Australian govt to bankroll a nuclear opinion survey

Federal funds to test popular opinion on nuclear power

THE AUSTRALIAN : Jamie Walker | September 11, 2009

THE federal government will fund research to test public opinion on nuclear power,………… The study, bankrolled by the Australian Research Council at a cost of $133,500, could expose new pressure points to shift public sentiment in favour of the controversial energy option.

The project has been backed by the ARC, a statutory authority within the federal government’s Innovation, Industry, Science and Research portfolio………..Project leader Daniela Stehlik, a professor of sociology at Perth’s Curtin University of Technology, said the study would test whether concern about climate change was causing attitudes to shift towards the more emissions-friendly option of nuclear power.

Opinion polls show that many more Australians oppose the establishment of a nuclear power industry than support it, though the gap is closing slightly. A 2007 Newspoll commissioned by The Australia Institute found 46 per cent of people were against nuclear power, compared with

36 per cent for it. However, a growing proportion – 18 per cent – was undecided.

A Newspoll for The Australian in March 2007, eight months before the last federal election, showed that anti-nuclear sentiment hardened decisively when people were questioned on the prospect of having a reactor in their local areas. Two-thirds were against this, with only 25 per cent in favour.

Professor Stehlik said Australians had difficulty in coming to terms with the idea of nuclear power because they had no direct experience of it – unlike people in Europe, Japan or the US, which had large and long-established civil programs.

“With coal-fired power stations, you have at least seen one … with nuclear, Australians can’t tell what it’s like … they haven’t actually seen a plant in operation or talked to the people who work there,” she said.

“Part of the issue, I think, is that nuclear power is really still in our imagination.”

As a result, Australians tended to equate nuclear with negative connotations, such as the atom bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki to end World War II, or nuclear power plant accidents at Three Mile Island in the US and Chernobyl in the then Soviet Union.  http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/business/story/0,28124,26056731-5005200,00.html

September 11, 2009 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | AUSTRALIA - NATIONAL, spinbuster, uranium | aboriginal, antinuclear, Australia, nuclear, nuclear costs, radioactive, uranium