OPINION: Just when we thought Australia’s years of climate wars were over amid fresh seas of solar and wind farms, would-be prime minister Peter Dutton has gone nuclear.
The opposition leader’s late-June announcement that, if elected, he would build seven nuclear power plants to begin operating from 2035, has fully charged politics ahead of an election due within 14 months.
Dutton has gambled his electoral future on a plan that would renationalise the nation’s electricity system, employ nuclear energy for power generation – though that’s illegal currently – and halt the nation’s efforts to meet near-term emissions-reduction targets. Under the plan, Australia would abandon its commitment to meeting an emissions reduction target of 43% by 2030.
Not since the Ferrari-driving John Hewson launched his 650-page Fightback! economic manifesto in 1992 has an opposition leader flung down such a crazy-brave proposal. Hewson sank beneath his own mass of detail, memorably struggling to explain on live television if a birthday cake would cost less or more under his proposed consumption tax.
Dutton has not made that mistake; he’s provided no detail of how Australia will transition to nuclear power generation, other than naming seven sites where they will be built. They will supplement generation from solar and wind.
The costs? “Big” was his only answer. Recent experience suggests that’s an understatement. France has struggled to meet cost and time targets. Its 1650-megawatt Flamanville 3 power plant is due to be fully operational by year’s end. Construction started in 2007, with the aim of having it running by 2012 at a cost of €3.3 billion ($5.7b). It is now 12 years behind schedule and the cost has ballooned to more than €13b.
Similarly, in the US, the state of Georgia recently completed two nuclear power plants seven years late and billions over budget.
According to financial services firm Lazard, renewable energy sources continue to be much cheaper than nuclear energy. Its latest research shows onshore wind was the cheapest, costing US$25-$73 per megawatt hour. Large-scale solar was second-cheapest, at $29-$92 and nuclear was the most expensive at $145-$222.
Big investors have already got behind the Albanese government’s legislated target for 2030 to have 82% of the grid powered by renewables and made long-term investment decisions on that basis.
So why would you now choose to go down the nuclear path, upending Australia’s very large push into renewables? Why ignore natural advantages of abundant sun, wind and land?
Although Dutton argues, unconvincingly, that the costs of nuclear generation will be cheaper than remaking an energy system based on renewables, there’s an awful lot of political scheming behind his nuclear option.
In one move, Dutton has cast huge uncertainty over the Albanese government’s signature thrust into renewals.
On paper, his nuclear policy seems to defy financial, scientific and political realities. The Liberal-National coalition’s nuclear plan could cost A$116-$600b while supplying only 3.7% of Australia’s energy mix in 2050, according to the Smart Energy Council.
But people are listening. A Sydney Morning Herald poll after Dutton’s announcement found 62% of voters are in favour of nuclear, or at least open to further investigation.
Remember the Voice? When Anthony Albanese proposed minutes after his election victory in May 2022 that the nation hold a referendum on granting Aboriginal people a Voice to Parliament, he quickly had opinion polls, big business, sporting leaders and the cultural elites with him.
Dutton out-campaigned him and the referendum was lost. The nuclear option is likely a pup. But Dutton might sell it.
