For a Big Idea that leads opposition to power, go nuclear

’If ever there were an opportunity to solve the big question of locating nuclear plants the closure of the coal-fired fleet was going to provide it.’

Any opposition leader is under pressure to espouse fresh ideas and launch out in new directions. In this spirit Peter Dutton says the Coalition is open to nuclear power. He signalled an internal party review but took the opportunity to rehearse the somewhat dusty arguments about nuclear being cheap and reliable.

The Howard government in fact funded a comprehensive review headed by Ziggy Switkowski that reported in 2006. South Australia had a debate, too, about hosting a nuclear waste repository.

Both debates expired, evoking Paul Keating’s advice about embracing causes of limited merit: “Never hug a mug. He will die in your arms.”

The Dutton proposition is also vulnerable because it was never picked up by Coalition prime ministers Tony Abbott, Malcolm Turnbull and Scott Morrison, who declined to give even the modest South Australian proposal an encouraging nod. But Dutton in the next three months has the chance to prove this time Australian conservatives are serious. He can pitch it direct to 4.5 million voters in the November 26 Victorian elections. He can show this is more than a lazy “thought experiment” and invest it with hard-edge credibility.

Dutton and Matthew Guy can stand on the site of the demolished Hazelwood coal-fired power plant in the Latrobe Valley and announce something very specific – so concrete and precise that no commentator could say modern Liberals lack a Big Idea. It’s elegant in its simplicity and gives Victorians a clear choice.

Dutton and his Victorian colleague can announce that a Liberal government will repeal Victoria’s Nuclear Activities (Prohibitions) Act 1983 and federal Liberals will repeal the 1999 act that bans approval for nuclear power and enrichment. A Victorian Coalition government will seek expressions of interest in construction of a nuclear power plant on the Hazelwood site.

It’s a big parcel of land already zoned for heavy industry – something that would carve years off the development approval process. It’s not only plugged into the transmission network; in fact the whole Victorian grid was built to accommodate power production on the site, which once generated 25 per cent of the state’s energy. The vast mine, which closed in 2016, is a huge void that might even lend itself as a waste repository, these visionary opposition leaders could declare.

“Clean, dispatchable power facilitated by special legislation with the aim of setting a new record in approval times for nuclear plants,” they can say. The message would be that state and federal Liberals stand for something, offering “a choice not an echo”, in the words of fabled US Republican Barry Goldwater.

Australia’s coal-fired power plants are closing. Behemoths thrown up in the 1980s are being dismantled. Origin Energy’s closure of Australia’s largest coal-fired plant, Eraring at Lake Macquarie, will take place in 2025 instead of 2032. The old warriors are being thrashed by the cheeky challengers of solar and wind plus battery storage.

As NSW planning minister between 1984 and 1988 I began to understand how fiendishly difficult it would be to locate a nuclear power plant. Australia had never been able to locate a high-temperature waste incinerator. And not even that modest proposal for a nuclear waste repository in the desert of South Australia – free from earthquakes or floods – could win support from either side of SA politics or, even after the full airing of the idea by a royal commission, a respectable share of public opinion.

But what about sites that for 40 years had supplied big slabs of NSW and Victorian power? If ever there were an opportunity to solve the big question of locating nuclear plants the closure of the coal-fired fleet was going to provide it.

Calling for expressions of interest would clarify commercial prospects. Right now there is no consortium of superannuation funds, private equity, merchant bank and construction company volunteering to make the investment. Overseas partners? South Korea under an anti-nuclear president folded up its one nuclear power company even after a successful construction of a plant in the United Arab Emirates.

There would be no American bidder for Hazelwood. Westinghouse, historically the largest builder of nuclear plants in the world, was sent bankrupt by plants in Georgia and South Carolina. The delays and cost overruns that brought Westinghouse to its knees are customary for a sector in which 175 out of 180 projects exceeded their initial budgets by an average of 117 per cent and took 64 per cent more time than projected. Currently in the US there is one plant under construction and six being decommissioned. Britain and Finland offer sorry examples.

President Emmanuel Macron announced “a renaissance” for the French nuclear industry. Yet the same promise of new prototype reactors had been made in 2006 by president Jacques Chirac: new prototypes to be in service by 2020. But no fourth-generation reactor exists today.

Small modular reactors are proving just as elusive. Enthusiasts had predicted as far back as 2005 that by today they would be commonplace – across Indonesia, for example. Reports suggest that even on the drawing boards they are threatening not to be small at all and to remain always the enticing prospect for a decade off.

The Liddell power station in the Hunter looms for closure in April next year. That is one month after the NSW election. There is another opportunity for Dutton to stand shoulder to shoulder with another newly minted state opposition leader and make another splash with a policy specific: seek expressions of interest for the latest model nuclear reactor on a site zoned for power generation.

Just a warning. The new model is always just over the horizon and renewables backed by storage are thrashing nuclear on price.

In opposition you need an idea or two, but remember Keating’s advice: “Never hug a mug.”

Bob Carr is the longest-serving premier of NSW and former foreign minister of Australia.