The Coalition's plan to build seven nuclear power plants across Australia excluded more than half a billion dollars in costs for essential emergency services and personnel according to a report by the United Firefighters Union of Australia (UFUA).

The report calculated that $446.68 million would be required to establish specialised fire stations both in and near the proposed nuclear sites.

An additional $79.7 million would be required for firefighter salaries.

UFUA calculated these costs based on standards implemented in the United States and Canada by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). Australia is also a member of the IAEA.

The Gippsland Monitor spoke to UFUA National Secretary Greg McConville about the costing needed to keep the proposed nuclear sites manned under mandatory international regulation – and his concerns for community safety.

The price tag for seven nuclear sites worth of firefighters

McConville said that if IAEA standards were applied along with the shift roster that commonly applies in firefighting, each nuclear site would require two fire stations with 34 firefighters each.

“That's 68 firefighters employed at each nuclear facility,” said McConville. “That’s a salary bill approaching $80 million a year. That hasn't been accounted for.

“In terms of fire stations and equipping them with the relevant trucks and personal protective equipment, [it’s] a sum of $446 million in capital that no one has accounted for at this stage.”

McConville isn’t sure where the funding will come from for the necessary firefighters, facilities and equipment. The Frontier Economics report that the Coalition has used to cost the nuclear power stations doesn’t budget for firefighters.

“If you do a word search of the Frontier Economics report, you will not get a hit on fire rescue, emergency, or waste,” he says. “It just doesn't appear in the narrative at all. And that's very concerning.”

McConville says that if the power stations were to go ahead the price tag might be “left with state governments and territory governments, unless the Commonwealth is suddenly going to come up with money.

“It's a major hole in the costing and it's very concerning that no one seems to have really turned their minds to firefighter safety or community safety.”

What do unions think?

McConville says “there is a very high level of concern about this from a number of unions,” particularly the Electrical Trades Union. 

“I think the concern is growing… there's a lot of reasons why it doesn't add up and the public shouldn't have to be making their voter choices on things like this.”

Charlie Phillips, a Just Transitions Organiser at Victorian Trades Hall Council, told the Gippsland Monitor “the whole union movement is united against Dutton’s nuclear plans to build seven reactors across Australia”.

Concern for community safety

United Firefighters Union of Australia delegate Matt Muscatt spoke to the Gippsland Monitor about his concerns for community and firefighter safety if a nuclear plant were to be built in the Latrobe Valley.

Muscatt referenced the 2014 open cut fire at Hazelwood and said “you start to get worried about what it actually means for the community if a worst case scenario were to unfold.”

Muscatt explained that firefighting is a highly multiskilled profession. 

“Firefighters are trained to attend to house fires, car fires, car accidents, hazmat incidents,” he said. “They need to be trained in high angle, steep angle, trench and confined space rescue.” 

Muscatt’s concern is that training firefighters to deal with nuclear disasters is another skill that has to be acquired and then maintained but there’s currently no plan for training in the Coalition's proposal. 

“No thought or costing has gone into initial training and ongoing training required,” he said.

“The opposition haven't even considered what these costs would be, they haven't even considered what the risk to the community or fire services capabilities would be.”

Muscatt was working the day the fire got into the mine at Hazelwood in 2014 and he doesn’t ever want to experience a disaster like that again.

“I was here for that, I spent seven weeks in that mine fire. I spent seven weeks in that black pit. The community for that period of time in Morwell was like a desolate wasteland. It was just terrible. Whatever was coming out of that pit was covering our fire station. It's just a horrible thing to experience. 

“I've heard reports in the media from the opposition saying; ‘these are the safest nuclear plants and nothing's ever going to happen’. But the Titanic wasn't supposed to sink either was it?

For me as a firefighter to think that I could be potentially attending an incident at a power station powered by nuclear power, it frightens the hell out of me to be honest.”