Friends of the Earth (FoE) welcomes the Interim Report released by the House Select Committee on Nuclear Energy.
The Interim Report states that nuclear power "cannot be deployed in time to support Australia's critical energy transition targets and climate commitments, or to assist the coal workforce and communities in their transition away from the coal industry." It warns that "taxpayer funding of an uncertain nuclear venture during a cost-of-living crisis is a significant risk."
In 'Additional Comments' to the Committee's report, Kooyong MP Dr. Monique Ryan concludes that an "ongoing pursuit of nuclear energy options will only perpetuate and increase Australia's reliance on coal and gas".
FoE Australia's national nuclear campaigner Dr. Jim Green said:
"The House Select Committee has found that nuclear power is too expensive and too slow. The Coalition hid its bogus economic costings until the Committee's work was nearly complete, but the absurdity of those costings has now been thoroughly exposed.
"The simple fact is that recent reactor projects in the US, the UK and France have cost A$27-45 billion per reactor ‒ several times higher than the Coalition's absurd assumption. No amount of sophistry and creative accounting changes the plain facts.
"This week the Climate Change Authority released a detailed analysis concluding that the Coalition's energy plan would result in an additional two billion tonnes of greenhouse emissions. The Coalition's response was to threaten to sack the Authority's chair Matt Kean (a former NSW Liberal energy minister and treasurer) and to scrap the Authority just as a previous Coalition government defunded the independent Climate Commission and tried to kill off the Climate Change Authority and the Australian Renewable Energy Agency.
"The threat to the independent, expert Climate Change Authority is pure thuggery, as is Peter Dutton's threat to use compulsory acquisition laws to acquire sites to build nuclear reactors from energy companies that are openly critical of the Coalition's nuclear plan. Those companies are planning their exit from coal and its replacement with renewables and storage projects.
"The Dutton Coalition's threat to override state governments and state laws is nuclear thuggery. And the threat to override community opposition is nuclear thuggery. Peter Dutton says it is in "the national interest to proceed" with nuclear reactors even in the face of adamant public opposition.
"The Dutton Coalition's all-embracing nuclear thuggery stands in stark contrast to shadow energy minister Ted O'Brien's comments in 2019 that a future government should only proceed with nuclear power on the condition that it make 'a commitment to community consent as a condition of approval for any nuclear power or nuclear waste disposal facility'."
