Australia’snuclear blind spot
Jacopo Buongiorno and Cristina Talacko
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Jacopo Buongiorno and Cristina Talacko
4 August2025
1:20 AM
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The GenCost 2024-25 report, published annually by CSIRO in partnershipwith the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO), has become a cornerstone fordiscussions about the future of Australia’s energy mix. It is the authoritativetool for comparing the costs of power generation technologies in Australia. Itis designed to inform policymakers, investors, and analysts about the costs andtrade-offs of different electricity generation technologies, providing acomparative lens for decision‑making. But as the energy landscape becomes morecomplex, with competing demands for decarbonisation, reliability, andaffordability, the limitations of this report, particularly in how it assessesnuclear energy, have become increasingly apparent.
CSIRO’s authors give nuclear top billing in the report’s first chapter,a tacit acknowledgment that it is a potentially important option for Australia,but then dismiss it almost entirely on cost grounds. They use the mostexpensive project they could find as their benchmark, effectively re-framingnuclear not as a serious contender but as a prohibitively costly outlier. Thisis more than a technical quibble. It reshapes the narrative about nuclear’sviability in Australia’s energy transition. And it boils down to four mistakes:
1. Cherry‑picking the priciestprojects
CSIRO’s GenCost pins its nuclear numbers to Canada’s Darlington SMRproject, hardly a fair benchmark. This FOAK (first of a kind) build carries aC$20.9 billion (≈US 15.1 billion) price tag for four BWRX‑300 reactors, withthe first unit alone costing C$6.1 billion and shared systems adding anotherC$1.6 billion. But Darlington is no ordinary project: it’s a prototype, weigheddown by development costs, regulatory novelty, new supply chains, andfirst-time inefficiencies. Independent studies show FOAK builds can cost 30-60per cent more than later units. For example, by the fourth BWRX-300 reactor,costs are expected to fall to around US $12,900/kW, nearly 30 per cent lowerthan the first. In other words, GenCost uses the most expensive example torepresent an industry that, like any other, gets significantly cheaper once itgets moving. Ontario Power Generation’s CANDU refurbishment program proves thepoint: a C$12.8 billion overhaul that delivered its first unit on budget andthe second an impressive 169 days ahead of schedule, with about C$136 millionin cost improvements between units. The third unit is expected to come morethan 140 days ahead of schedule and below budget too. Repetition,standardisation and hard-earned experience slash costs, exactly what Australiawould benefit from if it got serious about nuclear.
2. Missing context: other countriesare already driving costs down
GenCost ignores what’s happening overseas, where nuclear costs havefallen thanks to repeat builds. In the UAE, the Barakah project, built byKorea’s KEPCO, delivered four large APR1400 reactors with clear cost reductionfrom unit 1 to unit 4. In China, the story is even clearer: multiple AP1000 andHualong One reactors have been built in just five to six years, at constructioncosts as low as US $2,300/kW, with some domestic CPR‑1000 units even lower(around US $1,748/kW). Their levelised costs of electricity are about US$62/MWh. MIT modelling, benchmarked on past projects, shows that for next‑of‑a‑kindAP1000s, costs could range between US $8,300-10,375 /kW, with electricity costsof US $78–97/MWh when investment incentives are included.
3. Australia’s future reactors wouldbe NOAK — not FOAK.
If Australia decides to build nuclear, it won’t start from scratch. Itwould use proven, licensed global designs like the AP1000, ABWR, BWRX‑300,APR1400 or Hualong One, and tap into established international supply chainsand experienced contractors. Literature suggests cost ‘learning rates’ of 5-15per cent[JB1] per doubling of cumulative capacity, with subsequent units comingin about 30 per cent cheaper.
4. LCOE hides the real system costsof intermittent renewables
Finally, GenCost leans heavily on Levelized Cost of Electricity(LCOE). This single-figure metric has long been popular for comparinggeneration technologies because it averages the costs of building and operatinga plant over its lifetime. But it is an incomplete and outdated way ofevaluating technologies that interact very differently with the grid. Byfocusing narrowly on LCOE, GenCost leaves out the expensive extras neededto make intermittent renewable generation work: new transmission lines, gridfirming, large‑scale energy storage, and the costs of curtailing surpluspower. In doing so, it fails to capture the true cost of deliveringreliable, decarbonised electricity. When those extra costs are included in thecomparison, nuclear becomes one of the most competitive technologies on a whole‑of‑systembasis.
The Verdict
If GenCost is truly meant to guide Australia’s energy future, it owesthe public a richer, more accurate accounting of nuclear’s potential. One that:
· Reflects broad, real-world experience,not just FOAK projects
· Accounts for global learning curves andcost benchmarking
· Values the whole-system contribution offirm, clean power
Without that, it risks locking Australia into costlier, less reliablepathways, while leaving policymakers, investors, and the public to make billion‑dollardecisions on an incomplete picture.
