Main Street, Lithgow, is a waning shrine to its former self. This town of coal and iron ore, pottery and armaments was once so big that by the end of the 19th century, it had a brewery. By the beginning of the 20th, it had built a picture palace, such was the demand from the steel mills and mines surrounding it.
Now it has dozens of vacant shopfronts and a smattering of residents on its high street who describe it as neglected, depressed and struggling to varying degrees. Coal-fired Mount Piper Power Station, west of Lithgow, is now a proposed site for a nuclear plant. Credit: James Brickwood If the Coalition gets its way, it will also have a nuclear power plant.
Opposition Leader Peter Dutton’s plan to bring nuclear to the centre of the Blue Mountains is either foolhardy or worth the risk, depending on who you talk to in this divided town that straddles water catchments 150 kilometres west of Sydney. Dutton’s plan for seven nuclear power plants , mostly in Coalition or marginal electorates including Lithgow and the Hunter in NSW, will require not only a Coalition election victory but a majority in both chambers of parliament, billions of dollars in investment and a decade of planning. The proposal is as optimistic as it is ambitious.
However, the Liberal leader is gambling that it will pay off in electorates that are older, economically vulnerable and increasingly anxious about the sight of wind farms and solar panels across their landscapes, regardless of the environmen.
