Tasmanian senator Jacqui Lambie has unleashed on Peter Dutton’s nuclear ambitions, blasting it as a poorly thought-out plan he pulled “out of his clacker”.
The firebrand politician took aim over a lack of detail over nuclear waste, with Senator Lambie also questioning whether Australia has the experts to execute the project, adding that Australian specialists were “miles behind”.
While Senator Lambie flagged she was open to considering a removal of a federal prohibition on nuclear power, she didn’t hold “much hope” Mr Dutton’s plan would eventuate, she told Today.
“I don’t know what planet he’s on, they’ve got no plan, and let’s face it, they don’t have a plan,” she said.
“He’s just come out and pull this out of his clacker, so we’re going nuclear now? Come on.
“You cannot sell a product unless you have a plan of attack, and he has no plan.”
Issues around storing nuclear waste are another tension point.
Senator Lambie pointed to the Coalition’s fumbled plans to build a low-level nuclear waste dump in South Australia’s regional Kimba area that were abandoned by the Albanese government following a Federal Court ruling.
“They had nine years just to find somewhere to put low-level waste and they blew that out of their backside,” she said.
“You want to actually wait for them to do nuclear in the next 10, 15 years … good luck with that, honestly, and this is without even having the high-level waste.”
Low-level nuclear waste refers to clothing and equipment contaminated with radioisotopes used by hospitals, research and industry, while nuclear reactors produce high-level waste.
Mr Dutton has previously claimed a 450 megawatt reactor would only produce waste “equivalent to the size of a can of Coke each year” that would be stored on site and then moved to a “permanent home” once the reactor retires.
This, however, has been criticised by experts, who claim a large-scale reactor would produce tonnes of waste.
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A Newspoll survey released on Monday found six in 10 Australians supported including nuclear energy in Australia’s energy production pool.
The poll took in answers from 923 respondents from Melbourne, Sydney, Adelaide and Brisbane as well as the regional areas of Victoria’s Latrobe Valley, NSW’s Hunter Valley, the South Burnett and Gladstone region in Queensland, and South Australia’s Port Augusta – areas that could host nuclear plants under Mr Dutton’s plan.
Respondents in Melbourne were least supportive of the plan, with 61 per cent saying they didn’t “believe nuclear power has a place in Australia’s future energy mix”.
People in Brisbane were most supportive of the plan, with 64 per cent opting in favour of nuclear.
