Energy Minister Chris Bowen has pilloried Opposition Leader Peter Dutton’s plan to build seven nuclear reactors across five states without releasing the details or cost of the proposal.

“They are treating the Australian people, quite frankly, with quite arrogant contempt,” Mr Bowen told ABC Radio on Tuesday.

There had been “a very clear misunderstanding or misrepresentation by Peter Dutton about the respective energy mixes that are options for Australia”, he said.

Australia won’t meet its net-zero emissions target by 2050 without nuclear energy, Mr Dutton argues, as he slams the cost of wind and solar energy.

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Mr Bowen said this ignored Australia’s wind and solar potential stemming from its unique geography and expert estimates about nuclear cost blowouts.

Gas would be used as a backstop as part of Labor’s plan and could be fired up with two minutes’ notice and not spew harmful emissions when it was not operating, he said.

This was in contrast to the opposition’s plan to extend the lifespan of Australia’s coal-fired plants which were losing reliability as they aged and needed to run constantly when used as a backup, which was terrible for emissions, Mr Bowen said.

“The biggest threat to reliability in our energy system now is coal-fired power stations,” he said.

“We haven’t had a day in the last year where we haven’t had an unexpected outage from a coal-fired power station. They don’t get more reliable as they get older.

“If you’re leaving those coal-fired power stations in the system while you waiting for the nuclear fantasy to come on board, then you are just engineering a recipe for unreliability and blackouts in our system.”

Mr Dutton has criticised the reliability of wind and solar, saying Australia needed energy when the wind wasn’t blowing and the sun wasn’t shining.

Mr Bowen says this is where batteries come in.