"Let the bastards freeze in the dark," was the quip of Sir John Carrick, a senior minister in the Fraser government, in response to the refusal of the Greens equivalent and others to accept any consideration of nuclear power. He quipped that there should be bumper stickers saying just that.

He was ahead of his time. Or more particularly he thought ahead.

That's what we want governments to do, make policies in our long-term interest. To put it in political terms we want them to make policy that our grandchildren will benefit from. Unfortunately short-term populism gets too much sway.

Fifty or so more years later people might be coming to their senses. Technology is always changing and it shouldn't be judged by its earlier iterations. We don't expect to use sundials to tell the time and the first cars didn't have airbags, cupholders, seatbelts or the capacity to go the speeds and distances today's cars go. So why do we judge nuclear power by old outdated technology?

If you say it is fear there's no rationale for that today. The Fukushima accident was in 2011 and the reactor was 40 years was old at the time. That was well over a decade ago. There were no direct deaths at the time but subsequently the disaster-related deaths have been put at 2000. In the two years 2021 and 2022, our road toll was, in total, over 2200.

A Fukushima road toll every two years and we hardly blink. Perhaps it's humanity's collective guilt at the terrible horror of Hiroshima. But that wasn't an accident. It was a quite........

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