Like chasing Tasmanian tigers: What’s behind the Coalition’s nuclear push

Australia’s climate wars are cranking back up to full power, as Opposition Leader Peter Dutton mounts a challenge to Labor’s ambitious renewable energy agenda by declaring a Coalition government would replace coal-fired power stations with nuclear plants.

“They have declared they plan to keep burning coal and gas until an unknown time in the future when nuclear reactors may come online. But international examples show huge delays and cost blowouts on large reactors,” Solutions for Climate director Barry Traill said. “The idea of doing that in Australia just seems too incredible and until they turn it into a real policy, you can’t have much of a conversation about it.”To date, the Coalition’s nuclear push has been hypothetical and limited to the emerging technology of small modular reactors that experts say may be decades away from deployment.

A typical large nuclear reactor produces 25 to 30 tonnes of spent fuel a year and the high level of radioactive waste contained in it can remain toxic to humans for tens of thousands of years.Grattan Institute climate and energy director Tony Wood The Nationals, and the right wing of the Liberals, also back nuclear as a way to slow down the energy transition until retiring coal plants can be replaced with another form of baseload power.

“We don’t need to do all this by 2030. We’ve got to 2050, so why wouldn’t we pause and get this right,” he said.to reduce emissions by 43 per cent by the end of this decade, in large part by slashing reliance on fossil fuels and doubling the share of clean energy in the electricity grid to 82 per cent by 2030.

“It’s like comparing a motor vehicle you’re driving off the showroom floor today in 2024 … to something in 1954,” he said. Resolve director Jim Reed said voters were increasingly open to the potential of nuclear power now the Coalition was advocating for existing technology in large-scale plants, but support for the policy would not be truly tested until Australia’s ban was lifted and a construction site selected.

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