Media

Syndicated globally via AFP – Australia’s conservative opposition will build nuclear power plants across the country if it wins the next election, according to plans detailed Wednesday that have reignited debate over climate policy. Opposition leader Peter Dutton said he would overturn a 26-year nuclear ban to build seven government-owned reactors on the sites of ageing coal-fired power stations.Climate finance expert Tim Buckley said nuclear power in Australia was “impossible”. “The idea that nuclear could be up and running in 2035-37 is fanciful, and even that is too late given our concurrent climate and energy crises,” he said. Read more

As Tim Buckley says on ABC TV’s The Business, nuclear is the most expensive option for Australia and the technology in the Australian context is entirely unproven – notwithstanding the claims to the contrary by the Coalition. Read more

The biggest problem of nuclear energy is “the technology in the Australian context is entirely unproven”, according to Climate Energy Finance director Tim Buckley, “We don’t have any of the supply chains, any of the labour, skilled workforce or knowledge to actually do it,” he said. He said it was “impossible” for any private investor (without taxpayer subsidies) to take on the risk of building a nuclear power plant. Read more

Sun-soaked Australia’s lofty renewable energy ambitions were given a harsh reality check on Thursday, as looming electricity shortfalls delayed the long-awaited shutdown of the country’s largest coal-fired power plant. In many cases, nuclear makes sense for energy-deficient countries that had no domestic renewable options, such as Japan, energy analyst Tim Buckley told AFP. “Nuclear has no future in Australia,” he said. “Australia has not continuously built it, we have none of the skillset, none of the engineering, and none of the capacity for nuclear.” Read more

The new CSIRO GenCost 2023-24 report released this week makes for very interesting reading. In the report, the Australian Government’s independent scientific body subjects the nuclear barracking of Peter Dutton and Ted O’Brien to a comprehensive science and economics based, peer reviewed debunking. Peter Dutton has now pivoted to spruiking large scale nuclear reactors, having repeatedly thumped the table last year asserting in the face of all the available evidence that small modular reactors are the solution for Australia’s energy transition, with a similar reception from the CSIRO. Read more

As a new CSIRO report demonstrates once and for all that nuclear is not viable in Australia as a zero-emissions energy source, Tim Buckley explains that nuclear would lock in permanent, ultra-high energy prices for Australians. Read more

Tim Buckley breaks down the new CSIRO GenCost report out today which finds that a large-scale nuclear reactor would take at least until 2040 to build, cost around $17bn and produce power costing twice as much as firmed renewables, definitively showing that Peter Dutton’s nuclear fantasy is a complete furphy. Read more

Climate Energy Finance’s latest report, released this week, modelled China’s electricity system nationally at the annual level through to 2040, evaluating its likely GDP growth trajectory and the resulting energy demand growth, as well as the increased share and hence demand for electricity in the energy mix as China continues to pursue its ‘electrification of everything’ strategy of the last two decades. This is a wakeup call for Australia to accelerate the transition of its economy from its historic overdependence on coal exports and diversify its economic base. We should be pivoting now to deploy our natural advantages – our world-leading wealth of critical minerals and strategic metals – to produce value-added energy transition materials for export. Read more

The Federal Government last week announced a $1 billion investment in Australian solar manufacturing in the historic fossil fuel heartland of the Hunter Valley, the Solar Sunshot program. Its establishment at the Liddell coal power plant site is symbolic. The play is designed to boost a regional economy formerly dependent on fossil fuels, and help pivot the region and future workforce into the zero-emissions industries of the future, presenting a stark alternative to the Coalition’s “vision” of a nuclear reactor for every former coal generator site. Read more

The sudden enthusiasm of the LNP for nuclear energy is another divisive, cynical and damaging ploy to ignite Climate Wars 2.0 and disrupt and delay Australia’s accelerating renewables transition on behalf of the fossil fuel cartel. The LNP’s climate and energy luddites burned a decade when they were in office. We can’t afford more of the same policy lunacy. Read more

Tim Buckley, the director of the independent think tank Climate Energy Finance, said the opposition’s nuclear energy solution is about delay, which he views as the “new denialism.” “We’ve got this pure hypothetical political spin about waiting for 20 years for SMRs. We can’t afford to wait,” he told The Canberra Times. “We have a climate crisis. We have a cost-of-living crisis now. What this is all about is sowing disinformation and delay. It’s climate science denialism. Read more

The false dichotomy of distributed small-scale versus utility-scale renewables, coupled with the nuclear and CCS furphies, is the latest chapter in the Coalition’s efforts to stymie and repoliticise Australia’s energy transition. As Andrew Forrest succinctly put it at his National Press Club address this week: “If we swallow this new lie that we should stop the rollout of green energy and that nuclear energy will be our fairy godmother, we will be worse off again.” Read more