By PHILIP HOPKINS
THE long-term economic and social future of the Latrobe Valley is assured with nuclear energy, according to proponents of the nuclear industry, who will hold an information session in Morwell next Wednesday, September 18.
The safety and environmental benefits as well as siting, economics, grid connection and nuclear reactor types will all be outlined at the meeting in the Morwell RSL from 6pm to 8pm.
It has been organised by Nuclear For Climate Australia, WePlanet Australia and Going Fission.
Key advocates are Robert Parker, who has a Master of Nuclear Science from the ANU and is a former president of the Australian Nuclear Association, and Dr Robert Barr, OAM, an electrical engineer who is a past national president of the Electrical Energy Society of Australia. Also speaking will be Latrobe City Councillor, Graeme Middlemiss, who is a former Secretary of the Gippsland Trades and Labour Council.
Mr Parker said choosing nuclear energy meant embracing a full-blooded commitment to building national infrastructure that could benefit the nation for a century.
“Energy is the lifeblood of the Latrobe Valley providing jobs that house, feed and clothe the community,” he said.
“At least four nuclear power plants of 4.44GW total capacity can be built in Latrobe, maximising the benefits of the existing transmission capacity, work force, cooling capacity, transport and sites.
“Building these plants would employ up to 7000 workers at peak construction, meaning a fleet of four would sustain at least 14,000 jobs for at least 12 years. Best of all, 80 per cent of the cost of construction would come from labour and materials used in civil works, such as concrete, excavation and steel fabrication, all sourced from local and Victorian suppliers. The money stays here and not in the hands of overseas industry.”
Mr Parker said that according to the Nuclear Energy Institute, each plant would employ 650 full time workers for at least 80 years, providing jobs for three or four generations.
“As in the USA, nuclear workers’ salaries would be 50 per cent higher on average than those employed in other forms of electricity generation,” he said.
“For every 100 nuclear power plant jobs, 66 more jobs are created in the local community.”
Mr Parker said debate around costs of electricity from wind, solar and nuclear was misleading unless total system costs such as transmission, storage and backup were taken into account.
“A system based on nuclear energy will generate ultra-low emissions electricity at around half the cost of one based exclusively on wind and solar,” he said.
Mr Parker said society had hoped that by switching to low carbon energy sources such as wind and solar, “we would reduce our environmental impact”.
“Unfortunately harvesting our environment for low grade energy from wind and solar yields poor returns for our efforts, going back to values similar to the era of wood burning,” he said.
“Worse still, a high price is paid by our native habitats and rural landscapes though the construction of not only the wind and solar generators but also the transmission lines, redundant backup and storage projects.
“Society cannot be held hostage to the vagaries of the weather. Load-shedding by industry is raising the white flag on our economy. The risks of failure with randomly variable power sources are so high, and their environmental toll so great, that we must embrace a sustainable large scale roll out of nuclear energy.”
Mr Parker said the United Nations and the European Union Joint Research Council had found that nuclear energy has lower emissions than any other generating source including wind and solar.
“Localities with nuclear energy such as France, Sweden and Ontario (Canada) have amongst the lowest emissions in the world. No nation, without strong backup from its neighbours, has yet achieved low carbon emissions with wind or solar,” he said.
“If the term ‘renewable’ is to mean anything sensible, then nuclear energy is the best example. On top of that, a nuclear energy-based system would use about one third of the materials of one based on wind and solar.
“By building the plants at existing coal sites or near load centres, we can eliminate most of the 13,500 kilometres of new transmission required by the renewable energy zones.”
Registration for the information session is through the WePlanet Australia or Nuclear For Climate Australia websites – just follow the links.
