Howard committed to nuclear despite poll

AAP Newswire
Tuesday 7/11/2006

CANBERRA, Nov 7 AAP - Prime Minister John Howard has dismissed a poll which shows only 17 per cent of Australians back nuclear power while almost half think solar power is the best way to tackle climate change.

Mr Howard, who has been promoting a nuclear energy industry for Australia, derided solar power as a soft answer which would never be able to replace coal-fired electricity. He said he would not back away from his support for nuclear power because of one opinion poll.

This is going to be a long debate, but I am going to continue to argue reason. I can't have a policy on something like this dictated by an opinion poll," Mr Howard told reporters.

In the end I've got to call it as it is and in the end I have to say that solar and wind will not replace conventional power stations." The ACNielsen poll in Fairfax newspapers today found that nine out of 10 people believe global warming is a problem and 62 per cent are unhappy with the Howard government's response.

Almost half of those questioned cited solar power as the best weapon against climate change, while 19 per cent supported a carbon tax on fossil fuels and 17 per cent backed nuclear power.

Mr Howard said the results were unsurprising given the publicity surrounding last week's Stern report on climate change, which warned of dire consequences if the problem was not immediately tackled. Its a natural response to that sort of question," Mr Howard said.

"I didn't find that surprising. I didn't find the 50 per cent who thought solar was the answer surprising either, because solar is a nice, easy, soft answer." Mr Howard said solar and wind power could make a contribution, but would never be enough to replace baseload power generation by coal-fired power stations.

The only way wind power could create enough energy was to have a windmill "every few hundred feet starting at South Head and going down to Malabar", he said. Well you can imagine the residents of Sydney wanting that," he said.

You simply won't be able to generate enough power from something like wind in order to take the load off the power that is generated by the use of coal and gas and in time I believe nuclear."