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'Ethical' investment is booming

By Frances Howe - posted Thursday, 21 August 2008


Ethics, uranium and nuclear power

Several fund managers that invest in nuclear power cite climate change as a reason. However, little effort is made to justify those arguments or to address counter-arguments. Briefly, the counter-arguments are:

  • a global doubling of nuclear power at the expense of coal would reduce greenhouse emissions by less than 5 per cent with significant attendant risks (for example the reactors would produce enough plutonium to build over one million nuclear weapons); and
  • a significant and growing body of scientific literature and experience demonstrates how the use of renewable energy sources and energy efficiency policies and technologies can generate major reductions in greenhouse emissions - without recourse to nuclear power.

Not a single repository exists in the world for the disposal of high-level nuclear waste, and few countries have identified potential sites for such a repository. This waste will pose public health, environmental and proliferation risks for thousands of years.

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Nuclear power is the only energy source with a direct and repeatedly-demonstrated connection to the proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction. Of the 10 nations to have produced nuclear weapons, five did so under cover of an ostensibly peaceful nuclear program - India, Pakistan, Israel, South Africa and North Korea. Over 20 countries have used their “peaceful” nuclear facilities for nuclear weapons research.

The uranium mining industry has a poor track record in its dealings with Aboriginal communities. This ongoing pattern of behaviour cannot be reconciled with the inclusion of uranium mining companies in ethical investment funds.

The Mirarr Traditional Owners in the Northern Territory led a successful campaign against the Jabiluka uranium mine, but still have the Ranger uranium mine on their land. Yvonne Margarula, Senior Traditional Owner, wrote in a submission to a 2005-06 parliamentary uranium inquiry:

Uranium mining has completely upturned our lives - bringing a town, many non-Aboriginal people, greater access to alcohol and many arguments between Aboriginal people, mostly about money. Uranium mining has ... taken our country away from us and destroyed it - billabongs and creeks are gone forever, there are hills of poisonous rock and great holes in the ground with poisonous mud where there used to be nothing but bush.

Similar patterns of “radioactive racism” are evident in the management of by-products of the nuclear cycle. In 2006, the Australian government amended the Commonwealth Radioactive Waste Management Act to enable the imposition of a nuclear waste dump, without any consultation with or consent from Traditional Owners.

North American activist Winona LaDuke told the Indigenous World Uranium Summit in 2006: "The greatest minds in the nuclear establishment have been searching for an answer to the radioactive waste problem for 50 years, and they've finally got one: haul it down a dirt road and dump it on an Indian reservation."

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The nuclear industry cannot be described as “ethical” given its inherent WMD proliferation risks, its legacy of high-level nuclear waste, its treatment of Indigenous people and the plethora of more benign methods to reduce greenhouse emissions.

While ethical questions are necessarily arguable, the nuclear industry has been repeatedly and comprehensively discredited. If the ethical investment market is to retain its credibility, it must employ more rigorous and more consistent ethical screens. There is a clear case for regulatory reform to ensure more transparent disclosure of investment in uranium mining and nuclear power.

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About the Author

Frances Howe is a researcher with Corporate Watch Australia.

Related Links
Clean Energy Future Group, 2004,
Corporate Watch Australia
Friends of the Earth et al., 2005,
Responsible Investment Association of Australasia

Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.

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