Op-ed: Opposition on nuclear and renewables - published in The Australian

'Nuclear renaissance'? Coalition can't face reality on renewables

The Coalition’s shadow minister was almost purring with excitement when he told his colleagues about the potential for small modular nuclear reactors to play a role in Australia’s energy future.

“You would know that new generation reactors …are now coming into use. They are small (from 250-400MW) and fully automated and overcome many of the safety problems associated with large scale reactors of the past”.

Was this Dan Tehan in 2025? Or Ted O’Brien in 2024?

No, it was then Shadow Minister for the Environment Peter McGauran in 1989, in a memo to his Liberal and National colleagues.

You see the LNP has been promoting SMRs as “the next big thing” in nuclear energy for the better part of 40 years.

Four decades on, nothing has changed. SMRs are still being promoted as the answer to our problems. And it’s still the case that not one has been built in the Western World.

The Liberals talk wistfully of a “nuclear renaissance”, telling us the rest of the world is going nuclear, and Australia will miss out unless we act. This renaissance is a chimera. It exists only in the minds of nuclear boosters.

In 1989 of course renewable energy was vanishingly small in the global energy mix. Nuclear energy was responsible for 17% of the world’s generation.

Now, renewable energy is responsible for more electricity generation than coal, and nuclear power has fallen to 9% of the world’s generation. Renewable generation already far surpasses nuclear generation and over the course of the next twelve months wind and solar will separately surpass nuclear generation in importance.

To hear LNP spokespeople and others boosting the nuclear renaissance, you’d think that the number of countries with nuclear in the mix is growing. It isn’t. In 2025, the number of economies that include nuclear generation in their system has fallen by one, with Taiwan having closed the last of its nuclear power stations.

And when it comes to SMRs the story is also not encouraging. According to the World Nuclear Association there are two in operation in the world: one in China, one in Russia. None operates commercially in comparable countries to Australia.

Argentina did start construction of an SMR in 2014. In 2024, construction was halted, work incomplete with the head of Argentina’s National Atomic Energy Commission saying: “This reactor is not economically competitive”.

Even in China, which is building some large nuclear reactors, their role pales into insignificance compared to renewables. The importance of nuclear in the overall Chinese energy mix is falling as China’s massive renewable rollout leaves nuclear in its wake.

Having had its plan for taxpayer funded nuclear power stations comprehensively rejected by the Australian people a few months ago, the LNP is now hinting they will go to the people with a watered-down plan instead of scrapping it all together. They signal that they would simply lift the nuclear moratorium applied by John Howard and “let the market decide”.

This is also false hope, for two key reasons.

Firstly, for nuclear investors to look at Australia, it would take more than John Howard’s moratorium being lifted. There would need to be a comprehensive nuclear regulation regime in place. The Australian Energy Regulator told Australia’s most recent parliamentary inquiry into nuclear that it would take 10 years to set up regulatory regime.

(I say most recent, because nuclear has been examined in at least four parliament-run inquiries at a state and federal level in the last decade alone – the issue has been well considered.)

As our existing thermal infrastructure ages, these are not years Australia has. Only once the regulatory regime was in place could investment decisions be made and then proposals would need to wind their way through the Australian planning system. Nuclear power plant developers need to navigate the same community acceptance and planning approvals our renewable energy proposals do.

Secondly, the fact is that nuclear power stations hinge on big government subsidies to be viable. There is no nuclear construction anywhere in the world being undertaken solely by the private sector. You can look to the United Kingdom for example to see how the taxpayer has been on the hook for the eye-wateringly expensive Hinkley and Sizewell new reactors.

Angus Taylor, when he was Shadow Treasurer acknowledged the fact that Government expenditure is necessary to make nuclear work. Nothing has changed in the intervening period. There is no Australian exceptionalism when it comes to nuclear: the market simply will not deliver it.

Australia’s renewable energy transformation is well underway, with renewable records tumbling on almost weekly basis. We are now past halfway on the journey to 82% renewable energy.

By 2030 I imagine nuclear boosters will still be waxing lyrical about SMRS despite the fact that none will have been built. Australia on the other hand will have harnessed the opportunities of a form of energy much cheaper and quicker to build: renewables.