Seriously, Bob Carr? “Nobody’s really interested in the nuclear option”
Perhaps the reason there has been no interest in developing a nuclear energy industry in Australia is because there’s been a ban on it since 1998 and since at least the 1970’s, it’s been weaponised as a “we’re all gunna die” glow in the dark, scary political football, promoted by the radical dark green, environmental left.
The ban combined with the end of times, scare tactics in effect made nuclear energy political Kryptonite and placed the prospect of it as an energy source outside the Overton window of what’s politically possible, do-able and acceptable.
Why waste political capital on something like nuclear that’s banned and therefore easily packaged and beaten up as an end of world thermonuclear narrative by the opposition.
Why go there? Who needs that kind of political grief?
But as reflected in opinion polls, times have changed and people now understand that the ban was always irrational and part of a political fix at the time.
People also now understand that if you’re not talking nuclear when talking net zero emissions by 2050, then you’re not serious.
Carr cites the Andrew Forrest and Mike Cannon-Brookes investment in Northern Territory Solar farms to buttress and reinforce his argument but does he really think that without the generous taxpayer subsidies involved in the renewable energy boondoggle to attract such investment, solar and wind would attract a second look?
Lift the ban and extend the subsidies to nuclear and Bob Carr would find all of a sudden that, “everybody’s interested in the nuclear option”.
The rich irony in all of this lies in the fact that nuclear, once the end of times boogeyman, has now been supplanted by the other end of times boogeymen climate, and in one of those strange twists of irony, it now falls to the nuclear boogeyman to help mitigate the effects of the climate boogeyman.
That is, boogeyman one needs to be harnessed to slay boogeyman two.