Opposition leader Peter Dutton is promising he will soon release costings for his proposal to build seven nuclear power plants. The Coalition has been under pressure to reveal more details of its nuclear plan, having announced the sites, but not much else.
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00:00Having announced where the nuclear reactors would go and who would pay for them, the coalition
00:06is now being pressed to outline more details.
00:10How much it would cost, where the waste would go and what the energy mix would be in the
00:15grid.
00:16Labor's run a campaign of mocking memes against nuclear power in general, sparking a separate
00:22fight over whether that's juvenile or just a joke.
00:26But the political crux is cost and time frame.
00:30The coalition has been forced to adjust its plan to announce the costs from sometime before
00:35the next election to very soon.
00:38In the 2040s they're saying we'll do nothing until then and then in the 2040s sometime
00:45they'll be the most expensive form of new energy brought into the system.
00:51The coalition wants nuclear to replace coal as a baseload power supply, complemented by
00:57renewables and gas.
00:59Although nuclear is reliable and stable, it can't easily be scaled up and down to take
01:04into account renewables already in the energy grid.
01:08Labor wants renewables to be the mainstay of the grid, supported by batteries, hydro
01:15and gas.
01:16A myriad of issues aside, coal-fired power stations will have largely exited the energy
01:22grid by the end of the decade, which means there's not much time to make the right call.