Drop the fission line

Friday 29 June 2007
(URL for source to be found)
From Courier Mail, QLD, Australia



Smart State ambassador Ian Lowe warns against a nuclear future

THE Queensland ALP conference this weekend offers an important forum for the Beattie Government to steer the state away from the risks of a radioactive future and towards sustainable energy options.

Prime Minister John Howard is actively promoting nuclear power as a belated answer to global climate change. Recent media reports suggest a wider federal nuclear agenda for Queensland that includes uranium enrichment and nuclear power.

Against this background it is important Premier Peter Beattie continues to keep the door firmly shut on uranium mining and the nuclear industry.

Uranium mining in Queensland would be economically short-sighted and environmentally disastrous. If we want to be the Smart State, we must use solar energy and other forms of renewables.

We should move towards better efficiency, turning our energy more effectively into the services we want. There are many more jobs and dollars in becoming a world leader in clean energy.

We have known for more than 20 years that burning coal, oil and gas is changing the global climate. Moves by the coal industry to clean up its act and reduce its pollution are welcome, but rushed pledges of taxpayer funding to assist this are not. The same money would do much more to curb greenhouse pollution if it were allocated to efficiency improvements and clean energy.

Some claim nuclear energy could help to slow climate change, but this is not a sensible solution. Even the Switkowski report, put together by a hand-picked group of pro-nuclear technocrats, did not make a convincing case.

The summary was optimistic, but the fine print of the report shows it would take about 15 years to build one nuclear power station if we started today, and the cost of electricity would more than double.

Even the most fanciful crash program, dotting 25 nuclear power stations all over the landscape, would only slow the growth in greenhouse pollution by less than 20 per cent. The science shows we need to make serious cuts, 60-90 per cent by 2050, not allow more increases.

Would uranium exports be an economic bonanza? No. The most optimistic forecast of the possible export income is about a third of our earnings from cheese exports. Uranium accounts for only about 1 per cent of our mineral exports and there is little prospect of it becoming a big earner.

What would be the cost of mining and exporting uranium? Huge volumes of radioactive mine tailings, depleted and degraded water resources and an increased risk from nuclear weapons and waste. We are still living with the legacy of the mines at Mary Kathleen and across the Northern Territory border at Rum Jungle.

Uranium mining needs large volumes of water -- not easy to find in Queensland at the moment -- and uses vast amounts of fossil energy, actually worsening greenhouse pollution.

Finally, as the Ranger uranium report said 30 years ago, uranium exports inevitably produce high-level radioactive waste that will have to be managed for hundreds of thousands of years and equally inevitably increase the risk of nuclear weapons.

Even if we say we have the best safeguards in the world and only export to the most responsible leaders, they won't be in power forever and can't control what others will do with the fissile material we sell.

We should learn the lesson of Iran. The world is now getting nervous about its possible nuclear developments. Thirty years ago, we were being urged to export uranium to Iran, and the US was trying to sell its nuclear technology to the Shah. Had that deal gone ahead, Iran would now have all it needs to build nuclear weapons.

The report A Bright Future showed we could get 25 per cent of our power from a mix of renewables by 2020. We should use solar hot water universally. Going that way would create literally thousands of real, skilled and permanent jobs in regional Australia.

Rather than facing a future of leaking tailings dams and increased pressure for nuclear reactors and waste dumps, Queensland can lead Australia and the world in sustainable and clean energy solutions.

The smart sunshine state is a much better option than being a toxic quarry.

Before last year's state election, the Premier stood firmly against the nuclear lobby and promised that the state would not support the mining or processing of uranium.

Beattie also resisted the silly suggestion that we should allow others to inflict on Queensland other stages of uranium processing, such as enrichment or dumping waste. As a Smart State ambassador, I strongly urge the Premier to resist those who want to drag us back into the Dark Age of uranium mining.

Ian Lowe is emeritus professor of science, technology and society at Griffith University and president of the Australian Conservation Foundation

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Letters against Nucelar Energy / Uranium Mining

The following 2 letters are "letters to the editor". The source of the first was not indicated.

Letter One

There are numerous reasons why common sense dictates that we cannot
have uranium mining in Australia, the driest continent in the world. All uranium
mining operations require vast volumes of water in the process of extracting the
uranium from the uranium ore. The liquid waste comprising more than 97 percent
of the ore, and containing radioactive particles, heavy metals and acid would
either be dumped into the ground water, (as at the Beverly mine) or will be
stored recklessly in crudely built tailings dams, (as at the Olympic Uranium
Mining Dam) in the open air.(Olympic Uranium Dam uses/contaminates 42 million
litres of water per day).

The radionuclides and heavy metals which were previously inert and immobile in
the ore body, are after processing, bioavailable and mobile in the aquifier if
put into the ground water, or readily able to leak out of the tailings dams and
into our environment.

With 32 sites in Queensland alone where uranium has been found, such
dangerous tailings dams could well be positioned on Australia’s natural
cyclical flood plains, where no safeguards would ever be adequate for a period
of hundreds of thousands of years for which the tailings remain dangerously
radioactive, bioavailable and mobile. As well as leaking out and contaminating
other water, evaporation of leaked tailings can also occur which can then become
dust, or it may again precipitate as rainfall.

Such remote tailings dams could also become the targets of terrorist
attacks, or they could even become the source of easily available
contaminated radioactive water, for use by terrorists in a terrorist act,
whereby they use it to contaminate town water supplies. If a government is so
concerned about the possibility of terrorism, then it would not ever consider
uranium mining in a country with a nation wide water shortage problem.

(As an example of the relationship between Australia’s water and mining, it has
just been announced that more than 40 mines along the Murray-Darling River Basin
are going to be banned from using water from July 1st. So why should uranium
mines be any different? There are more reasons to prevent the use of water by
uranium mines than any other type of mine).

Not discussed for the sake of brevity are the issues of encouraging nuclear
proliferation, other forms of nuclear waste, the use of waste to produce
depleted uranium weapons, and their deadly contamination of the landscape in other
countries, as Australia’s negative contribution to a world which doesn’t need
nuclear power, when renewable energy sources can indeed provide adequate
baseload power.

Letter Two

No2. letter sent by Keith Jaffray, of Byfield to the Courier Mail.

Dear Sir,

Flat earthers,climate change sceptics,coconut heads and mercenary ghouls are
singing the praises of expanding the uranium industry..........It's time for us
to wake up and raise our individual and collective conscience.

Cetainly there are some beneficial uses of radiation such as for xrays and anti
cancer therapy.However,expanding the uranium industry to cater to a world greedy
for electricity is fraught with great danger. Most people are not aware that
"enriched uranium" creams off only 3% of the uranium from uranium ore for power
generation....the rest (97%) is radioactive waste and is called "depleted
uranium" or "d.u.".This is a misnoma.Depleted uranium has a half life of 4.5
billion years and any form of life exposed to this waste is facing a catostropic
future.Human beings develop the most horrific illnesses,tumours,chromosome
damage,birth deformaties and ultimately death. D.U. happens to be twice the
weight of lead and in a novel approach the producers of "enriched uranium"have
found a convenient way of disposing of the "waste"(depleted uranium) by giving
it to armaments manufacturers! It is now being used for armour plating in tanks
and as a replacement for lead in bullets,missiles and war heads.

U.S.A. military forces have been using D.U.weapons extensively in Iraq since the
1st Gulf War.Over 300,000 U.S.A. service personnel are on permanent dissability
pensions having developed "Gulf War Syndrome" after being exposed to their own
uranium dust on the battlefield. 11,000 of those service personnel have since
died from this "syndrome", not to mention the thousands of innocent Iraqis who
have been contaminated by this weapon of mass destruction declared illegal by
the United Nations.

Take a look at the photographic exhibition "Children of the Gulf War" when it is
displayed at a venue near you. Show some sympathy to our own Australian service
personnel who have been exposed to this evil poison (see"The Courier Mail" March
28th,2007).

The Australian Defence Forces purchased and used 43,000 rounds of D.U.amunition
over a period of 10 years in training exercises.How many Ausralian defence
personnel and civilians have been exposed to this radioactve poison?Is this
"Agent Orange" all over again? These are serious questions only capable of being
answered by a Commonwealth Commission of Inquiry.

Greedy, short sighted armaments manufacturers cannot be trusted to deal with
D.U..

Say "NO" to uranium mining - leave it in the ground.

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