Genie's out of the bottle - Business - Business - theage.com.au: "THE Prime Minister's concerted move to put nuclear power on the Australian agenda culminating in his appointment of Ziggy Switkowski's taskforce to examine the issue not only wakens the nuclear genie that has been asleep in Australia since the 1970s. It represents a radical change in the Government's approach to the whole of Australia's energy future.
To date, the Howard Government has been happy to bet the energy future on Australia's massive, and cheap, coal reserves. It eschewed the Kyoto system with its penalties for carbon emissions and made only the most marginal commitment to renewable energy. It also has devoted more than $500 million to low-emission energy solutions likely to target the coal industry.
Now, however, nuclear is on the agenda and significantly that is an admission that one way or another Australia faces a carbon price on its massive coal reserves. Without such an impost, nuclear energy will never be in the competitive ball park.
Given the nuclear genie is out of the bottle, one question that needs to be answered is can nuclear power be cost effective in Australia? It's a difficult and highly political question and to deal with it a series of set-piece responses need to be negotiated.
Broadly these fall into two categories. The anti-nuke position that says the industry is uncompetitive and its environmental problems are unsolvable. The nuclear lobby, meanwhile, points to the increased interest in the industry, the safety issues are solved, and it offers major possibilities for greenhouse emission reduction.
The Government's Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation's recent paper on the issue put nuclear power firmly in the ball park of current costs, claiming power stations could be built"