A nuclear energy advocacy group backed by entrepreneur Dick Smith will bring 2023 Miss America winner Grace Stanke to Perth this month, in a bid to win public support.
A nuclear energy advocacy group backed by entrepreneur Dick Smith will bring 2023 Miss America winner Grace Stanke to Perth this month, in an unorthodox bid to win public support.
Ms Stanke, a 22-year-old pageant winner and nuclear engineer, will headline an event in Perth on January 29, as political debate ramps up around the technology as an Australian energy source ahead of the federal election.
Ms Stanke is billed as a clean energy advocate, having graduated with a bachelor’s degree in nuclear engineering from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2023 – the same year she held the Miss America crown.
“I’m looking forward to offering my experience as a nuclear engineer to educate the general public about nuclear energy and its potential future applications in Australia,” Ms Stanke said.
Her visit has been organised by Nuclear for Australia founder, Brisbane-based 18-year-old Will Shackel, who has secured the support nuclear advocate Mr Smith as a patron.
Nuclear for Australia claims to be the largest nuclear advocacy group in Australia, and Perth is the first stop on its national tour.
The nuclear movement has ramped its rhetoric up in recent months, with opposition leader Peter Dutton championing the technology as a reliable baseload source of energy.
Mr Dutton faces stiff competition in Western Australia, where even the local branch of his own party has distance itself from his pro-nuclear stance.
The long-awaited independent costings of his proposal to build nuclear reactors around Australia, published in December, did not include WA despite a federal Liberal desire to build a nuclear plant at Collie.
Modelling by Frontier Economics suggested the rollout of nuclear on the east coast would set the nation back $331 billion over 25 years, which was $263 billion cheaper than the estimated $594 billion bill to deliver a renewables plan across the country.
Those numbers were championed by advocates and picked apart by critics, who accused the opposition of not comparing apples with apples and omiting key costs.
The WA government has been strong in its stance on a future powered by renewables supported by a natural gas-powered baseload, with the fossil fuel phased out as renewable reliability improves – an approach supported by the federal government.
Mr Smith lashed Anthony Albanese’s approach to energy policy in a statement today, claiming a reliance on battery storage would make power cost prohibitive.
“An energy plan based on experimental modelling by the CSIRO for the future of Australia is setting the country up for skyrocketing power bills the likes of which we have never seen before; the assertion that bills will come down is an impossibility,” he said.
A draft report issued by the CSIRO late last year found the cost of batteries fell 20 per cent last year, with renewables found to be the most cost-effective source of new energy generation for the seventh consecutive year.
