Prime minister John Howard would welcome a debate about the use of nuclear power in Australia, saying the country “has the capacity to deliver if we want to change policy”.
Speaking at a press conference in Sydney on 9th June 2005, Mr Howard said that given the country’s “enormous” supplies of uranium it would be an odd contradiction if a debate on nuclear power was not allowed. He said under appropriate safeguards Australia would be quite happy to export large amounts of uranium to other countries.
Responding to a reporter’s question on the need for a debate over nuclear power in Australia, Mr Howard said: “I welcome a debate on nuclear power. I don’t think you’ll find anything I’ve said in the past suggesting there shouldn’t be a debate on it.
“Where it will go and what the economics end up being… I don’t know, but I think we should be mature enough and sensible enough to debate it, and I’ve read that there’s an interesting coalition of supporters of open debate on this issue which covers people on both sides of politics, and I think that’s good because we do have the capacity to deliver if we want to change policy.”
In April 2005, the federal minister for education, science and training, Brendan Nelson, called for Australia to consider using nuclear as the most obvious power source for the generation of electricity and water desalination [see News No. 73, 20th April 2005].
Australia has no nuclear power plants, but the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO) is building a replacement research reactor that is scheduled to start operating in 2006 [see News No. 16, 24th January 2005].
At an Australian Institute of Energy conference in Sydney on 8th June 2005, ANSTO’s chief of operations Ron Cameron said the four main advantages of nuclear power were its lower generating costs, safety, security of energy supply and that it can help reduce CO2 emissions.
Dr Cameron pointed to nuclear energy initiatives in the US such as Generation IV and Nuclear Power 2010, and said a possible solution for Australia would be next generation reactors. These would result in better, safer, more economic nuclear power plants with improvements in safety and reliability, economic competitiveness and sustainability.
