Dutton’s nuclear push will cost renewable jobs

As Australia’s federal election campaign has finally begun, opposition leader Peter Dutton’s proposal to spend hundreds of billions in public money to build seven nuclear power plants across the country has been carefully scrutinized.

The technological unfeasibility, staggering cost, and scant detail of the Coalition’s nuclear proposal have brought criticism from federal and state governments, the CSIRO, the Climate Council, the Electrical Trade Union (ETU), the Climate Change Authority, the Australia Institute, and independent energy experts.

The CSIRO, among others, has refuted the Coalition’s claim that nuclear will be cheaper than renewables; instead, they have shown the energy produced by Australian reactors would cost approximately eight times more than the same amount of energy produced by renewables. If this cost is passed on to consumers, the average household would pay $590 per year more on their power bill. Unsurprisingly, Australia Institute polling has found that fewer than one in twenty Australians (4%) are prepared to pay this nuclear premium.

The cost alone should be enough to bury this nuclear proposal. But it is also important to recognise how the Coalition’s plan will impact – and fail – workers.

False promises

The Coalition has proposed that large nuclear reactors would be built on the sites of five operational or recently decommissioned coal fired power stations: Liddell and Mount Piper in New South Wales, Tarong and Callide in Queensland, and Loy Yang in Victoria. In doing so, the Coalition has promised that nuclear energy would be a source of stable and plentiful work for the communities where coal-fired power plants are phasing down.

This is a false promise. Six coal fired power stations have already closed in the past decade, with 90% of Australia’s remaining coal-fired power stations set to close in the next decade. These communities are already undergoing structural adjustment, and they need new sources of employment now. But this is not what the Coalition’s plan delivers. The Coalition outlines that the first two nuclear reactors would not come online until the mid-2030s – more than a decade from now – while the remainder would be completed by 2050.

And energy and technology experts agree that even this timeline is impossible. On average, a nuclear reactor takes 9.4 years just to build in countries with established and capable nuclear industries. Former Australian Chief Scientist Alan Finkel has estimated that it would take until the mid-2040s at the earliest for Australia to build an operational nuclear reactor. Moreover, analysis from the Institute for Energy, Economic & Financial Analysis (IEEFA) has found that, in economies comparable to Australia’s, every single nuclear reactor project experienced multi-year delays and cost blowouts of up to three and a half times over budget. It is hard to see how Australia, which lacks the experienced workforce, training and research base, or regulatory framework, would buck this trend.

Lost jobs

While the Coalition’s nuclear plan would not bring jobs to the communities that need them, it might have the real effect of depressing investment in renewables.

Renewable energy already generates approximately 40% of Australia’s energy and is by far the cheapest form of electricity. Renewable energy industries already account for the employment of tens of thousands of workers, and Jobs and Skills Australia estimates that approximately 240,000 new workers will be required in industries associated with clean energy by 2030.

But this requires ongoing and expanding investment in renewables, which the Coalition’s nuclear policy is likely to derail. The Clean Energy Council has estimated that by capping renewable energy to 54% of total use (as the Coalition’s modelling has assumed), 29GW of renewable energy generation projects would not be built – squandering an expected 37,700 full-time-equivalent construction jobs and 5,000 ongoing jobs in operations and maintenance. By limiting renewables investment, prolonging fossil fuel usage, and diverting investment towards nuclear energy, the full employment opportunities of the renewable energy transition are lost.

Scarce and dangerous work

If the Coalition’s nuclear plan does come to fruition it will hardly create any ongoing jobs for the communities that have undergone structural readjustment. According to analysis from the Nuclear Energy Agency, while the peak period of construction of the average 1GW nuclear power plant can demand up to 3,500 workers, ongoing operations and maintenance will only require about 400 workers – with only a quarter of these being onsite blue-collar jobs that might provide work for the people who will have lost jobs with the closure of coal-fired power stations. Most jobs will be in administration, regulatory compliance, energy, marketing, sales, science and emergency personnel – and many of them are likely to be located away from the nuclear facility itself.

Disturbingly, any jobs on-site may put the health of workers at risk. Recent analysis of multiple studies of the health impacts of nuclear power plant employment across multiple countries found that workers have a significantly higher risk of mesothelioma and circulatory disease due to exposure to radiation. Nearby residents also exhibit a significantly higher risks of cancer, with children under the age of five at particular risk. And this does not even factor in the risk of sudden plant failure and reactor meltdown on workers and communities – a risk sharpened by the Coalition’s plan for these reactors to be built on geological fault lines with heightened earthquake risk.

Australian workers have much to gain from the renewable energy transition, including cheaper power, new clean technology industries, and hundreds of thousands of new jobs. The Coalition’s nuclear plan only brings false promises, lost jobs, and – if the plan comes to fruition – few jobs and potentially dangerous work.