RE-Alliance has been working with rural and regional communities navigating energy projects for more than a decade. We recently released polling across several proposed nuclear communities, which found support for nuclear reactors in those communities was very low. The polling of 1250 regional residents was conducted by respected research firm 89 Degrees East, which is a member of the Research Society of Australia.
The data revealed only 22% of people in Central West NSW support nuclear, 24% in Central Queensland, 32% in Hunter, 24% in south west WA and just 31% in Gippsland. Interestingly, regional communities also don’t believe that nuclear power is capable of bringing down their energy bills anytime soon (just 13%) while 72% said renewables would bring bills down faster.
Further, a report released by former Land and Water Australia CEO Professor Andrew Campbell has found an extra 200 gigalitres of annual water allocation would need to be acquired from farmers and other water customers to cool the proposed nuclear reactors. The report also found half the reactors couldn’t be built because there isn’t enough water to cool them and another 40% would have to be turned off regularly due to lack of water.
RE-Alliance will continue to push that all energy projects being proposed in regional and rural Australia contribute to the strength and resilience of our regions and that clear information is readily accessible.