ENERGY MYTHS
One of the most important technological changes needed to combat human-induced climate change is the transition of the energy system from fossil fuels to renewable energy and energy efficiency. This system can be ecologically sustainable, healthier, more socially just and safer. However, the transition is being impeded by the capture of nation-states and some international organisations by vested interests, including the fossil fuel and nuclear energy industries. An important tool used by these vested interests is the dissemination of myths and other false and misleading information about renewable energy, nuclear energy and energy efficiency. Here are the principal myths and my brief refutations of them, based on science and electric power engineering. More detailed refutations are in the sources cited and my publications.
An excellent, independent, annual compendium of nuclear energy status and programs is World Nuclear Industry Status Report (2024) https://www.worldnuclearreport.org/World-Nuclear-Industry-Status-Report-2024 .
Detailed scientific refutations of myths about climate change are given by others at https://skepticalscience.com/.
Terminology
Myth, as used on this webpage, covers false and misleading claims that mostly originate from nuclear power proponents, renewable energy opponents, and climate science deniers.
Baseload power stations operate continuously 24/7 at the rated power capacity, except when they break down or undergo planned maintenance; examples are big hydro, coal and nuclear. The latter two are considered 'inflexible' in the sense that they need at least a day to fire up from cold to rated power and, when operating, their output cannot be varied substantially within an hour to follow variations in demand and supply.
Peakload power stations or 'peakers' can be either gas turbines or hydro. They are 'flexible', in the sense that they can go from a cold start to full power in 10 minutes or less and, when operating, their output can be varied rapidly. Gas turbines are essentially jet engines; they can burn fossil gas, biofuels or hydrogen. Hydro can be both peakload and, where there is a huge resource (e.g. Tasmania), baseload.
Variable renewables, sometimes called 'intermittent', depend on the weather. Examples are wind and solar photovoltaics (PV).
Myth 1: Renewable energy is expensive and nuclear is cheap.
Refutation: This myth is opposite of reality. Solar PV and wind are already the cheapest electricity generation technologies in almost all countries that have the resources, even before the costs of environmental impacts of fossil fuels are taken into account. Nuclear power is the most expensive of all electricity generation technologies. Businesses do not invest in nuclear unless governments pay them huge subsidies.
The CSIRO GenCost Report is by far the best analysis of the costs of various electricity supply technologies, existing and proposed, for Australia. Contrary to misinformation spread by the nuclear lobby, the report does take account of (i) the cost of storage and transmission for renewables and (ii) the shorter lifetimes of solar and wind. However, the report acknowledges that it omits the substantial additional cost of back-up for big nuclear reactors, because of limited data.
The peculiar result of the Frontier Economics Report 2, that a nuclear scenario is cheaper than a renewables scenario, depends on dubious assumptions. In particular, Frontier assumes a substantially lower future demand for electricity than the CSIRO GenCost study. This comes from Frontier's assumption that the electrification of transportation and combustion heating will not proceed to a large degree, despite the fact that electrification of almost all energy use is essential for achieving net zero greenhouse gas emissions. It also assumes a slower transition to renewable electricity.
Less use of renewable electricity entails greater use of fossil fuels. Over the period 2025–2051, Frontier's nuclear scenario has much greater use of coal for electricity generation, oil for transportation and fossil gas for heating than renewable energy scenarios, until nuclear eventually becomes available. It's actually a fossil fuel support scenario. However, Frontier omits to cost the greater use of oil and gas for n0n-electricity use. This major error invalidates Frontier's economic results. This and other 'accounting tricks' in the Frontier report are discussed by Tristan Edis.
References: CSIRO (2024), GenCost 2023–24;
Lazard (2024), Levelized Cost of Energy;
Edis (2025), The four accounting tricks behind Peter Dutton's nuclear cost claims.
Myth 2: “[M]uch more renewable capacity is required to produce the same amount of electricity compared to a nuclear power station”. (Frontier Economics (2025). Report 2 – Economic Analysis of including Nuclear Power in the NEM. p.4.)
Refutation: This statement is misleading and irrelevant, because it creates the false impression that this has been overlooked in standard economic analyses that find renewables to be much less expensive than nuclear. The higher capacity of renewables, which is inexpensive, is already taken into account in standard economic comparisons.
Myth 3: Electricity systems with 100% renewables are impossible, unless they have the major generation from hydro.
Refutation: Scotland and two northern German states, all with a modest contribution from hydro, generate over 100% net of their electricity consumption (annual averages) from renewables. Denmark (88% renewable electricity, 67% variable renewables, in 2023) and South Australia (74% variable renewables in 2024), are each on track to 100% renewables before 2030; both have little or no hydro.
Scotland obtains 62% of its electricity generation and the equivalent of 113% of its electricity consumption from renewables, mostly wind. The difference between generation and consumption is exported to England and beyond. The presence of nuclear power in Scotland’s electricity system provides negligible back-up for wind––see Myth 6.
Source: My compilation of official government data from the regions concerned.
Myth 4: To be reliable, all electricity systems require at least some baseload generation.
Refutation: Electricity systems, comprising 100% renewables (with over 90% variable renewables ‘firmed’ with storage), are just as reliable as systems containing baseload power stations. This result was initially obtained by computer simulations using several years of hourly data on wind, solar and electricity demand. It is now being confirmed by practical experience in electricity grids with very high levels of generation from variable renewables. South Australia’s sole baseload (initially) power station, Torrens Island, has not operated as baseload for several years; it will be closed in 2026 and not replaced with a baseload power station. Denmark expects to phase out baseload coal by 2030; it had already cut it down to 8% of its electricity generation in 2023.
For balancing supply and demand continuously in electricity grids dominated by variable renewables (i.e. solar and wind), options for ensuring reliability and operational flexibility include energy storage in batteries, hydro (single reservoir), pumped hydro (two reservoirs), lifting weights, and compressed air. Demand management is also an option (e.g. shifting water heating from late night to daytime), as is power-to-X, where excess renewable energy is used for X, which can be renewable fuels, other chemicals, industrial heat, water pumping and other intermittent demands. Another option for reducing the variability of wind and solar is transmission lines linking different climate regions.
For rare extended periods of Dunkelflaute (literally ‘dark doldrums’), gas turbine peakers, fuelled initially by fossil fuels and subsequently by stores of biofuels or green hydrogen, could be kept in reserve. They have low capital cost and, because they rarely have to be used, low annual operating costs. Hence they can be considered reliability insurance with a low premium.
All these reliability or 'firming' options are flexible, with fast responses ranging from a fraction of a second to minutes. With these options, electricity systems containing up to 100% renewables can be just as reliable as systems containing baseload power stations.
References:
German Academies of Science & Engineering (2024), cited here;
Diesendorf (2016), The Ecologist, 10 March;
Elliston et al. (2016), Renewable Energy 95:127–139;
Blakers et al. (2017), Energy 133:471–482;
Myth 5: "We need more gas to 'firm up' more renewables."
Refutation: From 2014 to 2022, while renewables (solar and wind) grew rapidly and coal-fired generation declined, the amount of gas used to generate electricity declined 47 per cent. It continues to decline, and the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) forecasts that, in 2030, only 4% of total east-coast gas production will be used for gas-powered generation. This decline corresponds to the rise in the use of big grid-connected batteries with storage periods of 1–4 hours. Pumped hydro and new types of battery are expected to further extend storage periods in the near future.
During the transition, we will likely need more gas turbine 'peakers' to be in reserve to handle the variability of wind and solar. These will play the role of cheap reliability insurance (see above) and will be operated infrequently. Having more gas turbine capacity is consistent with less gas energy use.
Reference: IEEFA (2023). Gas' role in the transition.
Myth 6: Nuclear can fulfil the role of back-up for variable renewables.
Refutation: Nuclear reactors are inflexible in operation, i.e., it’s technically difficult and expensive to vary their outputs substantially on a timescale of an hour or less to follow the variability in electricity demand and in solar and wind. Flexible, fast responses are needed, such as storage technologies and/or gas turbine peakers. It's ironic that big nuclear itself needs big back-up.
Myth 7: Without baseload power stations, it will be impossible to control the frequency and voltage of alternating current in an electricity grid.
Refutation: The following technologies are commercially available to maintain frequency and voltage in grids with 50–100% variable renewables: synchronous condensers; grid-following inverters together with batteries.
Reference: AEMO (2021), Application of Advanced Grid-scale Inverters in the NEM.
Myth 8: Wind and solar occupy vast areas of land and so compete with food production.
Refutation: Wind farms occupy tiny fractions of the land they span, typically 1–2%, and are compatible with essentially all forms of agriculture. Offshore wind and rooftop solar occupy no land. Solar farms are increasingly being built sufficiently high above ground for sheep farming and horticulture to continue, a practice known as agrivoltaics.
Reference: Denholm et al. (2009). Land-Use Requirements of Modern Wind Power Plants in the United States;
Clean Energy Council (2021), Australian Guide to Agrisolar for large-scale Solar.
Myth 9: Renewable electricity technologies need more energy to be invested in building them than they generate over their lifetimes.
Refutation: The energy returns in energy investment (EROEI or EROI) of wind, hydro and solar PV technologies depend on site; in general they are greater than 10, i.e. much more energy is delivered to society than is used in the extraction and construction processes. Expressing it another way: depending upon location, a typical solar panel generates the energy required to build itself in 1–2 years ; a typical large wind turbine in 3–6 months. Both have economic lifetimes of 25–30 years.
References: Raugei & Leccisi (2016), A comprehensive assessment of the energy performance of the full range of electricity generation technologies deployed in the United Kingdom;
Murphy et al. (2022), Energy return on investment of major energy carriers: review and harmonization
Myth 10: Renewable energy technologies will always need fossil fuels for mining the raw materials, minerals processing and manufacturing.
Refutation: Electricity generation for mining and minerals processing is increasingly being transitioned to renewables, which are much cheaper than diesel in most mining locations. The next step, just beginning, is to transition heavy vehicles at mine sites from diesel to EVs.
References: Numerous news reports, e.g., here and here.
Myth 11: Nuclear power is safe.
Refutation: The following is a concise summary of the more detailed article, 'The Physical Hazards of Nuclear Energy' (2025), on the Popular Articles webpage.
Nuclear power has three major dangers: nuclear weapons, nuclear accidents and nuclear wastes.
(i) The proliferation of nuclear weapons.
Nuclear power has assisted and cloaked the development of nuclear weapons in the UK, France, India, Pakistan, North Korea and South Africa. Other countries that commenced but did not complete such programs are Algeria, Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Libya, South Korea and Taiwan.
References: Institute of Science & International Security ; Nuclear Weapon Archive ; Nautilus Institute ; Richard Broinowski (2022, 2nd ed.), Fact or Fission: The truth about Australia's nuclear ambitions. Scribe.
(ii) Major accidents with huge human and economic costs.
Out of hundreds of nuclear accidents, the most serious were the Kyshtym disaster in former USSR in 1957, the partial meltdown at Three Mile Island in the USA in 1979, Chernobyl in Ukraine in 1986, and the meltdown of three reactors at Fukushima in Japan in 2011. Except for Three Mile Island, which took the USA to the brink of a major disaster, each of these accidents/disasters has likely caused many thousands of cancer deaths from exposure to ionising radiation.
References: Cardis et al. (2006), International Journal of Cancer 119:1224–1235;
Barnard (2019), CleanTechnica.
(iii) High-level nuclear wastes that must be managed for 100,000 years or more.
At the time of writing, there is no operating repository for high-level nuclear power station wastes anywhere is the world, although a repository in Finland is close to operation. Temporary storage at nuclear power stations is mostly in deep pools of water, potential terrorist targets; a minority is in stainless steel casks.
Incidentally, the costs of managing nuclear wastes, including decommissioning of radioactive nuclear power stations, have not been included in the CSIRO GenCost or Frontier Economics reports on energy costs.
In addition, concern is growing about:
(iv) Young children living near near nuclear power stations have a significantly increased incidence of cancer, in particular, more than double the risk of leukaemia compared with controls.
This result comes from a detailed case-control study by the German Childhood Cancer Registry of all cancers in children younger than five years living near all Germany's major nuclear power stations. Contrary to misinformation spread by the nuclear lobby, there is a large body of evidence that low-level ionising radiation is harmful, that there is no safe threshold. The unborn child is very sensitive to exposure because of its high rate of cell division. The likely cause of the observed increased childhood cancer risk near nuclear power stations in Germany is the exposure of their mothers, when pregnant, to low-level radiation releases. Furthermore, nuclear industry workers have a significant dose‐related increase in all cancer mortality.
References: Kaatsch et al. (2007), Leukaemia in young children living in the vicinity of German nuclear power plants;
Fairlie (2009), Commentary: childhood cancer near nuclear power stations;
Richardson et al. (2023), Cancer mortality after low dose exposure to ionising radiation in workers in France, the United Kingdom, and the United States (INWORKS): cohort study.
Myth 12: New nuclear power stations could make a significant contribution to climate change mitigation.
Refutation: Time is of the essence in climate mitigation. Nuclear power is too slow to construct. New nuclear power stations in countries with nuclear experience – Finland, France and the USA – are taking two to three times the original planned construction time to complete. Australia, which has no experience in nuclear power, would take about 20 years to get a single nuclear power station operating.
Reference:Schneider & Froggatt (2024), pp.58–61.
Myth 13: A wind turbine (presumably large) requires about 30,000 tonnes of concrete and about 30,000 tonnes of iron ore. (This absurd claim from geologist and nuclear energy campaigner, Ian Plimer.)
Refutation: According to the US National Renewable Energy Laboratory, a large wind turbine requires about 400 tonnes per megawatt (t/MW) concrete (onshore site) and zero t/MW (offshore); it requires about 110 t/MW steel (onshore) and 249 t/MW (offshore). For a wind turbine rated at 4 MW, multiply these numbers by 4. Then, assuming onshore wind turbines, Plimer's claims are 20 times too big for concrete and 68 times too big for steel (or 43 times too big for iron ore).
Reference: NREL (2023), Materials used in U.S. wind energy technologies: quantities and availability for two future scenarios, Table 6.
Myth 14: In Australia, nuclear can be located at the sites of retired coal-fired power stations, thus saving on transmission costs.
Refutation: The proposed sites for the states WA and SA are unsuitable for large reactors, while small modular reactors don’t exist. The owner of the Liddell site in NSW is already committed to renewables. The Mt Piper site, also in NSW, is five kilometres from the township of Wallerawang, providing a significant radiation risk from 'normal' operations to the inhabitants, especially young children exposed before birth; see refutation (iv) of Myth 9. Local communities are divided about nuclear power.
By the time nuclear power could be generating (in the 2040s), SA and probably Vic. and NSW would already have 100% renewables, making nuclear redundant there.