Western nations move to increase their reliance on nuclear energy

Used in 32 countries to provide 10 per cent of the world’s electricity, nuclear power is making a resurgence due to carbon neutrality pledges and the concerns surrounding energy security following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Recent announcements by nations to increase reliance on nuclear power include South Korea reversing the former government’s policy to phase out its nuclear power plants; Japan restarting its reactors as well as investing in fourth-generation technologies; Britain planning on eight more reactors to have nuclear contribute 25 per cent of electricity by 2050; France, already obtaining 75 per cent of its electricity from nuclear, revitalising the industry through the construction of up to 14 large-scale plants as well as investment in small reactors; and the US enacting measures to keep the country’s 93 nuclear reactors operating, as well as investing in new nuclear technologies.

And we expect our AUKUS partners, the US and the UK, to trust us to run a nuclear submarine program when we don’t even have a single nuclear power plant.

Ron Hobba, Camberwell, Vic

Hope turns to ashes

I loved Paola Totaro’s article, “Raising the spirits of Paris”, (16-17/4). The will of man to rebuild is extraordinary. Just look at Paris’s Notre-Dame Cathedral. Ukraine’s churches – places of worship, meeting places, keepers of records prior to government collection of certificates of births, deaths and marriages. Hope turning to ashes as I write. Erased with their people. Why?

Claudia Tregoning (nee Marconi), South Plympton, SA

Cold comfort

What a sad letter written by Roy McKeen (Letters, 16-17/4). He quotes from Peter Craven’s article, “The Power and the Passion” (14/4). It is a positive article, but Craven quotes a novel, The Master and Margarita, by Mikhail Bulgakov. It is a story about Jesus as a “preposterous concoction”. McKeen goes on to denigrate Jesus. “We no longer believe such a preposterous concoction. It is fake news.” Whereas Christians know Jesus is King of kings and Lord of lords. The Bible is the living word of God.

Robyn Daly, Montrose, Vic

Roy McKeen’s confidence in his Jesus myth over a miraculous Son of God must give him some comfort. The seemingly preposterous notion of a once dead and bodily risen Jesus returning to judge all humanity is an idea that must bring no comfort to 21st-century cynics.

Michael Deal, Enfield, NSW

Informed belief

Congratulations to The Weekend Australian for the well-balanced articles on domestic and world affairs in its Inquirer section over the Easter weekend.

In Greg Sheridan’s depiction of what Easter means for the beleaguered people of Ukraine, where Christian belief burns brightly, he highlights the philosopher St Augustine of Hippo (“Union of heaven and earth”). It was St Augustine who said “the world is a book and those who don’t travel read only one page”.

For those of us who are pensioners, incapacitated, unvaccinated or otherwise unable to travel because of Covid mandates, The Australian is a welcome book of informed journalistic news that helps us turn the pages and makes the day enjoyable.

John Bell, Heidelberg Heights, Vic

You might not agree with much or indeed anything of what Greg Sheridan writes of Christianity, the teachings of Jesus, or heaven and hell but you have to admire Sheridan’s expression of faith and the divine tone of his words.

George Fishman, Vaucluse, NSW

So long as a national newspaper can continue to print the sort of article written by Greg Sheridan, who uncompromisingly lays out the essence of Christianity with its supernatural orientation and all, then I agree with Angela Shanahan (“How Christianity looks on the bright side of irrationality”, 16-17/4) that “we don’t really need a religious freedom bill because we already have it”. Your newspaper embodies this freedom in the most emphatic way. Thank you.

Neville Clark, Battery Point, Tas

Angela Shanahan states as fact, and without qualification, that “God is not an irrational fallacy. God is as real as the cosmos he created”.

She is, of course, entitled to her faith but surely that statement should have begun with “I believe”, or “I think”. Beliefs aren’t facts.

As the Concise Oxford English Dictionary so deftly frames this distinction in its definition, “faith”, in the theological sense, is the “spiritual apprehension of divine truth apart from proof”.

If God is, indeed, “real” and created the cosmos as Shanahan asserts, then she should be able to prove it rather then presenting those beliefs as fact.

David Salter, Hunters Hill, NSW