Whole of Environment Report – #6: When the artist sometimes known as Prince recorded his hit song 1999 it was amid ongoing Cold War tensions in the summer of 1982. The threat of nuclear war had educated pop music with visions of the end of the world – as apparently foretold by the French oracle Nostradamus.
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The death toll of wars and the threat of mutually assured destruction to which Prince alluded must’ve helped make Australians sympathetic to the Howard government’s ban on nuclear power, as introduced in and around 1999 itself. Prince might’ve said the government didn’t want to see you “bath-ing-in-the-pur-ple-rain”.
The prospect of a nuclear renaissance now exists including because the federal Opposition Leader, Peter Dutton, has pointed to its significant appeal from a whole of environment (WOE) perspective. This comes despite the embargo on nuclear power stations. The Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Act 1998 (Cth) still prohibits the construction of certain nuclear facilities, including nuclear power plants. And Australia’s principal environmental law, the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 (Cth) (EPBC Act), does the same.
The Australian parliament doesn’t often make something doubly unlawful when it comes to matters that can impact WOE. As discussed in our last column, even in 2024, the EPBC Act doesn’t require the Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek to consider the impacts of climate change when deciding if she should approve new projects.
But some laws are not so much made to be broken as they are amended – think of the law that once prohibited, then later permitted, same-sex marriage. Is it time for another plebiscite (sorry: postal survey)?
The idea of exploring nuclear energy certainly isn’t new, even if, as Peter Dutton has made clear “we’re not talking about 1950s technology” and it coincidentally comes shortly after Oppenheimer (part of which depicted the “father of the atomic bomb”). About this time last year, the Opposition leader said “Australians must consider new nuclear technologies as part of the energy mix”. It’s taken a while, but since then the conversation has evolved to encompass the idea of large-scale nuclear power as well.
The opposition has also used the prospect of nuclear power to question the trajectory of Australia’s energy transition and the reliance on wind, solar, batteries and pumped hydro. It’s clear that nuclear energy has entered the conversation at least partially because addressing climate change and retaining biodiversity can conflict with the large physical areas required to house big renewables projects.
It’s worth remembering that the quarter of a century long federal ban on nuclear didn’t stop Peter Garrett (as environment minister in the first Rudd government) approving uranium mining projects in 2009. Nor did it stop the Morrison government from agreeing to buy nuclear submarines in 2021, in a deal that has been upheld by the Albanese government.
The opposition leader recently proposed seven new nuclear power plants on soon-to-be former coal fired power station sites. A point of difference from renewables is that the nuclear assets are proposed to be owned by the Commonwealth.
This is a departure from the philosophy that energy should be capable of being planned and operated by private enterprise, which renewables are demonstrating more and more. It’s not clear whether any private companies and industry specialists have been formally consulted on the nuclear proposal, self-evident as it is that they need to be.
If there’s a real source of concern at this early stage, it’s that the policy announcement comes before reasonable details have been given about how much it would actually cost taxpayers.
Of course, the reliance on government funding wouldn’t be a fatal flaw for nuclear, given that most energy generation in Australia’s history has also benefited from government funding or subsidies. As with anything that’s going to be government funded, the real question is about how, and how much, it will cost us. On the opposition’s proposal in its current form, the cost is a known unknown.
Another issue is what the real-world consequence will be for Australia’s greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions between now and 2050, by which time we’re expected to reach net zero pursuant to Australia’s obligations under the 2015 Paris Agreement (as well as under domestic legislation codifying the same aim).
As one client put it this week (who was content to be quoted anonymously), “it’s a bit late to be drip feeding new policy” when it comes to how Australia is going to meet its emissions reductions targets.
In response to the policy announcement, Labor premiers across Australia’s eastern seaboard have been more dismissive, demonstrating how quickly nuclear has become political more than ideological or environmental.
Any talk of nuclear being available “immediately” while technology is still being developed and without any legal or regulatory framework to support it should raise even the most relaxed eyebrows
NSW Premier Chris Minns said that the state based prohibition on nuclear would not be removed (irrespective of the Commonwealth’s ability to override a state based prohibition like the Uranium Mining and Nuclear Facilities (Prohibitions) Act 1986 (NSW) under the Constitution). Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan said the government wouldn’t allow nuclear energy to be established in Victoria (again, irrespective of the Commonwealth’s constitutional powers). And the Queensland Premier Steven Miles said nuclear power is “four to six times more expensive” than the alternatives, before saying “that is not to mention how future generations – my kids, your kids – will need to manage dangerous radioactive nuclear waste, forever”.
By contrast, the federal Labor government’s policy for giving effect to the energy transition has stayed firmly fixed on renewables and has rejected nuclear power absolutely. The prime minister has called the opposition’s nuclear policy a “fantasy”, though it could be that the opposition has better intel on the likelihood of public support beyond polling data.
We’ll leave it to others to argue about whether unpicking previous laws and recalling nuclear energy to centre stage should be viewed as progress. In any event, there’ll be a long time between any legalising of nuclear energy generation and seeing any potential benefit in terms of reducing GHG emissions. Certainly, any talk of nuclear being available “immediately” while technology is still being developed and without any legal or regulatory framework to support it should raise even the most relaxed eyebrows. As lawyers, any facial muscle relaxant must work overtime when we have to think about the meaning of words like “immediately”.
Between now and whenever nuclear energy could become available, Peter Dutton has said he would prefer to see “an energy mix with renewables”. His recent comments indicate that this means “significant amounts of gas” need to be brought into the system before any nuclear power comes online. This gives some clue as to what energy source would be relied upon if there were a slowdown on renewables.
In seeking support, Peter Dutton has said it’s time for “a mature conversation” about nuclear. He has pointed to the fact that Australia is the only one of the top 20 economies in the world that doesn’t use nuclear energy.
As far as we know, the only nuclear power stations that have become operational since 2006 have been in Russia, Belarus, Iran, India, China, and the United Arab Emirates. One of the few examples of a nuclear power station currently under construction is the Hinkley Point C site in the UK.
The cost of Hinkley power plant in the UK has blown out to $90 billion
Initially proposed in about 1981 Hinkley Point C has experienced a series of delays with a massive cost blowout and a final bill currently anticipated at about $90 billion which dwarfs the original estimates and is more than double the cost estimated as recently as in 2017.
The high cost of nuclear projects is consistent with comments made by other Liberal politicians who are sceptical about nuclear power. In May 2024, former Liberal NSW treasurer (and Deputy Leader) Matt Kean – who’s just been appointed by the Albanese government as chair of the Climate Change Authority – described nuclear energy as “hugely costly”.
Kean also reflected on his own experience in cabinet evaluating the merits of nuclear energy. As part of the same conversation in May, he said that “as we looked more into it, we found that nuclear was a Trojan horse for the coal industry who are looking to prolong coal longer, to keep electricity prices higher, and delay the transition, denying more supply coming into the system which will lower bills and make it better for families and businesses”. Kean’s words, not ours.
Last month, Australia’s national science agency, the CSIRO, released its regular GenCost report which provides facts about electricity generation. The report shows that the likely costs of nuclear are significantly higher and more unpredictable than renewables like wind and solar for several reasons, including because “premiums of up to 100 per cent (in terms of total costs) cannot be ruled out” for first-of-a-kind nuclear units. It concludes that “the earliest deployment (of nuclear energy in Australia) would be from 2040”. Therefore, in a best case scenario under the CSIRO’s modelling, nuclear energy would only become available 10 years before Australia is due to accomplish net zero GHG emissions.
A Trojan horse for coal and gas
Whether nuclear is a Trojan horse for those looking to prolong fossil fuels or not, we consider that, from a legal and energy transition perspective, nuclear is only problematic if it is unsafe or experimental (as is the case for some nuclear technology that is not yet commercially operational anywhere in the world), if it derails investment by privately-owned companies in renewable energy across Australia, or if it risks recreating the policy uncertainty of previous governments.
That is, if there’s a chance that the idea of nuclear utopia will distract us away from actively reducing Australia’s GHG emissions by 2030 and ultimately compromising any path to net zero by 2050.
Either way, there’s plenty of urgent work to do on the energy transition. On that score, Peter Dutton has recently said that meeting the legislated target of a 43 per cent reduction in GHG emissions by 2030 “would destroy the economy”. He’s also claimed that Australia won’t be able to meet the 43 per cent reduction target in any event. We’re not so sure.
Australia is in fact on track to reach a 42 per cent reduction by 2030 according to government projections from 2023. That’s only 1 per cent off the target that the Labor government introduced in 2022 (significantly bettering the previous target of a 26-28 per cent reduction by 2030 as set by the Morrison government), with more than half a decade left to intensify efforts and build on the existing renewables portfolio.
Perfect shouldn’t be the enemy of good. Any hope we have of meeting the net zero target by 2050 would be significantly reduced if we abandon the interim 2030 target in anticipation of long-term nuclear salvation. You don’t need access to the atomic codes to see an obvious answer: we can debate the possibilities and realities of nuclear energy provided we continue to invest heavily in the renewables we’ve come to know and trust (with more from us on offshore wind next month). We just can’t be on a highway – (or even a road) – to nowhere. That would sound more like Talking Heads than Prince.