If there’s a way to feed greed, the corporate sector will find it! Or die trying… From The Guardian:

Areva, Mitsubishi Heavy expand tie to nuclear fuel

Reuters, Monday December 22 2008

TOKYO, Dec 22 (Reuters) – French nuclear reactor builder Areva will work together with Japanese machinery conglomerate Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd and others to produce nuclear fuel in Japan, the companies said on Monday.

The news, first reported by the Nikkei business daily on Sunday, pushed Mitsubishi Heavy shares up 3.2 percent on Monday, outpacing the benchmark Nikkei average’s 1.6 percent rise.

Areva said it would transfer its nuclear fuel business in Japan to Mitsubishi Nuclear Fuel Co — a joint venture between Mitsubishi Heavy and Mitsubishi Materials Corp — early next year, in return for a 30 percent stake in the company for an undisclosed sum.

The deal will deepen the partnership between Mitsubishi Heavy and Areva, which are already cooperating in the development of a new midsize nuclear reactor.

The newly created Mitsubishi Nuclear Fuel Corp will be owned 35 percent by Mitsubishi Heavy, 30 percent by Mitsubishi Materials, 30 percent by Areva and 5 percent by trading company Mitsubishi Corp.

It will supply uranium fuel for pressurised water reactors (PWRs), boiling water reactors (BWRs) and high-temperature gas-cooled reactors, among others, in Japan. It also plans to sell fuel designed by Mitsubishi Heavy in overseas markets, they said.

“The deal’s impact on Mitsubishi Heavy’s profit will be limited,” Shigeki Okazaki, analyst at Nomura Securities, said in a research note. “But it is positive in that Mitsubishi can obtain the know-how for BWR fuel, an area the company is weak in, at a relatively low cost.”

Separately, Mitsubishi Heavy and Areva said they had agreed to jointly invest in a nuclear fuel plant to be built in the United States.

The growing alliance comes as the world’s nuclear reactor makers consolidate into three groups amid a boom in nuclear plant construction in the United States and China.

Japanese electric conglomerate Toshiba Corp has bought U.S. nuclear power firm Westinghouse, while General Electric has teamed up with Hitachi Ltd. (Reporting by Yuko Inoue; Editing by Chris Gallagher)

Canada is now a superpower in the African mining sector.
According to the Ministry of Natural Resources Canada , only the Republic of South Africa, with over 35% of assets and investments, is just ahead of Canada in the African mining industry.

Canadian uranium search will kill off the last Bushmen of Africa thanks to Canada’s Xemplar Energy Corporation.

The Topnaar, a subtribe of the Nama minority, are southern Africa’s original hunter-gatherer San or Khoi-Khoi tribes — often referred to derogatively as Hottentots — who were pushed from their habitats around the Orange River in southern Namibia and northern South Africa in the mid nineteenth century by agriculturalist-settlers. Just like the Boers, the Topnaar also undertook a Great Trek north, led by their famous leader Jan Jonker Afrikaner. There are only about 60,000 Nama people left in all of Namibia. From DNA testing of 19th-century workers’ graves on Boer farms in South Africa in a Johannesburg University study, it has been established that these so-called ‘Bushmen’ indeed are the true forebears of the first Nation of southern Africa…

Canada has so much to be proud of these days, eh? Ecological racism all over the planet…

Also being threatened is the ecologically-sensitive Garub-water hole — the main watering site for the giant Namib desert’s mysterious wild horses, the Shagyas, located inside this nature reserve about 120 km east of the Namibian harbour of Luderitz. The origin of the park’s protected desert horses is lost in time, the subject of endless speculation. Their DNA however links them to the Arabian Peninsula’s Shagyars horses.

Kill off people. Kill off animals. Just don’t kill off the right of Canadians to feed their greed. Eh?

Radiation and Public Health Project is “a nonprofit educational and scientific organization, established by scientists and physicians dedicated to understanding the relationships between low-level, nuclear radiation and public health.” In November 2008, released a study conducted by epidemiologist Joseph Mangano MPH MBA and toxicologist Janette Sherman MD of the Environmental Institute at Western Michigan University and as reported in the European Journal of Cancer Care, which shows rising child leukemia rates near U.S. nuclear power plants over the past two decades.

The carcinogenic effects of radiation exposure are most severe among infants and children. Leukemia is the type of childhood cancer most closely associated with exposures to toxic agents such as radiation, and has been most frequently studied by scientists. In the U.S., childhood leukemia incidence has risen 28.7% from 1975-2004 according to CDC data…

Is this really what we want for the children of Saskatchewan? I would think not, especially when clear alternatives are available. The mastermind of Germany’s green-energy law says

Ontario could power itself exclusively on renewable energy one day if it thought differently about the operation and design of its entire electricity system.

So, if Ontario, with its millions of households, can be envisioned operating on green renewables for electricty then surely Saskatchewan, with only one million people, can do so sooner and better!

Oh, but then there’s that bit about thinking differently. And old boys around here aren’t so good at that, eh?

More than 300 NGOs agreed to and delivered this statement on December 10. The list of signatories is here.

“300+ NGOS SAY NO TO MICKEY MOUSE CLIMATE SOLUTIONS”

KEEP NUCLEAR POWER

OUT OF CDM:

IT’S AN OBSTACLE TO

CARBON MITIGATION

NGOs Call for removal of the Option to “Include Nuclear Activities” in the Clean Development Mechanism(CDM) and Joint Implementation (JI)”

from Agenda Item 3a of the Accra Conclusions of the Ad-Hoc Working Group on Further Commitments for Annex I Parties under the Kyoto Protocol: Item I-D, Option 2 in the CDM and Item II-B, Option 2 in the JI

Nuclear Power contradicts Clean Development

The nuclear industry is using the issue of climate change

and energy supply as a vehicle to win political and fi nancial

support for its dirty and dying sector. Even a massive,

four-fold expansion of nuclear power by 2050 would

provide only marginal reductions (4%) in greenhouse gas

emissions, when we need global emissions to peak at 2015

and 50 – 80% cuts by 2050.

Nuclear energy’s ‘contribution’ to fi ghting climate change

would come too late (long after 2020), with huge costs

(US$ 10 trillion) and would create a myriad of other serious

hazards related to accidents, waste and proliferation.

These large costs and negative impacts make nuclear energy

an obstacle to the necessary development of effective,

clean and affordable energy sources – both in developing

and industrialised countries.

Activities related to nuclear power must not be allowed

to become eligible for the Kyoto Protocol’s fl exible mechanisms

in order to avoid:

– Undermining climate protection by wasting time and taking

resources away from more effective and clean solutions;

– Dumping this expensive and unsafe technology on developing

countries who would be landed with the associated

economic and environmental impacts (accumulation of

massive fi nancial debts, increased dependency on foreign

fuel and technologies, increased risk from reactor accidents

and contamination); and

– Decreasing global security as volumes of nuclear waste

with no safe methods of disposal increase massively and

both nuclear materials and technologies are spread.

Expensive and dangerous nuclear power

would provide only a marginal contribution to

carbon mitigation

The OECD International Energy Agency’s (IEA) Energy Technology Perspectives

2008 Blue Map scenario [1] assesses what energy mix could achieve a 50% reduction

in carbon emission by 2050. The agency assumes a four-fold increase

of nuclear power generation, from today’s 2,600 TWh/year to 9,900 TWh/year

in 2050. But this would only reduce CO2 emissions from the energy sector by

6% (around 4 % of overall greenhouse gases).

Even getting to this 6% would require unprecedented rates of growth, sustained

over four decades. The nuclear industry would have to build an average

of 32 large (1,000 MWe) nuclear reactors every year from now until 2050.

Compare this with the last decade’s average where the nuclear industry added

3000 MW of new capacity a year. In the 1980’s, the decade of the industry’s

fastest growth, it built an average of 17,000 MW a year [2] – still only half the

rate needed to realise the IEA’s Blue Map scenario. But the IEA believes we

can build 32,000 MW capacity every year from now to 2050.

Then there’s the cost. Moody’s [3] currently estimates the investment cost for

new reactors at USD 7,500 USD/kW. Assuming this, the required 1,400 large

new reactors would cost around USD 10,500 billion – and this is only the upfront

investment.

While nuclear power presents itself as the largest carbon free energy

source, its potential role in carbon mitigation is very limited and is

simply not worth taking, given all its risks and costs.

Nuclear energy’s massive problems and risks

remain unsolved

Even today, running at one-tenth of the hypothetically required construction

speed, the nuclear industry is struggling with serious problems and has hit

many bottlenecks:

– Massive technical problems and ever-rising costs have affected attempts

to build new reactor units, for example both of the French EPR units

– in Finland and France – have experienced years of delays and billions in

cost overruns already. [4]

– Capacity to produce reactor components is limited to only several pieces

a year and are only produced by half a dozen corporations in a handful of

countries. [5]

– Shortages in uranium supplies to fuel the existing fl eet of reactors; the

annual consumption reached 69,000 tonnes of uranium in 2007, compared to

an annual production of just 41,300 tonnes in 2007.6 The world‘s proven and

reasonably assured uranium resources would only be able to cover current

consumption for a few decades and, as they deplete, carbon emissions from

the nuclear fuel chain would rise signifi cantly. [7]

– A crunch for raw materials, because of the high demand for large volumes

of steel and concrete.

– Negative health effects of ionising radiation. Recently published peer-reviewed

research found statistically high incidence of childhood leukaemia in

the close vicinity of nuclear power plants in Germany [8] and the US [9].

– Dangerous impacts of uranium mining and milling threatens the lands,

communities and health of Indigenous Peoples, many of whom (in Canada,

the US, Africa, India and Australia, inter alia) continue to protest the extraction

of uranium on or near their homelands and territories

– Lack of qualifi ed engineers, inspectors and personnel to safely manage

and oversee operations at the current scale.

– Long lead-times for projects. It takes 10 to 15 years, even in countries

with developed related infrastructure, to plan, approve, site and build a new

reactor, not to mention bringing it online. It would take even longer in countries

that are just starting their nuclear programmes.

– No safe disposal method for radioactive wastes that reactors have already

produced, despite decades of research and money spent. In the past

fi ve years, the estimated costs of radioactive waste disposal grew by USD 40

billion in United States [10] and by GBP 27 billion in the United Kingdom [11]

with no guarantees that safe storage, at the end of the day, is really possible.

– Growing proliferation problems: As stockpiles of separated plutonium

increase, nuclear technologies and materials spread to new countries. International

safeguards are under-resourced and structurally weak. It is only a

question of time before they become accessible to terrorist groups. One large

reactor can produce 200 kgs of plutonium every year – enough for two dozen

nuclear weapons.

All these factors raise additional scepticism about the actual potential

of nuclear power to really mitigate greenhouse gases on any useful

scale and within a reasonable timeframe.

Nuclear power steals “time and money” that

would be better invested in energy effi ciency

and renewable technologies

Expensive, dirty and hazardous nuclear power stands in the way of clean and

sustainable solutions. It could take USD10 trillion or more to build enough

reactors to produce 9,900 TWh of “nuclear electricity” as projected under the

International Energy Agency (IEA) 2008 “Blue Map” scenario. Building enough

wind farms to produce the same amount of electricity, for example, would

cost USD 6 trillion at current prices, for a savings of USD 4 trillion. And, these

costs would decrease over time.

Wind power has no associated fuel costs and does not require expensive dismantling

of its power plant at the end of its life and long term disposal of radioactive

waste as is required in the decommissioning of a nuclear power plant.

Other calculations show that, compared to nuclear, wind power at today’s costs

replaces twice as much carbon per invested dollar and energy effi ciency measures

three to six times more. [12]

Even the IEA’s 2008 Blue Map scenario itself shows that, while massive nuclear

expansion reduces carbon emissions from the energy sector by 6%, the potential

of renewable energy sources is around four times greater, and the potential

of energy effi ciency six times greater. It is clear by these numbers which technology

deserves the priority for investment:

Lastly is the issue of time. Energy effi ciency measures can be implemented in

months. A wind farm can be planned and built in one year. Nuclear reactors

take one to two decades to plan and build.

Every dollar invested in nuclear power means a dollar less invested in

energy effi ciency and renewable energy sources — sources that can

not only replace several times more carbon for the same cost, but also

achieve the desired carbon reduction more rapidly.

Renewable energy sources can easily provide power to remote areas

with underdeveloped infrastructure and can be implemented quickly

while supporting local job development. In contrast, large nuclear

power plants are often not compatible with established grids and infrastructure

in developing countries. Various institutions have recently

warned developing countries against unrealistic expectations from

nuclear energy plans.

“You should go for it [renewable energy]. It is cheaper than investing in

nuclear development.”

– Ferran Tarradellas Espuny, spokesman for the EU Energy Commissioner, speaking

about renewable energy projects in South East Asia.

“Nuclear energy is not the panacea for tackling global warming. Even if

you set aside the problem of long-term waste storage and the danger of

operator accident and the vulnerability to terrorist attack, you still have

two others that are more diffi cult. The fi rst problem is one of economics…..

The second is nuclear weapons proliferation. For eight years when I was in

the White House, every problem of weapons proliferation was connected to

a reactor program.”

– Al Gore, Former Vice President of the United States, Nobel Peace Prize Winner, 2007

References:

1 International Energy Agency, Energy Technology Perspectives 2008 (Paris: IEA, 2008)

2 International Atomic Energy Agency’s PRIS database, http://www.iaea.org/programmes/a2/index.

html

3 New Nuclear Generating Capacity – Potential Credit Implications for U.S. Investor Owned Utilities,

Moody’s Corporate Finance, May 2008

4 Nucleonics Week, Platts, 4 September 2008; Detailed briefi ngs and references at http://www.greenpeace.

org

5 Platts Nucleonics Week publications; Nuclear Engineering International; http://www.areva.com .

6 See World Nuclear Association, online: http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf23.html .

7 Benjamin Sovacool, “Valuing the greenhouse gas emissions from nuclear power” (2008) 36 Energy

Policy 2940.

8 Spix C et al, Case-control study on childhood cancer in the vicinity of nuclear power plants in Germany

1980- 2003, European Journal of Cancer (December 2007)

9 Joseph Mangano, Janette D. Sherman: Childhood Leukaemia Near Nuclear Installations, European

Journal of Cancer Care No 4 Vol 17, July 2008

10 Platts, Nuclear Fuel, 11 August 2008.

11 Guardian, online: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/jul/18/nuclearpower.energy .

12 Amory Lovins, The Nuclear Illusion, May 2008.

To endorse our call, or for more information, contact by email or, where indicated,

by mobile, in Poznan:

– Nicole Van Gemert and Sabine Bock, Women in Europe for a Common Future

(WECF), Nicole Van Gemert at +31 – 6- 229 – 500 -27 (mobile in Poznan)

and sabine.bock@wecf.eu, +49 176 228 274 65

– Claire Greensfelder, International Forum on Globalization (IFG),

cgreensfelder@ifg.org, +1-510-917-5468 (mobile in Poznan)

– Thomas Breuer, Greenpeace, Thomas.Breuer@de.greenpeace.org,

+49 – 171 878 0820 (mobile in Poznan)

– Peer de Rijk and Daniel Meijer, World Information Service on Energy (WISE),

wiseamster@antenna.nl, Daniel Meijer +31 6 2525 4065 (mobile in Poznan)

– Vladimir Slivyak, Ecodefence, ecodefense@gmail.com, +7 903 299 7584

(mobile in Poznan)

– Michael Mariotte, Nuclear Information and Resource Service,

nirsnet@nirs.org

Please sign on by sending an email to wiseamster@antenna.nl,

with your name, city and country.

Conclusion: Too little, too late, too expensive,

and just too dangerous.

Nuclear power is not a suitable answer

to climate change and should be removed as

an investment option for the Clean Development

Mechanism and Joint Implementation

strategies.

KEEP NUCLEAR POWER OUT OF CDM:

IT’S AN OBSTACLE

TO CARBON MITIGATION

NGOs Call for removal of the Option to “Include Nuclear Activities” in

the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) and Joint Implementation

(JI)”

from Agenda Item 3a of the Accra Conclusions of the Ad-Hoc Working Group on

Further Commitments for Annex I Parties under the Kyoto Protocol: Item I-D,

Option 2 in the CDM and Item II-B, Option 2 in the JI

My favourite part in the story below is this bit regarding the public outcry about the lack of “adequate scientific backing” for the radioactive-waste facility slated for Ontario.

“The big motivation here is to bury OPG’s biggest public relations problem – which is radioactive waste . . . . They want to move ahead with building new nuclear reactors, and they need to be able to say they’ve solved the radioactive waste problem.”

Ted Gruetzner, spokesman for Ontario Power Generation, plays down such talk.

“They’re an anti-nuclear group who have an anti-nuclear bent,” he says. “It’s kind of what you expect them to say.”

Well, DUH! That’s some response. Attack the messenger is such a valid argument, eh? Whadda crock o’shite!

Being the poet, I am interested in the phrase “nuclear sacrifice zone” which indicates that a certain portion of land around Kincardine has already been contaminated and suggests that the industry may as well further contaminate it. That kind of thinking is not at all good for Mother Earth!

The Canadian Press: Safety research on nuke burial plan lags by decades

Safety research on nuke burial plan lags by decades

12 hours ago

OTTAWA — As plans progress for a radioactive-waste site buried deep in Ontario limestone, the federal nuclear watchdog says the related safety research is full of holes.

Ontario Power Generation wants a licence by 2012 to bury low-to intermediate-level radioactive waste at its Bruce nuclear plant near Kincardine, Ont.

It’s the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission’s job to approve or reject that application.

But environmental critics and geoscientific experts are asking how the federal regulator can credibly assess crucial safety issues – especially when the commission itself says it lacks up-to-date, independent research.

Moreover, specific guidelines to oversee the project have yet to receive final federal approval.

“Compared to the European countries, research in Canada on geological disposal in sedimentary rocks is lagging behind by decades,” the nuclear regulator says in background documents for a contract recently awarded to hydrogeologist Kent Novakowski through Queen’s University.

In the next three years, he will gather the latest research from countries including France and Japan, along with studies commissioned in Kincardine by Ontario Power Generation (OPG).

Novakowski, who has worked as a consultant for OPG, will study the extent to which radioactive contaminants could be diffused through tiny pores in the 680 metres of sedimentary limestone under which they’re to be buried.

“What we want to do is assess realistically what the likelihood or the travel time might be for a contaminant to reach a potential receptor (such as) somebody who’s drinking the water at the surface, or it could be discharged into a stream or something like that,” he said in an interview.

The Bruce station, built between 1970 and 1987, is one of the biggest nuclear facilities in North America. It can power much of Toronto, Ottawa, Kingston, Hamilton, London and Thunder Bay.

It also produces radioactive waste that until now has been stored in sealed casks onsite.

The subterranean repository for those materials would be split into two wings: one for low-level radioactive garbage in sealed boxes, the other for intermediate-level items such as plastic resins and liners.

OPG is expected to argue before the federal regulator that its own seismic and geochemistry studies suggest the site has been stable for centuries with only prehistoric water migration.

Environmental groups and First Nations in the region aren’t sold.

The Citizens Environmental Alliance last June gave OPG the dubious 2008 Weenie Award for environmental degradation. It blasted the giant utility for planning the repository so close to Lake Huron – a precious freshwater resource.

“Once a facility like this is built it is more than likely going to be the permanent site” for nuclear waste from across Canada, alliance research and policy director Derek Coronado said at the time.

“Any contamination of the Great Lakes and we’re all in serious trouble.”

Environmental activists want more focus on renewable energy sources such as wind and solar power.

Shawn Patrick Stensil, energy and climate campaigner for Greenpeace, says the environmental assessment for the underground site is a cart-before-the-horse process that can’t be completed by 2012.

“There’s no way we will have adequate scientific backing for this project by the time OPG would like to complete the environmental assessment.”

The nuclear safety commission knows more about the kind of granite found in the Canadian Shield than the sedimentary rock at the Bruce location, concedes Patsy Thompson, the regulator’s director general for environmental and radiation protection.

But she insists the safety commission isn’t starting from scratch. “Essentially what we’re doing is complementing the expertise that we have,” she said.

“We know what the waste is, we know its characteristics, we know how it behaves, and we have experience in terms of management of waste in similar situations. It’s a huge project but it’s not something that we have no experience with.”

Stensil argues that Kincardine was chosen not because it’s ideal but because it’s already “a nuclear sacrifice zone” hitched to the industry’s wagon.

“The big motivation here is to bury OPG’s biggest public relations problem – which is radioactive waste . . . . They want to move ahead with building new nuclear reactors, and they need to be able to say they’ve solved the radioactive waste problem.”

Ted Gruetzner, spokesman for Ontario Power Generation, plays down such talk.

“They’re an anti-nuclear group who have an anti-nuclear bent,” he says. “It’s kind of what you expect them to say.”

He cites a range of studies being done on a project encouraged by local mayors and residents – thousands of whom rely on jobs linked to the power plant.

“There isn’t the concern in the community that may be expressed by people who don’t live close and haven’t taken the time to really understand what we’re proposing. That being said, we have said from the very start that the reason that you do these scientific studies is that you can then make a rational decision – and based on scientific facts.

“And if it’s not a safe project to proceed, then we won’t proceed.”

Gruetzner confirmed no other sites are being considered for the repository. “The site was chosen because that’s where this material has been stored since the reactors have been operating.”

Novakowski, the Queen’s professor commissioned to work on behalf of the federal nuclear watchdog, concedes his prior work for OPG could raise questions.

The reality is that only a small pool of scientists are trained for such research – and they tend to share their expertise with governments, the nuclear industry and critics alike, he said.

“It could be argued that I might favour OPG because I would be afraid of losing contractual work with them again,” Novakowski said.

“I guess the response would be: this is no different than any of the other research contracts that I have . . . anywhere between 10 to 15 at a time. I work extensively for the Ministry of the Environment, for example. They support about a third of my graduate students.”

He has also been asked to do some work on behalf of concerned First Nations in the Kincardine area.

Copyright © 2008 The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.

David Thorpe: The effects of uranium mining are disastrous. To minimise the risks, the nuclear supply chain needs independent auditing | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk

The increased sourcing of raw uranium that will arise from nuclear new build is an ethical and environmental nightmare currently being ignored by the government.

The World Nuclear Association (WNA), the trade body for companies that make up 90% of the industry, admits that in “emerging uranium producing countries” there is frequently no adequate environmental health and safety legislation, let alone monitoring. It is considerately proposing a Charter of Ethics containing principles of uranium stewardship for its members to follow. But this is a self-policing voluntary arrangement. Similarly, the International Atomic Energy Agency’s safety guide to the Management of Radioactive Waste from the Mining and Milling of Ores (pdf) are not legally binding on operators.

The problem is that transparency is not a value enshrined in the extractive or the nuclear industries. Journalists find themselves blocked. Recently, to tackle this issue, Panos Institute West Africa (IPAO) held a training seminar for journalists in Senegal which highlighted that only persistent investigation – or, in the case of the Niger’s Tuareg, violent rebellion – has a chance of uncovering the truth.

The co-editor of the Republican in Niger, Ousseini Issa, said that only due to local media campaigns was there a revision of the contract linking Niger to the French company Areva. “As a result of our efforts, the price of a kilogram of uranium increased from 25,000 to 40,000 CFA francs,” he said. The local community hopes now to see more of the income from the extraction of its resources.

IPAO has much evidence that in Africa the legacy of mining is often terrible health, water contamination and other pollution problems. IPAO would laugh at the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative – an Orwellian creation launched by Tony Blair in 2001.

What is the effect of uranium mining? Nuclear fuel from fresh uranium is cheaper than from recycled uranium or recycled plutonium (MOX), which is why there is a worldwide uranium rush.

To produce the 25 tonnes or so of uranium fuel needed to keep your average reactor going for a year entails the extraction of half a million tonnes of waste rock and over 100,000 tonnes of mill tailings. These are toxic for hundreds of thousands of years. The conversion plant will generate another 144 tonnes of solid waste and 1343 cubic metres of liquid waste.

Contamination of local water supplies around uranium mines and processing plants has been documented in Brazil, Colorado, Texas, Australia, Namibia and many other sites. To supply even a fraction of the power stations the industry expects to be online worldwide in 2020 would mean generating 50 million tonnes of toxic radioactive residues every single year.

These tailings contain uranium, thorium, radium, polonium, and emit radon-222. In the US, the Environmental Protection Agency sets limits of emissions from the dumps and monitors them. This does not happen in many less developed areas.

The long-term management cost of these dumps is left out of the current market prices for nuclear fuel and may be as high as the uranium cost itself. The situation for the depleted uranium waste arising during enrichment even may be worse, says the World Information Service on Energy.

No one can convince me that the above process is carbon-free, as politicians claim. It takes a lot of – almost certainly fossil-fuelled – energy to move that amount of rock and process the ore. But the carbon cost is often not in the country where the fuel is consumed.

And what of the other costs? Over half of the world’s uranium is in Australia and Canada. In Australia the government is planning to make money from the nuclear renaissance being predicted; uranium mining is expanding everywhere. Australian Greens are fast losing the optimism they felt when the Labor party won the last election.

In the Northern Territory plans to expand a nuclear dump at Muckaty station are being pushed forward with no regard for the land’s Aboriginal owners. The supposedly greener new Australian government Minister Martin Ferguson has failed to deliver an election promise to overturn the Howard government’s Commonwealth Radioactive Waste Management Act, which earmarks a series of sites for nuclear waste dumps.

In South Australia, in August the Australian government approved the expansion of a controversial uranium mine, Beverley ISL. This was dubbed a “blank cheque licence for pollution”. Groundwater specialist Dr Gavin Mudd has examined the data from the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) and called for it to be “independently verified by people not subservient to the mining industry” (The Epoch Times September 2 2008).

Elsewhere in the Northern Territory, BHP Billiton plans to have the first of five planned stages of expansion at its Olympic Dam mine in production by 2013. This will increase production capacity to 200,000 tonnes of copper, 4500 tonnes of uranium and 120,000 ounces of gold. This is a vast open cast mine, from which the wind can carry away radioactive dust.

Not far away locals are fighting a new uranium mine 25 kilometres south of Alice Springs. At the Ranger mines, Energy Resources of Australia – 68.4% owned by Rio Tinto – expects to find 30,000 to 40,000 tonnes of ore in the Ranger 3 Deeps area. In October it agreed to supply uranium oxide to a Chinese utility, signing a safety accord. This is how safe the mine in fact is – and you won’t find such records at African mines: almost 15,000 litres of acid uranium solution leaked in a 2002 incident, and since then further leaks ranging from 50 to over 23,000 litres have been reported.