Dutton goes nuclear on government’s renewable plans   

WA Today
February 16, 2024

Opposition Leader Peter Dutton is ramping up his campaign against the Albanese government’s renewable energy goals, making the claim that next-generation nuclear technology is a cheaper, more reliable alternative to wind and solar energy.   

Dutton claimed on Friday the government’s renewable goals would drive household power bills “through the roof” and argued nuclear was a climate-friendly option, setting up an energy policy clash with Labor at the federal election due by May next year.

Opposition leader Peter Dutton is cranking up the Coalition’s campaign for nuclear energy in Australia.   


Prime Minister Anthony Albanese won the 2022 election pledging to more than double the share of clean energy to 82 per cent of the grid by 2030. This is a cornerstone of Labor’s commitment to cut greenhouse emissions by 43 per cent on 2005 levels by the end of the decade.

Albanese said on Friday the government had capped the price of coal and gas to lower electricity prices. The government says its renewables policy will lower power bills by $275 a year by 2025.

But Dutton said Australia needed to have a “mature” conversation about nuclear.

“There are 20 countries similar to ours ... who have a nuclear industry or they’re committed to do so,” he told media in Adelaide.

RELATED ARTICLE
Renewable energy will produce cheaper energy compared to coal and nuclear power, CSIRO says.
Energy
Renewables cheaper than nuclear, coal now and into the future: CSIRO
“It’s the latest technology that has zero emissions and it can firm up renewables in the system.”

However, experts say nuclear technology is more costly than renewables and would take decades to deploy if Australia lifted its long-standing ban on nuclear power.



The small modular reactors Dutton favours are not in commercial production. Some companies are conducting research and are expected to take several more years to build a working unit.

US company NuScale Power was developing the world’s most advanced commercial SMR project in Utah, but the project was abandoned in November due to a 70 per cent blowout in project costs.

Former chief scientist Alan Finkel, who was also a special adviser to the federal government on low-emissions technology, said it would take at least 20 years from the ban being lifted until a reactor could start generating electricity for the grid.

The government would need to dramatically beef up its nuclear regulation, which was currently equipped only to oversee radioisotopes used in medicine, select sites for construction of a reactor and for waste disposal, and set up a fund for decommissioning.

Finkel said it would also need to wait for a jurisdiction with regulations similar to Australia, such as the United States, United Kingdom, Canada or Europe, to deploy a small modular reactor.

“We are a laggard in the nuclear power industry, we’re not going to suddenly become a trailblazer,” he said.

“It’s very hard to imagine that [deploying nuclear energy] being done in less than 20 years from today.”


Is nuclear energy feasible in Australia (and how much would it cost)?
Finkel said small modular reactors offered appealing technology in the long term, with emissions-free, continuous supply of baseload electricity and a small mining footprint for fuel.

“But if you want to get a fast transition to a low-emissions electricity system, the only option we’ve got today is solar and wind,” he said.

The CSIRO’s GenCost report in December calculated the 2023 costs of electricity generation for renewables, coal and small modular reactors and projected what they would be in 2030.

It found that a mix of wind and solar power in 2023 would generate electricity for $90 to $134 per megawatt hour, falling to $70 to $100 by 2030. These costs include investment of $30 billion to upgrade transmission lines to link wind and solar farms to the grid, and to build back-up power such as hydro dams.

Coal electricity generation costs were calculated at between $110 and $220 per megawatt hour in 2023, dropping to $85 to $135 in 2030.

If small modular reactors were available today, CSIRO estimated they would generate electricity at a cost of $380 to $640 a megawatt hour, dropping to $210 to $350 in 2030.

Quote:


Yes the sooner the better.