Nuclear Australia

Since the dawn of the nuclear age, Australia has had a place at the nuclear table because of our vast uranium deposits, spread across Queensland, Northern Territory, South Australia and Western Australia.  Despite public opposition Australia has become a major uranium mining and exporting country.

No safeguards on sales

Safeguards on the end-use of that uranium are totally inadequate –there is no guarantee that Australian uranium does not end up in the nuclear weapons of client countries. Other nuclear plans have been controversial as well, and therefore introduced surreptitiously – like the  building of United States military bases, linked to their nuclear-war fighting strategies,  or allowing British nuclear testing to occur  on our soil.

Cleaning our own backyard

Plans for Australia to engage in its own nuclear weapons programme, and the building of many nuclear power stations across the country have been resisted.  So has the notion of becoming the world’s nuclear waste dump.  But we do have a research reactor at Lucas Heights, in suburban Sydney, and a great deal of unfinished business in dealing with our own nuclear waste from tailings dams, from the research reactor, and from industrial and medical uses of nuclear technology.