It’s World Environment Day and I woke to hear Australia’s MInister for Foreign Affairs Alexander Downer talking up the possibility of the Australian Government building a nuclear power station to run a water desalination plant for Adelaide.
Adelaide is the capital of the driest state on this driest of continents. South Australia has plenty of uranium. Nuclear power is greenhouse neutral. Much of the water for Adelaide has been traditionally piped a couple of hundred kilomtres from the Murray River. It would all seem like a rather sensible idea me, but it is radical and of course the very conservative Australian Labor Party has already condemned it (click here for the response from Kevin Rudd on ABC Online).
Interestingly British Labor PM Tony Blair is talking about the possibility of a second generation of nuclear power stations for the UK, when Australia doesn’t yet have a single nuclear power station. And while the USA gets something like 20 percent of its water from desalination, desalination is also a novel idea for Australia.
My friend Phil Sawyer proposed both a desalination plant for Adelaide and a nuclear power station in his documentary ‘In Flinders Wake’ released in 2002 to commemorate the 200th anniversary of the voyage of Matthew Fliners. It was shown on SBS TV about the same time.
[Phil at the launch, photograph from the ABC SA website]
Phil has been a supporter of new environment group the Australian Environment Foundation (AEF) which was launched exactly a year ago in Tenterfield. The group has been fairly quiet over the last year, but there will be a big get together for the first Australian Environment Foundation AGM and conference on 23rd and 24th September at Rydges, Southbank in Brisbane. Mark that date in your diaries. Chances are Phil and copies of his video will also be there.
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD has worked in industry and government. She is currently researching a novel technique for long-range weather forecasting funded by the B. Macfie Family Foundation.