KEY POINTS:
Prime Minister John Howard has set a nuclear timebomb ticking in Australian politics, placing atomic power firmly on the national agenda.
His long-stated belief that nuclear energy is a clean option for the future - especially as pressure increases to attack global warming - has been echoed in a Government-sponsored study that envisages a chain of 25 reactors around the continent.
Most would be sited near major population centres.
It is not the first time Australia has considered it. Several decades ago a similar policy ran against an economic and political barricade that in the end allowed only the construction of the small research reactor at Lucas Heights in Sydney.
That reactor has shown that the problems of the original plan would be repeated - and magnified - should an Australian Government decide to go nuclear. Not only was the replacement of the ageing reactor furiously opposed by local residents and anti-nuclear activists, but Canberra has never been able to convince anyone to allow the relatively tiny amount of waste it produces to be stored near them.
Nor have the politics essentially changed, although the ground has shifted significantly: advocates of nuclear power are promoting the atom as a clean alternative to fossil fuels, and a weapon against climate change.
But the publication of the report of a taskforce led by former Telstra chief Ziggy Switkowski, who is also a nuclear physicist, has formally opened a debate that has been stewing for years.
Already, it has won significant support from conservative politicians, industry and sectors of science. But it has been condemned by Labor and the left, environmental groups and opposing scientists.
Switkowski's report also presents extremely difficult and opposing choices for both sides, especially on such issues as greenhouse-tied carbon pricing, the future of the vast Australian coal industry - which is already in hot pursuit of "clean" coal-fired energy - and renewable energy.
In essence, Switkowski's taskforce found that nuclear energy is a practical proposition for Australia, with a string of 25 reactors producing more than one-third of Australia's energy by 2050. The first nuclear-generated electricity could flow into the national grid within 10-15 years.
Its report says this would help reduce greenhouse gas emissions, with significant economic spinoffs through uranium enrichment that would add A$1.8 billion to annual uranium exports.
The report also claims the continent's vast, empty interior could accommodate a nuclear waste dump - which would not be needed for 40 years - and that an Australian nuclear industry would not increase the risk of nuclear weapons proliferation.
But there are major caveats: nuclear power would be up to 50 per cent more expensive than coal or gas-fired generation, requiring the Government to impose a carbon price of A$15 to A$40 a tonne on coal. Subsidies could possibly still be needed, even with a carbon tax.
This presents Howard with a political migraine. He is committed to promoting the efficiency of coal and insists he will not damage the industry's competitive advantage with a carbon tax unless rival producers are forced to do likewise under an international agreement. Howard continues to refuse to sign the Kyoto Protocols, and any real, effective alternative is well over the present horizon.
In short, if Switkowski's argument on pricing is accepted, Howard cannot economically promote nuclear energy unless he turns on the coal industry.
Nor is that his only problem.
Labor and the left oppose nuclear energy and uranium enrichment, the states want nothing to do with it, and the vast grassroots opposition that so firmly held uranium mining in check is beginning to rumble again.
Outrage would certainly inflame passions and politics wherever a nuclear reactor was proposed.
Safety remains a real fear, regardless of the statistics the nuclear industry provides. So does waste: Canberra was forced to abandon plans for a small Outback nuclear waste dump because of implacable opposition.
The scientific debate is already gathering steam. A newly formed panel of scientists, engineers and nuclear policy experts called EnergyScience Coalition, supported by the University of Melbourne, is leading the charge.
"We have supported the EnergyScience project to provide a factual and scientifically informed counterweight to the primarily pro-nuclear voices on Ziggy Switkowski's panel," said Professor Jim Falk, director of the University's Centre for Science, Innovation and Society.
Yesterday Greenpeace released a review of the Switkowski report by what it described as an international panel of experts, which said that the taskforce's findings were fundamentally flawed and had seriously misled the Australian public.
The science used by the nuclear lobby is equally strong on the benefits, promoting low greenhouse gas emissions - about one 20th of that produced by brown coal - and the comparative safety of the industry.
Figures in the report show that between 1969 and 2000 there was only one severe nuclear accident - at Chernobyl - compared with more than 1200 in coal-generated plants, almost 400 in the oil industry, and more than 200 in the gas industry. While the report places the number of direct fatalities from Chernobyl at 31, more than 4000 locals have contracted thyroid cancer, with another 5000 people facing premature death in outlying areas.
Nuclear power will not come quietly to Australia.
