A nuclear plant takes 15 years to build only if governments let them get tied down by green tape

Chris Bowen claims nuclear power is a “risky” option. If you want risky, slow and expensive, check the green hydrogen schemes Bowen is frantically backing to keep on the lights.

If I didn’t look outside, I’d almost believe the crowing from the ABC and the Albanese government.

A new CSIRO report says the opposition’s plans for nuclear power are rubbish!

As an ABC headline put it: “CSIRO skewers case for nuclear energy”.

Well, yes, this report says building a big nuclear power station is more expensive than wind and power, plus some kind of power storage – like the Snowy 2.0 pumped hydro scheme – for when the wind doesn’t blow or the sun shine.

A CSIRO report has criticised the opposition’s nuclear power plans as rubbish. Picture: AFP

It would cost $8.5bn and take 15 years to build – too late to save us, given Labor plans to force shut all our remaining coal-fired stations by then.

That’s what Chris Bowen, the manic Climate Change and Energy Minister, jumped on: “Nuclear will be very long lead time to build, very slow to build, so nuclear is slow and expensive and risky when it comes to the reliability of Australia’s energy system.”

What? Look out the window – figuratively. Look at reality, not modelling.

How can wind and solar with backup cost more than an $8.5bn nuclear reactor when the cost of just the Snowy 2.0 backup alone has blown out to $12bn, and is estimated to reach $20bn once you add transmission wires?

Manic Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen. Picture: Martin Ollman

That is, if it ever gets finished. One of the machines digging the project’s 40km of tunnels is stuck again. Yet Bowen claims that nuclear power – a proven technology used in 32 countries – is the “risky” option.

If you want “risky”, “slow” and “expensive”, check the green hydrogen schemes Bowen is frantically backing to keep on the lights.

He’s just promised $2bn in handouts to get companies to invest billions more in finding ways to make hydrogen from water with massive wind and solar power, without going broke. This is a technology untested at scale, and almost certainly likely to take more than 15 years to get working as needed. If it works.

There are also reasons to doubt the CSIRO’s modelling. Its claim that nuclear power is more expensive is based on an assumption a plant would last just 30 years. In fact, new plants in the US are rated to last 80 years.

And a nuclear plant takes 15 years to build only if governments let them get tied down by green tape.

Where there’s a will there’s a way, but nuclear is just up against a lot of won’t.

Originally published as A nuclear plant takes 15 years to build only if governments let them get tied down by green tape