By Matthew Knott and Rachel Clun
Top energy policy experts say they are highly dubious about Coalition claims the nation could have a nuclear power plant running within 10 years as the opposition prepares to ignite a major debate on energy policy by nominating possible sites for Australian nuclear reactors.
Opposition Leader Peter Dutton is expected to announce a plan before the May budget to convert retiring coal plants into nuclear energy sites, taking advantage of the fact that the existing plants come equipped with poles and wires to distribute power.
While attacking the Coalition over its nuclear energy plans, Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen on Sunday said he was open to changing the government’s proposed vehicle emissions standards to address concerns from the auto sector.
The Coalition has said it will be upfront with voters about where it believes nuclear power generation is viable in Australia. The Gippsland region in Victoria and the Hunter Valley in NSW are regarded as among the prime candidates for nuclear energy plants.
The debate over nuclear power is set to be a central policy contest at the next election. Labor MPs are eager to campaign against the Coalition’s push to end the nation’s long-standing moratorium against nuclear energy.
Coalition energy spokesman Ted O’Brien told Sky News on Sunday: “The best experts around the world, with whom we’ve been engaging, are saying Australia could have nuclear up and running within a 10-year period.”
O’Brien said that if Australia wanted to move to net zero while maintaining affordable and reliable electricity generation, nuclear power must be a part of the nation’s energy mix.
“You have over 30 economies right now with nuclear, and wanting more, another 50 in the world wanting to introduce nuclear for the very first time,” he said.
“And here in Australia, we are paying among the highest energy bills in the world, our grid is wobbling with threats of blackouts, we’re already experiencing some blackouts and we need to get to net zero.”
Opposition energy spokesman Ted O’Brien says experts say Australia could have nuclear power within a decade.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen
Describing the Coalition case for nuclear power as crumbling like “a Sao [biscuit] in a blender” when subjected to scrutiny, Bowen said there was no way Australia could have a nuclear power plant up and running in a decade.
“Tell him he’s dreaming,” Bowen told the ABC’s Insiders, quoting from the beloved film The Castle.
“[In] the United States, with a very developed regulatory regime, with a very developed nuclear industry, the nuclear leader of the world, the average build time of a nuclear power plant in the United States has been 19 years.”
Bowen said the costs also did not stack up, given Britain’s Hinkley Point C nuclear power station was completed late at a cost of $86 billion for just over three gigawatts of energy output. “Now, coal in Australia is about 22 gigawatts. Do the maths,” he said.
“This is an eyewatering, eyewatering amount of government taxpayer subsidy that would be required to make this stack up. Maybe Peter Dutton is prepared to do that. We’re not.”
Former chief scientist Alan Finkel, a respected energy policy expert, said he believed nuclear power was an excellent way to help nations reach net zero emissions over the long term, but he expressed scepticism about the opposition’s 10-year timeframe.
He cited the Barakah nuclear power plant in the United Arab Emirates, which was announced in 2009 and which had the first of four units enter commercial service in 2021.
“You would find it difficult to imagine Australia could move faster than the UAE,” Finkel said, noting that the national moratorium on nuclear power would need to be overturned and that any proposed nuclear power plants would be likely to face legal challenges and protests.
“Nuclear power is a great long-term solution but it would not address our needs over the next 15 to 20 years.”
Grattan Institute energy and climate change policy director Tony Wood said it would take at least 10 years, and probably closer to 20 years, for a nuclear power plant to become operational in Australia.
“You’ve got huge challenges ahead, and even to work out what it would actually cost,” he said.
“Starting from scratch in a country that’s got no facilities, no people who know how to work on a nuclear power station at all, and we know that Australia is in the world a relatively high-cost place to build stuff, so it’s just very difficult.
“I’ve got no fundamental objection to nuclear. I just think the economics in the timescale are horrendous.
“I don’t think the opposition has really laid out a proper plan. Can they do that? Yes, and they should.”
Noting that Australia is the only G20 nation to ban nuclear energy, Finkel and Wood said it would be logical for the government to overturn the moratorium on nuclear power.
Asked whether Australia needed the ban if it was so prohibitively expensive and took so long, Bowen said the government did not want to send mixed signals about its priorities.
“It would send the signal that the government’s somehow interested in setting subsidies,” Bowen said.
“There’s a myth that this is happening elsewhere in the world. It’s not. Australia has the best renewable resources in the world. It would be a massive economic own goal to give up utilising those resources and to go down this nuclear fantasy.”
Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen
Bowen and Transport Minister Catherine King have also begun consultation on new fuel efficiency standards, which would cap the average emissions of a car manufacturer’s overall fleet of vehicles in a bid to cut vehicle pollution by 60 per cent by 2030.
While saying he would not be “bullied” out of taking action from opponents of change, Bowen said he was willing to accept reasonable changes proposed by industry during the consultation process.
“We chose to consult because we want to make sure we’ve hoovered up all the good ideas about how to implement this, so where an idea has been made to us sensibly, we will consider it sensibly in good faith to help the implementation of what is a big and complicated policy space,” he said.
Bowen released new figures on Sunday showing that NSW and Victorian motorists in outer suburban and regional areas would save as much as $1800 a year in fuel costs under the government’s plan to cap motor vehicle emissions for new cars.
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