Wednesday, 5 September, 2007

by Dave Sweeney
Australian Conservation Foundation

John Howard and George Bush’s nuclear cooperation deal, announced today, is bad news for the environment and for regional security, the Australian Conservation Foundation said.

 “Australian involvement in the USA’s Global Nuclear Energy Partnership will be greeted with deep suspicion by our neighbours in the region,” said Australian Conservation Foundation nuclear campaigner Dave Sweeney.

 “This announcement fails the climate test – nuclear is a dead end, high risk technology and the proposed research and development will not realise anything for decades.  It represents a great missed opportunity for real action at APEC.

 “Australia’s neighbours will be very concerned about Australia being a nuclear reactor developer and a nuclear weapons fuel exporter – it will inflame existing regional insecurities.

 “We can have little confidence in the Prime Minister’s assurance that our involvement in the USA’s Global Nuclear Energy Partnership does not also include becoming a host for high-level radioactive waste, especially considering the Federal Liberal Party’s resolution in June this year that Australia should ‘expand its currentnuclear industry to incorporate the entire uranium fuel cycle’.”

 The following resolution was passed, unamended and unchallenged, by the Liberal Party’s Federal Council on the weekend of 2-3 June 2007:

 “That Federal Council believes that Australia should expand its current nuclear industry to incorporate the entire uranium fuel cycle, the expansion of uranium mining to be combined with nuclear power generation and worldwide nuclear waste storage in the geotechnically stable and remote areas that Australia has to offer.”

 Polling shows Australians are deeply opposed to nuclear power and radioactive waste storage in Australia.  A survey of 1000 voting age Australians in March this year found 73 per cent did not support “the storage of nuclear waste in Australia”.