SPECIAL REPORT | AUSTRALIA’S NUCLEAR OPTION
Is nuclear right for Australia?
Opening the nuclear debate risks checking renewable energy investors’ enthusiasm for the Australian market. It may be the right time to test the waters but does it threaten security in the next decade?
AUSTRALIA HAS A LARGE URANIUM industry that supplies around 8% of global demand. And, after receiving a construction licence in 2002 it successfully built a 20 MWt research reactor (named Opal) at the Lucas Heights facility on the outskirts of Sydney, which started up in 2016. However nuclear power remains illegal in Australia. That exclusion was questioned most recently in June this
year, when Peter Dutton, leader of the opposition unveiled a plan to build seven nuclear power plants on sites that would be acquired by the Australian Commonwealth (via the national government in Canberra). He named potential sites as Tarong and Callide in Queensland; Mount Piper and Liddell in New South Wales; Collie in Western Australia; Loy Yang in Victoria; and Northern power station in South Australia. He suggested the plants could start coming on stream by 2035. The proposal has kicked off debate in Australia, which is expecting to phase out its aging coal-fired stations over the next decade, to be replaced by lower-carbon generation. The Canberra government responded by setting up a
Select Committee on Nuclear Energy to carry out an inquiry into nuclear power generation in Australia. The Select Committee began taking oral evidence in October and is due to produce its report in March 2025. The debate comes as Australia’s Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) and Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) published their annual ‘GenCost’ report, which estimates the cost of building new electricity generation, storage and hydrogen production in
Australia. This year the authors addressed three common criticisms of their approach to assessing the cost of nuclear power (see box). Minister Chris Bowen hit back at the Dutton plan, which
would also see a pause in building the pipeline of new renewable energy projects until the proposed nuclear plan was under way. Bowen claimed that Dutton’s plan “will result in a staggering 49% gap between demand and the supply available to meet it”. Simon Duggan, Deputy Secretary at the Department of
Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water, in Canberra, was questioned about Bowen’s claim during a Select Committee hearing on 24 October. He said the department “provided calculations on the basis of the assumptions that were put to us”, which included the coal closure schedule and an assumption that there was no further investment in renewable energy beyond what is already classified as committed. “On that basis, the sum of those two things then led to the estimate of an 860 TWh cumulative projected shortfall from 2025 to 2035.” Duggan also gave an indication of the importance of the
nuclear debate where the environment for investors is a key factor in attracting companies to enter bidding rounds to provide new generating capacity – and making auctions competitive by attracting enough companies to take part. That requires maximum visibility of the future market. Committee chair Dan Repacholi (from the governing
Labor Party) asked: “What will pause that investment pipeline, do you think?” Duggan warned of uncertainty over
Above: The Opal research facility at Lucas Heights is Australia’s only nuclear reactor. Nuclear power generation is currently illegal
26 | January 2025 |
www.neimagazine.com
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45
