Opposition leader Peter Dutton has put forward a bold plan to contrast Labor’s move into expanding renewables as the preferred energy source – an Australian nuclear energy plan.

In December 2024 the Opposition Leader released the Coalition’s costings for its proposal to build seven nuclear power stations in Australia. Dutton says the plan will cost tens of billions of dollars less than Labor’s transition to renewables. However, experts say the plan is not credible and fails to address the climate crisis.

In this short Guardian podcast climate and environment editor Adam Morton tells Nour Haydar why the plan doesn’t stack up.

We should first look back at why Australia has never embraced nuclear energy, despite much of the developed world relying on it.

In the 1980s nuclear energy was a white-hot topic. The anti-nuclear movement was strong, giving the Greens party a major platform, and seeing rock star Peter Garret of Midnight Oil form a political party. Protests were strong, and gained popular support, particularly after the 1979 Three Mile Island accident in the US and the 1986 Chernobyl disaster in Ukraine (pictured above). The Labor Party’s stance was a policy of limiting uranium mining to three mines (Ranger, Nabarlek, and Roxby Downs) and opposing the development of nuclear power in Australia. Several Australian states and territories declared themselves nuclear-free zones.

Australia has missed the submarine of nuclear energy. Nations who embraced it in the 1980s are struggling to get out of it, as the plants reach end-of-life, and renewables become realistic options.

Being produced by The Guardian, listeners know it won’t be too flattering for Mr Dutton. Nevertheless, the pros of nuclear energy are discussed. Nuclear is a clean energy source, at least in the short term. It does not pour carbon into the atmosphere around the clock. Disposing of its waste is a very, very long-term worry, however. Nuclear energy is also excellent bang-for-your-buck. Uranium has extremely high energy density; one kilo can produce as much energy as 1,500 tonnes of coal.

The problem Dutton has with his policy is that he must sell it to more than just the coal industry and Gina Rinehart. Australia’s rank and file are dubious, primarily about the cost. And it’s a big-ticket item. On top of the submarines already in the shopping cart. The LNP’s own costings are $331 billion by 2030, which experts say is an unrealistic estimate, greatly under-costing what the bill would actually be.

Why is Dutton suddenly pushing this? Spoiler alert, though if you listen to this podcast for five minutes, you won’t need the alert: Adam Morton says it’s all just to keep coal burning while we’re waiting for our reactors to come online. Under an LNP government, renewables can be vilified as not up to the job, so coal will just have to save the day.
No one wants rolling blackouts. And our reliance on energy is hardly going to reduce in the short term. But if we have the resources to build nuclear reactors, we must also have the same resources to advance our existing renewable energy systems.