Antinuclear

HALF-BAKED!

Tony Webb
New Community Journal, Vol 23 (1) Issue 89 p 37

The Coalition’s plan for our energy future including Nuclear power plants is based on:
 Delivering half the electricity anticipated as needed to power homes and industry
and transition to zero carbon emissions.
 Assuming cost of building nukes in Australia which has no experience of doing this
will be about half what the most nuke-favourable evidence world-wide from
countries that do have the experience suggests is needed.
 Assuming these can be built in less than half the time evidence suggests they take to
build.
 Ignoring the evidence that current official radiation-induced cancer-risk-estimates,
on which standards for worker OH&S are based, are less than half what the evidence
from nuclear power plant workers in Europe and North America suggests is the
inevitable and unavoidable reality. Also, ignoring that the cardio-vascular and heart
disease risk from such exposures is double that expected and the childhood
leukaemia risk in the community near these plants has been similarly under-
estimated.
 Not to mention that the coalition’s costings ignore the long-term costs of
decommissioning these plants, the management, and (perhaps . . . . Dutton dream
on!) eventually finding a solution for long-term storage (never ‘disposal’) of the
highly radioactive wastes –
 Nor to mention the fact that state and federal legislation currently prohibits such
nuclear power plants and is unlikely to be overturned any time in the near future.
 And – despite this overwhelming evidence that the whole silly idea is half-baked – in
fact a smokescreen for continuing climate denial and extending use of polluting and
planet life-threatening fossil fuels, inface of this the Coalition doubles down on it
with backing from sections of the media and the fossil fuel lobby.

April 21, 2025 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | politics