Antinuclear

• Remember that the former Labor MP is now a Councillor in Sutherland Shire, which houses Lucas Heights nuclear station –  so he’s not likely to want to offend the local nuclear community.
• Note that Aaron Patrick is getting his information from Ben Heard, Australia’s most prominent, and very manipulative, shill for the nuclear industry.
•  Note that Patrick is quoting John Quiggin and Simon Holmes a Court as pro nuclear (that’s questionable) and disparages Mark Butler as “stoking fear”.
• Note that this author quotes NASA about “nuclear saving thousands of lives” – and remember that NASA is a prominent nuclear advocate, wanting nuclear reactors in space and on Mars.

In 1998, Michael Forshaw, a Labor senator, agreed to a Greens proposal to insert a clause into a proposed law on nuclear safety that prohibited using nuclear power to generate electricity.

Now, as parliamentary inquiries at the federal level and in NSW and Victoria investigate nuclear power, Mr Forshaw is one of a number of Labor figures open to reconsidering whether nuclear can play a role in combating climate change.

“I think the debate is good because there have been people who have been the strongest environmentalists for many years who now say nuclear is a clean source of energy,” he said in an interview from the Sutherland Shire, where he is a councillor.

“Nuclear energy is certainly on one case cleaner that some of the more traditional forms of energy, such as coal-fired power stations. But the problem is of course what do you do with the nuclear waste. We still haven’t got to Australia settling on a site for the waste we currently produce.”

Pro-nuclear advocates regard the events of late 1998 as one of the great, unheralded missteps in the history of energy policy.

The medical industry was desperate for the Lucas Heights nuclear reactor – then located in bushland west of Sydney – to continue because it produced radioisotopes vital for the treatment of cancer and other diseases.

The 40-year-old reactor needed to be replaced, and the government wanted to merge the Australian Radiation Laboratory and the Nuclear Safety Bureau into a single independent regulator, the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency, according to a brief history by Bright New World, a pro-nuclear lobby group.

The Greens and Australian Democrats decided to tap into anti-nuclear sentiment coursing through society by raising concerns about where the nuclear waste would be stored.

The Greens, which wanted to attract votes from the bigger Democrats party, saw a political opportunity to demand that the new law would state that it did not “authorise the construction or operation” of a nuclear power plant or uranium enrichment facility.

As a junior Labor spokesman for health, Forshaw had responsibility for the legislation in the upper house. On December 10, not long before the Senate broke for lunch, he announced that the Labor Party had agreed to the proposal, ensuring it would pass.

“We understand that there is no either medium-term or long-term intention on the part of the government to proceed to construct such facilities,” then senator Forshaw said. “On that basis alone, one would think that the government should be prepared to support this amendment.”

Needing the Senate’s support to replace the ageing Lucas Heights plant with a new Argentinian reactor, prime minister John Howard’s government didn’t bother opposing the clause.

Only 10 of the 76 senators were present for the vote, including three from the Greens and Australian Democrats. “The rest just accepted it without any opposition,” the Bright New World history says.

The process took six minutes.

Eleven hours later the law was approved by the House of Representatives, without a vote, at the direction of health minister Michael Wooldridge. “I believe the amendments agreed to by the Senate will strengthen this legislation,” Dr Wooldridge told the lower house.

Waste concerns linger

Mr Forshaw, who chaired an inquiry into the replacement of the Lucas Heights reactor, on Monday said that he didn’t regret Parliament’s decision, and isn’t convinced that nuclear can compete with other energy sources on cost.

The Greens senator who proposed the ban, Dee Margetts, wasn’t well enough to answer questions, a party spokeswoman said. “I am sure she would believe it is still the right decision though,” she said. “Dee never wavered in her stance on issues.”

Mr Forshaw said political agreement was needed on a central location to store nuclear waste for hundreds of years. Once that was settled, a rational debate about the cost and benefits of nuclear power would be appropriate, he said.

We should store our own. That’s the requirement under international agreement. It’s a real travesty we haven’t been able to sort that out.

“If we can’t get governments to make a decision about where to make a long-term nuclear storage facility – if we can’t get that right I think we are a long way from making a reasoned decision on something like a nuclear power station.”

Other figures from the left who have expressed conditional support for nuclear energy include University of Queensland economist John Quiggin, Industry Super Funds chief economist Stephen Anthony, green-energy advocate Simon Holmes a Court and Australian Workers Union national secretary Daniel Walton.

The Labor Party remains adamantly opposed, and environment spokesman Mark Butler has already begun to stoke fear among voters about the risk of nuclear reactors.

Former NSW premier Bob Carr, who was an early Labor Party supporter of nuclear power, said he had become pessimistic about overcoming public opposition.

“If a continent can’t settle on a location for a toxic waste incinerator despite 30 years of discussion, can you really tell me which locality is going to put its hand up to host the country’s first nuclear power reactor?” he said on Monday.

The US National Aeronautics and Space Administration estimated in 2013 that nuclear power prevented 1.8 million deaths between 1971 and 2009 by displacing coal and other polluting sources of energy.