Leave it in the ground!
Nuclear free Australia
Date: 22-Jul-2008
Uranium mining impacts, radioactive waste and nuclear security risks far outweigh any claims for a nuclear expansion. The more uranium we mine and export, the higher the risks we face from waste, weapons, proliferation and nuclear terrorism.
The uranium mining industry in Australia has a record of failed standards, radioactive leaks and spills, unresolved long-lived radioactive waste problems, disproportionate impacts on Traditional Owners and health and safety risks for workers – including incidents of uranium in the drinking water at two of the three operational uranium mines.
A 2003 Senate Inquiry found an industry characterised by “a pattern of underperformance and non-compliance” and concluded “changes were necessary in order to protect the environment and its inhabitants from serious or irreversible damage.” The Commonwealth, SA and Northern Territory governments have not implemented this Inquiry’s recommendations.
You can’t have uranium mining or nuclear power without radioactive waste. No country has yet been able to establish a final repository for high level nuclear waste. Australia must stop contributing to the intractable nuclear waste problem.
Also, there is no way to guarantee that Australian uranium will not end up contributing to nuclear weapons programs. There are clear links between the civil and military nuclear programs in many nations, including in China, Russia and India, acknowledged by Former Vice-President of the United States Al Gore:
“In the eight years I served in the White House, every weapons proliferation issue we faced was linked with a civilian reactor program.”
(Guardian Weekly, 9-15 June 2006)
More Images:
