Skip to main content

Australia Nuclear Update

Australian Prime Minister John Howard gave the strongest signal yet that his nation intends to develop a peaceful nuclear power program in an interview with national broadcaster Channel 9:
"In an age where we're worried about global warming we should be looking seriously at nuclear power as an option, because it's clean and it doesn't emit greenhouse gases and I can't understand why the extreme Greenies oppose it," he said.
Howard's comments came against the backdrop of the 15th Pacific Basin Nuclear Conference, being held this week in Sydney. For more coverage on Howard's comments, visit the following links:

PM gives strong backing to nuclear power, The Age
Reactors could be up and running by 2015, The Australian
Nuclear Australia 'a decade away', news.com.au

Technorati tags: , , , , , , , ,

Comments

Matthew66 said…
In Australia, electrical power generation is largely the responsibility of state governments. All the state governments in Australia are formed by the Australian Labor Party which remains intractably opposed to nuclear power. Further, as the Chief Executive of Silex stated in his evidence to the Prime Minister's inquiry on the nuclear industry, no company is going to make multi-billion dollar investments in nuclear infrastructure in Australia unless there is bipartisan support. The risk that a later Labor government would shut down a project is currently too great for any private investors.
Anonymous said…
Matthew is right.

The Prime Minister's push on nuclear is kind of strange. In much of Australia, our power stations are pretty much built on top of coalfields. Consequently, in Australia, coal is cheaper than nuclear, at least until the kinks in the new reactor designs on the drawing board are ironed out in the first few builds. The only way this is likely to change is with the introduction of a carbon charge, or if the government provides big subsidies to nuclear power operators.

However, the government is implacably opposed to carbon charging, and there has been no mention of any plans to subsidise nuclear construction.

Furthermore, there is a federal election due somewhere between now and November 2007, and the government is facing a very tough re-election fight. Given that substantial majorities of Australians remain opposed to nuclear power, I can't see the government spending political capital to push this. I would like things to be different, but it's important to look at things as they are rather than as we would like them to be.

The Australian public hasn't yet realised that if it wants cuts in carbon emissions, that nuclear may be the only thing that can provide baseload electricity at a similar price to what they now pay. Until that realization hits, to approximately render a favourite Australianism, those advocating nuclear energy in Australia are pushing sewerage uphill.
Anonymous said…
Pretty simple really. Howard is trying to legitimise nuclear power by calling it a solution to climate change. He will use this as a cover to increase uranium mining in Australia.

His goal is to make Australia an "energy superpower", by increasing exports of Uranium to the US, China and whoever else will take it.

Read more about it here.

Popular posts from this blog

An Ohio School Board Is Working to Save Nuclear Plants

Ohio faces a decision soon about its two nuclear reactors, Davis-Besse and Perry, and on Wednesday, neighbors of one of those plants issued a cry for help. The reactors’ problem is that the price of electricity they sell on the high-voltage grid is depressed, mostly because of a surplus of natural gas. And the reactors do not get any revenue for the other benefits they provide. Some of those benefits are regional – emissions-free electricity, reliability with months of fuel on-site, and diversity in case of problems or price spikes with gas or coal, state and federal payroll taxes, and national economic stimulus as the plants buy fuel, supplies and services. Some of the benefits are highly localized, including employment and property taxes. One locality is already feeling the pinch: Oak Harbor on Lake Erie, home to Davis-Besse. The town has a middle school in a building that is 106 years old, and an elementary school from the 1950s, and on May 2 was scheduled to have a referendu

Why Ex-Im Bank Board Nominations Will Turn the Page on a Dysfunctional Chapter in Washington

In our present era of political discord, could Washington agree to support an agency that creates thousands of American jobs by enabling U.S. companies of all sizes to compete in foreign markets? What if that agency generated nearly billions of dollars more in revenue than the cost of its operations and returned that money – $7 billion over the past two decades – to U.S. taxpayers? In fact, that agency, the Export-Import Bank of the United States (Ex-Im Bank), was reauthorized by a large majority of Congress in 2015. To be sure, the matter was not without controversy. A bipartisan House coalition resorted to a rarely-used parliamentary maneuver in order to force a vote. But when Congress voted, Ex-Im Bank won a supermajority in the House and a large majority in the Senate. For almost two years, however, Ex-Im Bank has been unable to function fully because a single Senate committee chairman prevented the confirmation of nominees to its Board of Directors. Without a quorum

NEI Praises Connecticut Action in Support of Nuclear Energy

Earlier this week, Connecticut Gov. Dannel P. Malloy signed SB-1501 into law, legislation that puts nuclear energy on an equal footing with other non-emitting sources of energy in the state’s electricity marketplace. “Gov. Malloy and the state legislature deserve praise for their decision to support Dominion’s Millstone Power Station and the 1,500 Connecticut residents who work there," said NEI President and CEO Maria Korsnick. "By opening the door to Millstone having equal access to auctions open to other non-emitting sources of electricity, the state will help preserve $1.5 billion in economic activity, grid resiliency and reliability, and clean air that all residents of the state can enjoy," Korsnick said. Millstone Power Station Korsnick continued, "Connecticut is the third state to re-balance its electricity marketplace, joining New York and Illinois, which took their own legislative paths to preserving nuclear power plants in 2016. Now attention should