Since its earliest days, and particularly since the Fox Report of the 1970s, the uranium industry in this country has been a divisive and controversial one. It has also been one that the ACF, along with the wider environment movement, has unequivocally opposed.In a broad sense our opposition to uranium mining and export and the spread of nuclear technology is based on the failure of the nuclear industry to match its operational reality with its public affairs rhetoric. In the five decades since the creation of the nuclear industry, vast sums of money have been spent to convince the public that nuclear technology is both necessary and desirable. However, the industry still lacks credibility in a number of key areas.
Nuclear energy is not clean. All parts of the nuclear fuel cycle, from uranium mining to reprocessing, contribute to the creation of long-lived radioactive wastes. Nuclear energy is not cheap. In many places renewable energy sources are as cheap or significantly cheaper than nuclear energy. When the electricity utilities were privatised in the United Kingdom the market refused to purchase or support nuclear utilities. Nuclear energy is not the answer to global warming. Extensive studies have shown that each dollar invested in end-use energy efficiency displaces nearly seven times more carbon than a dollar invested in nuclear power. Nuclear power is not safe. Nuclear reactors routinely release radiation into the surrounding environment. Incidents, accidents, releases and leaks plague the industry in every country where it operates. Uranium mining is not safe. According to the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, uranium mining has been responsible for the largest collective exposure of radiation to workers. One estimate puts the number of workers that have died of lung cancer and silicosis due to mining and milling alone at 20,000. It is widely agreed that there is no safe level of radiation exposure. The threat posed by nuclear weapons is not over. More than 40,000 nuclear warheads still exist. Nuclear proliferation continues and there is a growing global trade in smuggled nuclear materials. The problems of nuclear waste have not been solved. Despite industry assurances, nuclear waste remains a very real and very potent danger. It needs to be isolated from people and the wider environment for up to tens or even hundreds of thousands of years. As said nuclear energy is not the answer to global warming. As proponents of uranium mining and nuclear energy often promote themselves as clean and green I would like to explore this further. Can the Atom Cool the Greenhouse?
In the ACF's view greenhouse mitigation is essential and Australia's energy technologies and methods of power generation require structural change in order to effectively acknowledge and address this. The mining of uranium in Australia cannot be equated with an Australian initiative to mitigate the effects of global warming. Even if Australia developed its own nuclear power and utilised Australian uranium we could not make this claim.
The National Academy of Sciences in 1983 examined the costs of establishing nuclear power as a world-wide replacement for coal-fired power stations. In order to meet the projected energy demand of the year 2025 one would have to build 7600 large nuclear reactors. That is one reactor being built every second day and would still result in a growth of greenhouse emissions by 65% due to motor and non-coal fossil fuel power generation.
It would cost US $8.39 trillion in 1987 dollars and this excludes the costs of nuclear waste storage and treatment, decommissioning costs or the costs of attempted clean up operations following occasional major accidents.
Or one could accept that nuclear power is a rather foolhardy and expensive option, even as part of a mix, and adopt a strategy based on Professor Bill Keepin's research that "each dollar invested in end-use efficiency effectively displaces nearly seven times more carbon than a dollar invested in nuclear power."
If the welfare of future generations is accepted as a compelling reason to develop non-greenhouse energy alternatives, then nuclear power must be excluded from the alternatives. The risks associated with every stage of production of the nuclear power industry poses unacceptable long term risks. Sustainable energy has become considerably cheaper since then too.
In fact, even if massive funding could be permanently secured with which to contain and guard radioactive waste stockpiles, we would still be unable to ensure an enduring political will to do so. If the stability of the earth's surface cannot be forecast or manufactured for the life of entombed radioactive waste, it is folly to pretend that the nations of the world could apply their political will on future governments.
It is precisely in the interest of the safety of future generations that Australia should avoid the use of nuclear power and should end our involvement with the international nuclear industry. Uranium mining is a hazard to people and the environment because radioactive contamination follows the mining, processing and refining of uranium and its use in reactors and weapons. While radiation exposure can be reduced by improved practices in mining, there remain major problems of health and long-term safety, especially in the countries to which we export uranium. Nuclear Power - Its Past, Present and Future
Radiation exposure can induce cancer and inheritable genetic damage, both of which usually appear decades after exposure. The type of cancer produced depends on the type of radiation and the nature of the radioisotope, and especially where it is deposited or concentrated in the body. There is no safe lower limit of radiation exposure and it is recommended that it be kept as low as reasonably achievable. The proposed underground mine at Jabiluka, being in such a rich ore-grade, would pose a radiological hazard to workers. This scenario has been raised not only by environment and anti-nuclear groups but also by the Australian Radiation Laboratory in its recent submission to the Jabiluka EIS.
Uranium 238 and its decay products are hazardous if inhaled in the dust from blasting or mechanical handling. However, the major hazard to miners is radon-222, a radioactive gas which decays to products which readily lodge in the lung. The concentrates (yellow cake) from uranium processing also pose a hazard, even if only small amounts are inhaled.
An increase in lung cancer in uranium miners was noted more than a century ago and has been confirmed many times since - in Germany, Czechoslovakia, USA, Canada and France.
The discarded tailings from uranium milling contain high levels of radioactivity and present problems for waste management. The leaching of long-lived radionuclides into ground water, or their dispersal by wind, must be prevented.
Nuclear power has long been touted by the nuclear industry as a sustainable solution to the world's energy requirements. Despite the fact that nuclear energy production supplies less than 4 per cent of total world energy consumption, a figure virtually unchanged during the last 15 years despite major subsidies, the industry continues to make confident predictions about its future prospects. However, there are a number of reasons why nuclear power has little future.
The radioactive wastes generated in nuclear power production must be isolated from the biosphere for in some cases hundreds of thousands of years before they cease to be dangerous. Despite enormous research efforts and expenditure, an effective long-term waste storage scheme is yet to be developed.
Nuclear reactor accidents have undermined arguments for the safety of nuclear power. The Chernobyl nuclear accident contaminated 160,000 square kilometres of land, displaced at least 400,000 people and led to the premature deaths of incalculable numbers of people.
In addition, ground water contamination, a potentially massive problem, is only just becoming evident.
The costs of Chernobyl have been mind-boggling. Recent estimates for clean-up and lost production are over US $300 billion. In fact a USSR report concludes that as this is far greater than the value of all the nuclear electricity ever generated in the Soviet Union, the Soviet economy would have been better off had no nuclear reactors ever been built.
Just to give this some perspective it is worth noting that less than $1 billion in end-use efficiency measures would offset Chernobyl's generating capacity twice over. Furthermore, the new country of Belarus, upwind from Chernobyl, estimated in 1995 that 25% of its entire national income is spent on alleviating the effects of Chernobyl.
Claims by the nuclear industry that the 'safer' western-style reactors are not prone to Chernobyl-like disasters are dubious, given the near disasters at Windscale-Sellafield in the UK, Three Mile Island in the US and at the Monju reactor in Japan. Recently two French-designed reactors in China have been plagued with operating difficulties resulting in long shut-downs. In 1991 nearly half of France's reactors were temporarily shut down due to faults.
Spiralling costs and concerns about reactor safety and waste disposal have caused the nuclear power industry to stall in industrialised countries despite massive subsidies (in the US alone US $34 billion in 1995 dollars in the last 50 years).
By 1996 nuclear plants under construction world-wide had a total capacity of only 27,000 megawatts - compared to 520,000 megawatts from other sources under construction - with the lowest number of nuclear reactors under construction in 30 years. Also 84 nuclear reactors had been shut down, most of them before the planned shutdown dates.
More nuclear capacity has been cancelled in the US in the last 30 years than the current total capacity. And 25 of the current 110 reactors will probably be prematurely be shut-down within the next 6 years. Even France, the nuclear shining knight, has rusty armour. The hidden costs of the French nuclear power program has left the state-owned Electricite de France carrying about US $30 billion debt.
The industry has now shifted its attention to rapidly developing countries such as Indonesia. In those countries, generally poor environmental and safety standards can only exacerbate the environmental risks associated with nuclear power. Furthermore, there is little doubt that a key motivation of many governments for acquiring nuclear power is to position themselves to develop nuclear weapons capability.
However, despite decades of heavy promotion by the nuclear industry in the developing world, growth has been slow. Plants are running over cost, there are delays and numerous technical problems are being encountered. The World Bank has concluded that nuclear power is too costly and too risky.
Nuclear power is not the answer to the world's need for a long-term supply of clean and safe energy. But what are the alternatives, given the problematic nature of fossil-fuel energy sources such as coal, oil and gas?
In the short to medium term, major energy-efficiency programs and selective use of less greenhouse-intensive fossil fuel-based systems, such as natural gas and co-generation, can provide a transitional phase to sustainable energy systems. The recently released Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Second Assessment Report has estimated that energy-efficiency measures alone could cost-effectively reduce energy consumption in most industrialised countries by 20-30 per cent.
In the longer term, sustainable energy systems will have to be nuclear free and largely fossil-fuel free. Renewable systems, in particular solar energy, offer the best hope of providing the world with a safe, clean and sustainable energy supply. Solar radiation striking the earth each year is equal to about 178,000 terrawatts or about 15,000 times current global energy consumption.
Opponents of renewable energy - usually proponents of nuclear power, fossil fuels or both - frequently claim that it is either impossible, impractical or untried. But most renewable technologies are now well proven. In fact, renewable energy - solar, wind, micro-hydro, tidal and sustainably harvested biomass - already meets about 13 per cent of the world's commercial energy needs.
"Once [renewable energy] was the province of mad scientists and dreamers..... No longer. Little noticed, the costs of many renewables have recently been tumbling. Fossil fuels are still almost always cheaper, but a battle has begun on the fringes of the mighty $1 trillion-a-year fossil fuel industry that could force it into retreat early in the coming century." A statement by an environment organisation? No, The Economist magazine, 7 October 1995.The Expert Group on Renewable Energy Technologies (EGRET) in Australia recently concluded that wide-scale application of solar technologies will be capable of producing electricity for around 5 cents/kWh within a few years. This would put solar power close to the costs of coal-fired electricity in Australia and 40-60 per cent below the cost of nuclear power in industrialised countries. Currently photovoltaic power is still more expensive than nuclear but the cost is falling fast. On the other hand, the cost of nuclear power is rising rapidly due to decommissioning and waste management costs.
Nuclear power is a dinosaur of a bygone era: an era of big technical fixes - fixes that leave an addiction, a debt and ill-health. ACF maintains that the risks of the nuclear option are too great and the benefits too few.
Mine-site impacts within Australia vary according to the climate and ecosystems in which the mine is situated. For instance, Ranger is in a wet-dry tropical monsoonal climate, whereas Olympic Dam Roxby Downs is found in the arid zone of South Australia. Paradoxically, the two mines face the contrasting problems of too much water and too little water, and yet a major impact of both is contamination of water bodies. Uranium Mining in Australia
Ranger, through design faults arising from over-estimation of evaporation and under-estimation of rainfall, has had ongoing problems with the disposal of contaminated water. Radionuclides and heavy metals find their way into the wetlands of Kakadu National Park through water disposal, leaching and erosion. Although diluted by wet season rainfall, these pollutants accumulate in organisms. The continuation and proposed extension of uranium processing at Ranger through the milling of Jabiluka ore would compound these problems. Similar problems of water disposal and wetland contamination would arise at Koongarra.
Olympic Dam is a huge mine and has a voracious appetite for processing water. It currently draws this from Borefield A, located north of the mine in the Great Artesian Basin, at the rate of about 15 million litres per day. Mine expansion is resulting in the development of Borefield B further north-east, which will provide for a total of 42 million litres per day until 2036. This is an enormous burden on the basin's fossil water resources. The entire pastoral industry and town use for the basin in South Australia is 130 million litres per day.
Poor design and management of waste at Olympic Dam has seen up to five billion litres of highly toxic and acidic water leak from the tailings dam into groundwater. This was kept secret for years by Western Mining until the evidence became overwhelming.
Three of the uranium mines currently proposed for Australia - Kintyre, Yeelirrie and Honeymoon - are in arid areas and would require underground water, with the very real potential for similar problems of groundwater contamination.
It is worth remembering Rum Jungle, the uranium mine south of Darwin which operated in the 1950s and 60s. The clean-up of radioactive contamination cost the Australian government far more than it ever earned from the mine. Mining techniques have improved since then, but community expectations of environmental protection have increased and action is demanded to maintain the integrity of national parks, world heritage areas and the wider Australian environment.
Two of Australia's new proposed uranium mines - in fact the first two now undergoing environmental impact assessment - are (or were) located in national parks. Jabiluka is within Kakadu National Park (although excised before the park was declared) and Kintyre was within Rudall River National Park (although subsequently excised). Mining and National Parks
The mining industry has pushed the multiple land use concept on the grounds that it should be entitled to 'access' high conservation value areas. The industry argues that resource development activities can occur simultaneously with the protection of conservation and cultural values. ACF rejects these arguments for the following reasons:
1. exploration and mining have been demonstrated to have impacts which are incompatible with the protection of high conservation values;Our opposition to uranium mining and export is based on the local environmental effects of mining, the hazards of nuclear proliferation and the folly of adding further to the unresolved question of the management of long lived radioactive waste. These issues are demonstrably of concern not only to ACF's members, but also to the majority of the Australian and international community.2. conservation reserves generally protect a range of additional values (such as tourism, scientific research, water catchments etc.) which would be compromised by exploration and mining - conservation reserves are already multiple use areas, it is mining that is a single use;
3. the proportion of land area fully protected for conservation purposes in Australia at present is, at best, only 4.2%;
4. scientific assessment suggests that at least 15% of Australia's land area needs to be placed in a comprehensive and representative and fully protected reserve system to protect the full range of biodiversity;
5. numerous opinion polls have shown that 75-85% of Australians do not want exploration and mining allowed in high conservation value areas;
6. the sustainability of the Australian mining industry is highly questionable if it requires access to high conservation value areas in order to survive.
For all these reasons ACF will continue to campaign actively against the mining and export of Australian uranium and to advocate for the adoption and implementation of domestic and international strategies to achieve this goal and look forward to a future where all forms of nuclear threat are diminished.
Michael Krockenberger, ACF Campaigns Manager. January 1997
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