Lies, damned lies and Coalition energy economics: Dutton’s latest nuclear claim slammed
“Mr Dutton is either dangerously ill‑informed or he is lying to the Australian public.
Sophie Vorrath, Feb 3, 2025, https://reneweconomy.com.au/lies-damned-lies-and-coalition-energy-economics-duttons-latest-nuclear-claim-slammed/
Blink and you might have missed it, but Peter Dutton delivered another toe-curling example of energy policy hokum on Sunday morning, as the first guest of the first episode of the ABC’s Insiders program for 2025.
In amongst other well-spun lies – such as the claim Labor’s energy policy requires 28,000km of new transmission to be built – the leader of the federal opposition appeared to say that electricity bills would be 44 per cent cheaper under a Coalition government than under Labor.
“[Frontier Economics] look[d] at our energy policy compared to Labor’s, they judge[d] that it’s 44 per cent cheaper than Labor’s,” Dutton says.
When Insiders host David Speers points out that the 44% figure – itself hotly contested, as is Frontier’s Economics’ entire approach to modelling nuclear costs for Australia – relates to the cost of building nuclear between now and 2050 and not the power price impact, Dutton fudges further.
“If you’re delivering a model that’s 44% cheaper, that translates into cheaper power prices,” he says.
Pushed on this point, Dutton says, “If you apply the economics, so if there’s a 44% reduction in the model of delivering an energy system, you would expect a 44% reduction, or of that order, being passed through in energy bill relief.”
Pushing once more, Speers says: “But Frontier didn’t tell you that that number, you’re just, you’re just drawing that assumption yourself.”
Dutton: “Again, David, I mean, that’s that’s the economics of it. …All other variables being equal, if you have a 44% reduction in the overall cost to deliver that model, that is going to translate into that price reduction for households and for businesses, and that’s what we must do.”
Happily for Dutton, the discussion switches away from energy at this point, leaving his highly questionable application of “the economics of it” more or less unchallenged.
Unhappily for Dutton, certain energy market experts and actual economists are not having it.
The Smart Energy Council has responded on Monday by publishing the findings of its own analysis and calculations, using – it says – the same assumptions put forward by the federal Coalition and the nuclear policy costings of Frontier Economics. It also uses modelling from the Institute of Energy Economics and Analysis (IEEFA).
This analysis finds that for Australia’s 4 million (and counting) solar homes, power bills would go up more than $1,100 a year under Dutton’s nuclear policy. For non-solar homes, power bills would increase by an average $665 a year – a 30% jump.
The SEC says the hike in energy costs for solar homes of between $1,181 to $2,468 a year would come from lost energy savings, with “always on” nuclear likely to knock out rooftop solar for an average 67% of the year, forcing consumers on to higher nuclear power prices.
For both solar and non-solar homes, part of the jump in energy bills would come from the fact that nuclear power is a more expensive form of generation – as shown in IEEFA’s report, Nuclear in Australia would increase power bills.
The IEEFA report finds that for a nuclear plant with similar costs to those reported for Sizewell C in the UK to be commercially viable in Australia, wholesale energy prices would need to rise by $98 to $168 per megawatt-hour, relative to 2023-24 levels, to enable cost recovery.
This equates to a 74% to 127% rise in wholesale prices, which would see average household power bills across the states in the National Electricity Market increase by between $561 and $961 (with GST), assuming electricity retailers don’t add a margin on top.
“The latest reported cost blow-out for the UK’s proposed Sizewell C nuclear plant further underlines that the Coalition’s proposal to bring nuclear power to Australia is unrealistic,” say the report’s authors, Tristan Edis and Johanna Bowyer.
“Sizewell C’s revised capital cost estimate is about 2.5 times the capital cost used in the Coalition’s modelling.”
And then there are the other, other costs to Dutton’s nuclear policy plan – including the further cost to taxpayers of propping up old coal plants and relying more heavily on expensive gas.
As SEC chief John Grimes put it in a joint press conference with federal energy minister Chris Bowen on Monday, Dutton’s plan to build nuclear is more accurately – for the next decade, at least – a coal keeper, gas booster and renewables stopper program.
“Billions of dollars to go into coal to keep it in the system for as long as possible… [and] a massive scaling up of the amount of fossil gas, the most expensive fuel in the energy system. And a solar stopper program, a cap of 54 percent on renewable energy, solar and wind, by 2050,” Grimes said on Monday.
“Peter Dutton, he has a plan that will double power bills for ordinary Australians. We think that that is outrageous. We’re here today to call it out.
“Mr Dutton is either dangerously ill‑informed or he is lying to the Australian public.
“We know that his plan… will effectively transfer wealth from homeowners to the big fossil fuel companies. Peter Dutton’s plan delivers for his rich fossil fuel mates. But his plan, his power plan, is a big stop in the road, a stop for solar, a stop for wind, a stop for batteries, a stop for EVs, a stop for ordinary Australians slashing their power bills with solar,” Grimes said.
“A stop for the effective transition of our economy and the massive environmental benefits that that delivers, and economic benefits as well.”
‘No idea what he’s talking about’: Dutton’s nuclear plan could raise – not cut – electricity bills, experts warn
Opposition leader claims a 44% cost reduction compared with Labor’s plan would be passed on to Australian household bills, but not everyone agrees
Graham Readfearn, 4 Feb 25, https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2025/feb/04/no-idea-what-hes-talking-about-duttons-nuclear-plan-could-raise-not-cut-electricity-bills-experts-warn
Energy experts have rubbished claims by Peter Dutton that his plan to slow the rollout of renewable energy while waiting more than a decade for taxpayer-funded nuclear plants could bring down electricity bills in the short term.
Dutton said if there was “a 44% reduction in the model of delivering an energy system, you would expect a 44% reduction, or of that order, being passed through in energy bill relief”.
However, that was a “complete misunderstanding “of the Coalition’s own policy, according to Dr Dylan McConnell, an energy systems expert at the University of New South Wales. “He has no idea what he is talking about,” McConnell said.
Speaking to the ABC’s Insiders program on Sunday, Dutton said “power prices will be cheaper under us in the near term as well as in the medium to longer term as well”.
If elected, the Coalition would have to overturn federal and state bans on nuclear power; it claims it could have the first plants built by 2037. Experts, including the CSIRO, say the early 2040s is a more realistic timeframe.
The Coalition has not revealed any details on its near-term plans for electricity generation but Dutton said “we’re going to have to do a lot more with gas, with coal, in the system”.
Analysis by McConnell suggested the Coalition’s reliance on more coal and gas would add 1.7bn tonnes of CO2 to the atmosphere by 2050, compared with Labor’s plan.
Data from the CSIRO suggests using gas for power generation is more expensive than coal, and solar and wind. Nuclear electricity would be at least 50% more expensive than renewables, the CSIRO has said.
Gas prices tripled when the Coalition was in power, according to Tristan Edis, an analyst at Green Energy Markets.
He said energy prices were likely to fall over the next two years after the inflation caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine subsides.
“Beyond this two-year period, it is difficult to understand how the Coalition will lower power prices if they intend to simply rely on the power plants which are already in place and not foster additional competition,” he said.
“The coal plants are getting old and banks are reluctant to finance refurbishment costs. If we rely on additional gas, that will push up power prices, not reduce them – because gas is expensive.
Edis said the Coalition’s costs for building a 1GW nuclear plant had been set at $1bn, which was “unrealistically low” and could be at least double that. This would push up wholesale electricity prices and household bills, he said.
Frontier Economics released modelling, backed by the Coalition, that compared the cost of Labor’s preferred renewables-based plan with an electricity system that anticipates less demand for electricity and includes nuclear.
Of Dutton’s claim that modelling showed the Coalition’s approach would cost 44% less than Labor’s plan, McConnell was doubtful.
“That’s a clear misunderstanding of what makes up an electricity bill and what the [modelling report] shows.”
He said only about 45% of a household electricity bill related to the cost of the electricity system and the wholesale costs that relate to the cost of the system referred to by Dutton. The rest related to the costs of local poles and wires, retail costs and environmental charges.
Danny Price, managing director of Frontier Economics, defended Dutton’s comments, saying if he was referring to the energy costs portion of people’s bills then the lower cost should transfer to households.
But on the impact on households’ overall electricity bills, “it’s a much more complicated question” he said, because of uncertainties around how prices are set in the market.
For that reason, his company had not attempted to forecast what the Coalition’s plan would do for people’s electricity bills or to electricity prices.
New UK data sends nuclear warning for Australia
February 4, 2025, https://esdnews.com.au/new-uk-data-sends-nuclear-warning-for-australia/
By Tristan Edis and Johanna Bowyer, Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA)
The UK’s Financial Times recently reported that the 3,260MW Sizewell C project —expected to be the UK’s next nuclear power plant—is now likely to cost around GBP40 billion, or $80 billion in Australian dollars, to construct. That equates to $24,540 per kilowatt of capacity.
Related article: The Coalition reveals the cost of its nuclear power plan—but the devil is in the missing detail
Sizewell C’s latest cost blow-out offers further confirmation that the opposition Liberal-National Coalition’s costing for its proposal to build nuclear power plants in Australia is far too low at $10,000 per kilowatt, and completely unrealistic. It supports IEEFA’s findings on the cost of construction for other nuclear power plants, detailed in our September 2024 report Nuclear in Australia would increase household power bills. The Sizewell C reactor’s newly estimated capital cost is about 2.5 times the capital cost used in the Frontier Economics modelling that has underpinned the Coalition’s plans.
At present, the UK Government is yet to commit to construction of Sizewell C and an official costing for the project is yet to be released. But the latest information in Financial Times, which has reportedly come from government and industry sources close to the project, reinforces the findings from our prior report: that for nuclear power to be viable in Australia, large increases in power prices would be required.
If the reported $80 billion cost only covers the plant’s construction and doesn’t account for the substantial debt interest costs likely to be accumulated over the targeted nine-year construction period, then Sizewell C would need the wholesale power price to rise to average out at around $300/MWh to be commercially viable. Even if this debt interest cost is accounted for in the $80 billion cited by the Financial Times, then it would still need the wholesale power price to rise to around $230/MWh.
By comparison, according to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC), over the 2023-24 financial year electricity retailers across Australia’s National Electricity Market needed to pay $132/MWh on average for wholesale energy to service their household customers.
Shadow Treasurer Angus Taylor has asserted on repeated occasions that any government investment in nuclear power plants would be made on the requirement that they were “commercially viable”, with no subsidies provided that would hit the government’s budget.
So, for a nuclear plant with similar costs to those reported for Sizewell C to be commercially viable in Australia, wholesale energy prices would need to rise by $98 to $168/MWh, relative to 2023-24 levels, to enable cost recovery. This equates to a 74% to 127% rise in wholesale prices, which would be charged on to household electricity consumers.
Related article: Not in my green backyard: Only 5% of people in renewables zones would live near nuclear
Such wholesale prices would mean that average household power bills across the states in the National Electricity Market would increase by between $510 and $874 per year prior to application of GST. Once GST is added then the increase will be between $561 and $961 – assuming electricity retailers don’t add a margin on top. This is based on ACCC data, which indicates average household annual consumption is 5.2MWh.
The paradox of recent politics
Crispin Hull, 2 February 25
A paradoxical realignment is under way in Australian and US politics.
Until recently, the Republican Party in the US and the Liberal Party in Australia were the parties of business, entrepreneurs, the professions, and the relatively wealthy. And the Democrats and Labor were the parties of the worker. The Democrats and Labor were always wary of new technology because it invariably costs jobs.
It was a fairly straight-forward labour-capital divide.
Then came some big changes: the rise of China; the threat of global heating; the social revolutions relating to identity (race, gender, nationality, and religion); and the collapse of organised labour.
Global heating was seen by Republicans and Liberals as some trendy, leftie anti-capital nonsense. They saw, with some justification, the rise of China as menacing. They attracted working-class votes based on nationalism and opposition to social causes on racial and sexual equality.
Those changes have thrown up some irreconcilable contradictions.
Private-Sector Economic Rationalist Peter Dutton has a plan under one arm to axe 36,000 “Canberra” public servants. Under the other arm Commissar Dutton he has a plan for massive public ownership of the means of energy production and management with seven nuclear power stations – just so his mates can keep up the profitable burning of fossil fuels for a few more years.
No sensible private-sector organisation will go near the nuclear plan, for obvious reasons. Moreover, only a third of federal public servants work in Canberra. But it sounds good to cut “Canberra” public servants. As if they do nothing – aside from, say, running air-traffic control; policing the borders; running Medicare, the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme, and the defence forces; doing weather forecasts; and generally making society tick.
It leaves Labor, the party that has usually been unenthusiastic about entrepreneur-driven new technology, embracing and financing private-sector investment in new energy………………………………………………………….
Labor, the party of the environment, has now shelved legislative protection for endangered species and approved dozens of extensions to coal and gas projects while putting its hand on its heart saying it has approved no “new” coal or gas projects.
Despite election promises, Albanese, who “goes after Tories”, has delivered a corruption watchdog that bares its gums in private. And his whistle-blower-protection promises have evaporated. His political finance “reforms” tinker about the edges while continuing to allow big corporations and unions to be puppet-masters.
It is a government that clears the in-tray by moving things into the too-scared basket.
Dutton, meanwhile, the friend of the Australian Jewish Community, cynically weaponises and politicises antisemitic attacks in Australia so he can argue that Albanese is “weak” while stirring up divisions for his own ends. With any luck it will back-fire because the Jewish community is a bit more sophisticated and understanding of the nuances of public policy than the former Queensland policeman.
The attacks, of course, are not coming from racialised Muslims, but far-right, nationalist, self-labelled “Christian” neo-Nazis.
Surely these things mean that Dutton and Albanese have disqualified themselves from leading a majority government. Surely, events of the past three years tell us that a cross-bench holding the balance of power in the House of Representatives will improve government.
If Albanese is Prime Minister, they will demand action on obvious things on pain of being thrown out of office. If Dutton is Prime Minister, they will demand detail, justification, and costings for his nuclear policy or to drop it – again on pain of being removed from office.
How else can the major parties be weaned off the insidious corporate, union, and lobby-group influencers that conspire against the public interest?
The glimmer of hope here is Labor’s massive support of renewable energy. The Australian Energy Market Operator reported this month that coal’s share of electricity generation had fallen below half for the first time. Coal-fired power stations are becoming less reliable and less economic.
The economics are so obvious that households are taking up solar at an unforeseen rate. And they are telling everyone about their zero power bills. So, it is on an unstoppable roll. https://www.crispinhull.com.au/2025/02/03/the-paradox-of-recent-politics/?utm_source=mailpoet&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=crispin-hull-column
Dutton defends nuclear costings as opponents warn of power bill hit
“Peter Dutton wants to force millions of Australians to switch off the solar they bought, make them pay for more expensive nuclear power, and use their taxes to build nuclear reactors,”
The Age, By Shane Wright, February 2, 2025
Opposition Leader Peter Dutton has claimed his nuclear energy policy would cut power bills by 44 per cent, but analysis by the renewables sector warns it could actually drive up electricity costs by more than $1000 a year for millions of Australians with rooftop solar panels.
Ahead of an election that will be dominated by cost-of-living issues, Dutton said while it would take time for energy prices to fall under his $331 billion plan to build seven government nuclear plants, they would ultimately drive down costs for consumers and business owners.
Modelling commissioned by the Coalition for its plan to build the reactors by the mid-2040s asserts total costs will be 44 per cent lower compared to the mass rollout of renewables. The same modelling did not estimate a reduction in retail power prices.
But Dutton told the ABC’s Insiders program on Sunday it was “economics” that lower construction and production costs would lead to a large drop in prices paid by consumers…………………
The modelling, however, has come under fire for its underlying assumptions, including an effective lid on the amount of renewable energy. Renewable energy under the Coalition’s modelling reaches 54 per cent of the total power market by 2050. By the end of last year, it had already hit 46 per cent.
Research to be released on Monday by the Smart Energy Council warns that millions of rooftop solar systems would have to shut off every day to allow the baseload power generated by nuclear reactors to fit into the grid.
It found that non-solar households could pay an extra $665 a year in power prices, while for those with rooftop solar, the bill shock could be more than $1000. Rooftop solar households were forecast to pay an extra $1262 a year in NSW, $1108 in Victoria and $1419 in south-east Queensland.
The higher costs to the more than 4 million rooftop solar households were in part because they would be blocked from feeding power into the energy market, the council said. As nuclear needed to be run constantly, if there was too much energy in the market, the first to be turned off would be rooftop solar, which was the easiest to prevent competing against nuclear.
Smart Energy Council chief executive John Grimes said every person who had invested in rooftop solar would pay far more for their energy if expensive nuclear power was forced into the grid.
“Peter Dutton wants to force millions of Australians to switch off the solar they bought, make them pay for more expensive nuclear power, and use their taxes to build nuclear reactors,” he said.
“We know that power bills are going to soar for all Australians because Peter Dutton wants to cap cheap, clean renewable energy and substitute it with expensive, unreliable, polluting coal and gas, while we wait a couple of decades to build their nuclear fantasies.”
The battle over electricity prices is part of a broader debate over the size of government, with Dutton accusing Prime Minister Anthony Albanese of overseeing a $347 billion increase in spending and a 36,000 lift in public servants…………………….
Pressed on where he would cut spending, Dutton ruled out an audit but signalled that voters would have to wait until after the election to get final details………
Treasurer Jim Chalmers said part of the increase in spending and public servants included the indexation of the aged pension and extra resources to the Veterans’ Affairs Department, Medicare and to lift housing construction.
He accused Dutton of trying to hide his planned cuts because he knew people would not support them.
“It is extraordinary that he’s saying to the Australian people he wants to cut $350 billion, but they will have to wait until after the election before he would tell them what that is,” he said.https://www.theage.com.au/politics/federal/dutton-defends-nuclear-costings-as-opponents-warn-of-power-bill-hit-20250202-p5l8wu.html
Nuclear waste. AUKUS agency’s reckless indifference
Last Friday, government solicitors acting for the Australian Submarine Agency sent me a warning against publishing some embarrassing information about their conduct.
Neither I (Rex Patrick) nor Michael West Media will be subject to their bullying, however.
The Australian Submarine Agency deals with high-level Defence secrets and fissile material, yet it has been caught ignoring security obligations while threatening Rex Patrick, who reports on their conduct.
by Rex Patrick | Feb 3, 2025, https://michaelwest.com.au/aukus-agency-reckless-on-nuclear-waste/
Last Friday, government solicitors acting for the Australian Submarine Agency sent me a warning against publishing some embarrassing information about their conduct.
Neither I nor MWM will be subject to their bullying, however.
The Australian Government has undertaken to accept responsibility for the spent nuclear fuel from our planned AUKUS submarines. This is no light undertaking. It’s more than a lifetime obligation; indeed,
it’s an obligation that will last tens of thousands of years.
The Government has announced that this high-level radioactive waste will be stored on Defence land.
As reported in MWM, in February 2023, the Australian Submarine Agency awarded a contract for nearly $400K to former Defence Department Deputy Secretary Steve Grzeskowiak to find a suitable Defence location
The very expensive irony that lurked behind this contract was the fact that Grzeskowiak had, when he was inside Defence, looked for a location on Defence land to store low-level radioactive waste and had been unable to find a suitable site.
According to Grzeskowiak, there wasn’t a single spot anywhere across the vast Defence estate that was suitable for storing low-level radioactive material. Yet he was now the go-to person who would, through some miraculous divination, find the Australian Submarine Agency a location across the very same territory.
Document request
In December 2023, I requested Mr Grzeskowiak’s report under our Freedom of Information laws. I was refused access on the basis the report was a Cabinet document.
But here’s the interesting thing. I knew that the report had been being worked on by multiple agencies, so I requested related documents from the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO), the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency (ARPANSA), Geoscience Australia (GA), the Department of Industry, Science and Resources (DISR) and the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet (PM&C).
What those documents showed me was the report was not, at least until after I made my FOI request, developed on the Government’s CabNet+ system.
I’m now in a legal fight at the Administrative Review Tribunal, pressing my case for the report to be made public.
The Cabinet Handbook, the bible for Cabinet’s processes, makes it crystal clear that cabinet documents must be prepared on a special CabNet+ system.
The protective security framework of the Government also commands that Cabinet documents are stored on CabNet+.
Despite this, the Australian Submarine Agency didn’t do that.
Why? I can’t publish their evidence in the proceeding until the matter has been heard in the Tribunal, but what I can say is that it’s a case of reckless indifference to the rules.
It begs the question, will the Australian Submarine Agency also play fast and loose with the rules in relation to our highly classified data or our allies’ highly classified data?
“The Australian Submarine Agency is under a great deal of pressure to “get the job done”.
There are unquestionably a lot of unrealistic expectations coming down from the top. Will they follow the rules when it comes to nuclear safety, or will they bend and break the rules when they find it expedient to meet a politically driven objective?
Legal arguments
In their legal submissions, the Australian Government asserts: “The fact that the document was not created within the ‘CabNet’ system is not indicative one way or the other as to the intention of the authors.”
Actually, the rules of Cabinet are very strict. A document must meet two tests to qualify as a cabinet document 1) it must have been bought into existence for the dominant purpose of submission for consideration by the Cabinet, and 2) it must have been submitted to Cabinet.
I am satisfied it meets the second test but not the first.
To meet the first test the Government has to present objective evidence to the Tribunal that a minister so commissioned the document for consideration by Cabinet.
“They have not done so.”
And the fact that the document, in breach of the rules, just floated around on a government network not authorised to hold Cabinet documents for months on end will work against the Australian Submarine Agency in the end.
Hypocrisy
In response to insistence from Prime Minister Anthony Albanese that Peter Dutton should disclose the intended location of seven nuclear power stations, the Opposition Leader did so.
But Albanese is refusing to be transparent about the intended location of a high-level radioactive waste dump. His government wants to block public debate for as long as possible and then present people with a fait accompli.
It’s yet to be seen whether the Government will win on its claim that the report I’m after is a Cabinet document. But in the end, if it were determined that the report is that, there would still be nothing to stop Albanese from being true to his past rhetoric about the importance of government transparency and releasing the report to inform public debate.
“Australians have a right to know. The fact that the Prime Minister hasn’t already done this says a lot.”
For me, given that the Government has cautioned me against publishing details that reveal security incompetence inside the Australian Submarine Agency, I’ll wait for the knock on the door from the Federal Police. I’m not going to be intimidated.
There’s a vital democratic principle to be defended – the right to publish embarrassing information about government. The only way to protect that right, especially in the face of Government bullying, is to publish.
Dutton’s nuclear plan requires ‘huge’ new bureaucracy.
“Every single dollar spent on nuclear will come from the taxpayer. So of course, that will lead to a bureaucracy.
Opposition Leader Peter Dutton has criticised what he calls Labor’s “big government” approach and “wasteful” spending
A “huge” new bureaucracy, numbering thousands of extra public servant positions, would need to be created by the Coalition to establish and support an Australian nuclear power industry, according to the minister for public service, Katy Gallagher.
The proposal for a civil nuclear power program, as described by shadow energy minister Ted O’Brien last year, included “institutional architecture” that he said would entail an expansion of the regulatory agency, the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency (ARPANSA), a new independent nuclear energy coordinating authority and a government business enterprise to be called Affordable Energy Australia.
That architecture raises questions in the midst of the current opposition attacks on the growth and efficiency of the bureaucracy under the Albanese government. The Coalition’s election campaign push to cut government spending, sharpened by the nomination last week of Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price to lead a proposed efficiency department, has focused so far on paring back the public service.
The Coalition’s coal-to-nuclear strategy appears to defy that objective, as it requires building a large department “from scratch”, Gallagher tells The Saturday Paper. “We haven’t run state energy systems for so long,” the minister says. “It would be up there with departments like, you would think, Services Australia. Probably a bit smaller than the NDIA [National Disability Insurance Agency, Defence. It would be thousands of public servants.”
Gallagher likens the bureaucratic infrastructure for a nuclear power industry, which the Coalition has said would be taxpayer funded, to Labor’s creation of the Climate Change Department of more than 2500 staff. She expects more than that would be needed, including outside Canberra, for the Coalition plan to build its proposed seven nuclear power plants across five states.
“It would be planning, construction, safety, getting the skills. I don’t even know how you’re going to get the skills into that,” Gallagher said. “It’d be a lot of travel because you’re all around the country.”
Last year, O’Brien revealed that, under the Coalition’s plan, a coordinating authority would determine how much nuclear power is produced at each of the seven proposed sites before it enters the national energy mix.
“In terms of exactly how many on any plant, we’ll be leaving that to the independent nuclear energy coordinating authority,” he told the ABC’s Insiders last June. “It is right we want multi-unit sites. That’s how to get costs down.”
The shadow minister was not available for an interview. In response to emailed questions, O’Brien did not address the size of a civil nuclear power bureaucracy or the cost of expanding nuclear agencies and creating new ones, but acknowledged that “a highly skilled nuclear workforce will be paramount to ensuring the success of this plan”.
In his response, O’Brien gave more detail about the nuclear program, including outlines of private and public partnerships and a proposition to include the Australian Safeguards and Non-Proliferation Office (ASNO), which looks after Australia’s international treaty obligations.
“Experience is not cheap, because you’ll have to get it from overseas … we’ll be having to buy that in, at expense. You don’t just train someone up over a two-year period.”
“The ARPANSA legislation will be amended to allow the licensing and regulation of civilian nuclear facilities, including power stations,” the shadow minister said. “ARPANSA will have its resources increased to prepare to license the establishment projects and advice will be sought regarding the merits of regulatory consolidation of ARPANSA and ASNO.
“The independent Nuclear Energy Coordinating Authority will lead community consultation and manage a process to select experienced nuclear companies to partner with Government to deliver these projects.
“Affordable Energy Australia will be financed by the federal government through a combination of debt and equity and, through its partnership arrangements with experienced nuclear companies, will own, develop and operate the establishment projects.”
A former energy adviser to Britain’s Thatcher government says the Coalition is trivialising the bureaucratic support needed for a local nuclear power industry.
Greg Bourne, who is a former president of BP Australasia and is a councillor on the Climate Council, said the experience in the UK showed that the nuclear part of the electricity industry had to be regulated, as “no one commercially wanted it”.
He says established nuclear power countries in comparable democracies such as the United States have very large regulatory organisations rigorously covering issues such as skills, construction, safety, finance and radioactive waste.
“What you would need to do – almost certainly getting the people from overseas, building ARPANSA’s strength – it’s not a trivial act,” Bourne tells The Saturday Paper.
“They will have to build a complete set of public servants, for want of a better word, to be able to advise Department of Energy … on what can be done, what can’t be done, the pace at which it can be done and so on.”
The scale of the Coalition’s nuclear proposal, Bourne says, is obviously a far cry from Australia’s experience with its sole reactor, the 20-megawatt nuclear medical reactor at Lucas Heights in southern Sydney.
“We will have to buy experience. And buying experience is not cheap, because you’ll have to get it from overseas,” he says. “People will be coming in with different models. European models… a number of United States, Canadian models. They’ll all be coming in with different things, but we’ll be having to buy that in, at expense,” he says. “You don’t just train someone up over a two-year period.
“Lucas Heights is a very, very different thing. The people there are good. They understand what they’re doing. I do not think that [the Coalition] will be able to grab the head of the nuclear agency from Lucas Heights, and then that person will have credibility with two gigawatt-size reactors.”
The public service minister suggests that if the nuclear bureaucracy were to be added to the Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water (DCCEEW), not only would the department need to be “a lot larger” but there would likely be “a huge consultant bill”, over decades. “You’d be paying for all of that before anything gets happening.”
The Albanese government, meanwhile, is moving to accelerate household electrification efforts, through a deal with the Senate crossbench to support Labor’s Future Made in Australia legislation. The government aims for 82 per cent of power to be sourced from renewable energy by 2030 – a plan the Coalition has derided as “unrealistic”.
Energy Minister Chris Bowen revealed this week he used ministerial powers at the end of last year to direct the Australian Renewable Energy Agency to consider funding solar panels and home batteries. However, the basis of Labor’s transition plan, Bowen says, is private-sector funded.
“Every single dollar spent on nuclear will come from the taxpayer. So of course, that will lead to a bureaucracy. Our plan is based on private-sector investment. Theirs is based on public investment and a bureaucracy,” the minister tells The Saturday Paper.
He points to the lack of detail in the Coalition’s planning, in contrast with its demands for more detail in the lead-up to the Indigenous Voice to Parliament vote: “They campaigned against an alleged government bureaucracy in the referendum, and they’re proposing at least two new government organisations.”
The Coalition’s plan to build seven nuclear power plants to replace Australia’s ageing coal-fired power stations is backed by a contested set of costings, prepared by Frontier Economics and released late last year, amounting to roughly $300 billion spread over 50 years. The modelling suggests the Coalition plan is $263 billion cheaper than Labor’s renewables proposal, but a wide range of economists have countered that the costings lack crucial information about how the figures were calculated, and are based on a scenario of dramatically lower energy use than is realistic.
The delays in getting the reactors on line have also drawn strong criticism. The opposition insists its plan, under the best-case scenario, would begin producing electricity by 2035, but this is five years earlier than the earliest estimate by the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering, and assembling the necessary regulation and skills is a key component of that timeline.
The Coalition’s energy spokesman says the opposition’s civil nuclear policy is well formed and ready to start.
“[T]his policy follows the most comprehensive study ever undertaken by an Opposition, learning from experts in 10 nations about their decarbonisation policies while keeping prices down, the lights on and ensuring energy security,” O’Brien said in his statement.
“Upon entering government, the Coalition will be ready to implement a detailed energy policy immediately, informed by global best practices and established relationships.”
Opposition Leader Peter Dutton has criticised what he calls Labor’s “big government” approach and “wasteful” spending that he says has exacerbated inflation in the lead-up to an election that will be heavily focused on the cost of living.
His most cited example is the 36,000 additional Average Staffing Level places in the public service funded by Labor over three budgets.
The opposition leader now has four frontbenchers whose portfolios cover the public service, two of whom are solely tasked with zeroing in on waste and efficiency: Jacinta Nampijinpa Price and James Stevens.
While Dutton isn’t explicitly referencing as its inspiration the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency in the US, he’s elevating the mission within his ranks just as the Trump administration takes over. Australia’s richest person, Gina Rinehart, has long urged the Coalition to emulate the MAGA policy agenda.
“Our argument is to bring that role, that function, into [the Department of the] Prime Minister and Cabinet as a key central agency, and then to have the authority of Prime Minister and Cabinet to run the operation of senior efficiencies achieved across every department of the Commonwealth,” the Coalition leader told reporters in Perth on Tuesday.
“And that’s something that we would take very seriously.”
Dutton says Labor’s spending on public service positions is a question of “priorities”. Speaking to reporters in his electorate of Dickson last weekend, the opposition leader said, “That’s money that we could be spending elsewhere to provide support to people during Labor’s cost-of-living crisis, or into defence or into security and into priorities for Australians otherwise.
“I just don’t think any Australian can say that their lives are simpler or better off today because of the tens of thousands of additional public servants that the prime minister’s employed in Canberra.”
The plans for cuts have been flagged for at least six months.
“The first thing we’ll do is sack those 36,000 public servants in Canberra, that’s $24 billion worth,” Nationals leader David Littleproud told commercial radio station Triple M in August.
The figure for additional public servants equates to 20 per cent of the workforce, a boost that entailed rebuilding positions lost to more expensive outsourced labour. The cost cited by the opposition is over four years.
An audit, ordered by the Albanese government soon after the 2022 election, found that the Coalition government in the 2021-22 financial year alone spent $20.8 billion on almost 54,000 contractors and external providers. The bulk of the external labour was employed in the defence, social services and agriculture portfolios.
The 36,000 figure under the Albanese government, confirmed in federal budget papers, also covers Labor’s moves to rein in Centrelink and other government call centre waiting times, as well as additional staffing to reduce chronic backlogs in claims and visa processing times.
Gallagher, who is also finance minister, accepts that efficiencies remain to be made within government. She adds that $92 billion was saved over the past three Labor budgets and mid-year updates.
“We’ve had over $4 billion saved from not using consultants as much as the former government did,” the senator says.
She says there is an ongoing effort in explaining the worth and work of the public service.
“It’s always up to us to explain what we’re doing and why we’re doing it, but I would say to Peter Dutton, go and speak to a veteran who actually is getting their pension now, who’s getting their appropriate payment. There was a 40-month wait for people to get their pension,” she told reporters last week. “What he wants to pretend is that you don’t need anyone to do these jobs. Two thirds of these jobs are in the regions. They’re in every part of Australia.”
Briefing paper from UK trip shows nuclear waste discussions held, as location for AUKUS submarine waste remains undecided
ABC News, Stateline, Leah MacLennan, 31 Jan 25
In short:
Former senator Rex Patrick says documents show SA’s Defence Industries Minister met with a defence company in the UK for the “specific purpose of being briefed” on the dismantling of nuclear reactors and the waste associated.
Mr Mullighan says those topics were not the “focus” of the discussions.
What’s next?
Legislation passed last year allowing nuclear waste to be stored at Osborne, but the government says a location for any high-level waste storage is still to be decided.
A former senator has sounded the alarm over documents he says point to government discussions about the defueling and dismantling of nuclear submarines at South Australia’s Osborne shipyards.
Rex Patrick was a Navy submariner, entered the Senate as a replacement for Nick Xenophon, and is now running for the Senate again as a Jacqui Lambie Network candidate.
He has obtained documents through freedom of information (FOI) that show South Australia’s Treasurer and Defence Industries Minister Stephen Mullighan met with defence company Babcock during a visit to the United Kingdom late last year.
“What the FOI shows is that the Treasurer Mr Mullighan met with Babcock for the specific purpose of being briefed on the dismantling of nuclear reactors and waste associated with those nuclear reactors,” Mr Patrick said.
The documents include a briefing paper for the meeting, which said the objective of the visit was to “discuss Babcock’s approach to nuclear powered submarine sustainment, defueling and disposal … seek information on Babcock’s experience in radioactive waste management/nuclear decommissioning,” and “discuss Babcock’s approach to nuclear powered submarine social license”.
Mr Patrick said the documents show the government was exploring the idea of dismantling the submarines’ nuclear reactors at Osborne.
He has called for more transparency and discussion with the public about what is being planned for the site under the AUKUS agreement.
“I’ve been looking at AUKUS and issues of nuclear waste for about three years and what I’ve found is that you really have to pull teeth to get access to information about this sort of stuff,” Mr Patrick said.
“Any decisions being made about this are not decisions that just affect this term of government or the next, they are decisions that will affect South Australians for tens of thousands of years.”…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
Decommissioning still decades away
Australia’s first nuclear submarine will not arrive until the early 2030s, when the US plans to sell the government three Virginia Class boats.
The Virginia Class have a life span of more than 30 years, meaning their defueling and decommissioning is still decades away.
Rex Patrick argues that does not mean decisions can be delayed, because signing up to AUKUS is also signing up to a nuclear industry and dealing with the waste they will ultimately produce.
“Decisions around high-level nuclear waste are decisions that last for generations upon generations,” Mr Patrick said.
“They are not decisions that should simply be made and presented as a fait accompli by a government.”……………………………………………………………………..
Federal laws mean nuclear waste can be stored at Osborne
In October last year, legislation passed federal parliament that will allow for the storage and disposal of nuclear waste at Osborne.
The law does not define what level of waste can be stored there, but the federal government has given assurances that it will only be low-level waste.
Those assurances are not enough to allay concerns from the local community group that has branded itself ‘Port Adelaide Community Opposing Aukus’.
“One of our major concerns is that waste will be literally transported down Victoria Road, which alongside of it is a residential area,” group member Eileen Darley said.
“We’re going to be a docking point, or a gateway if you like, to some as yet unknown permanent nuclear dump somewhere.”………………………………………………
Major delays to UK decommissioning
The United Kingdom has had a fleet of nuclear submarines since the 1960s, but has faced multiple challenges decommissioning and disposing of boats that are out of service.
More than 20 decommissioned submarines are awaiting disposal at dockyards in Scotland and England, with half still waiting to be defueled.
The oldest, HMS Swiftsure, left service in 1992 and Babcock is now working with authorities to dismantle it, with an aim to be finished by the end of next year.
Overall it is a program that will cost billions of pounds. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-01-31/documents-show-nuclear-waste-discussions-aukus-submarines/104874852
Is the world going nuclear? The hope and hype of nuclear as a climate solution.
“The industry is having some very good rhetoric, but it’s having a very poor reality. We’ve seen 30 countries say that they will triple nuclear (power) by 2050; we’ve seen 125 say they will triple renewables by 2045.”
By political reporter Tom Lowrey, 26 Jan 25
In short:
Momentum behind nuclear power as a part of the global solution to climate change has been growing, with the technology gaining more attention and interest.
But climate advocates point out that nuclear still has a poor reputation for being delivered late and hugely over budget.
What’s next?
The Coalition will continue to point to any international shifts towards nuclear power, to make its case for Australia’s adoption of the technology.
It’s been a difficult few decades for nuclear power.
Nuclear’s share as part of the global energy mix has been falling, and incidents like the Fukushima disaster in 2011 highlighted for many the risks of the technology.
Some countries started mothballing or shutting down plants, and many new projects were plagued by cost blowouts and delays.
But in the past few years there has been a remarkable turnaround.
Countries are pledging to help triple the production of nuclear power globally, and industry advocates are a growing presence at global climate summits.
The International Atomic Energy Agency, a United Nations body that advocates for peaceful use of nuclear technology, is forecasting substantial growth in the sector over coming decades.
And Australia is about to head into a federal election with the adoption of nuclear power at the centre of the political contest.
The Coalition argues Australia risks being left behind if it doesn’t get on board.
But others point out that while there is plenty of global interest in nuclear — and the as-yet unrealised promise of new technology such as small modular reactors — there is a lot more real money flowing into renewables, which are already transforming global energy grids.
Nuclear’s big global arrival
The COP29 climate summit held in Baku, Azerbaijan late last year was ostensibly dedicated to climate financing — that is, finding the money needed to fund a massive global effort to tackle climate change.
But it made headlines for a few different reasons.
One was that for the second year running, the global climate summit was being held in a country that derives most of its wealth from oil and gas. (Last year’s summit was held in the UAE).
Another was the growing presence of nuclear power.
Six more countries signed a pledge to triple nuclear’s global production by 2050, taking the total number of countries on board to 31.
They range from relatively small countries such as Moldova, through to major Australian allies like Canada, Japan, the UK and US.
All four of those larger countries have long-established nuclear industries.
Nuclear attracted plenty of attention, including headlines labelling it a “rising star” at the climate summit.
And there was an Australian presence in Baku ready to cheer it on.
Nationals MP David Gillespie, the retiring member for the NSW North Coast seat of Lyne, travelled to the summit (with some support from Coalition-aligned environment group Coalition for Conservation).
David Gillespie has been one of nuclear power’s longest and loudest supporters, chairing the “parliamentary friends of nuclear industries”.
He acknowledges that a “big slice” of the climate summit was devoted to renewable energy, and a lot of money and ambition is flowing into solar and wind.
But he said the shift in thinking on nuclear power at a global scale was clear to see………………………………..
But other Australians at the November conference say it is important not to overstate nuclear’s presence, and its place in the global net-zero effort.
Tennant Reed is the Director of Climate Change and Energy at the Ai Group, and is a veteran of COP climate summits.
He said the arrival of nuclear energy on the climate scene had certainly been noticeable……………..
He made the point that growth in nuclear power wasn’t a feature of the main negotiations at Baku, but nor was scaling up any other particular energy source.
Mr Reed said nuclear advocates were hosting events on the sidelines — and they were sensitive to one criticism in particular
“They’re all conscious — they have to show that they can deliver new projects ‘on time and on budget’,” he said.
“I must have heard that phrase 50 times from nuclear people………………………………
Mr Reed said much of the growth in nuclear power was coming from countries with established industries, and while others were expressing interest in setting up an industry, few had recently broken ground.
He said there was a much more obvious momentum in the roll-out of renewables.
“Wind and solar deployment, and especially solar at the moment, is taking off like a rocket,” he said………….Conservationists cast doubt
Some conservation groups have sought to push back on the rising prominence of nuclear power, seeing it as a threatening distraction in efforts to combat climate change.
The Australian Conservation Foundation’s Dave Sweeney was also at the COP29 conference in Baku, and cast some doubt on nuclear’s future, at least compared to renewables.
“It’s one thing to have agreements and aspirations, it’s another to have projects and power,” he said.
“The industry is having some very good rhetoric, but it’s having a very poor reality. We’ve seen 30 countries say that they will triple nuclear (power) by 2050; we’ve seen 125 say they will triple renewables by 2045.”
And he argues part of the nuclear industry’s ambition is attracting public funding, in an effort to “de-risk” its projects.
“At meeting after meeting, they’ve spoken about the need for market reforms to de-risk nuclear projects,” he said.
“I think that is very bold code for ‘no-one wants to fund us, so we’re looking for the public purse’.”
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-01-26/is-the-world-going-nuclear-hope-or-hype/104856852
Media coverage of Dutton’s nuclear ‘plan’: Scrutiny, stenography or propaganda.
By Victoria Fielding | 28 January 2025, https://independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/media-coverage-of-duttons-nuclear-plan-scrutiny-stenography-or-propaganda,19
Unsurprisingly, the conservative media has failed to scrutinise Peter Dutton’s nuclear plan, once again displaying bias towards the Coalition, writes Dr Victoria Fielding.
WHEN OPPOSITION LEADER Peter Dutton snuck his dodgy nuclear energy “plan” out just before Christmas, it was an important moment for Australian news media to demonstrate the quality of journalism they produce: scrutiny, stenography or propaganda.
It was also their opportunity to be honest with the public about why Dutton is backing nuclear power, an opportunity they unsurprisingly did not take.
I analysed 37 news reports published by the ABC, The Guardian, News Corp and Nine newspapers on 13 December 2024, the day Dutton released his long-awaited “plan” for nuclear power. I categorised each article as either scrutinising the plan (a useful form of journalism that critically assesses the viability of the nuclear policy), as stenography (just repeating Dutton’s plan without scrutiny), or as propaganda (news presented to look like news but what is actually a form of political advocacy, aiming to persuade readers to support Dutton’s nuclear plan).
Here are the results.
In what will not be surprising to anyone, propagandistic content made up the majority of News Corp’s 20 articles about Dutton’s nuclear plan, with 14 out of 20 enthusiastically supporting nuclear power as a viable energy solution for Australia.
One notable example of this propagandistic approach by News Corp was in The Australian’s editorial on the subject which clearly gave away the views of the masthead.
‘…the Opposition Leader has taken an important and brave step, setting out the economics of the issue in a context relevant to concerns about living costs, especially power bills… Frontier’s modelling shows that the Coalition’s plan, incorporating nuclear and renewables, would cost $331 billion across 25 years, 44 per cent less than Labor’s renewables approach.’
Just like much of News Corp’s propagandistic content advocating for right-wing policies and politicians, the implied suggestion that nuclear is cheaper than renewables is manipulatively deceiving.
According to Climate Council reports using CSIRO’s analysis:
‘…the cost of electricity generated from nuclear reactors by 2040 would be about $145-$238 per MWh, compared to $22-$53 for solar, and $45-$78 for wind. So that’s at least twice as much for nuclear, or up to ten times as much when comparing with the lowest-cost solar.’
Dutton and his News Corp collaborators never let facts get in the way of manipulating voters.
Next, we have stenography. Stenography is the laziest form of journalism. Rather than doing the difficult work of analysis and being a watchdog to ensure only credible information is relayed to voters, stenographers just repeat what a politician has said, uncritically.
This has the effect of allowing manipulative politicians like Dutton to put information in the public domain which is false and/or misleading. Stenography is actually the opposite of what of journalism is meant to be.
Nine’s newspapers published six articles which just lazily repeated Dutton’s nonsensical nuclear plan, giving it undue credibility and failing to adequately scrutinise it.
For example, Phillip Coorey in the Australian Financial Review authored a piece originally titled ‘New costings signal war over energy’, which starts with the sentence:
‘The Coalition’s nuclear power plan will cost up to $263 billion less than Labor’s renewable rollout between now and 2050, translating into cheaper electricity over the long run, its long-awaited economic modelling purports.’
Coorey would no doubt claim that he is not responsible for any manipulative or misleading content he has included in his article, because he is just reporting what Dutton said. But that is exactly the problem with stenography. Although it is not as bad as News Corp’s overt propagandist style, it still gives Dutton a platform to mislead the newspaper’s audience.
The only useful form of journalism out of the three categories is scrutiny. Indeed, the whole point of political journalism is to scrutinise politicians and policies to ensure voters are not misled and have useful information in which to make an informed decision when voting. All four outlets included at least some articles with extensive scrutiny of Dutton’s nuclear plan. News Corp had five and Nine published three.
The ABC (four articles) and The Guardian (three) were the only two outlets to only present Dutton’s nuclear policy alongside critical analysis.
One shining example of scrutiny from The Guardian’s Graham Readfearn and Josh Butler’s explainer, titled ‘The glaring gaps and unanswered questions in the Coalition’s nuclear plan and costings’, methodically lays out the facts and problems with Dutton’s plans — including the true higher cost comparison with renewables and the huge amount of time it would take nuclear to come online.
The ABC and The Guardian’s useful critique of Dutton’s plan is exactly the information that voters need to accurately appraise whether Dutton’s nuclear policy is beneficial to them and their community. No doubt News Corp and Nine would claim that this scrutiny just shows the ABC and The Guardian are “left wing”, but it shows no such thing. The ABC and The Guardian are doing a public service in scrutinising a major policy announcement and providing factual analysis comparing the real costs of nuclear and renewable energy.
If a left-wing party announced a different energy policy, they would do exactly the same thing. It is called public interest journalism.
Unfortunately, however, this is not the end of the story. There was one major element of Dutton’s nuclear policy which was only included in one of the 37 news reports I analysed — the motive behind Dutton’s nuclear push. This was included in The Guardian’s Readfearn and Butler explainer, albeit only in two after-thought quotes at the end of the piece.
Under the sub-title ‘How have critics responded?’ The Greens’ Adam Bandt was reported to have said “the nuclear strategy relied on extending the life of fossil fuels”. The Australia Institute’s Rod Campbell similarly said the nuclear plan was a “distraction to prolong fossil fuel use and exports”.
Disappointingly, no articles overtly pointed out to the public that the whole point of Dutton’s nuclear policy was to undermine investment in renewable energy, unsettling the transition to a low carbon economy, to slow down efforts to address climate change, all in aid of fossil fuel and mining billionaires. This exclusion is not just a small part of the story of Dutton’s nuclear policy, it is the story.
This truth, unfortunately, is the story journalists collectively have failed to tell.
Geoscience Australia declares Darwin, Latrobe Valley high-risk earthquake zones
The Age By William Howard, 29 Jan 25
In short:
Darwin and Victoria’s Latrobe Valley have been identified as high-risk earthquake zones.
The National Seismic Hazard Assessment has been updated for the first time since 2018.
What’s next?
The Coalition has earmarked the Latrobe Valley as a potential site for a nuclear reactor if it wins the election, which is a concern for some residents.
…………………………………….In an update to the National Seismic Hazard Assessment, Geoscience Australia identified the Latrobe Valley and Darwin as the only two areas in Australia with a “higher risk of strong ground shaking”.
The Woods Point quake, centred about 130 kilometres east of Melbourne and 125km south of Ms Cox’s Traralgon South home, was the largest onshore event of its kind in the state’s modern history.
There were more than 43,000 reports from the public and the earthquake was felt in parts of New South Wales, South Australia, Tasmania, and the Australian Capital Territory. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-01-30/darwin-and-latrobe-valley-high-risk-earthquake-zones/104873178
Dutton’s atomic power bill for a ‘nuclear family’ could be nearly $39K
By Steve Bishop | 28 January 2025, https://independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/duttons-atomic-power-bill-for-a-nuclear-family-could-be-nearly-39k,19381
The Dutton nuclear power plan will cost about $264 billion if the type of reactor extolled by Shadow Energy Minister Ted O’Brien is adopted.
That’s equivalent to more than $9,700 for every man, woman and child in Australia — and $38,800 for the proverbial “nuclear family”.
The costings are simple.
Opposition Leader Peter Dutton announced on 13 December:
‘By 2050, our plan will deliver up to 14 GW of nuclear energy, guaranteeing consistent and stable electricity for all Australians.’
O’Brien even produced a video highlighting the virtues of the Bill Gates-backed Natrium reactor, which provides 345 megawatts of power and is costing US$4 billion (AU$6.45 billion) for the first one being built in Wyoming by TerraPower.
Forty-one of the reactors would be needed to produce the promised 14GW of nuclear power at a cost of $264.45 billion.
Australia has an estimated population of 27.2 million, giving a total of $9,724 for every man, woman and child.
Mr Dutton has made it plain he is opposed to big nuclear facilities and the Natrium small modular reactor (SMR) reactor meshes with his pledge to ‘place the latest zero emission nuclear technologies on the sites of seven retiring coal-fired power plants’.
Another reactor that falls within his pledge to use the latest technologies is the Rolls Royce UK SMR 470 MWe which could cost between £3 billion and £4 billion (AU$5.9-7.9 billion) apiece.
Even the lower estimate of £3 billion equates to $5.9 billion. Thirty of them would be needed to meet the 14GW target, at a cost of $176.7 billion.
But Nuclear Consulting Group chairman Paul Dorfman has warned that because the Rolls Royce reactor is more than 50 per cent bigger than an SMR it “will need big sites, standard nuclear safety measures, exclusion zones, core catchers, aircraft crash protection and security”.
Ontario and the Tennessee Valley Authority are planning to use the innovative GE Hitachi BWRX-300 reactor but it has been reported that planning documents reveal a cost of around US$5.4 billion (AU$8.6 billion), amounting to a cost of $369 billion for the 43 needed to produce 14KW of power.
Another new SMR is the Westinghouse AP300 SMR.
An order for four of the reactors has been placed in the UK for the Tees Valley with the Daily Express reporting:
‘The four reactors would cost £10 billion and generate 1.2 gigawatts of power, enough for 1.6 million homes.’
That’s £2.5 billion each, or AU$4.91 billion. Forty-three would be needed to meet the LNP target of 14GW — costing $211 billion. But this does not factor in the sort of cost blow-out experienced with other SMRs.
Mr Dutton was asked by ABC journalist Bridget Brennan in June:
“So, surely Australians need to know right now how much this is going to cost? Is it going to be as much as $16 billion per site?”
The answer is very much more expensive — more than $35 billion for each of the seven sites if Ted O’Brien’s preferred Natrium reactor is adopted.
Former Miss America’s Australian nuclear tour clouded by Chinese AI blow to her employer
Royce Kurmelovs, Jan 30, 2025, https://reneweconomy.com.au/former-miss-americas-australian-nuclear-tour-clouded-by-chinese-ai-blow-to-her-employer/
Miss America 2023 winner Grace Stanke has begun her Australian tour to promote nuclear power, just as the US energy giant that employs her has taken a big market hit after Chinese company DeepSeek claimed to have found a cheaper way to make AI.
Stanke, who flew into Perth on Wednesday, is a nuclear engineer who works in public relations for Constellation to promote nuclear technology, and has been brought out for an Australian tour by campaign group Nuclear For Australia in an attempt to drum up local support for the technology.
Nuclear For Australia is nominally headed by 18-year-old Will Shackel. But Stanke’s tour has reportedly been bankrolled by Australian businessman Dick Smith, who also provided the funding to establish the group.
The tour comes amid an aggressive expansion drive by Constellation, which holds a suite of nuclear and fossil fuel assets. According to the company’s 2024 Sustainability Report, nuclear makes up 67% of its generation capacity, with natural gas and oil making up 25% and renewables and storage accounting for 8%.
Constellation has increasingly been looking to capitalise on the development of AI as a driver in future electricity demand that it hopes to meet with nuclear power.
In September last year the company announced it would buy the Three Mile End nuclear facility under a deal to supply Microsoft with power to run its AI data centres.
Earlier in January, Constellation bought out rival Calvine for $US 27 billion, a move that meant it acquired the company’s gas-plants.
As gas-peaking plants currently help smooth out spikes in the wholesale electricity market by turning on during periods of high demand — at the expense of nuclear generators — the acquisition potentially gives Constellation greater influence over wholesale prices.
Late last week, President Donald Trump announced the US would pour $US 500 billion into AI development in what has been described as an “arms race” with China, a decision welcomed by Constellation CEO Joe Dominguez.
“President Trump is right that sustaining and enhancing America’s global AI dominance goes hand in hand with reliable, abundant American electricity,” he said. “Data center developers, generators, utilities, and other stakeholders should continue to work together to accomplish the President’s goals on behalf of the American people.”
On Tuesday, however, the assumption that power-hungry chipsets needed to train and run AI data centres would continue to drive demand for “clean” nuclear power ran into a wall.
Chinese firm DeepSeek announced it developed an open large-language model (LLM) that provides roughly the same service as ChatGPT with a smaller team and a fraction of the hardware as their US counterparts.
With the Chinese market subject to sanctions that limit access to the full-power graphics processing units (GPUs) needed to build their own models, the company was forced to find a workaround to do more with less.
These GPUs perform the calculations needed to drive LLMs and are manufactured by chipmaker Nvidia that was, until Wednesday, considered the world’s most valuable publicly-traded company with a market cap of $3.45 trillion. That changed with the latest news from DeepSeek.
In December, DeepSeek claimed it cost (USD) $5.6m and two months to develop its V3 model – a portion of what it cost to create ChatGPT. The accuracy of this figure, however, is questionable as the price of electricity is unknown.
Last week the company released the full version of its R1 model that it said is 30-times cheaper to run than equivalent models produced by US competitors such as OpenAI. The company has not released the training data, but has published papers outlining its methods, effectively allowing anyone to take DeepSeek work and expand upon it for free.
The announcement of a cheaper, less-demanding model triggered a massive 17% drop in Nvidia shares — wiping off $USD593bn, and knocked 20 per cent off the price of Constellation shares. By Thursday Constellation’s performance had partially recovered but not nearly enough to make up for Tuesday’s losses.
These events coincide with the arrival of 22-year-old Stanke, now a pro-nuclear influencer, in Australia to help local campaigns sell the technology to the Australian public.
Her tour includes appearances in Perth, Brisbane, Melbourne, Adelaide and Sydney, a parliamentary briefing and appearances at private events, including a community meeting in Lithgow, New South Wales.
The town selection is interesting as it has been a flashpoint for an anti-wind and anti-renewables campaign and has traditionally been a strong Nationals stronghold.
Lithgow falls within the federal seat of Calare which is currently held by federal independent Andrew Gee, who resigned from the National Party in 2022 over its opposition to the Indigenous Voice to Parliament.
Australia’s new chief scientist open to nuclear power but focused on energy forms available ‘right now’
Prof Tony Haymet says nuclear industry will need to ‘rebuild their social licence’ while noting solar and wind are ‘incredibly cheap’.
Josh Butler, Guardian 28th Jan 2025 –
Australia’s new chief scientist has said he is open to the prospect of nuclear power playing a role in the country’s energy mix, but remained focused on forms of energy that were “available to help us right now”.
On his first day in the job, Prof Tony Haymet said new energy-intensive technologies like artificial intelligence could be powered by renewables, but that he thought serious discussions about nuclear in Australia were likely to be years away.
“If you go back and look at Chernobyl and Three Mile Island and so on, there wasn’t enough transparency and openness. I think the nuclear industry has accepted the fact that they have to rebuild their social licence to operate,” Haymet told a press conference when asked about small modular reactors (SMRs).
“You know, for the next chief scientist in 2030 or 2040, I think you can re-ask your question.”
Haymet said Australia shouldn’t “rule out any energy source” but said new technologies, like AI datacentres, would require much more power in the short term.
“So I’m looking at the slate of energies that are going to be available to help us right now. If we wait until we perfect wave energy or nuclear fusion, or some other source of power, we’re going to miss the bus,” he said……………………………………….
The CSIRO’s GenCost report in December reaffirmed that electricity from nuclear energy in Australia would be at least 50% more expensive than power from solar and wind, backed up with storage. Electricity from SMRs would be significantly more expensive again, with the report rejecting opposition claims that nuclear power plants could be developed in Australia in less than 15 years.
The former chair of the Antarctic Science Foundation and high-level working groups on climate change, Haymet has also held senior roles at the CSIRO, with a particular focus on oceans.
Amid a heated debate on nuclear energy, sparked by the Coalition’s pledge to build conventional large reactors and SMRs – a developing technology that does not exist anywhere on a commercial basis – Dutton and his shadow ministers have been strongly critical of scientific reports and experts who have cast doubt on the viability of an Australian nuclear power industry.
Energy experts have noted the Coalition’s modelling forecasts much lower consumption of energy in Australia than Labor’s renewables-focused energy policy, which the treasurer, Jim Chalmers, claimed would see a $4tn hit to Australia’s economy. The Coalition modelling does not forecast a reduction in power bills and the Coalition senator Matt Canavan admitted the plan was “unachievable”.
At the press conference alongside the science minister, Ed Husic, Haymet strongly backed his former colleagues in the CSIRO.
“You may not be surprised to hear that I think the CSIRO report is a very fine piece of work. I don’t know of any mistakes in it, and if you do, please let me know. Having been inside CSIRO, I see the care and the diligence that goes into these reports,” he said. https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2025/jan/28/australia-nuclear-power-plan-tony-haymet-chief-scientist
Miss America and nuclear engineer Grace Stanke will be travelling around Australia with a host of other nuclear experts as a part of the National Nuclear Tour.
COMMENT. As I have predicted, the media emphasis is on “Miss America”, and the propaganda is so shallow as to be laughable. (Despite her obvious intelligence, Ms Stanke is not asked to say anything really sensible).
The tour is hoping to improve the public perception around nuclear science.
Grace Stanke told Peter Fegan on 4BC Breakfast, “I think nuclear energy and nuclear science as a whole is seen as some weird, unknown science that you have to spend 20 years in school to even so much as break into the industry, but that’s not the case.”
“Nuclear science is all around us, it’s in our homes. If you like bananas, you’re actually ingesting some radiation, smoke detectors use some nuclear technology.”
“All of these things that are part of our daily lives, so imagine how much more good nuclear science could do if we fully embrace this technology.”
1 This month
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