The debate around nuclear power in Australia isn’t just political. There’s also a generational divide

‘Plan B’?

The Coalition, now led by Peter Dutton, wants Australia to be among them.

He’s preparing to take an energy policy to the next election that includes a promise to lift the ban and explore the use of both large-scale and small modular reactors, or SMRs, possibly on the site of retiring coal-fired power stations.

Mr Dutton believes the world has changed since Australia last really considered the question of nuclear power under Mr Howard.

Australia has committed to achieving net zero emissions by 2050, coal is exiting the grid, power prices are rising and there’s a growing backlash in parts of regional Australia to the massive expansion of wind, solar and transmission projects.

Nuclear power plants, conversely, have a small footprint and perform a similar “firming” or “baseload” role to coal and gas, without the emissions.

Renewables in the regions causing anxiety

Ambitious climate targets are super-charging the race towards renewables in regional Australia, but in many communities, the pace and scale of change is causing anxiety and uncertainty.

But few have been built since the 1990s and the ones that have, have typically been beset by delays and huge cost blowouts. And that’s what the political debate has boiled down to: cost and time.

Labor — long opposed to nuclear — isn’t considering any use of a technology it believes is eye-wateringly expensive and too poisonous to sell to the electorate. It’s banking on a grid dominated by renewables to meet Australia’s future energy needs and mandated climate targets.

Tony Wood is the Grattan Institute’s energy director and agrees that right now, the economics for nuclear power “are terrible”.

But in the midst of a challenging, once-in-a-century energy transition, Mr Wood is also technology agnostic and reckons Australia would be wise to consider a plan B, just in case.

“Personally, I think Australia should have a grown-up discussion around the role of nuclear and I don’t think the ban helps that,” he says.

“There are some significant unknowns about nuclear, but the promise of small modular reactors [SMRs] is quite attractive to Australia because if you could dramatically drive down the cost, then that could be interesting in the future and so we should watch that.”

According to Dr Ho, SMRs are an attractive prospect because they’re smaller, safer, cheaper to build and easier to deploy than large-scale reactors.

“Their targeted time frames are about 3 to 5 years for construction compared to say 5 to 8 years for large nuclear,” he says.

Several designs are in development, with the most advanced aiming to be completed around 2030.

In its GenCost report, the CSIRO estimated the capital costs of an SMR would top $31,000 per kilowatt, compared with $3,040/kW for wind and $1,525/kW for large-scale solar.

However, those figures are contested.

A peer-reviewed 2020 study by the University of Queensland estimated the cost would be between $4,700/kW and $9,900/kW. The report says the capital costs would be recovered over the lifetime of the project.

On the question of timing, Ms Cook cites the International Atomic Energy Agency’s own figures, which suggest a country can go from considering nuclear energy to having nuclear energy in its grid within 10 to 15 years.

“And that is starting from scratch,” she adds.

“Australia is not starting from scratch. Australia has existing nuclear infrastructure that we would build up if we decided to go down a nuclear path.”

Are attitudes changing?

The biggest obstacle to change, as Tony Wood sees it, is that nuclear by definition “sounds scary”.

But as Ms Cook points out, the three countries where the worst nuclear disasters have taken place — the United States, Japan, and Ukraine — are not just doubling down but “trebling down on their nuclear generation commitments”.

“The United States, Japan and Ukraine are signatories to the pledge that was made at COP28 to triple our global nuclear energy capacity by 2050,” she says.

“To me, that is significant.”

There are signs too that attitudes might be shifting — albeit for different reasons.

While the labour movement is broadly anti-nuclear, the Australian Workers’ Union has always been open to nuclear energy for the jobs and energy-intensive industries it could support.

The Victorian branch of the Mining and Energy Union also became pro-nuclear following the shock closure of the Hazelwood coal-fired power station in 2017, leaving nearly 1,000 workers without jobs.

Essential polling suggests about half of Australians back the development of nuclear power and a recent Newspoll found 55 per cent of respondents supported the use of small modular reactors on the site of retiring coal-fired power stations.

Support was highest among younger Australians.