Small modular reactors are the solution to the climate crisis, as they are cheap, clean and safe. Fact: Small modular reactors (SMRs) are mini-nuclear power plants, similar to the units used in American aircraft carriers and nuclear submarines. They have been touted as viable sources of zero-emissions energy but actually suffer from the same problems as their full-scale counterparts. At the moment, there is only one SMR operating in the world – Russia’s 70 megawatt floating nuclear power plant, which is used to provide electricity to isolated settlements on the Arctic coast. This reactor cost 37 billion roubles (A$688 million) to build and produces power at five times the cost of renewable energy in Australia. China’s demonstration 210 MW high-temperature gas-cooled reactor (HTGR) is proving slightly less expensive to run but is nowhere near competitive with renewable energy sources or with large-scale nuclear plants. The only way the costs of SMRs could be reduced to a competitive level would be to mass produce them, but there is no sign of this happening.  Prior to the 2025 election, the Coalition mooted the idea of replacing Australia’s ageing coal fired power stations with SMRs. To do so would require 71 such reactors, but these could not be built until most of our coal-fired plants had already closed down – leaving us with significant power shortages. In addition, the Department of Energy estimates that the cost of building 71 SMRs would be $387 billion, or $18,167 a kilowatt, compared with $1,058 for large-scale solar projects and $1,989 for onshore wind. Even if the ultimate cost of SMRs proves to be much less, they will still be uncompetitive, short of massive taxpayer subsidies. Artist’s impression of a small modular reactor [Source: NuScale Power]

China is going all-out for nuclear energy. Other nations should do the same. Fact: China is indeed building more nuclear power plants than any other nation, but nuclear’s contribution to its electricity grid is very small. In 2026, it had 60 nuclear reactors, with a total capacity of 58.7 gigawatts (GW). Another 36 GW are under construction, with a total capacity of 38.9 GW. In 2025, it increased its nuclear capacity by 1.1 GW. That same year it increased its renewable capacity by 430 GW! In other words, China added 391 times more renewable capacity in 2025 than it did nuclear capacity. So yes, China it is building nuclear reactors, but these are not central its energy plans. 

Nuclear energy can provide all the backup needed for a grid that is mostly powered by renewables. Fact: The problem with this line of argument is that nuclear reactors must operate at near full capacity in order to amortise their high capital costs. This means they cannot ramp up their output if there is a sudden dearth of wind and/or sun. And even if they were to operate at a loss, at say 60 percent capacity, they cannot increase their output anywhere near quickly enough to deal with a failure elsewhere in the grid.  Battery storage, hydro storage and peaking gas are far better forms of backup for renewable energy. They can be brought into play almost instantly, preventing blackouts while the power outage is rectified. 

Nuclear power is cheap and clean. It’s the best way to stop global warming. Fact:  Nuclear power is a possible solution to global warming, and may be viable in countries that do not have plentiful sources of renewable energy, but it is definitely not viable in Australia.  The fact is that wind and solar are significantly cheaper than nuclear, so no companies are likely to build reactors unless heavily subsidised by the government. As of 2026, the price of nuclear power was between 14 and 32 cents a kilowatt hour. By contrast, the price of solar was between 2 and 9 cents a kilowatt hour, and onshore wind between 4 and 13 cents. Largely for this reason, just 4.4 GW of nuclear power was installed worldwide in 2025, compared with 814 GW of wind and solar! At the same time, 2.8 GW of nuclear power was decommissioned, meaning the total planned addition to the world’s nuclear capacity for 2025 was 1.6 GW. Cost blowouts are another problem that plagues the nuclear industry. The sole reactor project commenced in Britain this century, Hinkley Point C, has seen its cost blow out from £9 billion to £34 billion. Indeed, the company building it, Électricité de France, had to be bailed out and then nationalised by the French government in 2023, it was losing so much money. And France’s own reactors are so old and unreliable that they have had to subsidised to the tune of US$26 billion a year – all at the taxpayer’s expense. Even in the US, home to a quarter of all the world’s reactors, only two nuclear projects have been commenced this century, with both losing vast sums of money. The nuclear plant in Georgia – possibly the last commercial plant ever to be built in the United States – saw its cost blow out from US$2.8 billion to US$17.5 billion by its completion date in 2025. The twin V.C. Summer reactors being built in South Carolina fared even worse. Their cost blew out by US$13.5 billion over four years, causing the entire project to be scrapped. Yet another problem relating to nuclear power is that it can take up to 20 years to build a nuclear reactor in a western industrialised nation. The Vogtle plant in Georgia was first announced in 2008, and completed in 2024. Hinkley Point C in the UK was first announced in 2007, but is not expected to be completed until 2031! Those are construction times of 16 and 24 years respectively – and in nations with decades of experience building such plants. Then there is the matter of politics. Although modern reactors are far safer than their predecessors, the experience of Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima has soured the public on nuclear technology. In democratic nations it is next to impossible to find a community willing to host a nuclear reactor, let alone one that will store nuclear waste. As such, it is futile to push nuclear power as a solution.  A final problem relates to nuclear waste, which must be stored securely for many thousands of years before its radioactivity drops to safe levels. The cost of doing so, and the impact on the environment at the storage site, are often not fully taken into account when calculating the cost of nuclear power. Nuclear power plant [Source: PICRYL]

We can’t rely on technologies that haven’t been invented yet in order to decarbonise. These technologies might never appear. Fact: Well, actually, most of the technologies we need to deal with climate change have been invented and are available at commercial rates. But even for those that haven’t, this should not be a problem. Back in 1961, when President Kennedy pledged to put a man on the moon by the end of the decade, scientists had no idea how to do it. In fact, America had only just launched a man into space the previous year. What Kennedy was doing was giving his scientists and engineers a goal, and in response they developed the technology to achieve it. It was the same when President Roosevelt approved the development of the atomic bomb. More recently, scientists were tasked with developing a vaccine for COVID. Just because we don’t currently have a technology does not mean we should not be trying to develop it. 

Lego has failed to produce emissions-free building blocks, despite a five-year effort to do so. If we can’t decarbonise something as simple as children’s toys, how can we do so for the entire economy? Fact:  This is another example of a logical fallacy. It’s true that Lego has, thus far, failed to produce blocks using biopolymers (plant-based plastics), but plastics are nowhere near as damaging to the environment as using oil for transportation. In fact, they are only responsible for 4.5 percent of global emissions, as opposed to transport, which accounts for 21 percent. This is because most of the carbon used in making plastics is stored in the finished product and not released into the atmosphere. As long as those products are properly disposed of at the end of their life, the carbon they contain will not contribute to global warming.  Biopolymers, by contrast, can actually help reduce emissions, as they are made from the carbon sequestered by plants – that is, carbon that has been sucked out of the atmosphere via photosynthesis. If we could make as many of our plastic products from biopolymers instead of oil, these would have a positive impact on climate change, by acting as carbon sinks. Even if we could make half of all plastics from them, this would provide 10 percent of all the carbon sequestration required each year to reach net zero.  Finally, it should be remembered that net zero does not mean absolute zero. There are some things which we simply will not be able to make without fossil fuels. They are the ones we’ll have to compensate for by sequestering carbon. Who knows – perhaps Lego bricks will be among their number. Or just perhaps the company will solve the problem somewhere down the track and produce a zero-carbon Lego brick. After all, it wasn’t so very long ago when people thought getting to the moon was impossible. 

Australia has a lot of untapped oil. It would be better off using this than electrifying its road transport.  Fact:  Australia has about 1.8 billion barrels of oil remaining in its existing oil fields – enough to supply the country’s needs for 4 years without imports. There are also believed to be between 13 and 18 billion barrels of shale oil in Queensland and another 5 billion barrels of conventional oil beneath the Great Australian Bight.  Let’s start with shale oil. This type of oil is expensive to produce and would cost motorists as much as double what they normally pay for petrol. It would also take between 5 and 10 years to set up a shale oil industry, and double that time to scale it up to the level needed to provide for Australia’s needs. Without massive government subsidies, the private sector would not be prepared to invest in this industry.  As for the oil in the Great Australian Bight, unfortunately it’s about 400 kilometres offshore, where the ocean floor is between 1,000 and 2,200 metres deep. The sea floor in Bass Strait, by contrast, is at depths of between 50 and 400 metres, so the oil below has been relatively cheap and easy to exploit. The oil in the Bight would be significantly harder to extract, meaning it would cost a great deal more at the bowser. This is why the three companies that had exploration rights there abandoned plans to drill a decade ago.  Of course, those who are pushing to ‘drill, baby, drill’, will argue that with the price of oil being higher following the war with Iran, Australia’s untapped sources will be more economic. That might have been true once, but today there are cheaper alternatives than oil for transportation – namely, EVs – so if the price stays high, more people will go down the electrification path, thereby reducing the demand for oil. It’s a no-win situation for potential investors. Whichever way the price moves, there is no incentive to exploit Australia’s untapped oil reserves.  Offshore oil rig (Source: Public Domain Pictures]

If you have an EV made in China, the Chinese government can use it for espionage purposes and may even be able to disable it.  Fact: There is no evidence that Chinese-made EVs can used for espionage purposes, let alone disabled remotely. The sim card inside a vehicle connects it to the internet, just like a mobile phone or a tablet, so the car is no more vulnerable to being hacked than any other electronic device. But unlike those devices, the sim inside the car can be removed easily, rendering the vehicle completely autonomous. The only things that will stop working are the navigation and entertainment systems, and these can be replaced by the driver plugging his/her mobile phone into one of the car’s charge points and using an app like Apple CarPlay. So, if the driver seriously believes his/her Chinese-made EV acting as a mobile espionage device, there is a simple way to fix it.  Of course, the other answer is simply to buy a car that was not made in China.

Electric vehicle batteries don’t work properly in the cold, so they are unsuitable for many countries and regions.  Fact: It is true that EV batteries can work less efficiently in extremely cold conditions (-20°C), but this is not a serious problem if drivers know how to deal with it.  The first problem is that in extreme cold an EV battery has to be warmed before it can be charged. This process can take up to half an hour. If a driver has not already done this before arriving at a charge station, the charging process can take up to half an hour longer. Warming the battery does not use much power, so the range of the EV is only reduced by a few kilometres.  Range can also be affected by extreme cold. Normally, the loss of range is no more than 10 percent, but it can be up to 36 percent in extraordinarily cold conditions. Of course, such conditions are extremely rare, and when they occur driving any sort of car can be dangerous and should be avoided.  Interestingly, the nation with the highest uptake of EVs in the world is Norway, where extreme cold is normal in winter. People understand how to properly run their EVs, so neither of the above-mentioned problems is a concern. And they certainly aren’t a concern in Australia, where such conditions are unheard of. 

Because electric vehicles are heavier than their ICE equivalents, their tyres wear our much faster, making them more expensive to run.  Fact: It’s true that an EV is about 30 percent heavier than an ICE vehicle, and that its tyres can wear out up to 20 percent faster. But weight is not the only factor affecting the life of a set of tyres. Others include acceleration rates, frequency of braking, and how fast the car takes bends and corners. A careful driver will have tyres that last a lot longer than an incautious one.  That said, we can calculate how much extra an EV owner would have to pay if his tyres wore out at the maximum rate (20 percent). A set of tyres in Australia lasts on average five years, and a standard set for an EV costs $540 (at 2024 prices). If those tyres lasted four years instead of five (i.e. 20 percent less), then the extra cost would be $33.75 a year. This is a pittance compared with the savings to be made with an EV via lower fuel and maintenance costs.  So, this myth is just that – a complete furphy.