Age
Wednesday 18/10/2006, Page: 14
The answer to our power needs is blowing in the wind, write James Norman and-Jim Green.
THE way some commentators have been talking one, could be mistaken for thinking Australia is on the verge of an economic boom based on uranium sales to Asia. These claims don't stand up to scrutiny.
Uranium accounts for less than one-third of 1 per cent of Australia's total export revenue.
Even with exports to China, an expansion of the Roxby Downs and new mines, the likelihood of uranium accounting for more than 1 per cent of export revenue is minuscule. And even if Australia was the sole supplier of uranium on the global market, revenue from exports such as wine and medicines would still exceed it.
The nuclear industry may be able to reverse the pattern of stagnation that has prevailed for the past decade but it will need to replace the current cohort of ageing reactors.
Earlier predictions of nuclear growth proved to be laughably wrong. In 1974, the International Atomic Energy Agency predicted there would be 4450 nuclear reactors in operation by the turn of the century - the actual figure turned out to be just 440.
The Federal Parliament's joint Standing Committee on Treaties is scrutinising proposed uranium exports to China. In its submission to the committee, the Australian Safeguards and Non-Proliferation Office predicts that Chinese demand for Australian uranium could reach 2500 tonnes annually if China's ambitious nuclear expansion plans are realised.
At last year's value of Australia's uranium exports, sales of 2500 tonnes to China would yield just $136 million, though the safeguards office uses the current spot-price to estimate returns of $250 million. Total exports to China last year amounted to $18.4 billion, so uranium exports will struggle to increase that figure by 1 per cent.
But the bigger issue is to do with risk and global security.
IAEA director-general Mohamed ElBaradei has described his organisation's basic inspection rights as "fairly limited" and complained about "halfhearted" efforts to improve the system. He has also expressed concern that the safeguards system operates on a "shoestring budget ... comparable to a local police department". Yet we rely on the IAEA's safeguards to keep Australian uranium out of nuclear weapons.
China plans to increase the contribution of renewable energy to 15 per cent by 2020 while nuclear's contribution is expected to grow from 2 to 4 per cent. Australia ought to set a positive regional example and encourage China to abandon its nuclear expansion and to increase its renewable energy target to 17 per cent or more.
Earlier this year, an Australian consortium signed a $300 million deal to build wind farms in China. Surely we would be better off staying out of the dangerous nuclear game and promoting investment in the more lucrative clean energy sector instead.
Australia's role in nuclear proliferation in North- East Asia is all the more topical in the wake of the North Korean nuclear test. North Korea provides the latest of several examples demonstrating the link between nuclear power and weapons. Its weapons program has depended crucially on the pretence of a power program (and on support from China).
Plutonium produced in North Korea's "experimental power reactor" may have been used in the regime's nuclear bomb test. That test will encourage Japan and South Korea to pursue weapons programs.
Plutonium produced in reactors fuelled by Australian uranium is an obvious source of weapons material in both countries, as retired diplomat and Canberra University professor Richard Broinowski has been warning for years. By allowing Japan to separate and stockpile plutonium produced using Australian uranium, we are potentially fuelling further regional tensions.
Australia should be engaging with the clean-energy markets of the future, such as wind and solar, which several Asian countries are already investing heavily in. With global markets growing annually at 60 per cent and 28 per cent respectively for wind and solar, these clean, green technologies will fulfil our moral obligations while providing economic and energy security for the future.
James Norman is a Melbourne writer and author. Jim Green is national secretary of the Beyond Nuclear initiative.
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