Author: NuclearAdmin

UK – use of power reactors for weapons production

Puzzled by Plutonium?

24 January 2014

http://drdavidlowry.blogspot.co.uk/2014/01/puzzled-by-plutonium.html

Today a defence minister, Philip Dunne, provided an answer to Parliament that is demonstrably inaccurate. His ministerial reply, distorts by omission. Either it is deliberate, or the Government is dangerously ignorant. Either way, it’s a worry.

The question, by veteran Labour backbencher Paul Flynn, asked the energy secretary “whether any plutonium created in UK civilian (a) commercial reactors and (b) research reactors has been put to use in (i) nuclear weapons in the UK or elsewhere and (ii) other military uses since each reactor type first started operating in the UK.” (http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201314/cmhansrd/cm140123/text/140123w0001.htm#14012391000053)

Mr Dunne responded he had been asked to reply on behalf of the Ministry of Defence, and said: “This was addressed in a Ministry of Defence April 2000 report on historical accounting and plutonium, a summary of which is available in the National Archives at the following link:

http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20060130214247/http://www.mod.uk/publications/nuclear_weapons/accounting.htm“

He then expanded, saying: “Plutonium for nuclear weapons was produced in the UK defence reactors at the Windscale Piles, Calder hall and Chapelcross. The UK Government announced a moratorium on the production of nuclear materials for explosive purposes in 1995. Since the 1998 Strategic Defence Review, all reprocessing in the UK has been conducted under the Euratom/International Atomic Energy Agency Safeguards agreement. There have been some withdrawals of plutonium from safeguards, for analysis, temporary handling or processing when such services were not available in the civilian sector. It is not possible to determine where this plutonium was created. These withdrawals are of a type and quantity not suitable for weapons use; information can be found on the Office of Nuclear Regulation website at the following link: http://www.hse.gov.uk/nuclear/safeguards/withdrawals.htm“

The reason why I dispute the minister’s reply is set out in this submission I made to a nuclear conference in April last year, entitled: Hinkley’s Hidden History.

You can read the full presentation below:

With the seminar discussion of the historical context of the nuclear reactor decisions leading to the new proposed third nuclear plant proposed by EDF for Hinkley Point, Dr David Lowry explains how the first nuclear power station at Hinkley played a key role in Britain’s military nuclear programme too.

The first public hint came with a public announcement on 17 June 1958 by the Ministry of Defence, on: “the production of plutonium suitable for weapons in the new [nuclear ] power stations programme as an insurance against future defence needs …” in the UK’s first generation Magnox reactor.

By chance, in a French State Defence Council meeting on the same day, 17 June 1958, involving France’s President de Gaulle discussed the use of a Magnox-style reactor − the Gaz-Grafite plant ironically called EDF-1 − at Chinon in the Loire Valley, to make France’s the plutonium explosives. (http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/France/FranceOrigin.html)

A week later in the UK Parliament, Labour ‘s Roy Mason, asked why Her Majesty’s Government had “decided to modify atomic power stations, primarily planned for peaceful purposes, to produce high-grade plutonium for war weapons; to what extent this will interfere with the atomic power programme; and if he will make a statement?”

Paymaster General Reginald Maudling responded: “At the request of the Government, the Central Electricity Generating Board has agreed to a small modification in the design of Hinkley Point and of the next two stations in its programme so as to enable plutonium suitable for military purposes to be extracted should the need arise. The modifications will not in any way impair the efficiency of the stations. As the initial capital cost and any additional operating costs that may be incurred will be borne by the Government, the price of electricity will not be affected. The Government made this request in order to provide the country, at comparatively small cost, with a most valuable insurance against possible future defence requirements. The cost of providing such insurance by any other means would be extremely heavy.” (HC Deb 24 June 1958 vol 590 cc246-8)

This was challenged by Mr Mason, but the minister retorted: “The hon. Gentleman says that it is an imposition. The only imposition on the country would have arisen if the Government had met our defence requirements for plutonium by means far more expensive than those proposed in this suggestion.”

The headline story in the Bridgwater Mercury, serving the community around Hinkley, on that day (24 June} was: “MILITARY PLUTONIUM To be manufactured at Hinkley”

The article explained: “An ingenious method has been designed for changing the plant without reducing the output of electricity …” CND was reported to be critical, describing this as a “distressing step” insisting: “The Government is obsessed with a nuclear militarism which seems insane.”

The left wing Tribune magazine of 27 June 1958 was very critical of the deal under the headline ‘Sabotage in the Atom Stations’: “For the sake of making more nuclear weapons, the Government has dealt a heavy blow at the development of atomic power stations.” And warned: “Unless this disastrous decision is reversed, we shall pay dearly in more ways than one for the sacrifice made on the grim alter of the H-bomb.”

Then, on 3 July 1958, the United Kingdom and United States signed a detailed agreement on co-operation on nuclear weapons development, after several months of Congressional hearings in Washington DC, but no oversight whatsoever in the UK Parliament.

A month later Mr Maudling told backbencher Alan Green MP in Parliament that: “Three nuclear power stations are being modified, but whether they will ever be used to produce military grade plutonium will be for decision later and will depend on defence requirements. The first two stations, at Bradwell and Berkeley, are not being modified and the decision to modify three subsequent stations was taken solely as a precaution for defence purposes.” (HC Deb 01 August 1958 vol 592 cc228-9W228W, http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/written_answers/1958/aug/01/nuclear-power-stations-plutonium#column_228w)

Following further detailed negotiations, the Ango-American Mutual Defense Agreement on Atomic Energy matters to give it its full treaty title, was amended on 7 May 1959, to permit the exchange of nuclear explosive material including plutonium and enriched uranium for military purposes.

The Times’ science correspondent wrote on 8 May 1959 under the headline ‘Production of Weapons at Short Notice’: “The most important technical fact behind the agreement is that of civil grade – such as will be produced in British civil nuclear power stations- can now be used in weapons…” (http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/viewArticle.arc?articleId=ARCHIVE-The_Times-1959-05-08-12-010&pageId=ARCHIVE-The_Times-1959-05-08-12)

Within a month, Mr Maudling in Parliament told Tory back bencher, Wing Commander Eric Bullus who had asked the Paymaster-General what change there has been in the intention to modify three nuclear power stations to enable plutonium suitable for military use to be extracted should the need arise. “Last year Her Majesty’s Government asked the Central Electricity Generating Board to make a small modification in the design of certain power stations to enable plutonium suitable for military purposes to be extracted if need should arise. Having taken into account recent developments, including the latest agreement with the United States, and having re-assessed the fissile material which will become available for military purposes from all sources, it has been decided to restrict the modifications to one power station, namely, Hinkley Point.” (HC Deb 22 June 1959 vol 607 cc847-9 848

And so it may be seen that the UK’s first civil nuclear programme was used as a source of nuclear explosive plutonium for the US military, with Hinkley Point A the prime provider.

I explained in an earlier Blog entry last June – A Blast from the Past: Hinton’s hidden history − in more detail the reasons why I have strong reasons to believe plutonium created in civil commercial reactors was allocated to the unsafeguarded defence stockpile for military uses, based on an interview I conducted 31 years ago this month. See http://drdavidlowry.blogspot.co.uk/2013/06/a-blast-from-past-hintons-hidden-history.html

Ministers in 2014 should not re-write history, to protect the nuclear business from its murky past embrace of nuclear weapons

A Blast from the Past: Hinton’s hidden history

25 June 2013

http://drdavidlowry.blogspot.co.uk/2013/06/a-blast-from-past-hintons-hidden-history.html

Thirty years ago this month, on 22 June 1983, Lord Hinton of Bankside, one of the pioneers and the greats of the early UK nuclear programme died.

Christopher Hinton had been the primary driving force responsible in the first post war decade for development of the UK Atomic Energy Authority’s giant nuclear production and reprocessing plants at Windscale, now Sellafield, the uranium enrichment plant at Capenhurst, the nuclear fuel production plant at Springfields, and innovative research reactors at Harwell (BEPO) and the experimental fast reactors at Dounreay, on Scotland’s northern shore, as Managing Director of theUKAEA’s Industrial Group.

Already knighted in 1951, he became the first chairman of the newly nationalised Central Electricity Generating Board in September 1957, (a post he held until 1964), and oversaw the first commercial nuclear reactors being brought into service. A later chairman of the CEGB, Lord (Walter Marshall) described him in an appreciation after Hinton’s death as “the man responsible for establishing Britain’s nuclear energy industry'”

 In 1965 he became a life peer, a decade after being elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1954. He was also made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and the Institution of Chemical Engineers. Far from retiring, he remained very active in public life, becoming Chancellor of the University of Bath for 14 years to 1980, President of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers (1966-7), an honorary fellow at Trinity College, Cambridge, an honorary associate at the Manchester College of Technology, a member of the international executive of the World Energy Conference, deputy chairman of the Electricity Supply Research Council, and a special advisor to the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development. In his 80s, he was still informally advising the World Bank.

I present his glittering CV, to establish without doubt, if anyone was in the “nuclear know,” it was Hinton.

Five months before his death, at 82, he gave me an extended interview in his office at the then Department of Energy – where he was still active as an advisor – as part of my doctoral research, reflecting on his long time at the centre of nuclear decisions. I wrote up the interview as a monograph (ERG 048)1 for the Energy Research Group at the Open University in Milton Keyes, where I was then based.

Lord Hinton obviously had an admirable lifetime of experience in the nuclear business, and when interviewed was still spritely, lucid and on top of the issue. Power News, the monthly newspaper produced by the CEGB for its staff, described him as “unswerving in his integrity,” in its own appreciation on Hinton’s contribution.
During my long interview with him, Lord Hinton was candid about many historical matters, and quite prepared to admit where he and his colleagues had, in hindsight , got some important matters wrong.

The interview took place in London on 19 January 1983, a few days after the Public Inquiry into the application by the CEGB to build an American –designed Pressurised Water Reactor at Sizewell in Suffolk. When it was opened in 1995, it was the first non UK-designed reactor to be commissioned in the UK.

At one point in the interview, Lord Hinton was explaining how plutonium created by irradiating fuel in the UK’s first generation of nuclear plants, the so-called “Magnox Reactors” was earmarked for future use. I brought to his attention that a detailed academic book by business specialist, Professor Leslie Hannah, on the creation of the UK’s national electricity generation industry, in which he wrote in respect of the CEGB’s first fleet of Magnox plants “some plutonium from the used fuel could be used for the British atomic bomb stockpile. The Americans also agreed to take some for military purposes.”

On hearing this, Lord Hinton expressed surprise, exclaiming “He’s said that has he?….This is interesting, because this is what I was refraining from saying, because I did not know whether I should be offending against the Official Secrets Act… it is a very daring statement”

He went on to muse: “I don’t know how much of this is secret. I don’t think any of the plutonium from the British reactors was needed by the British for defence purposes If it was, I was not conscious of it.”

He went on to explain that “While the initial industrial reactors were being built the UK AEA said they would like them to be so designed so military grade plutonium could be produced in them. The design was modified in such a way to make this possible.”

“The irradiated fuel elements were handed over to the UKAEA ( then also responsible for nuclear explosives production ) but its chairman, Lord Plowden did not sell them to the Americans, but exchanged them for enriched uranium…I don’t know whether anyone is in a position to say what the United States used it for, but if you use a little nouce you are forced to the conclusion that they were using it for military purposes, because what else were they using it for, because ethey had no fast reactor programme.”

At this point Lord Hinton called for a press cutting from The Financial Times covering the opening of the Sizewell Inquiry, which reported the evidence from John Baker, the CEGB’s managing director and chief policy witness. Hinton said “I’ve cogitated to what extent.. I tread a very delicate line here. You see my access to all information could be cut off if I use things indiscretly.”

He the read out a verbatim extract from Mr Baker’s evidence:, which asserted:
“Plutonium produced by CEGB reactors have never been applied to weapons use in the UK or elswhere…I am absolutely certain that that statement is incorrect.”
I intervened asking for clarification if he was questioning the “or elsewhere”, as Hinton had already made clear some plutonium from CEGB reactors had been swapped with US.

He retorted: “I am questioning the whole statement because it is deplorable. I don’t know whether they ought to have a PWR or not…” and added forcefully. “I don’t know whether it is right they should get permission for a PWR at Sizewell or not, but what is important is they shouldn’t tell bloody lies in their evidence!”

After some prompting over to which reactors he was specifically referring, Hinton explained it was “certainly true” in relation to the Berkeley and Bradwell reactors [the first two CEGB Magnox plants to come on stream].

So thirty years ago, the very first Chairman of the nationalised Central Electricity Generating Board denounced the evidence of its then managing director, John Baker, as not simply inaccurate, but as “bloody lies” within days of the evidence being presented to the Sizewell lnquiry Inspector, Sir Frank, later, Lord Layfield, now deceased.

In this extraordinary interview, Lord Hinton, just like his counterpart in the United States, Admiral Hyman Rickover, who created the US nuclear navy and promoted the PWR design, who in a valedictory lecture on his retirement told some painful truths on failures to his successors – “Success teaches us nothing; only failure teaches” – unburdened himself of some sensitive information he had thought was secret, but felt finally able to make public.

We should be grateful for his candour. Today’s nuclear operators should learn this lesson from the venerable Lord.

Nuclear winter

Summary: There are many, repeatedly-demonstrated links between nuclear power and weapons. Recent research demonstrates that severe global climatic consequences would follow a limited regional nuclear war involving 100 Hiroshima-size bombs targeting cities.

Prof. Alan Robock from Rutgers University and Prof. Brian Toon from the University of Colorado summarise recent research on the climatic impacts of nuclear warfare: “A nuclear war between any two countries, each using 50 Hiroshima-sized atom bombs, such as India and Pakistan, could produce climate change unprecedented in recorded human history. This is less than 0.05% of the explosive power of the current global arsenal. Nuclear arsenals with 50 nuclear weapons can produce a global pall of smoke leading to global ozone depletion. The smoke, once in the stratosphere, heats the air, which speeds up reactions that destroy ozone, and also lofts reactive chemicals by altering the winds.”

More information:

* Starr, Steven, October 2009, ‘Catastrophic Climatic Consequences of Nuclear Conflict’, paper commissioned by the International Commission on Nuclear Non-proliferation and Disarmament, www.icnnd.org/research/Starr_Nuclear_Winter_Oct_09.pdf

* Starr, Steven, 12 March 2010, ‘The climatic consequences of nuclear war’, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, www.thebulletin.org/web-edition/op-eds/the-climatic-consequences-of-nuclear-war

* Climatic Consequences of Nuclear Conflict – references and links to articles by Prof. Alan Robock, Prof. Brian Toon and others http://climate.envsci.rutgers.edu/nuclear

* Robock, Alan, 2009, Nuclear winter, www.eoearth.org/article/Nuclear_winter

* Robock Alan, and Brian Toon, December 30, 2009, ‘South Asian Threat? Local Nuclear War = Global Suffering’, Scientific American, www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=local-nuclear-war

Nuclear Famine

nuclearfamine.org and see the publications listed at nuclearfamine.org/about-steven-starr/

The long-term environmental consequences of a nuclear war between the US and Russia could kill most humans and land animals. An India-Pakistan nuclear war could cause 2 billion people to starve to death. Nuclear war threatens all nations and peoples.

Nuclear power, warfare and global famine

Jim Green, Chain Reaction #115, August 2012, www.foe.org.au/chain-reaction/

A nuclear war using as few as 100 weapons would disrupt the global climate and agricultural production so severely that the lives of more than a billion people would be at risk, according to research findings released in April by International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War and its Australian affiliate, the Medical Association for Prevention of War.

Working with data produced by scientists who have studied the climate effects of a hypothetical nuclear war between India and Pakistan, author Dr. Ira Helfand and a team of experts in agriculture and nutrition determined that plunging temperatures and reduced precipitation in critical farming regions, caused by soot and smoke lofted into the atmosphere by multiple nuclear explosions, would interfere with crop production and affect food availability and prices worldwide.

The report finds that:

  • There would be a significant decline in middle season rice production in China. During the first four years, rice production would decline by an average of 21% and over the next six years the decline would average 10%.
  • Increases in food prices would make food inaccessible to hundreds of millions of the world’s poorest. Even if agricultural markets continued to function normally, 215 million people would be added to the rolls of the malnourished over the course of a decade. Significant agricultural shortfalls would lead to panic and hoarding on an international scale, further reducing accessible food.
  • The 925 million people in the world who are already chronically malnourished would be put at risk by a 10% decline in their food consumption.

Dr Helfand said: “The death of one billion people over a decade would be a disaster unprecedented in human history. It would not cause the extinction of the human race, but it would bring an end to modern civilization as we know it.”

Power and proliferation

The report on the catastrophic potential of nuclear warfare has important implications for the ongoing debate over nuclear power. Apologists for the nuclear industry trot out any number of furphies in their efforts to distance nuclear power from WMD proliferation, but the facts are in. There is a long history of ostensibly peaceful nuclear programs providing political cover and technical support for nuclear weapons programs − and an expansion of nuclear power can only exacerbate the problem.

Of the 10 nations to have produced nuclear weapons:

  • Six did so with political cover and/or technical support from their supposedly peaceful nuclear program – India, Pakistan, Israel, South Africa, North Korea, and France.
  • The other four nuclear weapons states (US, Russia, China, UK) developed nuclear weapons before nuclear power − but there are still significant links between their peaceful and military nuclear programs (e.g. routine transfer of personnel).
  • Eight of the 10 nations have nuclear power reactors and those eight countries account for nearly 60% of global nuclear power capacity.

Examples of the direct use of nuclear power reactors in weapons programs include the following:

  • North Korea’s nuclear weapons tests have used plutonium produced in an ‘Experimental Power Reactor’.
  • Power reactors are used in India’s nuclear weapons program − this has long been suspected and is no longer in doubt since India refuses to allow eight out of 22 reactors (and its entire thorium/plutonium program) to be subject to International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) safeguards inspections.
  • The US has used power reactors in recent years to produce tritium for use in ‘boosted’ nuclear weapons.
  • The 1962 test of sub-weapon-grade plutonium by the US may have used plutonium from a power reactor.
  • France’s civilian nuclear program provided the base of expertise for its weapons program, and material for weapons was sometimes produced in power reactors.
  • Magnox reactors in the UK had the dual roles of producing weapon grade plutonium and generating electricity.
  • Pakistan may be using power reactor/s in support of its nuclear weapons program.

Nuclear power programs have facilitated and provided cover for weapons programs even without the direct use of power reactors to produce material for weapons. Nuclear power programs provide a rationale for the acquisition and use of:

  • uranium enrichment technology (which can produce low enriched uranium for power reactors or highly enriched uranium for weapons);
  • reprocessing technology (which separates spent nuclear fuel into three streams − uranium, high-level waste, and weapons-useable plutonium); and
  • research and training reactors (which can produce plutonium and other materials for weapons, and can also be used for weapons-related research).

The nuclear weapons programs in South Africa and Pakistan were outgrowths of their power programs although enrichment plants, not power reactors, produced most or all of the fissile (explosive) material used in weapons.

Research and training reactors, ostensibly acquired in support of a power program or for other civil purposes, have been a plutonium source for weapons in India and Israel and have been used for weapons-related research and experiments in numerous other countries including Iraq, Iran, South Korea, North Korea, Taiwan, Yugoslavia, and possibly Romania.

Nuclear power programs can facilitate weapons programs even if power reactors are not actually built. Iraq provides a clear illustration of this important point. While Iraq’s nuclear research program provided much cover for the weapons program from the 1970s to 1991, stated interest in developing nuclear power was also significant. Iraq pursued a ‘shop til you drop’ program of acquiring dual-use technology, with much of the shopping done openly and justified by nuclear power ambitions.

According to Khidhir Hamza, a senior nuclear scientist involved in Iraq’s weapons program: “Acquiring nuclear technology within the IAEA safeguards system was the first step in establishing the infrastructure necessary to develop nuclear weapons. In 1973, we decided to acquire a 40-megawatt research reactor, a fuel manufacturing plant, and nuclear fuel reprocessing facilities, all under cover of acquiring the expertise needed to eventually build and operate nuclear power plants and produce and recycle nuclear fuel. Our hidden agenda was to clandestinely develop the expertise and infrastructure needed to produce weapon-grade plutonium.”

Power and proliferation − two sides of the same coin and a major factor to consider when weighing different energy options, all the more so in light of the report on nuclear warfare and global famine.

Jim Green is the national nuclear campaigner with Friends of the Earth, Australia.

The report, ‘Nuclear Famine: A Billion People at Risk − Global Impacts of Limited Nuclear War on Agriculture, Food Supplies, and Human Nutrition’, is posted at mapw.org.au/download/nuclear-famine-findings Videos are posted on youtube − search ‘nuclear famine’.

More information on the links between nuclear power and WMD proliferation is posted at https://nuclear.foe.org.au/power-weapons/

Public opinion – nuclear power in Australia

In this webpage: public opinion regarding nuclear power, followed by public opinion regarding uranium mining.

Public support for nuclear power in Australia has jumped up and down quite significantly over the past decade and has never reached 50% support. Part of the variation could be explained by polling questions, sample sizes etc. Some poll results are as follows:

  • 2019: 44% support for nuclear power, 40% opposition.[1] (51% believe nuclear power would help lower power prices, 26% disagree.)
  • 2015: 26.6% support for nuclear power in South Australia (level of opposition not surveyed).[2]
  • 2013: 30% support for nuclear power, 53% opposition.[3]
  • 2011 (after the Fukushima disaster): 34% support for nuclear power, 61% opposition (Roy Morgan poll).

Opposition to a locally-built nuclear power plant is clear:

  • 2019: 28% “would be comfortable living close to a nuclear power plant”, 60% would not.
  • 2011: 12% of Australians would support a nuclear plant being built in their local area, 73% would oppose it. (Morgan poll)
  • 2006: 10% Australians would strongly support a nuclear plant being built in their local area, 55% would strongly oppose it. (Newspoll)

Opinion polls clearly show that renewables are far more popular than nuclear power:

  • 2015: An IPSOS poll found support among Australians for solar power (78‒87%) and wind power (72%) is far higher than support for coal (23%) and nuclear (26%).[4]
  • 2015: When given the option of eight energy sources, 84% included solar in their top three, 69% included wind, 21% included gas and only 13% included solar.[5]
  • 2013: Expanding the use of renewable energy sources (71%) was the most popular option to tackle climate change, followed by energy-efficient technologies (58%) and behavioural change (54%), with nuclear power (17.4%) a distant fourth.[6]

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/jun/18/australians-support-for-nuclear-plants-rising-but-most-dont-want-to-live-near-one

[2] Paul Starick, 13 March 2015, ‘Voters reject Premier Jay Weatherill’s agenda to transform the state’, www.adelaidenow.com.au/news/south-australia/voters-reject-premier-jay-weatherills-agenda-to-transform-the-state/story-fni6uo1m-1227262025901

[3] John McAneney et al., 14 Oct 2013, ‘Why don’t Australians see nuclear as a climate change solution?’, http://theconversation.com/why-dont-australians-see-nuclear-as-a-climate-change-solution-19099

[4] http://www.ipsos.com.au/Ipsos_docs/Solar-Report_2015/Ipsos-ARENA_SolarReport.pdf

[5] http://www.solarquotes.com.au/blog/climate-institute-poll-finds-australians-support-renewables/

[6] John McAneney et al., 14 Oct 2013, ‘Why don’t Australians see nuclear as a climate change solution?’, http://theconversation.com/why-dont-australians-see-nuclear-as-a-climate-change-solution-19099

Why don’t Australians see nuclear as a climate change solution?

14 October 2013

http://theconversation.com/why-dont-australians-see-nuclear-as-a-climate-change-solution-19099

John McAneney, Deanne Bird, Katharine Haynes, Rob van den Honert – Macquarie University

This survey found that more respondents oppose nuclear power than support it (53% versus 30%).

Expanding the use of renewable energy sources (71%) is the most popular option to tackle climate change, followed by energy-efficient technologies (58%) and behavioural change (54%). Nuclear power (17.4%) is a distant fourth.

Nuclear power in Australia: A comparative analysis of public opinion regarding climate change and the Fukushima disaster

Deanne Bird, Katharine Haynes, Rob van den Honert, John McAneney, Wouter Poortinga − Macquarie University

Energy Policy, 3 October 2013
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301421513009713
or download PDF
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301421513009713/pdfft?md5=b76349b6d01dedd516e3783c3e25f95f&pid=1-s2.0-S0301421513009713-main.pdf

1101 respondents in Australia -aged 18+
Overall 2012 figures – 41.4% opposition to nuclear power in Australia compared to 24.4% support (+17% difference)
Overall 2010 figures – 31.7% opposition to nuclear power in Australia compared to 29% support. (+2.7% difference)

… indicating the impact of the Fukushima disaster on public opinion.

Support for nuclear power has melted away

Jim Green, 11 April 2011, The Punch

http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/support-for-nuclear-power-has-melted-away

A poll by Roy Morgan Research several days into the Fukushima nuclear crisis found that 61 per cent of Australians oppose the development of nuclear power here, nearly double the 34 per cent level of support. Thus the growth in support for nuclear power over the past five years has been totally erased … and then some.

While there was undoubtedly growing support for nuclear power until Fukushima, the issue has been the subject of a great deal of hype and spin. In 2009, for example, a flurry of media reports and commentary followed the release of a Nielsen poll which found that support for nuclear power had risen to 49 per cent and had overtaken the level of opposition. But in fact the poll found that 49 per cent of Australians supported “considering the introduction of nuclear power in Australia”. There is of course a big difference between supporting nuclear power and supporting its consideration.

Then there was an unfortunate web-poll conducted by the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation in 2009 to gauge attitudes towards nuclear power. “I am against it” was easily winning, so an enterprising ANSTO staff member changed “I am against it” to “It is one of the options”. A journalist got wind of the subterfuge and ANSTO issued a public apology.

The hyping of nuclear power includes the repeated claim that environmentalists are turning in support of nuclear power. Truth is, you could count the number of pro-nuclear environmentalists on the fingers of one hand. Two hands if you count the likes of eco-warrior turned “sustainability consultant” Patrick Moore, whose consulting is sustained by funding from the US Nuclear Energy Institute.

While the polls were trending upwards for nuclear power in Australia until recently, Roy Morgan Research points out that the longer term trend is in the other direction. In 1979, the “yes” vote for nuclear power beat the “no” vote by 17 per cent; now it trails by 27 per cent.

The PR problem only gets deeper for nuclear advocates. Sooner or later, plans for nuclear power must be accompanied by a postcode, and few of us want to live anywhere near a nuclear reactor. The Morgan poll found that just 12 per cent of us would support a nuclear plant being built in our area, 13 per cent would be anxious but not oppose it, and 73 per cent would oppose it.

And if nuclear advocates weren’t already feeling punch-drunk, consider the November 2007 federal election − the first time in decades that a major political party took a pro-nuclear power policy to an election. As the election loomed, the Howard government tried to avoid mention of its pro-nuclear policy, but the issue was bubbling away in local electorates. During the election campaign at least 22 Coalition candidates publicly distanced themselves from the government’s policy. The policy was − and was seen to be − a liability and it was ditched immediately after the election.

No such PR problems for renewable energy. A 2007 Australian Research Group survey found that an overwhelming majority of Australians support greater investment in wind power, solar power and energy efficiency, while support for nuclear power came a distant last at 33 per cent. A 2009 poll commissioned by the Clean Energy Council found 80 per cent support for prioritising the development of renewables and just 15 per cent support for prioritising nuclear power.

While nuclear power is off the agenda for the foreseeable future, that still leaves the elephant in the room − King Coal. The debate turns on polarised opinions about the capabilities of renewable energy sources. Some say that a clean, green, renewable energy future is feasible and inexpensive. Some say it is a hideously-expensive pipe-dream.Few would be surprised if the truth lay between those extremes.

Two of the most likely candidates to provide large-scale electricity in Australia are solar thermal power with storage (e.g. in molten salts), and geothermal “hot rocks” using underground heat to drive turbines.

Solar with storage is available, but it is about twice as expensive as other low-carbon electricity sources and four times as expensive as coal. It will certainly become cheaper, but we don’t know how much cheaper.

For geothermal hot rocks, a great deal of exploration and development is underway in Australia, but we’ve yet to see large-scale geothermal electricity generation.

There may be a need for “bridging” energy sources, with the most likely candidates being greater use of gas and also greater use of bioenergy such as the use of crop wastes to generate electricity.

But for Australia, much depends on the development of solar and geothermal. One logical policy would be to axe the many and varied fossil fuel subsidies, which amount to several billion dollars each year even by the most conservative estimates, and to use those funds to support solar and geothermal.

Jim Green is the national nuclear campaigner with Friends of the Earth.

Australian attitudes towards nuclear power are typical:

A 2005 IAEA survey of attitudes in 18 countries found that about two-thirds of those expressing an opinion opposed building new reactors. South Korea was the only one of the 18 countries with majority support for new reactors.

A 2011 survey covering 24 countries found 62% of respondents opposed nuclear power and 69% opposed the construction of new reactors.

PUBLIC OPINION  – URANIUM MINING IN AUSTRALIA

In general terms, public opinion in Australia is evenly divided on the topic of uranium mining. A 2008 Newspoll found 47% of Queenslanders opposed uranium mining compared to 45% support. A 2008 Newspoll found 48% of Western Australians supported a ban on uranium mining compared to 38% in favour of uranium mining. A 2011 poll found almost half the voters contacted by Western Australian Opinion Polls opposed uranium mining in WA, with 32% strongly opposed; 32% support uranium mining but only 5% were strong supporters; and only 28% of swinging voters supported uranium mining.

A 2011 Morgan poll illustrates how sensitive the results are to the framing of the question. When asked if they support exporting uranium for ‘peaceful purposes’, respondents were 59:34 in favour. When the same respondents were asked if they support exporting uranium to other countries for their ‘nuclear power needs’, the result was 44:50.

A 2012 opinion poll by the Lowy Institute found 61% of Australians opposed uranium sales to India, nearly double the number in support (33%). The number strongly opposed (39%) was more than four times the number strongly in support (9%). A 2008 poll by the Lowy Institute found that 88% agreed that Australia should “only export uranium to countries which have signed the global Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty”.

A 2008 survey found 62% of Australians opposed uranium exports to nuclear weapons states compared to 31% in favour. An International Atomic Energy Agency survey of 1,000 Australians in 2005 found 56% believed the IAEA safeguards system was ineffective − nearly double the 29% who considered it effective.

There is also scepticism towards the mining industry generally. in a 2011 poll only 11% said “all Australians” benefited a lot from the mining boom compared to 68% for mining company executives, 48% for mining company shareholders, and 42% for “foreign companies”.

Undermining nuclear disarmament diplomacy

Chain Reaction #119, Nov 2013, www.foe.org.au/chain-reaction

Documents obtained by the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) in August through freedom of information reveal that the Gillard government refused to endorse an 80-nation statement delivered at this year’s Non-Proliferation Treaty meeting in Geneva because it referred to a Red Cross resolution with which Australia fundamentally disagrees, and because it had concerns that the statement was designed to build support for a ban on nuclear weapons.

The declassified diplomatic cables, ministerial briefings and foreign ministry emails show that Australia’s opposition to the landmark Red Cross resolution – adopted by the international movement in November 2011 – prompted Australian Red Cross chief executive officer Robert Tickner to seek an explanation from then foreign minister Bob Carr, who responded to his letter but deliberately withheld information about Australia’s true position. Foreign ministry official Caroline Millar was fearful that to do so would “add oxygen” to the issue.

Former prime minister Malcolm Fraser and former foreign minister Gareth Evans were critical of Australia’s decision not to endorse the humanitarian statement. Responding to a letter from Mr Fraser, then prime minister Julia Gillard explained that Australia did not support it because “a push for a near-term ban on nuclear weapons formed part of the context of the statement’s intention”. Canberra is opposed to any moves to delegitimise the use or possession of nuclear weapons.

Canberra considers a ban on nuclear weapons to be incompatible with its continued reliance on US “extended nuclear deterrence”, which it claims “has provided security and stability in our region for more than 60 years and [has] underpinned regional prosperity”. Australia now hopes to steer other nations away from pursuing a ban on nuclear weapons, the documents reveal.

Tim Wright, Australian director of ICAN, said: “We were disappointed to learn that Australia plans to undermine the work of progressive nations and non-government organisations to advance a global ban on nuclear weapons. It should instead be driving international efforts for such a treaty. Despite their enormous destructive potential, nuclear weapons are the only weapons of mass destruction not yet subject to a total ban.

“Australia cannot credibly advocate nuclear disarmament while claiming that US nuclear weapons guarantee our security and prosperity. Not only is this a ludicrous notion; it is also a dangerous one because it signals to other nations that nuclear weapons are useful and necessary,” Wright added. “It is now clear that the Rudd and Gillard governments were interested only in maintaining the status quo of disarmament inaction. The Abbott government should join the vast majority of nations, and the Red Cross, in rejecting nuclear weapons for all.”

In February 2014 the Mexican government will host a major conference on the humanitarian impact of nuclear weapons, which is likely to be the first major test of the new Australian government’s commitment to nuclear disarmament. ICAN is encouraging the foreign ministry to report on the human toll of British nuclear testing in South Australia and Western Australia in the 1950s and 1960s, and to commission research on the effects of a regional nuclear war in Asia Pacific on the global climate and agricultural production.

“This would contribute to the evidence base key to informing policy choices about nuclear weapons and their elimination,” said Dr Bill Williams, who chairs ICAN in Australia. “The most startling new scientific evidence in relation to the effects of nuclear weapons is the severe, prolonged and global cooling, drying and darkening that would be caused by the millions of tons of soot and smoke injected into the upper atmosphere following the use of even a tiny fraction of the world’s nuclear weapons.”

Gem Romuld, ICAN outreach coordinator in Australia, is encouraging more humanitarian and environmental organisations in Australia to adopt nuclear disarmament as part of their work, in the same way that Australian Red Cross has done. “Banning nuclear weapons is everyone’s responsibility,” she said. “The general public need to take nuclear weapons personally and insist that the Australian government take stock and get real on abolishing these weapons of mass destruction.”

Sources:

  • International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, media release
  • Philip Dorling, 2 October 2013, ‘ALP nuclear backflip linked to US defence’, Sydney Morning Herald, tinyurl.com/dorling-smh

Undermining the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty

Undermining the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty

Dave Sweeney

Chain Reaction #119, Nov 2013, www.foe.org.au/chain-reaction

August 2013 − Sixty-eight years ago this week our world changed forever – and tens of thousands of lives instantly ended – when the atomic bomb was unveiled. The destruction of the Japanese cities of Hiroshima (6 August) and Nagasaki (9 August) in 1945 heralded the end of the Second World War and the beginning of the nuclear age.

It is a long way from Hiroshima in 1945 to election mode Canberra in 2013, but lessons learned and actions taken to stop the chance of further nuclear threats are being forgotten in the rush to advance risky Australian uranium sales.

In December 2011, the Labor Party narrowly voted to overturn a long standing ban on the sale of uranium to countries that had not signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) — the world’s main check and balance on the spread of the world’s worst weapons.

Labor’s backflip was designed to allow uranium sales to India, a nuclear weapon state that has consistently refused to sign the NPT. The move was condemned by the Australian Greens but enthusiastically welcomed by the Coalition, which paved the way with its August 2007 decision to support uranium sales to India and is an active supporter of an expanded uranium sector.

But the controversial sales plan is in clear conflict with Australia’s obligations under the South Pacific Nuclear Weapons Free Zone Treaty – also known as the Treaty of Rarotonga – and is putting Australia on a collision course with our Pacific neighbours.

Professor of International Law at ANU, Professor Donald Rothwell, has examined the treaty and the planned sale deal and concluded ‘Australia is obligated under the Treaty of Rarotonga to not provide India with nuclear materials until such time as India has concluded a full-scope safeguards agreement.’

The Treaty, signed 28 eight years ago this week in the Cook Islands, bans the use, testing and possession of nuclear weapons within the South Pacific region and places constraints on non-military nuclear activities, including the export of uranium. The Treaty sent a clear and important message to those nuclear weapons states that saw the Pacific as an easy testing ground. It remains relevant and important today, but is now under direct threat from the atomic ambitions of Australian politicians and miners.

The Treaty of Rarotonga clearly makes any uranium sales conditional on the receiver nation agreeing to comprehensive or ‘full-scope’ nuclear safeguards — that is, the nation receiving the uranium must open up all of its nuclear facilities to inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

India has declared some of its nuclear facilities to be ‘civilian’ and others ‘military’, with a number of its civilian facilities now open to the IAEA. But India retains extensive restrictions on international and independent access to its nuclear facilities and its approach in no way meets the requirements of comprehensive safeguards, posing a radioactive risk for the planet and a legal and policy headache for Australian uranium producers and promoters.

The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade officials currently developing a nuclear cooperation and sales treaty with their Indian counterparts are tight-lipped about the yawning gap between Australia’s uranium ambitions and nuclear obligations. For its part, India has made it clear that while it will continue developing and deploying nuclear weapons it will not accept full-scope safeguards on its nuclear facilities.

Proponents of the sales deal claim that earlier Indian recognition in a nuclear deal brokered with the United States mean changed circumstances and new rules, but the US-India deal has seen India accept only limited IAEA safeguards and in no way reduces Australia’s obligations under the Treaty of Rarotonga.

As home to around 35 per cent of the world’s uranium, the decisions Australia makes and the positions Australia takes matter. Uranium is a dual use fuel – it can be used to power reactors or weapons – and the distinction between the civil and military nuclear sectors is often more psychological and semantic than real.

In the week that sees the anniversary of the both the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the signing of the Treaty of Rarotonga and in the shadow of Fukushima – a continuing nuclear crisis directly fuelled by Australian uranium – it is time for Australia – and Australian politicians – to choose. Do we advance the self-interest of the high risk, low return uranium mining sector or are we a nation with the capacity to reflect on the past, respect the future and honour our international commitments?

Dave Sweeney is nuclear free campaigner at the Australian Conservation Foundation.

Reprinted from Independent Australia, 11 August 2013, www.independentaustralia.net

Undermining the South Pacific Nuclear Weapons Free Zone

Undermining the South Pacific Nuclear Weapons Free Zone

Chain Reaction #119, Nov 2013, www.foe.org.au/chain-reaction

Declassified documents from the National Archives of Australia, and US diplomatic cables published by WikiLeaks, highlight longstanding opposition in Canberra and Washington to a comprehensive nuclear-free zone that might constrain US nuclear deployments in the Pacific.

This saga is detailed in a recent article by Nic Maclellan, who works as a journalist with Islands Business magazine (Fiji) and other Pacific media, and is co-author of three books on nuclear testing in the South Pacific.

The South Pacific Nuclear Free Zone (SPNFZ) Treaty was finally negotiated in the 1980s after decades of campaigning by unions, Pacific churches and the Nuclear Free and Independent Pacific movement.

Under the Treaty, member countries in the zone commit never to develop nuclear weapons. Under three protocols, nuclear weapons states with territories in the zone (France, Britain and the US) agree to apply the treaty to their territories. In accepting the protocols, all nuclear weapons powers also undertake not to use or threaten to use any nuclear device against countries in the zone, and not to test nuclear bombs in the zone.

Russia and China signed the protocols in 1986 and 1987 respectively, pledging not to store or test nuclear weapons in the region or use them against Australia, New Zealand or island nations. France, Britain and the US refused to sign the treaty protocols until March 1996 (after a series of French nuclear bomb tests in the Pacific), and even now the US refuses to ratify its signature by passing legislation through the US Senate.

The delay reflects longstanding US opposition to limits on its nuclear deployments in the region. US diplomatic cables published by WikiLeaks show Washington’s opposition to the SPNFZ dating back to the 1970s.

US cables from September 1975 show that Gough Whitlam supported the proposal in public but privately told the US Embassy that he only did so because he “feels obliged to give token support” to a “beleaguered” NZ government. The Fraser government did nothing to progress Treaty negotiations from 1975−83.

The Hawke Labor government revived the concept of a nuclear free zone at the 1983 South Pacific Forum leaders meeting in Canberra. However the Hawke government was duplicitous as Nic Maclellan writes: “[D]eclassified documents from the National Archives of Australia, including the 1985 Cabinet minute about the SPNFZ Treaty, show clearly that Australia designed the treaty to protect US interests in the Pacific, including the deployment of nuclear-armed warships and the testing of nuclear missiles. … At the time, the Hawke government was embroiled in debate over a US proposal to test-fire two MX inter-continental ballistic missiles into Pacific waters east of Tasmania.”

Australia fought to retain the option to provide assistance in the manufacture or acquisition of nuclear weapons − and fought against draft Treaty text which would complicate or preclude that option. Canberra wasn’t prepared to stop the export of uranium from Australia to nuclear weapons states.

Maclellan notes that those decisions during the 1980s have important implications today, at a time when Australia is proposing to sell uranium to India, a country that has refused to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. He writes:

“International legal experts, including Don Rothwell, professor of international law at the Australian National University, have raised concerns that uranium sales to India would breach Australia’s obligations under the treaty. Rothwell has prepared a legal opinion stating that the SPNFZ Treaty prohibits members from selling uranium to countries that do not accept full-scope nuclear safeguards under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

“This is consistent with past Australian government policy. In 1996, Australian foreign minister Alexander Downer observed that ‘Article 4(a) of the SPNFZ Treaty imposes a legal obligation not to provide nuclear material unless subject to the safeguards required by Article III.1 of the NPT; that is full scope safeguards.’

“In spite of this, the Gillard government commenced discussions on uranium sales to India in 2012, even though Delhi still refuses to open its nuclear facilities – civilian as well as military – to international inspectors, as required by the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.”

Nic Maclellan, 27 August 2013, ‘Delaying the nuclear-free zone in the Pacific’,

http://inside.org.au/delaying-the-nuclear-free-zone-in-the-pacific

or tinyurl.com/nic-macl

Uranium Mining in Niger

Chain Reaction #119, Nov 2013, www.foe.org.au/chain-reaction

In the latest unrest at Niger’s uranium mines, one person was killed and 14 wounded in a car bomb attack at Areva’s uranium mine at Arlit, northern Niger, on May 23. Two suicide bombers were also killed. On the same day, military barracks in the northern town of Agadez were attacked, resulting in the deaths of 18 soldiers and one civilian.

The Arlit attack caused sufficient damage to force a halt to mining operations, which were partially restarted on June 18.

The Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa (MUJAO) claimed responsibility for the attacks, in retaliation for military involvement in neighbouring Mali. MUJAO was one of three Islamist groups that seized control of northern Mali last year before French-led troops drove them out.

Moktar Belmoktar, whose brigade calls itself ‘Those Who Sign In Blood’, also claimed responsibility for the Arlit attack and is believed to be responsible for an attack on a gas plant in Algeria in January which resulted in 80 deaths including 37 foreign hostages.

Areva and uranium mining in Niger

Areva has been mining uranium in Niger for more than 40 years and operates two mines in the north of the country through affiliated companies Somair (Arlit mine) and Cominak (the nearby Akokan mine). Areva is also working to start up a third uranium mine in Niger, at Imouraren.

In July 2007, rebels attacked the compound of an electricity company that powers the area’s towns and the Arlit and Akokan uranium mines, but government troops fought them off. Around the same time, rebels made a series of attacks on government and mining interests, killing 15 government soldiers and abducting over 70 more.

Four French workers were kidnapped in 2008 by Tuareg-led rebels and released several days later. The rebel Niger Justice Movement (MNJ) said the French were seized to demonstrate to foreign mining companies that the Niger government could not guarantee the security of their operations.

In August 2008, gunmen killed one civilian and wounded another in an attack on a lorry used for transporting uranium from north Niger to a port in Benin.

In 2010 in Arlit, seven employees of Areva and one of its contractors were kidnapped. Four of them, all French nationals, are still being held. The group has repeatedly threatened to execute them in retaliation for the French-led intervention in Mali.

After the 2010 kidnapping, the French government sent special military forces to protect Areva’s uranium mines in Niger, supplementing private security companies which mostly employ former military personnel. The use of French military forces to protect commercial interests led to renewed criticisms of French colonialism in Africa. (France ruled Nigeria as a colony for 60 years, ending in 1960.) In any case, French military forces and Nigerien counter-terrorism units failed to prevent the May 23 attack.

An Areva employee said questions were still being asked as to how the May 23 attack could have happened considering “the impressive military and security apparatus” that was in place. Agoumou Idi, a worker at the mine site, said: “We saw a car enter the factory and immediately it exploded. The terrorists, probably from MUJAO, took advantage of the fact that the entrance gate was open in order to let in a truck carrying the next shift of workers. They used that opening to enter the heart of our factory and explode their vehicle.”

In addition to attacks and kidnappings, the Arlit mine has been subject to worker disputes. Workers began an open-ended strike on August 20, 2012 over labour conditions, but the strike ended the following day as negotiations resumed with management over conditions at the mine.

There have also been strikes at the nearby Akokan uranium mine. About 1,200 workers began a 72-hour strike on July 9, 2012 to demand higher wages. A 48-hour strike began on April 18, 2013 to demand the payment of a bonus on the mine’s 2012 financial results. In May 2012, the social security tribunal of Melun (France) condemned Areva for the lung cancer death of a former employee of the Akokan mine. The court ordered Areva to pay 200,000 Euros plus interest in damages, and to double the widow’s pension. Serge Venel died of lung cancer in July 2009 at the age of 59, after working at the Akokan mine from 1978 to 1985.

Ethnic and regional tensions

Areva’s operations have exacerbated ethnic and regional tensions within Niger. Uranium production is concentrated in the northern homeland of the nomadic Tuareg minority, who have repeatedly risen in revolt, charging that whatever resources do accrue from the mining operations go primarily to the southern capital of Niamey.

According to the UN human development index, Niger is the third poorest country on the planet, with 70% of the population continuing to live on less than US$1 a day and life expectancy reaching only 45.

Khadija Sharife wrote in a 2010 Pambazuka article: “French interests on the continent were realised through France’s postcolonial Africa policy, known as Françafrique, extending to the diplomatic and political echelons of the Elysée from the days of de Gaulle. The policy comprised corporate and intelligence lobbies, multinationals intimately connected to the State such as Elf and Areva, French-backed dictators, and shadow networks named in honour of its masterminds such as Jacques Foccart, de Gaulle’s chief Africa advisor who was called out of retirement at age 81 by French President Jacques Chirac to resume activities. Chirac himself would declare in the early 1990s that the continent ‘was not yet ready for democracy.’ … Currently, the Niger’s 12,000 armed forces are guided by 15 French military advisors, with Nigerien personnel largely trained, armed and financed by France, protecting five critical defence zones – namely geostrategic routes and mines.”

In 2008, international transparency campaigners meeting under the umbrella of the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative condemned the opaqueness surrounding Nigerien mining contracts and demanded their “full publication in the official gazette and the elimination of confidentiality clauses.” Nigerien environmental and civil society groups have also denounced the ‘vagueness’ of local authorities over numerous uranium and oil prospecting licences granted to foreign firms, including Areva. In May 2008 the Nigerien parliament rejected the creation of a commission of inquiry into mining contracts.

Environmental and health impacts

Areva was one of three companies receiving the Prix Pinocchio awards in 2012, in the category “Dirty Hands, Pockets Full” (prix-pinocchio.org). Friends of the Earth France said Areva “refuses to recognise its responsibility for the deterioration of the living conditions of people living near its uranium mines in Africa”, a charge that was denied by Areva.

In 2008, Areva received a Public Eye Award as one of “the world’s most irresponsible companies” for its uranium mining operations in Niger (publiceye.ch). NGOs the Berne Declaration and Pro Natura alleged: “Uranium mining in Niger: mine workers are not sufficiently informed about health risks, open-air storage of radioactive materials. Workers with cancer are deliberately given a false diagnosis at the company hospital.”

Niger’s uranium mines have been the subject of many environmental and health controversies including leaks; contamination of water, air and soil; the sale of radioactive scrap metal; the use of radioactive ore to build roads; and poorly managed radioactive tailings dumps.

In November 2009, Greenpeace − in collaboration with the French independent laboratory CRIIRAD (Commission for Independent Research and Information about Radioactivity − criirad.org) and the Nigerien NGO network ROTAB (Network of Organizations for Transparency and Budget Analysis − rotabniger.org) − carried out a scientific study of the areas around the Areva mining towns Arlit and Akokan. The groups found:

  • In four of the five water samples that Greenpeace collected in the Arlit region, the uranium concentration was above the WHO recommended limit for drinking water.
  • A measurement performed at the police station in Akokan showed a radon concentration in the air three to seven times higher than normal levels in the area.
  • The concentration of uranium and other radioactive materials in a soil sample collected near the underground mine was found to be about 100 times higher than normal levels in the region, and higher than the international exemption limits.
  • On the streets of Akokan, radiation dose rate levels were found to be up to almost 500 times higher than normal background levels. A person spending less than one hour a day at that location would be exposed to more than the maximum allowable annual dose.
  • Although Areva claims no contaminated material gets out of the mines anymore, Greenpeace found several pieces of radioactive scrap metal on the local market in Arlit, with radiation dose rates reaching up to 50 times more than the normal background levels. Locals use these materials to build their homes.

The pattern seems to be weak environmental and public health standards which are only addressed − partially − when local or international NGO scrutiny embarrasses Areva, or in response to local worker and citizen protests such as the 5,000-strong demonstration in May 2006.

Some 2,000 students held a protest in Niger’s capital Niamey on April 5, 2013 against Areva to demand their country get a bigger slice of its uranium mining revenues. Marchers held placards saying “No to exploitation and neo-colonialism” and “No to Areva”. Mahamadou Djibo Samaila, secretary general of the Union of Niamey University Students, said: “The partnership in the mining of uranium is very unbalanced to the detriment of our country.”

The Niger Movement for Justice, a largely Tuareg-armed militia active since 2007, has demanded a more equitable distribution of uranium revenue, protection from ecological degradation and access to constitutional rights such as water and waste sanitation, education and electricity.

The government has dismissed the armed civil society movement as anti-democratic ‘drug smugglers’. Yet the government has also complained about Areva’s behaviour. In 2007, the government expelled Dominique Pin, head of Areva Niger, from the country. In February 2013, President Mahamadou Issoufou said the government intends to renegotiate its partnership with Areva for the exploitation of uranium resources.

Reprinted from WISE/NIRS Nuclear Monitor #765, 1 August 2013

www.wiseinternational.org/nuclear-monitors

South Korea: Nuclear scandal widens

Chain Reaction #119, Nov 2013, www.foe.org.au/chain-reaction

A scandal in South Korea concerning the use of counterfeit parts in nuclear plants, and faked quality assurance certificates, has widened.

In May 2012, five engineers were charged with covering up a potentially dangerous power failure at the Kori-I reactor which led to a rapid rise in the reactor core temperature. The accident occurred because of a failure to follow safety procedures. A manager decided to conceal the incident and to delete records, despite a legal obligation to notify the Nuclear Safety and Security Commission. In October 2012, authorities temporarily shut down two reactors at separate plants after system malfunctions.

Then in November 2012, the scandal involving counterfeit parts and faked certificates erupted. The reactor parts included fuses, switches, heat sensors, and cooling fans. The scandal kept escalating and by the end of November it involved at least 8,601 reactor parts, 10 firms and six reactors and it was revealed the problems had been ongoing for at least 10 years. Plant owner Korea Hydro and Nuclear Power (KHNP) acknowledged possible bribery and collusion by its own staff members as well as corruption by firms supplying reactor parts. Two reactors were taken offline to replace thousands of parts, while replacement parts were fitted to other reactors without taking them offline.

In recent months the scandal has continued to expand:

Late May 2013: Two more reactors were shutdown and the scheduled start of two others was delayed because an anonymous whistleblower revealed that “control cables had been supplied to [the] four reactors with faked certificates even though the part had failed to pass a safety test.”

June 20: Widespread police raids. Prosecutors reveal that the number of plants suspected to have non-compliant parts (or at least paperwork) has widened to include 11 of South Korea’s 23 reactor reactors.

July 8: The former president of KHNP was arrested as part of the ongoing investigation into nuclear industry corruption.

July 10: Search and seizure occurred at Hyundai Heavy Industries after the Busan Prosecutor’s office obtained warrants relating to the nuclear parts scandal.

July 11: Details emerged on the involved parties in the Hyundai headquarters raid, including persons and exchanged funds. Contract bribery is included in the charges.

October: Seoul has selected global ship classifier Lloyd’s Register to review the safety certificates of the country’s nuclear reactors in the wake of a scandal over forged documents, the energy ministry said.

Even before the scandals of the past two years, a 2011 IPSOS survey found 68% opposition to new reactors in South Korea. The proportion of South Koreans who consider nuclear power safe fell from 71% in 2010 to 35% in 2012.

Pandoras Promise Propaganda

Pandora’s Promise is a pro-nuclear film written and directed by Robert Stone, with a little help from billionaires Paul Allen and Richard Branson (www.pandoraspromise.com).

The US Beyond Nuclear website has a wealth of material debunking the film (www.beyondnuclear.org/pandoras-false-promises).

Robert Stone says: “The film is anchored around the personal narratives of a growing number of leading former anti-nuclear activists and pioneering scientists.” The film’s website also asserts that nuclear power is “now passionately embraced by many of those who once led the charge against it.”

In fact, not one of the film’s cast was ever a “leading former anti-nuclear activist”. As Beyond Nuclear notes: “The protagonists were either not ever anti-nuclear, or were ‘somewhat against it,’ but were never a high-profile or an outspoken critic of nuclear power.” Stone partnered with the right-wing, anti-environment Breakthrough Institute to produce the film and the institute’s personnel feature prominently in the film.

Robert Kennedy Jnr. generously describes the film as an “elaborate hoax”. It’s not elaborate. The film-makers and their cast claim objectivity and balance which the film clearly fails to deliver. They claim the scientific high-ground even as they repeatedly bastardise science. One critic suggests giving the film a miss and Stone responds by portraying the entire environment movement as authoritarian thought-police, saying they “use their positions of influence to determine what can and cannot be said about our predicament, to claim uncompromising ownership of the issue”.

Stone writes glowingly about “people like me who care about the future” and are “open-minded enough to change their minds like I have done.” In other words, if you oppose nuclear power, you have a closed mined and you don’t care about the future. The film repeatedly ignores or misrepresents serious criticisms of nuclear power. Key problems − such as nuclear power’s negative economic learning curve, and WMD proliferation − are all but ignored.

Claims that the script has been carefully fact-checked are laughable. To cite one example − of dozens − a contributor says that Greenpeace claims one million deaths from Chernobyl. A few minutes research gives the lie to claim − a Greenpeace-commissioned scientific study estimates 93,000 cancer deaths from Chernobyl, possibly up to 160,000 deaths from all other causes.

Gushing praise for Stone’s propaganda can easily be found on the internet so here we pull together some critical commentary.

Physicist Dr Ed Lyman, senior scientist with the Union of Concerned Scientists, writes:

By oversimplifying the issues, trivializing opposing viewpoints and mocking those who express them, and selectively presenting information in a misleading way, [Pandora’s Promise] serves more to obfuscate than to illuminate. As such, it adds little of value to the substantive debate about the merits of various energy sources in a carbon-constrained world.

“Pandora’s Promise,” taking a page from late-night infomercials, seeks to persuade via the testimonials of a number of self-proclaimed environmentalists who used to be opposed to nuclear power but have now changed their minds, including Stewart Brand, Michael Shellenberger, Gwyneth Cravens, Mark Lynas and Richard Rhodes. The documentary tries to make its case primarily by impressing the audience with the significance of the personal journeys of these nuclear power converts, not by presenting the underlying arguments in a coherent way.

This strategy puts great emphasis on the credibility of these spokespeople. Yet some of them sabotage their own credibility. When Lynas says that in his previous life as an anti-nuclear environmentalist he didn’t know that there was such a thing as natural background radiation, or Michael Shellenberger admitted to once taking on faith the claim that Chernobyl caused a million casualties, the audience may reasonably wonder why it should accept what they believe now that they are pro-nuclear.

My hand got tired trying to jot down all the less-than-half truths put forth by the talking heads in the film, which could have benefited from some fact-checking. … One after another, the film’s interviewees talk about how shocked they were to read the 2005 report of the Chernobyl Forum − a group under of U.N. agencies under the auspices of the International Atomic Energy Agency and the governments of Russia, Belarus and Ukraine − and discover that “the health effects of Chernobyl were nothing like what was expected.” The film shows pages from that report with certain reassuring sentences underlined.

But there is no mention of the fact that the Chernobyl Forum only estimated the number of cancer deaths expected among the most highly exposed populations in Ukraine, Belarus and Russia and not the many thousands more predicted by published studies to occur in other parts of Europe that received high levels of fallout. Nor is there mention of the actual health consequences from Chernobyl, including the more than 6,000 thyroid cancers that had occurred by 2005 in individuals who were children or adolescents at the time of the accident. And the film is silent on the results of more recent published studies that report evidence of excesses in other cancers, as well as cardiovascular diseases, are beginning to emerge (www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3107017).

Insult is then added to injury when Lynas then accuses the anti-nuclear movement of “cherry-picking of scientific data” to support their claims. Yet the film had just engaged in some pretty deceptive cherry-picking of its own. Lynas then goes on to assert that the Fukushima accident will probably never kill anyone from radiation, also ignoring studies estimating cancer death tolls ranging from several hundred to several thousand. The Japanese newspaper Asahi Shimbun, which obtained a copy of a draft report by the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation (UNSCEAR), revealed that the report estimated a collective whole-body dose of 3.2 million person-rem to the population of Japan as a result of the accident: a dose that would cause in the range of 1,000-3,000 cancer deaths. …

There are also scenes in the film that are downright offensive, such as showing impoverished, barefoot children wandering through slums with the clear implication that nuclear power is all that is needed to raise them out of poverty. The biggest failing of the film, however, is the lack of any discussion of what the real obstacles to an expansion of nuclear energy are and what would need to be done to overcome them. In fact, nuclear power’s worst enemy may not be the anti-nuclear movement, as the film suggests, but rather nuclear power advocates whose rose-colored view of the technology helped create the attitude of complacency that made accidents like Fukushima possible. Nuclear power will only be successful through the vision of realists who acknowledge its problems and work hard to fix them − not fawning ideologues like filmmaker Robert Stone and the stars of “Pandora’s Promise.”

− Ed Lyman, 12 June 2013, ‘Movie Review: Put “Pandora’s Promise” Back in the Box’

http://allthingsnuclear.org/movie-review-put-pandoras-promise-back-in-the-box

Nuclear power supporter Severin Borenstein writes:

I was surprised at the very narrow bite of the nuclear power issue that the movie takes. It is basically a movie about nuclear power’s past safety record and waste management. On that score it is fairly convincing. … What left me less than completely persuaded on safety is the fact that there are far more thoughtful critics and reasoned concerns about nuclear power safety, including access of terrorists to plants and to fuels. This is particularly true if we are talking about building plants in countries with less stable governments, as the movie suggests we should. The movie says only a bit about nuclear proliferation among national governments and essentially nothing about terrorism. …

My disappointment with the film is that beyond safety, it has little to say. There are two fleeting references to cost that suggest vaguely that it is cost competitive. It isn’t. In the discussion after the movie, Michael Shellenberger agreed with me that nuclear power can’t beat coal or natural gas today. The movie briefly beats up solar and wind for being intermittent, but that’s probably less than a minute and there is no reference to storage possibilities or demand adjustment to address intermittency.”

− Severin Borenstein, 21 June 2013, ‘Pandora’s Promises – Kept and Unkept: Examining the Nuclear Documentary’

http://theenergycollective.com/severinborenstein/239851/pandora-s-promises-kept-and-unkept

Andrew Revkin writes:

Serious engagement with critics of nuclear power − whether on economics, industry practices or health and environmental issues − is absent. The film also avoids discussing the high costs and logistical and policy hurdles to adding substantially to the country’s, or world’s, existing fleets of operating nuclear plants. The scale and costs required to cut into coal use using any technology − nuclear, wind, solar or otherwise − is incredibly daunting.

− Andrew Revkin, 13 June 2013, ‘A Film Presses the Climate, Health and Security Case for Nuclear Energy’

http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/06/13/a-film-presses-the-climate-and-security-case-for-nuclear-energy/

Mark Hertsgaard writes in The Nation:

The public and the overwhelming majority of environmental groups continue to reject nuclear power. Of the ten leading environmental organizations in the US − the Sierra Club, Greenpeace, The National Wildlife Federation, The Natural Resources Defense Council, Defenders of Wildlife, Environmental Defense, The National Audubon Society, The Nature Conservancy, The Wilderness Society, The World Wildlife Fund − not one supports nuclear power, despite the threat of climate change.

− Mark Hertsgaard, 10 June 2013, ‘Pandora’s Myths vs. the Facts’

www.thenation.com/article/174740/pandoras-myths-vs-facts

Joe Romm writes:

The five converts featured in Pandora’s Promise speak for themselves as individuals; they don’t represent large environmental organizations − or small ones, for that matter. Gwyneth Cravens and Richard Rhodes don’t even appear to have track records as activists; Cravens is a fiction writer. Stewart Brand helped found the Whole Earth Catalog, but that was over forty years ago; since then, he’s spent much of his time as a consultant to corporations, including some in the energy sector. Shellenberger is a PR man who, as he says in the film, used to consult for environmental groups but no longer does. … Shellenberger has dedicated himself to spreading disinformation about Gore, Congressional leaders, Waxman and Markey, leading climate scientists, Al Gore again, the entire environmental community and anyone else trying to end our status quo energy policies, including me. Heck he even went after Rachel Carson! … The only bona fide activist is Lynas, who wrote a fine book about climate change, Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet.”

− Joe Romm, 17 June 2013, ‘Pandora’s Promise: Nuclear Power’s Trek From Too Cheap To Meter To Too Costly To Matter Much’

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2013/06/17/2158951/pandoras-promise-nuclear-powers-trek-from-too-cheap-to-meter-to-too-costly-to-matter-much/

Kennette Benedict writes in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists:

To be sure, there is nothing wrong with changing your mind. In fact, there is much to admire in those who recognize altered circumstances, integrate fresh information, and come to a new judgment. What is disingenuous about Pandora’s Promise is the way the new judgment is conveyed. The film mocks groups that continue to protest nuclear power, treating one-time colleagues as extremists and zealots. An audience discussion after a preview at the University of Chicago made it clear I was not the only one who sensed the self-righteous tone of the newly converted in the film’s narrative. In the end, by dismissing the protestors and failing to engage them in significant debate about the pros and cons of nuclear energy, the film undermined its own message. …

Solutionists lurch in fits and starts from one extreme position to another, from one answer to the next, failing to understand that the problems we have created are as complex as the societies we live in. We are disrupting the Earth’s atmosphere through a combination of carbon-emitting technologies, population growth, overconsumption in industrial societies, and settlement patterns that have cleared huge forests that filter carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. No single technological fix is likely to “solve” the problem of climate change.

A more powerful approach to this complex threat to humanity would be to film a fact-based, passionate debate that explored the alternatives, trade-offs, and consequences of various energy options. Such an exploration might move us from the usual politics of zealotry to new habits of thought, and perhaps to new forms of action based on all the facts.

− Kennette Benedict, 10 June 2013, ‘Pandora’s false promise’,

http://thebulletin.org/pandoras-false-promise

Manohla Dargis writes in the New York Times:

“Pandora’s Promise” is as stacked as advocate movies get. … In brief − or so the movie’s one-sided reasoning goes − everything that anti-nuclear energy activists and skeptics have thought about the issue is wrong. Decades of politically and ideologically driven fearmongering and misinformation have led to its demonization when it could be our salvation. Drawing on original interviews, archival materials, computer animations and even, d’oh, “The Simpsons,” Mr. Stone builds his case seamlessly but leaves no room for dissent, much less a drop of doubt. “To be anti-nuclear,” another of his experts, the journalist Richard Rhodes, says, “is basically to be in favor of burning fossil fuel.”

Certainly there’s an environmental case to be made for nuclear energy as an alternative to fossil fuels, which is exactly what some activists and journalists have been exploring for years. But you need to make an argument. A parade of like-minded nuclear-power advocates who assure us that everything will be all right just doesn’t cut it.

− Manohla Dargis, 11 June 2013, ‘Pandora’s Promise’ Advocates Nuclear Energy,

http://movies.nytimes.com/2013/06/12/movies/pandoras-promise-advocates-nuclear-energy.html

David Roberts writes in Grist:

There is no budding environmentalist movement for nukes. Ever since I started paying attention to “nuclear renaissance” stories about a decade ago, there’s always been this credulous, excitable bit about how enviros are starting to come around. The roster of enviros in this purportedly burgeoning movement: Stewart Brand, the Breakthrough Boys, and “Greenpeace cofounder Patrick Moore,” who has been a paid shill for industry for decades (it sounds like the Pandora folks were wise enough to leave him out). More recently George Monbiot and Mark Lynas have been added to the list. This handful of converts is always cited with the implication that it’s the leading edge of a vast shift, and yet … it’s always the same handful.

Anyway, if environmentalists are as omni-incompetent as Breakthrough has alleged all these years, why the eagerness to recruit them? I get the media appeal of “even hippies know the hippies are wrong,” but to me it smells of flop sweat.

In the movie, Shellenberger says, “I have a sense that this is a beautiful thing … the beginning of a movement.” I fear he has once again mistaken the contents of his navel for the zeitgeist. …

To hear supporters tell it, within a few years you’ll have a reactor in your backyard that consumes nuclear waste from past reactors and emits nothing but fresh air, clean water, and the scent of jasmine. There are, of course, lots of folks who think the promise of new reactors is overblown.

− David Roberts, 14 June 2013, ‘Some thoughts on “Pandora’s Promise” and the nuclear debate’,

http://grist.org/climate-energy/some-thoughts-on-pandoras-promise-and-the-nuclear-debate/

Yellowcake Fever: The economic myths of the uranium export industry

Jim Green

In the mid-2000s, uranium was the ‘new black’ as The Bulletin put it and investors could take their pick in this “radioactive heaven”. The number of listed uranium juniors doubled and doubled again … and again and again. A company sent radioactive drill samples for assay and quickly became the most traded stock on the ASX (leading to a suspension of share trading).

Residents of the small Pacific Island Niue were surprised to learn from an Australian company that they might be sitting on 10% of the world’s uranium, and surprised again when the project was abandoned two months later − easy come, easy go. The uranium spot price increased ten-fold and more, peaking at US$138/lb in June 2007.

Michael Angwin, the Australian Uranium Association’s Executive Director, said in 2008 that Australia “has enough reserves to be to uranium what Saudi Arabia is to oil”. Only a pedant would note that Saudi oil generates 466 times as much revenue as Australian uranium (and that most of ‘our’ uranium revenue never comes anywhere near Australia because of the high level of foreign ownership). Politicians from the major parties have been only too happy to regurgitate uranium industry propaganda − for example former SA politicians Mike Rann and Kevin Foley have made the comparison with Saudi oil.

The Australian Securities and Investments Commission could hold uranium miners and wannabes to account for peddling misinformation − but it doesn’t. Business journalists could hold the uranium industry to account − but they usually don’t. Claims that nuclear power growth in China, India and Russia will drive huge increases in uranium exports are routinely and uncritically regurgitated yet they don’t withstand the simplest calculations. For example it is routinely claimed that uranium sales to Russia will generate $1 billion annually − but Australia would need to supply entire Russian demand twice over to generate that amount of export revenue.

Milk and cream generate almost twice as much revenue as uranium − so where are the newspaper puff-pieces with pithy headlines about corporate moovers and shakers; where the ponderous weekend think-pieces about how the nation that once rode on a sheep’s back is now attached to a cow’s udder? Why isn’t milk the ‘new black’?

Nincompoops in academia and journalism

We could turn to academia for some common sense. There we find Prof. George Dracoulis − a member of the 2006 Switkowski Panel − wondering aloud whether uranium will “make or break Australia as an exporter”. Hardly − Australia could supply entire world demand and uranium would account for just 3% of national export revenue and it would still fall short of iron ore export revenue by a factor of 6.5. There we find Prof. Barry Brook insisting that there was no credible risk of a serious accident at Fukushima even as nuclear meltdown was in full swing − his follow-up act is a prediction of a four-fold expansion of uranium exports. And there we find Ian Plimer and Haydon Manning drawing comparisons between Australian uranium and Saudi oil.

Even with the uranium price tanking in the wake of the Fukushima disaster, the Global Financial Crisis, and the failure of the nuclear ‘renaissance’ to materialise, journalists are still reading from the same script. Significant, protracted price falls are met with predictions that the market will soon turn. A November 2012 article in The Australian, titled ‘Yellowcake starts to glow again’, speculated that the uranium price may be close to bottoming.

A March 2012 report by the federal government’s Bureau of Resources and Energy Economics predicted a near three-fold increase in uranium exports by 2016/17 and The Australian responded with an article titled ‘Global uranium demand expected to skyrocket’.

So how has the media responded to the further decline in the uranium sector over the past year? The short answer is that the media hasn’t responded at all. In March 2013, Bureau of Resources and Energy Economics reduced its mid-term forecast for uranium revenue by nearly half, and the media was silent.

The Australian Conservation Foundation released a detailed, factual report on April 26 exposing the uranium industry’s economic misinformation, and the media was silent. The ACF report finds that uranium accounted for just 0.29 per cent of Australia’s export revenue in the 10 years from 2002−2011. In the 2011/12 financial year, uranium revenue of $607 million was four times lower than Australia’s 20th biggest export earner, eight times lower than Australia’s 10th biggest export earner and 103 times lower than the biggest earner, iron ore.

By the highest estimate, uranium mining and exploration accounts for 1,760 jobs in Australia − just 0.015 per cent of all jobs. The Australian Uranium Association claims the industry is a “significant employer of First Australians” but in fact it provides just one job for every 3,000 Indigenous Australians.

The bottom line is that when the industry has some ‘good’ news to spruik, it will surely be amplified by dullard politicians, academics, industry ‘analysts’ and Paul Howes, and it will surely be regurgitated by sections of the media. But if you’ve got a story about industry stagnation and decline, forget it. If it’s not good news, it’s not news.

‘Potential’

Simple facts are easily dismissed by talking up the ‘potential’ of the industry. But as Richard Leaver from Flinders University notes: “‘Potential’ is one of the most powerful chemicals available to the political alchemist. Any individual, firm, or sector deemed to have potential is relieved of a massive and perpetual burden − the need to account for past and present achievements (or, more probably, the lack of them). … The history of Australian involvement in the civil uranium industry offers an excellent example of this alchemy at work.”

There are real-world consequences to yellowcake fever − many ‘mum and dad’ investors have been burnt. That problem was most acute during the speculative price bubble in the mid-2000s when small investors were spending big on penny dreadfuls while at least three major utilities were selling shares in Rio Tinto-controlled Energy Resources of Australia. As Tim Treadgold wrote in the West Australian in 2005, “smart money” was selling “while less clued-up people continue to buy uranium penny dreadfuls rather than do something sensible, like bet the house (the wife and the kids) on the horse carrying the jockey wearing pink polka dots in the fourth at Ascot next Saturday.”

There is another problem associated with yellowcake fever. A sober assessment of the economics benefits and the problems and risks associated with the uranium industry is required, but there’s precious little chance of that when the economic benefits are grossly overstated (and amplified and regurgitated) and contrary facts are ignored.

Perhaps the worm will turn after a few more years of industry stagnation. Already there’s plenty for a contrarian journalist to hang a story on. BHP Billiton, for example, has not only cancelled the planned expansion of Olympic Dam but has also disbanded its Uranium Division and sold the Yeelirrie uranium lease in Western Australia for just 11% of the nominal value of the resource.

Also indicative of the state of the industry was Cameco’s announcement in February of a $162.5 million write-down on the Kintyre project in Western Australia. Just months after first production at the Honeymoon mine in north-east SA in September 2011, project partner Mitsui announced its decision to withdraw as it “could not foresee sufficient economic return from the project.”

Jim Green is the national nuclear campaigner with Friends of the Earth and co-author of the ACF report, ‘Yellowcake Fever: Exposing the Uranium Industry’s Economic Myths’, posted at www.acfonline.org.au