Last week, I joined the world's largest gathering of the nuclear sector, the World Nuclear Exhibition (WNE) in Paris. Over three days, 25,000 delegates filled the halls: energy ministers, utility CEOs, reactor developers, tech experts, financiers, engineers, and policymakers. This wasn't a fringe event. It was where governments and companies committed to the technologies that will power the next century of industry, data infrastructure, and electrified economic growth.
National pavilions showcased everything from small modular reactor fleets to medical isotopes and advanced fuel cycles. The IAEA convened fast-track regulatory discussions. France unveiled a 2050 nuclear expansion plan. South Korea inked export deals. The UAE celebrated its Barakah plant, now delivering more clean power than all the wind and solar capacity in Australia combined.
The theme was unmistakable: nuclear as essential, reliable, zero-emissions baseload for a future defined by electrification, AI, and industrial resilience.
Yet, in a hall filled with 90 nations shaping the future of energy, one was nowhere to be found: Australia.
No minister. No policy officials. No trade delegation. No uranium sector representation. No satellite presence from our universities, engineers, or innovation agencies. Not even individual observers in informal discussions.
Australia, the world's third-largest uranium producer, a country with the capability to support regional energy security, high-value manufacturing, and decarbonised mining, was not there.
This was not a bureaucratic oversight. It reflects something deeper: a long-standing refusal to even enter the global conversation about the future of energy, technology, and industrial competitiveness.
At a time when every advanced economy is wrestling with the same trilemma - how to provide reliable, affordable, low-emissions electricity for industry and citizens - Australia has chosen to exempt itself from relevant debate. Our policy settings are so ideologically rigid they prevent us from engaging with the very technologies that leading economies see as essential for survival in a post-carbon world.
We have legislated a ban that makes nuclear energy not just prohibited, but unthinkable. And because of that ban, we have not developed the institutional capacity to even observe the global shift underway.
The cost of that absence is already being felt.
Australia has spent more than $29 billion in subsidies for large-scale renewable energy projects over the last decade. A vast rollout of wind, solar, and transmission infrastructure has brought us to a point where around 40 per cent of national generation comes from intermittent sources. Yet the promised outcomes, lower electricity prices, reduced emissions, and long-term energy security, have all failed to materialise.
Electricity prices rose 23.6 per cent in the past year alone, according to the ABS. Wholesale volatility has increased. Gas consumption, far from declining, is forecast to rise by 14 per cent by 2030 to compensate for intermittent wind and solar. Coal-fired power stations that were supposed to close are staying online, not out of political nostalgia, but out of necessity.
On emissions, the picture is equally troubling. Reductions since 2005 have flatlined in the electricity sector once land-use offsets are excluded. We have reduced emissions on paper, not in reality.
But the most damaging and under-examined failure is environmental. More than 25,000 hectares of native woodland in Queensland alone are at risk from renewable energy zones. Koala habitat in New South Wales has been cleared for grid infrastructure. Biodiverse forests in Victoria are being carved up for transmission corridors. What began as a mission to preserve the natural world has resulted in industrial-scale ecological disruption, with the added irony that much of this infrastructure will need to be replaced within 20 to 25 years.
Meanwhile, Australian households are absorbing the real-world costs of this transition. Energy bills are rising faster than wages. Pensioners and families on low incomes are forced to choose between essential expenses. Manufacturers are reviewing their operations because of energy insecurity. Mining companies, responsible for 10 per cent of national energy use, are building private microgrids to avoid unstable supply.
This is not a managed transition. It is a fragmented experiment carried out on the grid, the environment, and the household budget.
And here's the most important point: the rest of the world has noticed this pattern too, and is adjusting.
At the World Nuclear Exhibition, country after country presented not just reactor blueprints, but full-spectrum energy strategies: nuclear for baseload power, renewables for distributed generation, hydrogen for industry, carbon capture for transitional fossil fuel plants, and advanced fuels to support next-generation reactors and ships.
Sweden recently amended its national target from '100 per cent renewable' to '100 per cent fossil-free', an implicit recognition that ideology should not override physics. Japan has restarted its nuclear fleet. The United States has passed an unprecedented suite of incentives for nuclear deployment under the Inflation Reduction Act, including production tax credits and federal loan guarantees. Canada is building the first grid-scale small modular reactor in the West. The UAE has brought four new reactors online in under a decade.
These are not fringe decisions. They are mainstream policies in countries serious about economic and emissions outcomes.
And that's the core difference: Australia is pursuing an energy transition that measures success in political terms, not technical outcomes. We speak in gigawatts installed, not emissions reduced. We count ribbon cuttings, not system stability. We prioritise announcement over analysis, ideology over evidence, and subsidies over results.
Our absence in Paris was not a matter of diplomatic scheduling. It was a manifestation of a deeper national belief: that the world's energy transition will look like ours, not the other way around. That we can bend the system to our preferences and that physics, economics, and global momentum will oblige.
But that belief cannot survive contact with reality.
The energy future being shaped at forums like the World Nuclear Exhibition is not waiting for Australia to participate. It is being driven by countries that understand the link between energy policy, industrial capability, and strategic security. Countries that understand that an AI-driven economy cannot run on hope. Data centres cannot operate depending on the weather. Hydrogen cannot be produced at scale without 24/7 power. Mining critical minerals for the global transition, while lacking stable electricity at home, is a national contradiction.
Our absence from the World Nuclear Exhibition was not just a missed opportunity; it was a warning. If we cannot engage with the realities of global energy and industrial development, we will not control our energy future. We will import it, at far greater cost, and with far less sovereignty.
The path is not predetermined. But the first step is simple: we need to show up. Not just at events, but in the conversation. In engineering. In the planning. In the acknowledgment that the world's most successful energy transitions use every tool available, not just those preferred by a select few.
A nation that ships uranium to power the world while banning its use at home has already surrendered its seat in the future. A nation that won't enter the room where decisions are made has no voice in what comes next.
We can still change course, but the clock has stopped being generous.