Embrace nuclear to reduce emissions

This one issue lays bare the hypocrisy in the "green" movement for all to see. On the one hand, they whine about reducing emissions to "tackle climate change", yet on the other they refuse to accept the only feasible emission-free source of electricity: nuclear generation.

Still bogged down in the "Nuclear Power? No thanks!" bumper-sticker mentality of the 1970s, they claim that climate change is the greatest threat to humanity, yet spurn the technology that would do more to reduce emissions (assuming, of course, that CO2 drives climate) than countless ugly wind farms or acres of hopelessly inefficient solar panels. Yes, of course there are issues with nuclear power, like the storage of spent fuel. But this is something we have the capability to deal with, as evidenced by the widespread use of nuclear power throughout the developed world.

An editorial in The Canberra Times makes the point well:

For countries planning to rely on ''clean coal'' and ''renewables'' [such as Australia - Ed] there will come a day of reckoning. Emission trading costs on top of high energy costs will result in decades of global disadvantage and loss of competitiveness.

Not surprisingly for most participants at the KL conference, Australia's ''clean coal'' and ''renewables'' energy policy appeared to be an unnecessary and expensive gamble. And many remembered the December 2007 Bali climate conference, where Prime Minister Kevin Rudd ratified Kyoto and Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, stated ''I have never seen a credible scenario for reducing emissions which did not include nuclear energy.''

For once I agree with Yvo de Boer.

Read it here.