Antinuclear

Martin Ferguson, Top Nuclear Salesman will lead push for nuclear power

Unlike fellow Labor party member Mr Ferguson, Ms Gillard says that in Australia, “nuclear power doesn’t stack up as an economically efficient source of power”.

Nuclear Debate On the Agenda for 2011 | Australia | Epoch Times, By Shar Adams, 22 Dec 10,“………..The Australian Labor Party (ALP) has long had a policy of caution about the nuclear industry, stating in its National Platform that uranium and the nuclear fuel cycle “present unique and unprecedented hazards and risks”.Their nuclear policy lists threats to human health, nuclear weapons manufacture and dangerous nuclear waste as major concerns. The policy will “prohibit the establishment in Australia of nuclear power plants and all other stages of the nuclear fuel cycle”

Energy Minister Martin Ferguson, however, has declared that Labor’s policy on uranium is now up for debate. With growing support within the party, Mr Ferguson has put it on the agenda for the ALP national conference next year, declaring in The Daily Telegraph: “They have as much right to discuss nuclear at the 2011 conference as other people have to debate the issue of gay and lesbian marriage.”……….
While it remains to be seen who in Australia will have the reactor in their backyard, Dr Mark Diesendorf, from the Institute of Environmental Studies at the University of New South Wales, says there are many concerns with the nuclear push. Building a nuclear reactor is “a huge construction project” that could take up to 15 years to build, he told The Epoch Times. The costs involved are already prohibitive and going up.

Concerns about the impact on public health, waste disposal and the risk of nuclear weapons remain after decades of debate, while talk about the benefits and cost effectiveness of future generation nuclear reactors is still just talk, Dr Diesendorf says.

While nuclear energy has been “massively subsidised” by governments around the world, it is still costly compared to renewable sources. Dr Diesendorf says that if that money had been directed towards renewables, the world would be far more advanced in sustainable energy supplies. ………

Unlike fellow Labor party member Mr Ferguson, Ms Gillard says that in Australia, “nuclear power doesn’t stack up as an economically efficient source of power”.
Australia is in a different situation to other nations that needed nuclear power, Ms Gillard says.

“We’ve got abundant sources of renewable energy. We are very focused on our record investment in solar and renewable technologies. We’ve got abundant energy from those sources,” she said on Melbourne radio 3AW.

Nuclear Debate On the Agenda for 2011 | Australia | Epoch Times

December 22, 2010 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | AUSTRALIA - NATIONAL, people, politics