Shadow minister talks up community consultation plans for Collie nuclear proposal, shrugs off worrying report

The Coalition has revealed it will undertake a two and a half year “community engagement process” on its plans to build a nuclear reactor in Collie if it is voted into power in the upcoming Federal election. Shadow energy and climate change minister Ted O’Brien met with the Collie shire council on Thursday last week to answer questions and provide more information on the nuclear plans. Mr O’Brien said the community consultation period would last for more than two years. “In the event of a Coalition Government, it will be a two and a half year comprehensive community engagement process so that all questions can be answered while in parallel a detailed feasibility study is undertaken,” he said. The visit comes a month after Opposition Leader Peter Dutton announced his party’s plan to build seven nuclear reactors around Australia if it was voted into power at the next Federal election. As well as the small modular reactor site in Collie, two reactors would be built in both New South Wales and Queensland, while South Australia and Victoria would house one each. Despite the consultation pledge he stopped short of giving any additional details on the cost of the plan, saying they would be released “in due course”. Mr O’Brien said during the engagement period community members would be given answers to their questions. “Communities will always have questions and they deserve to be answered,” he said. “Which is why throughout the consultation process they will be able to call for reports on any relevant issue and they will be receiving analysis assessments back not from politicians, but from experts.” The Collie community has had a mixed reaction to the news they could be thrust into the centre of Australia’s nuclear future under the Coalition’s plan. While some have welcomed the idea of re-purposing the retiring Muja Power Station into a new energy source, many have slammed the lack of detail in the plan and the potential impact on tourism and house prices. On Wednesday last week, the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering released its report on small nuclear reactors which said adopting SMR technology too early would be “very risky” given the current immature market. Mr O’Brien dismissed the report as “not relevant” to the Coalition’s plan. “I’ve read that report — it is not relevant to the Coalition’s policy and it is inconsistent with the advice we have received, not just within Australia, but internationally,” he said. “Our plan, we talked about it with (Collie) council today, is that we would see the first electricity coming to the grid in a 10-year period from small modular reactors.” As part of the trip to Collie, Mr O’Brien met Collie shire councillors and other community leaders for the first face-to-face meetings since the Coaltion announced its ambitious plan. Collie shire president Ian Miffling said he was pleased to see Coalition members come to the community. “We’ve been advocating for Canberra to come to Collie and they’ve honoured that,” he said. “The message got through and they were very honest in their outline to the council upstairs just a while ago in what the policy is all about. “All the cost implications and the waste and all that sort of thing which were questions that we had before and came up again today. “They’re sort of work in progress things that ultimately though they’ll have to come to terms with because it’s got to be a whole package that’s right for the community and right for the government.”