Olympic Dam and Four Mile uranium mines will promote nuclear weapons spread
The terror of Hiroshima
ONLINE opinion, Dr Sue Wareham, 6 August 09
“………………….The Hiroshima bomb was a very small weapon by today’s standards, and yet an estimated 90,000 people died immediately and many tens of thousands more died slowly of burns, multiple injuries, radiation sickness or, later, cancer.
For nearly six and a half decades, the survivors’ message has been clear: Hiroshima never again. And yet not only do these worst of all weapons of terror remain, but they are now held by nine nations. One of the reasons is in our own backyard – uranium.
As our sales of uranium, the raw material for bomb fuel, appear set to increase with a massive expansion of the Olympic Dam mine, and the proposed opening of the Four Mile mine, both in South Australia, it is time to seriously examine the weapons proliferation record of the industry that our exports support.
In the 1970s, the Ranger Uranium Environmental Inquiry found that “the nuclear power industry is unintentionally contributing to an increased risk of nuclear war”. That remains as true today as it was then.
The need to ensure that nuclear weapons are not used again, as articulated by the people of Hirohima, is making a political comeback, spurred on particularly by President Obama’s commitment to “seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons”. Nuclear weapons abolition is both essential and feasible. Feasible, that is, if all existing fissile material is brought under strict international control and we stop creating more. That means leaving uranium in the ground.
Australia, with our large uranium reserves, is blessed with leverage in this issue. Even if mining and export were to continue at some level however, there is one thing at least that should be non-negotiable. No Australian uranium should go to any nation that has nuclear weapons.
That would include a number of our current customers – the US, the UK, France and China. All of them, in addition to Russia which does not (yet) receive Australian uranium, are in violation of their Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) obligation to disarm. Do we really want to supply fissile material to NPT non-compliers who continue to threaten mass destruction? That question should concern the Australian government, especially with the NPT Review coming up in early 2010.
While the nuclear industry has been plagued by a litany of major problems, its most grievous failing lies in its deliberate obfuscation regarding the civilian-military nuclear links. Its glib reassurances might help sell uranium, but at the cost of the nuclear weapons free world that has eluded us since the terror of Hiroshima.
http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=9269&page=0
Neal Blue: U.S. arms salesman in charge of South Australian uranium mines
Digging dirt with a sledgehammer
The weapons manufacturer who converted Labor’s staunchest opponents to nuclear development has a controversial past, write Nick O’Malley and Ben Cubby…………………………….
………………..Neal Blue’s single-mindedness emerged during the battle over a Blue-owned uranium processing plant on an Indian reservation in Oklahoma.
After a series of radioactive spills a nine-legged frog was discovered outside the yellowcake factory.
A government investigation eventually established the company had known for years that radioactive material was leaking and that radioactivity in water around the plant was at levels 35,000 times higher than US federal laws permitted………………………………….
As General Atomics grew, Blue kept an eye on Australia. One of his former employees recalls that in the late 1980s Blue was sure the future was nuclear and Australia was going to be a key part of it.
He went about buying pastoral leases sitting on uranium deposits in South Australia and the Northern Territory, gambling that bans on uranium would one day be lifted.
He was right. In 1990 Blue established Heathgate Resources to operate the new Beverley uranium mine, near Lake Frome in South Australia……………………..The South Australian Government has recorded 59 spills of radioactive material on the surface at the site,……………..
there is no requirement it decontaminate the site when mining ceases.
The environmental impact assessment for Blue’s nearby Four Mile mine, approved this month by the federal Environment Minister, Peter Garrett, similarly carries no such requirement.
http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/national/digging-dirt-with-a-sledgehammer-20090729-e1lj.html
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Australia’s nuclear hypocrisy
Unholy Trinity
ON LINE opinion by Bill Williams 28 July 09
“……………………………..the moral and political quagmire created by our ongoing export of the raw ingredient for nuclear weapons fuel, uranium. The not-so-subtle identification of China as our most likely aggressor in the White Paper’s purview ought to raise questions about the role our uranium will play in that nation’s anticipated rearmament…..………..The capacity to produce nuclear power intrinsically involves the capacity to produce fissile material usable for nuclear weapons. A world free of nuclear weapons will be more readily achieved and sustained in a world in which nuclear power generation is phased out. Bomb-making ingredients will be harder to acquire and more conspicuous to seek. This will substantially deter proliferation, while facilitating timely detection and intervention, focusing scarce intelligence resources on needles, not haystacks.
With the weapons’ retirement age fast-approaching, Australia can contribute to real progress in abolishing these apocalyptic anachronisms, by putting some real spirit into driving the NWC agenda, by politely withdrawing from the US nuclear umbrella and by reducing the flow of raw material into the nuclear fuel chain.
1 This month
17 October, Free Public Talk on Nuclear Issues in South Australia
David Noonan will speak on public interest concerns over the new Roxby Downs Indenture Act 2026 on BHP copper-uranium mining and ore processing in SA, and on how AUKUS may face SA with a High-Level nuclear waste agenda.
Dr Jim Green will discuss international developments in the field of nuclear power including ‘small modular reactors’ and Generation 4 ‘advanced’ nuclear reactor concepts.
Help Aunty Sue Protect Her Land and Sacred Sites From Destructive Rocket Testing.
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PETITION – To: Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and the Australian Labor Government
of the week – Australians for War Powers Reform (AWPR)
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