McGUINNESS
March 21, 1996
It's time to get back properly into the uranium export business
IT WAS not surprising that as soon as the new Federal Government took power, the issue of uranium exports and the three/two mines policy would raise its head. The absurdity of Labor's policy on uranium exports has been apparent from the beginning, and the sooner we freely allow the mining and export of uranium for energy generation the better.This will displease the anti-uranium lobbyists, and will doubtless produce a wave of vocal protests, roadblocks, sit-ins and a flurry of pseudoscientific propaganda as to the evils and dangers of uranium and its lack of any economic justification. Much of this will simply play into the hands of the Howard Government, which knows how the blue-collar workers feel about militant environmentalists, and turned it to considerable advantage at the last election. Every hysterical demonstrator who hits the front pages and the TV news is worth votes to the Coalition.
Moreover, it will provide an excellent opportunity for the divergence between the interests of the Aborigines in remote areas and those of the urban environmentalists to be shown up; the Aborigines are far more concerned with their own interests, in terms of land, respect for the local environment and the generation of jobs and income than with ideological battles about the uses of uranium. The first beneficiary of the relaxation of policy will, of course, be the Ranger II mine in the Northern Territory, which is the projected Jabiluka mine retitled. This project is ready to go just as soon as the green light is given, and the company has been engaged in amicable and co-operative discussions with the local Aborigines for some time.
Similarly, the projected expansion of the Olympic Dam mine in South Australia will also go ahead. There are a number of other potential prospects, such that the potential for a major addition to our export income is very great. It is not necessary to rehearse the refutations of the environmentalist anti-uranium line. Suffice it to say that while of course careless uranium mining can be hazardous, it need not be if it is properly supervised and management is given incentives to ensure that there are no mistakes.
There has been no serious incident involving uranium mining in Australia, not even the much exaggerated spillage of water from the Ranger mine containment pond. Radon gas is not a serious hazard at mines such as Ranger (nor is background radiation, which in most places is no higher than that of a coal mine or large granite building); and at the underground mine at Olympic Dam very strict precautions are taken.
What about on-use of uranium? Since, at this stage, only the export of yellowcake is involved, and that in the drum is no threat to anyone's health - it is stacked in ordinary sheds - the further use of the uranium by customers is strictly none of our business. There are alternative sources of supply in any case, and our refusal of supply harms no-one but ourselves. However, there certainly is an Australian and an international interest in the safety of the nuclear energy industry and the prevention of non-proliferation, so participation in the present, very effective international control regime is highly desirable. The more important we are as a uranium supplier the louder is our voice in the councils of nuclear safety control.
It has been interesting to hear the arguments, both public and private, about the supposed dangers, in particular, of supply to Indonesia. After the outpouring of repressed racism and xenophobia which followed the French decision to resume testing, it should not be surprising that most of the arguments about the supposed dangers of the proposed Indonesian nuclear power station are essentially racist.
There is the belief that somehow Indonesian scientists and engineers would have to be inferior, that management would inevitably be corrupt and inefficient, and that we would be seeing some kind of re-run of Chernobyl - only worse because somehow the Indonesians would be worse than the Russians (or Ukrainians).
But Indonesia is a large country and has many highly trained engineers - the Minister for Energy has a German engineering doctorate. And there is nothing to prevent the hiring of highly qualified technical staff from other countries. It has been pointed out that the proposed location of the power station is dangerous because of volcanic and seismic activity. But Japan is also like this, and has seen no design problems in taking necessary precautions.
Nor is the argument that Indonesia has plentiful supplies of fossil energy relevant. For the real reason Indonesia favours nuclear energy on the island of Java is simply that it is less polluting than coal or oil-burning power generation. Java is heavily and densely populated, and is the main rice-growing region of the country. In these circumstances nuclear power generation is greatly to be preferred even if it should prove to be more expensive. Precisely because the power station is to be sited near to the main population concentration it will not use poor design technology or be unsafely managed. In the unlikely event that a Chernobyl-type station were to be built without containment vessels and were to be mismanaged in the same way, Indonesia itself would be the main sufferer.
There is no way in which Australia can prevent or delay the building of nuclear power stations in Indonesia. What we can most sensibly do is to become a secure and trustworthy supplier of uranium to the Indonesian nuclear power industry, and in the process become so intimately involved in it that we can be continually reassured as to the safety of its engineering and management practices.
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