A senior government nuclear safety official says the sites of coal-fired power plants “might not be adequate” to house the opposition’s proposed taxpayer-funded nuclear reactors.
Government agencies and departmental officials were grilled in parliament on Wednesday at a government-backed inquiry into nuclear energy. The inquiry was tasked with scrutinising the Coalition’s controversial plan to lift Australia’s ban on nuclear power and build taxpayer-funded reactors at seven sites.
Several officials told the inquiry it would take at least 10 to 15 years to start generating nuclear power once a future government confirmed an intention to build reactors.
The opposition leader, Peter Dutton, has said the Coalition expects to be able to build a small reactor by 2035 or a larger reactor as early as 2037.
The Coalition has said putting reactors at the sites of coal-fired power stations would reduce the need to build expensive transmission lines and towers to connect renewables to the grid.
At Thursday’s inquiry, the Nationals MP Darren Chester asked the chief regulatory officer of the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency, Jim Scott, if that approach could save time.
Scott said it likely would, but added that this “presupposes that the sites of current coal-fired plants would be adequate for nuclear sites, because that might not be the case”.
He said: “You have to look at external events – flooding, natural events – that could occur. That’s part of the siting process. Given that, the potential issue [is] that the sites of current coal-fired plants might not be adequate for nuclear plants.”
Simon Duggan, a deputy secretary in the energy department, listed some of the steps that would be needed for nuclear to go ahead, including setting up management frameworks for health, safety, security, environmental impacts, as well as transport of nuclear fuels and waste, storage of waste and the workforce capability to build, maintain and regulate plants.
“Based on the work and the assessments that you have seen from bodies such as CSIRO and the [International Energy Agency] you are looking at around a 10- to 15-year timeframe to put all those prerequisites in place in order to have nuclear power capability in Australia,” Duggan said.
Many officers raised the issue of social licence and community consultation, saying this would be a critical step if any nuclear reactors were to be built in the future.
The opposition energy spokesman, Ted O’Brien, who is also deputy chair of the inquiry, attacked analysis from the energy department which the energy minister, Chris Bowen, said showed the Coalition’s plan would mean a gap of at least 18% between electricity supply and demand.
Duggan said the analysis was based on assumptions supplied by the minister, where there would be no new investment in renewable energy, and that coal-fired power stations would stick to the closure schedule assumed by the Australian Energy Market Operator.
But O’Brien said those assumptions, described by Bowen previously as reflecting Coalition plans, were “the opposite” of what they were planning and were “fundamentally flawed”.
He said the Coalition had made public statements “with respect to ensuring there’s no premature closure of baseload power stations, more gas is poured into the grid and renewables continue to be rolled out”.
O’Brien asked if Duggan was comfortable with how the minister had presented the analysis to the public. “I am very comfortable,” Duggan replied.
Officials from Australia’s Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation and Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency both said Australia had deep expertise in nuclear regulation, and did not see problems in expanding that to accommodate a future nuclear power sector.
Clare Savage, chair of the Australian Energy Regulator, told the inquiry she did not believe nuclear could be deployed in enough time to cover the closure of coal-fired power plants, which she said were becoming increasingly less reliable as they aged.
She told the inquiry that on the same day of the hearing, 26% of the total capacity of Australia’s coal-fired power fleet was offline. Eleven per cent of the coal fleet was down due to unplanned outages, she said.
