The compelling case for nuclear

 
Dr Ziggy Switkowski: "The case for nuclear is it's a base load source of electricity, the technology is established so you're not speculating upon the next generation of nuclear technology.  It's affordable and in an environment like Australia the continent is geologically stable and we have a very sophisticated workforce.  All of those things come together alongside the world's richest sources of uranium to present, in my opinion, a compelling case for nuclear power.  Well the support for nuclear power in Australia had been growing quite consistently so that pre Fukushima, more Australians were in favour of nuclear power than against and that was a very positive development.  Then Fukushima obviously set that course back, but in a way it also demonstrated that in the worst of all circumstances which I think the tsunami and earthquake in the tsunami, and the flooding and the Fukushima incident demonstrated that the response could be such that the damage, the cost, the environmental consequences were both understandable and manageable.  So in Australia we have a geography that is benign, we have a network of coal fired power stations which demonstrate that we could have a similar network of nuclear power stations that require the same sort of environment.  And we have an energy hungry society and it just seems to point to the fact that if we do want to move away from a fossil fuel based economy, by having placed industrial strength electricity generating network that at the heart of that should be nuclear power."

Categories: Australia Energy Issues, Environment
Author: Dr Ziggy Switkowski
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