power yet


The federal government's hand-picked taskforce into the future of Australia's uranium industry is yet to meet, but already the debate is going nuclear amid allegations of stacking and bias.Nuclear energy is considered a proven technology in most of the industrialised world and provides 16 per cent of the world's power, but not in Australia where political opposition to it remains intense.Australia is more richly endowed with uranium than any other country on earth, holding up to 40 percent of its known recoverable reserves and providing about 20 per cent of the world's uranium exports.The government's review will canvass whether uranium enrichment, nuclear power plants and increased uranium mining are viable, affordable and safe options for Australia.Recent polls have shown strong opposition to all three proposals - but public opinion could be on the move.A Newspoll of 1,200 voters published last week showed opposition to enriching uranium for export to overseas reactors had dropped 13 points to 46 per cent since 1988.In the same period approval had grown nine points to 34 per cent.The same poll showed 51 per cent of Australians did not want domestic nuclear power stations, with opposition strongest among women, people aged between 18 and 49, and Labor voters, and only 38 per cent were in favour of the plan.The Australian Conservation Foundation maintains young people are just as opposed as their parents, but Prime Minister John Howard believes Australia's attitude has changed and the country now has an obligation to consider all the issues in a full public debate."There is little point in a review if you put barricades around areas which you fear might be unpopular," Mr Howard said.However, Labor, The Greens and environmental groups have questioned whether the inquiry's findings will be in the public's best interest.Opposition Leader Kim Beazley said the inquiry will produce "whatever John Howard wants it to produce".Taskforce head, former Telstra chief and nuclear physicist Dr Ziggy Switkowski, stepped down from the board of the pro-nuclear Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation to avoid charges of conflict of interest.Dr Switkowski's pledge to keep an "open mind" has not allayed concerns the government has loaded the inquiry with nuclear supporters.Nuclear physicist George Dracoulis, nuclear safety expert Sylvia Kidziak, environmental scientist Dr Arthur Johnston, chairman of electricity firm Delahunty Power Ltd Martin Thomas and prominent economist Warwick McKibbin join Dr Switkowski on the taskforce."It's the old thing in politics, if you are going to get the result you want, then pick the people who are going to give you that result," Senator Bob Brown said.The Greens and Labor have also attacked the task force's narrow terms of reference, calling for it to look into other forms of electricity generation.The review will examine health, safety, security, waste storage and disposal and weapons proliferation issues, along with environmental and economic factors, Mr Howard said, and has sprung from concerns about climate change, greenhouse gas emissions and the rising costs of energy.It follows the release of an ANSTO-commissioned report that found nuclear power was economically competitive with gas and coal - as long as taxpayers contributed to either the cost of building plants or underwriting the risk.ANSTO said the industry could be viable with four or five plants built near major cities or towns in eastern Australia where they could be easily hooked up to the electricity grid.Opposition resources spokesman Martin Ferguson, who is leading a push to change Labor's current policy allowing no new uranium mines, said if government wanted to prove nuclear energy was viable it should reveal possible sites so their economics could be considered.But the government and Dr Switkowski have ruled the issue out of the inquiry, calling it premature. They want the public better educated about nuclear power before the next step.And while it is still unclear if power generation makes economic sense, the government's review will also consider whether Australia should add value to its vast uranium stores by processing the fuel locally.Uranium must be enriched before use in most nuclear reactors because mined material contains only about 0.7 percent of the useful U-235 isotope, with the remainder the heavier U-283 isotope.This minuscule difference in mass allows the two isotopes to be separated to "enrich" the percentage of U-235 up to three or five percent for use in power generators.Last year, Australia exported a record 12,360 tonnes of uranium, valued at $573 million, extracted from its three operating mines: Ranger in the Northern Territory's Kakadu National Park, and Olympic Dam - the largest known uranium orebody in the world - and Beverley in South Australia."I've always maintained that holding the reserves of uranium that we do, it is foolish to see ourselves as simply an exporter of uranium," Mr Howard said.Labor has promised it would not build reactors but has yet to crystallise its position on enrichment, although Mr Beazley said it had "similar problems" to nuclear power.Nuclear weapons also require enriched uranium, to at least 90 per cent, but the government appears eager to steer the public discussion away from such emotive issues.Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said the debate about nuclear power had already been clouded by "puerile" arguments about the Chernobyl disaster and linking the industry to possible atomic weapons development.The nuclear debate has "been driven too much by people who are opposed just for emotional reasons and they sort of descend to abusive and hysterical arguments very quickly", Mr Downer says.The taskforce will announce its findings at the end of the year, but the public discussion in the meantime is itself sure generate quite a bit of heat. The former Soviet Union's 1986 Chernobyl disaster resulted from a flawed reactor design operated by inadequately trained personnel and without proper regard for safety.It resulted in a total of 56 known deaths, although experts are divided about its lingering impact in Europe.