Uranium enrichment plants can produce low-enriched uranium for power reactors, and they can produce highly-enriched uranium for nuclear weapons. Pakistan and South Africa developed their arsenals of nuclear weapons through the acquisition of enrichment technology. The Iraqi regime was pursuing uranium enrichment until its nuclear weapons program was terminated during and after the 1991 war. North Korea’s nuclear weapons program − based on a uranium enrichment plant and a so-called experimental power reactor − is a source of international concern. There is enormous controversy over the current uranium enrichment program in Iran.
Former Australian Prime Minister John Howard likened a domestic uranium enrichment industry to building factories to knit garments from Aussie wool. But unlike enrichment plants, garment factories can’t produce fissile material for Weapons of Mass Destruction.
We can safely assume that the Lucas Heights nuclear plant in Sydney never operated a secret knitting program. But in 1965, the Lucas Heights plant, then known as the Atomic Energy Commission, did begin a secret uranium enrichment program. It was known as the ‘Whistle Project’ − the idea being that workers would whistle as they walked past and studiously avoid any mention of the secret enrichment program underway in the building’s basement. There is no doubt that the Whistle Project had a military agenda. In the archives of the University of New South Wales, you can find hand-written notes by the then chair of the Atomic Energy Commission, Sir Philip Baxter, in which he calculates how many nuclear weapons could be produced if the enrichment work proceeded as he hoped it would.
The enrichment work was publicly revealed in the 1967-68 Annual Report of the Atomic Energy Commission and the project proceeded in fits and starts until the incoming Hawke Labor government put an end to it in 1984.
In addition to the connection between uranium enrichment and WMD proliferation, the depleted uranium (DU) tailings waste produced in large volumes at enrichment plants can be used in munitions, such as those used by the US and NATO in Iraq, the Balkans and Afghanistan.
Economics of enrichment in Australia
The 2006 Switkowski report stated: “The enrichment market is very concentrated, structured around a small number of suppliers in the United States, Europe and Russia. It is characterised by high barriers to entry, including limited and costly access to technology, trade restrictions, uncertainty around the future of secondary supply and proliferation concerns.”
The Switkowski report concluded that “there may be little real opportunity for Australian companies to extend profitably” into enrichment and that “given the new investment and expansion plans under way around the world, the market looks to be reasonably well balanced in the medium term.”
BHP Billiton’s submission to the Switkowski panel stated:
“BHP Billiton believes that there is neither a commercial nor a non-proliferation case for it to become involved in front-end processing or for mandating the development of fuel leasing services in Australia. Enrichment has massive barriers to entry − including access to technology and approvals under international protocols − and is concentrated with 4 large players: USEC, Areva, Urenco and Tenex, located within the nuclear weapon states of the United States, the United Kingdom, France and Russia respectively. … We do not believe that conversion and enrichment would be commercially viable in Australia. … The economics of any Australian conversion, enrichment or fabrication do not look positive, either individually or collectively. The global market is currently well supplied by services providers with strong customer relationships, economies of scale and scope, the necessary deep technological expertise and experience, solid reputations for delivery, and expansion plans in place.”
Jim Falk et al., 2006, “Australia, uranium and nuclear power”, International Journal of Environmental Studies, Vol 63(6), December, pp.845-857. (Available from jim.green@archive2.foe.org.au)
Looking beyond Iran and North Korea for Safeguarding the Foundations of Nuclear Nonproliferation, former IAEA Safeguards Director Pierre Goldschmidt, Nov 15, 2011, www.npolicy.org/article.php?aid=1115&tid=4
Building Support for the Agencys Safeguards Mission, Henry Sokolski, Nov 03, 2010, Nonproliferation Policy Education Centre, www.npolicy.org/article.php?aid=50&rtid=6
Dr. Brian Lloyd, NT Parliamentary Library Service, Feb 6, 2007, Nuclear Proliferation: Fifth in the series on the Debate on Nuclear Policy in Australia, 2006-2007 www.parlibrary.nt.gov.au/parliamentary_research_papers
This ANSTO-commissioned report argues that nuclear power would be economic in Australia … but only if it is subsidised! John H. Gittus, “Introducing nuclear power to Australia: an economic comparison”:
Statement of Dr. Thomas Cochran, Natural Resources Defense Council, on the Environmental, Safety, and Economic Implications of Nuclear Power Before the Science and Technology Committee House of Representatives, Washington, April 23, 2008,
Paul Leventhal, 2002, Sharon Tanzer, Steven Dolley (eds), Nuclear power and the spread of nuclear weapons: can we have one without the other?, order online e.g. at Amazon.
NSW Inquiry into Nuclear Waste Management 2003-04: NSW Parliament – Joint Select Committee into the Transportation and Storage of Nuclear Waste, 2004 www.parliament.nsw.gov.au/nuclearwaste
Successful campaign against dump in South Australia:
Jacques E.C. Hymans, 2000, “Isotopes and Identity: Australia and the Nuclear Weapons Option, 1949-1999”, Nonproliferation Review, Vol.7, No.1, Spring, pp.1-23, http://cns.miis.edu/npr/pdfs/hym71.pdf
Jim Walsh, 1997, ‘Surprise Down Under: The Secret History of Australia’s Nuclear Ambitions’, The Nonproliferation Review, Fall, pp.1-20, http://cns.miis.edu/npr/pdfs/walsh51.pdf
Alice Cawte, “Atomic Australia: 1944-1990”, Sydney: New South Wales University Press, 1992.
South Australia’s nuclear (weapons) history. SA Nuclear Information Centre paper: “Nuclear weapons proliferation in South Australia 1945-1965” www.ccsa.asn.au/nic/NucHazards/SAweapons.htm
Pro-nuclear environmentalists: There are just a handful of genuine pro-nuclear environmentalists. Most of the discussion and media commentary about pro-nuclear ‘environmentalists’ focuses on people such as self-described eccentric James Lovelock and industry hack Patrick Moore. See the critique posted at http://archive2.foe.org.au/sites/default/files/nuke-enviros.doc
Friends of the Earth is a membership-based not for profit community group that has existed in Australia for 40 years. It is comprised of a federation of autonomous local groups who are working towards the protection of the natural environment and an environmentally sustainable and socially equitable future.
FoE Australia functions both through the activities of its local groups, and on the national level through appointed spokespeople, campaigns and projects and the national magazine – Chain Reaction. Through a combination of research, community outreach, direct action, lobbying and offering positive business alternatives, FoE seeks to work in alliances with other like minded groups and individuals to achieve the necessary social change which will allow for environmental protection with full protection for the rights of all people.
FoE Australia is a grassroots and decentralised organisation that operates from an environmental justice perspective, with the view that social and environmental issues are inextricably linked.
Click here for details on our Major Gifts program.
Click here for information on including FoE in your will.
Here’s a short video from ABC TV ‘Hungry Beasts’ program on 5 November 2009 about Neal Blue who is involved in Heathgate Resources (Beverley and Beverley Four Mile uranium mines in SA), including a mention of Heathgate’s employment of a spy who attempted to infiltrate FoE, and Blue’s various weapons-related corporate and political connections in Australia and around the world.
From the ABC ‘Hungry Beasts’ website: “Earlier this year [2009] the Australian Financial Review published their ‘Covert Power’ List featuring the major string-pullers in Australia – big guns like Therese Rein. If you’ve ever wondered who has the real covert power in Australia, you might be interested in reclusive American billionaire Neal Blue. Neal is CEO and Chairman of US arms manufacturer General Atomics, and the man behind Australia’s newest uranium mine, Four Mile.”
The scarcely-believable story of General Atomics / Heathgate Resources
Jim Green – national nuclear campaigner with Friends of the Earth Australia.
The story behind the corporation that owns the Beverley uranium mine in South Australia is scarcely believable.
Heathgate Resources − a 100% owned subsidiary of General Atomics (GA) − owns and operates Beverley and has a stake in the adjacent Beverley Four Mile mine. GA CEO Neal Blue has had commercial interests in oil, Predator drones, uranium mining and nuclear reactors, cocoa, bananas and real estate. His primary political interests appear to be fighting Communism and supporting the far-right.
Radioactive spills and gas leaks at a uranium processing plant in Oklahoma led to the plants closure in 1993. The plant was owned by a GA subsidiary, Sequoyah Fuels Corporation, and processed uranium for use in reactors and for use in depleted uranium munitions. A nine-legged frog may have GA to thank for its dexterity. A government inquiry found that GA had known for years that radioactive material was leaking and that the radioactivity of water around the plant was 35,000 times higher than US laws permitted.
In 1992, a leak at the Oklahoma plant forced the evacuation of a building only two weeks after federal inspectors allowed it to resume operating. Later that year, the company announced that the plant would be closed after it had been ordered to temporarily shut down three times in the previous six years. Sequoyah Fuels Corporation President Joe Sheppard said the company could no longer afford rising costs related to regulatory demands.
The shenanigans and jiggery-pokery at the Oklahoma plant − such as the disposal of low-level radioactive waste by spraying it on company-owned grazing land, and the company’s attempt to reduce the amount of property tax it paid on the grounds that radioactive contamination reduced the value of the land − are documented by the World Information Service on Energy.
GA / Heathgate in Australia
Fortune Magazine recounts one of the controversies surrounding GA / Heathgate’s uranium ventures in Australia. When uranium prices increased in the mid-noughties, the company was locked into long-term contracts to sell yellowcake from Beverley at earlier, lower prices. Heathgate devised plans to renegotiate its legally-binding contracts. Customers were told that production costs at Beverley were higher than expected, that production was lower than expected, and that a failure to renegotiate contracts would force Heathgate to file for bankruptcy.
However former employees said that Blue had allegedly directed Heathgate to increase its production costs. Customers were not told that bankruptcy was unlikely since GA had agreed to continue providing Heathgate with financial assistance.
Two of Heathgate’s Australian directors, Mark Chalmers and David Brunt, consulted an attorney who advised them that the plan could be considered a conspiracy to defraud. Chalmers and Brunt left the company.
Exelon, one of Heathgate’s uranium customers, sued. The lawsuit was settled for about $41 million. Because of the increased uranium price, Blue ended up well in front despite the cost of the settlement with Exelon − more than $200 million in front by some estimates. Blue was unrepentant: “It made more sense to, in essence, just pay the fine.”
Blue has even been sued by his own company. Several years ago, ConverDyn, a uranium conversion plant jointly owned by GA and Honeywell, sued Blue, Heathgate and GA in relation to allegations of a failure to meet contractual obligations to deliver certain amounts of uranium.
Federal Resources Minister Martin Ferguson declined to comment when asked about GA / Heathgate’s activities in 2009.
The US Center for Responsible Politics calculated that GA spent over US$1.5 million annually in lobbying efforts from 2005 to 2011. GA / Heathgate has repeatedly flown US politicians (and their families and aides) to Australia for high-level talks and it has paid for Labor MPs to travel to the US. The company has used the services of PR firm Hawker Britton, which includes many former Labor politicians and staffers.
Money well spent, it seems. In 2006, then SA Treasurer Kevin Foley said: “I have visited the Beverley mine and, recently, in San Diego I met Mr Neal Blue, the chairman of General Atomics – an outstanding company that is producing uranium oxide from the Beverley mine. I only hope that further deposits of uranium can be found. The sooner we can find it, dig it up and get it out of the country, the better.”
Infiltration of environment groups
GA / Heathgate has employed at least one private investigator to infiltrate environment groups in Australia. The infiltrator, known as Mehmet, had previously infiltrated green groups as part of an undercover police operation before he moved into the private sector to set up his own security company, Universal Axiom. He also provided personal protection to visiting GA executives. When asked about the company’s tactics, a Heathgate spokesperson said the company was privately owned and had a policy of not responding to media questions.
People who worked at Friends of the Earth at the time − around the turn of the century − say they were highly suspicious about Mehmet from the get-go. His activities might have been laughable and pathetic except that he provided exaggerated information to police about the likely attendance at a protest at the Beverley uranium mine in May 2000. That led to an excessive police presence at the protest and police brutality against environmentalists and local Aboriginal people. An video of this brutality is posted at australianmap.net/beverley-uranium-mine. Heathgate applauded the police action.
After a 10-year legal case, 10 people were awarded a total of $700,000 damages. Supreme Court Judge Timothy Anderson described the imprisonment of protesters in shipping crates as “degrading, humiliating and frightening” and noted that the action constituted an “affront to the civil liberties of the protestors”. He added: “The conditions were oppressive, degrading and dirty, there was a lack of air, there was the smell from capsicum spray and up to 30 persons were crammed into a very small space.”
Judge Anderson also strongly criticised the SA government’s withdrawal from attempts to resolve the case through mediation. He said that SA government Ministers Kevin Foley and Michael Wright “acted with a high-handed and contumelious disregard of the plaintiffs as citizens of the state with a right to protest, and with the right to be treated according to law if they did protest.”
Heathgate’s record at Beverley has been substandard. At least 59 spills have been documented at the mine. The company sells uranium to nuclear weapons states (all of which are in breach of their disarmament obligations under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty), to at least one country with a recent history of secret nuclear weapons research (South Korea), and to countries which refuse to ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.
Heathgate’s activities at Beverley have been extremely divisive among Adnyamathanha Traditional Owners. Some Adnyamathanha Elders have formed an Elders Group as a separate forum from the Adnyamathanha Traditional Lands Association. Enice Marsh said: “There have been many attempts over the past 10 years to try and bring greater accountability to what’s happening in Native Title, and to stop the ongoing assault on our Yarta (country). Many of us have tried with very little resources, limited understanding of the legal system and environmental laws, and despite a mountain of bullying, lies and deceit from mining companies, lawyers, and self-inflated thugs in our own community who dare to call themselves ‘leaders’.”
The predator
Neal Blue, CEO of defense contractor General Atomics, has transformed the way the U.S. military fights wars. But it is his take-no-prisoners approach to business that has made him infamous.
(Fortune Magazine) — It’s hard to pin down exactly when Neal Blue decided to start building weapons. It was probably in the early 1980s, around the time he bought much of Telluride, Colo., but before he began mining uranium and sometime after he gave up growing cocoa and bananas in the Nicaraguan jungle.
Back then Blue was a Denver oilman and real estate investor who happened to spend a lot of time thinking about how to defeat communists. He was particularly interested in seeing the overthrow of the Soviet-backed Sandinistas, who had recently seized control of Nicaragua. He had known the Somozas, the ousted ruling family, from his cocoa and banana days, and, well, he hated Reds.
Crippling the regime, Blue figured, was simple: just send GPS-equipped unmanned planes on kamikaze missions to blow up the country’s gasoline storage tanks. “You could launch them from behind the line of sight,” he recalls matter-of-factly, “so you would have total deniability.”
Blue pauses, leans back in his white-leather swivel chair, and quickly adds that he had nothing to do with any of the Reagan-era operations there – nor, of course, did he launch his own attack. We are sitting in his small, sunny office near San Diego, not far from the Navy’s so-called Top Gun Academy.
Behind him unfolds a rambling campus of 1950s-futuristic buildings, home to General Atomics Technologies Corp., parent of one of the most important defense companies in the world and the centerpiece of Blue’s privately held – and secretive – business empire. Over the course of his five-decade career he’s built a sprawling global business that spans four continents and enriched his family. But he has also made enemies and infuriated customers.
Blue is one of the last of the old-school industrialists, a breed that is all but extinct in professionally managed, post-Sarbanes-Oxley corporate America – a modern-day Howard Hughes (minus that whole starlet-dating, obsessive-handwashing part).
Through a combination of entrepreneurial instincts, bold legal maneuvers, and all-out bullying, Blue and his younger brother, Linden, have assembled assets worth billions of dollars (it’s all private, so no outsider knows exactly how much), including an environmental cleanup firm in Germany, extensive uranium mines in Australia, real estate in Colorado, substantial oil and gas interests in Canada, and an airplane de-icing company in Iowa.
But General Atomics is best known for manufacturing one of the most important tools in modern warfare: the Predator, an unmanned spy plane that commanders in Iraq and Afghanistan credit with helping them fight insurgents. (The Pentagon recently announced that the Predator would increasingly take over the hunt for Osama bin Laden.)
“I once asked Neal how he does it,” says Harold Agnew, the former director of Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory, who sits on GA’s board. “And he said, ‘My golden rule is to always buy straw hats in the winter.'”
Blue is a razor-sharp businessman, and interviews with dozens of Blue’s associates and sparring partners suggest that he will do anything to maximize profit – even if it means violating agreements. And while some who have locked horns with him simply shrug their shoulders and move on, a few have taken him to court for breach of contract, fraud, and racketeering.
Blue admits to breaking contracts but won’t comment on the rest. In Telluride, not far from where he grew up, the town even seized much of his land after a bitter fight with residents.
“I have used his house there periodically,” says David Goldberg, Blue’s friend and longtime business advisor, “and I have always advised my guests never to sit on the porch for fear of being ‘duly rewarded’ by the passing populace.” (Translation: Duck and cover.)
Neal Blue is 73 years old but could easily pass for 50, thanks to his boyish face and fit build. Although shy in public, he’s a good storyteller and speaks with authority about everything from John Locke to nuclear physics. Conversations can easily turn into often mind-bending monologues that last hours – a phenomenon some of his employees call “Blue-speak.”
Blue’s father was a real estate investor, and his mother the first woman to be Colorado’s treasurer. He was a born opportunist. One high school friend remembers that during a public-speaking class he unabashedly played to the teacher’s Catholic faith: When Blue was to practice giving an award, he presented a national championship trophy to the University of Notre Dame. When he had to talk about great architecture, he picked the Vatican.
“Everyone in the class would just roll their eyes,” says Norman Augustine, former chairman of Lockheed Martin, who grew up with him in Denver. “But Neal got an A, and the rest of us didn’t. That was vintage Blue.”
It was also vintage Blue, friends say, to finance a road trip from France to India with his Yale buddies by selling articles to the New York Times and persuading Chrysler to donate a Dodge station wagon.
Blue outdid himself the following summer when he and Linden decided to fly a small plane over the Andes Mountains. It didn’t matter that they didn’t yet know how to fly. “Those were just details,” Blue says with a wry smile.
That exploit, which was featured on the cover of Life magazine in 1957, laid the groundwork for the Blue brothers’ future. After hearing that cocoa farming was a way to make money quickly, the brothers arranged financing to buy a slice of Nicaraguan jungle on the Caribbean coast, built an airstrip, and started planting.
While that venture failed, they had more success investing in sugar plantations, petroleum, and real estate. Neal was always looking for those straw hats. One morning in mid-1985 he read in the Wall Street Journal that Chevron (CVX, Fortune 500) was looking to sell some of the assets of newly acquired Gulf Oil. Sensing a bargain, he called Goldberg, his trusted advisor.
Soon Goldberg and the Blues flew to San Diego to look at an odd research entity that came with Gulf Oil. Founded as the nuclear think tank for General Dynamics (GD, Fortune 500), the unit, called General Atomics, had lost direction after being sold and resold to various oil companies. It built small nuclear reactors and pioneered a gas-cooled reactor for power generation – a technological coup but a commercial failure. The company also ran the country’s largest fusion reactor.
“Neal was exceedingly unimpressed by it,” says Goldberg. “But he was smart enough to spot it as a terrific real estate opportunity…. And he was smart enough to realize it might even be a place where he could do something with his ideas of transforming military doctrine.”
Blue has long believed that when it comes to innovation, the military is almost always wrong. The armed forces are always buying overpriced technology designed for the last war. During his first days at General Atomics in 1986, Blue gathered the company’s employees and laid out his vision: General Atomics would be remade in the image of the Hughes Aircraft Corp., back when its founder was still running it.
And like Howard Hughes, who often used his companies as vehicles for pursuing his obsessions, Blue soon announced that the company would begin research on his pet project: unmanned aerial vehicles. The company’s employees, mostly engineers and nuclear physicists, were shocked.
Blue had originally conceived the aircraft as kamikaze strike weapons or as cheap cruise missiles, but after the Pentagon put out a call for an unmanned surveillance plane in 1993, Blue changed his mind. To execute his vision, he hired Tom Cassidy, a retired Navy admiral and commander of the service’s elite Top Gun Academy. (When the producers of the Tom Cruise movie needed a gruff admiral for a bit part, they cast him.)
Cassidy’s team stuck to off-the-shelf parts, using cameras made for traffic helicopters and a Bombardier engine originally designed for snowmobiles. He named it the Predator.
Air Force officials were initially unmoved: After all, many of them were former pilots – and no pilot has ever picked up a girl in a bar by bragging he flew a remote-controlled plane. More important, the Air Force was sinking hundreds of millions into a next-generation fighter jet, the F-22.
But the Predator was cheap (the original Predator cost a mere $10 million per plane) and scarily effective at providing intelligence. It was quiet and could fly for a full day at 25,000 feet, recording and relaying real-time video to commanders on the ground. Current versions even shoot Hellfire missiles.
Although the first Predator was launched during the mid-1990s Balkans conflict, it wasn’t until the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that military commanders integrated it into their arsenals.
“It is difficult,” says Dyke Weatherington, the Pentagon’s deputy director of unmanned warfare, “for us to keep up with the demand for these from the field.”
While GA refuses to disclose its revenue or profits, the aeronautics business, which operates as a separate company, has sold more than $2.4 billion worth of drones and other equipment to the U.S. military in the past decade.
There are many sides of Neal Blue. There is the charming side he shows to reporters – military innovator, gutsy entrepreneur, and learned scholar. And there is the relentless side known only to his customers and the people who survive working for him.
ConverDyn, a uranium-processing subsidiary that GA co-owns with industrial giant Honeywell, recently sued Blue (that’s right, his own company sued him) and described his business practices as “fraudulent, malicious, and willful and wanton.”
This and other related lawsuits highlight Blue’s unique blend of questionable conduct and business foresight. He got into the sugar business in the early 1970s before it hit its all-time high. He invested in natural gas when prices were controlled, and he minted money after it was deregulated.
And he recognized that uranium was a commodity that was so “out” that it had to be “in” one day. During the 1980s he bought tracts of land in the Australian outback when mining uranium there was banned. He gambled that a new administration would rewrite the laws to his advantage, then patiently waited a decade to be proven right.
In 2001, when Blue started producing the radioactive metal, it sold for approximately $8 a pound on the spot market. Three years later the price had about doubled, but Blue was locked into long-term contracts to sell much of the metal to utilities at close to 2001 prices.
Realizing the company was losing a tremendous opportunity, his subordinates allegedly devised a plan. An internal memo prepared by General Atomics’ uranium subsidiary, Heathgate, in March 2004, recommended canceling or restructuring the contracts. The memo presented four options for backing out of the various deals, ranging from an intentional failure to deliver to allowing the subsidiary to file for bankruptcy.
Blue’s company chose a controversial middle ground. It would approach customers and ask for concessions, saying its cost of production was higher than expected and that the mine was producing less than it had anticipated. Some customers were handed documents confirming those assertions and suggesting that if the contracts weren’t renegotiated, Heathgate would have to file for bankruptcy.
What the companies weren’t told was that, according to former employees, Blue had allegedly directed the company to increase its costs. Plus the company couldn’t immediately go broke, since GA had agreed to continue providing Heathgate financial assistance – another fact conveniently left out of reports to customers.
Many of Blue’s longtime employees saw this as tantamount to railroading customers. Two of Heathgate’s Australian directors, Mark Chalmers and David Brunt, were so worried about the legality of what they were doing that they consulted an outside attorney. That lawyer advised them that implementing the plan could be considered a “conspiracy to defraud and the commission of at least one criminal offense by each director, which would be very difficult to defend.” Soon Chalmers and Brunt were no longer employed by Heathgate.
Most customers agreed to renegotiate. But as the price of uranium continued to skyrocket – it had reached over $40 by early 2006 – Heathgate again told its customers that it was experiencing higher than expected production costs, lower than anticipated volumes, and did not have enough uranium to fulfill its orders.
The lawsuits allege that these contentions were grossly exaggerated. That year, Blue’s executives told Chicago-based Exelon (EXC, Fortune 500), a $19-billion-a-year utility, that Heathgate would not deliver any uranium unless Exelon released them from the rest of the contracts. When the company refused, Heathgate and GA informed it that they would make no more deliveries. Exelon sued.
But Blue figured that didn’t matter. He says the most they could sue him for was the “maximum liquidated price,” or the amount of uranium times the price in the contract. In the meantime he could sell that disputed metal on the spot market for prices that peaked last year at nearly $140 a pound.
Exelon’s lawsuit against General Atomics’ parent company was settled in the spring for about $41 million, according to Exelon’s SEC filings. The amount Blue made selling that same uranium on the spot market? More than $200 million, by some estimates.
While Blue won’t discuss the specifics of the case – the settlement agreement is confidential – he doesn’t seem concerned by the allegations in the lawsuits. In fact, he is utterly unrepentant.
“If you’re a profit-center manager, you look at what are your contractual obligations,” Blue says. “It’s not your obligation to give as much as possible from your company to someone else…. It made more sense to, in essence, just pay the fine.”
One afternoon this past summer, Blue pulled up in his brand-new silver Volkswagen outside one of his company’s manufacturing facilities north of San Diego. It was 85 degrees, and he was wearing a short-sleeved blue dress shirt and dark-gray pants. Inside the warehouse were row upon row of remote cockpits for Predators.
From takeoff to landing, the Predator can be controlled with a joystick by a pilot sitting in a trailer thousands of miles away. But the original Predator “cockpit” looked more like a computer console than the deck of a fighter jet.
The new prototype Blue was here to inspect aimed to fix that. Indeed, it looked like a cross between a high-end videogame and the multimillion-dollar simulator airlines use to train pilots. But the system was buggy, and the video was so jittery that it hurt your eyes to look at it.
Blue’s face dropped. “This shouldn’t be like this,” he snapped at a young programmer who was demonstrating the machine. His voice rose. “This is totally unacceptable. Wouldn’t you agree? What is your problem? Why can’t you get this stuff right?”
The pressure of GA’s success – and the challenges Blue is facing in his other operations – may be taking a toll. The aeronautics business has grown so fast that it has apparently experienced production problems.
Northrop Grumman (NOC, Fortune 500) recently beat it out for a $1.6 billion contract to produce drones for the Navy. According to a recent report by the Government Accountability Office, the Navy had “substantial doubt” that the company would deliver the drones as promised. The Predator maker says the GAO report references “select instances of past performances,” and it has since increased resources and staffing.
“That’s just part of the capitalist world, which has provided so much to so many,” Blue says. “But I suppose the fundamental essence of our portfolio, aside from some measure of economic balance, is ‘Okay, how do you make a difference?’ And in my case, it is in developing transformational technologies that could change the world. The rest of all this doesn’t really matter.”
It is a prime example of Blue-speak – a measured but completely unremorseful response that belies the sharp elbows and strong-arm tactics Blue often uses to achieve his goals. And it is perfectly in keeping with his stubbornly old-fashioned brand of doing business.
As Howard Hughes said, “Once you do consent to some such concession, you can never cancel it and put things back the way they were.” He didn’t have an heir, but Neal Blue sure comes close.
Arms maker behind uranium mine settled fraudulent pricing case
Nick O’Malley and Ben Cubby, Sydney Morning Herald, 30 July 2009
THE arms manufacturer that received approval through an Australian subsidiary for a new uranium mine in central Australia this month was sued for fraudulently hiking uranium prices and manipulating costs at a neighbouring mine.
Neal Blue, owner and chairman of General Atomics, was accused in the proceedings of instructing executives at his Australian subsidiary, Heathgate Resources, to prepare false reports for customers, telling them costs at Heathgate’s Beverley uranium mine were higher than anticipated, and production lower.
The strategy was allegedly calculated to break contracts with US companies buying Australian uranium from Mr Blue’s company at low, fixed prices. According to court documents, the plan was hatched in 2004 when world uranium prices spiralled, as nuclear power came to be seen as a way of achieving greenhouse gas cuts.
Those companies that did not agree to allow Heathgate to break its contracts and increase prices were allegedly told Heathgate would file for bankruptcy. Mr Blue contested the claims and the proceedings were eventually settled.
Mr Blue was not available to speak to the Herald, but when questioned about the case by Fortune magazine last year said: “If you’re a profit-centre manager, you look at what are your contractual obligations. It’s not your obligation to give as much as possible from your company to someone else … It made more sense to, in essence, just pay the fine.”
The Illinois District Court case was settled last year. One of General Atomics’s customers, Exelon, received $US41 million from the company. It is estimated Mr Blue made $US200 million by breaking the contracts and selling uranium on the spot market as commodity prices rose.
As Mr Blue’s strategy unfolded, two Heathgate directors, Mark Chalmers and David Brunt, were so concerned they hired a lawyer who advised “the plan could be considered a ‘conspiracy to defraud and the commission of at least one criminal offence by each director, which would be very difficult to defend’.”
Soon after, the men’s relationship with Heathgate ended. Today they are respectively managing director and director with Uranium Equities. Neither would comment for this story.
The Resources Minister, Martin Ferguson, and the Environment Minister, Peter Garrett, who approved the Four Mile uranium mine, were unavailable for comment yesterday.
General Atomics is best known for making the Predator drones playing an increasing role in wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, but it also has interests in uranium processing and mining.
Four Mile mine will be owned by a General Atomics subsidiary, Quasar Resources, and an Australian-owned minerals explorer, Alliance Resources.
GENERAL ATOMICS, the company behind the nation’s newest uranium mine, has been patiently lobbying Australian politicians for more than a decade to encourage it to allow mining, to develop nuclear reactors and buy high-tech weapons.
The company has ferried members of the US Congress, their families and aides to Australia for high-level talks. It has paid for Labor MPs to travel to the United States to see its weapons and nuclear reactors first-hand, as well as hosting taxpayer funded trips.
In 1999, a federal Labor opposition frontbencher, Martyn Evans, was flown to the US for a four-day visit to the General Atomics headquarters in San Diego. This was at the expense of Heathgate Resources, the General Atomics subsidiary that operates the Beverley Uranium Mine in South Australia.
To put its case for more mines and more weapons in Canberra, the company uses Hawker Britton, a lobbying firm that includes many former ALP staffers and MPs.
But among the biggest supporters of uranium mining expansion is the South Australian Premier, Mike Rann, who was on the Greenpeace executive that launched the Rainbow Warrior protest ship to try to block French nuclear weapons tests in 1972.
Mr Rann, who also chaired the Nuclear Hazards Committee of the ALP in the early 1980s when the party was opposed to uranium mining, now believes that modern mining techniques are safe enough. He travelled to Dallas to meet Mr Blue last year and said on his return that he was an “unashamed supporter” of uranium mining.
In 2006 the South Australian Treasurer, Kevin Foley, spent $120,000 travelling the US to meet leading arms manufacturers including General Atomics, but it was apparently not his first visit. The previous year he told South Australia’s Parliament that he had already visited Mr Blue.
“I have visited the Beverley mine and, recently, in San Diego I met Mr Neal Blue, the chairman of General Atomics – an outstanding company that is producing uranium oxide from the Beverley mine. I only hope that further deposits of uranium can be found. The sooner we can find it, dig it up and get it out of the country, the better,” he said.
Also in 2006, General Atomics flew a group from the US Congress to Australia, accompanied by company executives, to persuade the Federal Government to buy the company’s Predator unmanned aircraft. The colourful group included a retired US Navy admiral, Tom Cassidy, a former pilot who had a cameo role in the Tom Cruise film Top Gun.
A report by the US Centre for Public Integrity found the trip cost $US184,000, and established that General Atomics was the biggest corporate sponsor of travel for US Congress officials since 2000.
The members of the US Congress on the Australia trip denied attempting to boost General Atomics sales on the trip, saying it focused on strengthening military ties and discussion on the war against terrorism. The Australian Defence Force tested a General Atomics robot surveillance aircraft that year.
As well as its interest in unmanned spy planes, General Atomics has employed human spies. Last year it was caught hiring a former undercover police officer turned private investigator to infiltrate Australian environment groups and report on their actions. The former officer was posing as a Kurdish refugee and feeding information back to General Atomics.
Digging dirt with a sledgehammer
Nick O’Malley and Ben Cubby, Sydney Morning Herald, 30 July 2009
The weapons manufacturer who converted Labor’s staunchest opponents to nuclear development has a controversial past, writes Nick O’Malley and Ben Cubby.
As a rule, Neal Blue’s employees – past or present – don’t like to talk about the boss. Not on record, anyway. Off the record, the same words keep coming up when they describe him. They say the man behind Australia’s newest uranium mine is brilliant and tough, private and autocratic. They say he is ruthless.
“Look at Telluride,” says one former associate. “That’s who Neal Blue is.”
Telluride is a ski town of astonishing beauty in the Rocky Mountains. In 1983 Blue, then making his first fortune in real estate, bought the valley floor beneath Telluride and, in 1998, moved to subdivide it and build mansions. Many objected and convinced the county to protect the land. After a string of legal battles a court decided that if Blue was paid $US50 million the county could keep its rolling green meadow.
The tight-knit community rallied to raise the money. Married couples cancelled honeymoons and donated their savings, sports teams passed the hat around, children sold lemonade. The county met the fund-raisers dollar for dollar and wealthy benefactors, including the actress Daryl Hannah, kicked in the last few millions. With days to spare the money was raised and the campaigners celebrated.
Blue wasn’t bowed. He turned to the state legislature, which introduced a retrospective law preventing the county from resuming the land. A judge found the law unconstitutional and Blue fought that too, in the Colorado Supreme Court. He lost.
After 25 years had passed and about $US60 million was spent in compensation and legal fees, the valley floor was saved, but the town of Telluride was divided and its budget blown.
One of the campaigners was bewildered by Blue’s ferocity. A judge involved in mediation told her the residents never understood that to Blue the issue was not the money but winning.
“That’s what I’m saying,” a former associate told the Herald. “He’s just an asshole.”
The battle for Telluride reveals much about Blue. It demonstrates his willingness to invest over the long term on long shots. His golden rule is said to be “always buy straw hats in winter”. There is ruthlessness too, and tenacity. And the tale suggests that to Blue, now 74, the law is a weapon to be wielded.
Such single-mindedness emerged during the battle over a Blue-owned uranium processing plant on an Indian reservation in Oklahoma.
After a series of radioactive spills a nine-legged frog was discovered outside the yellowcake factory.
A government investigation eventually established the company had known for years that radioactive material was leaking and that radioactivity in water around the plant was at levels 35,000 times higher than US federal laws permitted.
After a toxic gas leak in 1992 it was finally closed. A clean-up of the site should finish by 2012.
Blue and his younger brother and business partner, Linden, first came to public notice in a picture on the cover of Life magazine in 1957. The two high school graduates are crammed into the tiny cockpit of the light aircraft they had just piloted over the Andes.
The same cover carries the headline “Soviet inroads in Arab world”. This too is part of the Blue story.
Last year Blue, who would not be interviewed for this story, told Fortune magazine how in the 1980s he first thought of using pilotless aircraft as weapons. The fervent anti-communist figured remote control light aircraft could be used to blow up oil pipelines to cripple the Soviet-backed Sandinista regime in Nicaragua.
Those idle thoughts bore fruit. In 1986 Blue bought General Atomics, the research arm of a larger nuclear power company.Just a decade later the company’s Predator drone aircraft were in the air over the Balkans and the company was on its way to earning Pentagon contracts worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
As General Atomics grew, Blue kept an eye on Australia. One of his former employees recalls that in the late 1980s Blue was sure the future was nuclear and Australia was going to be a key part of it.
He went about buying pastoral leases sitting on uranium deposits in South Australia and the Northern Territory, gambling that bans on uranium would one day be lifted.
He was right. In 1990 Blue established Heathgate Resources to operate the new Beverley uranium mine, near Lake Frome in South Australia.
The South Australian Government has recorded 59 spills of radioactive material on the surface at the site, though none are considered serious and the company has not breached its licence conditions. Because the mine does little surface damage there is no requirement it decontaminate the site when mining ceases.
The environmental impact assessment for Blue’s nearby Four Mile mine, approved this month by the federal Environment Minister, Peter Garrett, similarly carries no such requirement.
General Atomics and Blue did run into trouble over the sale of its Australian yellowcake overseas, however. Exelon Generation, a US energy company, sued General Atomics for allegedly lifting its uranium prices and preparing false reports for customers. The case settled last year.
Blue was unrepentant, telling one journalist it made more sense to pay a fine than lose more money using less confrontational practices.
“He did teach me one thing, though,” says a former associate. “Given the will, and the way, and a sledgehammer, you can achieve almost anything.”
As his uranium interests in Central Australia began to realise their potential, another Blue company was locked in combat over the rich oil and gas fields of the Timor Gap. Blue had acquired the company Oceanic, which claimed to have secured the rights to the resources from Portuguese Timor in 1974.
Once Indonesia’s occupation ended it sought – and failed – to resume those rights.
In 2004 Blue took on the successful bidder, ConocoPhillips, the Timor Sea Designated Authority and the Indonesian Government-owned resources giant Pertamina, demanding $30 billion in damages. Oceanic claimed the then East Timor prime minister, Mari Alkatiri, and other Fretilin members of parliament had been bribed.
In May last year a judge in Houston, Texas, dismissed the last claims, declaring that “Oceanic asserts abstract operative facts – bribery, hostility, causation, and damage. It supports the abstractions with over 50 pages of trivia.”
An appeal by Oceanic is continuing.
One man who will speak about Blue is Geoff McKee, a petroleum engineer whom Blue hired to work on the Timor Gap bid. McKee remembers Blue as a charming dinner companion and a warm father to his two sons – both now in business with him – and as a genius.
“If Alkatiri had gone with Blue they [East Timor] would have an LPG plant with a pipeline to Australia up and running by now.”
McKee believes that Blue’s dogged pursuit of the lawsuit was driven in part by Alkatiri’s refusal to meet him. “He is used to powerful people taking his calls,” McKee says.
Peter Garrett’s U Sky Mining
Jim Green, Chain Reaction #107, November 2009, www.foe.org.au/chain-reaction
And some have sailed from a distant shore
And the company takes what the company wants
And nothing’s as precious, as a hole in the ground
— Midnight Oil, Blue Sky Mining
Federal environment minister Peter Garrett justified his July 14 decision to approve in situ leach (ISL) uranium mining at Beverley Four Mile in South Australia with the claim that he had “set the bar to the highest level” and was applying “world’s best practice” environmental standards.
Thus Garrett added another chapter to the history of spin surrounding ISL mining. He has not insisted on rehabilitation of polluted groundwater at Beverley Four Mile. Moreover, he did not insist on an Environmental Impact Statement from the mining proponents but allowed a lower level of assessment, a Public Environment Report. On both counts, Garrett failed to live up to his own rhetoric.
ISL mining involves pumping an acidic solution into an aquifer, dissolving uranium and other heavy metals and pumping the solution back to the surface. After the uranium has been separated, liquid waste – containing radionuclides, heavy metals and acid – is simply dumped in the aquifer.
Proponents of ISL mining claim that ‘attenuation’ will occur over time − that the groundwater will return to its pre-mining state. However there is considerable scientific uncertainty about the future of ISL-polluted groundwater and uncertainty about the timeframe for attenuation if it does occur. A 2003 Senate References and Legislation Committee report recommended that “mines utilising the ISL technique should be subject to strict regulation, including prohibition of discharge of radioactive liquid mine waste to groundwater”. Garrett has rejected that Senate Committee recommendation.
Geoscience Australia has been commissioned by the federal government to carry out a review of ISL mining. Its draft guidelines include consideration of alternatives to dumping liquid waste in groundwater − specifically, it mentions the option of “evaporation to solid residues and disposal on site (or at a low level radioactive waste repository)”. Garrett had the draft report from Geoscience Australia before making his decision but still chose to allow liquid waste to be dumped in groundwater.
Following the 2003 Senate inquiry, The SA Labor government commissioned a study by scientists from the CSIRO and the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation. The study had all the hallmarks of a whitewash yet still acknowledged that attenuation is “not proven” and could only cite a period of “several years to decades” for it to occur. Yet the companies proposing to use ISL mining at Beverley Four Mile want to absolve themselves of any future responsibility for the site just seven years after they have finished mining.
ISL uranium mining is used at the Beverley uranium mine (10 kms from Beverley Four Mile) and it is the mining method proposed for Beverley Four Mile, Oban and Honeymoon. The future of ISL mining is plain to see − short-lived mines leaving a lasting legacy of polluted aquifers.
In addition to the pollution of groundwater, surface spills and leaks are a common feature of ISL mining. The SA Department of Primary Industry and Resources lists 59 spills at the Beverley mine from 1998-2007.
The horrendous environmental legacy of ISL mining in former Soviet and eastern European states is dismissed by ISL proponents as being a result of Soviet-era mismanagement and neglect. But the same problems are evident in Australia: captured bureaucracies; slack regulation; Orwellian doublespeak (e.g. ‘world’s best practice’); secrecy (for example, the Australian Conservation Foundation had to appeal to the SA Ombudsman to get Heathgate to release crucial information about the Beverley mine, such as the Groundwater Monitoring Summary); and questionable corporate practices (for example, Heathgate employed a private investigator in the late 1990s who attempted to infiltrate Friends of the Earth).
Adnyamathanha Traditional Owners
Garrett noted that there is an agreement between the mining proponents and the Adnyamathanha Traditional Lands Association in relation to Beverley Four Mile. But he knows that the agreement falls a long way short of free, prior and informed consent. Traditional Owners have no right of veto under SA or federal legislation.
In a July 15 statement, Adnyamathanha Elders Enice Marsh and Geraldine Anderson called on Garrett to reverse his decision at least until the completion of an investigation being conducted by the SA government into long-standing Aboriginal heritage concerns raised by Adnyamathanha Traditional Owners.
Enice Marsh said:
“Adnyamathanha Elders wrote to [SA Aboriginal Affairs Minister Jay Weatherill] weeks ago raising our concerns, and he promised to do an investigation into the Four Mile proposal. His jobs is to make sure heritage laws are followed. If he won’t use his powers he should be sacked. …
“We have no decision making power under Native Title, we have been forced into signing a Native Title Mining Agreement that gives us royalty compensation. If we refused to sign it the proponent has the right to take the matter to the ERD [Environment, Resources and Development] Court and cut us out of the process altogether. Aboriginal people have no rights under Native Title to protect out heritage. Look at what’s already happened and how people have just given in to the pressures. …
“What more can we do to protect our land from being raped by mining companies that are allowed to pollute the water and carve up the waterways, even contaminate the soil with radioactive waste? The general public need to know what is going on and ordinary people need to take action to stop the abuse of our environment.”
In addition to their battle with state and federal governments and mining companies, some Adnyamathanha Elders are battling within their own community. They have formed an Elders Group as a separate forum from the Adnyamathanha Traditional Lands Association. According to Enice Marsh: “There have been many attempts over the past 10 years to try and bring greater accountability to what’s happening in Native Title, and to stop the ongoing assault on our Yarta (country). Many of us have tried with very little resources, limited understanding of the legal system and environmental laws, and despite a mountain of bullying, lies and deceit from mining companies, lawyers, and self-inflated thugs in our own community who dare to call themselves ‘leaders’.”
Even those Adnyamathanha custodians who supported the agreement to mine Beverley Four Mile seem unimpressed with the process. Vince Coulthard, chair of the Adnyamathanha Traditional Land Association, told ABC radio on July 17: “Well I think people have come to the understanding that if they didn’t support it, it’s going to happen in any case so the best thing to do is to negotiate an agreement.”
Traditional Owner Geraldine Anderson said: “This Labor Government is saying sorry to the Stolen Generation, on the other hand they’re taking the way of destroying our sites and taking our identity away. So when’s this going to stop?”
If and when the abuse stops, it will be despite and not because of Peter Garrett. Presumably Garrett is prepared to sell out on long-held principles in the pursuit of broader political goals. He ought to have asked Adnyamathanha custodians if they are willing to be sacrificed in the pursuit of his goals and ambitions.
Military links
The Four Mile lease is owned by Quasar Resources (an affiliate of Heathgate Resources) and Alliance Craton Explorer, and the mine will be operated by Heathgate Resources (an affiliate of US weapons and nuclear energy corporation General Atomics).
The Sydney Morning Herald reported on July 16 that James Neal Blue, a “colourful but reclusive billionaire”, is a director of Quasar Resources and chair of General Atomics. Blue first came to prominence in the 1980s as a self-described “enthusiastic supporter” of US involvement in the covert war against the Nicaraguan government.
The Beverley Four Mile deposit is estimated at 30,000 tonnes of uranium. Used in power reactors, that amount of uranium would produce 4,500 tonnes of high-level nuclear waste (in the form of spent nuclear fuel) and enough plutonium to build 4,500 nuclear weapons.
The major customer for the uranium is likely to be the US, a nuclear weapons state which has no intention of fulfilling its binding disarmament obligations under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and which has for many years blocked progress on the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and the proposed Fissile Material Cut-Off Treaty.
Jim Green is the national nuclear campaign with Friends of the Earth, Australia.
On July 14, 2004, the federal government announced that it had abandoned plans to build a national radioactive waste dump in South Australia. The backdown was a major victory for the environmental and Aboriginal organisations which fought the dump plan for over six years.
The government announced its intention to build the dump near Woomera, 500 kms north of Adelaide, in February 1998 – just a few months after it announced its intention to build a new nuclear reactor at Lucas Heights in southern Sydney. The two plans were closely linked. Up to 90% of the waste to be dumped in SA is stored at Lucas Heights. And the political agenda was simply to get radioactive waste out of Lucas Heights in order to reduce public opposition to the new reactor.
A campaign to oppose the dump took shape. The Kupa Piti Kungka Tjuta – a senior Aboriginal women’s council from northern SA – took up the fight, as did the Kokatha traditional owners. The Kungkas – victims of the British nuclear testing program at Maralinga and Emu Field in the 1950s – have been supported by the GANG (Girls Against Nuclear Genocide) who have moved to Coober Pedy to help fight the proposed nuclear dump.
The Kungka Tjuta recounted time and again their experiences of the Maralinga nuclear test program in South Australia in the 1950s. They knew first hand about the problems of the nuclear industry and pleaded with the politicians to ‘get their ears out of their pockets’.
The Maralinga experience also influenced the dump campaign in another way. The federal government completed a ‘clean-up’ of Maralinga in the late 1990s, but it was grossly inadequate. Even after the ‘clean-up’, kilograms of plutonium remain buried in shallow, unlined trenches in totally unsuitable geology. The botched ‘clean-up’ was hardly reassuring.
The federal government planned to build two facilities at Woomera – an underground dump for lower-level waste, and an above-ground store for ‘interim’ storage of higher-level wastes including those arising from the reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel rods from the Lucas Heights reactor. As public and media opposition to the dump plans grew, the Olsen Liberal government in SA sniffed the political wind and announced in 1999 that it would accept the underground dump but would legislate in an attempt to ban the higher-level waste store. The Labor Party – state and federal – trumped them by announcing opposition to both the dump and the store.
Several environment groups have fought the dump plan since it was first announced, including Friends of the Earth and the Australian Conservation Foundation. Opposition to the dump grew along the transport corridor linking Lucas Heights to Woomera, in no small part because of Friends of the Earth’s Nuclear Freeways project. On numerous occasions FoE activists took a mock nuclear waste castor along the transport corridor, building relations with communities all the time. This project was highly successful. Of the 18 councils along the transport corridor, 16 took a position of opposing the dump and the trucking of radioactive waste through their communities. FoE also organised numerous ‘radioactive exposure’ tours, taking hundreds of students to nuclear sites in SA – the proposed dump site and the uranium mines at Honeymoon, Beverley and Roxby Downs.
The Nuclear Freeways project was also significant in linking the dump proposal to the root of the problem – the planned new reactor at Lucas Heights. While the federal government mounted scare campaigns about waste stored in urban areas, it became increasingly well known that the dump plan had nothing to do with the small volumes of waste stored around the country and the everything to do with Lucas Heights. The NSW government was persuaded to hold a parliamentary inquiry into radioactive waste management in 2003-04, and that inquiry concluded that the dump proposal could not be justified and should be abandoned.
The Labor Party won the 2002 election in SA, and in the following year it legislated in an attempt to ban any form of national radioactive waste facility being built in SA.
The SA Labor government also tried a legal manoeuvre to stop the dump in 2003 – announcing its intention to declare the dump site a public park, which would make it immune from compulsory acquisition by the federal government. That led the federal government to use an urgency provision in the land acquisition act to seize control of the dump site with the stroke of a pen in mid-2003. The SA Labor government challenged the land seizure in the federal court, but lost. The SA government appealed the judgement to the full bench of the Federal Court, and that appeal was upheld in June 2004 – reversing the land seizure.
By July 2004, the Howard government was in trouble. It had the option of appealing the Federal Court decision to the High Court, but that appeal would have been deeply unpopular and it probably would not have succeeded in any case. And already, the dump was shaping up as a key issue in marginal seats in SA. For example, in the marginal seat of Adelaide, polling showed that the dump was second only to Medicare as a vote-swinging issue.
The Howard government decided to cut its losses and abandon the dump plan. The government said it would instead attempt to find a site to co-locate both lower and higher level wastes.
The victory of the dump campaign is something to savour – a fantastic result reflecting an enormous amount of hard work by a broad, effective alliance.
The Kupa Piti Kungka Tjuta’s ‘Irati Wanti’ website is archived at
‘We are winners because of what’s in our hearts, not what’s on paper.’
Open Letter from the Kupa Piti Kungka Tjuta – senior Aboriginal women’s council from northern SA – after the Federal Government abandoned its plan to build a national radioactive waste dump in South Australia.
People said that you can’t win against the Government. Just a few women. We just kept talking and telling them to get their ears out of their pockets and listen. We never said we were going to give up. Government has big money to buy their way out but we never gave up. We told Howard you should look after us, not try and kill us. Straight out. We always talk straight out. In the end he didn’t have the power, we did. He only had money, but money doesn’t win.
Happy now – Kungka winners. We are winners because of what’s in our hearts, not what’s on paper. About the country, bush tucker, bush medicine and Inma (traditional songs and dances). Big happiness that we won against the Government. Victorious. And the family and all the grandchildren are so happy because we fought the whole way. And we were going away all the time. Kids growing up, babies have been born since we started. And still we have family coming. All learning about our fight.
We started talking strong against the dump a long time ago, in 1998 with Sister Michelle. We thought we would get the Greenies to help us. Greenies care for the same thing. Fight for the same thing. Against the poison.
Since then we been everywhere talking about the poison. Canberra, Sydney, Lucas Heights, Melbourne, Adelaide, Silverton, Port Augusta, Roxby Downs, Lake Eyre. We did it the hard way. Always camping out in the cold. Travelling all over with no money. Just enough for cool drink along the way. We went through it. Survivors. Even had an accident where we hit a bullock one night on the way to Roxby Downs. We even went to Lucas Heights Reactor. It’s a dangerous place, but we went in boldly to see where they were making the poison – the radiation. Seven women, seven sisters, we went in.
We lost our friends. Never mind we lost our loved ones. We never give up. Been through too much. Too much hard business and still keep going. Sorry business all the time. Fought through every hard thing along the way. People trying to scare us from fighting, it was hard work, but we never stopped. When we were going to Sydney people say “You Kungkas cranky they might bomb you”, but we kept going. People were telling us that the Whitefellas were pushing us, but no everything was coming from the heart, from us.
We showed that Greenies and Anangu can work together. Greenies could come and live here in Coober Pedy and work together to stop the dump. Kungkas showed the Greenies about the country and the culture. Our Greenie girls are the best in Australia. We give them all the love from our hearts. Family you know. Working together – that’s family. Big thank you to them especially. We can’t write. They help us with the letters, the writing, the computers, helped tell the world.
Thank you very much for helping us over the years, for everything. Thank you to the Lord, all our family and friends, the Coober Pedy community, Umoona Aged Care, the South Australian Government and all our friends around Australia and overseas. You helped us and you helped the kids. We are happy. We can have a break now. We want to have a rest and go on with other things now. Sit around the campfire and have a yarn. We don’t have to talk about the dump anymore, and get up and go all the time. Now we can go out together and camp out and pick bush medicine and bush tucker. And take the grandchildren out.
We were crying for the little ones and the ones still coming. With all the help – we won. Thank you all very much.
No Radioactive Waste Dump in our Ngura – In our Country!
MEDIA RELEASE – 15 DECEMBER 2009
FRIENDS OF THE EARTH, AUSTRALIA
NUCLEAR DISARMAMENT REPORT MASKS A HIDDEN AGENDA
Friends of the Earth today questioned the credibility of the Australian-led International Commission on Nuclear Non-proliferation and Disarmament (ICNND), which has today released its first report, ‘Eliminating Nuclear Threats’.
Friends of the Earth’s national nuclear campaigner Dr Jim Green said: “The report makes repeated reference to the three S’s – safeguards, security and safety. It makes no reference to the dollar signs that constitute a hidden agenda to the Commission’s work including avoiding making any recommendations which would in any way jeopardise the Australian uranium export industry – an industry which accounts for a paltry one-third of one percent of Australia’s export revenue. The report trivialises the proliferation risks associated with nuclear power programs even though daily news coverage of the programs in Iran and North Korea provide a constant reminder of the risks.
“Co-chaired by Australian Gareth Evans and Yoriko Kawaguchi from Japan, the Commission is silent about Japan’s grossly irresponsible stockpiling of plutonium, the regional tensions arising from Japan’s plutonium program, and Australia’s complicity in Japan’s plutonium stockpiling.
“The report advocates new technologies ‘to avoid current forms of reprocessing altogether’ – so why not take immediate steps to reduce the risks of reprocessing and plutonium stockpiling rather than awaiting the development of new technologies? Kevin Rudd could announce tomorrow that he will no longer allow reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel produced from Australian uranium. Instead he waffles on about the fracturing of the global nuclear non-proliferation regime while doing nothing to address the problems.
“The ICNND got off to a bad start by giving the Australian Safeguards and Non-proliferation Office (ASNO) an advisory role. ASNO has a long track record of dishonest and unprofessional behaviour. Last year, ASNO misled the Joint Standing Committee on Treaties with false claims that safeguards would ensure peaceful use of Australian uranium in Russia – even though there hasn’t been a single IAEA inspection in Russia since 2001. Other ASNO lies include its claims that nuclear power does not present a weapons proliferation risk, that Australia sells uranium only to countries with ‘impeccable’ non-proliferation credentials, and that all Australian uranium is ‘fully accounted for’.
“If the Commission was serious about non-proliferation and disarmament, it would have recommended that:
* Australia and Japan both immediately renounce their reliance on the ‘extended deterrence’ of the US nuclear weapons ‘umbrella’ and take practical steps commensurate with that policy shift, e.g. prohibiting visits of US nuclear warships.
* Uranium exports should be prohibited to: countries in breach of their NPT disarmament obligations, including the five ‘declared’ weapons states; non-NPT countries including India; countries blocking progress on the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and the proposed Fissile Material Cut-off Treaty; and countries stockpiling plutonium, including Japan.
Dr Green concluded: “The Commission should have taken heed of the statements of physicist Victor Gilinsky, a former member of the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission, in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists earlier this year. Gilinsky said: ‘We should support as much nuclear power as is consistent with international security; not as much security as the spread of nuclear power will allow.'”
World Water Day on March 22 encouraged widespread reflection on worsening water depletion and pollution problems around the world. As the driest state in the driest
continent, South Australia is the canary in the coal mine. But while many South
Australians are pulling their weight by reducing water consumption and
installing rainwater tanks, some industries are pulling in the opposite
direction.
The
uranium mining industry is perhaps the most egregious example. The daily
extraction of about 35 million litres of Great Artesian Basin water for the
Olympic Dam uranium/copper mine has adversely affected a number of precious
Mound Springs – unique habitats which support rare and delicate micro flora and
fauna, some species of which are unique to a particular Mound Spring.
BHP
Billiton pays nothing for its massive water take for the Olympic Dam mine
despite recording a $17.7 billion profit in 2007-08. That arrangement is
enshrined in the Roxby Downs Indenture Act 1982 – as anachronistic a piece of
legislation as you’re ever likely to see.
In
February 2007, then Prime Minister John Howard wrote to state Premiers seeking
their agreement "to establish proper entitlements, metering, pricing and
reporting arrangements for water extracted from the Great Artesian Basin."
Asked whether his proposed new arrangements would apply to Olympic Dam, Mr
Howard said: "Everybody’s got to make a contribution to solving this
problem." But within days, he voiced support for BHP Billiton’s
"right" to free water from the Artesian Basin. In other words,
everyone except BHP Billiton has to make a contribution to solving this problem.
As The Advertiser noted in a November
2005 Editorial, it is “essential … to safeguard the artesian basin water
supplies”. To that end, most users are subject to the Great Artesian Basin
Management Plan. But BHP Billiton is a law unto itself – its Olympic Dam mine is
not subject to the Management Plan and also enjoys exemptions from the SA Natural
Resources Act 2004 and the Environment Protection Act 1993.
Another
problem at Olympic Dam concerns the liquid tailings dams which are constantly
expanding as water is turned into liquid waste. In 2005 it was revealed that over
100 bird deaths were recorded in a four-day period – the birds had drunk liquid
tailings waste from the mine. Ongoing seepage from tailings dams are a further
concern. Last Monday (March 23), photos taken by an Olympic Dam mine worker
were released clearly showing radioactive
tailings liquid leaking from the
so-called rock ‘armoury’ of a tailings dam. The leaks were ongoing for at least
eight months and probably amounted to several million litres, but were not
publicly reported at all. Serious questions must be raised as to BHP Billiton’s
capacity to safely manage radioactive tailings if, as planned, tailings
production increases seven-fold to 70 million tonnes annually and water
consumption increases to over 150 million litres daily (over 100,000 litres
every minute).
BHP
Billiton proposes continuing with its water take from the Artesian Basin and
also building a desalination plant in the Upper Spencer Gulf to provide an
additional 120 million litres daily. The proposed desalination plant has raised
concerns over its impacts on marine species and fishing industries – in
particular from the discharge of brine. The Upper Spencer Gulf is a low
flushing fragile marine environment unsuited to siting a desalination plant and
BHP Billiton’s preferred site at Port Bonython is the breeding ground of the Charismatic
Giant Australian Cuttle Fish.
In-situ
leach (ISL) uranium mining is used at the Beverley uranium mine and is the
mining method proposed for use at other SA mines including Oban, Beverley Four
Mile and Honeymoon. ISL involves pumping acid into an aquifer, dissolving the
uranium ore and other heavy metals and pumping the solution back to the
surface. After separating the uranium, liquid radioactive waste – containing
radioactive particles, heavy metals and acid – is simply dumped in groundwater.
From being inert and immobile in the ore body, the radionuclides and heavy
metals are now bioavailable and mobile in the aquifer.
Proponents
of ISL mining claim that ‘attenuation’ will occur over time – that the groundwater
will return to its pre-mining state. However there is considerable scientific
uncertainty about the future of ISL-polluted groundwater and uncertainty about
the timeframe for attenuation if it does occur. A 2003 Senate References and
Legislation Committee report recommended banning the discharge of radioactive
liquid mine waste to groundwater. The Rann Government responded by
commissioning a study which had all the hallmarks of a whitewash yet still
acknowledged that attenuation is "not proven" and could only cite a
period of "several years to decades" for it to occur. Yet the
companies proposing to use ISL mining at Beverley Four Mile want to absolve
themselves of any future responsibility for the site just seven years after
they have finished mining. The future of ISL mining is plain to see –
short-lived mines leaving South Australians with a lasting legacy of polluted
aquifers.
The
Australian Nuclear Free Alliance – which brings together Aboriginal custodians
with representatives from environmental, medical and public health groups – is
calling on the Rann Government to initiate an independent public inquiry into
the impacts of uranium mining on SA’s water resources. This inquiry ought to
take place in the 12 months leading up to next year’s state election. It would
provide political parties with an opportunity to demonstrate their resolve to
properly regulate the state’s dwindling water resources and to address the
contradiction between corporate water profligacy and the responsible attitude
and actions of ordinary South Australians.
Dr Jim Green is Friends of
the Earth’s national nuclear campaigner and a member of the Australian Nuclear
Free Alliance’s national committee.
June
2004 marks the fifth anniversary of PR company Michel Warren’s involvement in
the federal government’s plan to establish a national nuclear waste dump in
South Australia. A great deal of information is now available about the role of
Michels Warren in this controversy thanks to documents released under Freedom
of Information (FoI) legislation.
Parts
of the FoI material were discussed in a media release from the SA environment
minister John Hill on May 5, 2004 (included below), but a closer reading of the
FoI documents reveals much else of interest – including proof that federal
science minister Peter McGauran has misled the Parliament.
Misleading
statements by the federal government
While
this paper focusses on the role of Michels Warren, it should be noted that the
FoI material reveals evidence of the federal government misleading the Parliament
and the public.
The
FoI material reveals that the dump could be 25 times larger than the government
has ever publicly acknowledged. A February 10, 2000 email from a senior
government official, Rosemary Marcon, says that the “actual disposal area is a
500mx500m” (250,000 square metres) and she repeats that statement in a March
22, 2000 email. Yet public statements from the government refer to a 100mx100m
disposal area – 10,000 square metres (e.g. Environmental Impact Statement,
p.11.) Had the reference to a much larger dump been made once, and/or had it
been made by a junior official, it might be passed over as an error. But the
statement is made twice, and it is made by a senior government official.
In
response to a Question on Notice, federal science minister Peter McGauran
asserted unequivocally that departmental officers had not developed a list of
‘experts’ to make public comments in support of the proposed nuclear waste
dump. (Senate Hansard, October 27, 2003, p.16471, Question No. 2134, full text
copied below.) However, the FoI material makes it clear that such a list was
indeed developed. A July 6, 2000 email from Caroline Perkins, a senior
government official, lists four “technical experts … who have agreed to
assisting us in general”, though their names are blanked out. McGauran’s
unequivocal assertion that departmental officers had not developed a list of
‘experts’ to comment on the dump was clearly false – and he was clearly
misleading the Parliament and the public.
A
2002 government document released under FoI legislation (and previously
leaked), titled “Communication Strategy for the National Radioactive Waste
Repository Project”, states that: “An Adelaide based communications consultant,
Michels Warren, has been subcontracted … to assist with the development,
implementation and refinement of this strategy which has entailed the
following: … enlistment of a scientific liaison officer and other willing
experts”.
A
2003 document written by Michels Warren discusses plans to organise eminent
Australians and members of South Australian medical and science community to
participate in the ‘communications’ program. Michels Warren states: “This would
involve a concerted program of letters to the editor of The Advertiser and
responding and participating on talk radio programs.”
The
government and Michels Warren seem to have struggled to find “willing experts”.
For example, Mike Duggan from Michels Warren said in a July 6, 2000 email that
it would be a “great idea” to gather experts for a media conference, “if
possible at one of the universities or hospitals where waste is held”, in
support of the dump – but no such media conference eventuated.
Those
‘experts’ that have been enlisted have been error-prone. For example, the FoI
material contains a summary of a May 2000 radio interview with Dr Leon Mitchell
of Flinders University, who falsely claimed the dump would be lined with an
impermeable layer to isolate it from the underlying earth (the dump trenches
will be unlined). Mitchells also said the dump was for things such as watch
dials not nuclear power plants and reactors. In fact, dismantled nuclear
reactor components will be sent to the dump (if it proceeds), and that reactor
waste will amount to up to 5,000 cubic metres, which is greater than the entire
existing stockpile of 3,700 cubic metres of waste destined for the dump.
Michels Warren was involved in organising radio interviews with Mitchell, the
FoI material reveals. Other enlisted ‘experts’ have falsely claimed that the
dump is only for low-level waste, and one ‘expert’ even claimed that the waste
would not be buried!
McGauran
misled Parliament on another point. He asserted unequivocally in a response to
a Question on Notice that no ‘experts’ were provided with media training by
consultants to the department. The FoI material reveals that McGauran’s claim
was false. On July 12, 2000, Michels Warren charged the government $240 to
provide a written briefing to one of the enlisted ‘experts’, Dr. Gerald
Laurence, in preparation for media interviews. On July 7, 2000, Michels Warren
briefed another enlisted ‘expert’, Dr. John Patterson, for a radio interview.
Then on July 12-13, 2000, Michels Warren billed the federal government $800 for
media training with the government’s scientific liaison officer on the dump
project, Dr. Keith Lokan.
Why
Michels Warren would be conducting briefings about the dump is anyone’s guess.
The FoI material is replete with factual errors. For example, a draft letter to
a newspaper, states: “Unequivocally, it [the dump] will only ever contain
low-level waste.” Yet the dump will take both low- and intermediate-level
waste, including (according to the EIS, pp.45-46) long-lived intermediate-level
waste. The draft letter also states that “Australia produces no high-level waste
…” Yet the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation, operator
of the reactor at Lucas Heights in Sydney, acknowledges that its spent nuclear
fuel meets the heat and radiological criteria for classification as high-level
waste, and the New South Wales Environment Protection Agency has also
acknowledged that the Lucas Heights reactor generates high-level waste.
The
context for the “willing experts” strategy is made clear in the FoI documents.
Market research by the McGregor Tan company revealed: “A knee-jerk negative
reaction to sighting the Commonwealth crest – it is interpreted as the symbol
accompanying government propaganda.” The market research also revealed:
“Cynical responses to government promises and attempts at reassurance.” And McGregor
Tan found that: “Ministers’ statements are rarely believed, regardless of the
individual Minister’s honourable intentions.”
Michels
Warren’s nuclear dump PRopaganda
Michels
Warren has been involved in the following campaigns (among others): a controversy
over cadmium at West Lakes, Bridgestone tyres, bacteria in fast food, SA Water
contamination, ETSA Utilities, the SA Freemasons, Telstra, WMC Ltd., and
campaigns on behalf of the corporate owners of the Beverley and Honeymoon
uranium mines in South Australia.
Michels
Warren has been involved in the nuclear dump campaign since June 1999. Its
involvement has consisted of several discrete contracts rather than an ongoing
involvement. A July 8, 1999 letter from Stephen Middleton from Michels Warren
states that the company is “delighted to be part of the project” and has “hit
the ground running” since it started on the project in the previous month.
Michels Warren has maintained its enthusiasm. A 2003 document – a tender
seeking involvement in the federal government’s covert plan to seize control of
land for the dump site – states that: “We are available 24-hours-a-day,
seven-days-a-week to provide our support to the Minister and this project.”
A
September 27, 2000 email written by Stephen Middleton from Michels Warren talks
about the need to “soften up the community” and “sell” the repository: “We will
lose ground once again unless we can soften up the community on the need for
the repository and the reasons why SA has been identified as the best location.
The prospect of the Minister announcing the preferred site before we can get to
the community with something that explains what it all means makes my head
spin. The wider research into issues such as Lucas Heights, uranium mining, the
nuclear fuel cycle etc etc can be tackled as a separate issue. It should not
hold up anything we are doing in terms of selling the repository to South
Australians. The rest of the country probably doesn’t care less about the
repository, but it is a big issue in SA. Further delays could be potentially
disastrous.”
Why
on earth is a South Australian company willingly involving itself in the
federal government’s nuclear dump plans? After all, Michels Warren itself
acknowledges that the dump is an unwanted imposition on SA. A 2003 Michels
Warren document released under FoI legislation states:
“The
National Repository could never be sold as “good news” to South Australians.
There are few, if any, tangible benefits such as jobs, investment or improved
infrastructure. Its merits to South Australians, at the most, are intangible
and the range and complexity of issues make them difficult to communicate.”
So
why is Michels Warren dumping on its home state? Money, of course. The federal
government has acknowledged making the following payments to Michels Warren (in
response to a Question on Notice from Senator Bob Brown – copied in full
below):
*
$359,000 in financial years 2000-01, 2001-02, 2002-03 (Senate Hansard, October
27, 2003, p.16471 – copied in full below).
*
in 2003, Michels Warren and the federal government signed a $107,000 contract
for work connected to the government’s compulsory seizure of land for the dump.
At least $26,000 of that amount was paid (and quite possibly the entire
$107,000).
*
undisclosed payments to Michels Warren in 1999-2000.
The
1999-2000 payments amount to at least $102,000 up to May 31, 2000, according to
a document included in the FoI material (Progress Payment Certificate, Number
12, August 24, 2000).
So
in total, Michels Warren has been paid at least $487,000 to dump on SA … and
possibly much more.
Michels
Warren staff have been paid at rates up to $192.50 per hour (GST inclusive) for
their work on the nuclear dump campaign.
The
detailed breakdowns of payments to Michels Warren raise further concerns about
whether tax-payers are getting value for money. For example:
*
$160 to draft a letter to editor of Mt Barker Times
*
$894 for Michels Warren employees to attend a public meeting organised by the
Australian Conservation Foundation and for preparatory and debriefing work
surrounding the meeting (a full house at the Adelaide Town Hall, with
approximately 1000 people attending).
*
$225 to draft a letter to a constituent.
*
$240 to schedule talk-back radio interviews.
Michels
Warren is not the only company in receipt of government funding for PR and
research in relation to the nuclear waste dump, e.g.
*
$61,369 paid to Worthington Di Marzio in 2003 for market research. (Senate
Hansard, October 29, 2003, pp.16681-2, Question No. 2139.)
*
$72,000 paid to Hill & Knowlton in 2002-03. (Senate Hansard, October 27,
2003, p.16471, Question No. 2136.) Hill & Knowlton is well known for its
involvement in the imaginative ‘babies in the incubator’ fiasco in Iraq in
1990-91, and for its work with tobacco companies, Enron, etc.
Monitoring
protesters
An
August 16, 2000 “high priority” email reveals that Caroline Perkins, a senior
official in the Department of Industry, Science and Resources – at that time
under the direction of Senator Nick Minchin – was asked to compile information
on protesters. "[T[he minister wants a short biography of our main
opponents in the Ivy campaign by about 11am our time (pre-rally)”, the email
said. The rest of the email is blacked out under FoI provisions. The email refers
to a Michels Warren employee – no doubt Michels Warren helped compile the
biographies.
In
1999 Michels Warren was working hard “obviating the impact of campaigns by
opponents and the ‘I’m With Ivy Campaign’ run by Ch 7.”
The
Michels Warren worksheet for February 2000 includes the following: “Liaise
investigator re green planning. Liaise R Yeeles [from WMC Ltd.] re updated
intelligence.” Was Michels Warren employing a private investigator as that
comment suggests?
And
on March 28, 2000, $150 for activities concerned with a “Protest at South
Australian Parliament”, and $160 four days earlier to “Liaise WMC, Police and
media re weekend protests.”
And
in April 2000: “check re new protest activities”, “liaise SA Police re same”,
“internet search re protests”, and “update intelligence re OHMS Not Boms
protest group”.
In
March 2000, Rosemary Marcon, a government official, asked Michels Warren for
the details of an “activist website
which we should monitor”. She was advised by Michels Warren that the site is
<www.lockon.org>. Evidently that piece of ‘intelligence’ was off-beam –
the website advertises streaming live shows from nude male dancers in Montreal!
The
FoI documentation is frequently contemptuous of opponents of the planned
nuclear waste dump (about 80% of the South Australian population). The option
of displaying the Environmental Impact Statement in the Conservation Centre of
South Australia is treated as a joke. Opponents of the dump are described as
“anti-nuclear anarchists”. Michels Warren co-founder Daryl Warren refers in a
July 14, 2003 email to protests and “demons”. On July 10, 2003, Warren stated
that: “It has become apparent during the week that people seem to have lost the
plot on the repository as it becomes embroiled in a political fight.”
In
response to an invitation to the federal science minister to attend a
conference at Adelaide University in March 2000, Michel’s Warren employee
Stephen Middleton recommends against attending the conference. Middleton wrote:
“The better option is to:
(i)
dismiss the gathering as nothing more than a stunt
(ii)
attempt to discredit it with counter media measures before, during and after.”
Doctoring
photos
The
FoI material suggests that photographs have been doctored to suit the
government’s ends. A February 14, 2000 email from a senior government official
to Michels Warren’s graphic designer refers to a photo “with the sandhills
removed.” The rationale was explained in a December 13, 1999 email by the same
government official: “Dunes are a sensitive area with respect to Aboriginal
Heritage.”
The
February, 2000 email also asked: “Can the horizon be straightened up as well.”
Scare
campaign
A
recurring theme in the exchanges between the federal government and Michels
Warren is the attempt to justify the dump by mounting a scare-campaign in
relation to existing storage facilities. Yet they get their lines muddled up.
One document released under FoI includes that statement that “none” of the
waste “is stored satisfactorily” in existing stores. That is in direct
contradiction to a June 2000 document document under Senator Nick Minchin’s
name (“Radioactive waste: the eight biggest myths”), which states: “The safety
of the storage of radioactive waste is proven by the fact that there are fifty
stores around Australia housing radioactive waste and there has never been an
accident exposing a person to unsafe levels of radiation.”
And
in a May 17, 2000 media release, Minchin said: "South Australians have
nothing to fear from radioactive waste. The fact is that waste is already
stored in downtown Adelaide in complete safety." Anyone claiming otherwise
was merely trying to "whip up anti-radioactive waste hysteria",
Minchin claimed. So by his logic, Michels Warren and the federal government
itself are guilty of trying to whip up hysteria.