In 2010 the four Australian Learned Academies tackled the issue of the peculiarly Australian aversion to nuclear energy in their report "Understanding the Formation of Attitudes to Nuclear Power in Australia". On the whole, that work was not terribly successful. It gave much history but in the end the gap between attitudes in Australia and other developed economies remains mysterious. To the extent that this Forum emanates from Australia (and one has no way of judging that) it might have added some useful information to help solve the mystery by offering some representative Australian feedback. I don't think it does, which is a pity. Doubtless all of the factors Martin Nicholson lists are at work here. But why is the resultant different for Australians? As Stephen Fry would say on QI, 'nobody knows'.

*If we are running out of cheap energy, and there is nothing to replace it*

Then why not reduce our use and even (gasp) lower the population over time?

Thanks tombee. I wasn't aware of that report.

Robert le Page,

I'm all for a small population, but if the doomsayers are right, and we do run out of cheap power, we will still be in the muck. And remember, both major parties are big immigration junkies, and have never indicated that they will change.

Alas JBowyer. I fear you are correct. Disappointing though.

JBowyer,

I agree too. It is sad to see supposedly intelligent people display such an extreme example of "denial"!

They deny clear evidence that nuclear is the safest way to generate electricity; the real, measurable consequences of accidents in terms of fatalities and illnesses are small, they produce the lowest emissions per TWh when embedded in a complete system (electricity network) and providing a large proportion of the electricity for that system; could be much cheaper than fossil fuels if the greenies and anti-nukes would get out of the way and stop preventing progress.

@Peter Lang

Its amazing how pro-nuclear blokes Deny the cost of the Fukushima cleanup:

$95 Billion is just a portion of the money Japanese taxpayers are paying to Tepco the Japanese Company that owns/owned the Fukushima nuclear reactors.

See "Japanese government to bear more Fukushima cleanup costs for Tepco" http://uk.reuters.com/article/2013/12/20/japan-tepco-idUKL3N0JY1R620131220 :

"Under the new plan, the [Japanese] government, which essentially nationalised Tepco last year with a 1 trillion yen ($9.59 billion) injection of public funds, will nearly double to 9 trillion yen ($86.35 billion) the amount of interest-free loans it provides the utility through the state-backed Nuclear Damage Liability Facilitation Corp (NDLFC)."

Nuclear advocates can talk around these costs as much as they like.

Fukushima was considered extremely unlikely by Japanese engineers - but then it happened.

What extremely unlikely event could happen to a large power reactor built just outside of Sydney or Melbourne?

Planta