The Coalition has unveiled the policy on nuclear power generation that it plans to take to the next federal election. But as Capital Brief and others have pointed out, Peter Dutton’s plan raises more questions than it answers. Below are some of the crucial question marks the Coalition will need to straighten out in order to convince its critics.
How much will it cost?
This is perhaps the most crucial question. The CSIRO has estimated that seven 1,000MW reactors would cost $8.6 billion each, for a total of $60.2 billion. But the first rector built would be much more expensive, and as Crikey’s Bernard Keane has pointed out, “that does not include a cost blowout of 20-30% of a kind that has characterised nearly all major infrastructure projects in Australia over the past two decades”.
Dutton has said the reactors would be publicly owned, meaning taxpayers would foot the bill.
How will communities be convinced?
Labor leaders in nearly all states where Dutton would like to build reactors have dismissed the idea, and even some of Dutton’s Coalition colleagues in those states have said their constituents would oppose it. Whether or not the Coalition would override local concerns is another unanswered question: as ABC News reported this week, some federal Coalition politicians have suggested affected communities would be able to refuse a plant in their area, while others have said that’s “not correct”.
How will the Senate be convinced?
Even if Dutton was elected prime minister, giving him a theoretical mandate to impose his nuclear plan, the Senate might still give him a hard time. The Senate would look different after the election, but under the current makeup, a majority of senators have indicated they would oppose the plan.
Nuclear energy generation is banned under federal law, which would need to be changed with the consent of the Senate before reactors could be built.
When could reactors be up and running?
Dutton wants the nuclear plants to “start producing electricity by 2035 (with small modular reactors) or 2037 (if modern larger plants are found to be the best option)”. ANU Research School of Physics Professor Ken Baldwin wrote on Thursday that “even if this unlikely proposition were possible, this effectively means that nuclear won’t replace coal-fired power stations. Most, if not all, of those coal-fired stations would be gone by the time that nuclear comes online, and coal would have been replaced by renewables”.
