Australians are slightly more inclined to support nuclear power plants than oppose them, but a clear majority of voters do not want to live near one, according to new polling.

With nuclear power making a return to the national political agenda, a new survey from Essential finds 44% of Australians support nuclear power plants, up four points since the question was last asked in November 2015, and 40% oppose them.

But asked whether respondents agreed or disagreed with the statement “I would be comfortable living close to a nuclear power plant”, only 28% agreed and 60% disagreed.

The new survey comes as some members of the Coalition are pushing for an inquiry into the viability of nuclear energy and the federal energy and environment ministers have left the door open to lifting Australia’s ban on nuclear power as part of a review of environmental regulations.

During the recent election campaign Scott Morrison insisted he had no plans to reverse the current ban on nuclear energy, after earlier suggesting he could be open to it if proposals stood on their own two feet.

While the internal positioning within the Coalition is nascent, influential industry groups such as the Minerals Council of Australia have been lobbying to overturn the ban. In the event the Morrison government ultimately proceeds with a legislative effort to end the prohibition, it is possible it could get the numbers in the new Senate even if Labor and the Greens oppose the shift.

The Australian Conservatives senator Cory Bernardi told Guardian Australia: “I’m all for it” – although he said he was not supportive of either a carbon price or government subsidies to make nuclear technology economically viable.

Bernardi said parliament should remove the ban and then let proponents determine whether power plants were viable or not.

The Centre Alliance senator Stirling Griff said it was possible the micro-party, which has two Senate votes, could support ending the nuclear ban.

“We don’t have a closed mind on this, but we are a long way from having an open one,” he said. “I’m not there yet, but that’s not to say we won’t get there in the future.”

Griff said if any change was to be made it would need to be accompanied by appropriate safeguards and regulations to ensure safety and public confidence, and he said he was not sure Australian voters favoured the change.

The returning Tasmanian senator Jacqui Lambie is yet to flag her position publicly on a range of issues but in 2015 said: “Apart from hydro, the only way to decarbonise energy is to move very quickly to nuclear. And it’s about time we move to that option.”

The new survey from Essential says a majority of the sample 54% believe nuclear energy would be a reliable energy source for the future (28% disagree) and almost half the people in the survey, 47%, think nuclear would before better for the environment than coal-fired generation (30% disagree).

A majority, 63%, think having a nuclear industry in Australia would create skilled jobs, with 22% disagreeing. Even though nuclear energy is expensive, just over half the sample, 51%, think nuclear would help lower power prices (26% disagree).

John Howard established a review of nuclear power in the run-up to the 2007 election.

The Switkowski review concluded that Australia could establish a nuclear industry, and nuclear power plants – which don’t emit carbon pollution – could make a useful contribution to Australia’s abatement task, but setting up the industry would take between 10 and 15 years. That review also concluded nuclear energy would not be viable without a carbon price.

A more recent inquiry in South Australia, while supportive of the industry, said a nuclear power plant would not be viable in the state even under carbon pricing policies consistent with achieving the well below 2C target agreed in Paris in December “because other low-carbon generation would be taken up before nuclear”.

Separate to the renewed nuclear debate, the mining giant BHP has submitted a plan to build a new tailings dam at South Australia’s Olympic Dam uranium mine within months.

Dave Sweeney, nuclear campaigner for the Australian Conservation Foundation, said: “Any increase in the footprint of Olympic Dam would mean an increase in the complexity and cost of future clean-up and rehabilitation.

“Cleaning up a uranium mine is never easy and always costly. BHP must be required to ensure there is the dedicated financial capacity to fund this clean-up work. It cannot be allowed to become a future burden to the SA community.”