Achieving net zero by 2050 is non-negotiable. Australia and our global partners have agreed to targets that limit warming and maximise the chance to avoid the worst impacts of climate change, such as more natural disasters, rising sea levels, and species and habitat loss.
But the pathway to decarbonisation matters too. Cutting greenhouse gas emissions as far and fast as possible now can reduce the amount of temperature rise experienced in the years ahead and help curb the risks to our economy, communities and way of life.
That’s one reason why accelerating work to create a new electricity network built on renewables such as wind and solar – backed by storage, firming and peaking gas – is essential.
It’s the biggest abatement opportunity available in the short term and the most cost-effective form of new energy generation needed to underpin progress on decarbonisation across the rest of the economy. And the race to pull forward investment in renewable energy generation is on because the owners of existing coal-fired power stations have begun to close them.
The first shutdown occurred at Lake Munmorah, NSW, in 2012, and more have since exited the system. It’s now expected that 90 per cent of the existing coal-fired generation capacity will depart the system by 2035.
Against this backdrop, the Climate Change Authority will undertake analysis of the Coalition’s nuclear proposal. We want to give the Australian people an economic and science-based understanding of the impacts on the grid, the climate and their energy bills. But at first glance, Peter Dutton’s nuclear policy stops decarbonisation, blows the carbon budget, punishes consumers and harms the economy.
Under any scenario contemplated, Australia will be more dependent on coal-fired power stations for longer. The CSIRO says the best case for delivery of a single new nuclear facility in Australia is 15 years. And that assumes the legislative, regulatory, workforce and other issues can be resolved – and the cost blowouts and time delays witnessed overseas aren’t repeated.
Yet to replace all of Australia’s confirmed retiring generation capacity with nuclear as a zero-emission alternative would require deploying at least 15 to 17 large-scale nuclear facilities, or more than 50 proposed small modular reactors, by 2040. In the meantime, Australia will need to depend on coal-fired power that is increasingly unreliable and the cause of price spikes and blackouts. It would be strange to subsidise the ongoing operation of plants that can’t be guaranteed to actually keep the lights on.
It also compounds the challenge of reducing our emissions in the short and long term. Relying primarily on electricity from fossil fuels for longer would also delay necessary and achievable cuts to emissions in other sectors such as transport and industry, which depend on the availability of zero emission energy for their own decarbonisation pathways
The authority has calculated that for every percentage point that Australia falls short of achieving 82 per cent by renewables by 2030, about 2 million tonnes of harmful emissions will be added to the atmosphere.
The other element the authority will consider is cost – to the economy, taxpayers and consumers. For example, the proposal doesn’t just appear to slow decarbonisation, but the economy too. Some initial forecasts have already suggested it assumes an economy 40 per cent smaller than the alternative.
Assuming there will be far less demand for electricity means assuming far fewer Australians take up EVs or electrify their homes. It means assuming fewer industrial and manufacturing businesses switch to efficient, electric production processes.
The sensitivities are heightened given the proposal involves taxpayers funding nuclear power stations, which risks sending private investment now attracted to renewables offshore in pursuit of better returns.
The CSIRO, AEMO and the authority have all also made the point – a system built on renewables will lead to lower power prices for households and businesses compared with nuclear. It would take an astonishing leap of faith to suggest otherwise, but the modelling published last week in support of nuclear seemed to take that path.
The debate over Australia’s energy transition should be based on sober analysis, rooted in economics and engineering. It’s why markets, scientists and experts keep defaulting to a system based on renewables.
Alternatives that place faith in a technology that does not exist in Australia, risks slowing our economy, undermining energy security and stalling our bid to reduce emissions deserve scrutiny. That’s what the Climate Change Authority will do.
Matt Kean is chair of the Climate Change Authority. He previously served as a NSW minister for energy.
the Coalition documents released on Friday don’t seem to get around to mentioning is that its proposal for nuclear power involves taxpayers taking on all the massive financial risks (apart from the other sorts) and costs.
The August 2010 federal election campaign was conducted amid continuing shock waves from the Julia Gillard coup against Kevin Rudd a little less than two months earlier.
So, you may be forgiven for forgetting much that happened in the actual campaign, and specifically, how the federal Coalition didn’t bother releasing the costings of its election promises until just 48 hours before voters went to the polls.
It had already refused to submit the policy promises for independent analysis — which in those days was done by Treasury and the Department of Finance rather than the Parliamentary Budget Office.
That refusal might not have mattered too much to the broad sweep of history if the election result had been different. But a knife-edge result left three crossbench House of Representatives MPs to make the call on which side of politics would get their support and, therefore, be able to form government.
In making their decision the “Three Amigos” — Tony Windsor, Bob Katter and the subsequently infamously loquacious Rob Oakeshott — relied heavily on a Treasury and Finance analysis requested by them post-election.
Its findings? That the Coalition’s claimed budget savings were out by almost $11 billion. In the current age of announcements measured in the hundreds of billions of dollars, that might not sound like a lot.
But given that the claimed cost of Coalition policies was originally only $31.5 billion, that’s a rather spectacular …. miscalculation.
It felt for all the world like the work of an ill-prepared, lazy opposition that thought it could coast to office amid the chaos of a dysfunctional government. And it almost did.
A perfectly timed announcement
There’s something spookily familiar about the circumstances now, as the opposition finally unveiled its much-promised nuclear energy costings on a Friday one week before the country closes down entirely for Christmas.
There may be a lot more detailed modelling in the document prepared by Frontier Economics for the Coalition than there was in 2010.
But the modelling, and more importantly the Coalition’s political message wrapped around it, doesn’t answer the myriad of questions raised by the idea of nuclear energy. And this belated release of what we are led to believe is a signature policy for the election comes as the Coalition still hasn’t released details of most of its other key policies — from tax to immigration.
The decision to release the costing on December 13 feels like the Coalition is once again playing voters for mugs at a time when it is up against a federal government that has spent the year apparently determined to prove it is not very good at politics, or persuading voters that it knows what it is doing.
The Frontier modelling does implicitly raise important questions about the government’s own energy plans: just how much coal-fired power will the system need as we move towards a system that is dominated by renewables, and for how long?; how much gas will be needed (and is it in the right place) to be used to “firm” or underwrite the system?; how much can we really rely on battery technology that is still evolving to store renewables? and just how much transmission infrastructure do we need (and where) for a mostly renewables future?
The government has “sort of” answered these questions. Most analysts will tell you that it is almost impossible to answer them precisely because the wheel is still in spin. Prices and technologies are changing.
But, up against an opposition leader who is better at cut-through messages, it will need to do a lot better than that.
Crucial to the political debate is the fact that much of the uncertainty around these decisions arises because they are being made by individual investors who are taking on all the risks in building new energy capacity.
And this must surely be the threshold point of difference with what the federal Coalition is proposing.
For the one thing that the Coalition documents released on Friday don’t seem to get around to mentioning is that its proposal for nuclear power involves taxpayers taking on all the massive financial risks (apart from the other sorts) and costs.
The Coalition wants this big shift to be overseen by a public sector which it usually loves to point out is notoriously bad at running big projects, either directly or via massive subsidies.
The nuclear divide
The electorate is a lot more disengaged than it was in 2010, but the politically dangerous part of the nuclear policy from the government’s perspective is how it plays to regional Australia and, a bit like Brexit, likely divides the country into two very different blocks of voters.
Many regional voters, most pollsters will tell you, are worried about job losses as coal mining disappears, are unconvinced renewables offer job replacements, and are very exercised about the proliferation of wind and solar farms, and by the transmission lines to link them to the grid.
Earlier talk of small nuclear reactors has disappeared from the model set out using the Frontier modelling, and that modelling doesn’t seem to make provision for the fact that there are usually high costs for a first build, or that most expert opinion says it will take until at least 2040 to have the regulatory system and build in place for a first nuclear reactor to be functional, not 2036………………………………………………………………..
The Coalition has been pledging all year that its plans would lead to lower energy prices for stressed households.
But Peter Dutton had to sidestep on that issue on Friday because there is no clear mechanism for his plans to bring down those costs any time soon.
All the energy experts will be poring over the details for days. One could say they would be poring over them for weeks but (almost as if it was planned that way) the media coverage and the debate seem likely to come to a screeching stop in a week’s time as everything shuts down for Christmas.
Like the 2010 election costings, not many voters may remember the details of any analysis.
But the Coalition will have to be hoping there is no political equivalent of the Three Amigos to answer to this side of the 2025 election.
The signature [nuclear] Coalition policy for the 2025 election will be a huge government-owned energy monolith.
The overall costs will be borne by taxpayers because the publicly owned reactors will bear them. But the overall profits will be made by the private sector which will queue up for the construction contracts and whose profits will balloon as the costs of construction inevitably and uncontrollably blow out.
the real aim of the exercise is not to produce the cleanest energy at the lowest cost, but to keep the profits of the fossil industry flowing for as long as possible.
Crispin Hull, 17 Dec 24
Opposition Leader Peter Dutton’s announcement on nuclear energy last week contained a welcome development. For the first time since about 1989, the Coalition has acknowledged that only governments can do some of the really big-ticket items.
Since about 1990, the Coalition has said, Private Sector Good, Public Sector Bad. But with the program to build seven nuclear power stations, the Coalition acknowledges that only the public sector can do it.
The publication of Fightback! by then Opposition Leader John Hewson in 1992 was the touchstone of conservative policy: the private sector was more efficient and could do things quicker and better than the great big bloated public sector full of lazy, box-ticking public servants. Taxpayers and consumers would be much better off, they argued.
If you can find it in the Yellow Pages, they said, buy it there. Or these days, Google it. Don’t let the Government do it, they said. The Government is not the solution to the problem. The Government is the problem, as Ronald Reagan said. Get government out of the way, and the private sector will provide the solution.
So, what has happened now? The signature Coalition policy for the 2025 election will be a huge government-owned energy monolith.
Gulp.
That will require the unlearning of three decades of conservative policy.As it happens, though, much of that policy was a cruel hoax. Far from being cheaper and more efficient, the neo-liberal conservatives did not – to use market parlance – factor in two critical elements of private-sector contracting: fraud and profit gouging.
Since about 1990 in Australia we have seen, through privatisation, a major shift of wealth and income up to the top two percentiles at the cost of people on middle income. From employees and small business to the managers and shareholders of big business.
In the 1990s, the neo-liberals (read, the Coalition) harped on about reducing the role of government, particularly government spending. It did not happen. Government spending remained at 38 percent throughout the 1990s’ privatisations and downsizing. All that happened was that the spending went from public health, education, and welfare into subsidies and tax breaks for the fossil-fuel industry, other big corporates, and private health, education and other providers.
Public spending remained stubbornly the same.
It will be the same with the nuclear reactors. The overall costs will be borne by taxpayers because the publicly owned reactors will bear them. But the overall profits will be made by the private sector which will queue up for the construction contracts and whose profits will balloon as the costs of construction inevitably and uncontrollably blow out.
Importantly, even though the Coalition is going for a massive program of government spending and ownership for its nuclear reactors, it has relied on a private firm of economists to do the costings. Surely, if such a massive spend and risk is to be undertaken by the public sector, you would want the public sector to do the costings.
As it happens, we have that. The CSIRO has costed and re-costed nuclear energy and come up with the same result: higher electricity bills and greater dangerous carbon emissions.
The private-sector costings, on the other hand, look like an exercise in: “These are the conclusions upon which we have based our facts.”
This is because the real aim of the exercise is not to produce the cleanest energy at the lowest cost, but to keep the profits of the fossil industry flowing for as long as possible.
However, it is an electorally risky exercise. Not because a generally financially illiterate electorate will see nuclear as a white elephant, but rather because an ever-growing portion of the electorate has rooftop solar and know it pays off.
Further, in the unlikely event that nuclear goes ahead there will be times when the grid has too much power and domestic solar generators will be blocked from exporting their product to the grid because nuclear power stations cannot be turned on and off without enormous cost and difficulty.
That is going to annoy the owners of four million rooftop solar systems. It would be about as popular as taking away Medicare.
The electoral dynamics for nuclear are made worse for the Coalition because more than three million of those solar systems are on the roofs of stand-alone houses – in the very suburbs and regions which the Coalition hopes to take from Labor. That is about six million voters in an electorate of 18 million.
Moreover, those six million voters are proselytising about the value of solar, and lots of tenants and unit holders – hitherto shut out of solar – want to get a slice of the action sooner rather than later.
The big trouble with nuclear is spending vast amounts of public money with no electricity generation for at least a decade, more likely a lot more. Whereas every bit of renewable infrastructure generates from Day 1 and every battery stores from Day 1. Voters prefer the here-and-now to spending on something they might never see.
Nuclear is a matured industry. It not going to get much more efficient, if at all. Whereas the efficiency of solar, wind, and batteries continues on an upward trajectory well beyond previous expectations.
When you add electric vehicles, the renewables pay for themselves very quickly.
The task for Australia now is to reduce our reliance on our $30 billion a year of imported oil. And to reduce our reliance on $30 billion a year of thermal coal exports before the world does it for us. These are energy and national-security issues.
The Coalition’s decades-long nuclear program and Labor’s continued approval of coal mines fail to meet the urgency and magnitude of the national-security risks arising from climate change and fossil-fuel reliance.
A government’s first priority should be national security: not just from the threat of arms but the threats of disasters and supply-chain disruption.
We need politicians who think about the long-term security of their people not the short-term profits of big corporations and the donations which come from them.
Here are the facts re SMRs. Basically there are three types which generate less than 300 megawatts of electricity compared with current day 1000 megawatt reactors.
Light water reactors designs – these will be smaller versions of present-day pressurized water reactors using water as the moderator and coolant but with the same attendant problems as Fukushima and Three Mile Island. Built underground, they will be difficult to access in the event of an accident or malfunction.
SMRs will be expensive because the cost per unit capacity increases with decrease in reactor size. Billions of dollars of government subsidies will be required because Wall Street is allergic to nuclear power. To alleviate costs, it is suggested that safety rules be relaxed including reducing security requirements and a reduction in the 10 mile emergency planning zone to 1000 feet.
SMRs will be expensive because the cost per unit capacity increases with decrease in reactor size. Billions of dollars of government subsidies will be required because Wall Street is allergic to nuclear power. To alleviate costs, it is suggested that safety rules be relaxed including reducing security requirements and a reduction in the 10 mile emergency planning zone to 1000 feet.
High-temperature gas cooled reactors HTGR or pebble bed reactors. Five billion tiny fuel kernels consisting of high-enriched uranium or plutonium will be encased in tennis-ball-sized graphite spheres which must be made without cracks or imperfections –or they could lead to an accident. A total of 450,000 such spheres will slowly and continuously be released from a fuel silo, passing through the reactor core, and then re-circulated ten times. These reactors will be cooled by helium gas operating at high very temperatures (900 C).
A reactor complex consisting of four HTGR modules will be located underground, to be run by just two operators in a central control room. Claims are that HTGRs will be so safe that a containment building will be unnecessary and operators can even leave the site – “walk away safe” reactors.
However should temperatures unexpectedly exceed 1600 C the carbon coating will release dangerous radioactive isotopes into the helium gas, and at 2000C the carbon would ignite creating a fierce graphite Chernobyl-type fire.
If a crack develops in the piping or building, radioactive helium would escape, and air would rush in, also igniting the graphite.
Although HTGRs produce small amounts of low level waste they create larger volumes of high level waste than conventional reactors.
Despite these obvious safety problems and despite the fact that South Africa has abandoned plans for HTGRs, the US Department of Energy has unwisely chosen the HTGR as the “Next Generation Nuclear Plant”.
Liquid metal fast reactors (PRISM) It is claimed by proponents that fast reactors will be safe, economically competitive, proliferation resistant, and sustainable.
Fueled by plutonium or highly enriched uranium, and cooled by either liquid sodium, or a lead-bismuth molten coolant. Liquid sodium burns or explodes when exposed to air or water and lead-bismuth is extremely corrosive producing very volatile radioactive elements when irradiated.
Should a crack occur in the reactor complex, liquid sodium would escape, burning or exploding. Without coolant, the plutonium fuel could reach critical mass, triggering a massive nuclear explosion scattering plutonium to the four winds. One millionth of a gram of plutonium induces cancer and it lasts for 500,000 years. Extraordinarily, claims are that fast reactors will be so safe they will require no emergency sirens and emergency planning zones can be decreased from 10 miles to 1300 ft.
There are two types of fast reactors, a simple plutonium fueled reactor and a “breeder” in which the plutonium reactor core is surrounded by a blanket of uranium 238 which captures neutrons and converts to plutonium.
The plutonium fuel, obtained from spent reactor fuel will be fissioned and converted to shorter lived isotopes – cesium and strontium which last 600 years instead of 500,000. Called “transmutation”, the industry claims that this is an excellent way to get rid of plutonium waste. But this is fallacious, because only 10% fissions leaving 90% of the plutonium for bomb making etc.
Construction. Three small plutonium fast reactors will be grouped together to form a module and three of these modules will be buried underground. All nine reactors will then be connected to a fully automated central control room operated by only three operators. Potentially then, one operator could simultaneously face a catastrophic situation triggered by loss of off-site power to one unit at full power, in another shut down for refueling and one in start-up mode. There are to be no emergency core cooling systems.
Fast reactors require a massive infrastructure including a reprocessing plant to dissolve radioactive waste fuel rods in nitric acid, chemically removing the plutonium and a fuel fabrication facility to create new fuel rods. A total of 10,160 kilos of plutonium is required to operate a fuel cycle at a fast reactor and just 2.5 kilos is fuel for a nuclear weapon.
Thus fast reactors and breeders will provide extraordinary long-term medical dangers and the perfect situation for nuclear weapons proliferation. Despite this, the industry is clearly trying to market them to many countries including it seems, Australia.
Despite a clever comms strategy, there are significant credibility issues around the assumptions on which the cost estimates are based.
The Coalition has moved a considerable way on climate and energy since Scott Morrisson brought a lump of coal into the parliament and told us not to be afraid. On Friday, the Coalition finally released the long-awaited details of the nuclear plan it will take to the election and, once again, asks us not to be afraid – of the price tag, the higher climate pollution and a range of other variables.
However, despite a clever comms strategy, there are significant credibility issues around the assumptions on which the cost estimates are based, and there are other critical issues that have been left unanswered. Australians have a right to consider all the issues they are being asked to vote on, with facts rather than political rhetoric. These issues can be broadly listed under three headings: the economics, the environment and the law.
The Coalition makes the point that many countries use nuclear power. It is true that 9% of global energy capacity comes from nuclear power, which the International Energy Agency (IEA) estimates could increase to about 11% if and when planned projects come online. But the world is voting with its feet, with the IEA reporting that around the world 560GW of new renewable power was installed in 2023, compared with 7.1GW of new nuclear. At COP29 in Baku this year, the conversations were not about whether to invest in renewables, but how to roll them out faster.
The primary reason the world is not embracing nuclear energy on a grand scale is simple: cost (although in Japan’s case, it’s also about safety).
The Frontier Economics report, which the Coalition is using to make its case, is written in an opaque way that makes direct comparisons difficult. Essentially, the report admits that the capital cost of nuclear is $10,000/kW, while solar and wind are $1,800 and $2,500 respectively.
So how is it that the Coalition’s modelling suggests that a world where nuclear makes up more than a third of the east coast energy grid could possibly be cheaper?
It’s easy to come up with the answer you want when you base your modelling on rubbery assumptions.
Firstly, we should appreciate that even a $10,000/kW estimate for nuclear is considerably optimistic if we look at the experience of comparable countries over the past decade. The cost at the off-cited Hinkley C plant in the UK has, to date, risen to $27,515/kW. Three others – France (Flamanville 3), Finland (Olkilutoto 3) and the US (Vogtle) – are between $15,000 and $16,900.
Delays have been a key factor in driving up the cost of nuclear power. The longer it takes to build and operate a plant, the higher the cost of finance. The Coalition believes we can overturn national and state legislation and acquire land and planning approvals virtually overnight. And then we’ll just install an ‘off-the-shelf’ nuclear power plant, ready to run.
By its own admission, having to tweak nuclear power plants so they operate at maximum safety and efficiency can blow out build times and costs. It beggars belief that the Coalition claims Australia, which has no nuclear energy capability, could ship, build and integrate into the grid with no challenges, with a 50,000-strong nuclear workforce appearing by magic.
There is no mention of the costs of extending the life of existing ageing coal-fired power stations, or the likelihood that these plants will increasingly fail as they reach end-of-life, raising energy costs as supply falls short and, increasingly, the likelihood of blackouts. And, apparently, nuclear waste can be transported and stored without cost
The Coalition also argues that, because wind and solar energy are not always “on”, we’ll need to build a lot more capacity, along with transmission and storage. It calls this “overbuild”, but its assumptions have overegged what that need might realistically look like, especially as battery storage becomes cheaper over time (unlike the experience of nuclear) and of longer duration.
Finally, to arrive at these rose-tinted costs, the Coalition has had to cut back on estimates of the amount of energy we will demand over the next two decades by almost half what the Australian Energy Market Operator says we need. That’s because it’s assumed we won’t worry about EVs or electrification. This is why the Coalition will undo Australia’s 2030 43% emissions reduction target, which we are set to get very close to, taking us back to our Morrison-era status of global climate pariah.
And this is the kicker. Under the Coalition’s plan, our modelling shows Australia’s domestic emissions will rise by around one billion – yes billion – tonnes, at a cost of $240bn to the economy, society and environment, based on Infrastructure Australia’s cost of carbon methodology.
The Coalition’s track record on climate and energy has always been poor. In this latest iteration supporting nuclear power, its credentials have been further diminished on climate, energy and the economy.
Nicki Hutley is an independent economist and councillor with the Climate Council
Peter Dutton’s steady progress away from the traditions of his own party continued in Friday’s nuclear policy costings, one of the more disingenuous documents foisted on Australians by either party for quite some time.
Given that the job of the Coalition and Frontier Economics was to invent a set of numbers to claim that a build-from-scratch nuclear power industry would be cheaper than renewables with storage — when the objective truth is the latter is far cheaper — it’s unsurprising the modelling was so shambolic…………………………….. (Subscribers only )https://www.crikey.com.au/2024/12/16/peter-dutton-nuclear-plan-costing-fossil-fuels-coal-economy/
Comments about Ted O’Brien’s (Opposition energy spokesperson) disrespectful and dishonest questioning of witnesses during the hearings of the Inquiry into nuclear power generation in Australia. Maybe these comments could even be useful to future witnesses, if they were forewarned.
At today’s hearing in Lithgow one of the witnesses started to call him out. This is the first time that I can remember anyone really challenging him. It would be helpful if he was called out more clearly, ideally in a way that strikes at the heart of his dishonesty. Make it hard for him to use these tactics.
He regularly asks questions along the following lines:
“Have you read such and such a report?” (99% of the time the witnesses have not.) He then quotes or paraphrases (or misrepresents) something out of the report and asks the witness to answer “Yes” or “No” to some loaded proposition. When the witness doesn’t give him the Yes/No answer he wants, he interrupts them and insists that they answer Yes or No. Loaded questions might be along the following lines:
Based on this report, would you agree that nuclear is a viable option?
Or
Do you think you know better than the [unquestionably authoritative] author of this report?
(These are not direct quotes, just the general gist. See below for a specific example.)
This approach is disrespectful, because it is unreasonable to expect witnesses to have read every official report that O’Brien chooses to use (or misuse) to back up his position. Of course, O’Brien knows they haven’t read the report.
It is also disrespectful, because it is generally used for the purpose of making a fool of the witness in order to destroy their credibility.
It is dishonest, because he quotes or paraphrases the reports selectively, out of context, and probably misrepresents the reports.
An example from today’s hearing in Lithgow (11/12/2024) illustrates the point. It can be heard from 1.24.55 on the following link:
These two witnesses stood up for themselves, but on many other occasions throughout these hearings, the witnesses have been left looking silly, even though the fault is with O’Brien’s dishonest approach. (Note that a similar approach is used by Coalition “Supplementary Member” of the Inquiry, Simon Kennedy.)
Ted O’Brien: “My question was going to go to your comments on the timing for the construction of those plants — Generation 3, Generation 3+. And my question is, Do you recognise the experience of the International Atomic Energy Agency with respect to advice on the timing of introducing nuclear energy to new nations? And also the experience and authority of ANSTO, the government’s nuclear technology advisers, when it comes to the construction of nuclear power plants?”
Geoffrey Miell (retired mechanical engineer): “I look at the actual construction times around the world….”
O’Brien then interrupted Miell’s very reasonable answer and demanded that he give a Yes/No answer to the question “Do you recognise…?”
When Miell offered a variation of his original response, O’Brien asked, “Does that mean you do not recognise their experience and expertise sir?”
After this, at 1.28.25, Sarah Elliot (nursing academic and member of NSW Nurses and Midwives Association) called O’Brien out:
“I will say that I have read transcripts Mr O’Brien where you have misled …[interrupted by bickering between Chair Repacholi and Deputy Chair O’Brien]… Mr O’Brien can I ask you to afford this panel the respect you gave to the last ones. We may not be in agreeance with your views, but can you please respect this panel that is before you right now … I’m disgusted with your behaviour as a representative of…”
The dishonesty of O’Brien’s line of questioning is exposed when you read the latest CSIRO GenCost draft report. That report makes the following comment about the IAEA’s timing estimates:
“Nuclear development lead time
“The development lead time includes the construction period plus all of the preconstruction activities such as planning, permitting and financing. Many stakeholders have agreed with the GenCost estimate of at least 15 years lead time for nuclear generation. Those stakeholders that are more optimistic cite two alternative sources, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) who have an estimate of 10 to 15 years and the recent completion of a nuclear project in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) had a 12 year lead time. Both estimates are in relation to building nuclear for the first time. This consultation draft provides additional analysis of nuclear lead times to examine this issue more closely. We examine recent construction times and their relationship with the level of democracy in that country.
So the IAEA’s estimate is a 2015 estimate. In the 9 years since then we’ve seen massive blowouts in construction times in the US, UK, France and Finland. Those projects were already in trouble in 2015, but since then they’ve blown out much more, while the VC Summer plant in South Carolina was abandoned part way through construction. But O’Brien still uses the 2015 IAEA estimate to put witnesses on the spot. As for ANSTO, their credibility was demolished by John Quiggen in the following article. https://www.crikey.com.au/2024/03/20/coalition-nuclear-power-ansto-csiro-small-modular-reactors/
Another example was when O’Brien used the first Frontier Economics report (the second can be expected any day) to say the total system cost of the electricity grid in 2050 will be five times what the ALP Government has claimed (AEMO’s ISP report). He also completely misrepresented Minister Bown’s response to that report. However, on this occasion, Tennant Reed (Australian Industry Group), who had actually read the Frontier Economics report, interrupted him (5.55.50). This caused a problem for O’Brien, because his brazen dishonesty was exposed by a real expert. Unfortunately, Reed was too polite. He didn’t call out O’Brien’s dishonesty. He just explained the source of the difference between AMEO’s ISP figure and the figure in Frontier Economics report. “The two numbers are different sorts of number, rather than greatly in disagreement with each other.”
See the following YouTube link from 5.53.50:
See the following YouTube link from 5.53.50:
Inquiry Into Nuclear Power Generation In Australia, Melbourne, 04/12/2024
The above two examples are examples of where O’Brien was actually challenged, but, unfortunately, not exposed for the charlatan that he is. I am hopeful that if witnesses are forewarned of his tactics, they might be in a better position to stand up to him, ideally to expose him, but definitely not to be intimidated by his dirty tactics.
Re: “South Australia’s Copper Strategy”, Submission To: The Department of Energy and Mining c/o DEM.engagement@sa.gov.au
“SA’s Copper Strategy lacks ‘social license’ and fails contemporary public interest expectations and environmental and legislative standards”
By: Mr David Noonan B.Sc., M.Env.St., Independent Environment Campaigner and Consultant, 12 Dec 2024
The SA Copper Strategy is potentially an important way forward for the SA Gov to instigate and require needed reform in the copper – uranium mining sector in our State.
As an individual I provide this public input and 8 x Public Interest Recommendations (p.11) toward required reform in the sector ‘as part of the development of the refreshed SA Copper Strategy’ due to be released in 2025.
The Department of Energy and Mining should provide a Public Forum on the Copper Strategy before finalisation, I request to attend and participate and offer to be a Member of a Panel Discussion. I raise part of my relevant Background at p.12.
At this stage, the SA Copper Strategy lacks ‘social licence’ and the BHP run copper sector continues to fail contemporary public interest expectations and proper environmental and legislative standards.
Further, the core related Northern Water Project lacks needed ‘social license’ as the SA Gov has to date failed to set clear public commitments to ‘shared benefits’ in protection for the Mound Springs.
It is most important for SA’s Copper Strategy and Northern Water Project realise priority protection for the unique and fragile Mound Springs of the Great Artesian Basin (GAB) with a clear commitment to replace BHP extraction of GAB waters across both Wellfields A and B.
And it is axiomatic the SA Premier can-not credibly look to spend billions of dollars of public monies on water supply and not respect, save and protect the Mound Springs of GAB. – as gems of our State.
Social license, the Gov’s political credibility and public interest standing depend on this outcome.
Please feel free to contact on any aspect of these issues.
Yours sincerely
David Noonan B.Sc., M.Env.St., Independent Environment Campaigner and Consultant, Conservation SA Representative on the Northern Water Project ‘Stakeholder Reference Group’, Seaview Downs, South Australia
It’s hard to take the Coalition’s nuclear energy policy seriously, so we didn’t. And frankly, why would they put taxpayers on the hook for the biggest public funded project in history when renewables are crowding private investment en masse? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fSeaybp9oAA
It might seem weirdly appropriate that the federal Coalition should release its nuclear power policy costings on Friday the 13th, considered an unlucky day in western superstition. But that would be to downplay the sheer lunacy, rank dishonesty, and clear danger in Peter Dutton’s energy plans.
Shows like Edward Scissorhands are horror fantasies played out on a screen. But the Peter Dutton and Ted O’Brien nuclear plan is a horror show we may have to live and breathe. After so many years, the Coalition is still playing culture wars on the most fundamental issues of our time – and all at the behest of the fossil fuel industry.
It doesn’t matter at which level you look at it, this energy policy makes no sense at all. You could look at it backwards, from behind, sideways, leave it out in the sun for a few days, or even bury it in the garden (please do), the only thing that would change is that it might smell more than it does now.
It would likely take until Christmas to go through all the lies, deceptions and misunderstandings that comprise this policy and these costings, but let’s just focus on a couple of the important ones for now.
The reference to the sheer lunacy and the danger of the Coalition policy comes in Dutton’s desire to simply ignore climate science, along with basic engineering and economics.
Emissions reductions are put off to the never never. And, as Dutton revealed in his press conference through his comments on rooftop solar, he simply does not have a clue about the basic concepts of the energy system.
Dutton and Co simply want to bring a crashing halt to Australia’s only successful emission reductions efforts – the transition to green energy – and walk away from the country’s natural advantages in wind, solar and storage and the industries that are emerging from that.
They even have the chutzpah to claim that it will result in lower emissions. Which, inevitably, is pure bunkum. But, as Donald Trump has demonstrated, if you “flood the zone with shit”, something will stick – mostly to the front pages of mainstream media.
And that’s what we saw on Friday. A planned leak of the findings resulted in claimed headline “savings” – emblazoned across the front pages of the cheer-leading Murdoch media and the AFR this morning – that the nuclear power plan will save $264 billion.
It is of course, a complete nonsense, and obviously so to anyone who is paying attention, or even bothered to read the Coalition document. We are talking about completely different scenarios, and taking traditional accounting methods away from the international norm.
Dutton and his media followers have made a big deal of Frontier Economics costings of the Australian Energy Market Operator’s Integrated System which is the basis of Labor policy.
Frontier concedes, however, that the cost of AEMO’s “step change” plan is about what it says it is – $122 billion, based on the standard accounting practice of “net present value.”
But, at the urging of the Coalition, Frontier has published an additional number, around $600 billion, based on the “real cost” and throwing in some more transmission spending.
Dutton has used that number to insist that AEMO and Labor had lied to the Australian people. But it was the former Coalition government who instructed AEMO to cost it this way. And for good reason – it is standard international accounting practice. It is Dutton and O’Brien who are now spreading the lies.
Indeed, the Frontier Economics report actually reveals that the claimed $264 billion in savings parroted by the mainstream media are from two entirely different scenarios. One is from AEMO’s “Step Change”, the other from the Coalition’s version of “progressive change.”
The actual savings on a like for like basis are much smaller, if you can believe Frontier’s costings of nuclear.
Progressive change assumes that demand will not be as great as forecast by AEMO. It assumes much smaller electrification (thanks to the gas industry) and slower uptake of EVs (thanks to the oil industry). It then ignores the $75 billion a year of extra fuel costs that would result from that.
Now let’s go to the Coalition’s plan to shut down just one third of the main grid’s ageing coal fired generators by 2034 – with the rest trying to stay on line until nuclear power plants can be built.
The Coalition says it still thinks the first nuclear power plant can be built by the mid-2030s. The rest of the industry says this will be pretty much impossible until the mid 2040s.
Keeping the coal fired power stations open will not just increase pollution – both within the grid and the industries that depend on it – it will also puts grid reliability at risk.
This week, AEMO had to issue several lack of reserve alerts as another heatwave approached the eastern states. The main reason was that Origin, despite being promised up to $450 million to keep Australia’s biggest coal generator on line for another two years, reported another breakdown at Eraring.
At Bayswater, a unit is offline because of a tube leak. One third of the coal units in Victoria are also offline due to unplanned outages, and so is the country’s newest and “most efficient” coal generator at Kogan Creek, which is also the country’s largest single generation unit.
Dutton and O’Brien insist that these ageing and increasingly decrepit coal fired power plants will only have to operate “a few years longer”. But they are kidding themselves. Their own modelling confirms that.
They are still setting a timeline of 2035 for the first reactors. Will these be large scale of small commercial small modular reactor. No one has built one, or even got a licence to build one.
The Coalition insists that new nuclear can be built, from scratch, in a country with no nuclear infrastructure or know-how to speak of, no work force and no regulatory base ,in about a dozen years. There’s also a golden replica of the Sydney Harbour Bridge at the bottom of your packet of Cornflakes.
A dozen years is the average “delay” in the big nuclear power plants being built in western democracies – the UK, France, and Finland – all of whom have been operating nuclear power plants for decades.
Dutton and O’Brien are now telling us their nuclear plan will result in 14 gigawatt of nuclear capacity – double what they previously said. And Frontier’s modelling shows that coal is going to have to last a lot longer, beyond the official lifetime limits of the coal generators.
Even the Australian Energy Council, one of the most conservative of lobby groups that represents the coal generator owners, believes this is a bad idea and “could result in reliability issues.”
But let’s go back to the conventional way of measuring costs – net present value. The Frontier report includes it, at the very last page of its report. It shows that the difference in costs, on their calculations, is actually $62 billion over 25 years for the step change scenario.
But even that is on the basis of some heroic assumptions on the costs of nuclear. Frontier puts the total cost, including 14 GW of new nuclear power plants, at $142 billion (see table above).
Let’s look at the cost of Hinkley C, the first nuclear power station to be built in the UK for decades. At just 3.2 GW, its cost has already blown out to $A92 billion and is running at least 14 years late from its promised timeline. What does the Coalition know that the rest of the nuclear world does not know?
The Coalition’s vision for renewables also beggars belief. Under its modelling, it estimates the share of wind, solar and hydro will be less than 50 per cent in 2050. That’s in the “progressive” plan that appears to be their chosen one.
If you take the current level of renewables, the already committed large scale projects, and the continued roll out of rooftop and behind the metre solar, the Coalition is essentially telling everyone that the construction of new large scale wind and solar more or less comes to an end with their election next year.
The stupidity of the idea is frightening. Quite how the Coalition figures it could keep the lights on in the 2030s and 2040s is beyond belief.
The Coalition are also trying to convince people that somehow their plan does not need new transmission, or much back-up.
All generation needs back-up, and all generation needs transmission. A 1.4 GW nuclear power plant will be nearly twice the size of the current biggest unit in Australia’s main grid, the currently broken Kogan Creek coal fired generator.
That means it needs twice as much back-up, because if it trips suddenly – which it inevitably will, just look at the patchy performance of the new nuclear power plant in Finland – then the market operator needs to be able to fill in the gaps at a moment’s notice. That’s expensive.
And then, of course, is what to do with your rooftop solar. If the Coalition wants its fleet of nuclear power plants to run “always on” then there may be no room on the grid for your rooftop solar.
Your best bet might be to buy a battery, or better still an electric vehicle. You don’t have to leave the grid, but you will want to make sure that you can have power without it. And you sure don’t have to believe Dutton’s nonsense about solar not being able to charge EVs and batteries at the same time.
But the safest and cheaper option might be to ensure these idiots don’t get elected.
Solutions for Climate Australia today called out figures provided by Peter Dutton on the future cost of power from nuclear reactors as expensive and a failure to tackle climate pollution.
“While we are waiting decades for Mr Dutton’s nuclear reactors, the Coalition proposes to pour money into propping up expensive, ageing coal power stations that are already failing, and massively increasing climate pollution.
“CSIRO’s optimistic estimates of the costs of nuclear reactors last week show them as twice as expensive as the renewable energy pathway. Somehow Mr Dutton claims using the most expensive source of electricity will bring down consumer costs.
“Even more bizarrely, the federal Coalition’s plan relies on Australians using 45% less electricity than the independent electricity operator forecasts.
“What matters to consumers in the cost of living crisis we have here and now is the cost of electricity, and yet Mr Dutton is proposing a fantasy to build hugely expensive nuclear reactors on the taxpayer’s dime, decades from now.”
“Yesterday the Liberal Tasmanian Government made a joint announcement with the Labor Federal Government for an offshore wind zone that will produce 20 GW of electricity.”
“It’s time the federal Coalition gets serious about deploying the sun and wind power we have right here and now to bring down power prices and keep the lights on.”
If you really want to understand where the federal Coalition’s nuclear energy policy is taking us, and it’s real purpose, you need to turn to Figure 6 on the costings analysis provided by its consultant Frontier Economics.
This is the estimation of capacity installed on Australia’s main grid over the next 25 years. It is based on Coalition leader Peter Dutton’s preferred scenario – the one he used to emblazon the claims of $260 billion in savings across the front pages of the mainstream media on Friday.
Since this is the comparison that Dutton is seeking to sell to the Australian public, let’s look at in detail.
In contrast to the Australian Energy Market Operator’s Step Change scenario, the one that the federal Labor government has used for its policy and planning blueprint, the Coalition’s Progressive Scenario imagines a world still revolving around the concept of baseload power, of petrol and diesel powered cars, of gas-powered homes and a lot less renewables.
The scenario also assumes a lot less rooftop solar, which means that the Coalition is banking on consumers buying more from the grid, and paying money to big utilities such as the Hong Kong owned ElectricityAustralia.
But the Frontier model focuses only on large scale capacity and generation. For large scale solar it is a bad look: Just a doubling of capacity from 2025 to 2050. Given that 5 GW of capacity is likely already locked in, that reduces the rollout of large scale solar to a trickle over the next two decades.
For wind, the story is actually worse. The modelling assume no offshore wind at all, given the Coalition’s promise to scrap the newly declared offshore wind zones, and despite the legislated target in Victoria of 9 GW by 2040.
For onshore wind, Frontier puts the installed capacity in 2025 at 12.8 GW (according to OpenNEM it would be closer to 14 GW by the end of that year, and predicts the total rising to 28 GW by 2050.
Given that more than 5 GW of wind power is already locked in and under construction or contract, then that is a painfully slow build rate over the coming two decades.
It’s the Coalition telling local and international investors: “F*** off we don’t want you here:” And forcing consumers to buy more power from the big utilities at the same time.
Apart from scrapping the offshore wind zones, the federal Coalition has also promised to “rip up contracts” for large scale underwriting agreements written with the federal government.
According to the Frontier report , Large scale renewables total 49 per cent (wind 32 per cent and solar 17 per cent) by 2050, with nuclear likely to be 38 per cent, assuming that everything gets built in time. The graph above shows limited growth in each of wind, solar and utility storage after 2030.
“This … would represent a dramatic slowdown in the installation and investment of renewable energy across Australia and will be a massive shock and concern to investors who have invested $40 billion into large-sale renewable energy in Australia since 2020,” Clean Energy Council CEO Kane Thornton said.
“Australia has been a world leader in rooftop solar with over four million systems installed on homes and small businesses and an additional 300,000 plus systems being installed every year. The Coalition’s plan means millions of Australians would miss out on the chance to install solar.”
And Thornton also pointed out that it would not be good for the owners of rooftop solar. Currently, households are up in arms at the prospect of having their panels switched off – in an emergency – once or twice a summer.
In the Coalition’s nuclear plan, it would likely be a daily occurrence to ensure that the nuclear generators are “always on.”
“A nuclear-powered energy grid would also be a disaster for the four million Australian homes that have already installed a rooftop solar system as a way to lower their power bills,” Thornton said. “These systems would have to be switched off regularly if Australia was to move to inflexible nuclear power.”
Did you hear the one about big tech going nuclear? One of the lines being trotted out in support of nuclear power by shadow energy minister Ted O’Brien – and faithfully reproduced by the Murdoch press – is that everyone’s doing it, including global tech giants Google and Microsoft.
“Not only does Labor claim to know the economics of nuclear better than companies like Microsoft who signed a massive nuclear deal, but they also think they can run the numbers better than (US banks and financiers) who have come out in favour of nuclear energy,” O’Brien said in September.
Microsoft did announce, in September, a 20 year power purchase agreement with Constellation Energy to reboot one unit at the mothballed Three Mile Island nuclear power plant in Pennsylvania and rebadge it as the Crane Clean Energy Centre.
Three Mile Island was, in 1979, the site of the worst commercial nuclear power accident in US history. It was shuttered in 2019 for economic reasons, with Constellation’s then parent company Exelon Corp, saying in 2017 that its closure was due to lack of financial rescue from the state.
This is not unusual. According to TechCrunch, in the last decade, seven nuclear reactors have been decommissioned in the US, while only two new ones have been switched on.
Notwithstanding the fact that restarting a nuclear plant that has been shut down for five years has never been done before (according to reports, Constellation Energy is reportedly seeking a taxpayer-subsidised loan it hopes will save it $122 million in borrowing costs) this somewhat baffling deal is expected to supply around 850 MW.
Google, meanwhile, in October announced plans to invest in small modular reactors to meet its own growing data centre needs and Amazon followed suit, with news of “three new agreements to support the development of nuclear energy projects,” again with a focus on the the as-yet commercially unproven SMR technology.
So, yes – all three of these companies have recently announced plans to invest in nuclear power – albeit in markets where it already exists (although not in the case of SMRs) and in technology and applications that are highly speculative.
Does this mean they have come over all Team Nuclear? Hardly.
Amazon, as it bragged in October, has been the largest corporate purchaser of renewable energy in the world for four years running, according to Bloomberg NEF, having invested billions of dollars in more than 500 solar and wind projects globally, which together are capable of generating enough energy to power the equivalent of 7.6 million US homes.
Amazon met its goal of sourcing 100% of the electricity its uses with renewable energy in 2023 – seven years ahead of the 2030 target.
Google announced just this week that it was funding $US20 billion ($A31 billion) worth of renewable power projects across the US, in a deal with Intersect Power and investment fund TPG Rise Climate to develop power to drive several gigawatt-scale data centers.
Microsoft, last week, joined a US investor Acadia Infrastructure Capital and other companies to launch the Climate and Communities Investment Coalition (CCIC) to develop a $US9 billion ($A14 billion) pipeline of renewable energy projects across the country, as reported in Reuters.
On its website, Microsoft says it invested in over 23.6 million megawatt-hours of renewable energy in 2023 financial year – “enough to power Paris with renewable electricity for about two years.”
Earlier this year, the company announced plans to procure some 9.5GW of solar panels from Qcells for PPAs through 2032 – adding about 1.5GW every year. In April Microsoft revealed in a job listing that it had more than 20GW of renewable energy under contract.
On Monday, the CSIRO released updated estimates for the cost of nuclear as well as a range of other power generation technologies. According to the CSIRO’s analysis, producing power from a conventional, large-scale reactors would cost between one and half and two and half times more than from a 90% renewables system backed up by batteries and gas.
Unfortunately, the CSIRO’s costing for nuclear power was not a particularly comprehensive one. It doesn’t adequately take account of the complexity involved in nuclear power plant construction and high risk of budget cost blow-outs with this technology.
The CSIRO’s Gencost publication assumes the cost of building a nuclear reactor in 2030 will be around $8.5 billion for a one gigawatt unit. Yet the experience from real world projects across Europe and the United States indicates the lower bound cost is $14.9 billion and the upper end is $27.5 billion.
Antinuclear 