[Peakoil] Govt's Coal-To-Liquids game plan?

[Nature and Society Forum]

Coal-to-liquids is a possible agenda, but I suspect there is something more dangerous here. Think of the timing of John Howard's  launch of the "nuclear debate" - he was in Washington at the time, and we know he likes currying favour with the Bush administration and US business interests.



Sounds to me as if the Americans have decided to go nuclear, but are worried about the rest of the world getting uranium they could process up to weapons grade material. The solution would be for Australia to LEASE its fuel rods rather than selling them. The rods could even be contaminated here in Australia with lead to render further refinement of the uranium difficult if not impossible. The plan is, in that case, for Australia to lease its rods to India, China, anywhere you like, and also take them back at the end of their life and store the waste here.

 

Every country using Australian rods could sleep happy as the intractable waste problem will not be one for their backyard or their voters.

 

So, whence Australia's need for nuclear power? Australia doesn't need nuclear power. But, just as we joined the coalition of the willing in Iraq, when there was no Australian national interest at stake, we are now coming forward to join a similar coalition which is of no net benefit to Australia. The Howard plan is to drum up popular support for nuclear power in Australia, as a responsible response to climate change, and to construct our own reprocessing and storage facilities here in Australia - a measure which could be sold as being responsible, and 'value adding'. Once we have our own reprocessing and storage facilities, it is only a small step to move to the leasing arrangement through which we become a dump for the world's spent nuclear fuel rods and other high-level waste.

 

The most despicable aspect of this is that the Commonwealth government is negotiating with a number of Northern Territory (and possibly other) Aboriginal traditional owners to use their land as the site for this dump. "Beads and blankets" for something which traditional culture and society cannot possibly prepare Aboriginals to understand in the same terms as those who are pushing this onto them.

 

Incidentally, there is a strong editorial in the current issue of The Ecologist, in praise of NIMBY-ism. Worth a read, and relevant to the nuclear debate.


-----------------------------------------------------------------
Keith Thomas
Nature and Society Forum
(02) 6288 0760 (Weekday mornings only);  0412 487 625 (Mobile)
-----------------------------------------------------------------
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://act-peakoil.org/pipermail/peakoil/attachments/20060607/8cff47c1/attachment.html