It sort of slipped by last week without a great deal of notice, but Alexander Downer revealed something rather interesting about Australia’s negotiations with the US about our future involvement in the nuclear industry:
“It’s a real possibility that we could build a relationship with the Americans under the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP) but their work on that isn’t even finished yet,” he said.
The GNEP, you ask? It’s an American-led proposal to allow the expansion of the nuclear industry, while minimising the concerns about nuclear proliferation. If a developing country wants nuclear power, the GNEP countries will sell them a reactor, provides the fuel, and takes the fuel back for reprocessing and disposal afterwards. Therefore, the developing country isn’t faced with the difficulties of safely disposing of spent fuel; equally, the spent fuel isn’t available for nuclear proliferation either.
If Australia were to be allowed to join the GNEP club, we could become one of the countries permitted to participate in the full fuel cycle, including enrichment, fabrication, reprocessing and disposal. The implications of disposal you can probably figure out; if we’re taking waste back, we’d have to find somewhere to put it.
There are lots of issues here, and some of them are not particularly closely related to whether Australia should use nuclear energy domestically. As previously noted, enrichment, particularly, is extremely problematic.
The GNEP plan itself has serious political problems; the world’s developing countries are not entirely thrilled about the idea of a perpetual cartel of rich-country nuclear suppliers, as explained in this excellent Radio National Background Briefing on the issue. Furthermore, if new rich-country suppliers like Australia were let into the game, the reaction from the developing world is likely to be even more unenthused. As one interviewee put it:
In an environment where there is great concern about further proliferation of sensitive technologies, and the fact that the development of a domestic capacity to enrich or to reprocess could facilitate the development of a nuclear weapons capacity, for Australia to develop that capacity at this sensitive point, might send an example to many other countries that if Australia can do it, why can’t we?
The GNEP approach seems to be mainly a creature of the Bush White House. It’s hard to see a Clinton or Obama White House being terribly keen on Australia building enrichment plants. But, as usual, the Libs seem to view their foreign policy through the prism of George W. Bush, who is a lame duck even now and whose agenda stands a pretty good shot of being swept away entirely in January 2009.
Elsewhere: Ed at Nuclear Australia has his take.
GNEP seems to have Cheney’s fingerprints all over it, and he’s just as lame a duck as Bush: even though he could theoretically run for Prez he’s too old and too detested. The Libs’ continued enthusiastic kowtowing to the Bush administration is puzzling, given that even if a Republican takes the Presidency he’ll likely only get there if he pledges to renounce most of Bush’s agenda.
Robert, you’re always on the ball.
A quick impression. I would suspect that this proposal would lead to Australia being a spot where American companies could do business with less political fallout than expanding their capability in the US, as well as providing a furtile field for the dumping of waste material. Australia would be to nuclear processing as Asia is to manufacturing, preferred because of its isolation, political stability, vastness and low population. For the sake of a few high technology jobs and some taxation income we would be taking on an eternity of responsibility while the real profit filled American Corporate pockets. It is called “being left holding the baby”.
Oh bugger – don’t tell me “little fatty” Downer has fallen for the old “it won’t allow proliferation” fairy-tale…groan…OK, I’ll sum up the problems with this approach:
1) You cannot just ship a reactor into a country and expect it to work. Either outside operators are provided OR you must train the locals to do everything. Reactor operations will include startup/shutdown, refueling, storage/shipping of used/new fuels, and a variety of other things. Safe operation will require knowledge of nuclear chemistry including testing and some ongoing material science R&D (yes, even the commercial reactors in the USA do this).
2) Shipment of fuels (even the MOX type “safe” fuels) will increase the likelyhood of an accident/terrorist attack (greater opportunity/etc) – the only way to offset this is to use the navy to provide convoy duties (at great expense). To make sure our local strategic situation is not put at risk we will thus need more ships/crew to make up for the loss of availability.
3) While it is easy to ensure that no materials are diverted within the facility the physical presence of it would require either a massive surveillance effort to prevent properties and/or chemistry from being determined by the “user” country. This also costs money.
4) Assume you are the leader/parliment/dictator of a third/second-world country, you have observed what happened to Iraq after many years of cooperation, you are making a decision about power generation/growth for the next 20-40 years. Would you trust the USA/Australia to provide the critical items for your future energy security?
Finally, who pays the bill? If we could ensure that this would decrease proliferation risk then I’d happily pay more tax for it, BUT the above problems mean I’m not very happy at all. Anybody remember “Atoms for Peace”?!
Or like the Steritech man who was asked in court,what would you do if a nuclear rod jams and won’t go back in the water?
Replie:Phone Canada!
This one has been simmering for a while behind all the other issues. Seems like there is a need to whisk this one through under the radar while this mob is still in power.
What is the name of the company involved in the construction of the Alice/Darwin railway?
Why the sudden negation of aboriginal land rights under the guise of child protection?
And there’s the matter of Iran, but no, that’s probably paraniod b***s***