Antinuclear

Writing in The Australian today, Senator Leyonhjelm says the environmental problems ­associated with nuclear power are “greatly exaggerated”.

He says it is true that the clean-up of the Fukushima site in Japan, which was badly damaged by a tsunami in 2011, would be costly, but “No one at Fukushima was exposed to enough radiation to get so much as a runny nose’’.

Senator Leyonhjelm says renewable energy such as solar and wind farms routinely occupy huge swaths of land for relatively small returns.

“You need to have drunk a particularly strong ideological kool-aid to believe a technology that covers the landscape in metal is good for the environment,’’ he says. “The volume of nuclear waste produced by nuclear power is smaller than most people are led to believe, it can be safely stored, and is likely to become re-usable as technology develops.”