Greenwash Political Action Party and Urban Grassroots Movement for the Green Party

Tuesday, June 06, 2006

The real nuclear debate part 2

Exporting uranium to China and India and domestic enrichment

See below for Part 1 of the 'real nuclear debate'

As well as distracting the country from the real solutions to climate change, the nuclear power debate is more insidiously softening Australians up for something potentially far more unpopular - exporting uranium to China and India.

Ignoring the very dodgy Morgan poll (which asked one of the most leading questions on the topic I’ve ever seen), some polling is showing that exporting uranium to China is hugely unpopular in Australia - far more unpopular than nuclear power.

In fact while The Australian recorded it as an increased in support for nuclear, the Newspoll published in The Australian May 30th showed a massive 66% of Australians wanted no new mines or no uranium mines at all. Only 22% supported the Howard government policy of no restrictions on the number of uranium mines.

So issues (ie. exporting uranium to the communist authoritarian regime in China and to India who hasn’t signed the Non Proliferation Treaty) that would normally have sparked public outrage in Australia are relegated to second tier issues. In fact, it seems there won’t be a debate about uranium exports at all - already being presented as a fait accompli within Labor and the country as a whole.

So with uranium presented as a finished debate, the Hawks can get on with their next plan – a dangerous domestic mega bucks uranium enrichment industry.

Indeed, Barry Cassidy summed it up when talking with Virginia Trioli on local ABC radio 702 on June 5, when he said that he thought the Coalition would come forward with a united position – perhaps not on nuclear power, but certainly on enrichment.

And on the question of an international nuclear dump in Australia, favoured by some including former Prime Minister Bob Hawke, the news is even worse for the nuclear lobby. An SBS commissioned Newspoll found that 83% of Australians were opposed to the idea even when the uranium was initially mined domestically.

Proposals for nuclear power, which will never get up economically or politically in Australia, are a deliberate smokescreen from the real possibilities: enrichment, increased mining and nuclear dumps.

Why nuclear wont work

Even if the world doubled nuclear power output by 2050, the estimated reduction in greenhouse emissions would be only 5%. Yet even our Federal Government says the world needs 60% reductions by then. And in fact many argue that in the longer term we must aim for 100% reductions over the next 100 years.

Furthermore, new nuclear power plants take around 20 years to start operating from conception, with large quantities of greenhouse emissions produced in the extraction and enrichment of uranium and the building of the plants. So much so, that it takes 40 years of operation of the power plant to offset the emissions produced in construction.

And even then, if we doubled the world’s nuclear power output we face running out of high grade uranium in less than 25 years. Moving to lower grade uranium, means higher emissions during extraction, putting as much carbon into the atmosphere as a gas fired power station over its lifetime. Not exactly a great solution.

And just look at the economics of the massively subsided nuclear industry. John White, the chair of the Federal Government's own Uranium Industry Framework, said in Australian Financial Review a couple of weeks ago: "Once their true cost is known, the market for renewable energy will explode, because they are the only sustainable and relatively cheap energy option left for the planet."

Terrorism, proliferation and Chernobyl

But of course the real debate that the pro nuclear lobby will hate having, is the debate on nuclear proliferation and terrorism. Most reasonable people would have thought that the shut down of the nuclear industry was a no-brainer post-September 11. Nuclear reactors are undoubtedly prime new terrorism targets that would magnify the horror of any new large scale terrorist attack.

Expanding the nuclear energy industry will also expand the chances of nuclear proliferation. That is undeniable. And what about Iran? There is no mention of Iran’s nuclear push from the nuclear supporters in Australia.

And Chernobyl cannot be excluded from any rational discussion of the dangers of nuclear fuel cycle, regardless of how hard the proponents try to avoid the issue. Look how ridiculous the Federal Industry Minister, Ian Macfarlane sounded on the ABC Radio’s the World Today recently when he said “and if you set aside Chernobyl, which was a deliberate manmade intervention in the nuclear cycle to test safety, there has not been a nuclear disaster in the western world”. But you can‘t simply ‘set aside’ between 8000 (World Health Organisation estimate) and 100,000 (Greenpeace estimate) deaths.

According to a great environment group report:

“a nuclear weapon powerful enough to destroy a city requires a mere 10 kg of plutonium. The ‘peaceful’ nuclear power industry has produced 1,600 tonnes of plutonium - enough to build about 160,000 nuclear weapons. If 99% of this plutonium is indefinitely protected from military use, the remaining 1% would suffice for 1,600 nuclear weapons. Australia’s uranium exports, once irradiated in nuclear power reactors, have produced about 80 tonnes of plutonium enough for about 8,000 nuclear weapons.”

What we should be debating is how by selling uranium to China and India Australians, will help put more nuclear weapons on the planet.

Nuclear Indonesia

Bob Brown brilliantly put the arguments about the consequences of allowing our region to go nuclear in his opinion piece in The Australian, where he said:

Indonesia can now foster its own nuclear future, free of worries about chastisement from Canberra. The Suharto plan for 12 nuclear reactors, concentrated on earthquake-prone Java, is likely to resurface, and Megawati Sukarnoputri's interest in floating nuclear power stations from Russia almost certainly remains on Jakarta's drawing board.

When either or both options resurface, Australians will worry about some future reactor accident sending a pall of radiation across the populous islands to our north, as well as northern Australia. And the prospect of a future Indonesian leader opting for nuclear weapons will grow stronger.

Before Howard set out to wedge the divided Labor Opposition on nuclear power, he should have stopped to seriously consider his move, in light of the threat posed by religious extremists in Indonesia. The dangerous mix of jihadists and nuclear energy will stalk Australia's future long after he has left office.

posted by Ben Oquist # 3:47 PM 1 comments