We'll be a nuclear nation in five years

Adelaide Advertiser
Wednesday 18/3/2009 Page: 11

A DECISION to build a nuclear reactor in Australia will be made within five years, nuclear advocate Ziggy Switkowski says. Dr Switkowski, chairman of the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation and a former Telstra chief executive, said yesterday the community was not yet ready for nuclear energy, but the tide was turning.

Speaking at the Paydirt 2009 Uranium Conference in Adelaide, he said polls showed more than half of the community now supported nuclear energy - but not where they lived.

"The community is not yet ready for nuclear energy and therefore I understand the position of politicians who don't want to move ahead of community opinion," he said. "Over time, the government will find, as other governments have, nuclear energy is too important and effective a source of clean energy to be ignored.

"I think we're two to five years away from that." Dr Switkowski said nuclear had to be part of the solution if the Government was serious about tackling climate change. "Targeted deep greenhouse gas emission reductions will almost certainly prove beyond the capability of existing technologies and renewable energy platforms to deliver in the available time," he said.

"Our lights will start to go out as investment in clean, base-load energy generation stalls in an uncertain regulatory environment and the nuclear alternative is not validated." Dr Switkowski said 31 countries, representing two-thirds of humanity, used nuclear energy for some electricity. "That is expected to grow to 50 countries by 2020," he said.