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The Coalition has vowed to begin building nuclear power plants on ‘day one’ if they are elected. Peter Dutton has long promised to build seven nuclear reactors across Australia at an estimated cost of over $300 billion if he can oust Labor from power.
The Opposition Leader has claimed the power plants will work alongside renewables to stop blackouts and reduce electricity bills. But critics have warned the cost of converting to nuclear will blow out to more than double at $600 billion, ultimately slugging Aussie households with higher bills.
But Nationals leader David Littleproud has doubled down on the Coalition’s commitment to begin building power plants immediately if elected. ‘ We’ll start building the first nuclear power plant, the very first day after a coalition government’s elected,’ Mr Littleproud told Sky News.
‘We’ll get on with the job. The time for talks are over. ‘We have to get on with this so that we can have AI , we can have fast rail, we can have smelters in this country, and one where regional Australia has a future, not littered with transmission lines and solar panels and wind turbines.’
Mr Littleproud, who would be Deputy Prime Minister if the Coalition win this year’s federal election, which must be held by May 17, said that their position was that ‘we should not put all our energy eggs in one basket’. ‘We’re all for renewables, but we want to balance and get that balance right,’ he said.
‘We should transition some of those coal-fired power stations across to nuclear power plants, but we’ll need a lot of gas in the short term.’ The Nationals leader said it was ‘insanity’ to rely solely on renewables because transmission lines, solar panels and wind turbines would impact food security. ‘We’ve got sovereignty of all our resources, we should use all of our resources, not just some,’ he added.
Mr Littleproud has previously sought to reassure voters about the safety of the proposed nuclear power plants. ‘This is safe technology … we’re not talking about 1950s technology from Russia nor letting the Russians run it,’ he told reporters last year. ‘We’re not putting them where a tsunami is going to take place.’
The latter was a reference to the Fukushima nuclear accident in Japan in 2011 where an earthquake and tsunami damaged a nuclear power plant, with the fall out resulting in 51 deaths. Mr Littleproud claimed that nuclear energy would provide over 30 percent of the power to the grid. However, the Smart Energy Council claims it will only amount to 3.7 percent of Australia’s energy mix by 2050. Both sides of politics support a goal of net zero by 2050.
However, Labor’s plan is for renewable energy to comprise 82 percent of Australia’s energy generation by 2030, rising to 98 pecent by 2040 based on solar and wind. Whereas, the Coalition sees nuclear making up 38 percent of Australia’s electricity generation by that time, with solar and wind energy making up 49 percent of the mix and gas, pumped hydro and storage the rest. The Coalition’s plan was modelled by Frontier Economics, which costed Labor’s energy transition at $594billion, versus $331billion for the Coalition’s nuclear plan – marking a difference of $263billion.
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