Opposition Leader Peter Dutton has been speaking about the Coalition’s nuclear energy plans.

He was questioned on Nine’s Today program about estimates from the CSIRO that it would cost $8.5 billion and take more than a decade.

Dutton said he wanted to believe that battery power can provide the baseload but “it just can’t”, and that wind and solar power was intermittent.

“So you need to firm it up. And as we know at the moment, Labor governments in Victoria and NSW are extending the life of coal-fired power stations because they’re worried about the lights going out.”

Those comments come after the NSW government made a deal to prolong the life of the Eraring power station.

“We’ve got to get serious about a new energy system as we decarbonise and modernise, and nuclear is a key part of that,” Dutton said.

The opposition leader pointed to the Canadian province of Ontario, and said they have 60 per cent nuclear energy and power prices were a quarter of what was paid in Australia.

But Labor minister Bill Shorten, who also appeared on the program, said he didn’t believe nuclear energy was a viable option for Australia, and would cost too much and take too long.

“It will take about 15 years. $8.5 billion, costing twice as much as the renewables are,” he said.

Shorten said it wasn’t true to say 19 out of 20 countries in the G20 used nuclear power, arguing that Germany was moving away from it, Indonesia and Saudi Arabia didn’t use it.

“The truth of the matter is that if we were going to have nuclear power, that was a conversation for the 1960s, not the 2020s,” he said.

“We’ve got the opportunity to invest in our renewables and use gas as our base load transition until we get there.”