by Robert Barwick and Jonathan Tennenbaum (published in The New Citizen, February 2002, reprinted in April 2006 edition.)
Moving the bill to authorise the
construction of the Snowy
Mountains Scheme in 1949, the
federal Chifley Labor Government’s
Minister for Works and
Housing, Nelson Lemmon, declared
to the Parliament: “Now …
the Australian Government desires
to proceed with the great Snowy
Mountains Scheme, in an endeavour
to ensure that Australia does
not lag in the race to develop atomic
power…. Today we are living in
the atomic age. It would allow great
inland cities … and decentralised
industries to be built.”
Today, it is vital for Australia’s
future that Chifley’s and Lemmon’s
vision for an Australian nuclear
power industry be revived. For
Australia to achieve the goal of 50
million people, our energy and
water requirements would be most
efficiently met through the widespread
application of modern,
clean and safe nuclear power. One
kilogram of nuclear fuel in an atomic
reactor generates about as much
energy as the combustion of more
than 50 tons of petroleum! In that
fact, we begin to grasp the vastly
higher economic potential of nuclear
energy, compared to fossil
fuel technology.
This amazing potential was part
of the Chifley Government’s vision.
The way that vision was virtually
snuffed out within 30 years
of Lemmon’s declaration is a tragedy
of Australian history. With it
went many of the other grand plans
for Australia Post War Reconstruction
(resurrected in this publication),
as well as the cultural optimism
that allowed our war-time
nation builders to expect a future
in which Australia would enjoy a
prosperous population of nearly 50
million people by the end of the
20th century.
Australia’s Nuclear History
From the mid-1950s until the
mid-1970s, Australia boasted a
world class nuclear research capability,
coordinated by the Australian
Atomic Energy Commission
(AAEC) based at Lucas Heights in
Sydney, the site of our only nuclear
reactor. Australia’s world-class
scientists who participated in the
AAEC research program in those
days insist that, contrary to the antinuclear
propaganda they have
been subjected to, the focus of
Australia’s research was the peaceful
application of nuclear power.
The history of the AAEC has been
very concisely recorded by its
long-time director Keith Alder in a
1996 book, tellingly titled, Australia’s
Uranium Opportunities:
How Her Scientists and Engineers
Tried to bring Her into the Nuclear
Age but were Stymied by Politics.
In its lifetime, the AAEC constructed
the Lucas Heights nuclear
research facility, and among its
many research projects conducted
notable research into reactor models,
and the uranium enrichment
process. In its research into reactor
models, the AAEC particularly focussed
on high temperature reactors
(HTRs), and conducted a significant
amount of the very early
research into pebble bed reactors.
This research was discontinued by
the AAEC in the late 1960s, and
was seen as unsuccessful, but today pebble bed HTRs are seen as the
fourth generation, super-safe reactors whose widespread application is the
future of nuclear power generation.
In 1971, Australia’s nuclear power
program was ended when the
pro-nuclear Prime Minister John
Gorton was replaced by William
McMahon, who stopped the construction
of Australia’s first commercial
nuclear power plant at
Jervis Bay on the NSW south coast.
The Jervis Bay nuclear reactor was
a significant project, both nationally
and internationally: it would
have been the first realisation of a
longstanding dream of nuclear
power generation in Australia that,
for instance, had inspired the Nuclear
Research Foundation at the
University of Sydney in 1955 to
foreshadow a line of nuclear power
plants “from Alice Springs to the
Arafura Sea”; and it was the world’s
first genuine competitive tender
for a nuclear power station, which
triggered advances in enrichment
technology worldwide. The decision
to build Jervis Bay had been
made explicitly “in the national
interest”. The decision by McMahon
to scrap the project, after tenders
had closed, the design decided
and some foundations laid, was
justified purely on financial
grounds, and dubious ones at that.
In his book, Keith Alder reports PM
McMahon said to him, “How can I
possibly approve a nuclear power
station when I’m faced with the
need to cut pre-school education
in Canberra?” However, Alder
maintains, “In retrospect, the Jervis
Bay Nuclear Power Station would
have been a tremendous bargain if
it had gone ahead…. I believe that
the station would have produced
the cheapest electricity in Australia
during its operating lifetime.”
Suspiciously, when the 1971 Cabinet
documents were released on
January 1, 2002 under the 30-year
secrecy rule, documents relating to
the Jervis Bay saga were held back
as still being “too sensitive” to release,
even after 30 years.
Another major wasted opportunity
arose from the AAEC’s significant
research into uranium enrichment,
particularly the centrifuge
enrichment process, which is necessary
to enrich the raw, “yellow
cake” form of uranium that is
mined from the ground up to the
3-4% purity necessary for most
nuclear reactors. (Again, contrary
to anti-nuclear propagandists, this
is not the process that enriches uranium
fuel for nuclear weapons,
which requires above 90% purity).
This project was given particular
encouragement by Labor Prime
Minister Gough Whitlam’s Minerals
and Energy Minister, R.F.X.
(Rex) Connor, who had a grand vision
of an Australian uranium industry.
The potential was enormous:
Australia contains 30% of the
world’s known uranium reserves—
more than any other country—and
immediately upon beginning research
in the field in the 1970s, the
AAEC was inundated with expressions
of interest from countries keen
to develop Australia as an alternative
source of enriched uranium.
Tragically, with the sacking of the
Whitlam Government in 1975, directly
because of Connor’s vision
for an Australian-owned resource
industry, so effectively ended the
AAEC’s uranium enrichment work,
and a major export industry opportunity
was lost.
With the advent of the Hawke
Labor government in 1983, any
remaining serious nuclear aspirations
in Australia were effectively
killed off, and a strongly irrational,
anti-science “environmental”
position took over. Practically, this
saw the implementation of the
“three uranium mines” policy,
which effectively leaves Australia’s
huge uranium reserves barely
touched, while competitor nations
like Canada enjoy booming export
industries. It also saw the AAEC
wound up in 1985, and replaced
by the Australian Nuclear Science
and Technology Organisation
(ANSTO). Thus officially Australia’s
30-year commitment to nuclear
science.
Australia and the Current Global Reality
Australia’s present anti-nuclear
policy has serious ramifications.
Firstly, we are denying ourselves
the most efficient power
source in the world, thus thwarting
our own development. Secondly,
we are potentially placing ourselves
at risk from desperate neighbours
in our region seeking an energy
source which we possess in
abundance, but are just sitting on.
For instance, in Western Europe
and the United States, the once-mighty
nuclear industrial sector is
threatened with extinction, thanks
to the media-driven anti-nuclear
hysteria in the population and institutions.
But in Asia, nuclear energy
is in the beginning phases of
a vast upsurge.
Characteristic of this development
is the fact, that nuclear power
plants have become an “export
champion” of an otherwise depressed
Russian machining industry.
At present, Russia is building
six large nuclear power reactors
abroad: two nuclear reactors in China
(Tianwan 1 and 2 at Lianyungang,
Jiangsu Province); two nuclear
units in India, at Kudal; and two
reactors in Iran, at Bushehr.
A whole series of further projects
is under discussion. Nuclear power
is making a comeback in Russia
itself: The nuclear energy plant
Rostov 1 went on line in 2001;
three additional nuclear units are
now under construction, and nine
others are planned by 2010. Beyond
this, the Russian Ministry of
Atomic Energy has drawn up a
comprehensive plan for the development
of nuclear power, according
to which the relative share of
this energy source in the total energy
generation of the nation will
increase dramatically over the
coming 20 years.
China is also opting for a largescale
expansion of nuclear power.
Although that nation possesses
enormous reserves of coal, the annual
mining, distribution, and
burning of over a billion tons of
coal per year creates an enormous
burden on the transport system and
the environment, and drags down
the physical productivity of the
Chinese economy. For that reason
alone, a broad utilisation of nuclear
energy is inevitable. There are
now eight large nuclear power reactors
under construction: Qinshan
2, 3, 4 and 5; Lingao 1 and 2;
and Tianwan 1 and 2.
These projects will all be completed
by 2005. Additionally
planned are two 1,000 megawatt
(MW) reactors at Haiyang, while
four additional units for Hui An,
Fujian, Sanmen, and Zhejiang are
under study.
In South Korea, two nuclear
power plants are under construction,
and the construction of an
additional 12 units is planned by
2015. Japan projects the construction
of an additional 20 large nuclear
reactors.
India plans 12 additional nuclear
energy plants. Even Vietnam is
planning the construction of a first
nuclear power plant by 2020, in
its long-term government program.
Indonesia, while a major petroleum-
exporting nation, has also been
studying the possible domestic
applications of nuclear power.
In
Australia’s Uranium Opportunities,
Keith Alder spells out the
awkward position Australia’s current
policy is put in by these nuclear
developments in Asia. “Looking
ahead, all of the Asian countries
expanding their nuclear programmes
that I outlined earlier will
need increasing supplies of uranium.
They all know we have it, in
large quantities. If we continue to
say ‘no’ to exploration and mining
and the world supply becomes
scarce or expensive, what do you
think their attitude will be. I am
not pointing the finger at anyone
in particular, just pointing out that
if we don’t take advantage of our
resources someone else may come
and do it for us. And who will stop
them? None of the administrators
of heritage areas, parks and wildlife
areas, or aboriginal reserves.”
In a discussion with the New
Citizen on January 4, 2002, former
Newcastle Associate Professor of
Physics Dr. Colin Keay, the author
of two books on nuclear matters,
Nuclear Energy Fallacies, and
Nuclear Radiation Exposed,
spelled out a solution to this situation.
“What Australia could do, and
this would be, in my view a highly
moral approach, is to participate
in the full fuel cycle. We mine
the uranium, and we make the fuel
rods for reactors to the specifications
of whatever reactor they are
needed for. And to replace those
fuel rods when the energy has
been extracted, we supply more
upon return of the old ones, which
we then reprocess. For the intractable
waste, we’ve got the world’s
best opportunity for burying and
disposing of it. We reprocess it, we
salvage material to put into the
new fuel rods, and we keep the
cycle going. That way Australia
maintains tight control over the
whole cycle, because if any material
gets out of that cycle, it is subject
to the provisions of the Nuclear
Non-Proliferation Treaty.
And so we are really upholding an
international treaty, and we are
behaving in a highly ethical way.
We could do that.”
Further to that commonsense
initial step, there is a wealth of exciting
potential developments that
would open up for Australia, if Australia
ditches its current irrational,
anti-science, anti-nuclear policy and
develops a modern, clean, safe nuclear
power industry.
Continue onto The High Temperature Reactor is Coming
Return to Nuclear and Thorium Power
