The Coalition’s nuclear power folly

Nuclear scheme nuclear and coal capacity contrasted with AEMO's assumed coal capacity: Gigawatts from 2010 - 2050

The Coalition’s 13.2 Gigawatt (GW) nuclear scheme would be an expensive and destructive folly for Australia.

All four of the most recent major nuclear generation projects in the Western world: Hinkley Point C (UK), Olkiluoto 3 (Finland), Flamanville 3 (USA), and Vogtle 3 (France) – have had:

delays ranging from 7 to 14 years,
costs three times their original estimates, and
their construction company go broke.

The Hinkley Point C nuclear project is massive, one of the largest construction sites in Europe. Its workforce peaked at 5,600 people on site! The shock is that the Coalition’s 13.2 GW nuclear scheme is:

four times as big as the 3.2 GW Hinkley project,
double the total UK nuclear capacity of 6.5 GW, and
spread over five or seven sites across Australia, whereas Hinkley Point C is a single site.

The Coalition leader, Mr Dutton, continues to promote the nuclear scheme by falsely claiming Australians are paying three times more for electricity than in nuclear Ontario.

He’s picked an inflated Australian cost of 56 c/kWh: the peak-hours cost in a niche Australian electricity plan for people with solar and batteries. These people can top up their battery at about 2 pm for just 18 c/kWh – and rarely pay those peak rates. His cost is ridiculously high for them and the average Australian, making his comparison bogus. See Misinformation about current Australian electricity costs on this website.

We can’t trust his estimate of today’s Australian electricity cost. It’s a stark warning not to trust his future nuclear costs.

This graph shows:

Nuclear capacity GW (red on the graph). The Coalition has the nuclear capacity ready to start in 2036, despite the CSIRO saying the earliest start would be 2040.
Coal capacity GW assumed by the Coalition (brown). Here coal keeps generating for an extended period ending in 2048, despite our coal plants being old and already failing regularly.
More realistic coal capacity of AEMO’s step change scenario (black) which has coal gone by 2038,
The historic decline in coal capacity between 2010 and 2024.

The nuclear scheme is a huge gamble for the nation. The nuclear startups will surely be delayed by many years and at least one coal plant is likely to collapse before nuclear is ready. This would leave Australia with a power shortfall and soaring electricity prices.

The largest coal generator in the East Coast grid, AGL, says its coal plant closures can’t wait for nuclear power. (Renew Economy: 12 Feb 2025)

The Graph data comes from:

Nuclear capacity data (Frontier Economics Report 2, Figure 1, Page 7)
Nuclear scheme coal capacities (Frontier Report 2, Figure 2, Page 8)
AEMO “Step-change scenario” coal capacities (AEMO 2024 Integrated System Plan, Figure 1, Page 10)
I took measurements from these graphs to get the data for the graph.

The CSIRO says the cost per unit of electricity of building nuclear will be at least double that of building renewables, and yet the Coalition claims nuclear generates cheap electricity.

We need more flexible generation, not baseload generation that runs 24/7.

Baseload nuclear generators are not flexible. They will lose money whenever renewable generation is high, and they have to offer lower prices than renewables to win sales to the grid – so they can keep on running. Our coal generators are already struggling with this as renewable capacity grows.

Water usage is a concern. The proposed nuclear generation (104,139 GWh/year) will nearly double the generation of the previous coal plants at the five nuclear sites – and double the cooling water used. The increased water use could risk local water security, restrict farming, and disrupt nuclear generation, especially during droughts.

Extra gas and coal needed

The Coalition has said it will (1) keep our old and unreliable coal generators running and (2) rely on gas generation, but they have not provided any details or costs for this. It looks like their nuclear scheme is also a coal and gas scheme. Certainly, until the first nuclear plant starts up in 10 or 15 years, it is only a gas and coal scheme.

The costs of increasing gas generation would be considerable. The cost of extending coal generation too. Governments are already concerned about grid reliability and paying significant amounts to keep coal generators running as insurance, even though renewable energy capacity is increasing and should meet demand. For example, the NSW government will pay the 2.88 GW Eraring coal plant up to $225 million annually to extend generation until August 2027. This suggests it will cost enormous sums to keep Eraring or other coal plants running beyond their planned retirement to meet demand until all the nuclear capacity is operating in 2050 or probably later. It is also risky to extend the life of these old generators as they become more likely to fail. AEMO says the biggest risk to electricity supply is the unexpected failure of one of our large and increasingly unreliable coal generators.

Nuclear will increase the cost of living.

The nuclear scheme abandons AEMO’s comprehensive plans, will increase the cost of living, and will make Australian industry less competitive by:

holding back the cheapest electricity from solar, wind, and batteries, supported by flexible gas generation (blue on the graph),
building the most expensive and risky generation, nuclear, with the first reactor starting generation in ten years, but more likely in 15 years,
heavily subsidising coal plants to extend their generating, and
expanding the second most expensive generation, gas, with urgency to cover coal closures.

More than just abandoning AEMO’s plans, the Coalition is undermining these plans by (1) talking about cancelling renewable energy contracts, (2) planning market intervention via this government-run nuclear scheme, and (3) frightening investors. The Coalition could slow the needed rapid expansion of capacity and cause electricity shortages and price hikes.

We should trust the guidance of reputable Australian organisations like AEMO and the CSIRO, which can offer fact-based financial analysis.

I have covered most of my key points in the above summary; the following text provides supporting details and elaboration.

The rest of this page contains:

AEMO has a depth of experience

The Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO):

manages Australian electricity and gas markets, e.g., every five minutes, AEMO decides which electricity generators will supply the market based on the generator’s bids to sell electricity,
produces an “Integrated System Plan” every two years to guide the infrastructure development of our east coast National Electricity Market (NEM), and
each year, together with the CSIRO, produces a “GenCost Report”, which estimates the costs of building new electricity generators and storage.

This ongoing hourly market management, long-term planning, and costing give AEMO a depth and breadth of experience in these matters.

The annual GENCOST 2023-24 report found that:

nuclear produces the most expensive electricity, and
renewables generate the cheapest electricity even when you consider the costs of the electricity storage and transmission needed to firm renewable generation.

In the “2024 Integrated System Plan“ AEMO sees the “step change scenario” as the most likely of their planning scenarios, with renewable energy, energy storage and gas backup being the most affordable and reliable way to supply demand.

The Coalition’s nuclear scheme

The Coalition has described its nuclear scheme in:

a two-page media release in June 2024,
Two Frontier Economics Reports, 15 Nov 2024 and 13 Dec 2025.

The June media release and interviews proposed:

building nuclear generation at seven locations, each with a retired or retiring coal generator:
- Liddell, NSW,
- Mount Piper, NSW,
- Loy Yang, VIC,
- Tarong, QLD,
- Callide, QLD,
- Northern, near Port Augusta in SA, and
- Muja, near Perth in WA,
starting the first nuclear generation in 2035 for a small modular reactor or 2037 for a big reactor,
government paying for the total cost of building, running and maintaining the reactors,
running the nuclear plants for 80 years, and
delivering “a net-zero electricity grid by 2050”.
breaking contracts to stop wind and solar farm development,
making gas generation a big part of their scheme, and
extending the life of coal generators.

***** The Frontier Economics Reports

** Nuclear sites

“The regions where nuclear power stations are assumed to be commissioned are NSW, Queensland and Victoria. In total, just over 13,000 MW of nuclear power capacity is assumed to be commissioned across these three jurisdictions.” (Frontier Report 2, page 7)

The Frontier Report costing has not included the South Australian and Western Australian nuclear plants.

*** Nuclear capacity 13.2 GW

The Frontier nuclear capacity graph shows they are considering 13,200 MW. (Frontier Report 2, Figure 1, page 7). I estimated this by measuring the graph with a ruler.

*** Nuclear generation GWh/year

The Coalition has their nuclear plants generating 104,139 GWh/year in 2051 (Frontier Economic Report 2, p.34). This means that the Coalition assumes that their nuclear plant will be running hard at 90% of capacity each year.

** Small modular reactors

The Frontier reports do not include SMRs, but the Coalition is still considering them. On the day of the release of Frontier Report 2, 13/12/2024, Dutton said, “As we’ve said previously, in South Australia and Western Australia, [we are considering] small modular reactors. The Coalition’s plan is still vague about critical details.

By spreading the nuclear capacity evenly over the five sites, this could be:

2.640 GW at each site, and
two reactors each of 1.320 GW at each site.

The Frontier Economics Reports made no mention of:

the individual sites
the capacity at each site,
small modular reactors (SMR),
The type of reactors.

Frightening renewables investors

While the Coalition talks about a balanced mix including renewable energy, their plan for renewable energy seems to be to minimise renewables, and they may be succeeding in this minimisation even from opposition by:

threatening to cancel renewables contracts,
encouraging protests against wind farms and transmission lines,
advocating for massive government intervention in the market to build these nuclear generators,
creating uncertainty by promoting vague and radical schemes, and
frightening renewable energy investors.

The Coalition could be frightening all energy investors via their scheme to change the direction of energy policy radically. That’s a problem because government investment in nuclear energy can only be a small part of an energy policy, and we will need private investment to meet 87% of the demand in 2050.

By frightening renewables investors, the Coalition is undermining the AEMO plan without offering a workable alternative. This puts us at risk of electricity shortages and steep price hikes.

They also jeopardise Australia’s chance to become a global renewable energy leader.

Already subsidising coal extensions.

The Coalition is considering extending the life of coal generation. However, all our coal generators, bar one, have announced a retirement date before 2050, and AEMO expects the earlier retirements shown on the capacity graph.

Our governments are already paying subsidies to keep some coal generators running, and these extensions will become more expensive as the plants get older. Here are two examples.

In 2024, The NSW government agreed to pay the Eraring coal plant (2.88 GW) up to $225 million annually to generate for an extra two years. Eraring now expects to close in August 2027.

(NSW to extend the life of the Eraring Coal Plant: Power Technology: 23 May 2024)

(Eraring extension: NSW Government)

Keeping Queensland’s Callide B coal plant (0.7 GW) open beyond its use-by date of 2028 could cost Queensland taxpayers up to $420 million annually, drive up electricity prices, and endanger grid reliability.

(Queensland opposition’s goalkeeper plan could cost taxpayers AU$ 420 million a year: Renew Economy: 18 Oct 2024)

Our coal generators are old and no longer provide reliable baseload power. In November 2024, the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) issued alerts due to extended outages at nearly half of the coal-fired power units in New South Wales, which left NSW and Queensland vulnerable.

(Extended outages of baseload power: Renew Economy: 26 Nov 2024)

Extending substantial coal generation would be expensive, risky, and prolong coal emissions.

New gas too late for early coal retirements

The Coalition says gas will play a big role, so they will consider new gas generators. They will need to be built fast.

The nearly complete Hunter Power Plant / Kurri Kurri gas peaking generator indicates the cost of building gas generation and the time needed:

In 2020, the Morrison government announced it would build a gas generator at Kurri Kurri.
The 0.750 GW peaking plant may start late in 2024 and burn diesel fuel because its gas pipeline is still not ready.
From 2020, that’s over 4 years to have it running on gas.
The expected cost for the plant, 21-kilometre gas pipeline, gas storage, and diesel storage will be about AU$1 billion.
The plant may only generate for an average of 1 hour a month.

The Coalition has discussed cancelling renewables contracts and might want new gas plants to meet the increasing demand and coal retirements. However, if the 2.88 GW Eraring plant closes in 2027, you might need four gas plants of 0.750 GW to replace the Eraring capacity – and those new gas plants might take 4 years to build, starting after 2029. New gas plants may not be ready in time to meet coal retirements.

(Kurri Kurri Power Plant: Climate Energy Finance: 10/5/2024)

All recent nuclear builds led to bankruptcy.

All four of the most recent major nuclear generation projects in the Western world led to bankruptcies.

Project	Company	Status	Delay Years
Olkiluoto 3: Finland	Areva	Started 2023	14
Flamanville 3: USA	EDF	Started 2024	12
Hinkley Point C: UK	EDF	The first reactor due in 2031	?
Vogtle: France	Westinghouse	Started April 2024	7

The recent projects display:

cost overruns, all around 300%,
delays ranging from 7 years to 14 years, and
final costs between 31 and 132 billion Australian dollars,

These projects are financially dangerous for the builders and the governments. (1) Westinghouse went bankrupt, (2) EDF nearly went bankrupt, and the French nationalised it, and (3) AREVA became insolvent and restructured.

These bankruptcies and nationalisations starkly present the financial dangers of these nuclear projects and suggest why nuclear power is declining in the Western world.

(Is nuclear the answer to Australia’s climate Crisis? The Conversation: 3 Nov 2023)

The UK Hinkley Point C project

The nuclear scheme is bigger and more complex than the troubled UK Hinkley Point C project (HPC). To show this, first examine the HPC project:

a total capacity of 3.2 GW,
two nuclear reactors, each of 1.6 GW,
a single type of reactor,
on one site, and
in a country that:
- opened its first nuclear reactor in 1956,
- runs nine operating nuclear reactors at 5 locations, and
- has a total capacity of 6.5 GW.

The HPC timeline:

1981: The UK government announced HPC.
2008: Enabling work started, e.g. building a car park.
2014: Planning for building a sea wall and jetty: 400 staff.
2018: Start construction of Reactor 1.
2019: Start construction of reactor 2.
2031: Estimated startup of reactor 1.
2033: Possible startup of reactor 2.

The first HPC reactor build took 13 years, but the entire process may run for 52 years.

HPC had to cope with (1) Covid, (2) Brexit, (3) legal challenges, (4) political opposition, and (5) financial difficulties of the builders. Australian nuclear development would not face any Brexit and would be unlikely to face another world epidemic, but technical, legal, political and financial difficulties and delays come with the territory.

The HPC costs:

The initial cost estimate in 2007 was 9 billion pounds.
The 2024 estimate is 48 billion pounds.
This is 5.3 times the 2007 estimate.
This total cost would be 92.6 billion in today’s Australian dollars.

(Cost of Hinkley Point C blows out to over AU$93 billion: Renew Economy: 18 Oct 2024)

Hinkley Point: A massive project

The HPC project is one of the largest construction sites in Europe, involving:

1.6 GW reactors: this capacity is 91% of the world’s largest reactor (1.75 GW in China),
building docks to ship in materials and equipment,
building massive foundations for security,
using 50 cranes, one being the biggest crane in the world,
building a concrete factory,
making consistent, highest-quality nuclear safety concrete,
boring 9 kilometres of tunnels to carry seawater for cooling, tunnels like those for car tunnels and pumped hydro.

Each reactor had a small pour of concrete (2,000 cubic metres) and a large pour. The large pour:

needed three days of continuous pouring,
used 40 concrete placing booms, and
took a UK record volume of concrete:
- 9,000 cubic metres of concrete,
- 1,406 loads from concrete trucks,
- a truckload of concrete every 3 minutes for 3 days with no breaks,
- 3.6 Olympic swimming pools of concrete.

The workforce:

peaked at 5,600 people on site,
included 510 people living in purpose-built accommodation on the site,
required a fleet of 160 buses for site transportation,
will become 900 permanent jobs.

Two assumptions:

An Olympic swimming pool 50 metres long, 25 metres wide and averaging 2 metres deep contains 2,500 cubic meters of water.
A concrete truck with six wheels can deliver 5.6 cubic metres of concrete, and a truck with eight wheels can deliver 7.2 cubic metres. I used an average of 6.4 cubic metres per truck.

A YouTube video on Hinkley Point C

UK nuclear capacity

The UK has:

nuclear generation at five sites,
nine operating reactors,
nuclear capacity of 6.5 gigawatts (GW), and
plans for all but one of these plants to shut down before 2030.

(Civil Nuclear Roadmap: House of Commons Library: 14 Feb 2024)

Coalition scheme: Far bigger than Hinkley Point C

Alarmingly, the Coalition’s nuclear scheme is far more complex than the Hinkley Point C (HPC) project. The Coalition would build:

a total capacity of 13.2 GW, which is:
- 4.1 times HPC’s 3.2 GW, and
- double the total UK nuclear capacity of 6.5 GW,
ten reactors of 1.320 GW, this is:
- five times more than the two HPC reactors, and
- about the same as the UK’s nine reactors,
at five sites spread across Australia, which is far more complex than the HPC’s one site,
maybe two types of reactor, compared to HPC’s one type,
maybe small modular reactors for which there is no commercial plan,
ten reactors of about 1.320 GW, each 75% the 1.75 GW largest reactor in the world,
reactors in five states, each with different legislation, including legislation in Victoria, New South Wales, and Queensland prohibiting nuclear reactors, and
in a country with no nuclear generation experience, compared with the UK’s 68 years of experience.
The HPC workforce peaked at 5,600 people on site, so Australia would need to train, gather and house large groups of skilled workers in at least five locations around the country for extended periods of time.

Should we follow Ontario and go nuclear?

Now let’s look at a nuclear project the Coalition says supports our going nuclear: the example of Ontario, Canada.

** Ontario Hydro went nuclear & bankrupt

To present this as a nuclear success story, the Coalition:

fabricated its nuclear scheme talking point, i.e., its claim that Australians pay four times more for electricity than Ontarians (See Fabrication of Evidence on another page of this website),
ignores Ontario Hydro getting into debt by building its nuclear generators and going broke,
ignores that Ontario Hydro’s customers covered debt equivalent to 70 billion current Australian dollars, paid off via a fixed “debt recovery charge” in their bills from 2002 until 2018,
uses costs from Ontario’s current electricity bills that do not reflect this debt repayment,
ignores the Ontario government subsidy for electricity, the “Ontario Electricity Rebate” entry in bills. The bill shown in the Tristan Edis article shows a rebate of 19% of the electricity charges,
ignores that the Ontario government has a big role in setting prices, and
asserts that nuclear generators run for 80 years, ignoring the many refurbished nuclear reactors in Ontario and the costs of refurbishment (see below).

(Ontario’s huge nuclear debt: Renew Economy: Tristan Edis: 30 Oct 2024)

** Nuclear plant refurbishment

The Coalition media release says, “A … nuclear power plant will be a national asset delivering … consistent energy for 80 years”. The Coalition’s 80-year nuclear scheme ignores a major factor, the refurbishment of nuclear generators.

The Ontario government was planning the refurbishment of the four Darlington reactors in 2017, only 25 years after they started generation. The Financial Accountability Office of Ontario in 2017 estimated that the refurbishment of ten reactors at Bruce and Darlington and life extension work at Pickering would cost CA$25 billion in 2017 dollars. (Add 10% to get Australian dollars) Each reactor closes for about 3 years for refurbishment.

(Report on Nuclear Refurbishment: The Financial Accountability Office of Ontario: 2017)

These refurbishments are major investment decisions in themselves, and sometimes it is cheaper to close a plant. There are several closed nuclear generators in Ontario.

A plan for nuclear energy must include refurbishment costs and details for meeting demand during the years while refurbishment closes reactors. Providing replacement generation for refurbishment closures with five large nuclear reactors spread across Australia would not be simple. It might need extra transmission lines between states. Nuclear development without this planning could produce extended power shortages and large cost increases.

Accidents can also close reactors, so plans to cover outages are required from the start of operation. The difficulty here is that suddenly losing 1.3 GW of capacity would jolt the grid, and replacing this capacity for a day or a month requires a plan.

** Coalition fabricated evidence for nuclear

Fabrication of evidence

** Australia gets stronger sun than Ontario

The Coalition urges us to follow Ontario and go nuclear. Another reason for not following Ontario is Australia gets far stronger sun than Ontario.

This graph highlights that being closer to the equator, Australia benefits from:

significantly more sunlight than Ontario,
higher energy output per solar panel, and
milder seasonal variations: in mid-winter Ontario, you only get about 8 hours of sunlight a day, and the sun is only 23 degrees above the horizon at noon compared to mid-summer, 15 hours of sun a day, with the sun reaching 70 degrees at noon.

As a result, the advantages of nuclear power for Australia are far less than for Ontario.

For more about this, and an explanation of the graph, see Australia’s strong sun on this site.

Small modular reactor won’t run by 2035

The media release asserts we could have a small modular reactor (SMR) generating by 2035. This is fanciful; these reactors are not a proven technology. To the contrary, NuScale attempted to build an SMR in Idaho, USA, with a capacity of 0.462 GW. The cost blew out from US$ 3 billion to 9.3 billion, and they cancelled the project.

(The parlous state of the nuclear power sector: Renew Economy: 18 Oct 2024)

Some risk factors

Many factors make this a risky gamble; they could increase the scheme’s costs far beyond estimates and increase the cost of living.

Factor: Australia has never built a nuclear generator – and countries with experience have had massive cost overruns and delays, e.g. the Hinckley Point C project discussed above.

Factor: The government would pay a premium to acquire the proposed sites forcibly. For example, AGL does not like nuclear power’s costs and expected delays and has started building a $750 million battery at its Liddell site in NSW.

Factor: We would depend on nuclear fuel from overseas, subject to supply disruption and price hikes. The fuel would also have to travel large distances, possibly from the USA to Australian ports and then by road to the inland sites.

Factor: All nuclear projects and operations need to be super secure. This dramatically increases the costs of building and running the reactors. The risks include:

design and construction faults,
human error,
government cost-cutting on maintenance
cyber-attack,
terrorism,
radiation leaks,
extreme weather,
droughts, which could restrict cooling water,
earthquakes and tsunamis, and
warfare.

Factor: Nuclear power has many easily overlooked costs. For example, we would need to develop emergency plans for:

farmers located near nuclear reactors, and there are 11,000 farms within 80 kilometres of the seven proposed sites. In the U.S., these farms have established procedures to manage potential radiation leaks, and
transporting nuclear materials, covering all relevant ports, roads, towns, and cities.

We need flexible, not baseload generators.

One of the Coalition talking points is “Australia needs baseload nuclear generators”. In the media release, they call it “consistent 24/7 electricity”. These baseload generators must run steadily without pausing when they are running. (Nuclear generators in the US run about 92% of the time.)

Contradicting this, Australian Energy Market Operator CEO, Daniel Westerman, says that:

Our grid used to depend on (1) baseload coal generation supported by (2) gas generators to meet demand peaks.

That worked when coal generated the cheapest electricity, but now this does not work because renewables generate the lowest cost electricity and win dispatch ahead of coal and gas generators.

Today, our grid urgently needs: (1) renewable electricity, (2) batteries, (3) pumped hydro, (4) flexible gas generation and (5) transmission lines.

Australia does not need nuclear baseload generators.

(The baseload coal & gas peaking paradigm is no longer fit for our modern grid, says the AEMO chief: Renew Economy: 23 Oct 2024)

** Baseload generators often pay to run

Our levels of renewable generation are high and increasing. This means that our current baseload coal generators struggle, and our future baseload nuclear generation would have even more difficulties. Our baseload coal generators struggle to sell their electricity to the grid because:

our large-scale renewable generators produce cheap electricity, bid low in the AEMO auctions, and AEMO dispatches their renewable electricity to the grid,
rooftop solar meets the householder’s demand, reducing electric demand on the grid,
rooftop solar also supplies large amounts of electricity to the grid, electricity that AEMO cannot currently turn off, and
baseload coal generators need to run without stopping, so they often bid negative, i.e., offer to pay, so AEMO dispatches their coal electricity.

Look at the National Electricity Market (NEM) dashboard in the middle of the day. You’ll see the 5-minute prices in each state and, with rare exceptions, see some negative prices set by coal generators paying to avoid stopping.

** Our high levels of renewable generation

Renewable generation is significant and increasing. For example, on the East Coast grid:

Renewables generated a peak of 75.3% of demand on Sunday, 20 Oct 2024, at 11.15 am. Rooftop solar comprised 52% of this, while coal output had to drop to 24.1% of demand.
Renewables generated an average of about 40% of electricity in 2023 and are headed for the 2030 target of 83% of renewable generation over a year.

In South Australia:

On Saturday, 19 October 2024, at 1.15 p.m., rooftop solar provided 112.9% of SA demand, and SA exported its excess electricity.
During November 2021, wind and solar provided more than 100% of local SA demand for 93 hours straight, day and windy night; a little gas generation provided grid stability, and SA exported its excess electricity.
In October 2023, wind and solar generated 86.8% of SA demand.
In tax year 2023-24, wind and solar generated over 70% of SA demand.
In 2027, wind and solar will generate 100% of SA demand.

(Rooftop solar propels renewables to 75% of demand: Renew Economy: 23 Oct 2024)

** AGL is trying to pause baseload generation

Like all baseload coal plant operators, AGL often pays to keep its coal generators running. To avoid these payments, AGL is trialling the shutdown of its Bayswater plant for up to twelve hours at a time. This trial shows:

it’s not economical for the coal generators to provide baseload power, i.e. generate 7 days a week and 24 hours a day,
the Coalition is wrong to say we must have more baseload,
we do not need coal baseload generation, and
we do not need nuclear baseload generation.

(Coal generators are trying brief shutdowns to avoid costly baseload generation: Renew Economy: 1 Oct 2024)

** Baseload increases the low-demand risk

Baseload generation is part of an emerging problem for the grid: having more generation than demand, which can lead to blackouts. In 2024, AEMO introduced a “minimum system demand risk event” and is developing ways of managing this risk.

(Rooftop solar management: AEMO: 2024)

Rooftop solar generation supplies substantial amounts of electricity to the grid during the day, for example:

at 1.15 pm on 19 Oct 2024, in South Australia, rooftops supplied 112.9% of SA demand,
at 1 pm on Saturday, 12 Oct 2024, East Coast rooftops supplied 50% of the East Coast grid demand,
rooftop generation is the second largest renewable energy source in Australia, after wind generation, and before large-scale solar farms, and
rooftop generation is the fourth largest source of electricity, 11.2% of Australian generation.

Rooftop solar reduces demand on our large-scale generators by (1) supplying electricity to houses and businesses, and (2) exporting surplus electricity to the grid, enough to occasionally meet the entire local demand.

One in three Australian homes have solar panels, and AEMO expects rooftop generation to grow strongly; it could triple in the next 30 years. As people install more rooftop solar panels, the whole East Coast grid will become more like South Australia.

If the Coalition scheme proceeds, we could have generation from:

large-scale solar and wind, which the owners can turn off,
Rooftop solar that currently cannot turn off, and
Baseload nuclear or coal, which needs to keep running.

We will increasingly have the problem of insufficient demand, and any baseload generator that must run all the time increases the chances of supply exceeding demand. For example, in the isolated Southwestern Australian grid, noon demand is becoming too low, so they are building big batteries to increase demand.

** Nuclear baseload: expensive electricity

The Coalition’s scheme would produce expensive electricity as it would often need to turn off the cheapest generators (wind turbines, solar farms and rooftop solar) to allow the most expensive (nuclear) to keep running.

Baseload generators would displace cheap renewables at times when there was surplus generation capacity, and one measure of this on the current grid is “the percentage of the time when prices are negative”, i.e., when generators pay so that AEMO dispatches their electricity.

In SA, renewables can already supply all the local demand. Actually, rooftop solar alone can do this, and negative prices reflect this surplus generation capacity. Prices were negative:

4% of the time in 2019,
25% of the time in 2023, and
34% of the time in the December quarter of 2023.

So, if SA had a baseload nuclear generator now, for about 34% of the time, nuclear generation would be displacing low-cost renewable generation, e.g., rooftop solar that only costs the retailer about 5 cents per kilowatt-hour. This would increase the cost of electricity.

This “time with excess generation capacity” is increasing in other states too, as levels of renewable coapaicty increase.

State	2019 Time with negative price	2023 Time with negative price
South Australia	4%	25%
Victoria	1%	22%
Queensland	2%	14.5%
NSW	0%	7%

The Coalition argues for baseload nuclear power, saying we must have “a balanced energy mix”. Their pitch sounds modern, reasonable, and attractive, but some “mixes” don’t work. Oil does not mix with water, and baseload does not mix with a high level of renewables.

Baseload generation is incompatible with high levels of renewable generation.

We need flexible generators, not inflexible baseload nuclear generators.

Industry opposes nuclear: AGL

Even the energy industry is against the nuclear scheme, for example, AGL.

(Energy Giant AGL issues a warning on Dutton’s nuclear plan: The Age: 25 Sep 2024)

Increased water use

The proposed nuclear generation (104,139 GWh/year) will nearly double the generation from the previous coal plants at the five nuclear sites – and double the use of water drawn from local rivers and lakes. The increased water use could risk local water security, restrict farming, and disrupt nuclear generation, especially during droughts.

The total nuclear generation at five sites is also just less than the generation from our current coal fleet at 13 sites, so nuclear will concentrate this generation from 13 sites into just five sites.

(Coal 21.3 GW * 24 hour/day x 365 day/year x 60% = 111,953 GWh/year. The nuclear capacity is 93% of this 111,953 GWh/year)

This assumes that nuclear generators use the same amount of cooling water per unit of generated electricity as coal generators, a conservative assumption as some say nuclear generation uses more water.

This table compares (1) the coal generation in tax year 2017/18 with (2) the nuclear generation in 2050 with each nuclear site generating the same amount of electricity.

Plant	Coal generation 2017-18 GWh/year	Nuclear generation 2050 Spread equally: GWh/year	Increased generation & water use Factor
Liddell: NSW	7,222	20827.8	2.9
Mt Piper: NSW	6,440	20827.8	3.2
Tarong: QLD	9,978	20827.8	2.1
Callide C: QLD	9,717	20827.8	2.1
Loy Yang: VIC	21,711	20827.8	1.0
Total	55,068	104,139	1.9

The “total line” shows the nuclear plants would generate 1.9 times as much electricity as the earlier coal plants, which indicates they will use 1.9 times as much water.

The Coalition has not said how they would spread the nuclear capacity between the five sites, but one possibility is to build the same nuclear generator at each site, as in the above table. This spread of nuclear capacity suggests the smallest coal plant, Mt Piper, could need 3.2 times the water. Mt Piper draws water from Lake Lyell and during the 1996–2012 Millennium Drought, the lake fell 20 meters below capacity. At the time, Delta Electricity operated Mt Piper, and their 2006 Annual Report noted the company worked with the local council to limit community impacts.

An alternative spread of nuclear capacity would be to have nuclear generate 1.9 times as much electricity as the earlier coal plant at each site. That would mean that each site would use 1.9 times as much water.

Data Source: The 2017-18 coal capacities (MW) and generation (GWh/year) come from a Melbourne University document, “Source: Coal capacity factors in the National Electricity Market 2017-18”, on figshare.unimelb.edu.au

If the Coalition wins this election, they will lock Australia into proceeding with the nuclear scheme despite not knowing critical things like:

the availability of cooling water, and
the cost of extra transmission lines.

Nuclear needs more transmission lines

The Coalition falsely claims they will use the existing transmission at these old coal sites, to reduce the cost of their scheme by avoiding the need for new transmission from their nuclear plants.

The nuclear scheme requires transmission lines with 40% more capacity since its total capacity (13.2 GW) is 40% higher than the previous coal capacity at the five sites (9.733 GW). The extra transmission is needed to ensure each nuclear plant can deliver its full output to users.

The nuclear scheme would also need extra transmission because (1) we are already building batteries near the coal sites and these will be using the existing transmission capacity, and (2) some existing transmission lines will need replacing over the next 25 years.

One possible way of spreading the nuclear capacity would be to put the same capacity at each of the five sites. This table compares the coal capacity in tax year 2017/18 with the nuclear capacity spread equally between the sites.

Plant	Coal capacity 2017-18 MW	Nuclear capacity 2051 Spread equally MW	Increased capacity & transmission Factor
Liddell: NSW	1,680	2,640	1.6
Mt Piper: NSW	1,400	2,640	1.9
Tarong: QLD	1,843	2,640	1.4
Callide C: QLD	1,600	2,640	1.7
Loy Yang: VIC	3,210	2,640	0.8
Total	9,733	13,200	1.4

Across all the sites, 40% more transmission is needed. Again, if the Coalition spread the capacity equally between the sites, Mt Piper would need nearly twice the transmission capacity.

Costs not considered by the Coalition.

In evaluating the nuclear scheme, the Coalition has not considered the costs of:

subsidies to extend the life of coal generators
building new gas generators
increased gas and coal usage
increased greenhouse gas emissions
.
likely delays to their nuclear build
increasing the capacity of transmission lines
increasing the water supply to the nuclear sites
increased national security to defend the nuclear facilities
nuclear plant refurbishment to enable their claimed 80-year life
nuclear plant decommissioning
storing nuclear wastes

Nuclear waste

US Government websites say:

The US has no permanent disposal facility for high-level nuclear waste (HLW).
The US has run nuclear generation since 1957, for 67 years.
The US has over 90,000 tonnes of spent nuclear fuel from commercial reactors, increasing by 2,000 tonnes annually.
Commercial reactors store their HLW, including spent nuclear fuel, in storage ponds for 1 or 2 years to cool and then in dry storage casks on concrete pads at their sites.
High-level nuclear waste stays highly radioactive for tens of thousands of years.

This makes it clear that disposing of nuclear waste is highly problematic.

Coalition attacks the Climate Change Authority.

Climate Change Authority chair Matt Kean, a former senior Liberal Party politician, says the nuclear scheme would massively increase Australian carbon emissions. In response, the Coalition threatened to sack Kean and wind up the CCA.

This should not happen. The Climate Change Authority (CCA) is an independent statutory body established in 2011 to provide expert advice to the Australian government on climate change policy.

The Coalition has also attacked the CSIRO and AEMO, dismissing their authoritative reports that indicate that the nuclear scheme is not the way to go.

(Kean fights attempts to silence him: Renew Economy: 28 Feb 2025)

The Coalition climate denial continues.

The Coalition repeatedly mentions “net zero nuclear” and claims its scheme will deliver a net-zero electricity grid, but with a brake on renewables, it needs more gas and coal generation, and that will increase emissions.

As the scheme includes the possible cancellation of renewables contracts, it continues the Coalition’s attack on renewable energy and emissions reduction. The Coalition might even want to frighten renewable energy investors and slow the transition away from fossil fuels.

The Coalition presents its nuclear scheme as the solution for Australia’s electricity needs. However, the last of their reactors would only start generating in 2050 at best, and their total nuclear generation would only provide 13% of the demand in 2050. So, nuclear is a minor part of the solution. When asked for more details and costs, the Coalition only says it will release more information before the election. The Coalition is hiding 87% of its energy policy.

The Coalition must present a complete plan and provide the costs of all the activities involved before attacking realistic efforts to meet demand.

Updated 20 Feb 2025