Anti-nuclear activists from around Australia joined indigenous leaders on traditional Were Terre land outside Alice Springs last week to protest Federal government plans for a nuclear waste facility in the Northern Territory.
The meeting was hosted by the Australian Nuclear Free Alliance (ANFA) near the Federal Government’s proposed Mt. Everard nuclear waste site.
The ANFA formed a national anti-nuclear pact with traditional landowners who oppose plans for uranium mining and radioactive dumping, according to an article published on indymedia.org.au.
Despite notable opposition, the Howard Government seems fixed on going nuclear, and committing to America’s Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP), with further talks to be held at the Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation (APEC) forum next week.
Howard is also set to repeal federal legislation banning uranium enrichment, nuclear power and the reprocessing of spent fuel in Australia.
Mounting domestic pressure surrounding nuclear waste disposal and storage have meant Australia and Canada, both uranium-producing countries, have stalled on joining the GNEP that includes many nuclear heavy-weights, including China, Russia and France.
Nuclear by-products are highly radioactive, and GNEP nations would have to find methods to cool, transport, store and isolate the material from the environment virtually forever at enormous expense.
To ease tensions over a nuclear expansion program in Australia, Mr Howard has promised to give communities the ability to veto proposals to build nuclear power stations in areas designated by the Federal Government.
This move is purely a face-saving exercise to claw back anti-nuclear voters.
Prominent indigenous and environmental groups have called on Mr Howard to extend his offer to the indigenous communities of the Northern Territory near sites short-listed for a nuclear waste repository. Surprisingly, to no avail.
Let’s hope Howard’s plan to seize control of Northern Territory indigenous affairs is not a ploy or loophole through which the Commonwealth can conduct unsupervised and unrestricted dumping of radioactive waste on traditional aboriginal lands.
The essential aim of this US driven GNEP initiative is to develop a new generation of fast-cycle reactors that would produce less dangerous wastes than current nuclear reactors.
Its broader aim is to eventually secure the entire nuclear fuel cycle and confine production and reprocessing to members of the group, thus reducing the threat of nuclear proliferation.
New generation “1V reactors” are an integral part of the closed-loop fuel cycle proposed by GNEP, as the nuclear by-products can be “transmuted” into shorter-lived fission yields that have a radioactive life-time of only 600 years, not 500,000.
The safety of the GNEP concept is embedded in the idea that only politically stable and trusted countries will be involved in the closed-loop process, thereby reducing the risk of the spread and increased availability of nuclear materials.
The dangers imposed upon member countries in the transportation, re-processing and storage of nuclear waste is immense, and one could argue constitutes a severe terrorist threat.
Furthermore, considering the radioactive life expectancy of the nuclear waste produced from even the new generation reactors, how long can the “political stability” of member nations be guaranteed?
Howard’s support for an enormous expansion of the global nuclear power industry seems to contradict his stance as a leader deeply troubled by the threat of terrorism.
An expansion that will greatly increase the availability of material suitable for the construction of nuclear weapons.
Cabinet’s recent decision to also supply uranium to India overturned Australia’s long-standing opposition to exports unless India signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
Presumably this whole saga is aimed at significantly reducing emissions. If so, thousands of plants would have to be constructed, leaving dozens more countries access to fissile material able to be used in nuclear weapons.
According to prominent US author on globalization – Thomas Friedman, a serious global shift to nuclear power would mean a new reactor would need to come online each day for the next 36 years.
To say that nuclear energy has a great track record in safety is not good enough. When nuclear materials are involved, it only takes one mistake for it to be the last mistake.
Australia’s energy future must be considered gravely. Jumping into bed with the US is not always the answer to all life’s problems.
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