Peter Dutton’s nuclear plan still has no costings, and no grid connection: It’s a political hoax

Outside, in Martin Place, the voices were clear – unions and environmental groups holding placards and denouncing Coalition leader Peter Dutton’s nuclear “fantasy:” A combination of denial and delay they said: “Dutton wants gas, Dutton wants coal, nuclear is just a troll,” they chorused.

Inside the Fullerton Hotel, in the basement where Ballroom B is located, it was expected to be the moment for the nuclear true believers, but the numbers just weren’t there.

Unusually for a CEDA event, there was only a scattering of corporate table sponsors – ANZ, KPMG, and Clayton Utz – and most of the ballroom was partitioned off. Among the 160 attending, quite small for a CEDA event, there was the usual Dutton entourage, including energy spokesman Ted O’Brien, Warren Mundine, and a lot of media.

Bizarrely, many of the rest were from the clean energy industry, curious to know what they might be dealing with should the Coalition return to power next year. Did they like what they heard? Not really. Did they learn anything? No.

This was supposed to be Dutton’s occasion to spell out his nuclear power plan: “A nuclear powered Australia – could it work” was the title of the event. But we left little the wiser. The question about how many nuclear power plants, how much would they cost, when they would be built, and which technology, were not answered.

Instead, the event got a re-run of the Coalition’s renewable scare campaign. Dutton’s thesis is that wind and solar won’t work, even with storage and dispatchable back-up. Renewables, says Dutton, are dangerous and will lead to blackouts and the destruction of industry.

We’ve heard this before. It’s the common refrain of the fossil fuel and nuclear industries. They’ve gone from attacking the climate science to ignoring it, and have focused their attacks on the technology solutions. The ones that threaten their legacy and vested interests.

The Coalition uses “baseload” as if it’s another word for “reliability”. It’s not, as AEMO boss Daniel Westerman explains in this week’s Energy Insiders podcast.

Dutton did at least concede that building nuclear power stations at the seven sites identified by the Coalition will cost a lot, even if he wouldn’t say how much, or how consumers are impacted. Somehow, he imagines, the cost will be amortised by their assumed 80 year timeline. Perhaps he hasn’t seen their maintenance and refurbishment bills.

Dutton is still churning out the line that renewables are accompanied by high prices and nuclear by low prices, without ever contemplating the context, local taxation, historical prices, the influence of fossil fuels, and massive government subsidies, particularly in nuclear France.

We did learn a couple of new things. One was that Dutton admitted that Aukus – the controversial deal to sign up for half a dozen nuclear submarines at horrific cost and questionable use – was as much a Trojan horse for the nuclear debate as it is an allegory for his power plans.

He also insisted that nuclear is a bed-fellow of renewables, not a competitor. But the grids he cited – Arizona, Finland, Ontario and France – have at most 18 per cent renewables.

That’s not much, and not like Australia which is already at 40 per cent renewables, going on 50 per cent with committed projects, and where solar eats up much if not all of daytime demand. Renew Economy questioned Dutton on that very point, and asked if the Coalition had a renewables cap in mind. But he fudged the answer.

There was indeed, an awful lot of fudging. Dutton pretends that his nuclear power plan can be rolled out without new transmission lines. But he’s kidding himself, and trying to fool the public.

Firstly, the seven sites he has targeted are already filling up with their owner’s own projects – mostly battery storage and renewables. There simply isn’t room on the grid.

Secondly, the sort of nuclear reactors Dutton is planning are nearly twice the size of most coal generators – which means – as a matter of course – that there has to be more infrastructure built to support them, in transmission lines, and back-up capacity in case of a trip or unexplained outage. That is grid management 101.

Thirdly, Dutton hasn’t explained what fills the gap as coal fired power plants exit the grid. Either he has to double, treble, or even quadruple his nuclear power plans – at great cost and huge new transmission requirements, or he has to rely on renewables after all, and they will also require new transmission.

Fourthly, his complaints against new transmission is largely a furphy. AEMO’s Integrated System Plan – which is little changed for when it was produced for the Coalition government – doesn’t contemplate the 28,000 kms of new transmission as Dutton claims.

That is in one scenario that imagines Australia as a renewable superpower, exporting electrons but also “green” goods such as iron, ammonia and even hydrogen. Those power lines – should they ever be built some time beyond 2040 – will be connecting remote areas with production centres. They are unlikely to be marching through population areas or even farmland.

Dutton did confirm that the Coalition’s plan was to extend the life of coal fired power stations as much as it could, and build a lot of new gas generators. Quite how he believes these investments will lower the price of power to consumers was not and has never been explained.

Like nuclear, they are the most expensive sources of power. He suggested they will all be government owned, which is inevitable as private finance won’t touch it, and Snowy Hydro is quite accustomed to projects that run well over time and budget. And that way, the true cost will already be hidden from homes and businesses.

Dutton was asked about Plant Vogtle, the first nuclear plant built in the US over the last few decades, at horrific cost (more than $US35 billion) and years late. In its first few months of production it has already been taken off the grid twice, due to various faults, and has underpinned a big rise in local consumer bills.

Dutton insisted the delays, the cost over-runs and the other hiccups were due to the fact that the AP1000 reactors were “first of the kind.” That’s not something the Coalition intended to do, he insisted, there won’t be a “kangaroo” brand reactor in Australia, he said.

A couple of problems there: The AP1000s – the technology actually helped send the Westinghouse nuclear unit broke – at Plant Vogtle were not the first of their kind. Four had been completed in China five years before these came on line.

Secondly, if Dutton is serious about switching on the first nuclear power plants in Australia by 2035 (which he clearly is not), then the Coalition is going to have to run with a technology that has barely been proven.

Which is one of the problems with the nuclear debate in Australia – it’s hard to make an assertion without having to contradict yourself before a sentence is finished.

Dutton did make one curious excursion into the Pacific Ocean, observing that Fiji, the Solomon Islands and PNG were buckling under the cost of diesel, and didn’t to have to switch off their power after 8pm or 9pm.

But this Trumpian thought diversion didn’t go very far, which is a shame, because the media table was wondering if he was thinking of an SMR for Fiji, or a sub-sea cable. Or something.

He also confirmed he doesn’t understand batteries. They can’t store energy for more than four hours he said, which is news to the project developers of more than 3,000 megawatt hours of eight-hour batteries currently under construction in NSW.

Has he heard of demand management? Dutton refuses to see or admit the solutions that are right in front of him.

Meanwhile, the general public is being led a merry dance by folksy promises, a solution that sounds vaguely plausible, but in reality has no chance of delivering.

The protestors with the placards outside the hotel were closest to the truth: This is about denial and delay, the whole policy is an elaborate troll, a political hoax, and a refuge for the climate deniers and do-littles. Nothing more, nothing less.