My father, Moss Cass, phoned just now and we talked about the Labor Party's national conference decision to export uranium to India, a country not in the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

Uranium mining was a big issue in our household when I was growing up and it became the reason that I decided to not to follow Moss into the Labor Party.

The context of the 1980s was of course the Cold War. The world had been brought to the brink of an accidental nuclear war, by a combination of US strategic aggressiveness and Soviet technological senescence. NATO had developed and deployed short-range nuclear missiles in Western Europe, that could reach targets in the USSR quicker than the Soviet air defences could verify the incoming attack.

This meant that the USSR would be on a hair-trigger for the launch of a nuclear counter strike against the West and might do so on the basis of a false positive alarm. In practical terms, the world might find itself in a nuclear war thanks to a technical glitch. This was the original Dr Strangelove paradox, in real life.

This escalation of danger was recorded on the January 1981 cover of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, which moved the hands of the 'Doomsday Clock' forward to 4 minutes to nuclear midnight (from 7 minutes).

Germany was still riven between East and West and the epicentre of any European nuclear battle. It was thus home to the greatest anti-nuclear and broader green political movement. Petra Kellyrose to a leadership of this movement and co-founded Die Grünen (The Greens) and was elected to the Bundestag in 1983.

Petra Kelly was a hero for my generation. She showed me that it was possible for a political party to stand unambiguously in defence of life and against nuclear war.

In 1984 the Labor Party national conference adopted the 'three mines policy' which sanctioned the largest uranium mine in the world at Roxby Downs (Olympic Dam) and the Ranger and Nabarlek mines, while preventing any new mines from opening.

I knew then that it would not be possible for me to join Labor, on account of its 'half-pregnant' stance on this issue. As a teenager I joined no party and instead participated in the 1980s subcultures that spoke of a meaningful response to the times.

My friends and I organised anti-nuclear protests and dressed in op shop clothes. Lots of our favourite bands sang about the nuclear era: The Smiths, Kraftwerk, Crass, Style Council, Midnight Oil, Legendary Pink Dots, Laurie Anderson.

In 1995 I finished at university and decided to join a political party: The Australian Greens.

Mr Fox and the nuclear industry

My father was Labor's minister for environment and conservation from 1972 till 1975, and he instituted a major inquiry into a proposed uranium mine by Ranger Uranium Mines. The inquiry was chaired by former Chief Justice Russell Fox and shaped Australia's nuclear industry policy ever since.

The Fox Inquiry (often referred to as the Ranger inquiry) was comprehensive. It travelled around Australia, to hear evidence from 281 people, recorded in 12,575 pages of transcript.

The specific Fox recommendation that Labor decided to finally reject today was as follows:

"No sales of Australian uranium should take place to any country not party to the N[uclear] N[on]-P[roliferation] T[reaty]. Export should be subject to the fullest and most effective safeguards agreements, and be supported by fully adequate back-up agreements applying to the entire civil nuclear industry in the country supplied." (Report No 1, 1976, p.186)

The Fox inquiry gave a qualified support to the uranium mining industry, on the basis of proper regulation of the whole nuclear fuel cycle. This proper regulation is yet to happen.

BHP Billiton is the operator of the behemoth Olympic Dam copper and uranium mine and continues to successfully greenwash the mine and mislead over its legitimacy. If the Fox inquiry findings had been fully and honestly implemented, we would not be exporting uranium to any country and perhaps not allowing it to be processed at Olympic Dam, let alone mined at other sites.

The proper interpretation of the Fox recommendations is that until there is a definitively safe way to dispose of long-term nuclear waste and guarantee no nuclear proliferation from our exported uranium, then mining is not OK.

Watching the nuclear debate at the Labor Conference at the weekend, I was struck by a few things.

Firstly, the anti-nuclear speakers had the facts on their side. After 50 years, the nuclear industry still has no solution to long-term nuclear waste and nuclear proliferation.

Secondly, the pro-nuclear speakers have stopped relying on fibs about nuclear safety and are now winning on the basis of lies about renewable energy and global warming.

They make out that baseload renewable energy is expensive, but omit to mention that US nuclear reactors cost 300-400 per cent more than promised, according to independent analysts, including Moody's, Standard & Poor, MIT and McKinsey & Company.

The Prime Minister and her pro-uranium supporters also forgot to mention that the reactor construction industry has been in decline since 1980.

The average age of the reactor fleet is over 25 years, which means that just to replace the old reactors reaching the end of their life by 2025 would mean building one every 19 days for a decade. Where are they going to go? Which communities are going to welcome them?

To build replacements for the oldest reactors in the global fleet plus construct enough new reactors to stop climate change, is fanciful. As Fortune Magazine puts it, 'A nuclear renaissance? Maybe not' (April 22, 2009).

Nuclear power is also becoming more expensive as the years pass, while solar, wind and other renewables are now cost competitive. Nuclear power will never become ubiquitous, because it is an economic failure of an industry and renewables are getting cheaper and cheaper.

Thirdly, our media frequently subtracts more value from environmental debates than it adds. The Murdoch media reports pro-nuclear talking points as if they are facts and uses Labor's uranium stance to play partisan politics in support of the Liberal party.

Lastly, many of the anti-nuclear speeches were intelligent, principled and compelling. Minister Stephen Conroy was the big surprise. His voice broke as he recounted his family's association with the Windscale (Sellafield) nuclear facility in Cumbria, home of the first reactor to export electricity to the grid (Calder Hall power station).

Minister Anthony Albanese was also excellent, as was delegate Maurice May, who recounted his experience with the McClelland Royal Commission into British nuclear tests.

There are some great people in the Labor party and I wish them all the best; may they prevail, on the side of life and facts.

Dan Cass is a lobbyist with over 20 years' experience working in the environment movement, both in Australia and overseas.