Community, environment and health groups will rally together against the Coalition’s nuclear proposal for the Latrobe Valley in Traralgon as public hearings for a nuclear inquiry take place in town on Tuesday.
Adrian Cosgriff, a member of community advocacy group Voices of the Valley, who worked in Gippsland’s oil and gas industry before retiring, said the region needed a decent plan for jobs as its coal-fired power stations shut down.
Peter Dutton’s nuclear idea made that “harder, not easier”, he said. “We’ve got people wasting time and making empty promises to a community that needs real jobs and real leadership.”
A self-described “industrial nerd”, Cosgriff followed Australia’s net zero commitment and local coal station closures closely.
So when Dutton proposed seven nuclear power stations nationally, including one in the valley, he went looking for details – and became frustrated with a lack of substantial detail on key aspects of the proposal, including the economics, timeframe and lack of available water resources for cooling.
“It’s not a viable proposition in any way, shape or form,” Cosgriff said.
Hayley Sestokas, a community organiser at Environment Victoria who grew up in the valley, said the “risky scheme” was being foisted on locals with no detail and consultation.
“The Coalition has not been upfront with the community,” she said. “If this was to go ahead, for the next 60 to 100 years we would be living next door to high-level radioactive waste and the threats and implications that actually entails.”
Sestokas hoped the rally and committee hearing would provide further information to people unsure what it meant to live next to a nuclear reactor.
Public hearings for the federal inquiry into nuclear power generation were scheduled for Traralgon, Melbourne and Adelaide this week. The local member for Gippsland and National party MP, Darren Chester, a member of the committee conducting the inquiry, has previously said: “Communities which have retiring coal-fired power station assets deserve to be at the centre of this inquiry.”
Dr Margaret Beavis, the vice-president of the Medical Association for Prevention of War, was due to speak about the health risks from radiation exposure, nuclear accidents and waste for local communities hosting nuclear reactors.
According to studies, increased radiation exposure raised the risk of cancers, heart attacks and strokes, she said, as well as increased incidence of leukaemia in children.
Beavis said studies – including from the US, the UK and Germany – showed the risk of childhood leukaemia roughly doubled for people within 5km of an operating nuclear power station, and was elevated within 50km.
While rare, accidents at nuclear power sites can occur, Beavis said, causing major exposures to large numbers of the population. “Complex systems do fail, as we’ve seen with [Chornobyl], Fukushima and Three Mile Island.”
Nuclear waste management was an unsolved problem, she added, which meant spent fuel rods could end up being stored at the site for decades. Globally, she noted, Finland is closest to a long-term storage solution, after a process that involved 40 years of planning and community consultation.
Dave Sweeney, a nuclear policy analyst with the Australian Conservation Foundation, said environment groups shared the community’s concerns relating to radioactive waste, energy costs, water resources and the consequences of delaying the energy transition for jobs and the climate. These concerns were detailed in a joint submission to the inquiry by the ACF and 15 other groups.
“We’re switching off coal, and we need to have secure energy supplies to make that transition,” Sweeney said. “Nuclear power is simply too uncertain, too expensive and too slow, and brings with it a range of related risks.
“When it comes to our energy future, we need effective climate action now, and we want to see an energy future that’s renewable, not radioactive.”
