Yes, it was a good story on Inside Biz this morning, talk of nuclear being the only adequate source of baseload electricity generation is still bubbling.
Carbon costing back on the political agenda too so the story even implied Australia may have to embrace nuclear power generation in the longer term. However the political sensitivity means that neither party will endorse it yet.
While it seems that Australia will never actually need to establish a source of nuclear power, future cost metrics may force their hand to at least debate the issue.
ALAN KOHLER, PRESENTER: Resources minister Martin Ferguson's determination this week to expand the Australian uranium industry certainly didn't win him any brownie points with the Greens.
As Neal Woolrich reports while uranium's supporters are encouraged, it also showed the fractious and delicate nature of the current political environment where achieving anything will be hard work.
NEAL WOOLRICH, REPORTER: It's the sticky tape that's holding a fragile government together.
A month ago there were smiles all round as the Greens formed a crucial alliance with the ALP.
But now beaming faces are being replaced by heated policy debates.
And a key battleground appears to be an issue that has dogged the Labor party internally for the best part of three decades - uranium mining.
The Greens want uranium mining banned but now Federal Labor is hoping to exploit the billions of dollars worth of resources that lie underground.
MARTIN FERGUSON, RESOURCES MINISTER: Well I actually expect our export earnings to reach about 1.7 billion by about 2013-14, which represents a more than doubling of our export capacity in terms of earnings between now and 2013-14.
SCOTT LUDLAM, GREENS SENATOR: Martin Ferguson's comments are completely pre-emptive.
We've got people at all levels of government right now assessing and analysing the environmental, public health, transport impacts.
And the minister's just come in over the top of all that and said he's going to be signing these things off no matter what.
And I think it's a deliberate and quite provocative over-riding of the processes that are underway at the moment.
NEAL WOOLRICH: But Martin Ferguson says the uranium industry's inevitable expansion will adhere to the best environmental and indigenous rights practices.
MARTIN FERGUSON: I've got no intentions of interfering with that, I always respect them.
If anything I normally find it's people like Scott Ludlam who are running political campaigns aimed at ensuring those processes do not occur because they don't potentially like the outcomes.
NEAL WOOLRICH: While the ALP and Greens thrash out their differences, industry leaders say the heat has gone out the uranium mining debate in Australia.
MICHAEL ANGWIN, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, AUSTRALIAN URANIUM ASSOCIATION: Particularly with the focus on climate change, I think people's attention has shifted to what are those electricity generating technologies which we can use in Australia to help address climate change.
So I think the nuclear power issue is a much more salient issue for people these days than uranium mining was four years ago.
NEAL WOOLRICH: Michael Angwin argues that safety concerns about uranium mining have been overdone and now is the right time to think about expanding the industry.
MICHAEL ANGWIN: There are currently about 60 nuclear power plants under construction around the world, most of those in Asia, and I think we can expect to see quite rapid growth in the nuclear power industry around the world.
NEAL WOOLRICH: And resources analyst Warwick Grigor says there's money to be made, even though the uranium price has been in the doldrums for 18 months and sits around $48 a pound.
WARWICK GRIGOR, EXECUTIVE CHAIRMAN, BGF EQUITIES: Well that's the spot price. That's what speculators and punters focus on, but $60 a pound is the long term price, and that's what you can achieve if you've got a good mine life, good reserves.
And at that level there are a number of projects in Australia that would make good profits.
NEAL WOOLRICH: While the industry is talking up its prospects, the ALP still has its own internal divisions to resolve.
At the 2007 Labor national conference the party dumped its 25-year prohibition on new uranium mines.
But state governments in Victoria, New South Wales and Queensland maintain their own bans.
MICHAEL ANGWIN: If you draw a line between Karumba on the Gulf of Carpentaria and Mt Gambier in South Australia, you can mine to the west of that line but you can't mine to the east of that line.
What a strange thing. The country's essentially the same on both sides of that line.
MARTIN FERGUSON: Queensland's got a political position at the moment which is in opposition to uranium mining. So be it.
It will change as a matter of course, but in the meantime other states and territories will get windfall gains out of the expansion of the industry.
NEAL WOOLRICH: While both of the major parties want to expand uranium mining there's little support in Canberra for nuclear power.
The Liberal party says it's off the agenda, while Labor opposes nuclear power outright.
But the head of Australia's nuclear research organisation says now is the time to re-think the issue.
DR ZIGGY SWITKOWSKI, CHAIRMAN, AUSTRALIAN NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY ORGANISATION: Well we're going to need more electricity generating capacity anyway - maybe twice as much in 2050 as we have today.
It's going to have to be clean - that is it can't be based upon fossil fuel.
And when it comes to baseload electricity the only alternative available to us, and to most other countries for that matter, is nuclear power.
NEAL WOOLRICH: Australia is the only nation in the world's top 25 economies without nuclear power but that argument looks unlikely to sway the politicians.
MARTIN FERGUSON: Unlike a lot of other countries we don't have to resort to nuclear power, because we're rich in virtually every energy opportunity.
SCOTT LUDLAM: So this is simply not something that we can afford to do in Australia and it's evidenced by the fact that if it were legal to build nuclear power stations in Australia, if the Government said 'All right, go ahead electricity industry, build nuclear power stations in Australia', not a single one of them would be built.
NEAL WOOLRICH: But Ziggy Switkowski argues that once a carbon price is factored in nuclear power becomes more commercial.
DR ZIGGY SWITKOWSKI: It's less expensive than wind and vastly less expensive than solar, but more expensive than what we currently have. But that's at the generating level which is perhaps 40 per cent of your bill.
So your total bill may go up by perhaps 20 per cent over 20 years.
NEAL WOOLRICH: However, with Federal politics delicately balanced these days, nuclear power is the kind of policy debate that has all the appeal of a spent fuel rod, at least during this term of Parliament.
(20min delay)