Senator Bob Brown   Senator for Tasmania





Report shatters nuclear safeguards illusion



Senator Brown, 5th November 2006

The Australian Greens' opposition to the mining and export of uranium has been  vindicated today by the release of a report, An Illusion of Protection, by the Medical  Association for the Prevention of War and the Australian Conservation Foundation.

"Nuclear weapons proliferation is a major and growing threat to our long-term  security and cannot be swept under the carpet as both the coalition and Labor try to  do,' Greens energy spokesperson Senator Christine Milne said.

"Nuclear safeguards don't work. They never have and never will.

"The report demonstrates that the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)  cannot guarantee that nuclear materials are not diverted from nuclear power stations  to weapons programmes.

"Nor can the IAEA guarantee that any diversions will be detected before weapons can  be produced, and it cannot detect covert reprocessing of spent fuel, as the recent  nuclear weapons test by North Korea highlighted.



"If we cannot detect reprocessing, then we cannot prevent vast quantities of spent fuel  stored all around the world from being converted to nuclear weapons.

"The argument of the Howard government and the Labor opposition that we are only  exporting uranium to trusted governments is absurd. Spent fuel can be reprocessed to  produce plutonium for weapons for generations.

"It is madness to pretend we can trust future regimes and it is salient to remember that  prior to the overthrow of the Shah in the late 1970s the Australian Government  seriously considered selling uranium to Iran.

"Labor and Liberal are putting profits from uranium mining and export ahead of  global peace and security.

"Australia should leave its uranium in the ground and take a leadership role in global  peace and security by proliferating renewable energy and not nuclear fuel."

Contact: Ebony Bennett 0409 164 603

