Australia must pursue the nuclear option, Coalition declares

The man drafting the Coalition’s energy policy says we can’t reach net zero without nuclear as a visiting advocate claims he was asked to hush-up a meeting with Labor.

There is no way to get to net zero by 2050 without nuclear power and the ban on even considering it as part of the energy mix is “lunacy”, the federal opposition says.

As the Peter Dutton-led Coalition prepares to become the first would-be government to officially back a fission future, it can be revealed that a left-wing nuclear advocate from Canada met with a Labor MP in Canberra last week – and was asked to hush-up the encounter.

Canadians for Nuclear Energy president Chris Keefer also met a key adviser to Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen, warning of disaster if Australia bets solely on renewables to achieve its emissions reduction goals.

With taxpayers facing mounting bills for green energy projects such as Snowy 2.0 – plus the prospect of paying billions to keep ageing coal-fired plants to prevent blackouts – momentum appears to be gathering for a rethink of the prohibition on nuclear power.

The most recent credible polling, by the Lowy Institute in 2022, found support for overturning the ban had risen to 52 per cent from 47 per cent a year earlier.

Coalition climate change and energy spokesman Ted O’Brien said that until a short time ago, Australia hadn’t “been having a proper national conversation about what zero-emissions nuclear energy might do for our future”.

Mr O’Brien, who is leading the Coalition’s energy policy development ahead of the next election, said that since December he had gone to Japan, the US and Canada to investigate the nuclear option.

Coalition climate change and energy spokesman Ted O’Brien. Picture: Lyndon Mechielsen/The Australian

“I have proactively engaged with numerous countries around the world to understand how they are planning to reach net zero by 2050 and I’ve come to the conclusion that Australia needs nuclear as part of a broader mix if we are to achieve net zero,” Mr O’Brien said.

“I have seen no credible pathway to net zero that excludes zero-emission nuclear energy.

“For a country to have a ban on even considering it is lunacy.”

A spokesman for Mr Bowen responded: “The same party which told us for 10 years that we didn’t need to worry about climate change now says they’ve got the answer and it’s nuclear.

“This is just the latest distraction from a Coalition that is ideologically opposed to renewable energy,” the spokesman said.

“Australia’s future is a renewable energy superpower, not a nuclear backwater.”

Mr O’Brien said: “We need an ‘all-of-the-above’ approach to our future energy mix.”

Ontario was an example of what Australia should be doing, he said.

Canada’s most populous province gets a third of its power from renewables and more than half from nuclear energy.

Work on a “small modular reactor” (SMR) began in December and construction of three more is proposed.

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Australian National University lecturer and former Lucas Heights reactor manager Tony Irwin said Ontario-style SMRs were the “best fit” for Australia and could be positioned “in a corner” of a decommissioned coal-fired power station such as Liddell at Muswellbrook, NSW, linking to the grid via existing transmission lines.

Mr Keefer, who lives in Ontario’s capital Toronto, said consumers and industry there were being delivered energy with one-tenth the emissions intensity of Australia’s power – at half the cost.

During a visit to Canberra last week, Mr Keefer, a self-declared left-winger, told News Corp he “100 per cent” believed nuclear power was a viable option here.

He noted that Australia was one of the world’s top producers of uranium and was already producing medical radioisotopes.

“There is a non-trivial chance that wind and solar will not replace coal,” Mr Keefer said. “I have genuine concerns that there is a lot of pain coming.”

Australia’s energy transition was being done “on a prayer,” he said. Failure would leave only the “German option” of reactivating coal plants and building new gas-fired generation.

Mr Keefer also said nuclear energy offered a “truly just transition” to coal power plant workers – better wages and safer conditions.

While in Canberra, Mr Keefer had discussions with Coalition parliamentarians and a Labor MP. Asked who that person was, he said: “I’ve been asked not to share.”

Mr Keefer also met with Mr Bowen’s energy adviser.

Asked whether the decision to sit down with Mr Keefer was a sign the government was softening its stance on nuclear power, Mr Bowen’s spokesman said: “Nuclear is extremely slow to build, the most expensive form of new electricity generation and cannot firm renewable energy, which is the cheapest, quickest, and cleanest form of new electricity generation.”

Mr Bowen’s office said it did not tell anyone to hush-up its meeting with Mr Keefer.

Mr Irwin said the costs cited by the government in denouncing nuclear were three times the true price.