Media Release: Nuclear for Australia calls on the ABC to take misleading 'Nuclear Gamble' Four Corners episode off the air

On Friday Nuclear for Australia sent a formal complaint to the ABC Ombudsman in response to Four Corners' highly misleading 'Nuclear Gamble' episode. 

Key Points:

• The central assertion of the episode that Vogtle 3 & 4 was the sole reason power bills increased in Georgia is false. We contacted the Georgia Public Service Commission who regulate Georgia Power bills and the Vice Chairman Tim Echols confirmed to us that "Plant Vogtle was an easy target for people, but it was not the primary source of rate increases".Instead, there were many factors that Four Corners didn't mention including gas price increases due to the Ukrainian war, the cost of upgrading hundreds of transformers around the state due to storm damage and the cost of grid infrastructure to support solar arrays in the middle of Southern Georgia. By not mentioning these other factors, Four Corners deliberately mislead audiences. In his exclusive interview with Nuclear for Australia he told us that these attempts to misrepresent the Vogtle Nuclear Plant were "misinformation", "disingenuous and wrong". 
• The program also failed to question the findings of the highly controversial GenCost report. This report has been widely criticised by nuclear experts. The US Department of Energy's Nuclear Liftoff Report recently found that using LCOE and not factoring in the full 80 year lifetime of a nuclear plant, both features of the GenCost report, were not good practice. None of these criticisms were aired in the episode.
• The program failed to engage with Australian nuclear experts and advocacy organisations including Nuclear for Australia which represents over 75,000 Australians. 
• The program didn't mention the conflicts of interests of guestssuch as Peter Bradford, Malcolm Turnbull and Simon Holmes à Court in a clear breach of journalistic standards. 
• The program failed to seriously challenge Malcolm Turnbull's false assertion that nuclear power plants are inflexible. 

Whilst we appreciate that the ABC has already made some corrections in response to our work, in light of the damning evidence against this episode we believe that the program should be taken off the air and a formal apology should be issued with a commitment from the ABC to cover the nuclear debate fairly and honestly in the future. 

Download our letter