Latrobe Valley Express, 7 May 2025

The Coalition before the election planned to keep its nuclear power policy if it lost, but the huge election defeat may now put this intention under scrutiny.

This comes as just days before the election, a nuclear expert reconfirmed that a nuclear station in the Latrobe Valley would cost $10 billion, and highlighted China’s new status as the world’s largest user of domestic nuclear energy.

Robert Parker, who spoke in the Morwell RSL several months ago on nuclear power, also emphasised the need for base load power after the massive electricity blackout in Spain and Portugal last week.

Mr Parker, who has a Masters in Nuclear Science from ANU and is a founder of Nuclear for Climate Australia, said China had just announced it would build 10 new nuclear power stations at a cost of $41billion.

He quoted Yang Chang Li, chairman of the China Nuclear Energy Agency.

“China’s nuclear development is entering a new strategic operating period,” he said.

“By 2030, the installed capacity of operational nuclear power is expected to reach 110 gigawatts. Nuclear energy will pay a vital role as a key energy substitute for high-energy carbon sources (eg coal) and a mainstay for the stability of the power system.”

Mr Parker said while China was building a lot of wind and solar, they recognised that you must have ultra-low base load power to keep the system stable.

China now has 102 nuclear reactors either operating, under construction, or approved.

Together they represent an installed capacity of 113 GW, to be completed shortly after in 2030-making it the largest nuclear fleet in the world,” he said.

“It has now gone past the US as having the largest fleet and they also now have some of the most advanced reactors being built.”

The power stability issue was also highlighted by the recent power outage in the Iberian Peninsula that affected 60 million people in Spain and Portugal, he said.

This involved “an unexplained oscillation or variation in frequency and voltage in the grid”.

“Apparently it started in the southern part of Spain. To ensure the system remained protected, they sequentially shut down the whole area into a blackout,” he said.

There had been other speculation as to why it occurred.

“Lion Hirth, an energy consultant and energy policy at the Hertie School in Berlin said it was likely that a system with very little conventional energy online (nuclear, gas, coal, hydro) has less dampening inertia, (in other words) is more prone to such oscillations getting out of control.

“So, despite the uncertainty, I think, he said, that it is fair to say that it didn’t help that the Iberian system was mostly running on wind and solar on Monday noon,” Prof Hirth said.

“This oscillation that occurred in the Iberian Peninsula was fortunately stopped from moving into the larger European grid by the massive inertia built into the French nuclear power system. It protected the rest of the European grid from the impacts of the Iberian blackout.”

Sixty million people were inconvenienced and there was a massive cost to industry.

“Three elderly people died when they used a domestic electricity generator to try and power an oxygen mask and they died of carbon monoxide poisoning. One woman died in Madrid when she caused a fire with a candle she was using to get light as there was no light at home.”

Commuters were stuck in trains and had to be evacuated.

“We need to get on top of this and change the direction of Australia’s future energy transition; we can’t have the havoc in Australia that is happening in Spain,” he said.

“Getting in the way of a fair-minded analysis are the Australian anti-climate action allies-the Labor Party, the Climate Council, some of the teals. These people are wedded ideologically to renewables and they don’t look objectively at the options and the safety of our grid.

Mr Parker said a Nuclear for Climate Australia analysis showed that the reasonable cost of nuclear power in Australia was $9billion-$12b per 1000MW unit. The Labor Party’s ‘dreamt-up’ claim of $600b meant a nuclear power unit cost of $46b, he said.

Mr Parker said South Korea’s mainstay APR1400 MW unit cost $12 billion, whereas its smaller standard cousin, the APR1000, cost just under $12b ($11.82b).

Some sites in Australia were more site-constrained and needed smaller plants such as Canada’s CANDU EC6-740MW for just over $9b per unit or Canada’s larger Monark reactor (1000MW) for $10.5b.

Mr Parker said these costs were in contrast to those in China, where an HP1000 with 1225MW capacity cost $4.11b – “one third of the cost of the equivalent plants in South Korea and Canada”.

Russia, one of the world’s biggest nuclear exporters, was building units in Bangladesh, Turkey and Egypt. These cost about $1b each. Similarly in the US, MIT was looking at the cost of a fleet of Westinghouse plants.

“They would be about $10b.”

Mr Parker said this contrasted with the callous ALP claims of $46b a unit.

“These people do not care about having ultra-low emissions and low-cost energy. I used to be an endorsed ALP candidate, but I left that party when I realised at their heart, neither the environment nor low-cost energy was at the heart of ALP policy. All they cared about was winning at any cost,” he said.

Mr Parker said the Coalition’s policy of establishing seven nuclear stations around Australia was not perfect. The Coalition stated that it would not identify what sort of reactors would be suitable for each site, but would wait for an investigation of hydrology, seismology, the grid connection and other factors before making a decision.

“Frontier Economics came on scene and more meat had to be put on the bones of the policy, which came under more scrutiny,” he said.”

Mr Parker said Nuclear for Climate Australia had looked at the type of plants that would fit in the various sites.

“The type of plant strongly depends on the amount of water available,” he said.

The APR1000 MW unit at a cost of $10.5 billion was identified as the best fit for Loy Yang.

“Five of those could (theoretically) go in at Loy Yang, which has a much larger cooling resource that served Loy Yang, Hazelwood and Yallourn,” he said.

Five units at Loy Yang would produce 5250MW of power at a total cost of $55b, which would be the largest nuclear power site in Australia. The next biggest would be Liddell power station in NSW with three APR1000s for $33b.

Mr Parker said the total construction cost of the Coalition plan would be $157b. Two potential smaller 690MW units at Muja in Western Australia would push the total construction for all the nuclear stations to $174b, he said.