Cold winter drives electricity demand to record levels as the Coalition promotes nuclear power
A cold start to winter has driven demand for electricity to record levels. The high demand puts pressure on the electricity grid and pushes up prices. The federal opposition is promoting nuclear power as a solution, but Australia’s leading engineers have serious concerns.
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00:00A prolonged cold spell through late autumn and early winter had people in southern states
00:08turning on their heaters, pushing demand for power to the highest ever levels for this
00:14time of year.
00:16Costs were high too.
00:18Wholesale electricity prices were 23% more than the same time last year.
00:25The weather conditions also meant less wind and rain in Victoria and Tasmania, and less
00:31wind and hydropower for the grid.
00:33Gas-fired power plants ramped up to meet demand, which costs more.
00:39In the budget we had our energy electricity bill rebate that will start kicking in to
00:43help people with some of those costs.
00:45And nuclear energy along with renewables, along with gas, is absolutely the answer for
00:52our country.
00:53The Coalition is pushing its plan for seven nuclear power plants.
00:58There's still no detail on costs or types, but Peter Dutton believes it can happen in
01:04a little over a decade.
01:05We can have nuclear into the system 2035 to 2037 in the first two sites and then we continue
01:13to roll it out from there.
01:15The nation's leading engineers have looked at small modular nuclear reactors and found
01:20the cost and operational performance hasn't yet been demonstrated.
01:25And that likely won't happen until the mid to late 2040s.
01:30It is incredibly risky to bank on small modular reactors.
01:34The best bet is to urgently invest and roll out the renewable technologies that we already
01:40know work.
01:41We need to do this transition now, we can't afford to wait for nuclear.
01:46The timelines and expected costs of the Coalition's nuclear plan don't stack up.
01:51Labor's plan requires a rapid acceleration of the rollout of renewables and plenty of
01:57gas as a backstop.
01:59With most of the nation's coal-fired power stations to shut down over the next decade,
02:04what happens in the next few years will be crucial.