PM bets house on uranium -

THE Prime Minister, John Howard, has declared he would have no problem with a nuclear power plant being built next door to his family home in Wollstonecraft as he stepped up his push for Australians to embrace the nuclear fuel cycle.
Releasing the final report of a government taskforce on uranium mining and nuclear energy, Mr Howard said a country like Australia with abundant uranium reserves would be "crazy in the extreme" if it did not allow for the development of nuclear power.
Asked by reporters whether he would share community concerns about safety if a nuclear reactor was located next to his own home, Mr Howard said: "I wouldn't have any objection, none whatsoever. I'm serious, quite serious."
He said the taskforce headed by the former Telstra chief executive, Ziggy Switkowski, had shown there were no sound reasons to prevent expansion of uranium mining and debunked several myths about nuclear energy.
He called on state governments to lift bans on further uranium mining and exploration.
The Federal Government would respond soon to the report's recommendations to boost training of skilled workers such as geologists with uranium experience and radiation safety officers.
"Nuclear power is part of the solution both to Australia's energy and climate change challenges," Mr Howard said.
"It is not going to come immediately because it is not economic at the present time, but it will become increasingly economic as we clean up the use of coal."
His pro-nuclear comments mean the issue will figure prominently in next year's federal election. Labor says it will campaign locally on the issue by warning that nuclear plants could be built in neighbourhoods or towns if the Government was re-elected.
The report found that growing world demand for uranium gave Australia a timely opportunity to expand mining of the ore. It estimated exports of uranium oxide could double to more than $1 billion a year by 2010 if state legislative restrictions were lifted.
It gave a more qualified endorsement to processing and enrichment. Although this would add significant value to local production, there were high commercial and technological barriers to a local processing industry, it said.
The report said investment in nuclear plants would ease the challenge Australia faced in cutting greenhouse gas emissions.
But it said nuclear power would be commercially viable only if coal- and gas-fired electricity generators were obliged to meet the environmental costs of their greenhouse gas emissions through a carbon pricing scheme.
The Wilderness Society released its own report, arguing that several European countries were containing growth in greenhouse emissions without going down the nuclear path. It said this could be achieved by Australia ratifying the Kyoto Protocol and adopting a target of cutting emissions by 80 per cent by 2050.