Is nuclear power the only way to meet Australia's future energy needs and cut carbon emissions? The answer is no!

On top of the perennial challenges of global poverty and injustice, the two biggest threats facing human civilisation in the 21st century are climate change and nuclear war. It would be absurd to respond to one by increasing the risks of the other. Yet that is what nuclear power does.

Nuclear power, together with nuclear research reactors, helped India, Pakistan and (probably soon) Iran develop nuclear weapons and provided Britain and France with extra plutonium for their nuclear weapons.

It also helped nuclear weapons programs, fortunately discontinued, in Argentina, Brazil, South Korea, Taiwan, South Africa and Libya. The proliferation of nuclear weapons states and the threat of nuclear war did not disappear at the end of the Cold War. One essential step in bringing the threat under control would be to reach an international agreement to bring the two sensitive stages of the nuclear fuel cycle – uranium enrichment and reprocessing of spent fuel – under complete international control.

Nuclear power, based on existing technologies, still has all its original problems: proliferation of nuclear weapons, terrorism, lack of long-term waste management, rare but catastrophic accidents and huge economic costs. All except the risk of accidents are worse now than in the 1970s. In several decades, as high-grade uranium is used up, nuclear power will also become a substantial emitter of carbon dioxide from uranium mining and milling.