Opposition Leader Peter Dutton continues to hold off on releasing costings for his nuclear power pitch, despite a report claiming household electricity bills will surge if the energy source is introduced to Australia.
The coalition's plan to build seven nuclear reactors across five states on the sites of coal-fired power stations could cause consumers to pay hundreds of dollars a year more on electricity, research from the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis shows.
Typical household electricity bills could increase by $665 a year on average, while a family of four could face a $972 increase, according to the report released on Friday.
Energy Minister Chris Bowen has trashed Mr Dutton's policy, calling on him to reveal his costings in a speech the opposition leader is set to deliver on Monday.
"The delay, costs, and paltry electric dividend shows me the coalition has learned little from the dysfunction of 10 years of stop-start energy policy driven by ideological culture wars instead of economics and engineering," Mr Bowen said in an opinion piece in The Australian.
Mr Dutton questioned the report's figures, accusing Mr Bowen of coming up with them.
"This is Chris Bowen, who promised before the election that power prices would come down by $275 - they've gone up by $1000," he told Nine's Today show on Friday.
"He's predicting now that in 2037 your electricity bill will go up by $650. I mean, is that credible? Does anyone believe what Chris Bowen has to say? I suspect not."
Adding baseload power to the electricity grid was essential as coal-fired power stations were removed from the system, Mr Dutton said.
Government minister Bill Shorten, who joined the opposition leader on the program, said Mr Dutton's nuclear policy was "more lost than Burke and Wills" and told him to put his numbers out.
"We'll give the costings in due course," Mr Dutton said.
The report analysed six relevant nuclear projects in Europe and the US, including a cancelled US small modular reactor project, and found electricity bills increased by hundreds of dollars in every scenario.
It was unable to examine the experience of small modular reactors, the type proposed by the coalition, because no plants had been successfully completed in a democratic country.
Nuclear-generated electricity costs would likely be 1.5 to 3.8 times than current electricity generation in eastern Australia, with capital costs associated with construction reaching $90 billion based on international examples, report co-author Johanna Bowyer said.
"For nuclear power plants to be commercially viable without government subsidies and generating 24/7, electricity prices would need to rise to these higher levels to allow the nuclear power plants to recover their costs," Ms Bowyer said.
"In a cost-of-living crisis, bill increases like this are a big deal."
While costs associated with nuclear construction and financing don't show up in the energy bills in nuclear nations, the report said that was because the plants were old and their costs had largely been paid off or governments had recouped costs through taxes separate from electricity prices.
Australia should instead persist with renewables accompanied by energy storage like batteries, which is the lowest-cost form of electricity supply available, said Con Hristodoulidis, a policy officer at the Clean Energy Council.
"Nuclear power is a high-cost, high-risk strategy for Australia," he said.
