Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has rejected a push by labour movement figures to consider nuclear energy as a stopgap until renewable technologies become established.
Australian Workers' Union (AWU) national secretary Paul Howes and former NSW premier Bob Carr have called on the federal government to rethink Labor's opposition to the nuclear power industry.
Australia is a major uranium producer and exporter but is a heavy user of greenhouse gas-producing coal sources for its electricity generation.
The former Howard government commissioned a study into the prospect of nuclear reactors but Labor has consistently ruled out the technology as an energy source.
"On the question of nuclear, we believe that we have a huge range of energy options available to Australia beyond nuclear with which and through which we can respond to the climate change challenge," Mr Rudd said in response to the challenge.
Mr Howes said most of the developed world was now seriously looking at nuclear as an alternative energy source.
"In the UK, there's going to be the expansion of nuclear facilities there," he told the Fairfax Radio Network.
"France now has 80 per cent of its power generated from nuclear, all as short solutions, that is 20- to 50-year solutions until other technologies, such as fusion and hot rock ... are developed and are widely available as baseload power."
Nuclear power would always be a sensitive issue, he said.
"But we have 40 per cent of the world's uranium in Australia.
"Labor has overturned the three-mines policy and I think it's now a time for another healthy, sensible and rational debate about this issue without falling back to alarmist sentiments."
Mr Carr said nuclear power was the critical bridge between the carbon and renewable energy eras.
"There is no other bridging technology to get us from this catastrophic burning of coal and oil into the era of cheap and infinite renewable power," he told The Australian newspaper.
The Australian Greens slammed Mr Carr's logic.
Greens senator Christine Milne said renewable energy was closer than nuclear energy.
"A bridging technology can only be useful if it can be brought on much faster than the final intended technology. That is patently not the case with nuclear and renewables," she said.
"We don't need a dirty, expensive and dangerous bridge when we can leap across to the other shore if we make the effort to do so."
On other energy issues, Mr Rudd said the cost of petrol and electricity would not be insulated from the operation of an emissions trading scheme (ETS).
"If you act on climate change and the emissions trading system then obviously there's a flow-through consequence on the cost of petrol and the cost of energy," he said.
Opposition Leader Brendan Nelson said families must be protected from higher petrol and electricity prices caused by an ETS.
"We know that our economy, and that's all of us, are going to pay a price for it (climate change)," he said.
"The one thing that Mr Rudd must guarantee is on petrol and on electricity costs, that he will guarantee that he will protect Australian families."
(Source: APP)
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