Like chasing Tasmanian tigers: What’s behind the Coalition’s nuclear push

Australia’s climate wars are cranking back up to full power, as Opposition Leader Peter Dutton mounts a challenge to Labor’s ambitious renewable energy agenda by declaring a Coalition government would replace coal-fired power stations with nuclear plants.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said following his 2022 election win that his government would massively boost renewable energy and end the climate wars that have gripped politics since former Coalition leader Tony Abbott helped bring down the Gillard government with a scare campaign over a carbon tax.

But Dutton has reignited the fight, offering voters a stark alternative to the government’s plan, which has wind and solar at the heart of a rapid transition to clean energy.

Credit: John Shakespeare

The opposition’s proposal would slow down the renewables rollout, creating time to replace ageing coal plants with nuclear technology.

But many questions remain.

Which communities would host a nuclear plant? How much would they cost? Where will the high-grade nuclear waste generated by the power plants be stored? And crucially, do Australians support an end to the Howard government’s 1999 ban on nuclear power?

Election risks

Climate policy was a hurdle for the Coalition at the 2022 election, where voters backed the Albanese government’s more ambitious policies over the Morrison government’s pledge to cut emissions by 26 per cent on 2005 levels by 2030 and reach net zero in 2050.

Dutton must now convince voters that nuclear plants can be built cheaply, safely and in time for Australia’s legislated climate target of cutting emissions by 43 per cent by the end of the decade.

That appears almost impossible. Australia’s former chief scientist, Alan Finkel, said in August it was highly unlikely that Australia could open a nuclear power plant before the early 2040s, pointing out the autocratic United Arab Emirates took more than 15 years to complete its first nuclear plant using established technology.

“There are a lot of very attractive things about nuclear energy for our clean energy transition. The problem is timing and cost,” Finkel said at the time. “If we did large-scale [nuclear power], I would imagine something approaching 20 years in Australia.”

With little prospect of nuclear power in the short term, Dutton must make the argument that Australia should halt its commitment to the Paris Agreement, miss its 2030 goal and keep coal plants running until nuclear plants are built in time to replace them.

Lobby group Solutions for Climate Australia said the Coalition’s nuclear plans were a “dangerous distraction that cannot reduce climate pollution this decade”.

“They have declared they plan to keep burning coal and gas until an unknown time in the future when nuclear reactors may come online. But international examples show huge delays and cost blowouts on large reactors,” Solutions for Climate director Barry Traill said.

“To give just one example – the latest British large-scale nuclear reactor is £17 billion ($33 billion) over budget and now six years beyond its planned finish date. If it’s ever completed, it will be the most expensive power station in the world.”

Grattan Institute climate and energy director Tony Wood said it was extremely unlikely that Australia would find political support to overturn its nuclear ban and source enough investment to build power plants.

“It’s like saying we’re going to build an enclosure at the Taronga Park Zoo for Tasmanian tigers … but there’s no such thing as a Tasmanian tiger any more.

“The idea of doing that in Australia just seems too incredible and until they turn it into a real policy, you can’t have much of a conversation about it.”

Clean energy debate

To date, the Coalition’s nuclear push has been hypothetical and limited to the emerging technology of small modular reactors that experts say may be decades away from deployment.

But the Coalition declared this week that traditional, large-scale plants are also firmly in the mix.

It slams what it has dubbed the government’s “reckless race to renewables”, claiming regional communities will disproportionately bear the brunt of new wind and solar farms needed to decarbonise the grid, as well as the extensive network of transmission lines to hook the clean energy into the city.

Dutton stresses that he wants nuclear power to bolster electricity supply to the grid and support renewables when the wind isn’t blowing and the sun isn’t shining.

He warns the government risks blackouts by forcing too much renewable energy into the grid without enough continuous baseload supply from either coal or nuclear plants to back them up, that taxpayers will be on the hook for a massive bill for expanding the network, and that “pristine” farmland and natural habitat will be damaged by the infrastructure.

Dutton has promised to release detailed nuclear plans before the May budget, which is when the Coalition will face the same questions it has been asking the government about renewables.

Experts warn Australia’s nuclear regulation – currently equipped only to oversee radioisotopes used in medicine – would need to be dramatically beefed up, sites selected for construction of a reactor and for waste disposal, and a fund set up for decommissioning.

A typical large nuclear reactor produces 25 to 30 tonnes of spent fuel a year and the high level of radioactive waste contained in it can remain toxic to humans for tens of thousands of years.

“It’s like saying we’re going to build an enclosure at the Taronga Park Zoo for Tasmanian tigers.”

Grattan Institute climate and energy director Tony Wood

Defence Minister Richard Marles has said the nuclear waste from nuclear-powered submarines that Australia will acquire under the AUKUS pact will be housed on Defence land.

This could potentially also store high-level nuclear waste from power plants, but the controversy surrounding the selection of the first site to permanently house Australia’s low-level radioactive waste shows the political risks involved. The Albanese government last year abandoned plans for a facility to take medical waste at Kimba, in rural South Australia, due to community opposition.

What’s powering nuclear policy?

The Coalition’s caution over nuclear power when it was in government has waned since the 2022 election, not just because the alternative to renewables provides an opportunity to attack the government, but because it is also the most likely way for Dutton to hold his party room together.

Former federal energy minister Angus Taylor said in 2019 that the Morrison government had no plans to lift the moratorium and “any changes to the moratorium would need bipartisan support and broad community acceptance”.

But Dutton is alive to the risks for a Coalition leader promoting renewables.

The Turnbull government’s National Energy Guarantee, which ultimately failed after opposition from the Coalition backbench due to its promotion of renewable energy, was a major factor in the downfall of the then-prime minister.

For now, the Coalition is united behind the nuclear push.

Senior moderate Simon Birmingham, the leader of the opposition in the Senate, is backing nuclear as a clean energy option to drive down emissions.

“This is a matter of some political courage by Peter Dutton and our team to look at something that historically has been put off the table in Australia,” Birmingham said earlier this week.

The Nationals, and the right wing of the Liberals, also back nuclear as a way to slow down the energy transition until retiring coal plants can be replaced with another form of baseload power.

“I’m proud to say I made it clear to Peter Dutton that when I became [Nationals] leader, we were going to run with this. But he’s had the courage to come with us,” David Littleproud said on Wednesday.

The Paris Agreement requires members to cut emissions in line with international efforts to keep global warming under 2 degrees – a goal the Albanese government has not yet met – and to increase the ambition of emissions reduction goals every five years.

However, Littleproud called for a moratorium on the renewables rollout last month, and argued that Australia should prioritise reaching net zero emissions over short-term targets.

“We don’t need to do all this by 2030. We’ve got to 2050, so why wouldn’t we pause and get this right,” he said.

Voter shifts

Nevertheless, Dutton has selected energy as a major policy battle for the election.

The federal government in 2022 set a legally binding climate target to reduce emissions by 43 per cent by the end of this decade, in large part by slashing reliance on fossil fuels and doubling the share of clean energy in the electricity grid to 82 per cent by 2030.

Albanese has rejected the Coalition’s nuclear policy escalation as implausible, many Labor MPs are opposed to nuclear power, and Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen has derided the Coalition’s policy as an unaffordable, ideological tactic to delay renewables.

However, the Coalition is banking on growing support for nuclear power, particularly among younger voters who don’t remember meltdowns at Three Mile Island in the United States in 1979, Chernobyl in the former USSR in 1986 and Fukushima, Japan in 2011.

Dutton said this week that concerns relating to older reactors did not apply to modern nuclear technology, and Australia should follow the lead of the 19 other countries in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development that used nuclear power.

“It’s like comparing a motor vehicle you’re driving off the showroom floor today in 2024 … to something in 1954,” he said.

“Why younger people are embracing nuclear technology is because they’re well-read, they’re passionate about reducing emissions, and they understand what’s happening in Europe, what’s happening in North America, what’s happening in Asia.”

The Resolve Political Monitor, conducted for this masthead by research company Resolve Strategic, surveyed 1603 Australians in February and found 36 per cent supported the use of nuclear power, 23 per cent opposed it and 27 per cent were open to the government investigating its use, with 15 per cent undecided.

Support for nuclear power has ticked up since October last year, when 33 per cent supported it and 24 per cent opposed it.

Resolve director Jim Reed said voters were increasingly open to the potential of nuclear power now the Coalition was advocating for existing technology in large-scale plants, but support for the policy would not be truly tested until Australia’s ban was lifted and a construction site selected.

“We’ve got a new generation of younger people, and they actually are quite positive towards nuclear power,” Reed said.

“It’s swung towards at least openness to nuclear power, but it’s weak support at the moment simply because people aren’t being asked to approve an actual site.”

Power policy costs

A CSIRO report found in December that by 2030, a grid with 90 per cent wind and solar power would generate electricity at $70 to $100 a megawatt hour. This figure includes more than $30 billion of new transmission lines and battery and pumped hydro projects to provide back-up power.

Coal generation is more expensive at $85 to $135 a megawatt hour in 2030.

CSIRO found that if small modular reactors were available today, based on the current projections, they would generate electricity at a cost of $210 to $350 a megawatt hour in 2030.

The report did not calculate a cost for large-scale nuclear, but addressed the argument that Australia should follow the lead of countries that use it such as France, the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, Spain and South Korea.

CSIRO said claims of cheap nuclear power in these countries were ignoring the fact that their plants were either funded by taxpayers as opposed to private investors or had been in operation for a considerable time – over which the capital costs had already been recovered.

“Such prices will not be available to countries that do not have existing nuclear generation such as Australia,” the report said.

Wind and solar cripple coal

Cheaper renewables are displacing coal power in the grid quicker than expected. The Australian Energy Market Operator in December forecast the country’s last coal plant would shut in 2038, five years earlier than it predicted just two years ago, with cheaper renewables undercutting fossil fuel profitability.

Dutton says the government is forcing too much renewable energy into the grid without sufficient back-up power.

“They’re trying to turn the old system off before the new system is ready, and if you do that, not only will you have that disruption to supply, you’ll have an increase in prices,” he said on Wednesday.

The market operator does not agree with Dutton. Its latest projections show wind and solar will boom, with the most likely outcome that the electricity grid will continue to meet its reliability targets and operate without blackouts, as it is powered by 95 per cent renewables backed with 5 per cent gas power.

Cut through the noise of federal politics with news, views and expert analysis from Jacqueline Maley. Subscribers can sign up to our weekly Inside Politics newsletter here.