It is nine months since Peter Dutton formally embraced nuclear power as the centrepiece of the Coalition’s climate and energy policy. The long-whispered nuclear ambition was launched last June with a swag of adjectives but not much detail. In a marathon press conference more reminiscent of extended late-night TV product promotions, Dutton and others including Climate and Energy Shadow Minister Ted O’Brien (LNP Queensland) and Nationals Leader David Littleproud took turns to praise nuclear, deride renewables and see how often they could use the word ‘bold’.
Heading towards a federal election that’s being touted as a referendum on domestic nuclear power, we still don’t know much of the basic information needed to inform the ‘mature’ and ‘adult’ conversation that the Coalition says Australia needs. These considerable detail deficits include: what sort of nuclear technology is being proposed; how many units will be at each of the proposed seven sites; the construction timetable; clarity on costing and modelling assumptions; regulatory and capacity constraints; and the plan, location and cost of managing high-level radioactive waste for many thousands of years to come.
The Coalition’s failure to move beyond rhetoric is, unlike Fukushima, no accident. It is motivated more by a desire to attain political power than to secure low-carbon electrical power. This point was highlighted in a pre-Christmas video featuring former Resource Minister, Queensland Nationals Senator and unabashed coal champion Matt Canavan. A matter-of-fact Matt both belled the atomic cat and stirred the Nationals leadership pot by stating, ‘nuclear is not going to cut it …we’re latching on to it as a silver bullet because it fixes a political issue for us … it ain’t the cheapest form of power’.
In 2025 it is simply not tenable to go to the Australian people on a platform that climate change is woke crap and renewables are rubbish, and that we should ignore the science and the economics and keep the lights on by burning more fossil fuels. Instead, you need a distraction. And domestic nuclear power is both a distraction on steroids and the new iteration of the energy culture wars, writ large in glowing text.
The real risk is that Australia’s needed, and happening, renewable energy transformation will lose momentum and money and stall as investors wary of the politicisation of power politics look elsewhere. And there are many that would be very happy with this self-inflicted wound.
Years ago, a clever advertisement showed a burnt match and two gas jets, one dormant, the other aflame, under the banner ‘Gas obeys you’. Now the sector has a less prosaic message to our politicians: you must obey gas. The primary beneficiaries of the Coalition’s nuclear project would be Australia’s fossil fuel sector, through a lifeline to ageing and under-performing coal plants and the construction of a new era of gas power plants.
The Coalition’s nuclear plan has been described by veteran industry figures like the Smart Energy Council as a cover for the most anti-renewable energy suite of policies put forward by a contender for national government. It will do nothing to reduce fossil dependence, instead extending the role of coal and growing that of gas while capping renewable production at slightly over 50 per cent—a figure set to be realised by mid-2026.
Coupled with scrapping offshore wind zones, removing vehicle emission and new-build energy efficiency standards and ending support for renewable hydrogen, steel and aluminium production, the federal nuclear push seeks to inject uncertainty into and constrain Australia’s embrace of renewables in favour of fossil fuel business as usual.
The new global nuclear push
The Australian focus on nuclear is not happening in isolation, and is mirrored internationally, often linked with populist Right political agendas. Donald Trump wants to both drill baby drill and react honey react. Japanese politicians are gently stepping through the deep residual post-Fukushima community concern and bringing stalled reactors back online; the United Kingdom is haemorrhaging public pounds on its new-build reactor program and amending planning rules to encourage the industry’s great hope, small modular reactors, despite the SMR holy grail remaining elusive, with none in commercial production or deployment and a string of high-profile failures. In continental Europe the uncertainty over energy supply linked to Russia’s war in Ukraine continues to fuel nuclear consideration, while the surge in right-wing votes in Germany and beyond is providing fertile ground for fissile promotion.
The nuclear industry has no shortage of shadowy players and performances, and the gap between the sector’s rhetoric and reality is often a canyon. This was writ large last November at the UN Climate Conference CoP 29 in Azerbaijan. Nuclear proponents ranging from the International Atomic Energy Agency and national nuclear agencies to private corporations and citizens were present and highly visible. There were multiple forums and briefings championing the essential role of nuclear power in meeting climate targets and enthusiastic calls for action, which included Nationals MP David Gillespie taking to the stage to urge Australia to ‘put on its big boy pants’, no doubt in order to stride manfully into a nuclear future.
But behind the gloss and self-assured panels the mood was different. Unlike Australian nuclear promoters, who cannot express anything but unqualified boosterism as they seek to gain social licence, representatives from mature nuclear nations were often more reflective and honest. Not facing an existential threat to their sector, they were better able to analyse and articulate its performance and progress.
Or lack thereof. Constant themes were frustration over the slow roll-out of new nuclear, the continuing contest over community acceptance, and above all, cost. Any assessment of the industry metrics as opposed to its messaging highlights the fact that nuclear advocates are right to feel vulnerable, given that over 70 per cent of the world’s nuclear generation is shared among five nations: the United States, France, China, Russia and South Korea. In 2024 the number of operating reactors fell from 413 to 411, which is twenty-seven fewer than the 2002 peak of 438 reactors. This drop saw global nuclear power capacity stagnant at 371 gigawatts (GW), while the sector’s contribution to global electricity production fell from 9.15 per cent to 9.1 per cent. In panels and personal conversations, senior industry figures all spoke of the need for investor confidence and public subsidy. Getting nuclear included in national and international financing mechanisms in order to ‘de-risk’ new builds and demonstrate ‘steel on the ground’ was the common aim and dream.
The existing nuclear sector has plateaued. It is in the lack of new builds and the growth of alternatives that its lack of competitiveness is starkest. Net nuclear capacity growth was less than 5 GW, compared to over 665 GW of new global renewables.
Analysis from the International Energy Agency shows that renewable electricity generation is set to overtake coal-fired generation this year. Next year, wind and solar power generation are each poised to surpass power generation from nuclear. In 2029 electricity generation from solar PV is set to surpass hydropower, becoming the largest renewable power source globally, with wind-based generation expected to surpass hydropower in 2030. And the megadollars are following the megawatts, with Bloomberg 2024 data showing over twenty times more investment in renewable energy than in nuclear.
The end of nuclear is not happening tomorrow, but nor will nuclear be powering tomorrow. In Australia and around the globe, the energy arc is bending swiftly and strongly towards renewables. But not if the Dutton Coalition has its way.
The LNP has condemned medical critics citing peer-reviewed and recent health studies as fearmongers, conflated nuclear power with nuclear medicine and refused to meet with environment and civil society groups—hardly actions consistent with an ‘adult conversation’. But Australia’s energy market has voted with its wallet against nuclear. Australia’s key advisory bodies, the CSIRO, Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) and the Australian Academy for Technological Sciences and Engineering, have all highlighted the high cost and low likelihood of nuclear, and identified far superior renewable alternatives.
To address this market reality the Coalition intends to bypass the market and ignore reality through the compulsory acquisition of potential reactor sites and the effective nationalisation of a greenfield nuclear power sector. It has delivered rubbery costings based on a 2050 energy supply far lower than that which AEMO considers prudent and has consistently dodged questions about costs, risks and impacts, as well as details around water access and waste management.
If decisions were based on merit and evidence then the nuclear debate would be over. But we all know they are not. Unaccountable and opaque (anti)social media campaigns shape opinion and votes. Emotion literally trumps evidence and algorithms sideline analysis. Sometimes this becomes outright absurdity. As recently as February 2025, O’Brien highlighted the paucity of detail in response to sustained concerns over water issues, declaring that, ‘the nuclear technology for Australia is yet to be selected’.
It is rare in Australian political discourse to find an issue where the forces of capital and forces critical of capital share the same song-sheet, but they do in scepticism about and opposition to the LNP’s nuclear ambitions. From the energy corporates at the big end of town to local community voices in the regions, there is a diverse and considered set of concerns and objections.
The coming federal election has been described as a sliding-doors moment for our nation’s energy future—a choice between securing electrical power that won’t cost the Earth and a cynical roll of the dice to gain political power that very well may. Watch this space. Closely.