Gray seeks national discussion about nuclear power

The climate change conversation is complex in the extreme, but is little more than a friendly neighbourhood chat compared to the emotion-charged discussion about nuclear power.

Federal Resources Minister,
 Gary Gray, he wants a
national discussion about
nuclear power.

Discussion devoid of logic and driven by argument pining for fact herds reason into a cul-de-sac leaving the nuclear power advocates on an isthmus that a flood a disapproval is about to cut loose from the mainland.

Traditional power sources, primarily coal, are clearly responsible for many thousands of deaths, maybe even millions, while deaths nuclear power faults on a comparative basis, relatively few.

The discovery of coal and the subsequent realization that it’s energy could be accessed by humans and used for many purposes freeing them from a paradigm in which the prime sources of energy were sun, wind, water, human and animal to open a new vista in which fossil-fuel energy freed them from their daily drudgeries and without those natural limitations, humans flourished.

As with everything, however, there are unintended consequences and so after more than two centuries of gouging on reserves nature had put aside, the party, to use Richard Heinberg’s words, is over for we have damaged the climate (at least in human terms) to such an extent, that the only exist open to us is a return to sun, wind, water, human and animal power.

There is, however, still another fossil energy that humanity has until now only, in the greater scheme of things, really simply fiddled with. That is a suggestion that the French would unquestionably take umbrage with for some seventy per cent of their power come from this source.

Uranium, an energy-rich fossil fuel, allows for nuclear power and being effectively free of carbon-dioxide emissions, it stands as a genuine alternative to meet the world’s energy needs and when considered in isolation it would be a major step in mitigating global warming.

Federal Government Resources Minister, Gary Gray, wants Australian’s to objectively and honestly discuss and although he didn’t say so much, such a discussion would only produce an effective result if each of us were able to enter it in a non-ideological manner.

Mr Gray talked about the need for a national discussion about nuclear power at the recent Australian Uranium and Rare Earths conference in Perth.

The ABC report on the matter in a story headed: “Federal Resources Minister Gary Gray wants nuclear Australia debate”.