Coalition’s nuclear energy plans a ‘fantasy’, Bowen says   

Sep 24, 2024
New Daily



The Coalition’s plan to build nuclear power plants backed by coal for Australia’s energy transition has been branded a fantasy stacked with misinformation.   

Energy Minister Chris Bowen has pilloried Opposition Leader Peter Dutton’s plan to build seven nuclear reactors across five states without releasing the details or cost of the proposal.


“They are treating the Australian people, quite frankly, with quite arrogant contempt,” Bowen told ABC Radio on Tuesday.

There had been “a very clear misunderstanding or misrepresentation by Peter Dutton about the respective energy mixes that are options for Australia”, he said.

Dutton argued Australia won’t meet its net-zero emissions target by 2050 without nuclear energy, as he slammed the cost of wind and solar energy in a speech to the Committee for Economic Development of Australia in Sydney on Monday.

Bowen said this ignored Australia’s wind and solar potential stemming from its unique geography and expert estimates about nuclear cost blowouts.


Gas would be used as a backstop as part of Labor’s plan and could be fired up with two minutes’ notice and not spew harmful emissions when it was not operating, he said.

This was in contrast to the opposition’s plan to extend the lifespan of Australia’s coal-fired plants, which were losing reliability as they aged and needed to run constantly when used as a backup, which was terrible for emissions, Bowen said.

“The biggest threat to reliability in our energy system now is coal-fired power stations,” he said.

“We haven’t had a day in the last year where we haven’t had an unexpected outage from a coal-fired power station. They don’t get more reliable as they get older.


“If you’re leaving those coal-fired power stations in the system while you waiting for the nuclear fantasy to come on board, then you are just engineering a recipe for unreliability and blackouts in our system.”

Dutton has criticised the reliability of wind and solar, saying Australia needed energy when the wind wasn’t blowing and the sun wasn’t shining.

Bowen said that was where batteries came in.

I have an open mind on nuclear power. It's a serious concern that build times are so long, so by the time plants are commissioned they may be obsolete.

But I'm a bit cynical about renewable power. If it doesn't "bend the curve" upwards, and hits a lower limit of storage costs, and if demand continues to increase (not least because of electric cars) then we'll be talking about extending the lifetime of gas turbine AND coal plants.

We should invest now, to have the option of nuclear ten or fifteen years from now. If that turns out to be unnecessary, or if the plants are fully commissioned and fueled, but almost never used, then all we have lost is money.

Carbon reduction is the one imperative. We're taking economic risks by building wind turbines, so why not hedge also with nuclear power plants?

Australians sometimes copy the US in their contempt for France.

But France opted out of the Eurofighter program, and with a much smaller tax base built the Rafale fighter.

France is the world leader in nuclear reprocessing. If some greenie hadn't daringly put a RPG into France's fast reactor (before it was fueled up,) France would have completed the cycle from raw ingredients to reactors that burn their own waste.

France is the best (not the biggest) user of nuclear power, because government shares in private enterprise. This is a solid model (working in China for most industries.) Private enterprise provides the incentive to cut cost and increase profits, while the government stakeholder makes sure that cost cutting does not endanger the public.

We're not Americans or Japanese. We're certainly not Soviet Russians. We should be more like the French.

Government green-lights three NSW coal mine extensions, angering environmental groups

By political reporters Isobel Roe and Tom Lowrey



https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-09-24/federal-government-approves-coal-mine-extensions/104391416


How is this better than adding nukes to the mix?

John Smith wrote on Sep 25^th, 2024 at 1:22pm:



Why would you need two dispatchable energy sources, if one can do the job? Unless you feel coal has been unfairly vilified, or perhaps that they might ratchet up prices if nuclear is the only game in town?

Captain Nemo wrote on Sep 25^th, 2024 at 1:45pm:


and long term, instead of only GHG's, we'd then also have to deal with centuries of radioactive waste ...

Nuclear won't stop the pollution of the atmosphere, it just sweeps the dirt under the rug until someone else has to deal with it at some point in the future.

lee wrote on Sep 25^th, 2024 at 2:46pm:



I know you think you're going to be clever by splitting hairs, but pollution is pollution, i don't give a rats arse what type it is.