Foreign Correspondence

[fuagf]

These seems to suggest an Australian NO to international nuclear waste for now anyway ..

International repository

Although Australia does not have any nuclear power reactors, Pangea Resources considered siting an international repository in the outback of South Australia or Western Australia in 1998, but this stimulated legislative opposition in both states and the Australian national Senate during the following year. Thereafter, Pangea ceased operations in Australia but reemerged as Pangea International Association, and in 2002 evolved into the Association for Regional and International Underground Storage with support from Belgium, Bulgaria, Hungary, Japan and Switzerland. A general concept for an international repository has been advanced by one of the principals in all three ventures. Russia has expressed interest in serving as a repository for other countries, but does not envision sponsorship or control by an international body or group of other countries. South Africa, Argentina and western China have also been mentioned as possible locations
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-level_radioactive_waste_management

though there seems still be a push for a nuclear power industry here .. Rudd scothes it under his regime ..

Labor faces inside push on nuclear energy
Paul Kelly and Geoff Elliott | June 27, 2008
The Australian

THE head of Australia's biggest blue-collar union, Paul Howes, and former NSW Labor premier Bob Carr have called for Australia and the Rudd Government to purge its prejudices and embrace a nuclear power industry.

Their advocacy at the annual Australian American Leadership Dialogue in Washington after a debate on climate change signals a campaign to persuade the federal Labor Government to rethink its policy on nuclear energy.

Mr Howes, national secretary of the Australian Workers Union, told The Australian that "if we are going to be a green Labor Government, then we have to look at nuclear".

"If we don't start today, we are going to put ourselves in a very precarious position in 10, 15 or 20 years' time," he said.

"I've told ministers in the Rudd Government this is my view and the view of my union. I can't tell you how concerned I am about this. It's the greatest challenge the union movement has faced since trade liberalisation in the 1980s, if not greater.

"The only option for us, in my view, is nuclear. If we are going to reduce our carbon output and still want to have heavy industry then we have to look at renewable and new sources of energy and that means nuclear."

The message from Mr Howes and Mr Carr is that Labor's decades-old policy of rejecting nuclear power must be buried. They represent different elements in the Labor Party: the trade unions and the pro-green position.

Kevin Rudd insists Australia can meet its carbon emission reduction targets without resorting to nuclear power.

Labor's national conference last year dumped the party's 25-year ban on new uranium mines, but reaffirmed its stance against the development of a nuclear power industry. The shift on new mines does not override state Labor bans on uranium mining in Western Australia and Queensland.

South Australia - home to two of Australia's three operating uranium mines, including BHP Billiton's giant Olympic Dam operation - is central to the push to expand Australia's uranium industry. Premier Mike Rann, national president of the ALP, derided federal Labor's former "no new mines" policy as outdated and illogical, and said his state, which has issued 358 exploration leases, welcomes further investment in uranium mining.

Mr Carr told The Australian at the dialogue that nuclear power was the critical bridge between the carbon era and energy from renewable sources.

"There is no other bridging technology to get us from this catastrophic burning of coal and oil into the era of cheap and infinite renewable power," he said. "We all want to get there. But it's decades off and we need a bridge. The best thing the Western world can do to stop the melting of the polar ice caps isto sponsor the production ofthe most modern nuclear power plants."

The Carr argument is that coal-fired powered stations are more damaging and risky than nuclear power. He said Nicholas Stern's climate change review for the British Government underestimated the greenhouse gas problem, and Australia must now rethink its basic attitudes.

"I think it's incontrovertible," Mr Carr said. "France gets 80 per cent of its power from nuclear, and in Finland, people recently voted overwhelmingly for nuclear."

He said young people did not have the emotional objection of their elders to nuclear power.

The Howes-Carr position signals a profound unease within the labour movement about the Rudd Government's approach. This is also spreading into the business sector.

The two senior ministers at the dialogue were Deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard and Resources and Energy Minister Martin Ferguson.

Mr Ferguson refused to endorse the Howes-Carr line. He argued instead that the immediate energy policy priorities of the Rudd Government were to develop an emissions trading scheme and the technology for carbon capture.

The source of alarm for Mr Howes is the case mounted for years by former prime minister John Howard: that imposing onerous carbon limits in Australia threatens to send its heavy industry offshore at the cost of jobs for no environmental gain.

"You can't have a mining industry without significant power generation," Mr Howes said.

"I think we need to do something about climate change. But the last thing I want to see happen, for example, is to have the aluminium industry being sent to China where there will be 50 per cent more emissions, creating a worse problem than anything we have here."

Mr Howes called for a bipartisan debate. The Howes-Carr line is much firmer
than the nuclear power option advocated by Mr Howard before the last election.

Former treasurer Peter Costello, also at the dialogue, welcomed the rethink, saying that
nuclear power should not be banned but instead be allowed to compete on a commercial footing.

Despite South Australia's support for uranium mining, the Labor governments in Western
Australia and Queensland remain vehemently opposed to uranium mining and nuclear power.

Queensland's longstanding ban on uranium mining remains in place under Premier Anna Bligh, despite the Government having issued more than 250 exploration permits. But with Queensland riding the resources boom, the ban is more a practical issue than a philosophical one; the Government will not do anything to exacerbate the labour shortage, and Treasurer Andrew Fraser is privately concerned new uranium mines in South Australia might lure away Queensland workers.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23929647-601,00.html