The Australian Greens welcome indications that BHP may be abandoning plans for its Yeelirrie uranium mine.
“The political and community backlash in WA is indeed significant” Senator Scott Ludlam said today, citing the story in today’s West Australian.
“The WA community, our churches, unions, environment and women’s groups remain firmly opposed. Aboriginal people from all over the state are united in their determination to stop their land and water being contaminated by uranium mining. As the WA Nuclear Free Alliance gathering in April concluded, “We can’t close the gap by increasing the number of radioactive holes in the ground.”
“Australian uranium exporters and investors are uniquely vulnerable to the volatile and unpredictable nuclear industry that has never lived up to the promises it has made in the past,” Senator Ludlam continued.
“The largest mining company in the world is watching the impact of the Fukushima disaster: the German government has decided to phase out nuclear power by 2022. The Swiss government will phase out nuclear power permanently by 2034. Japan has abandoned plans for nuclear energy to provide half of its capacity and has scrapped 14 planned new reactors. The Mayor of Osaka City, KEPCo's biggest shareholder, has called on KEPCo to abandon nuclear energy. The Chinese State Council has also put an embargo on approval of new reactors.
“The nuclear renaissance is dead. The nuclear industry was in enormous trouble well before the disaster at the Fukushima complex. As at 1 April 2011 there were 437 nuclear plants operating in the world, seven fewer than in 2002. In 2008 for the first time since the beginning of the nuclear age no new unit was started up.
Seven new plants were added in 2009 and 2010 while 11 were shut down over that period.”
“The only future the nuclear industry has is in long-term intergenerational waste management and stewardship of the extraordinary categories of toxic and poisonous waste it produces. The reckless pursuit of electricity too cheap to meter must finally be set aside as the pipedream that it always was,” Senator Ludlam concluded.
“The Brendan Grylls deal over uranium royalties, to form a coalition government with Colin Barnett must now be seen for what it has created: an uranium feeding frenzy that had no substance,” said Robin Chapple, Greens MLC for the Mining and Pastoral Region.
For comment call: Senator Scott Ludlam (02) 6277 3467 Robin Chapple MLC (08) 9486 8255
HON ROBIN CHAPPLE (Mining and Pastoral) [5.50 pm]: Since the earthquake and tsunami of 11 March, Greens parliamentarians and party members around the world have been very concerned for the people of Japan, including our friends and colleagues whose lives changed on the day of the earthquake. Japan faces a very long recovery and rebuilding effort from an event that took such a short time. As someone who knows about geology, I am deeply aware of the sheer unforgiving force of an earthquake and the magnitude of that much water moving that fast. I am joined by my Greens colleagues in being amazed and heartened by the actions taken by the Japanese people in their recovery efforts: their ingenuity and improvisation and their capacity to organise on large scales is being tested greatly; how the Japanese people have met the test of cooperation within their communities; how efficiently they have moved to house and care for the displaced; and how they support the grieving and traumatised. All are different kinds of life-saving work, but crucial during the early stages of surviving a catastrophe on this scale. How quickly, also, have the Japanese people acted on the realisation that they do not need to use so much electricity. Electricity consumption has, out of necessity, reduced dramatically in big city centres, but this situation has advanced the idea that places do not need to be seen from space to be absolutely fantastic, interesting and prosperous places.
Acts of international support received in their hour of need have been important messages of solidarity for Japanese people. I wish to join my colleague Senator Scott Ludlam’s acknowledgement in federal Parliament of the speed with which the Australian government offered and delivered aid and assistance.
This week, on Tuesday, in the month of the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Chernobyl accident, the Fukushima nuclear plant accident was classified a level 7 incident—the worst possible type of nuclear event. I served on the Radiation Health and Safety Advisory Council of the federal government’s nuclear regulatory authority before serving this term in Parliament, and therefore know what it means for several nuclear reactors to experience serious power outages and fires for over a month, leading to radioactive and radiation leakages—some of them very large, others smaller—into the air and ocean. I know what it means for the workers on 10-minute shifts risking their lives, working to fight a radiation fire that they cannot see. The radiation levels are thousands of times those permitted normally. I cannot imagine what it means, however, for the Japanese people whose land, food and agriculture are at serious risk of contamination. I cannot imagine not letting my child drink water from a tap. I cannot imagine not returning to my home because it is now part of an exclusion zone that will be depopulated for many generations. I am aware of the science, the current thinking about acceptable levels of radiation, and level 7 disaster radiation releases are far from being acceptable for human health, water, fish, plants and all living things. Much of the actual damage, the cancers and mutations, will not be seen for a long time; in some cases, decades. Radiation works in mysterious ways and that is something the nuclear industry absolutely banks on—literally. It banks on the fact that radiation cannot be seen, tasted or smelled and that the damage shows up a long time later.
The Western Australian Nuclear Free Alliance, made up of Aboriginal people from all over Western Australia and their allies, met on 4 April under the slogan, “We Can’t Close the Gap by Digging a Deeper Hole”.
Traditional owners from the Pilbara, the Kimberley, the Goldfields, the Great Victoria Desert, the Central Desert, the Gascoyne, Perth and the South West all say that on a good day Australian uranium becomes radioactive waste; on a bad day it becomes fallout. They express their profound regret that Australian uranium bought by TEPCO could be what is contaminating the sea water, food chain and gene pool. These Australian people are joined by others who have opposed Australia being the source of uranium, which is causing so much long-term damage, risk, alarm and controversy. I take this opportunity to seek leave to table their conference statement.
Yvonne Margarula, traditional owner of the lands on which the Ranger uranium mine sits in Kakadu National Park, summed up this sense of responsibility in a letter to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, which appeared on the front page of last Friday’s The Age. In it she expressed her profound sadness that radiation problems at Fukushima were possibly fuelled by uranium derived from her traditional lands. As we all know, the Ranger uranium mine in Kakadu is currently out of action, with milling suspended until July and mining also suspended. It is likely that the uranium was from the Olympic Dam mine—a mine that uses 33 million litres of water each day at no cost whatsoever to BHP. In the driest state in the driest continent on earth, we simply cannot afford to waste that much water. The Greens globally agree that the energy future is renewable rather than radioactive, and calls on the Western Australian government to join the actions of the German, Swiss, Chinese and Venezuelan governments and to pause and conduct a thorough review of its responsibilities, and of the risks and consequences of being a major uranium supplier, including our links to not only Fukushima and the many other reactors around the world burning Australian uranium, but also the nuclear weapons industry, which continues to hold the world to ransom, 66 years after the first use of nuclear weapons on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Premier Colin Barnett’s continuing pursuit of nuclear power for Western Australia even as radiation leaks from the Fukushima facility are appalling and out of step with his own party, Greens MLC Robin Chapple said today.
“It is truly incredible that anyone, let alone a State Premier, can continue to push for nuclear generated power in light of the tragedy unfolding in Japan,” Mr. Chapple said.
“I think that whilst events are largely speaking for themselves in terms of the safety of nuclear power, the Premier’s fantasy needs to face some harsh facts and these need to be raised systematically.”
“The Premier has said that nuclear should not be an option on fault lines. That should rule out Western Australia given that Perth is adjacent to a fault line.”
“We experience infrequent but significant seismic events such as the Kalgoorlie quake in 2010 – and as we have seen, it only takes one quake to cause a major incident and it only takes one major incident to contaminate a community”
“The Premier advises that he wants to see nuclear as an option once we have exhausted our fossil fuel supplies.”
“That in itself is an indication that the man has no vision with regards to any form of renewable energy generation and that he expects WA to remain chained to dirty energy to the bitter, unaffordable end.”
“He then wants to lock the State into an energy source that is basically an incredibly inefficient, expensive, and potentially catastrophic energy source that will dog future generations well after he is gone.”
“Nuclear is not a clean option because it generates highly radioactive waste that few countries or communities are prepared to have sitting around for thousands of years.”
“Nuclear is not a low emission energy source because the combined CO2e emissions from mining, processing and refining uranium, and the emissions from waste management are far higher than genuine renewable energy sources.”
“Nuclear is not a safe energy source, as has been made abundantly and tragically clear from its inception right up to the present moment. The industry itself is plagued with malpractice and faulty safety accounting.”
“Nuclear is also an incredibly expensive option and virtually impossible to insure without passing the cost on to the taxpayer.”
“Even Tony Abbott has said that nuclear is too expensive an option. This will be doubly true after the insurance agencies account for the Fukushima disaster.”
“Finally, the Premier has completely failed to grasp the implications of installing an incredibly water-hungry facility in a water-starved state.”
“Mr. Barnett is in the grip of a dangerous fantasy as a nightmare unfolds in the real world.”
For more information please contact Robin Chapple on 0409 379 263 or 9486 8255
