Enriching Australia?

The Prime Minister is undoubtedly aware of widespread concern that the international non-proliferation regime could collapse because of the recalcitrance of the major nuclear weapons states and the ambitions of would-be weapons states. As the 2004 report of the UN Secretary-General's High Level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change noted: "We are approaching a point at which the erosion of the non-proliferation regime could become irreversible and result in a cascade of proliferation."

The Prime Minister has argued that in the emerging Nuclear World Order, countries supplying nuclear fuel might also take responsibility for spent nuclear fuel disposal. If Australia is to supply not just raw yellowcake but enriched uranium or fuel rods, the pressure on Australia to host an international high-level nuclear waste dump will continue to build.

As Professor John Veevers from Macquarie University wrote in the Australian Geologist in the late 1990s - when Pangea Resources was attempting to foist a nuclear dump on Australia - such a dump would pose serious public health and environmental risks: "[T]onnes of enormously dangerous radioactive waste in the northern hemisphere, 20,000kms from its destined dump in Australia where it must remain intact for at least 10,000 years. These magnitudes - of tonnage, lethality, distance of transport, and time - entail great inherent risk."

Instead of pursuing his nuclear dreaming, the Prime Minister should focus his attention on adding value to benign and clean energy resources. Australia was once a leader in solar power, an industry that has been left by his government to wither on vine as capital and brains take flight overseas, where more visionary policies are in place.

The Canberra Times obtained a confidential CSIRO report in May which argues that solar thermal technology "is poised to play a significant role in baseload generation for Australia" and will be cost-competitive with coal within seven years.

But this potential won't be realised unless the Government can be persuaded to shift its nuclear ambitions from enrichment plants and power reactors to the nuclear fusion power supplied by the sun at a safe distance of 150 million kilometres.

An expanded renewable energy target, like those recently announced in Victoria and South Australia, would provide jobs and energy security while slashing greenhouse emissions. And it won’t upset the neighbours.