Chris Bowen: Election a ‘referendum on nuclear power’

Energy Minister Chris Bowen has undermined claims by Peter Dutton that all G20 nations except Australia have backed small modular reactor technology.

Chris Bowen and Anthony Albanese.

Chris Bowen has said the next election will be a “referendum on nuclear power” and undermined claims by Peter Dutton that all G20 nations except Australia have backed small modular reactor technology.

With the Coalition under pressure to release its energy and climate change election policy, including modelling on the viability of nuclear power, Mr Bowen said “truth is the first casualty in a culture war”.

Writing in The Australian, the Climate Change and Energy Minister said Germany and Italy had shut down nuclear plants while Saudi Arabia and Indonesia do not use nuclear power.

Seizing on CSIRO’s GenCost report released last month, Mr Bowen attacked the Coalition for promoting nuclear facts “that bear little relationship to reality”.

“The most common of the falsities about nuclear power, uttered daily by Peter Dutton … is that Australia is the only G20 country without nuclear power, or proposing nuclear power,” he wrote. “What about Germany? Its last nuclear power plant was turned off in April 2023. Since then, Germany has experienced record renewables output, energy price falls and a material drop in emissions.”

Mr Bowen – criticised by the Coalition over his renewables-only approach to modernising the grid – invoked German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who last year said “the issue of nuclear energy in Germany is a dead horse” because building a new nuclear plant would take 15 years and cost between $16bn and $22bn.

“That doesn’t sound like considering nuclear power to me,” he wrote. “Italy is in the G20. Nuclear power was shut down in Italy after a 1987 referendum. Saudi Arabia and Indonesia are in the G20. Neither has nuclear power. Suggestions of nuclear power in these two countries are distant whispers of possibilities as opposed to concrete plans.”

Accusing advocates of refusing to acknowledge the “extraordinarily expensive” costs of nuclear power, Mr Bowen said the Coalition must be “upfront … about who will pay for it”.

Ahead of Mr Dutton releasing his energy policy later this month, Mr Bowen said the Coalition was “entitled to their opinion but it should never be at the expense of facts”.

He said while opposition energy spokesman Ted O’Brien accepted the high capital costs identified in the GenCost report, his rival “disputed that this flows to the cost of energy”.

“How exactly are those investors meant to recoup capital costs if not through high energy prices?” Mr Bowen wrote. “If Mr O’Brien thinks that extremely expensive power plants can produce cheap power, then he really needs to explain how this economic metamorphosis will occur.

“In another criticism of the CSIRO, Mr O’Brien inadvertently revealed more than he intended. As part of their research, the CSIRO predicts the amount of time various power generators will be outputting electricity. For nuclear, this could be as little as 53 per cent of the time.

“Nuclear reactors could technically run 24/7 – but not commercially. They would struggle to recoup the costs of doing so, because existing electricity generation sources have lower marginal costs. It simply would not be commercial to run all day, every day.”