Dave Sweeney from the Australian Conservation Foundation says Australia has a direct moral responsibility for any nuclear fallout. Fair enough as long as we accept that Japan has a direct moral responsibility for Aussies killed in accidents involving Japanese vehicles. Same logic. The Greens and Lefties will be crowing about the danger of Nuclear power but Australia is well know as being geographically stable so the current Japanese problems have no bearing whatsoever on our Nuclear power debate. Two earthquakes and no tsunamis of note in my life time in the entire continent do not cut it as a factor in the debate. The same type of characters that panic about climate change used to panic about nuclear energy and to try and force us to join their church come up with the term ‘China Syndrome‘, a scenario where a reactor accident would develop into a self sustaining heat source and burn all the way from the US to China. In a small way the Three Mile Island accident proved the extent of truth in the proposition as the molten core material got exactly 15 mm of the way to China as it froze on the bottom of the reactor pressure vessel. No one died but that’s not the point. The Left has an ideological abhorrence of anything nuclear, possibly emanating from the cold war days when they agitated for unilateral nuclear disarmament. Unilateral because they only wanted the US to disarm – the communists in the USSR were the good guys after all and anything that might bring the Great Satan to her knees was on their ‘to do’ list It will be a long long time before Nuclear energy racks up more deaths that coal fired energy. If ever. Ziggy Switkowski, former chairman of the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation has this to say;

In Australia, opponents of nuclear power already point to the situation in Japan as evidence of the dangers of nuclear reactors. They conveniently sidestep the loss of life and damage caused by exploding oil tanks, burst gas mains, electrical fires: hazards that come with living in a tectonically active region.

Possibly tens of thousands dead from the earthquake but about half of the media coverage is about the nuclear disaster which, so far, has killed exactly no one. Let’s just concentrate on helping Japan get back on her feet. UPDATE: There is an incredible amount of misinformation and hyperbole flying around the internet and media right now about the Fukushima nuclear reactor situation. To get a good layman’s description and maybe become better armed to enter into debate on nuclear energy you might like to read this piece at bravenewclimate