The oft-discussed issue of nuclear energy has again resurfaced as a topic of contention among politicians in the lead-up to the next federal election. Earlier this term, a repeal of a law legalising nuclear energy was passed by the government following demands from environmental and community activists such as Nuclear Free Australia. The Commonwealth Party manifesto has promised to "remove the ban on Nuclear which the Greens imposed", and candidates for the party have spruiked this policy nationwide.

Just on day one, in the NT, Commonwealth candidate and former Justice BloodyChrome called the repeal "short-sighted and ignorant", while Senator Chi0121 declared that his party was "avidly green fingered", and that realising "green potential" would require a repeal of the nuclear energy ban. However, perhaps no Commonwealth candidate has been as enthusiastic for nuclear energy as the party's candidate in the uranium-rich seat of Pearce, which covers Western Australia.

Randy176 has spoken twice in the past three days about the potential they say nuclear energy has for Australia. In a Tuesday speech, they said that nuclear power could be the solution to the problem of the burning of fossil fuels, going into quite wonky detail about thorium reactors and how he would seek to mitigate the risk of meltdown. Ultimately, the message from the pro-nuclear side was clear - as Randy176 said, "nuclear power would stop and even reverse the effects of climate change".

But the backlash from anti-nuclear advocates was just as swift. In a fiery Morwell speech, Prime Minister model-putrid promised to make any nuclear power bill "dead on the spot" (a phrase later incorporated by the party's social media team) and compared what she called the risk of plants being "operated by multinational companies who care about nothing but profit" to the negligence of the Hazelwood mine operators revealed in the wake of a 2014 mine fire.

In a radio interview, Greens co-leader Aussie-Parliament-RP said that nuclear offered "no real benefit", and pledged that there would be no nuclear energy under a Greens government. Sensible Team candidate for Sydney Fun_Seat4906 also displayed posters evoking the accidents at Fukushima and Chernobyl, captioned with "DON'T LET IT HAPPEN HERE".

Undettered, Commonwealth candidates like tbyrn21, standing in Moncrieff, defiantly declared that "nuclear power solves all of our present issues, and we at the Commonwealth Party will get it done", while the aforementioned Randy176 called nuclear energy "one of the safest cleanest ways to get electricity prices down". Whatever the result of the election, it appears likely that this debate will continue to rage throughout the halls of Parliament.

- Alison Brooks, Pitchfork News