Let’s clear air on real nuclear power agenda

Energy security is about a reliable and economic supply of energy that meets the needs of households, industry and communities safely into the future. Nuclear power is arguably the least safe and the least economic power source possible. 

Nuclear power has received billions of dollars of public funds, making it the most heavily subsidised form of electric power generation ever, yet the markets and public opinion have consistently rejected it. The industry has jumped at climate change as a drowning man goes for a life raft. 

A baby of the military, nuclear power has never really cut the umbilical cord, and we have seen the proliferation of nuclear weapons into previously non-nuclear states of North Korea, Israel, India, Pakistan and potentially Iran, through intertwined military and civilian programs. 

Nuclear power stations create highly toxic radioactive wastes. Even after more than 50 years of highly subsidised research, there is still no known way of economically and safely disposing of high-level radioactive wastes on the scale required, and for the tens of thousands of years for which they remain dangerous. Plutonium, a bi-product of nuclear reactors, is one of the most toxic and cancer-causing substances known.  What a legacy to leave our children and our children's children…. 

Nuclear reactors, and their wastes, are potential radioactive time bombs through human error, or as terrorist targets.  The only way of maintaining the safety of nuclear power stations and wastes is heightened security, and further curbs on civil liberties.  The fallout from the meltdown of the Chernobyl reactor in Ukraine in the 1980s, spread across Europe. It still affects human health twenty years later, and has already produced thousands of thyroid cancers. Other more deadly types of cancer are expected to proliferate over the next few decades. Is this energy security?

Nukes are not a viable option for solving world energy needs.  It is not a replacement for oil, the most urgent potential energy shortfall.

Furthermore, the long-term use of nuclear power is not carbon dioxide neutral.  There is sufficient high-grade uranium to fuel only a few decades of nuclear power. There is low-grade uranium, but the amount of CO2 generated from the mining and processing this uranium for use in reactors releases at least the same amount of CO2 as that generated by a gas-fired power station.

Therefore, nukes are not a serious energy option for Australia or the world. Even that most hardheaded of Liberal senators, Nick Minchin, has declared that nuclear power will not be economic in Australia for at least 100 years (read ‘never’).

So, what is the real agenda behind this so-called debate?  The promotion of nukes is partly to legitimise the sale of Australian uranium overseas, even better if Australia joins an Enriched Uranium Exporters Club. This is so morally bankrupt – “It’s not safe or a solution, but is worth megabucks. Others can wear the problems; we’ll just take the profits!”

Perhaps the government hopes to soften up Australians to agree to take back the radioactive wastes produced from Australian uranium exports – a nuclear boomerang. However, it’s unlikely to be the people who profit most from uranium exports who end up with a waste dump in their backyard!

The focus on nuclear is, mostly, a cynical attempt to divert attention from the real debate about how to prevent climate chaos, investment in genuine clean renewable energy technologies - solar, wind, biomass and geothermal. It is ridiculous that the Prime Minister revives nukes as news breaks of an increase in CO2 emissions from Australia’s coal-fired power stations of nearly 50% since1990, and stalled renewable energy investment.

Nuclear power is expensive, risky, generates toxic and radioactive waste, contributes to the proliferation of nuclear weapons of mass destruction, is a obvious terrorist target, and will not help prevent runaway climate chaos.

Australia could lead a genuine clean energy solution. This country has both the climatic conditions and the research potential and a skilled manufacturing workforce for world-class renewable energy development, focused on solar thermal, organic photo-voltaics, electrical storage and wind technologies.

The energy debate we really need is how to boost these genuinely clean energy technologies.

Geoff Evans is a director of the Mineral Policy Institute, a member of the international advisory board of the London-based Business and Human Rights Resource Centre, and a researcher at the University of Newcastle. A version of this article was published in the Newcastle Herald in June, 2006

For more information, please contact:

Geoff Evans

Created: 31 Jul 2006 | Last updated: 31 Jul 2006

This page: http://www.mpi.org.au/ campaigns/climate/nuclear/

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