canberra.yourguide: "How Swiss warmed to nuclear"

COMPARISONS between Australia and Switzerland would find little in common - at least that's what I thought before I joined a study tour of Swiss high-tech research institutions and manufacturers last month.
"Our venture capital sector is small and risk-averse." That kind of plaint is often heard in Australia, but the speaker was Lesley Spiegel, managing director of Technopark Zurich, a business incubator in a formerly run-down industrial sector of the city.
Despite - or because of - Switzerland's legendary banking sector, home-grown venture capital is as hard to find there as here. Seems the conservative approach has served the gnomes of Zurich so well, they rarely feel inclined to take a punt on taking a punt.
"This is typical Swiss behaviour - looking for a niche to play in." The speaker is Dr Franz-Anton Glaser, president of Robotec Solutions, which develops bespoke software for industrial robots.
His market is Europe, but he heads a small company in a high-cost country with a small domestic market, so he has to export to survive and his product has to be special to justify its cost. Sound familiar?
Like many Australian companies trying to break into the Asian or US market, Robotec has developed a specialised niche skill - programming robots made in Japan to perform in European factories.
Also like many Australian companies, Robotec has struggled from time to time and has had to rely on funding and other assistance from federal and local governments to survive.
Global warming is another common experience.
Although their last winter was longer and colder than most Swiss are used to, average temperatures have been trending upwards over recent decades. But when it comes to the contribution both countries make to global emissions of the gases causing global warming, the differences could hardly be starker.
Australia generates about 95 per cent of its electricity by burning fossil fuels, mostly coal, the rest coming mainly from the Snowy and Tasmanian hydro generators and a little from wind farms.
Because of our relatively small population, our comparatively expensive material expectations, and the fact that we use a lot of power to produce exports like alumina, we are in the top echelon of greenhouse emitters on a per-capita basis.
Our reliance on fossil fuels is a function of opportunity - we have heaps of coal - and history. The Swiss story is equally shaped by opportunity and history, but the outcome is a mirror image of Australia.
On the latest figures available, less than 5 per cent of Swiss electricity is generated by burning fossil fuels, mainly gas. The biggest source of power is hydro - about 56 per cent - and the remaining 40 per cent comes from five nuclear power stations.
Hydro is the energy source of opportunity - they have heaps of fast-flowing rivers - while nuclear is the source based on necessity and history.
Necessity because the hydro opportunity has largely been realised and Switzerland has no coal or gas to speak of. History because after World War II the Swiss decided to apply their engineering prowess to developing a nuclear-energy industry. Australia did that, too, but pulled out; Switzerland stuck with it despite major setbacks.
The worst came with the meltdown of a small pilot plant that had been operating for about three years in an underground cavern. Despite that experience the Swiss remained committed to nuclear energy. Their first nuclear power plant, a 350-megawatt unit in Beznau, began operating in the same year. In the next 15 years, four more would come online.
The 970Mw Gosgen plant is about a kilometre from the town of Daniken and less than a half-hour train ride from Zurich. It is a big generator (the Kogan Creek coal-fired power station under construction in Queensland will have a capacity of 700Mw) and has been operating for more than 25 years. It was first connected to the grid a month before the accident at Three Mile Island, in the US, in March 1979, delaying its commissioning until the end of that year.
Would Australians be comfortable living so close to a nuclear power station? Not according to the Labor Party and anti-nuke campaigners whose contribution to the current debate over nuclear power is focused on the scare tactic of naming possible sites.
The Swiss have had their doubts. At least two proposed nuclear power plants have been rejected, mainly because of local opposition, but the history of public opinion shows a growing acceptance of nuclear energy that was temporarily stalled by the Chernobyl disaster of 1989. In February 1979, a narrow majority of 51.2 per cent rejected a referendum proposal to forbid new nuclear plants and close down existing ones. In 1984, 55 per cent voted against a move to forbid future nuclear plants and in 1990 a proposal to phase out nuclear power was rejected by 52.9 per cent but a 10-year moratorium on new plants was supported by 54.6 per cent.
In their most recent vote, in 2003, 58.4 per cent of Swiss voters rejected a ban on construction of new nuclear plants until 2010 and 66.3 per cent voted against closing nuclear plants after 30 years' operation.
Underpinning this trend towards stronger public acceptance of nuclear power is the experience of several decades of living with it.
It is an area of major difference with Australia, but it remains to be seen whether the shared experience of global warming will lead to a convergence in how these two small rich nations satisfy their appetite for energy.
Simon Grose travelled to Switzerland as a guest of the Swiss Government.