‘Tell him he’s dreaming’: Labor blasts Coalition plan for nuclear power in a decade

The Coalition has argued Australia could have a nuclear power plant running within 10 years, drawing a savage response from the federal government which claims such a timeframe is wildly ambitious.

Opposition Leader Peter Dutton is expected to announce a plan before the May budget to convert retiring coal plants into nuclear energy sites, taking advantage of the fact that the existing plants come equipped with poles and wires to distribute power.

The Coalition has said it will be upfront with voters about where it believes nuclear power generation is viable in Australia, with the Gippsland region in Victoria and Hunter Valley in New South Wales regarded as among the prime candidates for nuclear energy plants.

The debate over nuclear power is set to be a central policy contest at the next election, with Labor MPs eager to campaign against the Coalition’s push to end the nation’s long-standing moratorium against nuclear energy.

Coalition energy spokesman Ted O’Brien told Sky News on Sunday: “The best experts around the world, with whom we’ve been engaging, are saying Australia could have nuclear up and running within a 10-year period.”

O’Brien said that if Australia wants to move to net zero while maintaining affordable and reliable electricity generation, nuclear power must be a part of the nation’s energy mix.

“What we have seen across the world is that countries are moving more and more to have nuclear in the mix because it gets prices down, keeps the lights on, and of course it’s zero emissions … this is why Australia needs to seriously be looking at this,” he said.

“You have over 30 economies right now with nuclear, and wanting more, another 50 in the world wanting to introduce nuclear for the very first time.

“And here in Australia we are paying among the highest energy bills in the world, our grid is wobbling with threats of blackouts, we’re already experiencing some blackouts and we need to get to net zero.”

O’Brien confirmed that nuclear waste would be stored on site in Australia as it is overseas, noting that the government is already devising a plan to store the waste produced by the AUKUS nuclear-powered submarines.

Shadow Minister for Climate Change and Energy Ted O’Brien said experts say Australia could have nuclear power within a decade.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

Arguing that the Coalition case for nuclear power crumbles like “a Sao [biscuit] in a blender” when subjected to scrutiny, Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen said there was no way Australia could have a nuclear power plant up and running in a decade.

“Tell him he’s dreaming,” Bowen told the ABC’s Insiders, quoting from the beloved film The Castle.

“[In] the United States, with a very developed regulatory regime, with a very developed nuclear industry, the nuclear leader of the world, the average build time of a nuclear power plant in the United States has been 19 years.”

Bowen said the costs also did not stack up, given the UK’s Hinkley Point C nuclear power station was completed late at a cost of $86 billion for just over three gigawatts of energy output. “Now, coal in Australia is about 22 gigawatts. Do the maths,” he said.

“This is an eyewatering, eyewatering amount of government taxpayer subsidy that would be required to make this stack up. Maybe Peter Dutton is prepared to do that. We’re not.”

Asked whether Australia needed a ban on nuclear energy at all if it was so prohibitively expensive and takes so long, Bowen said the government did not want to send mixed signals about its priorities.

“It would send the signal that the government’s somehow interested in setting subsidies,” Bowen said.

“There’s a myth that this is happening elsewhere in the world. It’s not. Australia has the best renewable resources in the world. It would be a massive economic own goal to give up utilising those resources and to go down this nuclear fantasy.”

Minister for Climate Change and Energy Chris Bowen.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

Bowen and Transport Minister Catherine King have also begun consultation on new fuel efficiency standards, which would cap the average emissions of a car manufacturer’s overall fleet of vehicles in a bid to cut vehicle pollution by 60 per cent by 2030.

Bowen said this was not about phasing out any particular model of vehicle, and said many manufacturers supported the government’s preferred model.

“We chose to consult because we want to make sure we’ve hoovered up all the good ideas about how to implement this, so where an idea has been made to us sensibly we will consider it sensibly in good faith to help the implementation of what is a big and complicated policy space,” he said.

Bowen released new figures on Sunday showing that NSW and Victorian motorists in outer suburban and regional areas would save as much as $1800 a year in fuel costs under the government’s plan to cap motor vehicle emissions for new cars.

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