The Coalition’s ambition to build nuclear power plants in Australia will face significant cost overruns, timing blowouts and constitutional hurdles, according to project management and legal experts.

Community backlash against site selection and how to dispose of nuclear waste is also likely to see the time frame for building and running a nuclear power plant in Australia pushed even further into the future, University of Sydney School of Project Management associate Professor Petr Matous said.

“It’s basically impossible to do before 2040.

“If you think about multi-billion [dollar] mega projects in Australia, or anywhere else, you probably won’t find many examples that could have been implemented on schedule without any delay.”

Dr Matous pointed to the Snowy Hydro 2.0 project as an example of a recent government-led energy project that has failed to meet budget and schedule targets.

“If you think about the delays and cost overruns there, I think the nearest available example to compare with.

“It was first announced for $2 billion, then it became $6 billion, now we are perhaps at over $12 billion.

“So you can imagine what could happen with this type of announcement with this type of [nuclear] project.”

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Project pipedreams

Griffith University emeritus professor Ian Lowe, a trained physicist, also cast doubt on the reality of the Coalition’s nuclear ambitions.

“The Commonwealth government is not very good at managing large projects,” he said.

“And any large project they’ve done in recent years has always been years behind schedule and billions over budget.”