Australian entrepreneur Dick Smith has rubbished Anthony Albanese‘s claim that nuclear power is too expensive.
The Prime Minister tweeted on Wednesday that Opposition leader Peter Dutton ‘won’t give his nuclear reactor plan a price tag – but he knows it will be a big bill’.
Mr Albanese’s Climate Change minister Chris Bowen in a recent press release cited CSIRO research that nuclear power would be eight times more expensive than renewable electricity from wind and solar.
The CSIRO and AEMO’s GenCost 2023-24 report said that building a large-scale nuclear reactor would cost $17billion and Labor claimed power bills and taxes would both rise to pay for the increased costs.
But Mr Smith, who founded one of Australia’s first electronics retail chains, said the CSIRO and AEMO had misled the Albanese government.
‘The Prime Minister’s saying nuclear’s too expensive for Australia. You’ve got to be joking,’ Mr Smith told Sky News on Wednesday.
Mr Smith argued that what makes renewables the more expensive option was that, for them to provide stable power, they must also have large scale batteries to store electricity.
‘They need to be paired with three days of storage, not three hours that the CSIRO has accounted for. Batteries make them unaffordable,’ he said.
Dick Smith said the Australian government science agency the CSIRO had lied to the Albanese government that renewable electricity was the cheapest option
Mr Smith pointed out that Pakistan and Bangladesh, which he said are ‘really poor countries’, have both successfully utilised nuclear electricity.
‘To me nuclear is the gold standard for base load power and we actually have to have it,’ he said.
The philanthropist and aviator argued nuclear electricity was also better for the environment as it wouldn’t need vast tracts of land to house infrastructure.
‘You can just have five acres of a nuclear power station instead of thousands of square miles being destroyed.’
He said he believed Labor would have to reverse its position just as it did with the nuclear submarines needed for Australia’s defence force, which he campaigned for in 2016.
‘I was told by my friends when I ran ads in The Australian for the nuclear subs: ”Dick, Labor will never change their mind you’re wasting your money”,’ he said.
‘Then I woke up one morning and what had happened? The Coalition decided on nuclear subs and, wait for it, Labor reversed and supported it.
‘They changed 180 degrees because it was in the national interest.
‘They’ll have to do the same on nuclear power. The longer they delay the worse it is for our young people.’
Mr Albanese said electricity bills and taxes would rise if nuclear electricity was brought in
An advert placed in newspapers by Mr Smith saying to ‘expect blackouts’ if Australia relies on wind and solar power alone
Mr Smith added that he was all for reducing emissions and taking action on change but that he believed nuclear was the better option over solar and wind to do that.
Mr Bowen recently insisted Labor’s renewable electricity transition was on track.
‘Under Labor, we’ve had a 25 per cent increase in renewables in the national grid, record investment in batteries and storage and over 330,000 rooftop solar installations last year alone,’ he said.
‘We’ve approved more than 50 renewable projects since the last election, and we’re already halfway to meeting our 2030 renewables target in the national grid.’
The government has pledged to have the national electricity grid 82 per cent powered by solar and wind by 2030.