[Green-Activist] Howard's nuclear solution to global warming iswedge politics

[Roy Garner]

Thanks, Anne
Much appreciated.  I've left the text below to encourage 
feedback/discussion.
Kind regards,
Roy

On 20/06/2006, at 9:48 AM, Anne Goddard wrote:

> Excellent Post Roy :-) thank you.
>  
> a
>  
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Roy Garner
> To: maillist for Green Activists
> Sent: Monday, June 19, 2006 2:26 PM
> Subject: [Green-Activist] Howard's nuclear solution to global warming 
> iswedge politics
>
> Howard's nuclear solution to global warming is wedge politics
>
> Activists must beware that Prime Minister Howard is practising wedge 
> politics with environmentalists in his debate "we had to have" on the 
> nuclear solution to greenhouse—the latest manifestation of his 
> "democratic dictatorship". It is a strategy calculated to bamboozle 
> and divide his opposition.
>
> The debate is an old one—that nuclear power, properly harnessed, is 
> clean and green, and of course, peaceful. Even the ALP's Martin 
> Ferguson is talking the inevitability of a nuclear solution, if you 
> can judge from Channel 9's Sunday panel discussion 
> http://sunday.ninemsn.com.au/sunday/cover_stories/article_2007.asp, 
> which also included several so-called environmentalists for nuclear 
> power.
>
> The problem with this debate is that, by steering in the direction of 
> nuclear, it is assumed that we should be talking about the relative 
> dangers of uranium versus fossil fuel, with a focus on new-generation 
> technology bypassing the dangers of 20th century nuclear power plants, 
> and offering us a radical reduction in greenhouse gasses in place of 
> Chernobyl meltdowns http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster.
>
> Serious-minded "practical" politicians and commentators, tinkering at 
> the margins of the debate, and anxious to hang out their environmental 
> credentials, are busying themselves with what is essentially a 
> rear-guard action: insistence on adherence to the nuclear test-ban 
> treaty, which means no trade in uranium to non-signatory countries, 
> because of the real danger that, under the guise of nuclear power for 
> peaceful purposes, they will be covertly making weapons-grade 
> plutonium.
>
> So this is a double shift in focus—first, away from a serious 
> consideration of alternative power sources: solar, wind, wave, 
> hydrogen fuel cell, etc.; and second, away from the nuclear 
> alternative—thorium oxide—which proponents claim is far safer than 
> uranium.
>
> Dr Reza Hashemi-Nezhad, senior research scientist in High Energy in 
> Sydney University's School of Physics, told ABC Television's Lateline 
> http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/content/2006/s1616273.htm in April, 
> that thorium oxide was a safer, more abundant alternative source of 
> nuclear power.
>
> Hashemi-Nezhad claims the metal is safe enough to hold in one's hand 
> and does not produce greenhouse gasses.
>
> What should interest anti-nuclear campaigners is the claim that 
> thorium, unlike uranium, has no dangerous by-products that can be 
> turned into weapons. Howard's great debate favours only the uranium 
> miners, with dollar signs replacing the familiar radioactive danger 
> symbol under which several generations of anti-nuclear activists have 
> mobilised.
>
> Hasemi-Nezad further claims that a thorium reactor could be used to 
> incinerate plutonium stockpiles, and that the waste "would only remain 
> radioactive for 500 years, not the tens of thousands that uranium 
> by-products remain active."
>
> Hasemi-Nezhad's project couples a particle accelerator with a nuclear 
> reactor to start a chain reaction, and can be simply switched off in 
> the event of an accident. Hasemi-Nezad has received support from Greg 
> Copley, A/CEO of Future Directions International 
> http://www.futuredirections.org.au/default.asp?ModuleId=1, a 
> Perth-based think tank that has the Governor General as its patron. 
> Copley says the thorium option was bypassed in the 1950s because of 
> the uranium reactors' capability of producing fissionable materials 
> suitable for nuclear weapons.
>
> But Ian Low, President of Australian Conservation Foundation 
> http://www.acfonline.org.au/, sees the thorium proposal as "hype"—that 
> although "It's true that the period of danger of radioactive waste 
> from thorium reactors, if the design can be worked up and proven, 
> would be hundreds of years rather than hundreds of thousands of 
> years... we're still talking about very long lifetimes."
>
> Because there has been, so far, a deafening silence on the question of 
> thorium as an alternative to uranium, one must be suspicious that 
> Howard's great debate concerns only the nuclear options—the uranium 
> miners versus the thorium reactor proponents, not nuclear versus 
> alternative sources of energy. Interestingly, not one proponent of 
> thorium was represented in the Channel 9 Sunday panel discussion.
>
> Some in Labor have allowed themselves to be seduced by this strategy, 
> and to this extent Howard has already won part of the debate.
>
> If we are to be forced into this debate, then the thorium option must 
> be given serious consideration. But any truly objective appraisal of 
> the alternatives, I suggest, would see uranium stay in the ground, and 
> make it possible for us to help the energy needs of countries now 
> regarded with suspicion and worse—threatening a widening of the 
> ruinous commitment to the so-called "war against terrorism", which is 
> war against the environment.
>
>
>
>
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