Why Nuclear Power is a Bad Idea for Australia

By Josie Hess Digital Content and Mobilisation Lead

Clean energy is already here and generating more than 40% of our electricity! It’s on our rooftops, providing farmers with drought-proof income, and stored for later use by battery technology. Wind and solar are the most affordable forms of energy and they are growing fast, which means less pollution and less damage to our climate.

But the Coalition’s nuclear scheme would threaten this progress. Nuclear involves significant safety risks, takes too long to build, costs too much and will only supply a tiny fraction of the energy Australia needs.

What’s worse, waiting 20 years for nuclear to come online would also force us to run old coal power stations well past their planned retirement dates … pushing up bills, creating a less reliable grid and resulting in more than TWO BILLION extra tons of climate pollution.

Read on to get the details and learn why nuclear power is a terrible idea for Australia

Click to jump to:

How Long Would Nuclear Take to Build?
How Much Would Nuclear Cost?
Do We Actually Need Nuclear Power?
What Are the Health and Safety Risks of Nuclear?
Where Would the Water for Nuclear Reactors Come From?
Is Nuclear Power Good for the Economy?

Live in Gippsland and want to keep it nuclear free? Learn more and take action at

nuclearfree.com.au

So Why is Nuclear Power a Bad Idea for Australia?

It Takes Decades To Build

How Long would Nuclear Power Take to Build in Australia?

Australia has no existing nuclear power industry so the required infrastructure, regulations, and workforce would take a long time, and a lot of money to establish. Because of these barriers, nuclear reactors wouldn’t be producing energy in Australia until well into the 2040s.

Even countries with an established nuclear industry struggle to build nuclear reactors. For example, construction on Hinkley C nuclear power station in the UK started in 2016 and, after massive delays and cost blowouts, it isn’t expected to be operational until 2030!

Halting the rollout of renewable energy and waiting almost two decades for nuclear means we would have to rely more on expensive gas power and extremely polluting coal power. This would push up power prices and mean up to 2 billion tonnes of additional climate pollution, putting our climate targets out of reach.

This would also impact reliability. Australia’s coal power stations are old and becoming more prone to breakdowns. Which is why most of them are scheduled to close by 2035 well before any nuclear energy could be built. It’s an equation that just doesn’t add up!

In contrast, Australia is already transitioning to clean, renewable energy. In 2010, only 10% of electricity came from renewable energy — by 2023, that figure had climbed to almost 40%. New projects can be built in a few years, and we just need to get on with the job.

It’s Too Expensive

How Much Would Nuclear Power Cost to Build in Australia?

The reason nuclear is so expensive is because it costs so much to protect people from how dangerous it is. In fact, it is the most expensive way to produce electricity, and analysis has shown it will increase household electricity bills an extra $665 each year, even more if you have solar.

Internationally, nuclear projects also have a history of cost blowouts. In the UK, the Hinkley Point C reactor was originally budgeted at $35 billion but has now ballooned to $94 billion for a single power station.

Because superannuation funds and banks have refused to back nuclear, the Coalition has conceded taxpayers would need to pay for their construction. So any cost blowouts would be paid directly by Australian taxpayers.

It’s a different story for clean energy. Wind and solar are the cheapest forms of newly built electricity generation, even when you include the construction of other infrastructure like battery storage. The Federal Government’s Capital Investment Scheme (CIS) is driving billions of dollars in private investment in clean energy which means taxpayers don’t have to foot all the costs.

Powering Australia with nuclear energy would cost roughly twice as much as renewables, CSIRO report shows

ABC News

In its latest GenCost report, CSIRO estimates nuclear power to be at least 50 per cent more expensive than wind and solar power backed by batteries.

Australia Doesn’t Need Nuclear

Does Nuclear Power Help with Baseload Power?

The old ‘baseload’ model is a relic of 1980s thinking and technology. With advances in clean energy, including large-scale battery storage, modern energy grids are being designed around a combination of variable (but predictable) solar and wind, and ‘dispatchable’ sources.

‘Dispatchable’ means they can quickly ramp up and down their output in response to changes in wind and solar power, this includes things like large-scale batteries, pumped hydro and a small amount of gas.

This new model is the cheapest and most efficient way of building a modern energy grid, and we have study upon study showing exactly how we can do it using technology we already have. See here, here and here.

In contrast, Nuclear reactors are not flexible, so trying to force them into a modern energy grid would sometimes require rooftop solar to be disconnected! This would further push up power bills.

The Safety and Radioactive Waste Problems

What are the Health and Safety Risks of Nuclear Power?

Nuclear has too many risks: health risks, safety risks and waste risks.

Waste from nuclear reactors is dangerously radioactive for longer than any human civilisation has existed. Australia has struggled for decades to establish a facility for even low-to-intermediate level radioactive waste, and no country in the world has a reliable and permanent solution to store nuclear waste.

Under the Coalition’s proposal, highly radioactive waste would be stored on-site for up to 100 years, and then after that there is no clear plan for management, transportation, or estimation of the costs involved.

Safety is another huge issue. It is impossible to completely eliminate risk, and when things go wrong with Nuclear it can happen extremely quickly, and the consequences can be catastrophic.

Incidents like Chernobyl, Fukushima, and Three Mile Island are just the most well-known in an extremely long list of nuclear incidents which continue to occur.

For example, in 2002 a severely corroded reactor pressure vessel was discovered at a nuclear reactor in Ohio. Just 9.5mm of steel was preventing a potential reactor meltdown. A subsequent investigation found a list of other previously undiscovered critical safety issues.

And as recently as 2022 a nuclear power station in Minnesota leaked over 1.5 million litres of water containing radioactive tritium which made it into the groundwater. While the impacts of this particular incident were limited, it shows that nuclear incidents, safety breaches and failures happen more often than many people realise.

In Gippsland, the proposed nuclear site is next to an unstable coal mine and on top of a major earthquake fault line. Experts have warned that building a nuclear reactor in this location would be extremely difficult and pose serious safety risks.

When it comes to radiation exposure there is no safe level and workers in the nuclear industry face long-term health risks, with studies showing elevated rates of cancer, heart attacks, and strokes. Living within 30 kilometres of a nuclear reactor has also been linked to increased cancer risks, including a 14% rise in thyroid cancer and a 9% rise in leukemia.

Given Gippsland’s dependence on agriculture, and the fact that at least 125,000 people live within 30km of the proposed site of the nuclear power station, the risks are just not worth it.

30km radius from the proposed nuclear power plant at Loy Yang

It Uses Too Much Water

Where Would the Water for Nuclear Reactors Come From?

Nuclear power is one of the thirstiest forms of energy production, consuming as much as three times more water than existing coal power stations. So where is it going to come from?

In Gippsland, the water currently used by the coal power stations is required for rehabilitating the region’s coal mines. So building Nuclear would add another massive water user, taking vital water away from farmers, the environment and local communities.

In addition to this, climate change is reducing stream flows and making droughts more severe. This is a big problem for nuclear, because without adequate water for cooling they need to reduce output or even shut down completely.

Nuclear plants could use three times more water than current coal plants

ABC News

Proposed nuclear plants could use three times as much water as existing coal sites by 2050 if operating at their full extent.

A Bad Deal for Gippsland

Is Nuclear Power good for the Economy?

Clean energy and farming are perfect partners. Farmers are paid on average $40,000 per wind turbine per year, and $1,500 per hectare of solar panels. This income is drought-proof, and helps make their land more productive because they can still run sheep under the solar and cattle and sheep around the wind turbines

Gippsland is already set to benefit from $40 billion in renewable energy investment over the next decade, which is creating new, high-paying jobs and supporting local industries right now.

Pursuing nuclear would only create uncertainty and delay this progress, threatening the jobs and investment that renewable energy is bringing to the region. Meanwhile, the risk of radioactive waste, water scarcity, and safety concerns would fall on the local community.

Given all of this, it’s astounding that local communities weren’t even consulted before the Coalition made their nuclear announcement.