Nuclear slow and expensive, renewables fast and cheap: Bowen slaps down Coalition “fantasy”

Federal climate and energy minister Chris Bowen has again slammed the federal Coalition’s “nuclear fantasy”, describing it as a deliberate distraction and the latest “desperate effort” to keep the culture war over energy and climate alive.

“(They say) renewable energy is all too hard, we’ll just have to go nuclear,” Bowen said in comments at the Smart Energy Council conference in Sydney, adding that the technology is “utterly uneconomic.”

Bowen was asked why the government would not support a lifting of the ban against nuclear power and allow – as the Coalition and others suggest – to let the “market decide.” He pointed to the fact that it would take a decade to develop a regulatory regime, and three states also had their own bans in place.

“They say ‘lift the ban’ and the market will sort it,” Bowen said.

“Well, the market hasn’t sorted it out anywhere else in the world, there is not a market in the world where nuclear isn’t subsidised substantially by government. So this idea that we lift the ban and all these foreign investors are going to suddenly come to help Australia’s nuclear sector is just fantasy.”

Bowen said three states would also have to lift their bans, and only then could a regulatory process be put in place which he said would require at least 10 years, before deciding on location, environmental approvals and the question of subsidies.

“It would be a massive distraction,” Bowen said. “And it would send the signal somehow to the market that Australia and the Australian Government are interested in nuclear, when we’re not because it uneconomic, utterly uneconomic.

“Nuclear is slow and expensive, renewables are fast and cheap. It seems like a pretty easy comparison to me … I will not be distracted.”

The Coalition has made clear that it wants to stop the roll-out of large scale renewables, and replace ageing and retiring coal fired power stations with nuclear power.

Coalition leader Peter Dutton and energy spokesman Ted O’Brien had favoured small modular reactors, and dismissed large “Soviet era” reactors, but appear to have now changed their mind and flipped back towards large scale nuclear after the only prospective SMR in the western world was cancelled because of soaring costs.

Bowen says the push to nuclear is simply an extension of the culture war over climate and energy issues.

“We know the sorts of arguments they run. It’s a desperate effort to keep the culture war alive. Renewable energy is all too hard, we’ll just have to go nuclear.”

Federal Labor has adopted a target to reach 82 per cent renewables by 2030, and most energy experts suggest all remaining coal fired power stations would be closed by around 2035.

Nuclear is seen as impossible to deliver in Australia before 2040, notwithstanding its costs, and energy experts question how an essentially “baseload” energy supply can be jammed into what will by then be a grid dominated by wind and solar, and particularly rooftop solar, which will require storage and flexible capacity.

The federal government’s Capacity Investment Scheme is likely to seek 10 GW of new wind and solar capacity in a series of auctions in 2024, and likely a similar amount in 2025, along with at least 3 GW of long durations storage in each of the next three years.

Bowen said a formal announcement is expected soon. He said the result of the first CIS auction, for 600 MW of long duration storage (defined as a minimum four hours) had elicited a very good response and the results would be announced in coming months.