Hi, I’m Jaz! I’m a mum of one human and two dogs who is passionate about ensuring my family has a clean and sustainable future. I joined the Australian Army straight out of school and studied nuclear physics and chemistry at the Australian Defence Force Academy in Canberra. I spent the majority of my 22 year military career using my scientific skills to understand how to stop bad people from using toxic chemicals or materials to harm others (including radioactive material). It really forced me to understand the true risks if toxic chemicals and materials are misused. It taught me that we, as humans, have these amazing features that protect us from harm, things like skin, the sense of smell and taste - ever smelt rotten food? It often takes our bodies to react after ingesting toxins before we realise something is wrong.

Detectors struggle to pick up bugs and some toxic chemicals in real time…. but not radiation. It’s either there, or it’s not - there isn’t a grey area. You can understand the type of radiation, the strength of it and from there understand if it is harmful to you or not. That’s how I fell in love with nuclear science. It’s all around us everyday and harnessing its superpowers for good then became something I wanted to be involved in. Which led me to understanding nuclear power and energy.

Around 2013/14 I got very interested in the climate change discussion and didn’t understand why Australia didn’t embrace nuclear energy. Fun fact it’s currently illegal to generate power from a nuclear facility, this leads to thoughts that nuclear energy is bad. So to understand why it was banned in Australia, but a lot of prosperous countries around the world embraced nuclear, I went off and studied a masters in Nuclear Engineering through the University of New South Wales. Surely that would explain something that we knew that the rest of the world didn’t about nuclear.

This opened my eyes to the true potential of nuclear energy as part of a sustainable and clean energy mix. From that point onwards I have become more active in the Australian nuclear scene. Through Women in Nuclear Australia I try to encourage young girls and women into careers in the nuclear industry (because its awesome). With the Australian Nuclear Association and Nuclear for Australia, I work to help in the advocacy on peaceful nuclear technologies to help Australian’s fill the gap of nuclear understanding through facts and education, we have been a nuclear nation for over 70 years… but sadly a lot of Aussies don’t know this.

As Australia’s energy demands increase with data and AI centres, investment in manufacturing and industry, and our desire to reach net zero increases too, we need to consider all net zero options as part of our energy mix. Discussions around nuclear energy as part of this mix is important to have allowing us to have clean energy now and into the distant future for our children and beyond.