The opposition wants a 'mature debate' about nuclear power. This is what experts say about it - 9News

Nuclear energy has reared its head in Australia in recent months as the federal opposition calls for the technology to replace coal power plants as they shut down and drive the push to reduce our emissions.

Peter Dutton has promised to unveil sites for six future nuclear reactors and has called for a "mature debate" about it.

Last year, he said it was "the only feasible and proven technology which can firm up renewables and help us achieve the goals of clean, cost-effective and consistent power".

The federal opposition wants nuclear power to be embraced in Australia. (Getty)

That's not an opinion shared by some energy experts, though.

Emeritus Professor Ken Baldwin from ANU says nuclear is not the appropriate option for Australia right now.

"Solar and wind, particularly if you include the extra transmission and storage that is needed to implement it as we get to higher levels of decarbonisation, still remains the cheapest option compared to, say, (nuclear) small modular reactors," he told 9news.com.au.

"So for the foreseeable future, as we decarbonise the majority of the electricity sector, solar and wind will be the cheapest option."

That cost difference was outlined in the CSIRO's GenCost report in December last year.

Peter Dutton has promised to unveil sites for six future nuclear reactors and has called for a "mature debate" about it. (Alex Ellinghausen)

It said the cost of generating one megawatt hour (the amount of energy used by a little over 300 homes in the space of an hour) using wind and solar was $112 in 2023 and would drop to $82 in 2030.

By contrast, the figures for small modular reactors were $509 and $282 respectively – far more than a 400 and 300 per cent increase compared to renewables.

Dutton took aim at the report last week, labelling it "discredited", "not relied on", "not genuine" and "skewed".

That drew a sharp rebuke from CSIRO boss Doug Hilton, who, without naming Dutton, said politicians should "resist the temptation to disparage science".

"The GenCost report can be trusted by all our elected representatives, irrespective of whether they are advocating for electricity generation by renewables, coal, gas or nuclear energy," he wrote in an open letter.

Energy expert Ken Baldwin says wind is one of the two renewables that are the cheapest (Nicolas Walker/AFR)

It's a view shared by Baldwin.

"We should always trust the science, we should always use the best available information, and that is exactly what GenCost does," he said.

"And having worked with some of the people in GenCost, I can vouch for the fact that the work that they do is rigorous, scientific and valid."

In addition to cost, the time taken to get nuclear power up and running is a major hurdle given the pressing need to reduce carbon emissions now.

The technology is currently outlawed in Australia but even if the ban was reversed, the first nuclear reactor wouldn't come online until around 2040 – long after the 2030 deadline to reduce emissions by 43 per cent.

Coal-fired power plants are coming offline and need replacing. (Paul Jones/Fairfax)

"We're talking about timeframes of 15 years or so from changing the legislation to actually seeing something operating on the ground, and that's maybe a little conservative," Baldwin said.

"Small modular reactors might be constructed more rapidly, but we don't know because there are very few in the world."

That lack of evidence about small modular reactors (SMR) is another issue in itself.

The Coalition touted the emerging technology as the vehicle to drive nuclear adoption in Australia, only for the only SMR project in the Western world, in Utah, to be abandoned in November due to a lack of commercial viability on the back of high inflation.

"In addition to that one, there's only a couple which are in Russia and China," Baldwin said.

"And they're, of course, not a commercial product, they're built by government. So it's very hard to get a cost comparison with those two.

"So really, there's there's not much data to go on.

"But clearly the one piece of data we have from the Utah project indicates that the cost is actually quite high and it's risen quite a lot in a few years since COVID."

The CSIRO says a mix of solar and wind is significantly cheaper than nuclear energy. (Getty Images/iStockphoto)

He said that may change in the future as more countries look into the technology, hopefully making it more commercially viable, but there are too many unknowns to make a definitive call right now.

Where he does see the potential for nuclear to play a role in Australia is to decarbonise the last one or two per cent of the electricity grid in the mid-to-late 2030s or 2040s – just not before then.

"By that time, who knows what the cost of these small modular reactors might be, they might actually come into the competitive range," Baldwin said.

"That's not to say there's no place at all for nuclear," he continued.

"But as a competitor to solar and wind in the next decade or 15 years to decarbonise the electricity sector, nuclear is not as competitive as solar and wind."

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2024-03-19 19:21:10Z
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