DEAR News Of The Area,

OUR Federal parliamentary representative in the Electorate of Lyne, Dr David Gillespie, publishes a front-page advertisement in your paper every week disparaging the Federal Government’s proposed offshore wind farms.

He has spoken at meetings arranged by an organisation called ‘Reckless Renewables’ who oppose onshore and offshore wind farms and grid modernisation initiatives.

He is also the leader of ‘Friends of Nuclear Industries’, an organisation set up in November 2022 within the 47th Federal Parliament, and he supports the Coalition initiatives to build nuclear power stations to replace retiring coal fired power stations.

I am surprised that despite his medical training he is comfortable with introducing the multiple problems that come with nuclear power.

Occupational exposure to radiation will increase for every worker involved; in power production, waste storage, mining, refining, and transporting ore.

The uranium mines are in general a long way from the reactor sites envisaged.

Safe transport will require hundreds of kilometres of rail infrastructure which does not yet exist. At many points radioactive substances will be potentially vulnerable to mischievous or malicious damage by local activists or foreign powers and foreign powers will also have easy targets for morale-destroying dirty bombs in wartime.

A catastrophic accident like Chernobyl would alienate thousands of square kilometres around a site like Liddell in our beautiful Hunter Valley; of course, catastrophic accidents are rare, but if we don’t have nuclear power stations we won’t have any nuclear accidents.

Following the nuclear option looks ‘reckless’ when safer alternatives are available and in progress.

M J SUTCLIFFE,
Hawks Nest.