The Coalition’s nuclear power folly

Nuclear scheme nuclear and coal capacity contrasted with AEMO's assumed coal capacity: Gigawatts from 2010 - 2050

The Coalition’s 13.3 Gigawatt (GW) nuclear scheme would be an expensive and destructive folly for Australia.

Recent overseas experience

All four of the most recent major nuclear generation projects in the Western world have had:

their construction company go broke,
delays ranging from 7 to 14 years, and
costs doubling or quadrupling.

Nuclear Plant	Capacity	Start Up	Years Delay	Cost blowout
UK: Hinkley Point C	3.2 GW	2032	Over 14	3.8
Finland: Olkiluoto 3	1.6 GW	2023	14	3.6
France: Flamanville 3	1.6 GW	2024	12	4
USA: Vogtle 3	1.1 GW	2023	7	2

These nuclear projects were all huge; for example, the Hinkley Point C workforce in 2024 was expanding to 15,000 people on the site.

Coalition nuclear dwarfs overseas builds

Here’s the shock: The Coalition’s 13.3 GW nuclear scheme is:

far bigger than all these problematic overseas builds,
four times as big as the 3.2 GW of Hinkley Point C,
double the total UK nuclear capacity of 6.5 GW,
not on one site, but spread over seven sites across Australia, and
in a country without nuclear experience.

This page gives more details on each of these points below.

False claims of high electricity costs

The Coalition leader, Mr Dutton, continues to promote the nuclear scheme by falsely claiming Australians are paying three times more for electricity than in nuclear Ontario. He’s deceptively used a very high Australian cost of 56 c/kWh: the peak-hours cost in a niche Australian electricity plan for people with solar and batteries. These people can top up their battery at about 2 pm for just 18 c/kWh – and rarely pay the very high peak cost, making Dutton’s “Australian cost” ridiculously high even for those on this plan, let alone for other Australians, and making his comparison bogus. See Misinformation about current Australian electricity costs on this website.

We can’t trust his estimate of today’s Australian electricity cost. It’s a stark warning not to trust his future nuclear costs.

Water use doubles at nuclear sites.

The proposed nuclear generation (104,139 GWh/year) will nearly double the generation of the previous coal plants at the five nuclear sites, which will double the cooling water used. Especially during droughts, the increased water use could risk local water security, restrict farming, and disrupt nuclear generation,

The Coalition’s nuclear scenario

The Coalition’s “Frontier Economics Report 2” presents a nuclear power scenario on pages 25, 26, 33, and 34.

It is an unrealistic, foolishly risky scenario, with no backup plan for when it fails.

This is the scenario they use to argue that nuclear is 44% cheaper than renewables backed by gas, “AEMO’s step change scenario”. (It’s a faulty comparison as they are not comparing like with like.)

The nuclear scenario has a nuclear capacity of 13.3 gigawatts (GW) by 2051, distributed over five sites (Frontier Report 2, p 26). This could be 10 reactors in all, with two at each site, each of 1.3 GW. The scenario does not include the previously proposed “small nuclear reactors” in South Australia and Western Australia.

Failings of the nuclear scenario

One severe difficulty faced by the nuclear scheme is that our coal plants are continuing to retire, and we need to increase generation now to avoid shortages. Even if nuclear generation started in ten years, as claimed by the Coalition, this is not early enough to replace the retiring coal generation.

Red bars: Nuclear scenario nuclear capacities (Frontier Report 2, Figure 1, p 7)
Brown bars: Nuclear scenario coal capacities (Frontier Report 2, Figure 2, p 8)
Black bars: Alternative coal capacities from AEMO’s “Step-change scenario” (AEMO 2024 Integrated System Plan, Figure 1, p 10)
The historic decline in coal capacity between 2010 and 2024.

Fanciful: Nuclear starting January 2036

The red bars on the graph show the Coalition’s nuclear scenario capacity moving from 1.4 GW in 2036 to 13.3 GW in 2049. This is highly unrealistic as the CSIRO says the earliest nuclear could start is 2040, and overseas experience shows that, even in countries with existing nuclear power, nuclear builds take years longer than expected. Basing a plan for the nation’s electricity supply on this risky proposition is foolish. It risks electricity shortages, emergency fixes, and high electricity prices.

Risk: Coal plants failing or retiring early.

The black bars on the graph show the coal capacity retirements under the “AEMO step change scenario”, including:

Coal plant	Expected Retirement	Capacity GW
Eraring	2027	2.880
Yallourn	2028	1.480
Bayswater	2033	2.640
Vales Point	2033	1.320
Total		8.320

That is 39% of coal capacity closing over the next decade, with the last retirement in 2037.

The brown bars show the Coalition’s assumption that coal capacity continues for a decade longer, with the last retirement in 2047. This extension is risky because our coal plants are already old and becoming more likely to fail. For years, AEMO has been warning that the biggest risk to electricity supply is the failure of a coal generator, which would unexpectedly remove a large amount of generation from the grid.

Also, it will be expensive to extend the life of coal plants; for example, the NSW government will pay the 2.88 GW Eraring coal plant up to $225 million annually to extend its generation until August 2027.

AGL, the largest coal generator in the East Coast grid, says its coal plant closures can’t wait for nuclear power. (Renew Economy: 12 Feb 2025)

Renewable energy is the solution.

To keep the lights on, we need to move away from unreliable coal and build new capacity before each coal plant retires.

Nuclear cannot help during the next decade,
Gas is currently the most expensive source of electricity. The Coalition says (five weeks before the election) that they will force the gas companies to offer us cheaper gas. It didn’t happen during the nine years they were in government and pushing a gas-led recovery from covid. Even with cheaper gas, we do not have enough gas generation capacity, and renewables would still be cheapest.
AEMO is confident that the renewables supported by gas, the step-change scenario, will work.

Our short-term need for more generation means that we must proceed with the rapid expansion of renewable energy, regardless of the pros and cons of nuclear generation.

(Dutton’s cheap gas is still too expensive: Renew Economy: 28 Mar 2025)

Rio Tinto runs aluminium smelters which need a constant electricity supply. Rio says it can supply 80% of the electricity for its Boyne aluminium smelter in Gladstone from renewable energy, and the falling cost of batteries promises to increase the certainty of this supply and the continuing survival of its operation.

(Rio signs massive solar and battery deal to help secure the future of its aluminium smelters and refineries: Renew Economy: 13 March 2025)

Implausible: Increasing coal utilisation

Frontier presents coal as achieving only 56% utilisation of capacity in 2025 (Report 2, pp 26, 34). And, implausibly, the nuclear scenario has this utilisation increasing to above 80%.

*Note: a utilisation of 56% means that over one year, the plant generates the same amount as running flat out for 56% of the year.

This low 56% utilisation occurs because our old coal plants need maintenance and suffer unexpected failures. And they frequently slow generation and pay to have the grid accept their electricity to avoid costly shutdowns during daily competition from cheap renewables.

Now, the nuclear scenario assumes that the coal plants will keep on producing the same amount of electricity, even as coal plants retire, by running the coal plants harder, i.e. unrealistically increasing their utilisation.

For example, the graph (Frontier Report 2: p 33) shows coal generation increasing between 2031 and 2035, while the graph (Frontier Report 2: p 25) shows coal capacity decreasing in this period, between 2033 and 2034. The only way for this increased generation to happen is for the coal plants to run harder.

With the coal plants getting older and competition from renewables increasing as renewable capacity increases, you’d expect coal to struggle to maintain the current 56% utilisation. A close examination of the Frontier graphs suggests that coal utilisation climbs above 80%, which is implausible.

Unlikely: Nuclear achieving 90% utilisation

The scenario has the nuclear plants running at about 90% capacity in all years, even during the first months of each reactor’s operation. With about ten reactors starting up over 15 years, about 10 of these years will see a reactor working through teething problems, so it is unrealistic to assume such a high utilisation, and the scenario will likely not meet demand.

Also, if nuclear runs even close to 90% utilisation, it will displace an enormous amount of cheap renewable generation, particularly rooftop solar and large-scale solar, in the middle of the day, leading to more expensive electricity.

Unsupported renewables supply 62%

The nuclear scenario assumes that unassisted renewables supply 62% of the grid electricity in 2051. The scenario gets electricity from the following sources (Frontier Report 2, page 34).

Generator	% of generation in 2051	2051 / 2025 generation
Nuclear at 90% capacity	38%	–
Wind	32%	2.46
Solar	17%	2.06
Storage	8%
Hydroelectricity	5%	1
Gas	0.3%	–

In 2051, the nuclear scenario has:

unresponsive, inflexible nuclear pounding away to achieve 90% utilisation and supply 38% of grid generation,
negligible gas generation to support renewables, and
renewables: solar, wind, storage and hydro, contributing the remaining 62% – without support from gas and nuclear generation.

This is stunning. The nuclear scheme exists because the Coalition says renewables are unreliable – yet their nuclear scenario has renewables supplying 62% of demand WITHOUT support during periods of low renewable generation when the sun doesn’t shine and the wind doesn’t blow.

The nuclear scenario has renewables powering the grid unsupported. This destroys their case for nuclear.

Risk: Renewable capacity may not increase enough

Another risk for the Coalition’s nuclear scenario is that it will frighten renewable energy investors, leading to a shortage of capacity. The scenario has:

wind and solar generation more than doubling,
wind generation increasing from 355,521 GWh in 2025 to 87,468 GWh in 2051, i.e., increasing by a factor of 2.46 to meet 32% of demand,
solar generation increasing from 23,465 GWh in 2025 to 48,351 GWh in 2051, i.e., increasing by a factor of 2.06 to meet 17% of demand,
Wind and solar together provide 49% of generation, and
Nuclear only providing 38% of generation, so renewables must provide 62%.

Despite the nuclear scenario depending on renewables growth, the Coalition:

continues to demonise renewables,
threatens to break contracts for renewable development.
has nuclear running hard all the time (90% utilisation), meaning the grid must reject large amounts of renewable generation.

These attacks and the uncertainties created by the nuclear scheme may deter renewable energy investors and prevent the large expansion of renewables that the nuclear scenario needs.

Risk: High levels of gas generation.

The nuclear scenario has little gas generation. It’s less than 0.5% in both 2025 and 2051, and you need a magnifying glass to see any gas generation on their generation graph (Frontier Report 2, pp 33, 34).

This is unrealistic. In 2024, gas provided 5.3% of generation, and this gas use will continue in 2025 and beyond.

(National Energy Market Fact Sheet: AEMO: 2024)

It is also likely that the scenario would lead to more gas generation in other years due to:

nuclear starting later than assumed (highly likely),
nuclear utilization being less than the 90% assumed,
earlier coal retirement than assumed,
coal utilisation not rising from 56% to above 80% as assumed (highly likely),
lower than assumed wind and solar generation growth, and
higher demand than assumed.

The nuclear scenario would not run exactly to plan, and likely would need large volumes of gas. This could get very expensive as gas is currently our most expensive source of electricity, and it would be even more expensive if we had to import gas into Victoria or NSW.

False claim: Nuclear 44% cheaper than renewables

The Coalition falsely claims that this nuclear scenario is 44% cheaper than AEMO’s step change scenario. The claim is false in many ways.

The Coalition is not comparing like with like. Their nuclear scenario supplies 26% less electricity in 2051 than the alternative. They compare :
- their nuclear scenario, which meets the demand of AEMO’s progressive scenario, only rising to 277,174 GWh in 2051 (Frontier Report 2, Graph p 33, Table p 34), with
- AEMO’s renewables supported by gas, step change scenario in which demand rises to 376,484 GWh in 2051 (Frontier Report 2, Graph p 27, Table p 28)
The nuclear scenario produces far less electricity, has Australian homes, industry and transport using less electricity and far more petrol and gas, and does not include the cost of this extra gas and petrol.
The nuclear scenario would burn far more coal, gas and petrol and does not include any cost for this increased carbon dioxide release into the atmosphere.
The nuclear scenario does not include the cost of extending coal generation.
The cost of the nuclear build is underestimated. The CSIRO says the cost per unit of electricity of building nuclear will be at least double that of building renewables, and yet the Coalition claims nuclear generates cheap electricity.

(Four accounting tricks behind Dutton’s nuclear cost claims: Tristan Edis, Renew Economy: 18 Feb 2025)

We need more flexible generation, not baseload nuclear

We need more flexible generation to support variable renewable generation, not baseload generation that runs 24/7.

Nuclear will increase the cost of living.

The nuclear scheme abandons AEMO’s comprehensive plans, will increase the cost of living, and will make Australian industry less competitive by:

holding back the cheapest electricity generated by solar, wind, and batteries, supported by flexible gas generation,
building the most expensive and risky generation, nuclear, with the first reactor starting generation in ten years, but more likely in 15 years,
heavily subsidising coal plants to extend their generation, and
relying on what is currently the most expensive generation, gas, to cover shortfalls.

More than just abandoning AEMO’s plans, the Coalition is undermining these plans by (1) talking about cancelling renewable energy contracts, (2) planning market intervention via this government-run nuclear scheme, and (3) frightening investors. The Coalition could slow the needed rapid expansion of capacity and cause electricity shortages and price hikes.

We should trust the guidance of reputable Australian organisations like AEMO and the CSIRO, which can offer fact-based financial analysis.

Risk: Expensive electricity leading to loss of industry

Higher electricity costs and uncertain supply risk the loss of industries, e.g., the aluminium smelters.

The nuclear scenario is unbelievable.

The Coalition has based the nuclear scenario on highly dubious assumptions, has overlooked critical costs of the nuclear scheme, and made an inadequate comparison. They have not established that nuclear is cheaper than renewables. Indeed, they have not outlined a feasible nuclear future.

Strangely, the nuclear scenario in 2051 suggests that renewables can power a grid unsupported, which eliminates the need for nuclear generation.

The nuclear scheme is an unrealistic and dangerous folly that will leave Australia with power shortfalls and soaring electricity prices.

I have covered most of my key points in the above summary; the following text provides supporting details and elaboration.

This page contains:

AEMO has a depth of experience

The Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO):

manages Australian electricity and gas markets, e.g., every five minutes, AEMO decides which electricity generators will supply the market based on the generator’s bids to sell electricity,
produces an “Integrated System Plan” every two years to guide the infrastructure development of our east coast National Electricity Market (NEM), and
produces an annual “GenCost Report”, together with the CSIRO, which estimates the costs of building new electricity generators and storage.

This ongoing hourly market management, long-term planning, and costing give AEMO a depth and breadth of experience in these matters.

The annual GENCOST 2023-24 report found that:

nuclear produces the most expensive electricity, and
renewables generate the cheapest electricity even when you consider the costs of the electricity storage and transmission needed to firm renewable generation.

In the “2024 Integrated System Plan“, AEMO sees the “step change scenario” as the most likely of their planning scenarios, with renewable energy, energy storage and gas backup being the most affordable and reliable way to supply demand.

The Coalition’s nuclear scheme

The Coalition has described its nuclear scheme in:

a two-page media release in June 2024,
Two Frontier Economics Reports, 15 Nov 2024 and 13 Dec 2025.

The June media release and interviews proposed:

building nuclear generation at seven locations, each with a retired or retiring coal generator:
- Liddell, NSW,
- Mount Piper, NSW,
- Loy Yang, VIC,
- Tarong, QLD,
- Callide, QLD,
- Northern, near Port Augusta in SA, and
- Muja, near Perth in WA,
starting the first nuclear generation in 2035 for a small modular reactor or 2037 for a big reactor,
the government pay for the total cost of building, running and maintaining the reactors,
running the nuclear plants for 80 years,
delivering a net-zero electricity grid by 2050,
breaking contracts to stop wind and solar farm development,
making gas generation a big part of their scheme, and
extending the life of coal generators.

***** The Frontier Economics Reports

** Nuclear sites

“The regions where nuclear power stations are assumed to be commissioned are NSW, Queensland and Victoria. In total, just over 13,000 MW of nuclear power capacity is assumed to be commissioned across these three jurisdictions.” (Frontier Report 2, page 7). The Frontier Report costing has not included the South Australian and Western Australian nuclear plants.

*** Nuclear in 2051

The Coalition scheme is for 13.281 GW, which rounds to 13.3 GW (Frontier Report 2, p 26).
The nuclear plants will generate 104,139 GWh/year (Frontier Report 2, p 34).
The utilisation of capacity = 104,139 / (13.281 x 24 x 365) = 89.5%

The Coalition assumes that nuclear will be running hard at about 90% of capacity each year.

** Small modular reactors

The Frontier reports do not include SMRs, but the Coalition is still considering them. On the day of the release of Frontier Report 2, on 13/12/2024, Dutton said, “As we’ve said previously, in South Australia and Western Australia, [we are considering] small modular reactors. The Coalition’s plan is still vague about critical details.

Assuming the Coalition spreads the nuclear capacity evenly over the five sites, this could be:

2.656 GW at each site, and
two reactors, each of 1.328 GW, at each site.

The Frontier Economics Reports made no mention of:

the individual sites,
the capacity at each site,
small modular reactors (SMR), and
The type of reactors.

Frightening renewables investors

While the Coalition talks about a balanced mix including renewable energy, their plan for renewable energy seems to be to minimise renewables, and they may be succeeding in this minimisation even from opposition by:

threatening to cancel renewables contracts,
encouraging protests against wind farms and transmission lines,
advocating for massive government intervention in the market to build these nuclear generators,
creating uncertainty by promoting vague and radical schemes, and
frightening renewable energy investors.

The Coalition could be frightening all energy investors via their scheme to change the direction of energy policy radically. That’s a problem because government investment in nuclear energy can only be a small part of an energy policy, and we will need private investment to meet 87% of the demand in 2050.

By frightening renewables investors, the Coalition is undermining the AEMO plan without offering a workable alternative. This puts us at risk of electricity shortages and steep price hikes.

The nuclear scheme also jeopardises Australia’s chance to become a global renewable energy leader.

Subsidising coal extensions.

The Coalition is considering extending the life of coal generation, despite all our coal generators, bar one, having announced a retirement date before 2050, and AEMO expecting the earlier retirements shown on the capacity graph.

Our governments are already paying subsidies to keep some coal generators running, and these extensions will become more expensive as the plants get older. Here are two examples.

In 2024, the NSW government agreed to pay the Eraring coal plant (2.88 GW) up to $225 million annually to generate for an extra two years. Eraring now expects to close in August 2027.

(NSW to extend the life of the Eraring Coal Plant: Power Technology: 23 May 2024)

(Eraring extension: NSW Government)

Keeping Queensland’s Callide B coal plant (0.7 GW) open beyond its use-by date of 2028 could cost Queensland taxpayers up to $420 million annually, drive up electricity prices, and endanger grid reliability.

(Queensland opposition’s goalkeeper plan could cost taxpayers AU$ 420 million a year: Renew Economy: 18 Oct 2024)

Our coal generators are old and no longer provide reliable baseload power. In November 2024, the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) issued alerts due to extended outages at nearly half of the coal-fired power units in New South Wales, which left NSW and Queensland vulnerable.

(Extended outages of baseload power: Renew Economy: 26 Nov 2024)

Extending substantial coal generation would be expensive, risky, and prolong coal emissions.

Poor Coalition energy decision: Hunter Power Plant

The Coalition has a poor track record on energy decisions. They proposed their “gas-led recovery” from Covid and made a terrible decision, the Hunter Power Plant.

In 2020, the Morrison government announced it would build a 0.75 GW gas peaking plant at Kurri Kurri to cover the retirement of the Liddell coal plant in April 2023.
It was to start generation in December 2023, but may now start in June 2025, years after the Liddel closure.
It was to cost $600 million, but will cost well over 2,000 million.
The site is 21 kilometres from a gas pipeline that cannot carry enough gas to run the generator, so it needed a connecting pipeline and a gas storage.
The gas storage will empty after the generator has run hard for 10 hours.
Gas may not be available from this pipeline, as it also supplies other users.
The plant may have to run on expensive diesel, which also has limited storage.
It will take 30 minutes for the plant to start up or shut down, whereas a battery would respond in milliseconds.

(Hunter gas project hit by more delays and cost blowouts: Renew Economy: 23 Dec 2024)

All recent nuclear builds led to bankruptcy.

All four of the most recent major nuclear generation projects in the Western world led to bankruptcies.

Project	Company	Status	Delay Years
Olkiluoto 3: Finland	Areva	Start up 2023	14
Flamanville 3: USA	EDF	Start up 2024	12
Hinkley Point C: UK	EDF	The first reactor due in 2031	?
Vogtle: France	Westinghouse	Start up April 2024	7

The recent projects display:

doubling or quadrupling of costs,
delays ranging from 7 years to 14 years, and
final costs between 31 and 132 billion Australian dollars,

These projects are financially dangerous for the builders and the governments. (1) Westinghouse went bankrupt, (2) EDF nearly went bankrupt, and the French nationalised it, and (3) AREVA became insolvent and restructured.

These bankruptcies and nationalisations starkly present the financial dangers of these nuclear projects and suggest why nuclear power is declining in the Western world.

(Is nuclear the answer to Australia’s climate Crisis? The Conversation: 3 Nov 2023)

The UK Hinkley Point C project

The nuclear scheme is bigger and more complex than the troubled UK Hinkley Point C project (HPC). To show this, first examine the HPC project:

a total capacity of 3.2 GW,
two nuclear reactors, each of 1.6 GW,
a single type of reactor,
on one site, and
in a country that:
- opened its first nuclear reactor in 1956,
- runs nine operating nuclear reactors at 5 locations, and
- has a total capacity of 6.5 GW.

The HPC timeline:

1981: The UK government announced HPC.
2008: Enabling work started, e.g. building a car park.
2014: Planning for building a sea wall and jetty: 400 staff.
2018: Start construction of Reactor 1.
2019: Start construction of reactor 2.
2031: Estimated startup of reactor 1.
2033: Possible startup of reactor 2.

The first HPC reactor build took 13 years, but the entire process may run for 52 years.

HPC had to cope with (1) Covid, (2) Brexit, (3) legal challenges, (4) political opposition, and (5) financial difficulties of the builders. Australian nuclear development would not face any Brexit and would be unlikely to face another world epidemic, but technical, legal, political and financial difficulties and delays come with the territory.

The HPC costs:

The initial cost estimate in 2007 was 9 billion pounds.
The 2024 estimate is 48 billion pounds.
This is 5.3 times the 2007 estimate.
This total cost would be 92.6 billion in today’s Australian dollars.

(Cost of Hinkley Point C blows out to over AU$ 93 billion: Renew Economy: 18 Oct 2024)

Hinkley Point: A massive project

The HPC project is one of the largest construction sites in Europe, involving:

1.6 GW reactors: this capacity is 91% of the world’s largest reactor (1.75 GW in China),
building docks to ship in materials and equipment,
building massive foundations for security,
using 50 cranes, one being the biggest crane in the world,
building a concrete factory,
making consistent, highest-quality nuclear safety concrete,
boring 9 kilometres of tunnels to carry seawater for cooling, tunnels like those for car tunnels and pumped hydro.

Each reactor had a small pour of concrete (2,000 cubic metres) and a large pour. The large pour:

needed three days of continuous pouring,
used 40 concrete placing booms, and
took a UK record volume of concrete:
- 9,000 cubic metres of concrete,
- 1,406 loads from concrete trucks,
- a truckload of concrete every 3 minutes for 3 days with no breaks,
- 3.6 Olympic swimming pools of concrete.

The workforce in 2024 was 10,000, growing towards 15,000 – a town. The workers need housing and transport, a fleet of 760 buses.

Two assumptions:

An Olympic swimming pool, 50 metres long, 25 metres wide and averaging 2 metres deep, contains 2,500 cubic meters of water.
A concrete truck with six wheels can deliver 5.6 cubic metres of concrete, and a truck with eight wheels can deliver 7.2 cubic metres. I used an average of 6.4 cubic metres per truck.

A YouTube video on Hinkley Point C

UK nuclear capacity

The UK has:

nuclear generation at five sites,
nine operating reactors,
nuclear capacity of 6.5 gigawatts (GW), and
plans for all but one of these plants to shut down before 2030.

(Civil Nuclear Roadmap: House of Commons Library: 14 Feb 2024)

Coalition scheme: Far bigger than Hinkley Point C

Alarmingly, the Coalition’s nuclear scheme is far more complex than the Hinkley Point C (HPC) project. The Coalition would build:

a total capacity of 13.3 GW, which is:
- 4.1 times HPC’s 3.2 GW, and
- double the total UK nuclear capacity of 6.5 GW,
ten reactors of 1.328 GW, this is:
- five times more than the two HPC reactors, and
- about the same as the UK’s nine reactors,
at five sites spread across Australia, which is far more complex than the HPC’s one site,
maybe two types of reactor, compared to HPC’s one type,
maybe small modular reactors for which there is no commercial plan,
ten reactors of about 1.328 GW, each 76% of the 1.75 GW largest reactor in the world,
reactors in five states, each with different legislation, including legislation in Victoria, New South Wales, and Queensland prohibiting nuclear reactors, and
in a country with no nuclear generation experience, compared with the UK’s 68 years of experience.
The HPC workforce peaked at 5,600 people on site, so Australia would need to train, gather and house large groups of skilled workers in at least five locations around the country for extended periods of time.

Should we follow Ontario and go nuclear?

Now let’s look at a nuclear project the Coalition says supports our going nuclear: the example of Ontario, Canada.

** Ontario Hydro went nuclear & bankrupt

To present this as a nuclear success story, the Coalition:

fabricated its nuclear scheme talking point, i.e., its claim that Australians pay four times more for electricity than Ontarians (See Fabrication of Evidence on another page of this website),
ignores Ontario Hydro getting into debt by building its nuclear generators and going broke,
ignores that Ontario Hydro’s customers covered debt equivalent to 70 billion current Australian dollars, paid off via a fixed “debt recovery charge” in their bills from 2002 until 2018,
uses costs from Ontario’s current electricity bills that do not reflect this debt repayment,
ignores the Ontario government subsidy for electricity, the “Ontario Electricity Rebate” entry in bills. The bill shown in the Tristan Edis article shows a rebate of 19% of the electricity charges,
ignores that the Ontario government has a big role in setting prices, and
asserts that nuclear generators run for 80 years, ignoring the many refurbished nuclear reactors in Ontario and the costs of refurbishment (see below).

(Ontario’s huge nuclear debt: Renew Economy: Tristan Edis: 30 Oct 2024)

** Nuclear plant refurbishment

The Coalition media release says, “A … nuclear power plant will be a national asset delivering … consistent energy for 80 years”. The Coalition’s 80-year nuclear scheme ignores a major factor: the refurbishment of nuclear generators.

The Ontario government was planning the refurbishment of the four Darlington reactors in 2017, only 25 years after they started generating. The Financial Accountability Office of Ontario in 2017 estimated that the refurbishment of ten reactors at Bruce and Darlington and life extension work at Pickering would cost CA$ 25 billion in 2017 dollars. (Add 10% to get Australian dollars) Each reactor closes for about 3 years for refurbishment.

(Report on Nuclear Refurbishment: The Financial Accountability Office of Ontario: 2017)

These refurbishments are major investment decisions in themselves, and sometimes it is cheaper to close a plant. There are several closed nuclear generators in Ontario.

A plan for nuclear energy must include refurbishment costs and details for meeting demand during the years while refurbishment closes reactors. Providing replacement generation for refurbishment closures with five large nuclear reactors spread across Australia would not be simple. It might need extra transmission lines between states. Nuclear development without this planning could produce extended power shortages and large cost increases.

Accidents can also close reactors, so plans to cover outages are required from the start of operation. The difficulty here is that suddenly losing 1.3 GW of capacity would jolt the grid, and replacing this capacity for a day or a month requires a plan.

** Coalition fabricated evidence for nuclear

Fabrication of evidence

** Australia gets stronger sun than Ontario

The Coalition urges us to follow Ontario and go nuclear. Another reason for not following Ontario is that Australia gets far stronger sun than Ontario.

This graph highlights that being closer to the equator, Australia benefits from:

significantly more sunlight than Ontario,
higher energy output per solar panel, and
milder seasonal variations: In mid-winter Ontario, you only get about 8 hours of sunlight a day, and the sun is only 23 degrees above the horizon at noon compared to mid-summer, 15 hours of sun a day, with the sun reaching 70 degrees at noon.

As a result, the advantages of nuclear power for Australia are far less than for Ontario.

For more about this, and an explanation of the graph, see Australia’s strong sun on this site.

Small modular reactor won’t run by 2035

The media release asserts we could have a small modular reactor (SMR) generating by 2035. This is fanciful; these reactors are not a proven technology. To the contrary, NuScale attempted to build an SMR in Idaho, USA, with a capacity of 0.462 GW. The cost blew out from US$ 3 billion to 9.3 billion, and they cancelled the project.

(The parlous state of the nuclear power sector: Renew Economy: 18 Oct 2024)

Some risk factors

Many factors make this a risky gamble; they could increase the scheme’s costs far beyond estimates and increase the cost of living.

Factor: Australia has never built a nuclear generator, and countries with experience have had massive cost overruns and delays, e.g. the Hinckley Point C project discussed above.

Factor: The government would pay a premium to acquire the proposed sites forcibly. For example, AGL does not like nuclear power’s costs and expected delays and has started building a $750 million battery at its Liddell site in NSW.

Factor: We would depend on nuclear fuel from overseas, subject to supply disruption and price hikes. The fuel would also have to travel large distances, possibly from the USA to Australian ports and then by road to the inland sites.

Factor: All nuclear projects and operations need to be super secure. This dramatically increases the costs of building and running the reactors. The risks include:

design and construction faults,
human error,
government cost-cutting on maintenance
cyber-attack,
terrorism,
radiation leaks,
extreme weather,
droughts, which could restrict cooling water,
earthquakes and tsunamis, and
warfare.

Factor: Nuclear power has many easily overlooked costs. For example, we would need to develop emergency plans for:

farmers located near nuclear reactors, and there are 11,000 farms within 80 kilometres of the seven proposed sites. In the U.S., these farms have established procedures to manage potential radiation leaks, and
transporting nuclear materials, covering all relevant ports, roads, towns, and cities.

We need flexible, not baseload generators.

One of the Coalition’s talking points is “Australia needs baseload nuclear generators”. In the media release, they call it “consistent 24/7 electricity”. These baseload generators must run steadily without pausing when they are running. (Nuclear generators in the US run about 92% of the time.)

Contradicting this, Australian Energy Market Operator CEO, Daniel Westerman, says that:

Our grid used to depend on (1) baseload coal generation supported by (2) gas generators to meet demand peaks.

That worked when coal generated the cheapest electricity, but now this does not work because renewables generate the lowest cost electricity and win dispatch ahead of coal and gas generators.

Today, our grid urgently needs: (1) renewable electricity, (2) batteries, (3) pumped hydro, (4) flexible gas generation and (5) transmission lines.

Australia does not need nuclear baseload generators.

(The baseload coal & gas peaking paradigm is no longer fit for our modern grid, says the AEMO chief: Renew Economy: 23 Oct 2024)

** Baseload generators often pay to run

Our levels of renewable generation are high and increasing. This means that our current baseload coal generators struggle, and our future baseload nuclear generation would have even more difficulties. Our baseload coal generators struggle to sell their electricity to the grid because:

our large-scale renewable generators produce cheap electricity, bid low in the AEMO auctions, and AEMO dispatches their renewable electricity to the grid,
rooftop solar meets the householder’s demand, reducing electric demand on the grid,
rooftop solar also supplies large amounts of electricity to the grid, electricity that AEMO cannot currently turn off, and
baseload coal generators need to run without stopping, so they often bid, offering to pay so that AEMO dispatches their coal electricity. The auctions generate negative prices.

Look at the National Electricity Market (NEM) dashboard in the middle of the day. You’ll see the 5-minute prices in each state and, with rare exceptions, see some negative prices set by coal generators paying to avoid stopping.

** Our high levels of renewable generation

Renewable generation is significant and increasing. For example, on the East Coast grid:

Renewables generated a peak of 75.3% of demand on Sunday, 20 Oct 2024, at 11.15 am. Rooftop solar comprised 52% of this, while coal output had to drop to 24.1% of demand.
Renewables generated an average of about 40% of electricity in 2023 and are headed for the 2030 target of 83% of renewable generation over a year.

In South Australia:

On Saturday, 19 October 2024, at 1.15 p.m., rooftop solar provided 112.9% of SA demand, and SA exported its excess electricity.
During November 2021, wind and solar provided more than 100% of local SA demand for 93 hours straight, day and windy night; a little gas generation provided grid stability, and SA exported its excess electricity.
In October 2023, wind and solar generated 86.8% of SA demand.
In tax year 2023-24, wind and solar generated over 70% of SA demand.
In 2027, wind and solar will generate 100% of SA demand.

(Rooftop solar propels renewables to 75% of demand: Renew Economy: 23 Oct 2024)

** AGL is trying to pause baseload generation

Like all baseload coal plant operators, AGL often pays to keep its coal generators running. To avoid these payments, AGL is trialling the shutdown of its Bayswater plant for up to twelve hours at a time. This trial shows:

it’s not economical for the coal generators to provide baseload power, i.e. generate 7 days a week and 24 hours a day,
the Coalition is wrong to say we must have more baseload,
we do not need coal baseload generation, and
we do not need nuclear baseload generation.

(Coal generators are trying brief shutdowns to avoid costly baseload generation: Renew Economy: 1 Oct 2024)

** Baseload increases the low-demand risk

Baseload generation is part of an emerging problem for the grid: having more generation than demand, which can lead to blackouts. In 2024, AEMO introduced a “minimum system demand risk event” and is developing ways of managing this risk.

(Rooftop solar management: AEMO: 2024)

Rooftop solar generation supplies substantial amounts of electricity to the grid during the day, for example:

at 1.15 pm on 19 Oct 2024, in South Australia, rooftops supplied 112.9% of SA demand,
at 1 pm on Saturday, 12 Oct 2024, East Coast rooftops supplied 50% of the East Coast grid demand,
rooftop generation is the second largest renewable energy source in Australia, after wind generation, and before large-scale solar farms, and
rooftop generation is the fourth largest source of electricity, 11.2% of Australian generation.

Rooftop solar reduces demand on our large-scale generators by (1) supplying electricity to houses and businesses, and (2) exporting surplus electricity to the grid, enough to occasionally meet the entire local demand.

One in three Australian homes has solar panels, and AEMO expects rooftop generation to grow strongly; it could triple in the next 30 years. As people install more rooftop solar panels, the whole East Coast grid will become more like South Australia.

If the Coalition scheme proceeds, we could have generation from:

large-scale solar and wind, which the owners can turn off,
Rooftop solar that currently cannot turn off, and
Baseload nuclear or coal, which needs to keep running.

We will increasingly have the problem of excess supply / insufficient demand, and any baseload generator that must run all the time increases the chances of supply exceeding demand. For example, in the isolated Southwestern Australian grid, noon demand is becoming too low, so they are building big batteries to increase demand.

** Nuclear baseload: expensive electricity

The Coalition’s scheme would produce expensive electricity as it would often need to turn off the cheapest generators (wind turbines, solar farms and rooftop solar) to allow the most expensive (nuclear) to keep running.

Baseload generators would displace cheap renewables at times when there was surplus generation capacity, and one measure of this on the current grid is “the percentage of the time when prices are negative”, i.e., when generators pay so that AEMO dispatches their electricity.

In SA, renewables can already supply all the local demand. Actually, rooftop solar alone can do this, and negative prices reflect this surplus generation capacity. Prices were negative:

4% of the time in 2019,
25% of the time in 2023, and
34% of the time in the December quarter of 2023.

So, if SA had a baseload nuclear generator now, for about 34% of the time, nuclear generation would be displacing low-cost renewable generation, e.g., rooftop solar that only costs the retailer about 5 cents per kilowatt-hour. This would increase the cost of electricity.

This “time with excess generation capacity” is increasing in other states too, as levels of renewable coapaicty increase.

State	2019 Time with negative price	2023 Time with negative price
South Australia	4%	25%
Victoria	1%	22%
Queensland	2%	14.5%
NSW	0%	7%

The Coalition argues for baseload nuclear power, saying we must have “a balanced energy mix”. Their pitch sounds modern, reasonable, and attractive, but some “mixes” don’t work. Oil does not mix with water, and baseload does not mix with a high level of renewables.

Baseload generation is incompatible with high levels of renewable generation.

We need flexible generators, not inflexible baseload nuclear generators.

Industry opposes nuclear: AGL

Even the energy industry is against the nuclear scheme, for example, AGL.

(Energy Giant AGL issues a warning on Dutton’s nuclear plan: The Age: 25 Sep 2024)

Increased water use

The Coalition’s nuclear scheme is dangerous for many reasons, including water usage.

The nuclear scheme would generate 104,139 GWh in 2051, very slightly more (0.4% more) than the expected generation from our current coal fleet, 103,762 GWh in 2025. (The Coalitions’ Frontier Economics Report 2, p 34).

So, the five nuclear sites will generate nearly the same amount of electricity as our 13 current coal generation sites. This means that each nuclear site will generate far more electricity than the earlier coal plant at that site, up to 13 / 5 = 2.6 times the electricity.

Water drawn: Assuming both nuclear and coal plants use the same volume of water per unit of electricity, the nuclear sites will use up to 2.6 times more cooling water than the earlier coal plants at those sites.

This increased water usage could threaten nearby town water supplies and farming because the water comes from limited inland rivers and lakes. Water shortages could also disrupt nuclear generation, especially in droughts. For example, the 1996–2012 Millennium Drought did affect the Mt Piper plant and local community.

This table is the basis of a more detailed calculation. It compares (1) the coal generation in tax year 2017/18 with (2) the nuclear generation in 2050, assuming that each nuclear site generates the same amount of electricity.

Plant	Coal generation 2017-18 GWh/year	Nuclear generation 2050 Spread equally: GWh/year	Increased generation & water use Factor
Liddell: NSW	7,222	20,827.8	2.9
Mt Piper: NSW	6,440	20,827.8	3.2
Tarong: QLD	9,978	20,827.8	2.1
Callide C: QLD	9,717	20,827.8	2.1
Loy Yang: VIC	21,711	20,827.8	1.0
Total	55,068	104,139	1.9

Tripling water use: The Coalition has not said how they would distribute nuclear capacity across the five sites. However, they could speed construction by building identical plants at each site, and so having the same capacity at each site. That’s the assumption in the above table. With this capacity, nuclear at the smallest coal plant, Mt Piper, could use 3.2 times the water of its current local plant. Mt Piper draws water from Lake Lyell, and during the 1996–2012 Millennium Drought, the lake fell 20 meters below capacity. At the time, Delta Electricity operated Mt Piper, and their 2006 Annual Report noted the company worked with the local council to limit community impacts.

Doubling of water use: The “total line” of these more detailed calculations shows that overall the nuclear plants would generate 1.9 times as much electricity as the earlier coal plants, which indicates they will use 1.9 times as much water, i.e., about double. To achieve this, you would build different nuclear plants at each site, nuclear plants with a capacity that was 1.9 times the site’s previous coal capacity.

These calculations could underestimate the water use of the nuclear plants, as some assert that nuclear plants use 15% more water than coal plants.

Data Source: The 2017-18 coal capacities (MW) and generation (GWh/year) come from a Melbourne University document, “Source: Coal capacity factors in the National Electricity Market 2017-18”, on figshare.unimelb.edu.au

If the Coalition wins this election, they could lock Australia into proceeding with the nuclear scheme despite not knowing critical things like:

the availability of cooling water, and
the cost of extra transmission lines.

Nuclear needs more transmission lines

The Coalition falsely claims they will use the existing transmission at these old coal sites to reduce the cost of their scheme by avoiding the need for new transmission from their nuclear plants.

The nuclear scheme requires transmission lines with 40% more capacity since its total capacity (13.3 GW) is 40% higher than the previous coal capacity at the five sites (9.733 GW). The extra transmission is needed to ensure each nuclear plant can deliver its full output to users.

The nuclear scheme would also need extra transmission because (1) we are already building batteries near the coal sites and these will be using the existing transmission capacity, and (2) some existing transmission lines will need replacing over the next 25 years.

One possible way of spreading the nuclear capacity would be to put the same capacity at each of the five sites. This table compares the coal capacity in tax year 2017/18 with the nuclear capacity spread equally between the sites.

Plant	Coal capacity 2017-18 MW	Nuclear capacity 2051 Spread equally MW	Increased capacity & transmission Factor
Liddell: NSW	1,680	2,656	1.6
Mt Piper: NSW	1,400	2,656	1.9
Tarong: QLD	1,843	2,656	1.4
Callide C: QLD	1,600	2,656	1.7
Loy Yang: VIC	3,210	2,656	0.8
Total	9,733	13,281	1.4

Across all the sites, 40% more transmission is needed. Again, if the Coalition spread the capacity equally between the sites, Mt Piper would need nearly twice the transmission capacity.

Costs not considered by the Coalition.

In evaluating the nuclear scheme, the Coalition has not considered the costs of:

subsidies to extend the life of coal generators,
increased gas and coal usage,
increased greenhouse gas emissions,
.
likely delays to their nuclear build,
increasing the capacity of transmission lines,
increasing the water supply to the nuclear sites,
increased national security to defend the nuclear facilities,
nuclear plant refurbishment to enable their claimed 80-year life,
nuclear plant decommissioning, and
storing nuclear wastes.

Nuclear waste

US Government websites say:

The US has no permanent disposal facility for high-level nuclear waste (HLW).
The US has run nuclear generation since 1957, for 67 years.
The US has over 90,000 tonnes of spent nuclear fuel from commercial reactors, increasing by 2,000 tonnes annually.
Commercial reactors store their HLW, including spent nuclear fuel, in storage ponds for 1 or 2 years to cool and then in dry storage casks on concrete pads at their sites.
High-level nuclear waste stays highly radioactive for tens of thousands of years.

This makes it clear that disposing of nuclear waste is highly problematic.

Coalition attacks the Climate Change Authority.

Climate Change Authority chair Matt Kean, a former senior Liberal Party politician, says the nuclear scheme would massively increase Australian carbon emissions. In response, the Coalition threatened to sack Kean and wind up the CCA.

This should not happen. The Climate Change Authority (CCA) is an independent statutory body established in 2011 to provide expert advice to the Australian government on climate change policy.

The Coalition has also attacked the CSIRO and AEMO, dismissing their authoritative reports that indicate that the nuclear scheme is not the way to go.

(Kean fights attempts to silence him: Renew Economy: 28 Feb 2025)

The Coalition climate denial continues.

The Coalition repeatedly mentions “net zero nuclear” and claims its scheme will deliver a net-zero electricity grid, but with a brake on renewables, it needs more gas and coal generation, and that will increase emissions.

As the scheme includes the possible cancellation of renewables contracts, it continues the Coalition’s attack on renewable energy and emissions reduction. The Coalition might even want to frighten renewable energy investors and slow the transition away from fossil fuels.

The Coalition presents its nuclear scheme as the solution for Australia’s electricity needs. However, the last of their reactors would only start generating in 2050 at best, and their total nuclear generation would only provide 13% of the demand in 2050. So, nuclear is a minor part of the solution. When asked for more details and costs, the Coalition only says it will release more information before the election. The Coalition is hiding 87% of its energy policy.

The Coalition must present a complete plan and provide the costs of all the activities involved before attacking realistic efforts to meet demand.

Updated 26 March 2025