3CR
 Community Radio 855am

THE RADIO-ACTIVE SHOW

With Eric Miller and Linda Marks

Saturday at 10.00am

20th March 1999

Good morning, this is the Radioactive Show brought to you by the Sustainable Energy and Anti-Uranium Service. I'm Linda Marks and with me in the studio is Eric Miller. (Good Morning) The Radioactive Show is a weekly program bringing you news and information on Nuclear, Peace and Energy issues.

On today's show we speak to Alan Pears an Energy Consultant. We are now at a stage where we can buy green power, that is, electricity produced through renewable sources. Now it is time we also had green gas.

We then speak to Stephanie Mills of Greenpeace NZ on a high level radioactive waste shipment from France to Japan that is sailing now and a plutonium shipment that is planned for later this year.

And finally we speak to Fiona Hallam from the Melbourne Jabiluka Action Group about the Palm Sunday Rally that is on the 28th March and the blockade Peace Presence of North Ltd that will go from the 29th March to the 1st April.

The electricity industry has been forced by environmentalists to become beware of the environment. So we have energy ratings on our electrical appliances and we now have green power or soon will have. Gas has largely escaped these pressures but it does generate green house gases and it is a finite energy source. Eric Miller asked Alan Pears who is an energy consultant and writes for the Alternative Technology Association's magazine 'Renew,' is gas a green fuel?

Alan Pears: As fossil fuels go gas the cleanest of the fossil fuels from a greenhouse perspective. The problem is it is still a fossil fuel and burning gas does still generate a lot of greenhouse gas. As so, if we are looking at a future where we have to reduce Australia's greenhouse emissions by 60-80% to try to stabilise the concentrations of greenhouse gases, then, in that context, natural gas that can maybe give us 30% savings compared with coal is a long way from being the answer.

Eric Miller: The electricity system has all kinds of green power, does the gas industry have those pressures put on it to make it more efficient?

Alan Pears: No. I think that there are two things here. One is that the community tends to not put much pressure on the gas industry to improve its environmental performance. Partly because it is not seen as the problem in the same way as the electricity industry is. But also, I think that the gas industry has sort of lost its way over the last five or so years. This is partly because of a combination of uncertainties around restructuring of gas industry. This has meant that they have lost a lot of the knowledge base in their industry about what they could do and they have lost a lot of the motivation to perform. While at the same time they under the mistaken belief that they are going to be an automatic winner of we go for greenhouse response.

Eric Miller: In what ways is the gas industry inefficient? What are some of the simple things that we can do to make it more efficient?

Alan Pears: The big problem with most gas appliances if that they are not very efficient. We have done studies for instance, they have a pilot light going all year and they have a lot of heat loss from their tanks. For say, a small one or two person household, thirds of the energy that is in the gas is basically wasted when you are running a gas hot water service. Likewise if we look at central heating systems. The basic design of these things with very inefficient ducting, in many cases they still have pilot lights, the way they are controlled to heat the whole house instead of just parts of it, all these things make these central heating systems fundamentally inefficient.

Now, to be fair. Some manufacturers are making some improvements. You can buy zone systems and so on. But the reality is the builders don't put these better products in the houses, they just want a cheap system that will heat the whole house. And that's what goes in.

Eric Miller: I suppose part of it is that the government hasn't put regulations forward to make these things more efficient?

Alan Pears: No. The gas industry has done a very good job of avoiding government intervention in anything to do with them really. For example, while the electricity industry's appliance labelling programme is carefully supervised by the government, the gas industry scheme is actually a voluntary programme run in the gas industry and as such it hasn't had the same kind of scrutiny that might be applied to the electricity industry's scheme.

Eric Miller: The electricity industry has these efficiency schemes and it has the green power schemes where it has these alternatives than the fossil fuels where it seeks out renewables. Has the gas industry done anything like this?

Alan Pears: No. I think that this a really big failing on the part of the gas industry. For example, you can produce biogas which is in fact natural gas. Biogas can infact be produced from landfills, from fermenting organic materials in specially designed containers. So you could have green gas and you could promote a green gas package for gas in just the same way we have a green power package for electricity.

Eric Miller: Could you send green gas down the pipes to appliances or would it work with isolated systems?

Alan Pears: This something that has to be worked through. It may be cheaper, rather than injecting the renewable gas into the existing pipelines, to use that use gas for some factories or small areas of the grid, rather than trying to clean it up to exactly the same quality as mains gas. But in any case, there is no doubt that they could generate gas from lots of different sources and they could use it to replace fossil fuel gas that's now being consumed. And in a sense, that is the same as the electricity does because when I join a green power scheme, I don't actually have solar cells or a wind generator on my roof. What the electricity company promises is that the equivalent amount of electricity I use will be injected somewhere into the grid, from renewable sources and that will replace some fossil fuel use. Now that parallel with gas is pretty straight forward.

Eric Miller: Is this what we should be pushing the gas industry to do?

Alan Pears: I think so. I really think green gas or ecogas, or some other kind of package should be a standard product offered by the gas industry. And I think that it is appropriate for the community to start asking for it. And the reality is the technologies for the industry to do green gas type strategies are in many ways better known and with longer histories than a lot of the renewable energy technology that the electricity industry is using. For example, some people did a study a couple of years ago that suggested that if all urban green waste was collected and converted into biogas instead of just being composted or mulched, then the amount of energy freed up by that could be equivalent to all of the natural gas used by Australian homes.

Linda Marks: That was Alan Pears who is an energy consultant and writer for the Alternative Technology Association's magazine 'Renew' and you can get 'Renew' at most newsagents or by subscribing, or by becoming a member of the ATA. Renew is produced at the Solar Office at Ceres in Lee Street Brunswick.

And that's a good time to give a plug for what's going on at Ceres. If you haven't been to Ceres this summer, or you have never been to Ceres at all, I recommend that you go along today because they have their Autumn Equinox Harvest Festival that is going from Midday to dusk. And next Friday night they have Lothlorian and Tiddas with Rita Mills and the Descendants. That goes through from 6.30 until 10pm.

A few weeks ago a ship left France with a cargo of high level nuclear waste to go half way around the world to Japan through the Panama Canal. By now if should be in the Pacific. The waste was left over from reprocessing spent nuclear Reactor fuel rods. Eric Miller spoke to Stephanie Mills of Greenpeace NZ.

Eric Miller: A waste shipment has left Europe and is heading towards Japan.

Stephanie Mills: That's correct. A shipment of highly radioactive nuclear waste left Cherbourg in France and set sail for Japan a few weeks ago. The route was kept secret until just after the ship left. We have now discovered that the ship will be sailing via the Caribbean route and that's through the Panama Canal and across the North Pacific. This is by no means the last of these shipments and the Pacific route is still a likely one for the upcoming shipment in the latter part of this year that will be a plutonium shipment not nuclear waste.

Eric Miller: The plutonium fuel, will it have a ship to guard it all the way through, because it is pretty highly dangerous for weapons.

Stephanie Mills: That's right. The International Atomic Energy Agency and the US government require shipments of plutonium fuel, because it is useable for nuclear bombs, to have a military security transport plan. That plan has been submitted by the British shippers that are undertaking the shipment and has been discussed by the US government. The outcome isn't clear. What they are proposing is that it will just be two civilian vessels with some UK armed police and maybe a gun on the front of the ship. Now that isn't really an appropriate level of safety for such a shipment. There is also an environmental risk of course, because plutonium is highly toxic to human beings. If there was a fire on board that would certainly pose an environmental risk to coastal nations that are dependent on tourism and fisheries.

Eric Miller: The casks that carry this plutonium, are there any doubts that they could survive a fire on a ship?

Stephanie Mills: The shippers and the nuclear industry generally have said that the casks that they transport nuclear materials in are totally safe. They have some very impressive videos of trains smashing into walls and so on. However, one concern that has come up has been that many of the casks that have been used to ship nuclear fuel both across the sea and by rail within Europe have now been found to have been contaminated. Because the material becomes very hot there is a sweating process that goes on and the internal sides of the casks have become contaminated with radioactivity. And this obviously has implications for worker safety and for people who live along side railways where these trains are passing, for example. So although the nuclear industry has done its best for the last decade to ensure us that the shipments and the transportation of nuclear materials is totally safe, in fact they have not even met their own standards for this kind of contamination. And certainly, independent experts say that in the case of a shipboard fire where you have high extremes of temperature, you have obviously very extreme weather conditions, that you could definitely have a leakage of nuclear fuel to the environment. And this is nuclear material that could pose problems to human health and to the marine environment.

Eric Miller: This plutonium is so dangerous that the amount that they have got on the shipment, if any small percentage got out into the environment, it would be a global catastrophe wouldn't it?

Stephanie Mills: Well I think you have to see this in perspective. A very, very tine portion of plutonium could endanger your health. If you inhaled it, it could cause cancer. Eight kilos is sufficient to build a nuclear bomb. These ships will carry 4.5 tonnes of plutonium fuel. So although it requires a chemical separation process to turn it into weapons useable material, that's a relatively simple process which is why the US government requires military transport with the shipments.

Eric Miller: Has the shipment that is on its way now, has it entered the Pacific yet? Or where is it?

Stephanie Mills: It's passing through the Caribbean this week. It may have gone through the Panama by now. It will be in the North Pacific this week.

Eric Miller: Although that's not plutonium that is highly dangerous radioactive waste as well, isn't it?

Stephanie Mills: That's right. That's the other bi-product of reprocessing plutonium. What happens is that when you separate plutonium from the nuclear waste produced in a nuclear reactor, you obviously get the plutonium itself, but you also get large quantities of highly radioactive waste. And under the contract Japan has with Europe, this waste has to be returned to Japan. So obviously Greenpeace is calling for plutonium reprocessing to stop altogether. It's very risky in terms of the environment. It's a danger in terms of proliferation because it's weapons useable material. And these transports are unnecessarily exposing all the countries en route to the risk of nuclear accident.

Eric Miller: Once it gets to Japan the Japanese don't really know what to do with it do they?

Stephanie Mills: Well, Japan has argued that it needs plutonium fuel to have a complete fuel cycle because it doesn't have its own uranium and plutonium can be used either in conventional reactors or in experimental fast breeder reactors. Japan's own fast breeder reactor programme has pretty much come to a halt after a severe accident in 1995 at the Mondu reactor. The use of plutonium fuel in conventional reactors is basically untested on a commercial scale so Japan is at the moment, sitting on a stockpile of between of 4 and 6 tonnes of plutonium. This is obviously of concern to some of Japan's neighbouring countries. It's a concern, I think, when we consider that this is an enormous amount of weapons useable material. It's more plutonium, for example, than India has in its military programme. So we are talking about a capability that is creating a security dynamic in Asia. Obviously that is a concern to everybody that lives in the Asia Pacific region.

Eric Miller: And the other point is that we have to look after these 4 tonnes of plutonium for eternity.

Stephanie Mills: The half life of plutonium, that is, the time by which the radioactivity in plutonium decays by half, is 24,000 years. This is a very, very long problem. It is a legacy that we will leave to many, many future generations. Greenpeace believes that there should be a total ban on plutonium whether it is for commercial or for military use. It should be monitored by independent and international means. There should be, along with the phase out of nuclear power, an end to the production of this material because it is so dangerous to our health and to the environment.

Linda Marks: That was Stephanie Mills of Greenpeace speaking from NZ about the high level nuclear waste and plutonium shipments from Europe to Japan.

And before we go to our next story, here are the Painters and Dockers playing outside North Ltd last year.

There is going to be another Blockade Peace Presence at North Ltd. North Ltd is at 476 St Kilda Road. The Peace Presence will go from the 29th March to the 1st April. The day before is the Palm Sunday rally. Eric Miller asked Fiona Hallam of the Jabiluka Action Group where and when the Palm Sunday rally starts.

Fiona Hallam: We are starting at 1.30pm at the State Library on March 28th. We are going to march down to the gardens opposite the Victorian College of the Arts and we are going to have a big festival and concert in the gardens. We have quite a number of really good artists performing at the concert. Debra Conway and her new band, City of Women, Paul Hester's Largest Living Things, Dead Heart, the Brolga Boys, Dave Steel and Tiffany Eckhart and their band is the Green Room, and Alana Atkinson and Pan so it's a great line up and its going to really rock.

Eric Miller: So there are going to be a whole lot of stalls and a whole lot of bands playing in the gardens.

Fiona Hallam: Yes. There will be lots of information stalls and food stalls so it will be one huge party.

Eric Miller: And after that there is a blockade down at Norths?

Fiona Hallam: Yes. We are setting up the blockade or Peaceful Presence on the 29th, the Monday and that is going to last to Thursday the 1st April in the evening. That's a week of not only protesting but also educational workshops. Throughout the week there will also be performances and screenings of films. On the Thursday afternoon starting at 1pm that will probably finish around 10.30pm so we will have bands and comedians going all afternoon on Thursday. It should be a really fun week and a great way to demonstrate to North and the public that we are not going to give up on this issue.

Eric Miller: So there will be something on everyday and there are people that are going to stay there overnight.

Fiona Hallam: Yes. There will be people camping there throughout the week. We have divided the week up around different themes about human rights and environmental issues. On Monday we are doing a lot of educational workshops around Koori issues and there will be indigenous dancers performing. On Monday night we will be listening to a few ghost stories. I can't wait to hear them. On Tuesday morning we have speakers from various unions and the Melbourne Workers Theatre Group are going to do a bit of performing. On Wednesday we have lots of workshops around environmental issues. On Wednesday we have a women's theme in the morning and we have a lot of workshops and performances around women's issues and Wednesday afternoon we have a gay and lesbian theme and there will be performances around that. We have a drag queen doing a performance that will be really good. We also have got various movies being screened every night. On Thursday we have bands in the afternoon and a multicultural theme in the morning. Hopefully we will get a lot of ethnic groups doing performances on the Thursday morning and giving workshops around issues that concern them. It is going to be a week of community spirit and getting together. Not only protesting against the injustices that are occurring around the Jabiluka mine issue but also getting together and talking about other issues that concern humans and the planet that we live on.

Linda Marks: And that was Fiona Hallam from the Jabiluka Action Group talking about the Palm Sunday rally and the Peace Presence outside North Ltd for the 4 days after the rally. The rally kicks off at the State Library at 1.30.

Eric Miller: And that's all we have time for on the Radioactive Show this week, Linda, so it's goodbye from Eric.

Linda Marks: And it's goodbye from Linda.

Transcript produced by Linda Marks - with much thanks!!!
Page last updated April 2, 1999.
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