As Australia’s federal election campaign has finally begun, opposition leader Peter Dutton’s proposal to spend hundreds of billions in public money to build seven nuclear power plants across the country has been carefully scrutinized. The technological unfeasibility, staggering cost, and scant detail of the Coalition’s nuclear proposal have been subject to considerable public debate.

Less covered, however, has been the nuclear proposal’s impact on jobs. This piece examines the Coalition’s nuclear proposal through the lens of employment, finding that the proposal risks costing Australians hundreds of thousands of renewable energy jobs during the transition to a clean energy grid.

A key principle when considering the cost of nuclear energy in Australia is that when resources — whether financial, labour, or material — are dedicated to one technology, they are unavailable for other technologies. This is known as opportunity cost. Given we are in the midst of a critical period of clean energy transition where Australia must rapidly build out renewable energy infrastructure, choosing to deploy massive amounts of capital into nuclear power has huge costs, particularly for the labour market.