The Dutton Coalition is subjecting Australians to industrial-scale deceit regarding nuclear power and renewable energy sources. Here are some articles, videos and links to help you fact-check the Coalition’s lies.
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See the myth-busting info at dont-nuke-the-climate.org.au/myth-busting/
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Two good videos fact-checking the Coalition’s nuclear lies.
Dutton’s Nuclear Announcement: An exercise in Fact Checking Part 1
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6xMly0YpV_w
Nuclear Dutton: A fact checkers worst nightmare? Part 2
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zXNqVmYCKKY
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Four Reasons Why Nuclear Power is a Dumb Idea for Australia
Engineering with Rosie, 8 May 2024
Rosemary Barnes has a PhD in mechanical engineering and 18 years of experience working as a professional engineer developing new energy technologies.
11-minute video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H_47LWFAG6g
Transcript
In the vibrant, renewable-rich landscape of Australia, the symphony of wind and solar has long played the tune of progress, an unexpected blare cuts through the harmony. Like a foghorn in the calm of dawn, the sudden advocacy for nuclear power from a party that previously silenced such discussions is turning heads and raising eyebrows. It’s an about-turn that could make solar panels tilt in curiosity.
I’m Rosie Barnes, and with 20 years in the trenches of clean energy development, I’ve seen firsthand the evolution of Australia’s energy landscape. Does Australia need nuclear power?
Petter Dutton’s push for nuclear
The notion of nuclear energy was, until recently, firmly off the table for Australia. But now it’s found its way back into conversation championed by the Conservative opposition party under the leadership of Peter Dutton. There’s a push to integrate nuclear power as a backbone for Australia’s clean energy future. His vision includes swift construction timelines for large reactors and small modular reactors once that technology matures. And they are specifically targeting the sites of our retiring coal plants to take advantage of existing infrastructure. The first obstacle that these nuclear plans face is that nuclear power is currently banned in Australia.
Back in 1998, the Conservative Howard government wanted to secure a nuclear research reactor at Lucas Heights near Sydney. To do so, they needed support from the Greens Party, who made a deal to support the research reactor if a nationwide ban on nuclear power plants was introduced at the same time. So, it was banned and remains so today. But what if this ban were lifted? Should we then embrace nuclear for our energy future?
Nah, it’s a dumb idea for Australia. And I’m not just throwing around words here. There are some solid reasons behind this bold claim, four to be precise.
- Nuclear is too slow
Let’s start with the first one. The sluggish pace of bringing nuclear power online. In an era where rapid change is the norm, this slow stride just doesn’t cut it. Ready on to find out why.
Recently completed nuclear power plants have taken about nine years on average to construct. If we step into our time machine to 2033 Australia, 90% of our electricity will come from renewables by then. Which doesn’t leave a lot of space for nuclear. All of our brown coal power will be closed, and a decade later there’ll be no coal power at all. And that nine years I mentioned is only for construction. It takes years of planning before any contracts are signed.
Some countries are building nuclear reactors faster than that nine-year average. Some of China’s recent plant constructions have taken more like five years. But others, like the US and the UK, are taking much longer. The Vogtle plant in Georgia, USA, began construction in 2013, and it’s still not complete. And Hinkley Point C in the UK announced in 2007 that the reactors would power British homes by Christmas 2017. However, construction didn’t even start until 2018, and the latest projections push completion to beyond 2030, with more slippage expected by most people.
Those aren’t isolated examples. Nuclear projects are very prone to large overruns and construction time. Worse than any other kind of energy project. And the only other category of large projects that performs worse than nuclear power plants is Olympic Games and nuclear storage projects, according to Bent Flyvbjerg, who has spent his career studying cost and scheduling overruns in large projects. Out of the 191 nuclear power projects he studied, 93% of them took longer than expected to complete. And the mean schedule overrun was 65%. So if the plan for Australia is ten years construction (and remember, that needs to come after we change the law to allow it and develop a regulatory environment for nuclear power funding, etc.), then we could expect that on average, instead of ten years, it’ll actually take 16.5 years. And this would be our very first reactor built presumably by foreign experts in a new market and/or by inexperienced locals. I think it would be prudent to assume we’re not going to beat that average. All that is to say that by the time we managed to get a nuclear reactor operating in Australia, the energy transition would have mostly happened. That alone is reason enough to rule out nuclear power for Australia.
I’m going to go through three more reasons.
- Nuclear does not play nicely with solar & wind
The next one is that it doesn’t play nicely with wind and solar power. Australia has a lot of wind and solar power and more and more every day. Fifteen years ago, less than 1% of our electricity came from wind and solar power. And today it’s over 30%, growing by about three or four percentage points every year.
Of course, the thing about wind and solar is that they are variable, nuclear power plants on the other hand, like to be turned on and stay operating at a nice constant output. If you don’t think very closely about it, perhaps you might think that sounds nice and complementary. Actually, it’s not. Electricity demand varies from hour to hour and season to season. Either nuclear or renewables need a dispatchable energy source like hydro, batteries or gas peakers to match generation with demand minute by minute. Combining nuclear with variable renewables, turns out to not actually reduce that amount of dispatchable power that’s needed by much, if anything. Now, there are lots of countries that combine nuclear with renewables, but none with both a lot of nuclear and a lot of variable renewables.
France gets most of its electricity from nuclear and most of the rest from renewables, but that’s nearly all hydro, which can be turned on and off when you want. Same with Switzerland, Armenia, and Slovenia. The only countries with both a lot of nuclear and a lot of variable renewables are Sweden, with 30% nuclear at 20% wind, and Finland with 35% nuclear and 16% wind. But crucially, both of these also have a lot of hydro, 40% and 20% respectively. Let’s look a bit closer at what exactly this means for a country like Australia with currently 32% of our electricity from wind and solar power.
Today, the amount of other generation needed varies by a factor of two. From midday to evening, on average, modern nuclear reactors can vary that output a bit, but to cycle from 50% to 100% on a daily basis is really pushing it. Today, that’s only done across fleets of nuclear by turning some off entirely and ramping the rest by a smaller amount, which means you need a large number of reactors like France has. And using their reactors intermittently like that with a lower capacity factor would make nuclear power more expensive.
This chart shows both high and low-cost estimates for nuclear power, and you can say that in either case, the difference between operating at 60% capacity factor instead of 90% capacity factor is going to add something like 30% to the cost of energy. Ramping up and down is also hard on the equipment, which leads to higher maintenance costs. There is at least one example of a reactor in Germany that broke down as a result of ramping and in that case it was only ramping up and down by about a third.
- Nuclear is too expensive
Which leads me to the cost of nuclear power. It is expensive. There is admittedly a lot of disagreement amongst published values for the cost of nuclear, but the ones that I’ve seen are at least double and probably more than triple the cost of wind and solar in Australia. And that’s true even when you account for the extra integration costs that variable renewables need. That means extra transmission and more storage.
Furthermore, as well as being prone to schedule overruns, nuclear projects are even more prone to cost overruns. With the average nuclear project eventually costing over double its original estimate. In contrast, wind and solar projects have about 0 to 10% average cost overruns. Those are costs for new nuclear, but after it’s paid for itself, it is very cheap, and that’s great for countries that already have nuclear who might rather extend the lifetimes of their reactors than build new alternative sources of low carbon generation when those reactors were supposed to retire. But that’s not us in Australia. And that leads me to the last reason that nuclear is a dumb idea for Australia.
- Nuclear solves problems that Australia doesn’t have
It solves problems we don’t have. There are a bunch of great things that nuclear can do, that wind and solar can’t. It can provide constant baseload power no matter the weather and no matter the season. Nuclear reactors also take up less space than renewables, and existing nuclear is cheap to run. Let’s tackle those one by one in the Australian context.
First, nuclear provides firm baseload power. Well, there’s no such thing as baseload in Australia anymore. At times, rooftop solar on its own covers 100% of the demand in the highest renewable energy grid, South Australia. That means there is no space for anything else at that time. This is going to happen more and more across larger and larger parts of the country as solar installations continue over the coming decades, but that’s usually only in spring and summer and probably a bit in autumn, too. What about winter? One of the benefits of nuclear is that it is weather and season independent, and that is great for countries whose energy demand peaks in winter when the solar power may be close to zero. But that’s not Australia for most of Australia. Energy demand is in summer and there is still good solar output in the winter.
You can see on this chart that the balance between renewables and fossil fuels in our current grid doesn’t change that much from month to month. But renewables are variable, intermittent, unreliable, right? What about dunkelflaute? That’s periods when there’s no wind and no sun for days or weeks at a time. Potentially a huge problem in some places, but again, not in Australia. Forty-two years of weather data history show that widespread dunkelflaute across the whole Australian grid last hours and occasionally a day, never weeks. These charts show renewable resources for every one of the last 42 years. There are some winter days where renewables dip a little under 50% of the average output. There are no weeks below 50%, and the worst-ever winter month was around 70% of the whole year average. There will be occasions every few decades where there will be a day or maybe two of very low wind and solar, and on occasion, a few weeks in a row of something like 50% average output. And for those, we will need to use something more expensive to cover those shortfalls after sitting around mostly idle for ten or 20 years at a stretch. But you can’t do that with a nuclear reactor. You can’t just turn on a nuclear reactor that’s been sitting idle for ten years. It’s going to be gas or hydrogen or biodiesel or something like that.
The next advantage of nuclear. It doesn’t take up much space. That is so important for countries like Japan, Korea, that have a lot of people packed in a small area. Well, guess what we are not short of in Australia? Space. Australia is so big and so sunny that we would only need 0.1% of our land covered in solar panels to generate all our energy from solar. For wind, it’s about double that. And that’s just sticking to onshore wind. If we consider offshore wind too, it’s going to be even less. And our wind farms coexist with grazing. Our solar panels mostly go on roofs and could co-exist with agriculture if we so wished. So even these tiny fractions are misleadingly large. In Australia, it does not matter that nuclear power might take up less space.
Should nuclear power be banned in Australia?
I can understand why countries like Korea, Sweden, or Canada feel like they would benefit from nuclear power. They have long, hard winters that solar power can’t help much with, and some of them have high population density. They can use nuclear to avoid seasonal storage and avoid needing energy imports. But even in winter Australia, solar is pretty good. And our dunkelflaute are infrequent and short. We have more than enough land to capture what we need. Do I think nuclear power should be banned in Australia? No. I think it should be allowed a level playing field with other energy technologies to allow a fair fight. Like most people, I want the cheapest clean electricity possible and for any one of the reasons I’ve mentioned, nuclear would lose that fair fight. Add them all up and there is absolutely zero chance we’ll ever have nuclear power in Australia.
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The Coalition says its nuclear plants will run for 100 years. What does the international experience tell us?
Peter Hannam, 24 June 2024, The Guardian, https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/article/2024/jun/24/coalition-nuclear-policy-peter-dutton-power-plants-100-years-run-time
The Coalition says its nuclear plants will run for 100 years. What does the international experience tell us?
The average age of an active nuclear reactor worldwide is about 32 years – and a live plant reaching even 60 has ‘never happened’, an expert says
The federal Coalition’s pledge to build nuclear reactors on seven sites in five states if elected has continued to raise questions this week.
Ted O’Brien, the shadow energy minister, says the plants can operate for between 80 and 100 years, providing “cheaper, cleaner and consistent 24/7 electricity” compared with renewables.
That claim comes despite the CSIRO’s Gencost report estimating each 1-gigawatt nuclear plant could take 15-20 years to build and cost $8.4bn. The first may be double that given the high start-up costs.
But what does the state of the nuclear energy internationally tell us about the Coalition’s proposal?
What is the state of the global nuclear industry?
The world opened five nuclear reactors last year and shut the same number, trimming 1GW of capacity in the process, says Mycle Schneider, an independent analyst who coordinates the annual world nuclear industry status report.
During the past two decades, it’s a similar story of 102 reactors opened and 104 shutting. As with most energy sources, China has been the biggest mover, adding 49 during that time and closing none. Despite that burst, nuclear provides only about 5% of China’s electricity.
Last year, China added 1GW of nuclear energy but more than 200GW of solar alone. Solar passed nuclear for total power production in 2022 while wind overtook it a decade ago.
“In industrial terms, nuclear power is irrelevant in the overall global market for electricity generating technology,” he says.
As for small modular reactors, or SMRs, nobody has built one commercially. Not even billionaire Bill Gates, whose company has been trying for 18 years.
The CSIRO report examined the “contentious issue” of SMRs, and noted that one of the main US projects, Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems, was cancelled last November. Even then, its estimated costs in 2020 of $18,200/kiloWatt, or more than double that of large-scale plants at $8,655/kW (in 2023 dollars).
“In late 2022 UAMPS updated their capital cost to $28,580/kW citing the global inflationary pressures that have increased the cost of all electricity generation technologies,” CSIRO said. “The UAMPS estimate implies nuclear SMR has been hit by a 57% cost increase which is much larger than the average 20% observed in other technologies.”
So at least some nations are still building large reactors?
Of the 35 construction starts since 2019, 22 were in China and the rest were Russian-built in various nations. Russia sweetens its deals by agreeing to handle the waste from the plants it builds.
“The US has blacklisted CGN and CNNC, which are the two major [Chinese] state-owned nuclear companies [in China] that could respond to an international call for tender,” Schneider says. “So could you imagine that Australia would hire a Chinese company under those conditions to build nuclear reactors?”
Aren’t allies like France an option?
France’s EDF was a poster child for the industry, not least because nuclear provides almost two-thirds of the country’s electricity. However, the firm has €54.5bn ($88bn) debt and hasn’t finished a plant since 2007.
Construction of its Hinkley Point C plant in the UK – two giant, 1.63GW units – began in 2018, aiming for first power from 2025. Rounds of delays now mean it might not fire up until 2031 and the costs may approach $90bn when it is complete.
South Korea’s Kepco has been active too, building the 5.6GW Barakah plant in the United Arab Emirates. As Schneider’s report notes, the UAE “did not agree” to the disclosure of cost, delays or impairment losses.
That Kepco debt totals an astonishing $US154bn ($231bn) is perhaps “a slight indication that they cannot have made tonnes of money in the UAE”, Schneider says.
The 4.5GW Vogtle plant reached full capacity in April, making it the US’s largest nuclear power station. Its first two units exceeded $US35bn, with the state of Georgia’s Public Service Commission saying cost increases and delays have “completely eliminated any benefit on a lifecycle costs basis”.
Can these plants really run 80-100 years?
Of the active 416 nuclear reactors, the mean age is about 32 years. Among the 29 reactors that have shut over the past five years, the average age was less than 43 years, Schneider says.
There are 16 reactors that have been operating for 51 years or more. “There is zero experience of a 60-year-old operating reactor, zero. It never happened. Leave alone 80 years or beyond,” he says. (The world’s oldest, Switzerland’s Beznau, has clocked up 55 years with periods of outages.)
CSIRO’s report looked at a 30- or 40-year life for a large nuclear plant as there was “little evidence presented that private financing would be comfortable” with risk for any longer.
As plants age, maintenance costs should increase, as they have in France. That’s not the case in the US, though, with declining investment in the past decade even as the average reactor age has jumped from 32 to 42 years.
“You have two options as to the outcome: either you hit an investment wall, so you have to have massive investments all over the place at the same time, or you get a very serious safety or security problem somewhere,” Schneider says.
US plants have been running an “incredible” 90% of the time over the past decade. Compare that with France’s load factor in 2022 of just 52%, he says.
“The best offshore wind farms in Scotland have a five-year average load factor of 54%.”
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Cheaper electricity, less emissions and ready by 2035 are some of the Coalition’s core promises on nuclear energy, but are they backed by evidence?
Adam Morton, 20 June 2024, The Guardian, https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/article/2024/jun/20/does-the-coalitions-case-for-nuclear-power-stack-up-we-factcheck-seven-key-claims
The Coalition has made a range of claims about what nuclear energy could do for Australia, and why it is better than building solar and wind.
What is the reality? We factcheck the key claims.
Would nuclear power provide cheaper electricity?
No evidence – such as economic modelling – has been produced to back up opposition leader Peter Dutton’s main argument about nuclear energy: that it would make Australians’ electricity bills cheaper than under a renewable energy-run grid and bring down other costs. As things stand, it is a baseless claim.
The CSIRO and the Australian Energy Market Operator (Aemo) have assessed the cost of different electricity sources and found that solar and wind backed by storage energy, new transmission lines and other “firming” – what the country is building now, in other words – were the cheapest option.
They found nuclear generation would be significantly more expensive – the most expensive technology available – for consumers. They suggested Australia’s first large-scale nuclear power plant (1GW capacity) could cost about $17bn, not counting finance costs. If a nuclear industry was established, that might eventually drop to $8.6bn.
Small modular nuclear reactors (SMRs), a developing technology that the Coalition has suggested could be used in South Australia and Western Australia, are likely to be far more expensive again. They do not exist anywhere on a commercial basis. The leading proposal for an SMR in the US was last year cancelled due to rising cost.
Confronted with this, the Coalition argues the nuclear experience in Ontario, Canada, demonstrates that nuclear energy is cheaper than Australian renewable energy.
This is not a relevant comparison. Like France, Ontario runs on nuclear plants built decades ago. Construction costs in the 1980s tell us nothing about the costs in the 2030s and 2040s.
Even then, the claim electricity is cheaper in Ontario is misleading. Wholesale electricity prices – the only part of the bill that is affected by the cost of generation – in Ontario are actually higher than the cost of new firmed renewable energy in Victoria and Queensland.
A more relevant comparison may be the ongoing construction of the large Hinkley C generator in the UK. It was initially expected to open in 2017 and cost about A$34bn. That has now been pushed out to 2031, and up to A$89bn.
Will using more gas until nuclear comes online cut costs?
There is no evidence it will.
Gas is the most expensive form of electricity generation currently used in the National Electricity Market, connecting the five eastern states and the ACT.
The price of gas is set on the international market – what fossil fuel companies can get by selling the gas in Asia. Nearly all Australian gas is exported. Opening a couple of new gas fields is not likely to materially change this.
Currently, gas is used in “peaking” plants that are turned on only when needed, at times of high demand. This is expected to continue for at least the next couple of decades. Gas-fired power provided less than 5% of total generation last year.
The Coalition has not explained how it would get more gas into the electricity grid. Would taxpayers pay to build several new gas power plants? It has also not explained how the resulting power could be as cheap as renewable energy.
Will the Coalition’s plan be ‘cleaner’, as it claims?
No. Using more gas, less renewable energy and extending the life of coal-fired power plants will increase Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions.
The Coalition admits this. It wants to abandon the country’s 2030 emissions target and allow significantly more heat-trapping pollution while arguing it is still committed to net zero by 2050.
Could Australia have nuclear energy by 2035?
Again, no evidence has been released to explain how this would be possible. The experience in developed democracies internationally is that it would take much longer.
The Coalition says if it decided to build SMRs there could be “two establishment projects” in place by 2035. If it opts for large-scale plants it says first power would be in 2037.
CSIRO found an initial nuclear power plant of any size would not be possible until after 2040. Other analysts, including the pro-nuclear Blueprint Institute, agree.
That’s just the technology challenge. The Coalition would also have to get legislation through both houses of federal parliament to overturn a nuclear energy ban. Labor and most of the crossbench oppose lifting the ban, and the Coalition is 20 seats short of a majority in the lower house and hasn’t had a majority in the Senate since 2007.
It would also need to persuade three states that ban nuclear energy – and remain strongly committed to their current position – to change their laws.
Should Australia go nuclear? Why Peter Dutton’s plan could be an atomic failure – video
Have renewables caused a big increase in power bills?
No. It has a much smaller effect than factors related to fossil fuels.
Tony Wood, the energy and climate change program director for the Grattan Institute, says there was a 20% jump in wholesale electricity costs last year for four reasons: the war in Ukraine pushing up the price of gas; gas shortages; outages at ageing coal power plants reducing competition; and extreme weather causing flooding at coalmines. Prices have since started to come back down.
The renewable energy in the system has a smaller effect on price as the cost of incentive schemes is passed on, but it also helps reduce costs by increasing capacity and competition in the power grid.
The coal-fired power plants in the grid are ageing, increasingly have units offline and need to be replaced. Evidence from government agencies and most independent experts is that renewable energy plus firming is the best path to an affordable, reliable, clean grid.
Is it true that “Labor can’t keep the lights on today”?
No. The lights are still on.
Coalition MPs making this claim were referring to the findings of Aemo’s “electricity statement of opportunities” report, which was portrayed as warning blackouts were imminent.
This misrepresents what the statement does. It is a message to the industry about how much more generation will be needed over time. This year’s statement found there could be reliability gaps in New South Wales, Queensland, South Australia and Victoria unless there was faster deployment of renewable energy and batteries.
This is consistent with other warnings that investment has slowed and needs to accelerate. But Aemo did not say blackouts were inevitable, or that renewable energy would cause them.
Is it true that you can’t run an industrial economy on renewables?
No – again, based on evidence from experts and industry.
The energy and economic transformation is challenging whatever technology is used. But the electrons are the same, regardless of the source.
Industry leaders have repeatedly welcomed renewable energy investment. Rio Tinto this year signed what it called Australia’s largest renewable energy power purchase agreement to run its operations in Gladstone.
BlueScope Steel applauded the creation of an offshore windfarm zone in the Illawarra, saying it had the “potential to supply significant quantities of renewable energy to help underpin BlueScope’s decarbonisation of iron and steelmaking in Australia”.
Aemo has repeatedly found an optimal future power grid, including one that would power new green industries, would run on more than 90% renewable energy.
Other countries, including those with some nuclear power, have similar goals. Both the US and Germany are targeting 80% renewable energy by 2030.
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The Coalition says the rest of the G20 is powering ahead with nuclear – it’s just not true
Adam Morton, The Guardian, 25 June 2024, https://www.theguardian.com/environment/commentisfree/article/2024/jun/25/the-coalition-talks-so-much-about-its-nuclear-energy-plan-but-provides-so-little-evidence
So much has been said by the Coalition about what nuclear energy could do for Australia, with so little evidence to back it up, that it can be hard to keep up with the claims.
The key assertion by Peter Dutton and Ted O’Brien is that nuclear would lead to a “cheaper, cleaner and consistent” electricity supply. None of this has been supported.
Not cheaper: the available evidence suggests both nuclear and gas-fired electricity – which Dutton says we would need a lot more of – would be more expensive for Australian consumers than the currently proposed mix of renewable energy, batteries, hydro, new transmission lines and limited amounts of gas.
Not cleaner: stringing out the life of old coal plants and adding gas would increase heat-trapping greenhouse gas emissions.
Not more consistent: the Coalition is proposing a small post-2040 nuclear industry that, even in a best-case-scenario, is likely to provide only a fraction of Australia’s electricity. It wants less solar and wind, but has not explained how this would help keep the lights on as coal plants shut.
There has been less attention on the Coalition’s repeated suggestion that Australia is the only one of the world’s top 20 economies that either doesn’t have or hasn’t signed up to nuclear energy.
It’s a point that has been raised to imply a bigger point: that nuclear energy is flourishing elsewhere and Australia is out on a limb by not having it.
Let’s test that.
Germany, the world’s third biggest economy, shut its remaining nuclear plants in April last year, following through on a commitment after the 2011 Fukushima disaster in Japan to accelerate its shift away from atomic power. It was the end of a nuclear power industry that had operated since the 1960s.
Germany is also using less coal power – it is at its lowest level in decades – and instead backing renewable energy. It has an 80% renewables target for 2030.
Italy, Europe’s third biggest economy, also had a nuclear industry from the 1960s, but shut its plants in 1990 after a referendum. Its current right-wing government has suggested it would like to re-open the industry. It hasn’t yet.
Germany and Italy are connected to the European power grid, which gets about 20% of its electricity from nuclear energy, mostly from France’s decades-old plants. But to suggest either is a “nuclear country” is to stretch the truth to breaking point.
Peter Dutton outlines timeline of Coalition’s plan for nuclear power rollout – video
Indonesia has toyed with the idea of nuclear energy since opening an experimental reactor in 1965, but nothing has been developed. A US company has signed an MoU to study “developing a thorium molten salt reactor for either power generation or marine vehicle propulsion”, and Indonesian officials say they expect nuclear to play a small role in a future grid dominated by renewable energy. But no plants are under construction and the regulatory work to establish an industry has not been done.
Saudi Arabia also has no nuclear plants. It has been considering developing an industry for about 15 years and invited bids to build two large nuclear plants to help replace fossil fuels. But it is mostly backing renewables and has set a goal of 50% of electricity coming from solar by 2030.
Counting Australia, that means five of the G20 has no nuclear industry and attempts to change that are, at best, at an early stage.
That’s not necessarily a good thing. The evidence suggests nuclear energy will be needed for the world to eradicate fossil fuels, especially in places that do not have Australia’s extraordinary access to renewable energy resources. Every country will have to find its own way.
But it is evidence that the Coalition’s claim that nuclear energy is “used by 19 of the 20 biggest economies”, as Dutton put it last week, is misleading.
The data from an annual statistical review by the Energy Institute tells us there is no global wave of nuclear energy investment or construction. Global generation peaked in 2006, dipped after the catastrophe in Japan and has more or less flatlined since.
Electricity generated from solar and wind, on the other hand, has soared from a near zero base at the turn of the millennium to now be more than 50% greater than the output from nuclear.
Despite some perceptions, the global growth in electricity from renewables since 2010 has also been greater than the growth in fossil fuel generation. The problem for people and the planet is that electricity from coal and gas is still growing at all.
Nuclear might seem ideal on paper to replace them, but the reality is much more difficult, especially in developed democracies.
Renewable energy is already providing nearly 40% of electricity in the Australian national grid
Simon Holmes à Court, a player in these debates as an energy analyst and convenor of the Climate 200 fundraising body, says only five large-scale nuclear projects have reached construction stage in North America and western Europe this century.
Four have been hit by substantial delays and cost overruns. In each case, construction has taken more than twice as long as initially forecast. The price tags have ended up being somewhere between double and six times initial estimates.
One, Finland’s Olkiluoto 3, came online last year, 21 years after it was announced and 13 years after it was expected to be operational. The other three – Flamanville in France, Vogtle in the US, and Hinkley Point C in the UK – are expected to take between 18 and 24 years from announcement to generation.
A fifth large project at the Virgil C Summer plant in South Carolina was cancelled in 2017 after more than A$13bn had been spent when it became too expensive to justify.
Small modular nuclear reactors, which the Coalition also included in its announcement, do not exist in any commercial sense.
The Coalition’s argument in response to this evidence is that Australia needs these technologies, urgently. And that they would be cheap.
Out on the ground, renewable energy is already providing nearly 40% of electricity in the Australian national grid. The rollout is proving challenging due to problems with planning, grid connections and getting construction deals signed.
But some of the country’s best energy analysts say solar and wind energy have not driven the spike in power bills in recent years. And the Australian Energy Market Operator has found renewables plus firming support can meet the country’s baseload electricity demand – that is, the minimum generation needed – at the lowest cost possible.
It found it when the Coalition was in power, and has found it under Labor. Perhaps we should just get on with it.
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Dutton’s claim about G20 nuclear energy use doesn’t add up
William Summers, 5 July 2024, https://www.aap.com.au/factcheck/duttons-claim-about-g20-nuclear-energy-use-doesnt-add-up/
WHAT WAS CLAIMED
Australia is the only G20 nation that doesn’t use nuclear power.
OUR VERDICT
Misleading. Five other G20 nations don’t generate nuclear power, and two of those don’t use it.
AAP FACTCHECK – Federal Opposition Leader Peter Dutton claims Australia is the only country not to use nuclear energy out of the world’s 20 largest economies.
This is misleading. Five other nations in the top 20 – Germany, Italy, Turkiye, Saudi Arabia and Indonesia – do not generate nuclear energy.
Germany, Italy and Turkiye import very small amounts of electricity generated from nuclear sources, but Indonesia and Saudi Arabia don’t consume any nuclear power.
Australia is the only top 20 economy that doesn’t generate, import or have a plan to do so.
Mr Dutton has made the claim at least four times in interviews about the coalition’s plan to build seven nuclear power stations in Australia without clarifying that he’s counting countries planning to use nuclear power among those that are actually using it.
Mr Dutton said nuclear power was “used by 19 of the 20 biggest economies in the world” at a June 18 press conference in NSW.
He again claimed that of the top 20 economies in the world, “Australia is the only one that doesn’t have nuclear” in a June 20 interview on Sky News.
That same day, the opposition leader spoke out about how Australia could benefit from nuclear power “as 19 of the world’s top 20 economies have done” in an ABC News Breakfast interview.
Mr Dutton again said Australia was the only one of the 20 biggest economies that “doesn’t operate” nuclear at a press conference on July 5.
When asked to clarify his claims, the opposition leader’s spokeswoman told AAP FactCheck that he’s counting countries that have nuclear power and those “taking steps towards embracing nuclear”.
Mr Dutton accurately stated 19 of the world’s 20 biggest economies used nuclear power or “have signed up to it” in another press conference on June 19, and a Today Show interview on June 21.
He also said Australia was the only G20 member that didn’t use or plan to use nuclear power in an ABC TV interview on April 21.
The G20 is a global forum for countries with large economies. Despite its name, the G20 includes only 19 nations, plus the African Union and the European Union. Spain is invited to the G20 as a permanent guest.
It’s unclear if Mr Dutton is referring to the G20 countries plus Spain, or the 20 largest nations by gross domestic product, as he’s used both interchangeably.
However, AAP FactCheck has analysed the former because the nations that don’t generate nuclear power and the nations that only import small amounts of it are exactly the same for both groupings, as per World Bank 2023 GDP data.
Fourteen G20 countries operate nuclear power plants: Argentina, Brazil, Canada, China, France, India, Japan, Mexico, Russia, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, the UK and the US.
Three G20 nations that don’t generate nuclear power but import small amounts are Germany, Italy and Turkiye.
Germany shut down its final three reactors in April 2023. That year, about 0.5 per cent of the electricity consumed there was imported from France, which generates about two-thirds of its electricity from nuclear sources.
Italy closed its last reactors in 1990. About six per cent of its electricity consumption is imported nuclear power.
The country effectively banned nuclear power in 2011, but the current government wants to restart it.
Turkiye is building a plant that could start generating electricity from 2025. The country is also planning to build two other nuclear plants.
In 2022, the country imported a tiny amount of the electricity it consumed, including 0.8 per cent from Bulgaria, which generates about 35 per cent of its electricity from nuclear sources.
Therefore, a fraction of Turkiye’s electricity consumption could be produced from nuclear – likely less than half a per cent.
Saudi Arabia doesn’t use any nuclear energy either but it’s taking steps towards doing so in future.
Indonesia doesn’t have any nuclear reactors but has tentative plans to build some in the coming decades.
Dr Yogi Sugiawan, a policy analyst at the Indonesian government agency responsible for developing nuclear energy policies and plans, told AAP FactCheck that his country doesn’t generate or import nuclear energy.
However, Dr Sugiawan says Indonesia’s government is considering nuclear power, with an initial plant “expected to be commissioned before 2040”.
The Verdict
The claim that Australia is the only G20 nation that doesn’t use nuclear power is misleading.
Evidence and experts say six G20 countries do not generate any nuclear energy, and three of those don’t consume it either.
Misleading – The claim is accurate in parts but information has also been presented incorrectly, out of context or omitted.
AAP FactCheck is an accredited member of the International Fact-Checking Network. To keep up with our latest fact checks, follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
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Divide and squander: Dutton wants seven nuclear power plants, the first by 2035
Giles Parkinson, June 19, 2024, https://reneweconomy.com.au/divide-and-squander-dutton-wants-seven-nuclear-power-plants-the-first-by-2035/
Opposition leader Peter Dutton has finally revealed the federal Coalition’s nuclear plan, or at least bits of it.
The headline is that seven plants are proposed at current and former coal fired power stations, with the first to be built within a decade, despite the lack of any support from state governments, the site’s owners or the energy industry in general, and its huge costs.
The plan was outlined by Dutton and other senior members of the Coalition at a press conference in Sydney on Wednesday morning, and the pitch opened with an outright lie: Dutton’s claim that the Australian Energy Market Operator says renewables will lead to “a greater likelihood of blackouts and brownouts.”
In fact, AEMO has made it very, very clear that the opposite it true, and that the biggest and most costly danger to Australia’s energy security is keeping coal-fired power stations online, which is the Coalition’s stated intention.
But the Coalition nuclear strategy is not based on facts. It’s a populist appear to votes and the media release and presser were accordingly strong on rhetoric – and scare campaigns about the lights going out – and short on detail.
The sites targeted are Loy Yang in Victoria, Liddell and Mt Piper in the NSW Hunter Valley, Callide and Tarong in Queensland, Port Augusta in South Australia and Collie in Western Australia.
Dutton says the Coalition is looking at a mixture of small modular reactors – in South Australia and Western Australia – or larger plants such as the APR1400 or the AP1000 – the model whose cost overruns sent Westinghouse to bankruptcy in the US in 2017 – in the other states.
Dutton says the SMRs could be producing electricity by 2035 – even though no commercial SMR yet exists anywhere in the world, or even has planning approval, or even a licence.
The Coalition’s timeline assumes getting a project up and running within a decade of winning power in the next federal election, despite the absence of a regulatory regime, the lack of industry expertise, and federal and state bans in NSW, Queensland and Victoria.
None of those states support nuclear power, not even Queensland LNP leader and likely next premier David Crisafulli.
The Coalition says the plants will be Commonwealth owned and taxpayer funded, which makes nonsense of Treasury spokesman Angus Taylor’s claim that no subsidies are needed. Detailed analysis from Australia’s CSIRO, Lazard and BloombergNEF all point to the technology being the most expensive in the world.
Instead, the Coalition proposes – as predicted by Renew Economy on several occasions – to direct the taxpayer funds for the entire entire venture through the federal government’s ownership of Snowy Hydro, which already has one disastrous vanity project on its hands in the form of Snowy 2.0.
Dutton then moved quickly on to the next lie, that Labor is promising 28,000 km of new transmission lines by 2030. It isn’t, AEMO’s Integrated System Plan foresees around 5,000kms by 2030, a third of which has already been built.
Lie number three, published in the Coalition media release, is that “of the world’s 20 largest economies, Australia is the only one not using nuclear energy, or moving towards using it.”
Again, not true. Germany has dumped it, so too has Italy. Others are talking about it but not moving very fast. France is significantly reducing its share of nuclear and other countries such as Belgium, Spain, and Switzerland have discussed phasing out nuclear power due to high cost and waste issues, according to Dr Asma Aziz, from Edith Cowan University.
Lie number 4: That wind turbines have a life span of 19 years. One of the country’s oldest wind farms has just announced it will now close in 2033, 30 years after it was built. New wind farms have a life span of at least 35 years.
Dutton’s contention that his nuclear plans require no new transmission is also contentious. The 1.4 gigawatt units cited in the media release are double the size of any other unit ever built in Australia’s main grid and will require a significant upgrade of transmission and back-up capacity in case of a trip or outage.
Other investors, including the site owners, have plans for that transmission. In Collie, for instance, two of the country’s biggest batteries are already under construction, and more are planned. There likely won’t be room for either a big nuclear power station at the site, or the transmission capacity to transport it to where the power is needed.
However, Dutton’s position is not an appeal to the energy industry, but an attempt to divide the electorate – with the promise of “24/7” clean power, lower bills, no blackouts – designed as a populist appeal, however unrealistic and fantastic the claims might be.
Industry believes – as iron ore billionaire Andrew Forrest pointed out on Tuesday – that the nuclear plan will simply squander Australia’s wind and solar advantage, and threaten its exports.
“The Coalition’s nuclear policy is a recipe for delay and skyrocketing energy bills,” the Clean Energy Councils Kane Thornton said on Wednesday.
“Australia has no nuclear power industry, so building new reactors would take at least 20 years and cost six times more. This is a policy that would deliver nothing for at least 20 years, result in much higher power prices and risk the lights going out as coal power stations continue to close.”
The Smart Energy Council agreed: “The Federal Opposition’s nuclear strategy is in reality a plan to keep burning coal – this is a hugely expensive CoalKeeper policy,” said SEC chief executive John Grimes.
“Nuclear energy will not arrive in Australia until 2040 at the latest, so this is all about extending the life of highly polluting coal-fired power stations at taxpayer expense.
“Everyone knows nuclear equals higher power bills and higher carbon pollution by extending the life of coal-fired power stations. This so-called energy policy is for the fossil fuel lobby, not for Australians, or the planet.”
Federal energy minister noted that the Coalition plan had no costing, no gigawatts and no detail. “It’s a joke, but a serious joke because it threatens Australia’s renewable transition,” Bowen said.
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Nuclear debate is getting heated, but whose energy plan stacks up?
Mike Foley, 24 June 2024, https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/nuclear-debate-is-getting-heated-but-whose-energy-plan-stacks-up-20240624-p5jo45.html
The Coalition’s nuclear power policy is less than a week old, but the political debate about Australia’s energy future has been raging since. The opposition’s claims about both its policy and the renewables-focused government plan have prompted plenty of questions about their veracity.
We take a look through the biggest of those talking points to see whether they stack up.
*** Labor’s ‘renewables-only’ plan will cost more than $1 trillion: False
The opposition says it will cost more than $1 trillion for the Albanese government to reach its target of boosting renewables to 82 per cent of the electricity grid by 2030. Currently, about 40 per cent of the grid is renewable electricity.
Nationals Leader David Littleproud on Sunday attributed the numbers to Net Zero Australia: a think tank of academics from University of Melbourne, University of Queensland and Princeton University.
The think tank calculated the estimated cost of reaching net zero across the entire economy, not just the electricity grid.
They found that it would cost more than $1 trillion by 2030 and up to $9 trillion by 2050, largely driven by private investment. The figure includes a range of actions, from integrating electric vehicles into the transport fleet to heavy industry, such as smelting switching from gas to electric power.
The Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) forecasts that the cost of reaching 82 per cent renewables, again largely driven by private investment in wind and solar farms and transmission lines, will cost $121 billion in today’s money.
The Albanese government has also committed $20 billion to underwrite transmission-line construction and has set up a fund called the Capacity Investment Scheme, estimated to be worth tens of billions of dollars. It will underwrite new renewable projects, and if private investors fail to achieve forecast returns, taxpayers could be on the hook to subsidise operations but will get a cut of the profits when they exceed a set threshold.
*** Nuclear energy will deliver cheaper power bills: False
Dutton said on Wednesday last week his plan would “see Australia achieve our three goals of cheaper, cleaner and consistent power”.
The opposition has committed to release the costings of their plan before the next election.
Many experts disagree, arguing nuclear power delivers the most expensive form of electricity.
The same report cited by the opposition for a $1 trillion cost of the renewables rollout said there is “no role” for nuclear power in Australia’s energy mix.
“We only see a potential role for nuclear electricity generation if its cost falls sharply and the growth of renewables is constrained,” Net Zero Australia’s report in July last year said.
Internationally recognised financial services firm Lazard also found renewable energy sources continued to be much cheaper than nuclear. It said onshore wind was the cheapest, with a cost between $US25 and $US73 per megawatt hour. The second cheapest was large-scale solar at between $US29 and $US92. Nuclear was the most expensive, at between $US145 and $US222.
The CSIRO found the cheapest electricity would come from a grid that draws 90 per cent of its power from renewables, which would supply electricity for a cost of between $89 and $128 per megawatt hour by 2030 – factoring in $40 billion in transmission lines and batteries to back up renewables.
CSIRO calculated that a large-scale nuclear reactor would supply power for $136 to $226 per megawatt hour by 2040.
*** The renewables rollout needs 28,000 kilometres of transmission lines: False
“Labor has promised 28,000 kilometres of new poles and wires, there’s no transparency on where that will go, and we’ve been very clear about the fact that we don’t believe in that model,” Opposition Leader Peter Dutton said last week.
The AEMO releases a document each year called the Integrated System Plan, after consulting private industry, that details a road map of what the most efficient energy system will look like in coming years, including new infrastructure, up to 2050.
The Integrated System Plan includes directives set by policymakers, like the Albanese government’s commitment to reach 82 per cent of energy generation coming from renewables by 2030, and to hit net zero emissions by 2030.
The most recent plan, from January, says around 5000 kilometres of transmission lines are needed in the next 10 years to deliver the Albanese government’s goals, including 4000 kilometres of new lines and upgrading 1000 kilometres of existing lines. AEMO said 10,000 kilometres of transmission lines will be needed for Australia to reach net zero by 2050.
The 28,000-kilometre figure cited by the opposition resembles the 26,000 kilometres of transmission AEMO said would be needed by 2050 if Australia was to transform its economy to a clean energy export powerhouse, including large-scale production of green hydrogen and decarbonisation of other industrial processes.
*** The first reactor would be built before 2037: Questionable
The opposition says if elected, they would build a nuclear reactor and have it hooked up to the grid within 12 years of forming a government.
Its nuclear energy policy document, released last week, states that depending on what technology it chooses to prioritise, a large-scale reactor would start generating electricity by 2037 and a small modular reactor (SMR) by 2035. SMRs are a developing design not yet in commercial production.
This rollout would be as quick as anywhere in the world. The United Arab Emirates has set the global pace. It announced in 2008 that it would build four reactors under contract from Korean company KEPCO. Construction began in 2012, and the first reactor connected to the grid in 2020.
There are significant differences between the UAE and Australia. The former is a dictatorship without comparable labour laws or planning regulations that relies on cheap imported labour, whereas the latter has rigorous workforce protections, environmental laws and planning processes.
Opposition energy spokesman Ted O’Brien said a Coalition government would establish a Nuclear Energy Coordinating Authority that would assess each of the seven nuclear sites it has identified and determine what specific type of reactor would be built where, while also committing to two and half years of community consultation. A new safety and management regime would need to be developed, and parliament would have to repeal the current federal ban on nuclear energy within this timeframe.
If the Coalition forms government in May next year, following the consultation phase, it assumes construction could begin in late 2027 and would take 10 years for a large-scale reactor. That is far quicker than other Western nations have achieved recently.
The UK’s Hinkley Point nuclear plant began construction in 2018 and is not expected to be completed until at least 2030. The only reactor now under construction in France is the Flamanville EPR. Construction began in 2007 and is currently incomplete. A reactor at Olkiluoto Island, Finland, began in 2005 and was completed in 2022.
*** The annual waste from a reactor fits into a Coke can: False
Opposition Leader Peter Dutton’s claim that the annual waste generated by an SMR amounts to the size of a Coke can is incorrect, experts say, with such facilities likely to generate multiple tonnes of high-level radioactive waste each year.
“If you look at a 450-megawatt reactor, it produces waste equivalent to the size of a can of Coke each year,” Dutton said on Tuesday.
Multiple experts told this masthead a 450-megawatt reactor referenced by Dutton would generate many tonnes of waste a year.
Large-scale reactors, which have been deployed in 32 countries around the world, have a typical capacity of 1000 megawatts and generate about 30 tonnes of used fuel a year. This includes high-level radioactive waste toxic to humans for tens of thousands of years and weapons-grade plutonium.
SMRs are still under commercial development, and expert opinion is divided over whether they would produce more or less waste per unit of energy compared to a large reactor.
Emeritus Professor Ian Lowe of Griffith University’s School of Environment and Science said it was safe to assume an SMR would generate many tonnes of waste per year, and it was likely that waste would be more radioactive than the waste from a large-scale reactor.
“For a 400-megawatt SMR, you’d expect that to produce about six tonnes of waste a year. It could be more or less, depending on the actual technology, but certainly multiple tonnes a year,” he said.
Mike Foley is the climate and energy correspondent for The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald.
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‘Cheaper, cleaner, more consistent’: Do Dutton’s claims on nuclear stack up?
By Mike Foley, 19 June 2024, https://www.theage.com.au/politics/federal/cheaper-cleaner-more-consistent-do-dutton-s-claims-on-nuclear-stack-up-20240329-p5fg66.html
Australia’s climate wars have gone nuclear as Opposition Leader Peter Dutton brands the Albanese government’s plan to ramp up renewables as expensive and risky to power supply.
On Wednesday, Dutton released his plan to build seven nuclear reactors across the country on the sites of old coal-fired power stations. His six-page policy manifesto promises a “bold, visionary” nuclear program that will provide cheaper, cleaner and more consistent energy, while lowering prices for families and businesses.
Here is a fact check of the opposition’s key claims.
Will it be cheaper?
Dutton said his plan was cheaper and would lower household power prices. But he will not release the costings until a later date, which means it’s not possible to examine its commercial viability.
Experts have already questioned whether nuclear energy can deliver cheaper power. The Coalition has mounted an argument against renewables by saying that the cost of new transmission lines, which link wind and solar farms into the grid, is not included when the cost of renewable power is compared with other forms of generation.
The CSIRO’s GenCost report on electricity generation renewables, which factors in $40 billion in transmission lines and batteries, says they deliver cheaper power than nuclear energy.
The CSIRO found the cheapest electricity would come from a grid that draws 90 per cent of its power from renewables, which would supply electricity for a cost of between $89 and $128 per megawatt hour by 2030.
They calculated that a large-scale nuclear reactor would supply power for $136 to $226 per megawatt hour by 2040. Small modular reactors are even more expensive – between $171 and $366 per megawatt hour by 2040.
Internationally recognised financial services firm Lazard also found renewable energy sources continued to be much cheaper than nuclear. It said onshore wind was the cheapest, with a cost of between $US25 and $US73 per megawatt hour. The second cheapest was utility-sized solar at between $US29 and $US92. Nuclear was the most expensive, at between $US145 and $US222.
How long does it take to build a nuclear reactor?
Dutton has promised to build two reactors before 2037. He said small modular reactors, which are not yet in commercial production, could be completed by 2035, while traditional large-scale reactors could be in operation by 2037.
Most experts say this timeline is too ambitious and it would take far longer. This is because of challenges such as establishing a safety regime, importing a skilled workforce to build the plants, and preventing any cost blowouts.
New legislation would also be required to legalise the industry, after the Howard government banned nuclear energy generation in 1998.
Former chief scientist Alan Finkel, who was a special adviser to the federal government on low-emissions technology, has forecast longer construction times than those envisaged by the opposition. He said it would take at least 20 years for a large-scale or small modular reactor to start generating electricity for the grid.
However, Professor Andrew Stuchbery, head of physics at the Australian National University, said both China and the United Arab Emirates had built nuclear plants within a decade.
“China do it all the time … The UAE is an interesting example because they started absolutely from scratch, and they built them [reactors] in a bit under 10 years,” Stuchbery said. “If you look at some of the reactor projects in Europe and the US, they have been subject to delays, and the reason for that is that they had lost supply lines, they had lost the expertise in the country.”
The World Nuclear Association says the current global median build time for a nuclear plant is about nine years.
Can the Coalition keep a lid on cost blowouts?
Experts warn the potential for cost blowouts is a major risk for the opposition’s nuclear plan.
Dutton said an opposition government would build nuclear plants with a Commonwealth-owned corporation, such as Snowy Hydro. The Snowy 2.0 pumped hydro project has blown out from an initial cost of $2 billion to $12 billion, while the construction deadline has been extended by seven years, to 2028.
The UK’s flagship nuclear project, Hinkley C, has been beset by delays and cost blowouts. In 2017, the French-owned contractor EdF said it would be completed within a decade for $15 billion. But construction delays and technical problems have pushed out the estimated price to more than $90 billion, and the start date to about 2031.
The United States’ most recent nuclear power project, at the Vogtle Electric Generating Plant in Georgia, sought to double the plant’s capacity with two more reactors. Design began in 2005 and it was initially costed at $US13 billion, with a 2023 completion date. While the first reactor came online last year, it cost $US34 billion.
The UAE had more success with timing. It awarded a contract to South Korean company KEPCO in 2009 to build four nuclear reactors, estimated to be worth up to $US30 billion. Construction of the first reactor began in 2012 and was completed in 2020, with the other three also taking less than nine years to complete.
Does a green grid need nuclear?
The Coalition’s policy manifesto says shifting to nuclear “will keep an always-on source of 24/7 baseload power in the system to drive prices down and keep the lights on while we decarbonise”.
The energy market is made up of retailers, who buy electricity supply in short blocks around the clock, and generators, who supply the power. These generators compete on price and the cheapest always wins.
Renewables currently supply about 40 per cent of the grid’s electricity, and the Albanese government is aiming to have renewables supply 82 per cent of the grid by 2030.
The Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO), which manages the day-to-day operations of the energy grid, has forecast that more than 80 per cent of coal power will shut down by 2032, and all of it will be gone by 2038.
The advocates for both nuclear and coal power argue that continuous electricity generation, also known as baseload power, is needed for stable, secure energy supply. They argue renewables are subject to events such as wind and solar droughts, while nuclear plants are designed to run around the clock.
The flipside is that nuclear plants cannot be turned off at short notice and could spend a lot of time operating at a loss. That’s because the large amount of solar power in Australia can often drop daytime wholesale power prices to $0.
The Albanese government cites the AEMO, which says the grid does not need a new source of baseload power.
The operator has said wind and solar, paired with batteries and pumped hydro dams, will be able to supply up to 90 per cent of our power needs in the future, while rapid-response gas or hydrogen-fired generation plants could be used in short bursts when needed.
Can the Coalition build reactors if nuclear energy is banned?
Dutton’s nuclear ambitions have already started a fight with state governments and raised questions about how a federal Coalition government would gain access to the sites of old coal plants to build nuclear reactors.
Dutton said he would create a Commonwealth-owned corporation, which could apply a national interest test and compulsorily acquire land or reactor sites. But he would still need state approval for project development. As well as overturning legislated bans on nuclear energy at the federal level, he will need to overcome state laws in NSW, Victoria and Queensland.
In NSW, Premier Chris Minns said he would not remove the state’s nuclear ban, but the Coalition opposition said they were open to it. Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan is opposed to nuclear energy, and Opposition Leader John Pesutto said his party had no plans to introduce it.
In Western Australia, Premier Roger Cook has said “no one in Collie wants to see nuclear power established or constructed in their community”, while South Australian Premier Peter Malinauskas said nuclear energy would make electricity more expensive. In Queensland, Labor Premier Steven Miles and the state’s Liberal National Party leader, David Crisafulli, have both rejected Dutton’s nuclear plans.
Dutton said the assets would be owned by the federal government, which would form partnerships with experienced nuclear companies tasked with building and operating them. The owners of some of the coal plant sites targeted for nuclear development in NSW and Victoria – including AGL, Origin, EnergyAustralia and Alinta – have previously said they have no plans to develop nuclear energy in Australia.
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Canada / Ontario:
Coalition’s taxpayer-funded nuclear con a road to ruin, Tim Buckley and Annemarie Jonson, 25 June 2024, Australian Financial Review, https://www.afr.com/policy/energy-and-climate/coalition-s-taxpayer-funded-nuclear-con-a-road-to-ruin-20240624-p5jo3j
In Canada, which opposition energy spokesman Ted O’Brien admiringly cites, the last nuclear plant was approved in 1977 and commissioned 15 years later in 1993, five years late. The original capital cost of $C3.9 billion blew out 400 per cent to $C14.4 billion, including a $C600 million refurbishment immediately on commissioning, and it now needs another $C12 billion ($13.2 billion) refurbishment. …
In short, while nuclear may be part of the energy mix in some countries with a long-established history of deploying the technology – in Canada, for example, it was 14 per cent of total generation in 2023 (down from 16 per cent a decade ago), while renewables are 65 per cent and increasing – it is simply not viable here.
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Without a massive grid upgrade, the Coalition’s nuclear plan faces a high-voltage hurdle
Asma Aziz, Senior Lecturer in Power Engineering, Edith Cowan University
8 July 2024, The Conversation, https://theconversation.com/without-a-massive-grid-upgrade-the-coalitions-nuclear-plan-faces-a-high-voltage-hurdle-233458
Keeping the lights on in Australia is a complex task. Enough capacity must be ensured everywhere in the country, at every moment. Surplus in one location won’t solve shortages in another, unless we have the transmission infrastructure to transmit electricity between them.
The transmission network largely consists of high-voltage lines and towers, as well as transformers which transfer electrical energy from one circuit to another.
Australia’s transmission network is one of the oldest and longest in the world. As coal stations close and more renewable energy is built, the task of upgrading the system becomes even more pressing. So formidable is the challenge, it’s one of the biggest roadblocks Australia faces in reaching its crucial goal of net-zero emissions by 2050.
The Coalition’s plan for seven nuclear energy plants in Australia further complicates the task. A clear policy direction for Australia’s electricity system is urgently needed.
Lots of work to do
In technical terms, transmission congestion occurs when an element on the network, such as a high-voltage power line or transformer, reaches capacity and cannot carry more electricity.
Think of it as like traffic in a city. During rush hour, bottlenecks occur when there are more vehicles than the roads can handle. During times of peak electricity demand, electricity lines and transformers can also reach their limits. Exceeding the limits of the network can damage equipment and lead to power outages.
Between now and 2050, Australia’s electricity consumption will surge. We’ll need to draw power from increasingly diverse and far-flung sources. Coal power plants, typically located near large population centres, will close. Energy generation from solar and wind farms, usually located in regional and remote areas, will increase.
Importantly, we must make the distinction between electricity capacity and whether that electricity is “dispatchable”, or can be released on demand. That’s one reason why we need new transmission lines – to move electricity around the system as needed. The sooner we can build this capability, the quicker and cheaper our energy transition will be.
So far this decade, 490 kilometres of new transmission lines have reportedly been added to the National Electricity Market, which serves the east coast and South Australia. A further 2,090 km of transmission lines are progressing from the planning phase to the construction phase.
There’s still a lot of work to do: around 10,000 km of new transmission lines is needed by 2050. Western Australia’s main electricity network also needs more than 4,000 km of new high-capacity transmission lines.
A looming problem
The network’s ability to carry electricity is influenced by several factors. They include weather conditions, patterns of electricity generation and demand, the capacity of individual elements such as transmission lines and transformers, and their reliability.
Congested transmission can cause fluctuations in power prices. If cheaper electricity cannot be transported to where it’s needed, more expensive generators are dispatched to meet demand. This increases the price of electricity for both energy retailers and consumers. It can also lead to higher prices in some areas than others and poses financial risks for energy providers.
Transmission congestion in Australia is a looming problem. For example, South Australian transmission company ElectraNet forecasts rising congestion on that state’s network due to planned expansions of electricity generators, peaking in the late 2020s and 2030s.
What’s more, planning studies have identified ageing assets in Queensland’s transmission network, requiring new routes to manage constraints and ensure reliable supply.
Where does nuclear fit in?
All this has implications for the Coalition’s nuclear plan, if it comes to fruition.
The CSIRO and others say a nuclear power plant of any size would not be operational in Australia until after 2040.
If transmission lines are congested at that future point, nuclear power plants may not be able to send all their electricity to the grid.
Nuclear plants are expensive to build and run. But they typically generate electricity continuously, helping to offset these costs. If the plants can’t feed into the grid, or can’t sell their electricity at competitive prices, they may lose revenue and struggle to cover their costs, affecting their long-term viability.
The continuous high output of nuclear plants also helps them run efficiently. Frequently adjusting energy output leads to more wear, lower efficiency and reduced energy production over time.
Constraining nuclear output can have broader repercussions, too. In France, for instance, nuclear output is at a 30-year low, forcing the country to import electricity and prepare for potential blackouts. The reactors are offline for maintenance, not due to transmission issues. But the example highlights the consequences when nuclear energy is taken out of the mix for any reason.
Clarity is needed
Finally, the increasing share of renewable energy in our electricity grid means there’s no guarantee transmission capacity will be available for nuclear energy.
As South Australia’s energy minister Tom Koutsantonis noted on X, this poses challenges for the Coalition’s plan to build a nuclear plant at the site of an old coal station at Port Augusta and use existing transmission infrastructure:
The myth that a nuclear reactor could just plug into the old Pt Augusta coal power station transmission lines is not true. The transmission lines are already nearly full from new renewables. In truth, a nuclear reactor at Pt Augusta would need new transmission lines, the exact thing the LNP are complaining about.
So what’s the upshot of all this? Transmission infrastructure is a thorny policy problem, and divergent views among policymakers about energy policy only add to the challenges.
A clear direction on the future of Australia’s electricity grid, including transmission infrastructure, is essential. Without it, the energy transition will be slower and more expensive.
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Dutton’s nuclear plan contains a fib, but there’s also a fact in its favour
David Crowe, 21 June 2024, https://www.theage.com.au/politics/federal/dutton-s-nuclear-plan-contains-a-fib-but-there-s-also-a-fact-in-its-favour-20240619-p5jn1s.html
The car park at Murray’s Beach, on the southern head of Jervis Bay, is a monument to Australian visions about nuclear energy. The clearing in the coastal scrub, about three hours’ drive from Sydney, was meant to house a nuclear power plant in the 1970s, when Liberals in Canberra wanted to match the big projects of America and Europe.
That dream died when a Treasury analysis found the entire scheme would cost too much. The project was scrapped after Billy McMahon replaced John Gorton as prime minister in 1971, saving a beautiful bay and its residents from a project that looks, today, like utter madness.
That history sets up an essential reality check for Peter Dutton after he unveiled his big idea for seven nuclear power stations to be funded by the Commonwealth. The opposition leader has to reckon with the hard fact, as solid as a nuclear cooling tower, that other energy sources are cheaper.
The choice was easy in the 1970s because coal was cheap and could be burnt with no qualms about the climate. The decision is much harder today when coal-fired power stations are closing down. There is no consensus on the solution, only a new phase of the climate wars.
Dutton, however, has one big fact that works in his favour. The energy grid needs new sources of reliable power to make up for the end of coal. If the country cannot build enough renewable power with storage, something else must be added to the grid. Those who oppose nuclear have to show that other energy sources can fill the gap.
How big is the gap? The Clean Energy Regulator, one of the federal authorities managing the changes, said last month that Australia added about 5.3 gigawatts of renewable capacity to the electricity grid last year. This sounds impressive. Unfortunately, the regulator says we need to add at least seven gigawatts every year to achieve the country’s stated goals by 2030.
There appears to be some good news. Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek has approved 51 renewable energy projects since Labor took office – more in two years than the Coalition approved in the preceding nine. In theory, these wind, solar and pumped-hydro schemes would add 8.4 gigawatts to the grid. Unfortunately, there is no matching list to show how many have been built.
The Grattan Institute warns that power shortfalls are “creeping ever closer” because new investment is not arriving fast enough. Power outages are almost entirely due to network failures – 96.7 per cent of the problem, it says – but we need more energy generation as soon as possible. Some renewable companies blame slow state approvals, especially in NSW.
The truth is that construction is too slow and costs are too high – and the humiliating proof is stuck in the rock beneath the Snowy Mountains. That’s where Florence, the tunnelling machine, has stalled the grand plan for Snowy 2.0 to add renewable power to the grid. Meant to cost $2 billion, the project is now tipped to cost at least $12 billion and finish six years late.
Australia needs a better debate about where it finds more energy. For now, Dutton offers only a vague plan and skates over essential questions with a big fib about cost. He claims the government’s energy policies will cost $1.2 trillion, or even $1.5 trillion, and that this will be passed on to households to fund the investment in solar, wind and other projects. “Our proposal will cost a fraction of that cost,” he says.
Those numbers seem plucked out of the air. Tony Wood, an energy industry expert at the Grattan Institute, is not sure what the $1.5 trillion could possibly include. “Just throwing a number out there is pretty ordinary policy, let alone politics,” he says. The number also sets up an utterly false comparison.
It is true that Australia will pay a substantial cost over many decades to build new electricity supplies, whether they are wind turbines or rooftop solar panels or gas-fired power stations. But it is not true to suggest the Coalition can do away with that investment just because it commits to nuclear. It would be adding nuclear to what is already being planned, and perhaps replacing the need for some wind and solar.
Dutton also makes a flawed claim – that Labor has a “renewables only” policy for the grid. In fact, the government assumes that gas-fired power stations will be used over the long term to add reliability to the grid when solar and wind cannot generate enough electricity. Labor is just too divided about gas to talk openly about using it for decades.
Wood likens gas to Judi Dench, the actor who can bring a film alive with a supporting role. “She can walk on for a short time and leave to huge applause,” he says.
Right now, renewable projects supply almost 40 per cent of electricity across the grid on an annualised basis, and much more than this at peak times for wind and solar. Wood says it is possible to increase the annual figure beyond 70 per cent, or even higher, with the help of pumped hydro and batteries, but gas-fired power will be needed as well. He says it is totally wrong for Dutton to claim that renewables are responsible for higher electricity bills.
Green Energy Markets director Tristan Edis says there are ways to replace gas with clean fuel such as ethanol. He sees nuclear as a hugely expensive choice that would push up household costs.
Even so, there is a case to be made for nuclear. What if Australia cannot build enough renewable projects, with reliable storage or gas-fired power, in time to make up for those looming coal closures? That is when nuclear has to be an option. Voters will not accept power outages, so political leaders must have a back-up plan.
Ziggy Switkowski, the former nuclear physicist who ran Telstra and later chaired the NBN, says nuclear should be judged by the value it brings to the entire electricity grid with reliable baseload power. This is a nuanced argument for small modular reactors, for instance, to complement solar, wind, hydro, batteries and gas.
Australia has a huge challenge ahead. So far, Dutton has a feeble answer. As things stand, the most likely outcome from this nuclear debate is another monument like the car park at Murray’s Beach – a vision that turns into delusion.
There is, however, a debate to be had. There is also time for the opposition leader to give voters the details they deserve so they can vote for nuclear power if they choose.
David Crowe is chief political correspondent for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.
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Why the nuclear lobby makes stuff up about the cost of wind and solar
Giles Parkinson, RenewEconomy, 23 Oct 2019, https://reneweconomy.com.au/why-the-nuclear-lobby-makes-stuff-up-about-cost-of-wind-and-solar-46538/
An excerpt from Parkinson’s analysis is copied here:
“It is generally accepted in the energy industry that the cost of new nuclear is several times that of wind and solar, even when the latter are backed up by storage. The GenCost 2018 report from the CSIRO and the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) puts the cost of nuclear at two to three times the cost of “firmed renewables”.
“The nuclear lobby, however, has been insisting to the parliamentary inquiry that wind and solar are four to seven times the cost of nuclear, and to try and prove the point the lobby has been making such extraordinary and outrageous claims that it makes you wonder if anything else they say about nuclear – its costs and safety – can be taken seriously.
“RenewEconomy has been going through the 290-something submissions and reading the public hearing transcripts, and has been struck by one consistent theme from the pro-nuclear organisations and ginger groups: When it comes to wind, solar and batteries, they just make stuff up.
“A typical example is the company SMR Nuclear Technology – backed by the coal baron Trevor St Baker – which borrows some highly questionable analysis to justify its claim that going 100 per cent renewables would cost “four times” that of replacing coal with nuclear.
“It bases this on modelling by a consultancy called EPC, based on the south coast of NSW, apparently a husband and wife team, Robert and Linda Barr, who are also co-authors of “The essential veterinarian’s phone book”, a guide to vets on how to set up telephone systems.
“The EPC report admits to deliberately ignoring the anticipated cost reductions of wind and solar from AEMO’s 2018 integrated system plan. Even worse, the report dials in a completely absurd current cost of wind at A$157/MWh (before transmission costs), which is about three times the current cost in Australia, and A$117/MWh for solar, which is more than double.
The costs of wind and solar are not hard to verify. They are included in the GenCost report, in numerous pieces of analysis, and even in public announcements from companies involved, both buyers and sellers.”
See also: Giles Parkinson, 28 Oct 2022, ‘Dutton and Coalition still ignorant and deluded on battery storage and nuclear’, https://reneweconomy.com.au/dutton-and-coalition-still-ignorant-and-deluded-on-battery-storage-and-nuclear/
