Nuclear energy now our only option David Barnett

THE CASE for establishing a nuclear power industry in Australia is overwhelming. It would transport us into the modern world while reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 25 per cent on the finding of Ziggy Switkowski, who conducted an inquiry for the Government.
Solar power, whether it be heating water through a panel on the roof, or generating power through a different sort of panel, is not an alternative to the generation of power from burning oil or coal.
Solar hot water works well in the Australian climate. I've had solar heaters on the roofs of three dwellings.
Solar hot water works at The Lodge, where Malcolm Fraser had it put in but it remains a personal statement of good intentions. They make a useful dent in the electricity bill, but not enough people want to make that personal statement. You can't run a factory on silicon cells. Wind turbines are already a political issue. Biofuels are putting up the price of food.
Alternative energy can only be peripheral. We do not face up to our real choice because the Greens are watermelon green on the outside and deep Trotskyite red on the inside. Their prime concern is the evil of capitalism, and they command the media. Our politicians are just not game to take them on.
Australia, which has vast reserves of both fossil fuel and uranium, faces a simple choice between failing to meet the political expectations held for the nation in the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, and developing a nuclear power industry.
The great drawback in staying with fossil fuel is that we will become an increasingly backward nation. Some 30 countries in Europe, Asia and North America produce nuclear energy. Our scientific expertise was deliberately downgraded to the production of medical isotopes under the ALP government.
When it came time to replace the submarine fleet, we had no option but to look backwards to conventional power, instead of to the larger, faster and far more effective nuclear powered submarines because we do not have the infrastructure to support such vessels.
We have dithered over nuclear power for 50 years, while the world has moved on. Newcastle, which once produced the world's cheapest steel, and Wollongong have both become industrial wastelands. We produce cafe lattes as good as any in the world, but our manufacturing has moved north, and so, increasingly are our service industries also relocating.
The inquiry conducted over six months by Ziggy Switkowski found no technical reason why we should not develop a power industry, and one good reason why we should.
It is a low emission energy option. The two cleanest means of generating power are nuclear and solar, but nuclear produces enough. Solar doesn't.
The world's first civilian nuclear power reactor came on stream 50 years ago. There are now 440 reactors generating power in 31 countries and producing 15 per cent of the worlds electricity.
In France, 80 per cent of electricity is generated in nuclear power stations. In the OECD generally, it is 22 per cent.
The International Energy Agency in its World Energy Outlook for last year observed that the world faced the twin threats of not having adequate and secure supplies of energy together with the environmental harm caused by consuming too much of it.
Switkowski expects demand for electricity to more than double by 2050, while at the same time pollution and emission levels must be brought down on today's levels.
The solution as he sees it is a fast deployment of 25 nuclear reactors by 2050, so that about one third of electricity generation is nuclear, with greenhouse gas emissions down by 18 per cent. The first of them could be operating by 2016 and certainly by 2020.
They appear to be safe. Switkowski's commission visited Chernobyl and Three Mile Island, which led to new safety standards and new reactor designs. Nuclear power plants now have very low incident and accident rates. Radiation risks are very low.
Britain, the United States, Japan and Korea are all increasing their production of power from nuclear plants, having concluded that the risks association with nuclear power generation could be managed. We agreed, Switkowski said.
Australia has a number of geologically stable sites suitable for nuclear waste, which takes 50 years to decay.
Staff will be needed for the nuclear stations. Australia would need to invest in research and development, and in education and training across a range of fields.
Australia can only benefit from the great impetus this must give to our knowledge and to the development of new institutions. Concerted effort around the world to abandon the use of chlorofluorocarbons has led to a shrinking of the hole in the ozone layer during the past four years.
We have been held back by fear of the unknown an unknown that incidentally is thoroughly known elsewhere by green activism, by ignorance and by the media that exploits issues for their emotional or political implications, rather than on their merits.
It is time to put it behind us.
David Barnett is a Canberra writer.