In Australia, the conservative opposition relaunches the debate on nuclear power

The Rio Tinto solar park, northeast of Perth, Australia, October 19, 2023. REUTERS/MELANIE BURTON There are still sixteen of them, silhouettes of steel and concrete, spewing their smoke in the east and south from Australia. In the next fifteen years, these coal-fired power plants will all have closed their doors. To replace them and decarbonize its electricity mix, the Labor majority has invested, since coming to power in May 2022, in renewable energies. But with the legislative elections scheduled for the first half of 2025 approaching, the conservative opposition wants to convince voters to go nuclear. Peter Dutton, leader of the right-wing political coalition, defended his proposal on Monday, September 23, during a highly anticipated speech. “You can’t run a full-time economy on intermittent, unreliable energy. “If our national goals are to achieve cheaper, cleaner and more consistent energy, then Australia must join the growing number of nuclear power nations,” argued the former Minister of the Interior and Security. defense. For Australia, which formally banned the production of nuclear energy on its territory in 1998, this would be a real revolution. Although it has the largest reserves of uranium in the world, the island continent is one of the rare industrialized countries without civil nuclear power. Public distrust, fueled by the tests carried out by the United Kingdom on its soil between 1952 and 1963, has long weighed on the debates. But since the early 2000s, the opinions of Australians, faced with the climate crisis and the need to reduce the use of fossil fuels, have evolved. A poll published by the Lowy Institute in June shows that 61% of them now “partially” or “strongly” support the use of nuclear power to produce electricity. Read also | Article reserved for our subscribers Australia aims to export its solar energy to Singapore Add to your selections In order to respect Canberra’s commitment to achieve carbon neutrality in 2050, the conservatives promise to build seven nuclear power plants instead of certain coal-fired power plants at the end of their life and to connect them to the existing network. Their plan, the implementation and costs of which remain poorly detailed, provides for an energy transition in two stages. By 2037, the first two units – either small modular reactors (SMR) or larger, modern plants such as the AP-1000 or the APR-1400 – should see the light of day. By the middle of the century, all state-owned power plants should be operational. You have 58.77% of this article left to read. The rest is reserved for subscribers.



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