Cook goes nuclear on Dutton’s ‘simplistic, ridiculous’ power plan

WA Today
March 5, 2024

A Coalition proposal to build nuclear power stations at the sites of retired or retiring coal stations is ridiculous and a distraction from efforts to reach net zero using renewables, West Australian Premier Roger Cook has said.

Opposition leader Peter Dutton floated the idea of building nuclear power stations on sites of retired coal stations – which could include the South West town of Collie – as a zero-emissions solution to the nation’s energy woes.

WA Premier Roger Cook.


Cook blasted the Coalition proposal that federal Nationals leader David Littleproud was spruiking in WA this week as a fantasy.

“The rollout of small nuclear reactors or modular reactors in other countries has been halted because it’s not commercial, it’s not viable,” he said.

“In addition to that, Australia has no experience in nuclear power generation so we don’t have the workforce, we don’t have the know-how to be able to bring them in. 

“You simply cannot plonk these things into a landscape and plug it into the grid. These simplistic sort of ideas are ridiculous.

“What we need to do is accept that climate change is a reality and move to exploit the abundance of wind and solar that we have at our disposal.

“There’s no quick fix here, you’ve got actually do the hard work and this is simply a sound grab by the Nationals to distract people from the real hard work which is being done.” 

Littleproud said the Coalition wanted all energy solutions on the table because the Albanese government’s “reckless” target of 82 per cent renewables by 2030 was unattainable.



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“We don’t have the supply chains to support what’s needed to achieve 82 per cent,” he said.

“Why wouldn’t we replace them with nuclear power that firms up that energy with zero emissions, and those jobs are saved and transferred to a nuclear industry where they are transferable.”

Littleproud said instead of politicians debating nuclear power the longstanding ban should be removed and the viability of a project should be left to the market to determine.

“Let’s let the marketplace decide what’s the best energy mix for this country,” he said.

Dutton said the Coalition would be releasing details in relation to the policy soon.   

“If there’s a retiring coal asset, so there’s a coal fire generator that’s already got an existing distribution network, the wires and poles there to distribute the energy across the network to homes and businesses, that’s what we’re interested in,” he said.

The WA government plans to shut down all of its coal-fired power stations by 2030 in a staged approach.

Last August it delayed the planned shutdown of one of Muja power station’s main generators by 6 months, to April 2025, over summer power supply shortages.

Nuclear power stations need to be near rivers.

They heat the water up too.   

Meanwhile the  AEMO foresees an energy shortage due to EV's.-



The report is here -
https://aemo.com.au/-/media/files/electricity/nem/planning_and_forecasting/nem_e...

Be afraid be very afraid. BoneHead Bowen is on the case. No engineering, no science. He believes that as we can store water we can store elctricity just as well.