Peter Dutton's nuclear power policy is a 'suicide note'

Chris Kenny, the Australian's associate editor, says "the nuclear argument could play well in the teal seats where there is an eagerness for climate change and a high degree of economic realism."

However, teal MP Zali Steggall participated in a 2019 parliamentary inquiry into nuclear power and concluded that it "is unlikely that new nuclear will be able to compete with renewables … especially given the rate of price deflation of renewables."

Likewise, Allegra Spender says that nuclear power "is too slow, too expensive and the UK Hinkley experience shows the costs are too uncertain for it to be relevant to our current energy plans."

The latest Hinkley Point cost estimate is A$89 billion for the two reactors under construction or A$44.5 billion per reactor. The sticker shock is somewhat lessened by the large capacity of the reactors ‒1,600 megawatts each ‒but it's shocking nonetheless.

The latest Hinkley Point cost estimate is more than 10 times higher than initial estimates. On a site where reactors have operated since the 1960s, in a country with vastly more nuclear expertise and experience than Australia. The UK National Audit Office estimates that taxpayer subsidies for the Hinkley Point project could amount to £30 billion (A$58 billion).

In 2006, then UK industry secretary Alistair Darling said that the private sector would have to "initiate, fund, construct and operate" nuclear power plants. Since then, several proposed nuclear plants have been abandoned and the only project to reach construction is being propped up by an estimated A$58 billion from taxpayers.

The Australian reported on April 5 that Rolls-Royce is confident it could build one or more 470-megawatt reactors in Australia by the mid-2030s at a cost of as little as A$3.5 billion per reactor. Those claims are no more credible or plausible than EDF's claims that it could have a reactor built at Hinkley Point by 2017 (construction didn't even begin until 2018), that the cost would be A$3.8 billion per reactor (latest estimate A$44.5 billion), and that it wouldn't require taxpayer subsidies (now estimated at around A$58 billion for the twin-reactor plant).

Recent experience in Australia's other AUKUS partner, the US, is no better. Construction of two reactors in South Carolina was abandoned in 2017 after the expenditure of at least A$13.6 billion. The only remaining construction project, the Vogtle project in Georgia, was recently completed at a cost of A$26 billion per reactor. As in the UK, this is more than 10 times higher than initial estimates.

You wouldn't wish nuclear power on your worst enemy but the Dutton Coalition wishes it on Australian taxpayers and electricity rate-payers.