Australia should adopt large-scale nuclear power stations to fight climate change, which would mean building six or seven reactors along the coast between Sydney, Newcastle and Wollongong, according to a new paper in the journal Energy.
The Australian scientists Martin Nicholson, Tom Biegler and Barry Brook compared the cost of transforming electricity production away from coal and argue nuclear power is twice as cheap as switching to large-scale solar energy.
This conclusion is disputed by many scientists and environment groups, but the paper said discussion of the potential for renewable energy often ”ignores real-world practicalities and leads to over-optimistic conclusions”.
It is an attempt to revitalise the divisive debate about nuclear energy, which has languished in Australia since a government-commissioned report in 2006 found it would take 10 to 15 years to build just one power station.
Professor Brook said he expected it to take 10 to 15 years before public opinion would allow nuclear reactors in Australia.
”If political decisions dominate, you could always put them close to the existing coal-fired power stations and use the sources of water that the coal-fired plants already use,” he said. ”But in coastal locations there is a ready supply of salt water for cooling.”
Professor Ian Lowe, the president of the Australian Conservation Foundation, said the report was deeply flawed.
”Given that wind or solar thermal could be providing cheap, low-carbon power within a year or two, and a reactor is probably decades away, there is simply no convincing argument for it.
”Nor are these decisions just about economics - you can’t avoid the issues of radioactive waste management or of nuclear weapons proliferation.”
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has said the security threat from a proliferation of nuclear technology would be ”colossal”.
