Nuclear energy key to jobs, says union boss Geoff Dyke
The mining and energy union has proposed replacing ageing coal-fired power stations in Victoria’s Latrobe Valley with small modular nuclear reactors.
The mining and energy union has proposed replacing ageing coal-fired power stations in Victoria’s Latrobe Valley with small modular nuclear reactors, saying it would create 810 direct jobs and 1600 construction jobs over a decade.
The Victorian branch secretary of the CFMEU Mining and Energy Division, Geoff Dyke, said nuclear power would provide “secure, reliable, low-cost power”.
He said turning the Latrobe Valley into a nuclear region would help stem the 2600 job losses from the closure of the Hazelwood and Yallourn coal-fired generators, warning there would be fewer jobs if the region became a renewables hub.
“If we were to repurpose sites with small modular nuclear reactors, 2770 megawatts of small modular reactors would create 810 direct, well-paying, ongoing jobs,” Mr Dyke told a Victorian parliamentary inquiry into the closure of coal-fired power stations in the Latrobe Valley.
“About 1600 jobs in the Latrobe Valley would be required for construction over a decade. The construction jobs would add an estimated $240m per year to the region in income.”
Mr Dyke claimed nuclear power was “cost competitive with coal” and had a lower carbon footprint than renewables.
“It has the lowest greenhouse gas intensity of any energy source; it is even lower than renewables, because more materials go into building renewables, and more energy,” he said.
The CFMEU’s pro-nuclear stance is shared by the Australian Workers’ Union but federal Labor is opposed to lifting the prohibition on the energy source.
Outgoing Hunter MP Joel Fitzgibbon and Victorian senator Raff Ciccone are among a small number of Labor MPs who believe the ban on nuclear energy should be reconsidered, while a majority of Coalition MPs want it lifted.
Scott Morrison has ruled out lifting the prohibition on nuclear energy unless he receives bipartisan support from Labor.
Grattan Institute energy and climate change program director Tony Wood said there was no evidence small modular nuclear reactors produced energy that was cost competitive with coal generators.
“No one has yet built them at commercial scale,” Mr Wood told The Australian. “They are coming. There is a lot of speculation that they will have the advantage of being smaller, they will be less of a problem from a waste proliferation and a weapons perspective.
“The argument they could be more economic is you could make them in a factory and churn them out, where as every one of these big power stations is made bespoke every single time.”
In November hearings in the Victorian town of Traralgon, Mr Dyke also endorsed building new coal-fired power stations with carbon capture and storage to create a hydrogen hub in the valley.
“There is the potential to make 225,000 tonnes of hydrogen per year. It has the potential to decarbonise transport,” he said. “The cost of making hydrogen with coal is 40 per cent of the cost of making it with renewables, so it is 2½ times as cheap and there are near-zero greenhouse gas emissions with carbon capture and storage.
“With carbon capture and storage, if a pipeline is developed for that industry, we could attract new carbon-intensive industries to the Latrobe Valley, for example cement manufacture, and store their CO2 in (the) Bass Strait.”
The Hazelwood Power Station closed in 2017 while the Yallourn plant is due to close in 2028.
Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews has backed renewables projects to fill the void from the death of coal in the Latrobe Valley.
But Mr Dyke said the 2375 megawatts of renewables and 540MW hours of batteries that are slated for the region would “only create about 14 direct jobs” in the Latrobe Valley. “We estimate that the Energy Australia 340MW-hour battery would create two jobs on an ongoing basis, AGL’s 200MW-hour battery another two jobs, the 300MW Delburn wind farm five jobs, and the 75MW Toongabbie Frasers solar farm five jobs,” Mr Dyke said.
“The Star of the South 2000MW offshore wind farm claims to have 200 ongoing jobs, but they are all outside the Latrobe Valley,” he added.
Mr Dyke said that renewable power was not dispatchable and “energy storage is insufficient in the Latrobe Valley for what is being proposed”.
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