The World Today - Safety a main concern in nuclear energy debate

ELEANOR HALL: Now to debate on nuclear energy in Australia.Yesterday on the program we heard from a range of nuclear physicists selling the benefits of nuclear power in Australia. They say the looming global climate crisis driven by fossil fuels should put the atom back in the energy picture. But opponents say nuclear power is still too expensive and they deny technical advances have made it safe.This report from David Mark.DAVID MARK: The Executive Director of the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation, Ian Smith, outlines these three reasons for Australia adopting nuclear technology for electricity generation.IAN SMITH: The first is to do with energy security and the price of energy.The second is to do with the greenhouse gas effects. Nuclear power is 50 times better than coal in removing CO2 from the atmosphere.The third reason is to do with the economics. Many overseas studies have shown that nuclear power is in fact the cheapest form of electricity that can be produced at this time.DAVID MARK: Now even some staunch environmental campaigners, like the naturalist Tim Flannery, have added their voices to the nuclear debate.Tim Flannery believes Australia could support a nuclear industry once the right controls were in place.TIM FLANNERY: You know, if we can deal with the issues of proliferation and waste disposal, which we can deal with, then, sure, I think uranium definitely has a role to play.DON HENRY: There's absolutely no way we should embrace nuclear technology.DAVID MARK: Don Henry is the Executive Director of the Australian Conservation Foundation.DON HENRY: We shouldn't mine more uranium. And we certainly shouldn't have nuclear power stations. And we definitely shouldn't accept high-level radioactive waste in Australia.And look, the reasons are simple. This is a dirty, dangerous industry and it's not a solution to climate change.DAVID MARK: Nuclear supporters say the technology is now safe, thanks to a new generation of gas-cooled reactors.They say the most famous nuclear accident in history, the radioactive leak at Chernobyl in 1986, was a one-off, caused by a Soviet regime that didn't have enough money, poor construction and human error.But Don Henry isn't buying that argument.DON HENRY: Human error always occurs.And we have to remember with nuclear power and with the whole nuclear cycle that not only do we have nuclear power stations, we then have to worry about decommissioning them and we then have to deal with highly poisonous radioactive waste that stays highly poisonous for tens of thousands of years.And the risk of human error happening, the risk of a war, the risk of terrorism or the risk of an economy going through its ups and downs over tens and thousands of years is absolutely there.So the safest thing here is not to touch this stuff.DAVID MARK: You mention the problems of storing the waste.Again, proponents of nuclear energy say the waste can be stored safely, and in fact there is very little waste to store?DON HENRY: We've had 50 years of the nuclear experiment around the world and there is not yet one fully functional, large-scale, high-level waste disposal anywhere in the world.DAVID MARK: The Executive Director of The Australia Institute, Clive Hamilton, is a vocal campaigner for action on climate change.He entered the nuclear debate recently, when he suggested several possible locations for nuclear generators in Australia.It was an effective ruse. It got people talking. But the reality is he's no nuclear supporter.CLIVE HAMILTON: Nuclear power is probably the worst way, from an economic point of view, to try to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.It's very expensive, so even before you get to the safety concerns and disposal of or storage of nuclear waste for tens of thousands of years simply looking at the economics of it shows that it doesn't stack up.DAVID MARK: Don Henry and Clive Hamilton say the nuclear debate is a furphy, designed to prevent the debate they believe is truly needed: why Australia isn't rapidly adopting renewable technologies.Nuclear proponents say their technology is cheaper, but Clive Hamilton disagrees.CLIVE HAMILTON: Every analysis of the comparative costs of alternative energy systems shows that nuclear power is the most expensive and that the range of renewable energy alternatives are much cheaper.So why we're not investing massively in those is sort of... is beyond my understanding.And to start talking about constructing a whole new industrial sector with all of the safety and infrastructure costs involved is really… it's a bizarre debate.DON HENRY: We need to start dramatically cutting greenhouse pollution in Australia today.We can do it today with our existing suite of technologies, with a much stronger use of renewable power, with much greater use of energy efficiency and more use of biofuels and gas, we can cut Australia's emissions by 60 per cent by 2050.So in some ways this nuclear debate's a smokescreen for not acting on climate change today.ELEANOR HALL: And that's the Executive Director of the Australian Conservation Foundation, Don Henry, ending David Mark's report.