short tailed grasswren wrecks uranium mine, page-7

Firstly, again, this proposed mine would be equally unpopular if it was a tin or copper mine. Uranium is not the key issue at Arkaroola. The mine itself is.

But Uranium seems to feature heavily in the justification for it.

It's always remarkable how philanthropic industrial endeavours are intended to be when they come under threat from the community! Investors and/or directors may bemoan their lost opportunity to provide countless jobs, to help out a local hard-done-by indigenous community, or, in this instance, to save the world via a clean, unproblematic energy source. Nary a thought of buckets of profitability involved, apparently!

The thing about nukes is that the industry only ever looked good cost-wise because it was massively subsidised. And now we have to consider the opportunity cost of tying up all our greenhouse-combatting investment capital in a high-tech, high-capital industry whose overall energy/carbon budget is also actually highly problematic.

And it's just not popular, and thereby politically toxic. In fact the closer it gets to home, the less popular it becomes. Toleration is about the best one can expect from the public. One more 3-mile Island incident - let alone another Chernobyl - and what will happen to the revived industry? Where will Uranium shareholders be then?

On current trends SA is already going to export oodles and oodles of tonnes of Uranium over the next few decades, and simultaneously global carbon emissions will continue to rise. Adding some tonnage per year from Arkaroola may slow the rate of this rise at some stage (though constructing the mine - and any new nuclear plants - will only add to it), but it would probably be pretty hard to detect the change.

And all this will affect global food security not one jot.

You may have noticed many greens have stopped opposing exporting Uranium to existing nuclear plants, because the infrastructure already exists, so a real carbon-substitution may be made in each mega-watt produced. But there are very good arguments to be made against starting a new industry - say here in Australia - not least because the putative carbon savings are delivered way too late. You might read Ian Lowe's recently Quarterly Essay for a good summation of this position.

We haven't even looked at other key questions. What about diversion to weapons? Where's the waste going to go? How much effectively (by $$$ or carbon accounting) accessible Uranium (or Thorium) is there anyway? Are we going to be looking at fast-breeders, then? Who'd want to live in that world?

But I think Uranium's main danger is that it's an opiate - part of a dream; that we can simply go on - have this kind of constantly expanding industrial and consumer economy on this scale with this many people reaping its benefits (or not) and not pay for it. The thing about wind and solar is that they necessitate conservation strategies, and hence a contraction in the consumer economy as it's currently constructed.

Of course, you can, and probably will [ ;-) ], disagree with me. But meanwhile back at the Sanctuary everyone will still be squawking about a mine that they're afraid will permanently scar one of Australia's most spectacular remaining wild places. While the 4-Mile expansion (and another ISL for chrissakes!) right next door attracts nary a whimper of protest.

So you'd have to concede my first point. And you'd certainly be hard pressed to convincingly tie this mine to global food-security!..