ACF position on uranium mining and nuclear power
Date: 4-May-2006
ACF remains rock solid in opposing the mining and export of uranium and its use in nuclear power.
Uranium mining in Australia has a dirty history. There have been more than 120 documented leaks, spills and licence breaches at the Ranger uranium mine in Kakadu National Park since the mine opened in 1981. The incidents have got more sever and more frequent as the infrastructure has aged.
While even the strictest safeguards can't guarantee exported Australian uranium won't end up fuelling a nuclear weapon or a terrorists' dirty bomb, we can be absolutely certain our uranium will contribute to the unresolved problem of long-lived radioactive waste.
And nuclear energy is not a solution to climate change.
As ACF's Council stated in a resolution on 2 April 2006:
"Nuclear is too dangerous, too dirty, too expensive and too slow to provide any legitimate answer to climate change or to energy security for the developing world. Australian uranium exports (to China) would facilitate diversion of China's limited uranium supplies into their ongoing nuclear weapons program, further regional insecurity and increase nuclear risks including unresolved nuclear waste management."
As an energy source, globally, uranium provides less power than renewables do. In fact, China is planning to get much more energy from renewables than from nuclear power (15 per cent from renewables by 2020, against 6 per cent from nuclear).
Uranium is inextricably linked to very serious environmental and health problems via nuclear weapons and radioactive waste.
There is nothing ideological about opposing its use. It is a level-headed, logical, pragmatic and sensible position.
Read ACF President Prof Ian Lowe's speech to the National Press Club on this topic.