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SPEECH BY TOM UREN, M P , FEDERAL LABOR SPOKESMAN ON URBAN AND REGIONAL

AFFAIRS.

URANIUM RALLY, TOOWOOMBA, SATURDAY MARCH 1, 1980 ' ........

I am pleased to be here for today's rally. It's one of many

expressions of growing opposition to the mining and export of uranium

that have taken place already this year. Many sections of the media

are silent about the widespread concern growing in the community

about the unresolved problems of uranium mining and nuclear power.

Many are silent about the growing problems related to the nuclear

industry.

Despite the Fraser Government's continuing attempts to distort

the real situation in the uranium mining and nuclear industries, despite

their manipulation of the aboriginal people, despite their intimidatory

industrial and civil laws, people through their unions and their

community organisations continue to express opposition to the mining

of Australia's uranium and its commitment to the world nuclear fuel

cycle. And that opposition will continue to grow. Already this year

there have been rallies, there have been suburban public meetings

and film nights and several local councils have declared their areas

nuclear-free zones. Here in Queensland, metal workers have blocked

the supply of goods from their factory to the Ranger project. And

these are only some of the activities.

Elements of the media, the Fraser Government and the pro-nuclear

lobby will continue to try to confuse people that we need nuclear

energy. But we know that is not the case, that it is a deliberate

distortion. We know that people's concern about the unresolved

problems of uranium mining and nuclear power are not lightly held

they are deep seated concerns,particularly amongst the young and women.

And we know that more and more, those who are active in opposing

uranium mining are finding ways of by-passing the media monopolies

and going straight to the people in their neighbourhoods, workplaces,

community organisations and schools.

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We also know that the nuclear industry can be turned back,

that it can be made to face up to the many unresolved problems. All

over the world people are challenging the decisions of those who

control the nuclear industry. They are asking questions which challenge

the very basis of the industry. And because of these challenges of

the people's movements, because the industry is being forced to

consider costs it had ignored,  it is now more and more finding itself

on shaky economic grounds. For example, last year in the United States

there were no new orders placed for nuclear power stations. Throughout

the OECD countries - which are the wealthy countries of the western

world - the number of orders for nuclear power stations has, dropped

from 56 in 1973 to 10 in 1978 and 8 of these were in France. At the

same time a growing number of nuclear power station projects have been

cancelled or deferred. And according to a report prepared for the

Rockefeller Foundation of the United States and Britain's Royal

Institute of International Affairs which was released a few weeks ago,

this trend is likely to continue through the 1980s.

According to the study the reactor manufacturers in the major

western countries face a 50-100% over-capacity in the 1980s and

have few avenues for coping with this. The Report suggests that two

of the four major American manufacturers and the major West German

and Swedish manufacturers may be forced to pull out of the nuclear

business in the next five years. And the report adds that oil price

increases will contribute to this possibility rather than prevent it.

This is the very shaky state of theÃ¢ÂÂnuclear industry throughout the

world. It is why, despite all the fanfare of a uranium bonanza, the

Fraser Government has so far only managed to secure one small contract

for the sale of uranium, to South Korea. And it is why they are

being forced to keep watering down even further their safeguards

and to sell to unstable and repressive regimes such as those in power

in South Korea and the Philippines. I

I would like to examine in a little detail the argument that

it is crucial to western economies that there is a big increase in

nuclear power programmes to replace increasingly costly imported oil

supplies. This argument is put forward by the pro-nuclear lobby and

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by the Fraser Government. It ignores the fact that nuclear power

can only be used to produce electricity, and base load electricity

at that. Oil, by contrast, is largely used in the transport sector

and as a source of heat. If we look at the major western countries

we find that Japan has the highest proportion of oil used for

electricity generation - about 28% but, in countries like the U.S.A.

and France it is only about 10% and in West Germany it is as low as

4%. And this oil is used for intermediate and peak load electricity

generation whereas nuclear power is exclusively used for base load

electricity. Therefore we can see that nuclear power can only make

a small contribution to replacing imported oil.

And it is irrelevant to short term oil supply problems because

of the very long lead time of about 10 years in building nuclear

power stations.  One calculation suggests that if all oil-fired

generation of electricity in OECD countries were replaced overnight

by nuclear power - obviously an impossible task - this would only

reduce total oil consumption in those countries by about 12%. We

can be sure future oil price increases and any instability in the

Persian Gulf will be used to whip up an 1  energy crisis' hysteria

by the pro-nuclear lobby to promote uranium mining and nuclear power.

But the facts show that their argument is a bogus one. And even

the Australian Atomic Energy Commission in their latest annual report

seems to have admitted that this is the case - when they said:

" continued rises in the price of oil are not expected

to increase the demand for uranium in the short term (to

1985) because of the time required to construct and

commission new nuclear plant. There could be an adverse

effect if high oil prices result in a decrease in

economic activity (as occurred in 1973-75) with a conÂ­

sequent reduction in the growth of demand for electricity."

(AAEC Annual Report, 1978-79, p 27). I

I would like to turn now to some of the unresolved problems of

uranium mining and nuclear power.  It is these problems which are

the basis of Labor's policy on uranium. One of the major considerations

when the 1977 National Conference of the Labor Party in Perth

adopted the present uranium policy was the link between nuclear power

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and nuclear weapons. The Labor Party was strongly influenced by the

third finding of the first Fox Report which says;

" The nuclear power industry is unintentionally contributing

to an increased risk of nuclear war. This is the most

serious hazard associated with the industry."

The Labor movement has long held a strong moral concern about

the threat of nuclear war. And at the time of the Perth Conference

we knew that using the materials and technology of "civil" nuclear

power, India had obtained the bomb by stealth. We now know that

Israel and South Africa have obtained the bomb by stealth and that

Pakistan is also close to developing the bomb by stealth. And there

have been many other developments which have shown that you cannot

separate nuclear power for electricity generation from nuclear power

for weapons production.

In 1977, President Carter announced a policy which he said

would achieve this separation - and as a part of their attempts to

defuse opposition to uranium mining the Fraser Government latched

on to Carter's policy. The policy was supposed to stop the rush

into commercial reprocessing and breeder technologies. These techÂ­

nologies produce large amounts of plutonium - which can be used to

make nuclear weapons. But the policy could not stop the spread of

nuclear weapons because any existing nuclear power station and laboratory

scale reprocessing can be used by governments to supply weapons grade

plutonium.

In response to President Carter's policy, an international

study called the International Nuclear Fuel Cycle Evaluation was set

up in 1977. The study has been released this week. It repudiates

President Carter's policy on reprocessing and breeding. According

to the study, there will be enough plutonium produced from nuclear

power stations by the end of the decade for more than 45,000 bombs.

And the study fails to come up with any practical means for

preventing the further spread of nuclear weapons.

What this international study is saying, and it has been clear

for some time - is that once you get locked into the nuclear industry

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the more dangerous technologies are the logical next step. And now

the Fraser Government is trying to manoeuvre away from its previous

statements about the dangers of these technologies. It has watered

down its safeguards and I am sure it will allow Australian uranium

to be reprocessed to produce plutonium.

The problem of nuclear weapons proliferation is unresolved

and while it remains unresolved, the world will continue to face an

increasing threat of nuclear war. And any commitment of Australia's

uranium to the world's nuclear fuel cycle can only contribute to that

threat.

Let us turn briefly to the question of nuclear waste. The Prime

Minister has asserted on many occasions that this is not a problem -

that there are solutions. He has an enormous ability to deny the

truth. We only have to look to the statements of President Carter

to see how the United States, the wealthiest nation in the world,

has still found no solution to the waste problem. President Carter

in a major statement on waste a little over two weeks ago abandoned

America's existing project to-bury nuclear waste in a salt-mine in

New Mexico.

It's the second project that the U.S. has abandoned. Instead

they now hope to select a site in 1985 and to have a waste repository

operating by the 1990s. In other words, as has already happened so

many times - the decisions have been postponed to a future date. We

cannot be sure that this won't .continue to happen. And in Britain

only a little over a week ago a government representative testified to

a public inquiry that no nuclear waste would be buried in Britain

this century. Yet the nuclear industry continues to produce waste

that will be a danger to health for many thousands of years.

Nuclear weapons proliferation and the nuclear waste problem are

two of the serious problems associated with uranium mining and nuclear

power. There is also the threat to the beautiful Kakadu National

Park - Alligator Rivers area, the denial of the rights of the

aboriginal people, and questions about the impact of uranium development

on the Australian economy and our national sovereignty.

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-  The Labor Party says that while these problems remain

unresolved it will oppose the mining and export of Australia's uranium.

And we have pledged that a Labor Government will repudiate any

commitment by a non-Labor government to the mining, processing and

export of Australia's uranium. This has been firmly stated by

Federal Labor Leader, Bill Hayden. And I believe that by next year

we will have a Federal Labor Government which will carry out that

pledge. .

