rioters bloc
27th September 2006, 05:48
an article my friends wrote:
Spinning love for the nuclear cycle
Holly and Wenny
John Howard calls for a “full-blooded” debate on nuclear power; Liberal MPs clamber to line up behind him. The South Australian Labor government expands uranium mining; whilst the ALP comes out as “anti-nuclear”. Uranium mining, enrichment, leasing, dumping; but we’re cracking down on Iran and their dangerous nuclear ambitions. A new nuclear taskforce: old friends of Howard, headed by a board member of the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation; he’s retiring. Poll after poll after internet poll: do you support nuclear power?
The polls consistently return ‘NO’, but the high ‘YES’ vote reflects the context in which the ‘debate’ about nuclear power is being held: as a solution to climate change. After years of denying and dismissing global warming, the Australian government is suddenly championing action: in the form of nuclear energy. If Howard wants a “full-blooded” debate on nuclear power, let’s put all our cards on the table.
Mine, mine, mine – cashing in on nuclear
Depleting coal, oil and gas have sent prices of fuel resources sky-rocketing. So has public consciousness and concern about climate change, caused by our massive consumption of these greenhouse gas-emitting fuels. And the nuclear industry’s stroke of genius: exploiting genuine concern about climate change by re-framing itself as “clean, green and safe” and the “only solution” to climate change.
The government’s enthusiasm for uranium has followed its price: up. Australia has 40% of the world’s known uranium reserves, more than any other country. Mining companies are leading the charge on expansion of uranium mining: in 2003, there were five companies actively exploring for the material; today there are more than 70.
Australia has three existing uranium mines – the Ranger Mine in the Kakadu National Park in the Northern Territory, and the Beverley and Olympic Dam (Roxby Downs) mines in South Australia. Soon, the South Australian Labor Government hopes to add the Honeymoon mine, with a destructive acid in-situ leach mining process, to the list.
The 2003 Senate Inquiry into the regulation of uranium mining in Australia reported “a pattern of under-performance and non-compliance”. The inquiry identified “many gaps in knowledge and found an absence of reliable data on which to measure the extent of contamination or its impact on the environment”, and concluded changes were necessary “in order to protect the environment and its inhabitants from serious or irreversible damage”.
If BHP Billiton get their way with the Federal and South Australian governments, the Olympic Dam mine at Roxby Downs will become the biggest uranium mine on the planet. Australia will become the largest producer and exporter of uranium in the world.
The $5 billion expansion will treble the mine’s output and have devastating consequences. The Roxby Downs mine is already the largest single-site industrial user of underground water in the Southern Hemisphere. It uses an enormous amount of water – over 30 million litres of water daily. This figure is set to increase to 150 million litres of water per day, for the next 70 years.
As well as draining water from drought-stricken land, the mine also places enormous pressure on vast tracts of natural ecosystem. Water for the mine is drawn from the Great Artesian Basin, a vast body of water beneath central Australia. The Basin supports many Mound Springs – unique arid land habitats that support rare and delicate flora and fauna – that have already been adversely affected by mining operations, and in some cases, destroyed.
Olympic Dam is also one of the largest single electricity users in South Australia, and a major contributor to greenhouse gas emissions. Since beginning operation in 1988, the Roxby Downs mine has produced 60 million tonnes of radioactive tailings waste, currently growing at 10 million tonnes a year. This waste has simply been dumped on site with no plans for its long-term management. Eighty percent of the radioactivity of the original uranium ore remains in the tailings, as well as a range of other toxic materials.
The Roxby Downs mine operates with inexcusable legal privileges. The Roxby Indenture Act exempts BHP from a raft of provisions in the South Australian Water Resources Act, the Environment Protection Act, the Aboriginal Heritage Act and the Freedom of Information Act.
Thanks to such political largesse, last year BHP announced an annual profit of $8.5 billion – the largest in Australian corporate history. The pillage of the environment, radioactive racism and the jeopardy of lives continue in the name of corporate and State greed.
“Anti-nuclear” ALP mining uranium for a global nuclear industry
Moves by the Howard government to expand Australia’s nuclear industry are disturbingly reflected in similar policy moves by the ALP. Party leader Kim Beazley recently vowed to abandon Labor's longstanding “no new mines” uranium policy. Northern Territory Chief Minister Clare Martin was quick to echo the call to expand uranium mining, despite campaigning against uranium mining during elections, and continuing to oppose a nuclear power and a nuclear waste dump in the Northern Territory. (One wonders where Martin and the ALP think the uranium will go? Perhaps to nuclear power and to waste dumps?)
Martin Ferguson, the Shadow Minister for Industry and Resources, is spearheading a major push to overturn Labor Party policy of opposition to new uranium mines at the ALP National Conference in early 2007. Amongst a plethora of illogical arguments, Ferguson states in his March 20 paper: “Australia cannot slow down world demand for mined uranium for nuclear power. Nor does it have a right to begrudge other countries the right to use nuclear power in their energy mix to lift their people out of poverty or control their greenhouse emissions and pollution.”
Further, Ferguson states Australia “has the opportunity to lead the world as a responsible supplier of uranium for peaceful purposes” by, among other things, “stewarding uranium from cradle to grave”. It’s hard to know what Ferguson could mean, other than Australia accepting high-level nuclear waste produced in nuclear power reactors across the world.
Uranium mining has long been a divisive issue within the ALP. Massive anti-uranium rallies in the 70s and 80s saw strong anti-nuclear motions passing through ALP branches, culminating in a motion for a moratorium on uranium mining at the 1977 national conference. However, the party split dramatically in 1982 when a deal was brokered that allowed the construction of the Olympic Dam mine at Roxby Downs. In 1984, party policy was changed again to recognise the three existing uranium mines, but also pledged that no new mines will be opened under a Labor government.
Nationally, ALP policy currently “recognises the production of uranium and its use in the nuclear fuel cycle presents unique and unprecedented hazards and risks including: threats to human health and the local environment, the generation of products which are useable as the raw materials for nuclear weapons [and] the generation of highly toxic radioactive waste by-products.”
However, whilst ALP leader Kim Beazley and state Premiers conveniently oppose Howard’s push for nuclear power, state ALP governments are expanding uranium mines, beginning the new Honeymoon mine, and creating a huge stockpile of radioactive waste.
Pushing to be a big gun in the global nuclear industry
Expanding uranium mining, false public debates of nuclear power, and ongoing attempts to dump the world’s radioactive waste on indigenous communities in Central Australia are part of a grand plan to expand and consolidate Australia’s role in the global nuclear industry.
Eager to cash in on the boom of nuclear power, politicians argue Australia, as the world’s most uranium-rich country, has a “global responsibility” to provide “clean energy” to fast-developing nations like China. In April 2006, the Howard government struck a lucrative uranium export deal with the Chinese Communist Regime, a nuclear weapons state with an appalling human rights record. They are looking to open the use of Australian uranium to a host of weapons states, including non-signatories to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. These deals have fed public ‘debate’ around nuclear energy – and the corporate media conveniently overlooked similarly lucrative deals, created the same week, for Australian companies to sell renewable energy to China.
After another debauched visit to Washington, John Howard said nuclear power in Australia is “inevitable”, and that “the whole atmosphere in Washington, the atmosphere … created by the high level of oil prices is transforming the debate on energy, alternative energy sources.” He said the environmental advantages of nuclear power “are there for all to see. It is cleaner and greener and therefore some of the people who in the past have opposed it should support it.”
The miraculous reinvention of nuclear energy as “clean energy” cannot hide the ongoing thorn in the nuclear industry’s backside: the problem of nuclear waste. There is still no safe way of disposing of nuclear waste, and there are still no storage plans for the more than 250,000 tonnes of high-level radioactive waste already in existence. Because of the safety and environmental risks, the risk of accidents in the transportation of nuclear waste as well as security fears, there is not a single repository for high-level nuclear waste anywhere in the world.
This is where the nuclear waste dump in the Northern Territory enters the picture. Accepting nuclear waste means fixing the problem at the end of the nuclear fuel cycle. Australia gets to play good “global citizen” by being “responsible” for the residue of the uranium we sell. Mining and exports expand, and Australia even profits from the waste. Nice.
Cashing in – dumping nuclear waste in NT
On December 8 last year, the Federal Government passed legislation clearing the construction of a national nuclear waste dump in the Northern Territory. The proposal was met with opposition from almost all sides of Northern Territory politics, and by Aboriginal landowners, environment and community groups.
The choice of the Northern Territory is no coincidence. Here, the Federal Government can simply override territory laws – convenient after they were forced to abandon a similar proposal for South Australia in 2004, after facing strong, grassroots opposition.
Nuclear waste is made of some of the most toxic material in the world, and will remain radioactive for hundreds of thousands of years. There is still no safe way of storing nuclear waste. The waste dump will be a toxic blight on Australia and a direct threat to humans and the environment for thousands of years to come.
The legislation overrides existing minimum legal protections for the community and environment. For example, the provisions of the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 will only apply after the selection of the dump site. The legislation extinguishes any claims to native title and bypasses the unique provisions of the Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act 1976. It is another slap in the face of Indigenous peoples who continue to suffer disproportionately from the toxic legacy of nuclear power. With weapons testing, uranium mining, and now nuclear dumping taking place on traditional land, Indigenous people have always been the first to suffer the lethal fall-out of radioactive waste.
A nuclear waste dump is really the thin edge of the wedge. It already foreshadows the construction of a new nuclear reactor at Lucas Heights in southern Sydney to replace the aging plant there. A dump is necessary to fulfill the new reactor’s waste “management” requirements.
Active today, or radioactive tomorrow?
Indigenous, environment and community groups, and students have already begun organising in response to the latest, serious attempts to expand Australia’s involvement in the nuclear industry. The past successes of strong, committed and well-organised alliances between Aboriginal owners, Indigenous solidarity groups, environmental organisations, anti-nuclear groups, anti-war activists, unions, faith groups, political parties and student networks demonstrate how current campaigns can become another Jabiluka, or the Kupa Piti Irati Wanti campaign that stopped the construction of a nuclear waste dump in South Australia in 2004. These alliances mobilised thousands of people in the campaigns to stop mining and dumping, building the movement for a nuclear-free world.
The nuclear power debate is a false debate. Howard and the pro-nuclear lobby aim to confuse and ‘soften’ Australians into accepting nuclear power overseas, expanding uranium mining and exports, accepting the world’s nuclear waste, and to drive a wedge into the forlorn ALP.
The reframing of the nuclear industry and ‘debate’ is a distraction from the real debate about climate change – energy reduction and moving to renewable energy. State and Federal Governments are determined to gratify nuclear and fossil fuel industries – at the expense of indigenous communities; and creating environmental destruction, long-lived radioactive waste, and dangerous climate change.
To get involved or know more about anti-nuclear campaigning contact [email protected].org.au
break out boxes
Nuking the climate won’t stop climate change
Climate change is happening – and governments and corporations are being forced to respond to consensus of scientists worldwide and a strong global movement to avert dangerous climate change. Nuclear power plants are currently unlawful in Australia under the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Act 1998.
Produces Greenhouse Emissions
Vast amounts of greenhouse gas emissions are produced at nearly every stage of the nuclear cycle: mining and enriching uranium, building and decommissioning reactors, and transporting fuel and waste. Nuclear power will not provide the deep cuts to emissions needed to stop dangerous climate change. High-grade uranium ores are limited and will be exhausted in about 50 years, even at the current rate of consumption. Low-grade uranium ores are harder to extract and emit high greenhouse emissions.
Too expensive and too long
Nuclear energy has high capital costs and costs more than energy from renewable sources like wind, solar, biomass and small-scale hydro. A single nuclear reactor costs billions of dollars, and takes 10 to 15 years to build. Moreover, a huge number of nuclear reactors – 2000 new 1000-megawatt reactors – would need to be built were nuclear power to replace fossil fuels on a large scale. This is unrealistic as well as hugely scary.
Too dirty and dangerous
Uranium mining and processing is highly polluting; accidents are rife; nuclear reactors release radioactive isotopes into our air and water, potential targets for military attacks, and produce large amounts of dangerous, long-lived nuclear waste. There is still no safe way of disposing nuclear waste that will remain radioactive for hundreds of thousands of years. More nuclear material also means more nuclear weapons.
Spinning love for the nuclear cycle
Holly and Wenny
John Howard calls for a “full-blooded” debate on nuclear power; Liberal MPs clamber to line up behind him. The South Australian Labor government expands uranium mining; whilst the ALP comes out as “anti-nuclear”. Uranium mining, enrichment, leasing, dumping; but we’re cracking down on Iran and their dangerous nuclear ambitions. A new nuclear taskforce: old friends of Howard, headed by a board member of the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation; he’s retiring. Poll after poll after internet poll: do you support nuclear power?
The polls consistently return ‘NO’, but the high ‘YES’ vote reflects the context in which the ‘debate’ about nuclear power is being held: as a solution to climate change. After years of denying and dismissing global warming, the Australian government is suddenly championing action: in the form of nuclear energy. If Howard wants a “full-blooded” debate on nuclear power, let’s put all our cards on the table.
Mine, mine, mine – cashing in on nuclear
Depleting coal, oil and gas have sent prices of fuel resources sky-rocketing. So has public consciousness and concern about climate change, caused by our massive consumption of these greenhouse gas-emitting fuels. And the nuclear industry’s stroke of genius: exploiting genuine concern about climate change by re-framing itself as “clean, green and safe” and the “only solution” to climate change.
The government’s enthusiasm for uranium has followed its price: up. Australia has 40% of the world’s known uranium reserves, more than any other country. Mining companies are leading the charge on expansion of uranium mining: in 2003, there were five companies actively exploring for the material; today there are more than 70.
Australia has three existing uranium mines – the Ranger Mine in the Kakadu National Park in the Northern Territory, and the Beverley and Olympic Dam (Roxby Downs) mines in South Australia. Soon, the South Australian Labor Government hopes to add the Honeymoon mine, with a destructive acid in-situ leach mining process, to the list.
The 2003 Senate Inquiry into the regulation of uranium mining in Australia reported “a pattern of under-performance and non-compliance”. The inquiry identified “many gaps in knowledge and found an absence of reliable data on which to measure the extent of contamination or its impact on the environment”, and concluded changes were necessary “in order to protect the environment and its inhabitants from serious or irreversible damage”.
If BHP Billiton get their way with the Federal and South Australian governments, the Olympic Dam mine at Roxby Downs will become the biggest uranium mine on the planet. Australia will become the largest producer and exporter of uranium in the world.
The $5 billion expansion will treble the mine’s output and have devastating consequences. The Roxby Downs mine is already the largest single-site industrial user of underground water in the Southern Hemisphere. It uses an enormous amount of water – over 30 million litres of water daily. This figure is set to increase to 150 million litres of water per day, for the next 70 years.
As well as draining water from drought-stricken land, the mine also places enormous pressure on vast tracts of natural ecosystem. Water for the mine is drawn from the Great Artesian Basin, a vast body of water beneath central Australia. The Basin supports many Mound Springs – unique arid land habitats that support rare and delicate flora and fauna – that have already been adversely affected by mining operations, and in some cases, destroyed.
Olympic Dam is also one of the largest single electricity users in South Australia, and a major contributor to greenhouse gas emissions. Since beginning operation in 1988, the Roxby Downs mine has produced 60 million tonnes of radioactive tailings waste, currently growing at 10 million tonnes a year. This waste has simply been dumped on site with no plans for its long-term management. Eighty percent of the radioactivity of the original uranium ore remains in the tailings, as well as a range of other toxic materials.
The Roxby Downs mine operates with inexcusable legal privileges. The Roxby Indenture Act exempts BHP from a raft of provisions in the South Australian Water Resources Act, the Environment Protection Act, the Aboriginal Heritage Act and the Freedom of Information Act.
Thanks to such political largesse, last year BHP announced an annual profit of $8.5 billion – the largest in Australian corporate history. The pillage of the environment, radioactive racism and the jeopardy of lives continue in the name of corporate and State greed.
“Anti-nuclear” ALP mining uranium for a global nuclear industry
Moves by the Howard government to expand Australia’s nuclear industry are disturbingly reflected in similar policy moves by the ALP. Party leader Kim Beazley recently vowed to abandon Labor's longstanding “no new mines” uranium policy. Northern Territory Chief Minister Clare Martin was quick to echo the call to expand uranium mining, despite campaigning against uranium mining during elections, and continuing to oppose a nuclear power and a nuclear waste dump in the Northern Territory. (One wonders where Martin and the ALP think the uranium will go? Perhaps to nuclear power and to waste dumps?)
Martin Ferguson, the Shadow Minister for Industry and Resources, is spearheading a major push to overturn Labor Party policy of opposition to new uranium mines at the ALP National Conference in early 2007. Amongst a plethora of illogical arguments, Ferguson states in his March 20 paper: “Australia cannot slow down world demand for mined uranium for nuclear power. Nor does it have a right to begrudge other countries the right to use nuclear power in their energy mix to lift their people out of poverty or control their greenhouse emissions and pollution.”
Further, Ferguson states Australia “has the opportunity to lead the world as a responsible supplier of uranium for peaceful purposes” by, among other things, “stewarding uranium from cradle to grave”. It’s hard to know what Ferguson could mean, other than Australia accepting high-level nuclear waste produced in nuclear power reactors across the world.
Uranium mining has long been a divisive issue within the ALP. Massive anti-uranium rallies in the 70s and 80s saw strong anti-nuclear motions passing through ALP branches, culminating in a motion for a moratorium on uranium mining at the 1977 national conference. However, the party split dramatically in 1982 when a deal was brokered that allowed the construction of the Olympic Dam mine at Roxby Downs. In 1984, party policy was changed again to recognise the three existing uranium mines, but also pledged that no new mines will be opened under a Labor government.
Nationally, ALP policy currently “recognises the production of uranium and its use in the nuclear fuel cycle presents unique and unprecedented hazards and risks including: threats to human health and the local environment, the generation of products which are useable as the raw materials for nuclear weapons [and] the generation of highly toxic radioactive waste by-products.”
However, whilst ALP leader Kim Beazley and state Premiers conveniently oppose Howard’s push for nuclear power, state ALP governments are expanding uranium mines, beginning the new Honeymoon mine, and creating a huge stockpile of radioactive waste.
Pushing to be a big gun in the global nuclear industry
Expanding uranium mining, false public debates of nuclear power, and ongoing attempts to dump the world’s radioactive waste on indigenous communities in Central Australia are part of a grand plan to expand and consolidate Australia’s role in the global nuclear industry.
Eager to cash in on the boom of nuclear power, politicians argue Australia, as the world’s most uranium-rich country, has a “global responsibility” to provide “clean energy” to fast-developing nations like China. In April 2006, the Howard government struck a lucrative uranium export deal with the Chinese Communist Regime, a nuclear weapons state with an appalling human rights record. They are looking to open the use of Australian uranium to a host of weapons states, including non-signatories to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. These deals have fed public ‘debate’ around nuclear energy – and the corporate media conveniently overlooked similarly lucrative deals, created the same week, for Australian companies to sell renewable energy to China.
After another debauched visit to Washington, John Howard said nuclear power in Australia is “inevitable”, and that “the whole atmosphere in Washington, the atmosphere … created by the high level of oil prices is transforming the debate on energy, alternative energy sources.” He said the environmental advantages of nuclear power “are there for all to see. It is cleaner and greener and therefore some of the people who in the past have opposed it should support it.”
The miraculous reinvention of nuclear energy as “clean energy” cannot hide the ongoing thorn in the nuclear industry’s backside: the problem of nuclear waste. There is still no safe way of disposing of nuclear waste, and there are still no storage plans for the more than 250,000 tonnes of high-level radioactive waste already in existence. Because of the safety and environmental risks, the risk of accidents in the transportation of nuclear waste as well as security fears, there is not a single repository for high-level nuclear waste anywhere in the world.
This is where the nuclear waste dump in the Northern Territory enters the picture. Accepting nuclear waste means fixing the problem at the end of the nuclear fuel cycle. Australia gets to play good “global citizen” by being “responsible” for the residue of the uranium we sell. Mining and exports expand, and Australia even profits from the waste. Nice.
Cashing in – dumping nuclear waste in NT
On December 8 last year, the Federal Government passed legislation clearing the construction of a national nuclear waste dump in the Northern Territory. The proposal was met with opposition from almost all sides of Northern Territory politics, and by Aboriginal landowners, environment and community groups.
The choice of the Northern Territory is no coincidence. Here, the Federal Government can simply override territory laws – convenient after they were forced to abandon a similar proposal for South Australia in 2004, after facing strong, grassroots opposition.
Nuclear waste is made of some of the most toxic material in the world, and will remain radioactive for hundreds of thousands of years. There is still no safe way of storing nuclear waste. The waste dump will be a toxic blight on Australia and a direct threat to humans and the environment for thousands of years to come.
The legislation overrides existing minimum legal protections for the community and environment. For example, the provisions of the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 will only apply after the selection of the dump site. The legislation extinguishes any claims to native title and bypasses the unique provisions of the Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act 1976. It is another slap in the face of Indigenous peoples who continue to suffer disproportionately from the toxic legacy of nuclear power. With weapons testing, uranium mining, and now nuclear dumping taking place on traditional land, Indigenous people have always been the first to suffer the lethal fall-out of radioactive waste.
A nuclear waste dump is really the thin edge of the wedge. It already foreshadows the construction of a new nuclear reactor at Lucas Heights in southern Sydney to replace the aging plant there. A dump is necessary to fulfill the new reactor’s waste “management” requirements.
Active today, or radioactive tomorrow?
Indigenous, environment and community groups, and students have already begun organising in response to the latest, serious attempts to expand Australia’s involvement in the nuclear industry. The past successes of strong, committed and well-organised alliances between Aboriginal owners, Indigenous solidarity groups, environmental organisations, anti-nuclear groups, anti-war activists, unions, faith groups, political parties and student networks demonstrate how current campaigns can become another Jabiluka, or the Kupa Piti Irati Wanti campaign that stopped the construction of a nuclear waste dump in South Australia in 2004. These alliances mobilised thousands of people in the campaigns to stop mining and dumping, building the movement for a nuclear-free world.
The nuclear power debate is a false debate. Howard and the pro-nuclear lobby aim to confuse and ‘soften’ Australians into accepting nuclear power overseas, expanding uranium mining and exports, accepting the world’s nuclear waste, and to drive a wedge into the forlorn ALP.
The reframing of the nuclear industry and ‘debate’ is a distraction from the real debate about climate change – energy reduction and moving to renewable energy. State and Federal Governments are determined to gratify nuclear and fossil fuel industries – at the expense of indigenous communities; and creating environmental destruction, long-lived radioactive waste, and dangerous climate change.
To get involved or know more about anti-nuclear campaigning contact [email protected].org.au
break out boxes
Nuking the climate won’t stop climate change
Climate change is happening – and governments and corporations are being forced to respond to consensus of scientists worldwide and a strong global movement to avert dangerous climate change. Nuclear power plants are currently unlawful in Australia under the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Act 1998.
Produces Greenhouse Emissions
Vast amounts of greenhouse gas emissions are produced at nearly every stage of the nuclear cycle: mining and enriching uranium, building and decommissioning reactors, and transporting fuel and waste. Nuclear power will not provide the deep cuts to emissions needed to stop dangerous climate change. High-grade uranium ores are limited and will be exhausted in about 50 years, even at the current rate of consumption. Low-grade uranium ores are harder to extract and emit high greenhouse emissions.
Too expensive and too long
Nuclear energy has high capital costs and costs more than energy from renewable sources like wind, solar, biomass and small-scale hydro. A single nuclear reactor costs billions of dollars, and takes 10 to 15 years to build. Moreover, a huge number of nuclear reactors – 2000 new 1000-megawatt reactors – would need to be built were nuclear power to replace fossil fuels on a large scale. This is unrealistic as well as hugely scary.
Too dirty and dangerous
Uranium mining and processing is highly polluting; accidents are rife; nuclear reactors release radioactive isotopes into our air and water, potential targets for military attacks, and produce large amounts of dangerous, long-lived nuclear waste. There is still no safe way of disposing nuclear waste that will remain radioactive for hundreds of thousands of years. More nuclear material also means more nuclear weapons.