What? The Labor party appears to be promoting the Nuclear Debate!

Huzzah!

In the last couple of days I've seen various articles like this one about Labor planning to put the nuclear debate on the agenda. About friggin' time!

I mean seriously no political party has actually had a proper look at nuclear power, the Green's will probably never realise that it is probably the best answer to reducing the carbon cost of base load power and the other parties have been scared to raise the issue for fear of the political backlash from the uninformed masses.

The biggest problem is that people aren't even willing to discuss it. It's the hottest political potato around, whenever it is mentioned the issue gets tossed to the side. The recent moves by Senator Bishop and others to defy the 'official ban' on nuclear power within the Labor party and to raise awareness should be applauded.

Personally I am convinced that Nuclear Power is the best solution for Australia's base load power needs now and moving into the future. We have a significant portion of the worlds Uranium resources, the technological ability to build a plant and excellent places to store the minimal waste that is generated by nuclear power.

What we need from this debate is to realise that:

1. There are methods of nuclear power generation that don't lead to proliferation of nuclear weapons
2. There are methods of nuclear power generation that generate minimal nuclear waste
3. There is more radioactive material generated from the burning of coal than the equivalent waste for generating the same amount of power from nuclear energy.
4. Nuclear's weakness, that is the storage and disposal of waste, is its strength, the only output from a nuclear reactor is heat and a small amount of radioactive material, Coal spews forth large amounts of carbon dioxide, soot, etc that can not be efficiently captured and stored.

I believe that eventually Australia will have nuclear power stations but it may take many years and lots of ill conceived wind farms before we get there. To encourage the debate and hopefully educate some people to the benefits and not just the downsides of nuclear power is a great step in the right direction. Now if only we could dial back the political point scoring from baseless scaremongering we may be on the right track.

After I wrote this post the 7PM Project posted a story discussing the issue, looks like they are planning to talk about it tonight.

Oh and in answer to their question.

Would you like a power station in the neighbourhood?

I would be fine with living near a Nuclear power plant, however as I chose to live in the inner city I doubt that its going to happen.