Karen Grogan (SA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I will just mention that I did listen to Senator Cadell in silence, and I'm now being heckled from across the chamber. Over and over again, Senator Cadell and his colleagues have talked about how the small modular reactors are cheap, reliable and popular. I'm not sure that any of that's true. I frequently am respectfully disagreeing with Senator Cadell because the projects have not been proven to be commercially viable and yet, in Senator Cadell's contribution just now, he said we should get rid of all the subsidies. We know that new technology frequently will require some form of government assistance to get it off the ground, whether that be some form of financial treatment, loans et cetera, to enable companies to bring off the technology. But I think ripping off the bandaid and letting the market rip may end up with us in a situation which would lead directly off what the coalition government did for almost a decade, which was precisely nothing. They left us with announcements of coal powered stations being closed down and nothing to replace them.

I would like to say that we intend to keep the lights on. We intend to make sure that the power needs of this country are satisfied. We will not just stand around and ignore the fact that we need to ensure that we have enough supply, unlike those opposite, who did nothing for an extraordinarily long time and have only become very irate about this issue and started calling for new structures since they've been in opposition.

One classic example that a number of my colleagues from across the chamber have talked about is the NuScale development, a small modular reactor in America—cutting-edge, the brand-new normal. That project was cancelled just last month because of cost blowouts and technical issues. That was after two decades of trying to get this technology to work, and it hasn't come off yet—proving that this is not commercially viable; it's just not, at this point in time. So, not only did the project cost the American taxpayer $930 million for a project that's now just scrapped, but also as a company they didn't fare terribly well, with the value of shares in their company falling by 30 per cent in after-market trade. And that was on top of a 70 per cent decline in the year to date, to the point at which they closed down the project. If your only hope is the small modular reactors then you probably need to expand out a little bit, because that is not going to work at this point in time.

So, nine long years and no meaningful energy policy, and now just a frantic attempt to convince everyone that nuclear is the way forward, when what you are proposing is small modular reactors, and they are the ones that are not yet viable. If you're actually talking about a large nuclear reactor, a large energy plant, then you need to consider the water needs of those kinds of plants and where you're going to put it. We know that the social licence is still not there in this country for nuclear. What is the pathway to address that? And why would we do that when we have an abundance of wind and an abundance of sunshine and renewable energy is the cheapest form of energy that we have available to us? (Time expired)