-fired power generator and CO2 emitter AGL, warned in 2022 that the National Electricity Market would need about 98 gigawatts of new capacity to meet the Paris Agreement’s 1.5 degree threshold to speed up the closure of its coal power stations.
She said that new capacity would be needed by 2030 to ‘keep the lights on’, which would put ‘unacceptable pressure on energy security and affordability’.
Australia has added only about 2.2GW of capacity over each of the past five years.
Mr Smith said it was unrealistic to expect renewable energy to be able to supply all of Australia’s energy as coal was phased out and gas remained a backup source leading up to 2050.
Smith became the first person to fly a helicopter solo around the world in the 1980s. Above, the Dick Smith Australian Explorer
‘I’ve always thought renewables are fantastic, but common sense alone told me that you can’t run a whole country entirely on renewables. If it was so, I’d support it. But I’m absolutely positive it’s not so,’ he said.
‘It’s never been done anywhere in the world, and to be able to do that running industry, running transport, hospitals and everything continuously, on the wind and the sun. Wonderful if it was possible, but it’s not possible.’
Mr Smith revealed he has a way of solving the controversial issue of nuclear waste, and said it could be stored in the military-restricted Olympic Dam mine in northern South Australia.
‘You drive down into the mine, and there are huge great caverns where they’ve taken the uranium ore out, and we could store our waste there perfectly safely.’
Mr Smith said France uses nuclear power for 70 per cent of their electricity and the waste is stored at the power stations.
‘Do you get warnings not to go to France? Of course you don’t, it’s a very safe place.’
Mr Smith revealed that it was in fact Labor’s longest-serving prime minister Bob Hawke who converted him to the nuclear cause back on Australia Day 1988 at Kirribilli House.
Mr Dutton’s Coalition has backed setting up a nuclear power industry in Australia – although has gone relatively quiet on the issue since introducing its policy earlier this yer
‘Bob Hawke said to me, ‘Dick, You’ll be against nuclear’ and I said no, because I was helping Bob Brown and the blockade and I was known as an environmentalist.’
‘Bob said, ‘We need to move to nuclear, it’s so obvious’.
‘So here it is, the Labor PM, one of the most famous and best Labor PMs, telling me you should be supporting nuclear.’
Opposition Leader Peter Dutton said nuclear power had the potential to reduce electricity prices and achieve zero carbon emissions.
‘You can replace the coal-fired generators with the smaller modular reactors or the bigger modular reactors,’ he said.
‘The latest technology, it’s zero emissions, it’s lower cost and it means you can distribute the energy with the existing grid network.
‘It means you have reliability to firm up renewables in the system.’
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