Peter Dutton’s nuclear energy announcement has been totally nuked, so to speak,but Michael Pascoe argues it is nonetheless working just fine.
If a major Australian political party has had a core policy more quickly and comprehensively debunked, destroyed and generally defenestrated than the LNP’s nuclear power play, I can’t remember it. But that’s irrelevant to Peter Dutton and Atomic Ted O’Brien.
Despite the near universal rubbishing of the Coalition’s costings, allegedly supplied gratis by economic modeller Danny Price, the stunt is doing exactly what Dutton’s Trumpy playbook said it would do.
cheaper clean energy avoiding much more expensive and unsightly renewable energy spending by Labor.
That all credible media coverage effectively called that promise bullshit doesn’t matter. The promise was still being broadcast, still being talked about, still being reinforced.
For the votes the LNP is chasing, believing or disbelieving the promise is a matter of choice, political choice. Who do you believe, Labor or LNP?
Weak, faltering Albanese or strong, decisive Dutton?
Experts … who needs ’em?
Dutton and the LNP’s media wing have already done the groundwork to undermine those contrary opinions, no matter how numerous or expert.
The CSIRO has a political agenda, the criticism is coming from that “woke” ABC and “left-wing” newspapers, sources not to be trusted, Dutton copying Trump’s very successful “fake news” campaign.
“But, but, but,” you might argue, “these are fake nuclear costings! They have been totally exposed!”
I doesn’t matter. It’s not new that the LNP’s nuclear promise doesn’t add up. All the expert opinions rubbishing last week’s costings had already eviscerated the economics and credibility of the promise since Dutton made it back in May, before the Budget.
The Climate Council’s response back then is as solid an example as any. Dutton’s absolutely false claim that a nuclear reactor’s waste would only fill a Coke can continues to be a joke. Yet, it is unretracted.
Zero difference to Dutton’s polling
That’s seven months of steady, consistent, multifaceted dismissal of the LNP’s core energy and climate policy. Has it made any difference to Dutton’s polling? Well, as his rise in the polls shows, it certainly hasn’t harmed and has probably helped.
Once again, in this age of impressionism politics the detail of a policy being sensible or nonsense doesn’t matter. What counts is the impression it might leave of leadership.
The figures spat out by Danny Price’s modelling aren’t a surprise either. If you search on any issue, you can always find a consultant with a contrary view.
As a leading climate scientist once told me, there is a scientific basis to the three percent of climate scientists who don’t believe in anthropogenic climate change: there will generally be about three per cent of a group that will have a contrary view to overwhelming evidence.
change: there will generally be about three per cent of a group that will have a contrary view to overwhelming evidence.
Coalition media in cahoots
The staged-managed LNP/Murdoch costings reveal last week was a demonstration of Steve Bannon’s “flooding the zone”, starting with the Murdoch media simplifying, swallowing and promoting the nonsense in preview and rolling on with the flood of detailed critical analysis elsewhere, analysis that meant little-to-nothing to the voters Dutton is after.
The LNP’s nuclear policy was adopted without concern for costings. It was the vibe, opposition. The perpetrators knew some figures could be found to suit. Mere details.
There was a hint of that in the Saturday Paper’s story on Danny Price. Mike Seccombe quotes Price:
“What happened was I did an interview on the ABC about nuclear, because I was already doing some stuff in this area. And then the Opposition, Ted O’Brien’s office, contacted me and said they’d be interested in talking about my work. That would have been a few months ago.”
“The truth does not matter”
A “few” months ago? When it comes to months and years and measuring time and such, formulating a major policy in whatever period that would take before the Budget back in May sounds like more than a “few” months to me.
Total opposition. Grab the headlines, look strong and decisive, promise something the eventual failure of which would occur long after you’ve departed the scene, keep promising it, keep opposing whatever the government is doing. Some concurring figures can always be found along the way.
It works. It’s working. The truth does not matter. That’s what the polls are telling Dutton.
That’s what worked and works for Trump. Before the US Presidential election, Trump promised voters he would return prices to pre-COVID levels. It was obviously nonsense, obviously a lie. Doesn’t matter. It was part of Trump’s impression and now that he has been elected, it matters even less as he walks away from the promise.Shadow treasurer Angus Taylor is promising the LNP nuclear show will lower power bills by 44 per cent.
Yeah, right.
The worry for Australia is that the LNP shows every indication of continuing to follow the Trump path, the next step of which is ever greater lawfare.
Trump is suing a pollster and local newspaper over an incorrect poll in Iowa that had him losing that solidly Republican state, claiming the poll was election interference.
That is a fearsome warning to other media and pollsters.
The American ABC network settled a Trump defamation action over a little careless wording around rape/sexual assault, paying Trump $US15 million. The common view is the case would have been defensible, but ABC doesn’t want to be seen opposing Trump.
Given how small and impoverished independent media is in Australia, Dutton taking that next Trumpy step is frightening. A defamation action doesn’t have to be credible to be very effective. It just has to be started by a party with plenty of resources against a party with few.
Teals will baulk
Peter Dutton has backers with effectively endless resources. With such a frightening prospect, the only good news from the LNP’s nuclear fairytale is that it should make it impossible for the community independents, the Teals, to support a Dutton minority government.
The Teals are not stupid. They are committed to climate policy, a raison d’etre for them.
But if Dutton’s impressionist politics momentum continues, the Teals won’t matter either.
The Coalition wants to build nuclear plants on the sites of seven coal-fired power stations which have shut, or are earmarked to close, at Tarong and Callide in Queensland, Mount Piper near Lithgow and Liddell in NSW, Port Augusta in South Australia, Loy Yang in Victoria’s Latrobe Valley and Muja near Collie in Western Australia.
“I can’t help but feel that politicians see our region as apathetic, desperate and an easy target,” Lithgow resident Tom Evangelidis said.
The House Select Committee on Nuclear Energy, which will cease to exist after the inquiry, has toured Australia to hear from the residents whose towns have been selected to host the nuclear reactors.
Wait for ‘the facts’
A repeated request throughout the inquiry has been for the Coalition to explain what technology would be used, how much water would be needed, where the waste would be stored, how it would be transported and whether the infrastructure and technology were safe.
“Even after [the Lithgow hearing] there’s very poor details on will there be one here? When? And those concerns [about] land, safety concerns, environmental concerns; those are all very major concerns and I’ve seen no answers here today,” former NSW mining union executive Wayne McAndrew said.
“The Coalition is proposing the seven sites and I’ve seen nothing from them either.”
The inquiry’s deputy chair, Liberal MP Ted O’Brien, repeatedly told witnesses their communities would have access to a two-and-a-half year “on the ground” consultation process where people’s questions would be answered.
Outside the Port Augusta hearing, SA Liberal MP for Grey, Rowan Ramsey, urged people to wait.
But these assurances have not pacified witnesses.
“That’s not adequate in supporting the general public in forming opinions on things that affect everyone and nor is it adequate for people just to be expected to read or interpret a lengthy report,” Patsy Wolfenden from the Mingaan Wiradjuri Aboriginal Corporation in NSW said at the Lithgow hearing.
“We have agendas that are political and are imposed upon communities without their engagement and without their initial consent in the first place,” Associate Professor Naomi Godden from Edith Cowan University told the Collie hearing in WA.
Jobs promise
One of the Coalition’s key promises is secure employment for coal industry workers who will be out of a job when their power stations close.
Local resident Adrian Cosgriff said power station workers were being given false hope, and instead should be encouraged to consider transitioning to the burgeoning renewable energy industry. “Get our coal workers involved, attract other industries as much as we can, so that when they start coming out of those power stations there’s actually work for them,” Mr Cosgriff said.
At Collie in WA, Daniel Graham from the Australian Manufacturing Workers’ Union shared some of the questions and concerns being posed by members.
Peter Dutton’s vision doesn’t address the climate crisis anytime soon and cost savings are based on a comparison with Labor’s proposal that produces 45% more electricity
The Coalition has revealed further details of its plan to build nuclear reactors in Australia, claiming it could deliver an electricity system costing $263bn less than the Albanese government’s plans to power Australia on renewables backed by storage and gas.
The Coalition is relying on Frontier Economics modelling to argue its nuclear vision for seven reactors across the country would be 44% cheaper than the government’s renewables-led plan.
So what do we need to know about the Coalition’s proposal?
Does the plan address the climate crisis?
Not for about 25 years. Frontier’s modelling shows the amount of CO2 released for every megawatt hour of electricity generated under the Coalition’s nuclear plan.
The report shows the “emissions intensity” of electricity stays much higher with nuclear than without until sometime between 2046 and 2049 – after which electricity would be slightly cleaner.
This is mostly because, under the Coalition, the modelling shows more coal stays in the grid for longer, releasing more CO2.
Any delays in rolling out nuclear reactors, which experts say is very likely, would lead to higher emissions for longer.
The Coalition’s chosen scenario to develop the electricity grid is in line with a 2.6C rise in global temperatures by the end of the century.
Is the Coalition’s plan comparable to the government’s?
No. The Coalition says its plan delivers an electricity system that costs 44% less than the government’s proposal – a saving of $263bn.
But the detail in the Frontier Economics report shows this 44% cost reduction comes as a result of comparing two different scenarios for the future of the electricity grid.
The Australian Energy Market Operator (Aemo) looks at three scenarios for the electricity grid and Frontier based its modelling on two of them – called “progressive change” and “step change”. The Albanese government prefers step change.
Frontier says the “progressive” scenario is preferred by the Coalition and adding nuclear to this “is 44% cheaper than the step change future as envisaged by the federal Labor government”.
The problem here is obvious. We are not comparing apples with apples.
Tristan Edis, director of Green Energy markets, says the “progressive change” scenario “involves total electricity consumption in 2052 of 311TWh, whereas step change is 450TWh or almost 45% greater electricity demand”.
So the Coalition’s plan to deliver nuclear is based on a scenario where Labor’s preferred plan is producing 45% more electricity than the Coalition’s.
Clearly, a system producing more power will cost more. Dr Dylan McConnell, an energy systems expert at UNSW, says without adding nuclear, Aemo’s “progressive change” costs are about $133bn less than for “step change”.
The “progressive change” scenario being promoted by the Coalition assumes much slower roll-outs of electric vehicles, rooftop solar and the electrification of homes and businesses.
That suggests consumers would miss out on any cost savings from running electric vehicles or using less gas in their homes for cooking and heating (as well as the cuts in emissions that come with using less fossil fuels).
How realistic is the Coalition’s timeline for building reactors?
Frontier Economic’s report suggests the first nuclear power would enter the grid in 2036 – but many experts say this is wildly optimistic.
The CSIRO estimates it would take at least 15 years for Australia to establish the necessary legal and regulatory functions and then finance, commission and build a working reactor.
Energy expert Simon Holmes à Court laid out his own timeline this week saying there was “not a hope in hell” a nuclear reactor could be working before 2040. He said his own optimistic scenario put the date at 2044.
What other roadblocks does Peter Dutton face?
Dutton said because the Coalition was in opposition it hadn’t been able to begin the negotiations needed to make nuclear a reality in Australia.
Before a single nuclear energy plant could be built, the Coalition would have to win the next federal election.
Then, a Dutton-led government would have to overturn a Howard-era national ban on nuclear energy – with laws passing both Houses of Parliament. If Dutton winning a majority in the lower house seems a tough ask, getting such a plan through a likely hostile Senate would be even harder.
Then, the Coalition would have to see various state governments overturn their bans on nuclear energy. Finally, state leaders would need to be onboard to support reactors being built in their back yards.
As Guardian Australia has reported, Labor governments and Coalition oppositions in New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland and South Australia are either outright opposed to the plan or have failed to endorse it. The new Queensland Liberal premier, David Crisafulli, ruled out nuclear during that state’s recent election campaign.
Dutton has pointed to constitutional powers to override state objections if necessary. He has also noted the openness of SA’s Labor premier, Peter Malinauskas, to nuclear.
How much will electricity cost under the Coalition’s nuclear plan?
Dutton claimed the nuclear option would mean “a 44% saving for taxpayers and businesses” but does that translate into cheaper power prices?
Frontier’s report says it does not “present any results for the prices [of wholesale electricity] as this will depend on how the cost of new capacity will be treated in the future”.
In other words, they don’t know what the cost of power will be.
How have critics responded?
The climate change and energy minister, Chris Bowen, criticised the Coalition for not detailing how the nuclear plan would affect consumer power bills and pointed to other modelling showing it could push up bills by $1,200 a year.
He claimed the Frontier report contained “fundamental errors” and “heroic assumptions”, pointing out it assumed Australia would consume less power than Aemo’s modelling forecast. Bowen also criticised the report for using cheaper prices to produce nuclear power than the CSIRO and AEMO accounted for.
The federal Greens leader, Adam Bandt, called it a “con job for coal”, noting the nuclear strategy relied on extending the life of fossil fuels.
The Australian Chamber of Commerce And Industry said the plan needed to be scrutinised thoroughly. It wasn’t critical but called for “long-term certainty” for the business community regarding power prices and reliability.
The Clean Energy Council said it would be a “disaster” for power bills and dramatically slow the rollout of renewables like rooftop solar.
Rod Campbell, of the Australia Institute, said the nuclear plan was a “distraction to prolong fossil fuel use and exports”.
There may well still be good reasons to favour nuclear. But on the basis of this modelling, the economics isn’t one of them
Australian Financial Review, .Steven Hamilton, Columnist, 16 Dec 24
On Friday, the Coalition finally released the economic modelling underpinning its plan to produce more than a third of our electricity via nuclear by 2050.
I approached the modelling – produced pro-bono by Frontier Economics – with an open mind. I have no issue with nuclear power so long as the economics stack up. To date, I am yet to read a convincing analysis in its favour in the Australian context.
Alas, after studying the modelling very carefully, I can confirm it is worth about what the Coalition paid for it.
Most critical reporting has focused on the Coalition’s decision, bundled along with nuclear, to abandon the “step change” scenario the government is counting on, which would see significantly greater electricity generation to support widespread electrification of households, transport and business.
But this is a red herring. While the Coalition’s claim that its plan will cost 44 per cent less than the government’s plan relies on the abandonment of step change, the modelling presents both step change and the Coalition’s preferred “progressive” scenario with and without nuclear power.
Within the progressive scenario, nuclear is claimed to reduce costs by a still-substantial 28 per cent. How does the modelling reach such a conclusion? Through sleights of hand, unrealistic assumptions and sheer physical impossibilities.
The first red flag is the odd choice to conduct all cost comparisons across the entire 2025-2051 period. To understand why this matters, consider that the Coalition’s plan involves two big changes.
First, a big slowdown in the renewables rollout paired with delays to coal closures; second, the transition to nuclear of the remaining coal-fired power beginning in 2035, but mostly in the 2040s.
So the claimed cost reductions over 2025-2051 are not driven primarily by nuclear being cheaper than firmed renewables, but by already-sunk coal-fired generation being cheaper than new firmed renewables.
From 2025-2051, nuclear accounts for just 15 per cent of electricity generated; but in 2051, it accounts for 38 per cent. So while the cost difference for 2025-2051 is 28 per cent, the cost difference in 2051, when both systems are fully up and running and producing near-zero-emissions power, is just 12 per cent. And that’s the comparison that matters.
Of course, we should not pretend the decision to swap renewables for coal in the interim is costless. The modelling shows that this will generate two and a half times the emissions from electricity generation from 2025-2051 than Labor’s plan.
That represents 1 billion tonnes of emissions, and that’s ignoring additional emissions outside the electricity sector. Using the Australian Energy Regulator’s “value of emissions reductions” carbon pricing framework, that’s worth $180 billion in today’s dollars. And we can say goodbye to our Paris commitment.
far more capital investment – nuclear or renewables – will be required under the Coalition’s plan than the modelling claims.
So what is driving the claimed 12 per cent cost advantage in 2051? Two key things.
The capital cost of nuclear is assumed to be $10,000 per kilowatt, which then falls by 1 per cent per year from today despite the fact that the first nuclear plant isn’t due until 2035, and most not until the 2040s. So around $8500 per kilowatt in 2040.
But the Centre for Advanced Nuclear Energy Systems at MIT, in an independent assessment of the cost of the next AP1000 units at Vogtle, Georgia, puts the capital cost at a greenfield site at around double this, and that’s likely conservative.
Moreover, historical experience has shown that nuclear costs tend to rise, not fall, as additional units are built. This alone blows through that 12 per cent cost gap.
But there is a bigger problem. Because nuclear is so capital-intensive, the biggest economic challenge it faces is to operate at a high utilisation or “capacity factor”.
s noted by nuclear advocacy group the Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA): “At high levels of renewable generation, for example, as implied by the EU’s 30 per cent renewable penetration target, the nuclear capacity factor is reduced and the volatility of wholesale prices greatly increases whilst the average wholesale price level falls.”
“The increased penetration of intermittent renewables thereby greatly reduces the financial viability of nuclear generation in wholesale markets where intermittent renewable energy capacity is significant,” they say.
But this is completely ignored in the modelling. It assumes an extraordinarily high capacity factor for nuclear of 90 per cent despite 38 per cent of electricity coming from nuclear and 54 per cent from renewables.
This implies nuclear is prioritised to generate near maximum at all times. But then renewables must be forced to serve only residual demand regardless of whether or not the sun is shining or the wind is blowing, pushing down their capacity factor.
Yet the modelling assumes high renewables capacity factors of 26 per cent for solar and 36 per cent for wind. But the real smoking gun is the fact that these capacity factors do not change with the introduction of nuclear producing 38 per cent of generation nearly 24-7. You might imagine storage could soak up surplus energy, but the modelling assumes far less storage with nuclear but with a similar capacity factor.
In practice, one of two things has to happen. Either nuclear’s capacity factor must be reduced below 90 per cent to something closer to coal’s 60 per cent, or renewables’ capacity factor must be reduced to make room for nuclear. Either way, far more capital investment – nuclear or renewables – will be required under the Coalition’s plan than the modelling claims. Which again blows that 12 per cent gap out of the water.
ABC News, by political reporter Jake Evans, Fri 20 Dec 24
In short:
Video has emerged of a Nationals senator saying his party’s nuclear policy shows it is not serious about cheap energy, arguing if it was it would instead pursue more coal.
Separately, his Nationals colleague Keith Pitt has announced he will quit politics, citing frustrations over the Nationals’ approach to climate.
What’s next?
A new member for Hinkler in Queensland will be elected next year.
Video has emerged of Nationals senator Matt Canavan labelling his party’s nuclear policy a “political fix” and conceding it is not the cheapest form of power, as a colleague quits the party over its approach to climate change.
Senator Canavan told a podcast in August that his party was “not serious” about nuclear power being a solution to high energy costs.
“Nuclear is not going to cut it. I mean, we’re as guilty of this too — we’re not serious. We’re latching onto nuclear,” Senator Canavan told the National Conservative Institute podcast.
“I fully support getting the ban [lifted], we’ve got a bill in the Senate to get rid of it. We should build some nuclear power stations. They’ll help, they’ll help our system.
“But we’re latching on to it as a silver bullet, as a panacea because it fixes a political issue for us, that it’s low-emission and it’s reliable. But it ain’t the cheapest form of power.”
Climate Change Minister Chris Bowen leapt on the comments, saying it revealed a divide within the Coalition.
“I don’t agree with much Matt Canavan says. But I do acknowledge he’s honest on this occasion,” Mr Bowen said.
“Canavan admits the Coalition is willing to impose higher costs on Australians with the most expensive form of energy just to ‘fix a political problem’ for Peter Dutton’s divided party room.”
Federal energy and climate minister Chris Bowen has lambasted the federal Coalition’s nuclear power plans, describing them as a recipe for blackouts and a “con job”, and has expressed astonishment at Peter Dutton’s assumption of a grid that will use 40 per cent less power than forecast.
Dutton’s nuclear costings – revealed last Friday – and some of its major assumptions have been widely dismissed, even mocked, by the energy industry, although the proposal has garnered support from some with strong connections to the fossil fuel industry.
The reason for that is the Coalition’s focus on extending the life of the country’s ageing coal fired power generators, increasing the dependence on gas, and the implications for renewables, which will largely be stopped in their tracks, and climate targets, which will be ripped up and ignored.
The Coalition says it can get the first nuclear power plant running by the mid 2030s – a target most in the industry find laughable. But its own modelling confirms that most of the planned 14 GW will not be delivered until the mid 2040s, which means it must run ageing coal generators for another two decades.
“This is a recipe for blackouts and unreliability,” Bowen says in the latest episode of Renew Economy’s weekly Energy Insiders podcast. “Sweating the coal assets for longer, I mean, these coal fired power stations are not getting younger. None of us are.
“Just this week, we’ve had 3.4 gigawatts of coal out in the NEM (National Electricity Market, the main grid) and three gigawatts of that was unplanned, ie breakdowns, unexpected breakdowns, three gigawatts out this week.
“Now, the grid’s coped okay, even though it’s been very hot, but you’d still rather not have three gigawatts out, and that’s only going to get worse the longer you rely on coal.”
Indeed, the Australian Energy Market Operator has made it abundantly clear, and even the coal plant owners agree, that the biggest threat to reliability on the grid is the unplanned and sudden losses of big fossil fuel generators, particularly coal.
Over the last two weeks, AEMO has managed the heatwaves and the multiple outages and has turned to more demand and supply flexibility to help manage the situation, including putting several big batteries on standby – a protocol it is now using when the grid faces demand highs, and demand lows.
It is this focus on flexibility that is undermining the case for existing, let alone new even larger “always on” baseload power stations.
The Coalition, however, says it is determined to power on, but its costings have also come under heavy criticism – both on the assumed price and timeline of building new nuclear from a standing start, but also its assumption that electricity demand would fall more than 40 per cent below forecasts.
In the energy world, it is generally assumed that less primary energy will be used in an electrified world. But that’s because inefficient fossil fuel engines and generators (in cars, homes and on the grid) are replaced by more efficient inverter based technologies – wind, solar and battery storage.
That means less energy is needed overall (because around two thirds of energy from fossil fuels is lost as waste heat), but more electricity will produced on the world’s grids. The Coalition modelling shuts its eyes to that evolution, and assumes that electrification does not happen and fossil fuels are still burned in huge quantities.
“I spent a fair bit of time thinking about how they (the Coalition) might try and make nuclear look cheaper, and I’ve got a confession to make,” Bowen tells Energy Insiders.
“Not in my wildest dreams did I suspect that they would just assume we need less electricity. So they’ve said we’re going to need 40% less electricity than AEMO’s Step Change scenario.
“And guess what? Who knew if you make 40% less electricity, it’s roughly 40% cheaper. I mean, who would have figured? I mean, what a con job. We all know that nuclear is the most expensive. They had to find a way of pretending it isn’t.”
On Labor’s own policies, Bowen says that the Capacity Investment Scheme, which released the winners of the first major generation tender last week, is working better than expected, with 6.4 GW of capacity awarded rather than the planned 6 GW, and all representing new projects that have not begun construction.
“It’s working better than I thought it would,” Bowen says.
“And that’s a very encouraging thing. The value and the quality of the projects we’re having coming forward means that we can award more than we were intending.
“No, I won’t be giving tenderers an opportunity to know what our reserve price is. That’s not how an auction works, but (the result) meant that I could also announce for the next round that we’re going to target, in effect, 10 gigawatts, four gigawatts of dispatchable and six gigawatts of generation for tenders three and four.
“That’s huge, and that really means that those projects will get into the planning system faster and the emos connection process faster and help us get to our target.
“The only disappointing thing about this round, from my point of view, was the lack of projects that we could award in Tasmania. “I want to see more Tasmanian projects come forward, and … we have provided feedback to Tasmanian bidders about that …. we’ve got to ensure that we might get more Tasmanian projects into the future.”
However, Bowen says there is more to do, and he is hopeful – should Labor be re-elected and he remains in the portfolio – to make more reforms.
“We’ve made good progress in the first three years, but not yet good enough, in my view, and you really need a good long stretch in a job like this to, you know, bed down the reforms and make them work properly, and keep the momentum growing going and and learn as you go,” he says.
“Obviously, you know, you just get, you just get more proficient on things like the CIS, etc, as you build the experience collectively in the department.
“I would say the next term … should we get one, as I hope and expect we will, is that it’s a combination of consolidation, so a whole bunch of things that are well underway just need to be bedded down and consolidated, including the CIS, including the new vehicle efficiency standards that … have been in the too hard basket for so long, but don’t actually come in until the first of January.
“So they haven’t had any impact yet, to be honest, but they will. Same with the safeguards reforms, again, big and huge and difficult to do, but it has got to be bedded down and continued with and so there’s so much at stake.
“And then there’s the what’s next? And of course, we’ll go through the process of the 2035 target, the climate change authority advice to sector plans. All that process is underway, but I really see it now as a bit of a continuum.
“Having made good progress in the first two and a half to three years, got to build on it, bed it down, continue it. And it’s just unthinkable to me that we would, you know, having made this good progress, then stop, rip some of it up and go backwards, as the alternative would suggest.”
To hear more from Bowen on those plans and more, you can listen to the full episode here once its published later today.
“PETER DUTTON’S NUCLEAR numbers have more holes than Swiss cheese, leaving out big ticket items like the costs of dealing with radioactive waste,” says the Climate Council CEO Amanda McKenzie, slamming the Federal Coalition’s misleading modelling.
“Dutton must be honest with the Australian people. CSIRO tells us nuclear is double the cost of renewables, no amount of dodgy accounting can change the facts.”
Nicki Hutley, Climate Councillor and economist, said: “It’s shocking to see the Federal Coalition knowingly mislead Australians on the true costs of nuclear. If we’re going to debate the economics of energy it must be based. on real-world evidence – not dodgy modelling that obscures the real price tag.”
The Climate Council has identified four ways that the Federal Coalition appear to be cooking the books with their dodgy nuclear numbers:
1) Ignoring the costs of keeping our ageing coal-fired generators operating for longer, which would cost a bomb in constant maintenance and fault repairs, and produce far more climate pollution.
2) Failing to account for Australia’s growing electricity needs, producing up to 45% less power than our current plan by 2050. The Australian Electricity Market Operator expects power generation to double by 2050, and assuming any less is inaccurate.1
3) Underestimating the cost and timeline of building nuclear reactors, which international experience has shown cost on average 2.2 times more to build than their initial estimate, and take at least 15 years for construction alone.
-Advertisement-
4) Excluding significant and certain costs from their estimates, including the costs of managing highly radioactive nuclear waste.
Nicki Hutley, Climate Councillor and economist, said: “Nuclear doesn’t add up for Australia. The CSIRO tells us that nuclear energy will cost twice as much as renewables, and the risks of further budget and bill blowouts are simply not worth it. International experience has proven that nuclear is a financial black hole, with the average project costing more than double its original estimate, and projects like the UK’s Hinkley Point C costing triple. We’re already seeing renewables deliver power faster and at lower cost today.”
Amanda McKenzie, CEO of the Climate Council, said: “The Federal Coalition’s nuclear scheme would send our kids’ future up in smoke. Waiting up to 20 years for nuclear reactors means burning coal and fossil gas longer—adding 1.5 billion tonnes of climate pollution by 2050. That means more deadly bushfires, floods, and heatwaves.”
Greg Bourne, energy expert and Climate Councillor, said: “Australians can’t afford to wait 20 years for nuclear. All our coal-fired generators are due to close before even the first nuclear reactor could be built, and keeping our old coal clunkers running past their use-by-date presents a critical risk to our energy security. We need more renewables backed by storage now so it’s online before more coal is retired.”
Amanda McKenzie, CEO of the Climate Council, said: “Investing in renewable power backed by storage is the only way we can tackle climate change and replace our ageing coal fleet this decade. More than four million Australian households have already put solar panels on their roofs, saving $3 billion a year on electricity bills. Expanding access to rooftop solar will cut bills further, reduce climate pollution, and drive a cleaner, safer energy future. Let’s focus on what’s already working.”
1 Based on total generation implied by 14 GW of nuclear capacity, providing 38% of total generation at an 89% capacity factor.
The South West town of Collie is in the spotlight once again as the federal government hosted an inquiry into nuclear energy.
The WA government is in the middle of transitioning the town away from coal by 2030.
What’s next?
The federal Opposition wants to turn the site of one of Collie’s coal fired stations into a small modular reactor if elected.
Usually the domain of the blue collar worker, the small town of Collie has played host to numerous federal politicians in tailored suits in recent months.
Both parties have sent their leaders and a steady stream of federal and state MPs to talk about their respective energy plans to the community, which is expecting to transition away from coal by 2030.
On Monday, the federal parliament’s Inquiry into Nuclear Power Generation in Australia travelled to the town, 200km south of Perth, to hear the views of local experts and residents on the prospect of having a nuclear power plant in their backyard.
The proposal
The Coalition has identified Collie’s coal fired power station as one of seven sites where it would like to build a nuclear plant if elected.
Under the proposed policy, Collie would host a small modular reactor (SMR).
Small modular reactors have a capacity of up to 300 megawatts per unit — about a third of traditional plants.
Currently none are in commercial operation in any Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) country.
Several are in planning stages but they remain largely theoretical and the lack of completed projects makes it difficult to accurately project costs.
However, it did not include reference to Collie or SMRs.
Coalition says there’s support for nuclear
The gap in existing commercially operational SMR projects internationally was a central sticking point in the Collie hearing.
Shadow Assistant Minister for Trade and Federal Member for O’Connor Rick Wilson said more than two-thirds of respondents he had surveyed supported the Coalition’s nuclear plan.
He said he had sent a hard copy survey to every house in Collie and followed it up with a targeted social media survey.
Traditional owners at hearing
Noongar elder Phillip Ugle said at the hearing he held concerns about the impact a nuclear reactor could have on local waterways, which he said were central to cultural ceremonies.
He also said traditional owners should have been the first group the Opposition spoke to about the proposal.
The deputy chair of the hearing, Liberal MP Ted O’Brien, said there would be a two-and-a-half year consultation process in each location.
He asked the panel of traditional owners if they had any advice for how they would like to see those consultations run.
Noongar elder Karim Khan said he felt it was late in the game to be asking this question.
South West Aboriginal Corporation Gnaala Karla Booja CEO Bruce Jorgensen said the group had not yet asked its more than 1,000 members for their opinions as they felt they did not have enough information.
Workers confused
Representatives from WA’s Electrical Trades Union (ETU) and Australian Manufacturing Workers Union (AMWU) said workers had been thrown back into uncertainty over their futures.
AMWU WA branch secretary Steve McCartney said workers had just made peace with and begun to embrace the Just Transition plan, focused on renewable energy and battery storage.
“There’s been a lot of consultation with the whole public. Everyone knows what’s happening here,” he said.
ETU WA branch organiser Simon Brezovnik said the “nuclear fantasy” had sewn chaos and uncertainty among workers.
Edith Cowan University Associate Professor Naomi Joy Godden said the community had the right to continuing consent over what happens to their community.
“This dialogue around nuclear has not happened yet and certainly the proposal was launched onto the community [without] any level of dialogue that is required,” she said.
The last hearing of the parliamentary inquiry will happen on Tuesday in Perth.
A nuclear Australia would grow 12 per cent slower every year until 2050, according to government analysis of Opposition Leader Peter Dutton’s power plan, with economists warning that less energy for the country will lead to a smaller economy.
The long-awaited economic costings of Dutton’s nuclear energy policy, released last week, revealed the opposition is banking on an electricity grid that ends up 40 per cent smaller by 2050 than the government’s plan, which predicts the country to be almost entirely powered by renewables.
Government figures revealed to this masthead project that under Labor’s energy plan the economy would grow at 2.12 per cent a year. But under the opposition’s plan for a smaller grid, the figures state the economy would grow at 1.89 per cent a year.
That equates to a 12 per cent difference in annual economic growth, compounding each year.
The government has not provided this masthead with the analysis used to produce these figures.
Treasurer Jim Chalmers, while not revealing his expectation of how large the economy will be, said the cost to Australia under the opposition’s proposal would equate to $4 trillion by 2050.
“What these characters are proposing is a recipe for less growth in a smaller economy, with less energy at higher prices,” Chalmers said, referring to CSIRO findings from earlier this month that nuclear energy is at least 50 per cent more expensive than renewables.
“It means an economy which is $294 billion smaller by 2050, and the lost output between now and then would be about $4 trillion.”
………………………………………………………..Treasurer Jim Chalmers, while not revealing his expectation of how large the economy will be, said the cost to Australia under the opposition’s proposal would equate to $4 trillion by 2050.
“What these characters are proposing is a recipe for less growth in a smaller economy, with less energy at higher prices,” Chalmers said, referring to CSIRO findings from earlier this month that nuclear energy is at least 50 per cent more expensive than renewables.
“It means an economy which is $294 billion smaller by 2050, and the lost output between now and then would be about $4 trillion.”
The government’s ambitious renewable plan is based on a scenario identified by the Australian Energy Grid Operator that assumes the capacity of the country’s electricity grid will need to nearly quadruple in the next 25 years.
However, the opposition’s model assumes the grid will only grow just over half as much and also assumes some existing energy-intensive businesses will either reduce their power usage or disappear.
The opposition’s forecast for the energy grid, based on energy market operator modelling of a scenario where electricity grows more modestly than forecast by the government, assumes electricity demand from heavy industry drops about a third between 2027 and 2030.
That could spell bad news for aluminium smelters like those located in NSW’s Hunter Valley and Portland, in Victoria, which are the largest individual electricity customers in the grid and major regional employers.
Australian Aluminium Council chief executive Marghanita Johnson said smelters used about 10 per cent of all the electricity in the grid, and the industry may have to shut if power costs become internationally uncompetitive.
“The next five years are critical for Australia’s aluminium sector,” Johnson said. “High energy costs, regulatory uncertainty, and more attractive policies in competitor nations make the future of our industry far from certain.”
……………………………………………Grattan Institute energy and climate change deputy program director Alison Reeve said the issue of electricity grid planning hinged on assumptions about economic growth.
“If you choose to have a larger economy, you will need a larger electricity grid,” Reeve said.
Independent economist and member of the advocacy group Climate Council Nicki Hutley said it was illogical to argue that power supply can be reduced as much as the opposition plans to do without also reducing economic growth.
“You can’t curtail the supply side to the degree that the nuclear plan does while using the most expensive form of energy without it increasing energy costs,” Hutley said.
The Australian Industry Group, which represents big energy users like manufacturers and smelters, said its members depended on the delivery of reliable and affordable power.
“Energy-intensive industries like aluminium, steel and ammonia are vital and should be able to make an even bigger contribution to our national economy if Australia delivers on our potential for energy advantage,” said AIG principal national adviser Tennant Reed.
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.
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.
Apr 15, 2026 01:00 AM in Canberra, Melbourne, Sydney
Join the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW) on Tuesday, April 14th for a timely webinar exploring the risks associated with nuclear power and challenging the myth that it offers a simple, safe, carbon-free solution to the climate crisis
21 April Webinar: No Nuclear Weapons in Australia
Start: 2026-04-21 18:00:00 UTC Canberra, Melbourne, Sydney (GMT+10:00)
End: 2026-04-21 19:30:00 UTC Canberra, Melbourne, Sydney (GMT+10:00)
Event Type: Virtual A virtual link will be communicated before the event.
Antinuclear 