Coalition unveils nuclear energy policy with renewables

A firm up of Australia's energy grid with seven nuclear power plants over the coming decades will be cheaper than a largely renewables approach, the coalition argues.

COALITION NUCLEAR ENERGY POLICY

* Nuclear reactors will be built at seven former coal power plants across Australia, including at Loy Yang Power Station in Victoria, Callide and Tarong in Queensland, Mount Piper at Lithgow in central west NSW and Liddell in NSW's Hunter region.

*Small, modular reactors would also be built at Northern Power Station in Port Augusta and at Muja Power Station, southeast of Perth.

*Renewable energy would make up about half of the energy grid by 2050, with nuclear power accounting for 38 per cent.

*Coal-fired power stations would stay open for longer under the plan, with the first nuclear power site not coming into operation until at least the mid-2030s.

*Labor says this is a risk to energy reliability as aging coal plants are already experiencing outages, on top of being terrible for Australia's carbon emissions.

COST

*The total cost will be $331 billion, including construction, according to modelling by Frontier Economics.

*It modelled Labor's renewable energy plan to cost almost $600 billion. Labor and clean energy bodies dispute this with the Australian Energy Market Operator modelling putting its plan at $122 billion.

ENERGY BILLS

*Renewable energy is the cheapest form of electricity and lowest-cost of any new-build electricity-generating technology, the GenCost 2024-25 Report found for the seventh straight year.

*Nuclear would be up to double the cost of large-scale solar, according to the CSIRO and the Australian Energy Market Operator.

QUOTES

"It will lower costs. It will keep the lights on. And it will set our country up for generations to come." - Opposition Leader Peter Dutton.

"What the coalition is asking the Australian people to believe is this: they can introduce the most expensive form of energy, and it'll end up being cheaper, I mean it won't pass the pub test." - Energy Minister Chris Bowen.

"We need to get prices down, that means we need to pour more gas into the system. We shouldn't be closing our baseload power stations prematurely as we continue to rollout renewables." - Opposition energy spokesman Ted O'Brien.

"We must never forget, Australia has the best renewable resources in the world." - Fortescue chairman Andrew Forrest.

"Peter Dutton is telling Australians to believe him, a politician trying to win an election, over the country's leading scientific body and the engineers who run our electricity system." - Queensland Conservation Council deputy director Anthony Gough.