Jackie Kelly (Lindsay, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I would like to echo the comments of the member for Lyons in terms of the efforts of Russell and Jerome and the staff of this committee for the work that they have done on what is technically, I think, one of the most comprehensive reports that this parliament has produced in some time. It does go into scientific detail in a way that is necessary to educate the public on uranium mining, and also the uranium industry as a whole, from enrichment and fabrication through to use in power plants and subsequent disposal. But it does not go into the cost of these things, such as the cost of a fabrication plant or an enrichment plant. It does not go into the likelihood or feasibility of any of that happening in Australia. Similarly, it does not go into the cost-effectiveness of a power station. Hence, the recommendations are qualified in terms of the cost-effectiveness.

It is no surprise to those on the committee that I have been strongly anti-nuclear since, I think, my school days—call it the Chernobyl factor, the Three Mile Island factor or what you will. I have an inherent dislike of nuclear power stations—a nervousness. There were years of scientific evidence that said how safe Chernobyl and Three Mile Island were, and these things just keep on rolling along.

The political costs are a critical thing that needs to be built into any comparison of nuclear energy and coal. That is something we did not really investigate, but I have done a lot of investigation of the American experience. They operate a number of power stations and, clearly, as this report indicates, all the waste is kept on site. As the power stations get newer and newer, the waste can be kept on site in ‘swimming pools’. The waste gets less radioactive, but eventually—and no-one disputes this—it must go somewhere.

The US power industry has levied that industry at 1½ per cent for 30 years now. In that time, that levy has raised over $US40 billion—and $US20 billion of that has been spent on trying to find a terminal solution at Yucca Mountain, in Nevada. Nevada—surprise, surprise—has three seats in the US House of Representatives. One seat is held by the Republicans, one seat is held by the Democrats and one is a marginal seat. At the recent elections, the marginal seat was barely retained by the incumbent Republican after a very long struggle. The future of Yucca Mountain was one of the key things on which he distinguished himself from the other candidates. He had a very strong pro local position of: ‘Not in my backyard; put it in someone else’s backyard.’

I fear that the typical reaction to nuclear power stations right throughout Australia will be: ‘Not in my backyard.’ The political cost of that needs to be calculated and factored into any competitive suggestion that nuclear power in Australia could possibly become cheaper than coal in the future. As this report shows, it would require fairly substantial imposts on the coal industry to make it anywhere near as expensive as nuclear power. Those imposts come in various forms. Carbon credits are currently trading in New South Wales at $14 a cubic tonne of carbon—and you can generate those carbon credits any which way.

There is a terrific program running in New South Wales whereby they are handing out light bulbs. The more light bulbs you hand out, the greater the credits you gain. But they found that people were not actually putting the light bulbs in the sockets. So now, to get the carbon credit, you actually have to go into the homes and put the light bulbs in the sockets—and you get carbon credits based on how many light bulbs you put in the sockets. Similarly, Greening Australia is working on a program to plant a number of trees—for which you get carbon credits that can then be traded for carbon emissions.

So how expensive does carbon have to get before it is competitive with nuclear? One of the recommendations of this committee is to build cost-effectiveness into any consideration of the impact it would have. I do not have a problem with an expansion of the three mines policy. We have been mining uranium in Australia for some time, and we have benefited from that. It makes no sense to have three super mines. Why not bust it up and have, in a competitive industry, as many people mine as want to mine? I think we all agreed on that.

This was a case study out of the committee’s main study into developing Australia’s non-fossil fuel energy industry. I really look forward to our examination of the other areas, particularly hydrogen. I think that has some fantastic possibilities in the future. Some of the emissions that we are most concerned about obviously are from our mobile transport, not just our power generators, in terms of cars and car traffic. You can see that in Beijing, Singapore, Rome, London, New York. It is the emissions coming from cars that need to be severely reduced to combat global warming. So hydrogen cars offer the best response to that.

There are some horrific figures of the number of cars in the world more than doubling over the next 10 years, so the drive to find a less polluting source than fossil fuels is huge—hydrogen is one of them—as is the drive to find a reliable green source of hydrogen. I think Australia is in a prime position, with some of our north-west Australian geographic features, to be a key deliverer in that area. We can see Australia jump from being a key provider of coal to a key provider of hydrogen into the future. I do not know that we have to go down the nuclear path at all. In the interim, I am all for mining it and making the most of our uranium resources, but I in no way endorse a nuclear industry in Australia. I do not believe that it would even economically come close to stacking up with coal before hydrogen offers us some better solutions in combating greenhouse gases.

So it was a very interesting report. My colleagues on the committee were very pro uranium and the industry as a whole. I suppose I have some natural reservations. Obviously, I could be the one out in the cold, because I did a straw poll of a couple of schools I was at recently. I noticed the nuclear fuel cycle was running on the storyboards around the classroom, so clearly the children had been studying nuclear energy. I asked, ‘Who’s in favour of nuclear energy?’ thinking that it would be like when I was at school and there would be a blanket ‘No’—that 100 per cent would just go ‘No’. Fifty per cent of the children actually said yes. So it could be like the republican debate: I could be out of touch with my electorate, especially the younger people coming through who obviously did not grow up under the cloud of nuclear obliteration from the old Cold War days or grow up with real-time experiences of Chernobyl and Three Mile Island happening in their lifetime. Clearly the younger generation have a much more scientific and forensic examination of the industry and future power sources for Australia.

Besides those reservations that I have, I commend the report to the committee. It is very technically drafted. It covers a lot of the information that most people need to know. I find it very easy to read—for the nontechnophobes or the technophobes of our parliament. So I do recommend it to my colleagues, especially given the whole nuclear debate which is generating in Australia as we move to the big question of what comes after coal. In the interim I still remain wedded to coal, and I think that marriage will go on long enough to see us jump to hydrogen before we need to resort to nuclear energy in Australia.

Debate (on motion by Ms Hall) adjourned.

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