Just prior to the election being called, Nationals leader David Littleproud was pressed on ABC’s Radio National breakfast on whether insurance costs were included in the modelling exercise putting a dollar figure on the Coalition’s nuclear plans.
It has been tough for the Coalition: nuclear power is notoriously expensive, and so trying to present a narrative of it being cheap has been tricky. Littleproud had a confident answer in response to being challenged about insuring nukes:
“Well, as many countries around the world do that is actually factored in and in fact, self insurance is normally what they undertake. So it’s not a significant amount of anything that goes into the running cost”.
The majority of the Coalition’s claims regarding nuclear power come from a December 2024 report published by Frontier Economics, which itself has been widely criticised by experts.
It pulls off the trick of presenting an expensive approach to energy transition as cheap by a variety of accounting tricks, previously covered at RenewEconomy. But what it doesn’t seem to do is actually incorporate the costs of insurance, as claimed by Littleproud.
In fact, the Frontier Economics modelling does not mention insurance at all. Not in any context, or even in passing, or in footnotes (nor is it mentioned in the Coalition’s ‘blueprint‘). The Frontier report simply declares an assumption about the capital costs of nuclear power ($10,000 per kilowatt). RenewEconomy emailed Frontier asking for more details, but received no response.
The 2024-25 CSIRO GenCost consultation draft does contain an assumption around the insurance costs of nuclear, and ultimately concludes that “nuclear power does not currently provide the most cost competitive solution for low emission electricity in Australia”, and that “while nuclear technologies have a long operational life, this factor provides no unique cost advantage over shorter-lived technologies”. Notably, GenCost actually assumes a problematically low cost for nuclear power, as discussed here recently.
It is bad enough that Littleproud seems to be making a false claim about it being ‘factored in’ to the modelling, but insuring extremely risky technologies prone to massive cost blowouts and very vulnerable to worsening climate disasters is not going to be cheap.
Both Peter Dutton and Littleproud have been asked this before, and have side-stepped the question.
Perhaps making this even worse is the rising and very real insurance crisis around homes, communities and businesses in Australia, as the physical impacts of fossil fuels begin worsening the already crippling cost of living.
One of Dutton’s many blunders so far was threatening to break up large insurance companies in the wake of Cyclone Alfred, and then walking that back after shadow treasurer Angus Taylor and deputy Sussan Ley both issued conflicting statements.
The Coalition’s climate and energy plans seem to offer solutions that actively worsen the worst problems. Littleproud’s false claims on insurance lend themselves to that: actively intensifying a rising problem rather than helping to repair it.
Tradies launch ad blitz against nuclear
Meanwhile, the Electrical Trades Union has just launched a major advertising blitz targeting Dutton’s key federal electorates, raising doubts about nuclear power.
Cost, timelines and value for money are the focus of their campaign. Crikey’s Cameron Wilson highlighted the surprisingly central role that energy and climate policy is playing in the world of digital advertising spend – the ad targeting site ‘Who Targets Me’ makes it quite clear that pro-climate, anti-climate and climate-related political groups are dominated the digital world in Australia.
