Antinuclear

Last month, Goldsworthy announced that the ASX-listed Silex Systems would look to jettison its solar assets and focus instead on its uranium laser enrichment technology, confident that the global nuclear industry would rebound and that his technology would be worth billions within a decade.

Now its partners, GE and Hitachi, have dashed the plans by suspending all work on the nuclear technology.

Two of the world’s biggest suppliers to the nuclear industry no longer have faith in the industry. Silex shares crashed in response. The Tony Abbott government, it seems, is prepared to do exactly the same, jettison the country’s renewable energy industry and achievements in favour of a belief that the centralised form of generation will remain dominant for decades to come, and that nuclear will one day be the answer.

Numerous studies suggest that this is nonsense, that the emergence of solar, storage and software solutions will results in at least half the world’s electricity generated (and stored) ‘on site’.

But the conservative side of politics doesn’t want to know. It wants to extend the life of fossil fuel generators, pursue various of forms of emission reduction technologies for coal generators through its Direct Action plan, and leave the door open for nuclear.

The nuclear option is as yet unstated by the Abbott government, but you don’t have to scratch far beneath the surface to reveal a deep-seated belief in nuclear energy.

Abbott has surrounded himself with nuclear advocates. Most significantly, the man he appointed to adjudge the fate of the renewable energy target, and the wind and solar industries in Australia, climate change denier Dick Warburton, is convinced that nuclear is the only alternative to coal.

In an opinion piece he co-wrote for Quadrant magazine in 2011, Warburton wrote:

‘Except for nuclear power, there are no straightforward strategies for reducing dependence on fossil fuels without large economic costs. Wind and solar generators often cannot function when needed.’
Others in Abbott’s orbit of business advisors share similar views. So do many of his cabinet colleagues and backbenchers.

Industry minister Ian Macfarlane has explicitly written in nuclear as a consideration for the upcoming energy white paper.

In an issues paper released last December, Macfarlane’s team wrote that  nuclear technologies continue ‘to present an option for future reliable energy that can be readily dispatched into the market’.

It also says: ‘A growing area of global interest is in the use of small modular reactors, which have the potential to reduce the cost uncertainties and construction time frames associated with current generation reactor designs.’

The conservative commentariat is full of references to nuclear as a potential solution to safe-guarding Australia’s cheap energy status ………….http://www.echo.net.au/2014/07/time-abbott-dump-secret-nuclear-ambitions/#comment-1776807