The $80 billion question buried in Dutton’s nuclear power plan   

Sydney Morning Herald
January 3, 2025


Decommissioning any plants built under the Coalition’s nuclear energy plan could cost more than $80 billion, and taxpayers would have to foot the bill.

Opposition Leader Peter Dutton’s planned seven nuclear plants, with a likely 14 large-scale reactors, would be publicly owned, so taxpayers would be liable for clean-up costs from the radioactive sites and any accidents during operation.   

The Hinkley Point C nuclear plant, under construction in Britain, is that country’s first in two decades.


Last month, Britain’s National Audit Office found that the bill to clean up its old nuclear sites, which date back to the 1940s, would be $260 billion.

About $200 billion of this is to decommission Britain’s original Sellafield site for weapons and energy generation, with contaminated buildings and radioactive waste.

Another $48 billion is to decommission eight other nuclear sites, which now range from 36 to 48 years old, at a cost of $6 billion each. They are set to be handed back by a private operator to the government for decommissioning from 2028.

University of NSW energy researcher Mark Diesendorf said international experience showed the cost of decommissioning a nuclear reactor could be roughly in line with its construction cost, which the Coalition has said would be about $9 billion a reactor in Australia.


“For a rough approximation, you’re looking at probably the equivalent of the construction cost,” Diesendorf said.

If the Coalition’s plan to build 14 nuclear reactors by the mid-2040s is realised, the decommissioning bill would be roughly $82 billion to $125 billion in today’s dollars. 



Private firm Frontier Economics produced costings of the opposition’s plan that included decommissioning in an overall $331 billion bill to build 14 gigawatts of nuclear generation. However, it is unclear what price was attached to clean-up and whether it is plausible, given Frontier has declined to release the assumptions it used.

Frontier said the government’s policy to boost renewables to nearly 100 per cent of electricity generation by 2050 would cost $595 billion – a figure the federal government has rejected. Labor says nuclear is the most expensive form of new energy generation.




Opposition energy spokesman Ted O’Brien said the Coalition’s plan was cheaper than the government’s renewable energy goals.

“Unlike the Coalition, Labor refuses to calculate the full cost of its plan, such as the decommissioning costs of massive offshore wind projects in the six zones it has identified off the Australian coast,” O’Brien said.

Griffith University Emeritus Professor Ian Lowe said Diesendorf’s assumption that decommissioning a large-scale reactor would cost the same as building it was “sensible”.

“The World Nuclear Association has information about the 25 reactors that have been decommissioned, and the figures vary enormously,” Lowe said.


“The figure of about $6 billion per reactor sounds about the average figure, assuming that there are no complications.”

The opposition has said its nuclear reactors would operate for 80 years, and University of NSW Associate Professor Edward Obbard, a nuclear materials engineer, said it made “perfect sense” for a country to hold the liability for nuclear decommissioning, given the cost and timescale required.

“I don’t think there’s any alternative to the state being responsible for decommissioning a nuclear power program,” Obbard said.

“Companies can go bust, but the nuclear waste is still going to be there. It has to be owned by the government.”


The government could choose to isolate an old nuclear reactor once it reaches its end of life, and leave it alone for several decades until the radioactivity had reduced, he said.

Two elements of the opposition’s nuclear plan are not included in the costings – waste management and public liability for disasters.

Diesendorf and Lowe said public liability in the unlikely event of a nuclear accident could run into the hundreds of billions of dollars, given the $290 billion clean-up bill from Japan’s 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster.

The World Nuclear Association says Fukushima and Chernobyl are the only two major accidents in six decades of the industry’s commercial operation, spread across 36 countries.

Fancy trying to cost the decommissioning costs of nuclear more than 60 years in advance. We have no idea of any technological breakthroughs for nuclear.

The technological breakthroughs for renewables have been found and they are not cost-effective.

Not as bad as Howard's $230Bn 'future fund' that suits all the insiders and nobody else - though we all pay for it every day with super charges and fees, rising costs and all that.  Let them all nail their future to the mast of the same pharken country they are intent on ruining for the majority for a change...

These clowns could bring this country to ruin and still get their indexed fantasy fund for life - at a rate the peasants can only dream of.

I keep tellin' yez ........ new party needed... are you with me?  Or against me?  Half-wits wouldn't know where to begin with that question...

Armchair_Politician wrote on Jan 5^th, 2025 at 1:04pm:



countries that are covered in snow and ice for half the year?