Australians have responded to plans to build nuclear power plants in the country as the Coalition steps up efforts to establish seven sites as part of its election promise.
The House of Parliament’s Nuclear Energy Select Committee is investigating the proposal and is traveling around the country listening to the views of local communities.
At a meeting on Tuesday in Traralgon, in the Gippsland region of Victoria, angry locals waxed lyrical about the plan, which would see one of the new nuclear plants built at the currently closed Loy Yang coal plant, just 10 minutes from the city.
The other six locations Peter Dutton has described for nuclear plants are at the Tarong and Callide coal plants in Queensland, Liddell and Mount Piper in New South Wales, Port Augusta in South Africa and Muja in WA.
‘We don’t need nuclear power in Australia. We need to push for more renewable energy and the technology will develop more and more as we move forward to keep the lights on,’ Voices of the Valley community group president Wendy Farmer told the meeting.
Shadow energy minister Ted O’Brien, also vice-chairman of the committee, asked if it was “just a no” from Ms Farmer or if she was interested in studying whether nuclear power could be a safe and effective form of electricity.
“The Coalition has told us that they would consult with us for two and a half years but then they would go ahead with nuclear whether we wanted it or not, and our community would not have a veto,” Ms Farmer responded.
‘How can we trust the Coalition to do an independent study when you say proposal but where is the proposal?’
Wendy Farmer (pictured), chair of community group Voices of the Valley, told a parliamentary committee meeting in her area that “Australia does not need nuclear power.”
The Loy Yang coal plant near Traralgon in Victoria (pictured) is a site earmarked by the Coalition for a new nuclear power plant.
Darren McCubbin, chief executive of the Gippsland Climate Change Network, received a standing ovation when he told the meeting that renewables were “ready to go” while nuclear power plants would require years of consultation and reporting.
“I would like to congratulate Mr O’Brien for recognizing that we don’t have the science, that we need a roadmap, that we need two and a half years of consultation,” Mr McCubbin said.
“Good for him for coming here and saying we don’t know the answers and we need to find them because they don’t have the answers.”
McCubbin pointed to Victoria’s 2GW of offshore wind projects due to be online by 2032, rising to 5GW by 2035.
‘Look, now we have a movement towards renewable energies, we have established objectives. We’ve got an industry waiting to get going, we’ve got people coming from all over the world looking at Gippsland and saying we’ve got a way to transition (from coal-fired electricity).
‘We have the science, we have the community (support). We have had Star of the South (wind farm project) here for five years doing community consultation and I appreciate that they acknowledge that they have not done that.
“So we’re willing to put things off for two and a half years to have one roadmap after another, and the roadmap is not a solution for jobs and growth in our region.”
Peter Dutton is stepping up his push for nuclear power ahead of next year’s federal election.
A recent DemosAU survey of 6,709 adults between July 2 and November 24 found that 26 per cent of women said nuclear energy would be good for Australia, compared to 51 per cent of men.
But only one in three men surveyed was willing to live near a nuclear plant.
Nearly two-thirds (63 percent) of women said they do not want to live near a nuclear plant and more than half (57 percent) said transporting radioactive waste is not worth the risk.
The report card follows the survey conducted by Farmers for climate action which found that 70 per cent of rural Australians support clean energy projects on farmland in their local areas and 17 per cent were opposed.
That support came with conditions, including adequate consultation and better access to reliable energy.
Research by the Australian Regional Institute It found that while the country’s communities see significant opportunities in the energy shift, net zero emissions targets are under threat unless they are properly consulted.
O’Brien said on Tuesday that only the Coalition was committed to delivering “cheap, clean and consistent energy” to all Australians.
“We need an elected coalition government to build nuclear power plants and bring more gas to market to provide cheaper, more consistent energy for all Australians,” he said.
But Sanne de Swart, co-ordinator of Friends of the Earth’s Nuclear Free Campaign in Melbourne, said nuclear electricity would “raise energy bills, raise taxes and increase climate pollution”.
The independent Climate Council said it was concerned that the coalition was reliant on a private sector.base case‘ for nuclear costs rather than expert advice such as that of the Australian Energy Market Operator.
“What is crucial is that any new investment is made at the lowest cost to Australian consumers,” a council spokesperson said.
“Only renewable energy (solar, wind, hydro) together with energy storage is capable of achieving this, and it is being built right now,” the council stated.
Climate Change Minister Chris Bowen recently criticized Peter Dutton and the Coalition’s nuclear proposal, saying it would take too long to get the plants up and running.
‘Net zero by 2050 is not optional. Which means the critical decade is now.
With six years left to reach the legislated target of a 43 per cent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, he said the nation was on track to meet it and produce 82 per cent renewable electricity on the national grid by 2030.
On Wednesday the House Select Committee they told meLegal requirements to make old coal mines safe to build nuclear reactors will take decades of rehabilitation before they can be used.
“We’re talking about significant time periods of two or three decades,” Victorian Mining Land Reclamation Authority chief executive Jen Brereton said.