The world's energy_ Nuclear power still important: Garnaut

Nuclear power still important: Garnaut

April 5, 2011 - 4:55PM
SMH

The federal government's chief climate adviser Professor Ross Garnaut believes nuclear power still has a vital role to play in global efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, despite the crisis at Japan's Fukushima Daiichi plant.

Professor Garnaut told scientists at the CSIRO's Greenhouse 2011 conference in Cairns that nuclear power would play a significant part in reducing emissions in developing countries such as China.

"Despite the tragedy in Japan, nuclear energy has an important part in the world's energy future," he told the conference.

Advertisement: Story continues below Speaking to reporters outside the conference, Professor Garnaut said the task of tackling climate change would be much harder without nuclear power.

"The global task of mitigating climate change will be more difficult and expensive if nuclear energy doesn't play a significant role in the energy future especially in the rapidly growing economies of Asia, especially China," he said.

However, he said authorities would need to wait until after studies into the Fukushima disaster had been carried out before making decisions about the viability of nuclear energy.

"I think we all have to wait and see what comes out of the studies that are being carried by Japanese agencies and international agencies. We will learn a lot from that."

Nevertheless, he said it made little sense for Australia to shift to nuclear power while it had an abundance of alternative resources.

He said it was more cost effective to use Australia's natural gas supplies for domestic energy consumption, while other alternative technologies were developed, and export uranium because it was more expensive to ship gas.

"In pure economic terms while natural gas remains a significant fuel it makes more sense for us to burn the natural gas and export uranium."

AAP