Does the Coalition’s case for nuclear power stack up? We factcheck seven key claims

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Cheaper electricity, less emissions and ready by 2035 are some of the Coalition’s core promises on nuclear energy, but are they backed by evidence?

The Coalition has made a range of claims about what nuclear energy could do for Australia, and why it is better than building solar and wind.No evidence – such as economic modelling – has been produced to back up the opposition leader, Peter Dutton’s main argument about nuclear energy: that it would make Australians’ electricity bills cheaper than under a renewable-energy run grid and bring down other costs. As things stand, it is a baseless claim.

This is not a relevant comparison. Like France, Ontario runs on nuclear plants built decades ago. Construction costs in the 1980s tell us nothing about the costs in the 2030s and 2040s. Sign up for Guardian Australia’s free morning and afternoon email newsletters for your daily news roundup Liddell power station in the Hunter Valley, NSW. Outages at ageing coal power plants have been attributed to increasing wholesale electricity costs in Australia last year.Again, no evidence has been released to explain how this would be possible. The experience in developed democracies internationally is that it would take much longer.

Tony Wood, the energy and climate change program director for the Grattan Institute, says there was a 20% jump in wholesale electricity costs last year for four reasons: the war in Ukraine pushing up the price of gas; gas shortages; outages at ageing coal power plants reducing competition; and extreme weather causing flooding at coalmines. Prices have since started to come back down.

 

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