A peak business lobby group has today joined 12 Coalition MPs and Senators in pushing the Prime Minister to adopt large scale nuclear energy across Australia.
Our community is one of many who’ve had multiple sites proposed for nuclear reactors and waste dumps, with sites or dumps proposed in Newcastle, the Hunter Valley, Lake Macquarie, Port Stephens and the Central Coast.
The Minerals Council of Australia has now added its voice to the Coalition backbenchers who’ve been championing nuclear power for years.
Scott Morrison needs to push back against his unruly backbench and end uncertainty for residents of the Hunter.
Over the past 50 years, there have been at least 95 proposals for nuclear power stations in Australia and 42 different locations identified as possible locations of nuclear waste dumps
All the proposed nuclear reactor sites are near residential communities.
It’s hard to fathom – but if the Coalition backbench get their way will a reactor be built on the shores of Lake Macquarie?
Hunter nuclear power station sites have included Glenbawn Dam; Bayswater and Liddell power stations; Cessnock; Port Stephens; Newcastle; and Eraring, Vales Point and Lake Munmorah power stations. Sites for waste dumps have included Denman, Singleton and Broke.
The head of John Howard’s previous inquiry into nuclear energy, Ziggy Switkowski, has conceded that “the possibility of catastrophic failure within the nuclear system is non-negligible”.
The devastation such an event would cause in the Hunter is unthinkable.
Even outside of the real risk of catastrophe, we know power from a nuclear power station would be around three times as expensive as renewable energy and storage.
It’s time the Prime Minister ended the nuclear fantasy completely.