Well over 300 international and Australian delegates were registered for the conference. They included senior government policymakers and administrators, academics, energy experts, electricity utility managers, nuclear fuel suppliers, transporters of nuclear materials, heads of national nuclear laboratories and legal experts with nuclear experience. Also present were the managing directors and senior staff of Australia's uranium mining companies. Large delegations attended from China, the United States, Japan, Russia, France, South Korea and many countries of the European Union. And four of these countries will be represented at Canberra's Minerals Week.

In terms of its longer term impact on climate change, informed realism clearly indicates that only an expanding nuclear energy scenario can avert the global warming phenomenon. According to the International Atomic Energy Agency, the minimum cumulative savings by nuclear energy of carbon in the atmosphere by the year 2030 will exceed 25 gigatonnes. This should help to stabilise global temperatures. A greater nuclear contribution which is very likely could help return global temperatures to Kyoto Protocol 1990 levels.

The chairman of the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation, Dr Ziggy Switkowski, welcomed the conference delegates to Australia. He commended the Australian Government for freeing up the mining and export of uranium to the global market place. But he and many of the delegates were only too aware of Australia's paradoxical place in the global nuclear fuel cycle industry.

Recently, in a letter to an Australian newspaper, he summarised this issue as follows: ''We are a top-three exporter of uranium to countries which then avoid emitting greenhouse gases equal to Australia's annual output with their nuclear electricity. But we don't support nuclear power at home where fossil fuel usage makes us a world leader in per capita emissions the new climate change metric. We join other countries to permit India to buy uranium, but not from Australia.''

The Chinese delegation was led by the president of China Nuclear Energy Industry, Dr Chen Xinyang. China has an amazing energy and carbon reduction policy based largely on nuclear power. Eleven nuclear plants are already in operation. It is planned to have 70GW of nuclear electricity by 2020 and possibly 100 plants by 2030. China is developing an energy policy based on the gradual replacement of its immensely polluting coal-fired plant with nuclear. At the same time it is ensuring its energy security with Australian uranium.

The Americans quoted figures from the US Department of Energy which underline the huge advantages of uranium as the new clean energy paradigm. The carbon production from coal-fired plant in the US was cited as 0.86 tonnes for one megawatt-hour of electricity production. The figure for gas-fired plant was 0.36 tonnes while that for nuclear plant was 0.005 tonnes.

Consider the outstanding performance of the 104 nuclear power stations in the US during 2008. This included a 98 per cent capacity factor and an unmatchable generating cost of 1.68c per kilowatt hour. Is it any wonder regulatory processes are well in place for another 25 nuclear plants and that President Barack Obama has embraced nuclear power as a priority for carbon reduction?

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd ratified the Kyoto Protocol at the December 2007 Bali climate conference. It was here that the executive secretary of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Yvo de Boer, said, ''I have never seen a credible scenario for reducing emissions which did not include nuclear energy.'' The Australian Government should respond to this challenge by embracing nuclear power in its energy policy. A risky reliance on clean coal and renewables provides no energy security and will condemn the nation to decades of economic, environmental and geo-political disadvantage.

All countries represented at the conference are planning to attend the important United Nations Climate Conference to be held in Copenhagen in December. It is possible that by this time some 60 nations will be operating or building nuclear power plant. Australia should follow their example.

The Rudd Government has already had to modify its controversial emissions trading scheme to save the nation's remaining industries and to keep energy costs within reasonable bounds. As a global resource base for nuclear fuels, Australia should now endorse domestic nuclear power and seek to play a pivotal role in the international nuclear fuel industry.

Professor Leslie Kemeny is a visiting senior academic research fellow and a consulting nuclear scientist and engineer.