The danger of mixing nuclear reactors and fault lines has been a major stumbling block for the Coalition finalising its energy plans, with its original timeline pushed back while its leadership team decides on whether the risk of earthquakes is too great.
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The guessing game over where the reactors will be placed has been headline news since Opposition leader Peter Dutton promised to unveil them "within weeks" on March 12, while Energy Minister Chris Bowen said this week that the looming federal election will be a "referendum" on nuclear energy.
However, ACM-Agri understands that while the risk of earthquakes damaging reactors has yet to permeate the public narrative, tremors over the perceived threat have rippled through Liberal ranks since Mr Dutton first flagged the policy.
It is believed that should the Coalition win the forthcoming election it will undertake "high-level and nuanced" seismology risk assessments on proposed sites for potential geological issues.
Another major logistical consideration has been whether each site will have adequate water supply to cool the reactors, particularly given the vast amounts needed to cool reactors in the event of an accident.
At the same the Coalition has been considering how to head-off arguments that a nuclear program would not reduce emissions fast enough for Australia to reach its commitment to the Paris Accord.
It will not walk away from the agreement, and remains committed to its own net zero by 2050 pledge.
However, it appears it best tact will be attempting to muddy the waters by arguing that Labor itself will not reach its mandated target of a 43 per cent reduction on 2005 levels by 2030.
![The Coalition is finding fault lines under existing coal-fired power stations are a problem of seismic proportions in finalising its nuclear power policy. The Coalition is finding fault lines under existing coal-fired power stations are a problem of seismic proportions in finalising its nuclear power policy.](/images/transform/v1/crop/frm/230597393/d86dfae2-c13d-4d61-846a-b53f2851bac9.png/r0_0_1920_1079_w1200_h678_fmax.jpg)
Meanwhile, there is a very narrow field able to host nuclear reactors under the Coalition's flagged criteria of using retiring coal plants with a coal fired generator and existing distribution network, including poles and wires, to transmit power.
Nationals leader David Littleproud has referred to 12 to 14 existing coal-fired power stations across Australia being the absolute cap and has all but guaranteed some sites will be in National party seats.
Those most seriously considered currently are the Yallourn power station (scheduled to close in 2028) in the federal division of Gippsland in Victoria held by Nationals MP Darren Chester, Eraring (2025) and Bayswater (2033) in the Hunter Valley, Collie (2027) in southwest Western Australia, and Port Augusta in South Australia.
Others include Mount Piper in NSW (2040) and Tarong in the federal seat of Maranoa in Queensland, held by Mr Littleproud. However, a question mark hangs over the latter given reliability of water supply might mean needing to add to existing infrastructure.
However, the bind for the Coalition is that many of the nation's retiring coal-fired power stations, including those shortlisted, are on or near fault lines.
The final site selection will be made by the Coalition leadership and energy team before the overarching idea of building over fault lines is put up for a 'yes or no' party room decision, insiders believe that in mitigating risk from the policy potentially controversial sites might need to be removed.
Risk reduction would also make the proposals more attractive should the Coalition want private enterprise to take on the construction and running of the nuclear program or to work in partnership with future governments.
![A map displaying the Coalition's proposed nuclear power station sites and known fault lines underneath. Map supplied by Geoscience Australia. A map displaying the Coalition's proposed nuclear power station sites and known fault lines underneath. Map supplied by Geoscience Australia.](/images/transform/v1/crop/frm/230597393/9cf7668b-84e6-45cc-912f-9f2f2d3bc13c.jpg/r0_36_2051_1189_w1200_h678_fmax.jpg)
The other conversation circulating among Coalition decision makers is winning public sentiment and how that is dependent on party spokespeople being able to fully explain the nuclear policy, including quickly and unequivocally answering questions such as 'no we will not build them on fault lines or where there are other geological threats and that rules out sites X, Y and Z'.
Once the sites are settled and then revealed, and Mr Dutton has swung the script to now only say that will happen "in due course", the Coalition will shift its focus to the core of its energy policy which is winning the support needed to overturn Australia's nuclear ban.
There is also one less potential base after the old Anglesea coal mine in southwest Victoria was ruled out after shadow immigration minister and local MP Dan Tehan pulled rank.
The problem with being so careful and determined to launch a policy on overturning the ban on nuclear energy with science underpinning the merits of the proposal is to admit the inherent problem with fault lines.
The process has also been hobbled by Mr Dutton being cornered into revealing the sites well before the election and opening the door for localised scare campaigns run by Labor and environmental groups involving images of Chernobyl and three-eyed fish, that featured in The Simpsons cartoon series as symbols of the harm of nuclear radiation, to cut across age groups.
In 2007, Kevin Rudd's campaign team ran a negative ad campaign, playing on a fear of nuclear fallout, after then Prime Minister John Howard ran the nuclear idea up the flagpole and Labor will doubtlessly seize on polls suggesting that local residents are adverse to nuclear.
However, the Coalition's own polling suggests that younger Australians, not born when the ban was rolled out and Greenpeace campaigns and American cartoons dominated, are increasingly open-minded to nuclear as an energy alternative while older Australians may be the opposite.
The issue for Labor is that younger demographics are increasingly wanting to be engaged in an authentic debate rather than be a bystander to negative political campaigning. This also means they will assess the Coalition's campaign against Labor's renewable agenda while also calling for a "sensible discussion" on nuclear with withering eyes.
The starting point for the Coalition's pitch is its belief that public resistance to nuclear energy is overstated and to chronicle the overseas experience where it says 20 or so countries are using or considering introducing or increasing emissions-free nuclear technology as part of its green transition.
The problem to overcome local disapproval could also be solved with money.
Similar to Labor believing that it's $300 energy rebate, due to kick-in on July 1, for every Australian household will be remembered at the ballot box, the Coalition are believed to be strongly considering emulating Boris Johnson's nuclear sweetener of footing the yearly energy bills of UK residents living in the shadows of nuclear cooling towers.
The other issue is the time and cost being attached to nuclear with CSIRO recently estimating that even if the ban was lifted now and reactors commissioned immediately, the first small modular reactor would not be in full operation before 2038.
However, Mr Dutton has disputed this finding.
Meanwhile, Siesmology Research Centre chief scientist Adam Pascale said a site specific scoping study would only take around three weeks, with that information normally included in an engineers report to determine the overall merits of a project.
He said that predictions over seismic activity can be made for at least 500 years, however while researchers can scope an area up to 300 kilometres around a site they also cannot guarantee that all fault lines not mapped previously will be found.
While nuclear reactors can continue to operate safely during low-level earthquakes and are set to trip during earth tremors to avoid disaster, there have also been instances where things have not gone to plan.
Following a major earthquake, a 15-metre tsunami disabled the power supply and cooling of three Fukushima Daiichi reactors in Japan, causing a nuclear accident beginning on 11 March 2011 that largely melted all three cores over the next three days.
Meanwhile, Labor's campaign will also likely extend to the potential risk of accidents in transporting radioactive waste from reactors to dump sites with experts believing the most stable rock formations with the capacity for long-time storage of waste fissures are in outback Australia.
This means trucks must travel from, for example, the Latrobe Valley in Gippsland and head west either through Melbourne or the windier network of country roads north towards Healesville.
It is also unknown if the cost of transportation to a storage site and the subsequent storage has been factored into Coalition costings.
Nuclear waste is currently only kept in temporary storage facilities around the world, however Finland is set to become the first county to bury spent nuclear fuel rods in a permanent storage site.
The Onkalo site will soon become operational and features tunnels that have been carved out of living rock 450 metres underground to deposit the waste in bedrock for the at least 100,000 years it requires to lose its potency.
This is all, of course, setting aside that there is no guarantee that the world or humanity will even exist at that point, let alone the world still operating as a patchwork of nations run by governments and so it is impossible to know if the waste storage programs will continue as intended.
Mr Dutton announced the nuclear option in August 2022 to garner Nationals support, to unite the parties and to plant a flag in the emissions reduction debate.
Shadow energy minister Ted O'Brien was asked whether the placement of nuclear reactors over or near fault lines had been considered as a factor in deciding where to potentially place reactors and if the issue had been raised in Coalition party room discussions or elsewhere.
He was also asked whether the Coalition would or had commissioned seismology feasibility studies on the potential sites but his office did not respond by deadline.