Elizabeth Watson-Brown (Ryan, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

The coalition wants you to believe nuclear is a magic solution that will solve both our climate and our energy woes. Here's why they're wrong: nuclear is the most expensive form of energy generation. Renewables—wind and solar backed by storage—are the cheapest, followed by coal, then gas, then by pricy nuclear. This is according to the CSIRO, whose analysis does include the cost of transition infrastructure. Nuclear plants take decades to build. Construction of new plants is frequently delayed, such as in France, where their recent Flamanville 3 reactor came online after a 12-year delay and quadruple the amount of the initial cost estimate. That's a country with an already well-established nuclear industry. The UK's Hinkley Point C nuclear energy facility—mentioned by the previous member—is costing three times more than promised and running 14 years late. In the US, there's a seven-year delay and double the cost for the Vogtle unit 3 plant in Georgia. They have essentially stopped building new nuclear plants in the US because it's just not stacking up for the government or for private investors.

So, nuclear—when do we get it? The short answer is never. The Flamanville 3 station in France had a 12-year delay and quadruple the initial cost estimate. The UK's Hinkley Point C reactor had a 14-year delay and triple the cost. The Vogtle unit 3 plant in the US had a seven-year delay and double the cost. These are all countries with an existing nuclear industry. The Leader of the Opposition reckons we'll get nuclear by 2035 and that it will cost $331 billion. In the real world, however, where—hopefully—most of us reside and which it seems the LNP are increasingly detached from, nuclear in Australia will start hitting our grid only by sometime around 2050. And the cost? Triple the coalition's optimistic assessment up to $993 billion. In the real world this just ain't gonna happen. It's a pipedream.

But let's say, for the sake of argument, it goes ahead: we get nuclear by 2050, while in the intervening period we will have screwed up our chance to transition to 100 per cent renewables because their plan involves delaying renewables construction and relying on ageing, expensive coal and gas in the interim. Even if we did get it, it would be six per cent of our energy needs and, as the most expensive form of energy, drive up our power bill enormously. In the real-world scenario, this just never happens. Perhaps the Leader of the Opposition knows this and is just wanting to play politics with our energy transition. The best case scenario is that in 25 years we have six per cent of our energy covered by an incredibly expensive energy source, and we've completely turbocharged climate change in the meantime.

Nuclear sounds too good to be true, right? That's because it is. Nuclear is not only not as reliable as it has been touted to be by those trying to sell us this pup but is also not immune to the effects of climate change. Nuclear reactors rely on water to cool them, meaning they're vulnerable to droughts and even water that is simply too hot to cool the reactor, as they experienced in France. Coastal reactors are vulnerable to—get this; it sounds crazy—swarms of jellyfish clogging up their intake pipes because the acidification of the oceans due to climate change has turbocharged the jellyfish numbers. This has caused plant shutdowns across the globe, from Scotland to Japan to California.

Perhaps most importantly, the coalition's plan in the intervening decades before they could theoretically get nuclear going is to delay renewables and keep us reliant on ageing, expensive coal and gas infrastructure that's cooking our planet.

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