Glenn Sterle (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Senate will now consider the proposal from Senator Duniam. The President has received the following letter, dated 2 July 2024, from Senator Duniam:

Pursuant to standing order 75, I give notice that today I propose to move "That, in the opinion of the Senate, the following is a matter of urgency:

The need for the Albanese Government to drop its ideological opposition to nuclear energy and agree with other left of centre political parties across the world, such as UK Labour leader Keir Starmer who describes zero emissions nuclear energy as "critical" to lower household energy bills, create jobs and energy security."

Is consideration of the proposal supported?

More than the number of senators required by the standing orders having risen in their places—

With the concurrence of the Senate, the Clerks will set the clock in line with the informal arrangements made by the whips.

Jonathon Duniam (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Environment, Fisheries and Forestry) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That, in the opinion of the Senate, the following is a matter of urgency:

The need for the Albanese Government to drop its ideological opposition to nuclear energy and agree with other left of centre political parties across the world, such as UK Labour leader Keir Starmer who describes zero emissions nuclear energy as "critical" to lower household energy bills, create jobs and energy security.

The motion, just to remind the chamber, is a very important one about a very important issue, and that is, of course, the intransigence, based on nothing other than ideology, around this energy debate we're having in this nation. Our motion calls on the Albanese Labor government to drop its ideological opposition to nuclear energy in this country and to agree with left-of-centre parties in other countries that are adopting this approach to energy generation for two reasons. The first one is the most important one, which we'll spend most of our time talking about today, and that is the cost of energy. The second one is the Holy Grail that has often been talked about, and that is the pursuit of net zero. Chief amongst those centre-left political parties pursuing nuclear as a form of energy generation that will assist in achieving both of those goals is the UK Labour Party, set to romp it in in the polls not too long from now.

To that end, I remind anyone who happens to be unfortunate enough to be caught listening to this debate that 97 times before the last election a promise was made to Australian households that energy prices would drop by $275 per household per year by the year 2025. Since that promise was made, energy prices have gone up, on average across the country, by about $1,000 per household. If you add those two numbers together, we're about $1,275 away from where we should be based on that promise, which rather does put into perspective and paint as very insignificant what the government has done, as opposed to what it promised. So it is a fail on that count, and it's not just a political failure. It is a failure that is hurting Australian households and businesses. The reason we are in this situation is that this government has put all of its eggs in one basket when it comes to energy generation, and that is because it is a pursuit of renewables at the expense of any other form of energy generation.

Before we have the howls—or the calls, rather—that we are anti renewables, the fact is that we believe renewables are an important part of the mix—the mix, because renewables, when it comes to wind and solar, are only an intermittent source of energy. It is not baseload. It is not dispatchable. It is not there to flick on with the flick of a switch. It is, unfortunately, something that only operates when the sun is shining or the wind is blowing. So this policy approach being taken by this government, to pursue renewables with dispatchable baseload energy generation coming offline—90 per cent of it by the year 2034—is a recipe for disaster. The proof is in the power prices Australian households are paying now and in the blackouts and gas shortages that energy market operators and other experts are predicting will occur. The proof is there.

We're behind our target when it comes to emissions reduction, despite this ideological pursuit of an emissions reduction target and transitioning to renewables completely. We're not meeting our promises when it comes to power price reductions, yet we won't change the plan. The government will not change course and will not adopt any different policy when it comes to how we deal with these problems. Why are we being so bloody minded about this? I do not understand. Why do we not say yes to something instead of just saying no? If it's not working, why wouldn't you try something new? And I look forward to hearing whoever the first Labor speaker is in this debate as to what justification there could possibly be to continue doing what isn't working. As I said before, it's got nothing to do with political failure, as embarrassing as that might be—and you will be judged on election day against the promises you made. But the fact is, Australian households are hurting.

So, instead of doing anything different, this government is doubling down and ignoring what other leaders, who are going to romp it in across the world, are doing. You only have to listen to what Keir Starmer, the leader of the opposition, the Labour Party, in the UK said. He said, 'My government will lower household energy bills, create jobs and ensure Britain's energy security.' Nuclear is a critical part of the UK's energy mix, and it's a once-in-a-generation opportunity now to seize the jobs of the future. Why this government refuses to heed the call of other labour leaders around the world and adopt a solution that they're currently blindly ruling out is a mystery to me and to all Australians. (Time expired)

Varun Ghosh (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Well, what's a mystery to all Australians are the details of the coalition's plan. I spoke on a misconceived urgency motion about this last week and raised questions about the missing details in the coalition's nuclear mud map, and none of those details have been revealed since. What are the type and size of the nuclear reactors to be used? How many reactors will there be at each site? How much radioactive waste will be produced? Where will the waste be stored? How much will it cost? How much time will it take? And will local communities have a real say about whether they have to live next to one of these reactors? Those questions need to be answered urgently, but they have not been.

Rather than bringing these vague and performative urgency motions to the Senate, the Liberal Party should urgently work out the details of its policy and urgently reveal these to the Australian people. Months on, they have no detail in their plan. Last time I spoke about the cost of nuclear energy and the Lazard Levelized Cost of Energy analysis, which says that nuclear energy is between three and six times more expensive than renewable options.

We could also talk about time. In the absence of the details referred to earlier, it is difficult to know when any Australian nuclear power plant would be able to be brought online. There are estimates being provided, but they are necessarily speculative. In circumstances where Australia has no substantial nuclear power production industry, there are legislative impediments to this plan at a state and federal level. Significantly more expertise in nuclear energy production will be needed, and there is already a shortage of people, materials and expertise around the country. Any estimates currently in the public debate may be quite far wrong. Indeed, there is reason to believe, logically, that this is going to take quite a bit longer.

But I want to talk about economic feasibility as well. Again, in the absence of details, it is impossible to be precise. Mr Dutton initially speculated that the plan would use small modular nuclear reactors. There's no detail on what reactors are going to be used, but small modular reactors are not currently in widespread commercial production. Where are the reactors coming from? Although they may have lower up-front capital costs, their economic uncompetitiveness or viability is neither established nor refuted. In the context of either smaller or larger nuclear reactors, how do they work in relation to existing power grids across the country?

Just today, Steve Edwell, who is the chair of the Economic Regulation Authority in Western Australia—that's the independent umpire tasked with keeping utility prices down in WA—observed that he struggled to see how nuclear would ever be cost competitive. He also observed that nuclear reactors were not designed to be turned on and turned off to match demand and thus would not work with existing renewables feeding into the Western Australian grid. So while my colleague opposite says this is designed to augment or supplement renewables, that's just not possible in the WA grid. So, there's a kind of furphy going on here.

To get nuclear into the grid, the coalition basically has two options. It either puts on hold existing renewable projects and hobbles existing renewable power options that are currently feeding into the grid, or it accepts that it's got nuclear power plants that are going to be severely underutilised, as they are in many of the examples that they and some colleagues opposite cited last week. How do they deal with underutilisation of nuclear power plants? The difficulty there is that, because these will be state owned nuclear power plants that the coalition has to pay for, you're effectively saddling Australia and the Australian taxpayer with uneconomic assets—assets that will become stranded in the short to medium term once they're brought online.

Put simply, this government has an alternative that involves commitment to renewable energy and using gas as a firming fuel in the interim. Since coming to office the Albanese government has seen a 25 per cent increase in renewable energy in Australian grids, has greenlit 50 Australian renewables projects which, when completed, will power three million Australian homes, or the equivalent, and continues to invest in battery and storage technology and infrastructure. The other point is: if long duration battery technology comes online, these nuclear power plants will not be economically viable, so either the Australian taxpayer pays through the energy bills or they pay because they've underwritten an uneconomic asset.

David Shoebridge (NSW, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It's hard to know whether to laugh or cry when the coalition points to the UK as the example of cheap nuclear power. The Hinkley Point reactors would have to be the global test case for the economic insanity that is nuclear power. I think it's worthwhile remembering that, when the UK first decided to build this nuclear power station at Hinkley, the now former—very former!—CEO of the entity said in 2007 that the Hinckley project would be cooking Christmas turkeys in England by 2017 at a cost of nine billion pounds. Talking about turkeys—and the coalition are obviously keen for a bunch of Australian turkeys—what's the current cost of that same reactor? If you have a look at the current cost, it's coming in at more than A$90 billion—not nine billion pounds, but A$90 billion—and the only turkeys that are being cooked by that Hinkley reactor are the fools in government who thought that that nuclear power station would produce anything like reasonable power. It is extraordinary. Iin fact, it beggars belief that the coalition has had a look at Hinkley and looked at the UK nuclear industry and said, 'We want a bit of that!' You couldn't make this stuff up.

Talking about turkeys, whilst the coalition wants us to join the UK nuclear turkey hunt, the Labor government has gone really strangely quiet about their naval nuclear propulsion bill. Do you remember how it was really urgent that we had to get this new naval nuclear propulsion safety bill up? The Labor government suddenly wanted to go hot to trot on naval nuclear reactors. And, whilst the Labor Party jumped out with a bunch of weird memes against the coalition's nuclear strategy—do you remember the three-eyed fish?—maybe Labor was thinking about a three-eyed Port Adelaide kingfish or a three-eyed Fremantle redfish, because that's where Labor wants to put its nuclear reactors. Worse than that, that's where Labor wants to have toxic nuclear waste dumps. They've got legislation in parliament right now to put a toxic nuclear waste dump in Port Adelaide, to put another toxic nuclear waste dump on Garden Island, just off Fremantle. So, when Labor comes in here and says, 'Oh, nuclear is terrible,' they seem to have suddenly forgotten that Labor wants floating nuclear reactors—five or more in Port Adelaide and five or more in Fremantle. Maybe when they're talking about three-eyed fish, they're talking about themselves.

Gerard Rennick (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

What I really like about nuclear power is that, when you turn it on, it works and it's dispatchable. Compare that to wind power, which, in the last quarter, produced the same amount of energy as it did three years ago, despite the fact that an extra 2,400 gigawatts of capacity has been installed in the system. That extra 2,400 gigawatts of capacity cost billions of dollars to install. And what did we get for that money? Nothing, nada, zip—and that is the problem with unreliables. You don't know if they're going to turn up for work that day. You cannot run a country hoping and praying that the wind's going to blow or the sun's going to shine.

When that side of the chamber accuses this side of being Luddites and of not believing in technology, nothing could be further from the truth. I do believe in technology, but I happen to know that if you want to unlock the energy of a molecule, you've got to go high up into the atomic numbers. That's where the real energy is. If you look at the probes that NASA sends out to Mars, they have plutonium batteries that last for years and can send a vehicle into outer space. Imagine the day when we can tap into nuclear power in such a way that we have batteries in our cars or semitrailers that don't have to recharge for years. We may be a long way away from that today, but that is the technology of tomorrow, and that is why we desperately need nuclear technology in this country, because we cannot continue to rely on unreliables. We cannot continue to sink billions of dollars into an energy grid and get nothing for it.

Should I mention the words Snowy Hydro? Should I mention the words green hydrogen? You criticise us about a pipedream of building nuclear power plants when there are over 400 already installed around the world and another 60 being built and 110 slated to be built by over 30 countries, including the biggest countries in the world like the USA, France and China. No, no, no—you criticise us for that, but you've got your own pipedreams with some of this green hydrogen stuff that has never worked. The idea that you can somehow export this energy overseas is just a pipedream.

The other thing we need to talk about is waste. When I questioned the CSIRO about their costs in terms of building renewables—and I did just that yesterday morning—they couldn't tell me what the capacity factor of a windfarm was. Of course, the capacity factor that they use in their assumptions is 50 per cent. The real capacity factor over the last five years has been 30 per cent. The highest capacity factor of any energy source, as stated by the energy commission in the USA, is actually in nuclear energy, and that's on par with coal. But the CSIRO assume the capacities of those energy sources are only 60 per cent. Why? Because they always give first dibs to the unreliables, solar in particular, in the middle of the day.

When people say renewables are cheaper, it may be correct that in the middle of the day it is cheaper to sell solar, because you have to unload 32 terawatts of solar in order to meet the Renewable Energy Target that was set up years ago. So energy companies sell this stuff at a loss throughout the middle of the day, and then the zealots will take that and say, 'Look how cheap it is,' but those losses made through the middle of the day are then recouped by coal at night-time, when coal power stations are running. So what you're actually doing is increasing the costs of energy all around to basically subsidise renewables in the middle of the day.

The other beautiful thing about nuclear power is you won't have hundreds of kilometres of transmission lines and you won't have all that toxic sludge from lithium batteries and all the niobium, copper, nickel and everything like that that goes into them—not that there are enough rare metals in the earth to actually build this stuff. Let's get back to reality. Let's look forward for the future and embrace nuclear. (Time expired)

Deborah O'Neill (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It's always interesting following a contribution of that kind, where there is just so much spitballing of a range of ideas at the wall and no coherence. That's why Australians need to be very careful about what they accept from what those opposite are putting forward. The fact is this simple: renewables are the cheapest source for new-build electricity. That is the reality. We do live in what I would consider the most beautiful country in the world, and we have an incredible asset in terms of our renewable energy, and that makes us quite different from other places.

Today I want to make a very clear contribution to awaken Australians to how totally incorrect some of the rhetoric of the opposition leader is with regard to nuclear. Australians are feeling cost-of-living pressures and they are concerned about energy costs. When you're under pressure you cast about for somebody to give you an automatic, quick new solution. It is that fear that Mr Dutton is responding to with incorrect information. I cannot imagine why you would want to mislead the Australian people. Mr Dutton is the leader of the potential alternative government, the Liberal and National parties, and should be telling the truth. To do that he has to get his facts right.

Talking about nuclear energy is no small thing. We know that, overall, while the radioactivity falls after the use of nuclear fission to process any form of nuclear energy, overall radioactivity falls below that of natural uranium after about 10,000 years, so this is nothing to muck around with. This is serious, serious technology, so there should be serious, serious truth telling.

The truth is that there are two main types of nuclear plants. Some of them are in existence; they're the large-scale ones. Then there's these other ones that don't even exist in operation yet. They are the ones that we keep hearing about from those who think that nuclear is our solution in 20 years. Small modular nuclear reactors don't even exist, though there's some information you can get about them if you're interested. You can go to the Rolls-Royce website and it'll tell you about their plans for what they are developing. But they don't yet exist. To pretend that this can be put into the grid and that there'll be some immediate change to the cost of electricity is not only a lie, it's grossly misrepresenting the hope that Australians should have about a proper and sophisticated debate on this matter.

The Leader of the Opposition, Mr Dutton, has held a Coke can in his life many times, and he's decided to put into the public record his version of reality, where he says that the waste per annum from one of these small modular reactors—remember that they don't exist yet—will be one Coke can. Well, he's got his number very, very wrong because if you go to this document from Rolls-Royce, they describe very clearly that the technology they're producing generates about 285 cubic metres of spent nuclear fuel in the course of its 60-year life. If you split 285 cubic metres across 60 years you get 4.75 cubic metres per year—not just a centimetre, not just a square centimetre and not just a cubic centimetre. If we go from centimetres, which are tiny units, to what we're talking about, which is cubic metres—not a normal flat metre, not a square metre, cubic metres, which are like big blocks of concrete to stop cars proceeding. The reality is that on five occasions Mr Dutton has told the Australian people that a small modular reactor will produce one can of Coke of waste. The reality is that he's 12,499 cans of Coke out in his calculations.

You cannot trust a word that he says on this nuclear debate if he gets those basic facts wrong. Do not trust Mr Dutton. He is a master of deception. (Time expired.)

Lidia Thorpe (Victoria, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Despite the coalition claiming nuclear energy is in the national interest, nothing about it is in the national interest. It might be in the Nationals' interest, but the risk, costs and waste are certainly not in the interests of future generations nor are they in the interests of my people.

First Peoples in this country have a long history of continuous resistance against nuclear proposals of all kinds, including 30 years of successfully fighting against proposed nuclear waste dumps. In two weeks time it will be the 20th anniversary of the Kupa Piti Kungka Tjuta's win against the federal government's trying to put a nuclear waste dump at Coober Pedy in South Australia, with Coober Pedy in 2000 being declared a nuclear-free zone. Billa Kalina in South Australia, Muckaty in the NT, and Woomera, Yappala and Kimba, all in South Australia, were targeted for nuclear waste dumps. Isn't it strange that it was First Nations communities there were being targeted every time? Just put it in the blackfellas' backyard—which is the whole country, mind you. Yet we fought back successfully every time.

On 18 July it will be the one-year anniversary of the Federal Court determination that the former federal resources minister Keith Pitt was way out of step when he used ministerial powers to declare Kimba as the site for a federal nuclear waste dump. Just as the former coalition government was out of order on nuclear then, they are certainly out of order on nuclear power now. It is time governments upheld First Peoples' rights in this country, including self-determination and free, prior and informed consent, because you have no consent for nuclear waste or reactors ever on these lands. It is stolen anyway.

Ross Cadell (NSW, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

What we're getting into today is this massive thing around nuclear, but what we need to get down to are basic facts. What Australia needs is an energy mix. It needs to not have all its eggs in one basket, because we all know how that can go.

Tim Ayres (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Minister for Trade) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Cost it, man! Just cost it.

Ross Cadell (NSW, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

We heard the previous speaker talking about 2,400 gigawatts of power coming on with new wind in the last two years and not a single bit over what we were doing two years ago actually going into the grid in the last month, because they are transient, they are flexible and they do not always deliver what they should. In fact, the best rate of plate capability to actual delivery of power comes from one windfarm in Australia that delivers 43 per cent of what its plate rate says, not the actual rate that it says, because that is what it does.

Up my way we have the Tomago aluminium smelter, which currently uses 950 gigawatts of actual, firmed power. They're in the market for renewables, because that's what they have to do to meet so many of these compliance things. They're after three gigawatts, which is more than three times the plate rate of power, because it is no longer dispatchable; it is no longer firmed. This is where nuclear comes in.

If we're going down this path of emission-free power—let's get down to it—under this government's policy, what we're going to see is coal plants going longer. We'll see more emissions from older and older coal plants as they stretch them out, like the Labor government did in New South Wales.

We'll see gas peaking plants needing to be built to fix this gap, because they won't be getting to the 82 per cent goal by 2030. They're going to be nowhere near it, let's be honest, because they're playing with unicorn technology. They're talking about floating offshore wind. Let's go there. They want to talk about things that don't exist. Show me a floating offshore substation anywhere in the world. I know those on the other side cannot show me, because it does not exist.

The only floating offshore wind in the world is 11 floating turbines from Hywind and five that are powering gas and petrol extraction plants off the coast of Norway. How long did they last? Let's go back to that. They're being pulled out after seven years of operation. That is the length of energy security. They are coming in for long-term maintenance after seven years. That is what renewables gets you. It gets you a short-term, non-commercial rate of return.

So what do we want to do? We want to put 300 of these off the Port Stephens coast. We want to put 300 of these off the Illawarra coast. We want to put them around. So, if these things don't work, what do we do? We go to the only non-emission—

Tim Ayres (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Minister for Trade) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

You're worse than Barnaby!

Matt O'Sullivan (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Cadell, please be seated. Senator Ayres, it was very quiet in here before you came in. If you could, please allow the speaker to continue to speak. Senator Cadell, you'll be heard in silence.

Ross Cadell (NSW, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you for your protection from those opposite. Here we go. So we have nuclear as the only emission-free firmed power that can do this. It has to be in the mix because, of all of the countries in the world, none has a plan to get to zero emissions on wind and solar alone. They don't, because they can't do it. I'm standing here ready to take an interjection as to what country has.

A government senator interjecting—

Oh: now we hear gas coming in. But we're going to hear about coal. We're hearing more and more. We're not talking renewables under this. Gas has emissions. We're hearing from Labor now, with that interjection, that their plan will have emissions if they're relying on gas for that firming. That is what they're saying. I'm happy for gas; I'm happy for coal.

Hollie Hughes (NSW, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Mental Health and Suicide Prevention) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Acting Deputy President, on a point of order: it was very easy to hear every other speaker, prior to the entry of Senator Ayres into the chamber. I just wonder if he might lower his tone so I can hear Senator Cadell.

Matt O'Sullivan (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you for reminding Senator Ayres of the point that I'd already made as Acting Deputy President here. Senator Cadell, you will be heard in silence.

Ross Cadell (NSW, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

So, we get down here. Nuclear has to be part of the mix. Nuclear can give you power when you turn the switch on. Nuclear can always be there. If we're going down this hydrogen path for vehicles—and I think we will be using hydrogen—it doesn't have to be green hydrogen; it can be hydrogen that comes from nuclear power plants when they're always running. And you can have your Hyundai N74 car. We can have trains running on these things.

You have to have power that is firm, that is real, that is dispatchable, that is ready for industry. You have to have it always there. And battery technology is not evolving. We've just heard from those opposite, with an interjection, that their plan knows they can't get to a zero-emissions energy grid; they need gas. That was their admission. They're going to have to sweat coal. So, nuclear is the answer here. When you're talking about the AP1000, there are nine of them being built. There are six in existence. And those energy technology powerhouses like Bangladesh can do it. Bangladesh has us covered in the technological area when it comes to nuclear.

These are the things we're talking about. These people don't believe in nuclear, because they don't believe in Australia.

Sue Lines (President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The question is that the motion moved by Senator Duniam be agreed to.