4 Call for 50 nuclear electricity stations

FORMER Telstra boss Ziggy Switkowski says Australia should build 50 nuclear power stations by the middle of the century.

FORMER Telstra boss Ziggy Switkowski says Australia should build 50 nuclear power stations by the middle of the century, doubling the size of the sector he outlined to John Howard three years ago.

Dr Switkowski, chairman of the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation, will tell a conference today that his 2006 review of the nation's nuclear options was too conservative.

Instead of the 25 civil reactors he called for in his report to the former Coalition government, to produce one-third of the electricity supply by 2050, Australia should build 50 nuclear plants generating up to 90 per cent of baseload power.

"While this is a particularly extreme scenario, the fact is that nuclear power ... contains within it the answer to our climate challenges," Dr Switkowski told The Australian last night.

"It gives us clean energy, it gives us baseload electricity, it will be the lowest cost option for Australia from the 2020s."

While he acknowledged that the nuclear option was opposed by Labor under Kevin Rudd, Dr Switkowski said the public was increasingly open to the idea as concern intensified over global warming.

He will tell a national symposium of the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering in Brisbane that international experience suggested the first nuclear plant could be commissioned in Australia within a decade, not the 15-year timeframe he reported to Mr Howard.

A national network of 50 reactors, to be built from 2020, would require 13 to 25 sites given that nuclear plants were typically clustered in configurations of two to four units.

Countries with existing nuclear power industries, including Britain, France and Japan, had population densities greater than Australia's, and had identified sites for many more reactors than would ever be required here.

Generally, reactors needed to be built near the coast, but the sites in Australia would be no closer to major population centres than existing coal or gas-fired power stations.

"The task of finding suitable locations in Australia is simple, even if the political and social challenges may be difficult, at least for the first step," Dr Switkowski said.