Nuclear power ‘could save reef’

ONE of Australia’s top marine scientists has teamed up with a nuclear engineer to address how nuclear power could save the Great Barrier Reef.

Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, left, and Eric McFarland say it’s time to discuss nuclear energy. Picture: Lyndon Mechielsen

ONE of Australia’s top marine scientists has teamed up with a nuclear engineer to address what they call the “elephant in the room” of the climate change debate: how nuclear power could save the Great Barrier Reef.

For Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, a co-ordinating lead author of the latest UN-backed report on global warming, it took a quantum leap in his thinking to embrace the nuclear option.

Eric McFarland, formerly a professor of nuclear engineering at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the US, convinced him it was time to kick-start discussion on whether Australia should go nuclear.

“I have definitely changed my position on this. In all these debates, it’s really important that one gets guided not by the position you have taken and stick to it — it’s about looking at the evidence and really thinking the issue through,’’ says Professor Hoegh-Guldberg, head of the University of Queensland’s Global Change Institute.

“And I think this is a case where many people … have changed their minds on the nuclear option.’’

Writing in The Australian today, the scientists argue that advanced, fourth-generation reactors could run on existing nuclear by-products and other elements, such as thorium, without pumping out dangerous radioactive waste. With its abundant reserves of uranium ore, Australia could become the “next energy superpower’’ and lower carbon emissions.

Professor Hoegh-Guldberg has warned that almost all of the Great Barrier Reef corals could be destroyed by the middle of the century unless the predicted rate of climate change is slowed.