Peta Credlin: Nuclear power needs to be addressed by our politicians

We need to overturn the Howard-era law that makes generating nuclear power illegal so politicians can tiptoe towards a sensible discussion about the important issue, Peta Credlin writes.

Maybe, just maybe, as a country we’re starting to tiptoe our way towards a sensible discussion on nuclear power.

After all, if climate change really is the greatest moral challenge humanity faces, and if man-made carbon dioxide emissions really are the villain, why wouldn’t we be considering the only well-proven way to generate emissions-free baseload power?

First, though, we’d need to overturn the Howard-era law (a concession to the Greens and Labor to get nuclear medicine amendments through the Senate) that makes generating nuclear power illegal, even though we’ve had a nuclear reactor producing the isotopes needed for cancer treatment operating safely at Lucas Heights on Sydney’s southern fringes for decades.

Until the legal prohibition is lifted, there’s no way there’ll be any proposal for nuclear power, despite the contribution it could make to reducing emissions and despite the development of new “modular” reactors, like those in nuclear-powered ships.

Political commentator Peta Credlin. Picture: Sky News

Last week saw the first stirrings for change. After Barnaby Joyce up-ended the government’s legislative agenda by moving a pro-coal amendment, five National Party MPs flagged their intention go rogue with an amendment to allow the Clean Energy Finance Corporation to fund nuclear projects.

After a poll in The Australian showed two-thirds of Coalition backbenchers wanted the nuclear ban scrapped, two Labor senators chimed in calling for Labor’s position to change too.

So far, the Prime Minister is saying that the government won’t shift unless Labor does. That’s provided increasingly bolshie Nats don’t force his hand. And why wouldn’t this be one of the few issues on which an ultra-cautious PM is ready to fight?

Not only do 31 countries already have nuclear power plants, including the US, Britain, Spain, South Korea, Japan, Belgium, Sweden, Switzerland and France (where nuclear produces 70 per cent of all electricity) but we supply many of them with uranium.

Indeed, we have about a third of the world’s uranium reserves and about 10 per cent of global production.

As with coal, we can mine uranium and export it but not use it. It doesn’t make sense. That’s why this could be such a good issue for the government.

If Labor maintains that we should export uranium but not use it ourselves, they’re hypocritical; but if Labor were to ban its export as well as its use, they’d not only be ridiculous but anti-jobs.

For a prime minister gearing up for an election, it doesn’t get better than that.

Watch Peta Credlin on Sky News, weeknights at 6pm