Multi-billion dollar price tag revealed to go nuclear

While the federal opposition has claimed its nuclear energy plan, worth $330 billion or almost 12 per cent of Australia's GDP, would lead to less expensive electricity, uncertainty remains on how much immediate bill relief would be in store for customers.

"This will make electricity reliable ... it will make it cheaper for Australians," Opposition Leader Peter Dutton said during a 40-minute press conference on Friday to announce the policy's price tag that didn't once mention the total cost.

Wind and solar will make up 49 per cent of Australia's power grid by 2050, nuclear 38 per cent, and hydro and pumped hydro nine per cent under the opposition blueprint modelled by private sector consultancy Frontier Economics.

The price tag to set up seven nuclear reactors across five states would cost each of Australia's 13.6 million taxpayers more than $24,200, or would be worth roughly the entire net wealth of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg.

The nuclear policy is almost as much as the federal government will spend on procuring nuclear submarines under the AUKUS agreement, which would cost up to $368 billion.

The announcement of the nuclear policy has set the stage for an election battleground with Labor, the Greens and teal independents criticising the coalition's scaling down of renewable energy investment as walking away from climate change action.

Mr Dutton promised cheaper power long term but didn't outline a near-term plan after saying bringing down prices was a priority.

There was no price modelling for power bills.

Modelling bills is politically fraught after Labor pledged to lower electricity bills by $275 by 2025 in opposition, which the coalition seized on as bills went up.

Labor's plan is to have the grid firmed by just over 80 per cent renewable energy by 2030 and gas is being used as a backup during the rollout.

Mr Dutton has branded a largely renewables-backed energy grid as zealous, saying it had resulted in higher energy prices as the coalition seizes on a cost-of-living crisis to attack the government.

To recover the cost of nuclear, bills would go up by $665 a year for a typical households and $972 for a four-person household, the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis predicted.

Nuclear energy generation would be up to twice as expensive as large-scale solar, according to the analysis by the national science agency CSIRO and the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO).

Coal and gas-fired power plants will stay open longer under the plan, a move criticised as bad for Australia's carbon emissions and unreliable for the energy grid.

Coal stations couldn't shut down prematurely if Australia wanted to keep the lights on, opposition energy spokesman Ted O'Brien said, outlining a plan to replace the plants with nuclear ones as they came offline.

The first of the seven publicly owned nuclear plants would come into operation by the mid-2030s, Mr Dutton said, but this timeline has been rubbished by some experts.

Ageing coal-fired plants are already facing daily outages and extending them would be "a recipe for blackouts", Energy Minister Chris Bowen said, criticising Mr Dutton for expecting coal plants would be more reliable as they got older.

Australia's coal power would decrease by 90 per cent by the mid-2030s and all plants would be shut by 2038, according to AEMO.

Mr Bowen further criticised the nuclear modelling for reducing the number of energy transmission lines needed to be built and for operating on an assumption Australians would use less energy in 2050 than predicted by AEMO

"Transmission lines are full and need to be duplicated, regardless of whether the power comes from renewables or nuclear," he said.

Frontier Economics modelled Labor's transition around $600 billion while the energy grid operator put it at $122 billion.

Australian Associated Press