Nuclear Free
Greens push for Queensland Uranium Mining Ban
October 10, 2008: Queensland Greens MP, Ronan Lee, announced today he will be introducing two private members’ bills to the Queensland Parliament in the near future to: Ban uranium mining; and Ban uranium exploration.
Currently, the State Labor government has a policy of no uranium mining but does allow extensive exploration for it.This situation is clearly unsatisfactory for the Greens who want to make it as difficult as possible to change to the policy.
Mr Lee said it should not be a problem for the Labor government to support his bills since it was merely enshrining in law a policy they had enunciated for some time.
“It is not good enough merely to have a policy against uranium mining,” Mr Lee said.
“If a government wishes to change this policy one day, then they should first have to come to the parliament and get its approval.
“It is also important to ban exploration for uranium as this simply gives the mining industry leverage with the government to change the policy if they find substantial deposits.
“My legislation will ensure that Queensland's environment remains protected and nuclear free for future generations,” Mr Lee said.
Click here to download details about Ronan's Bill to Ban Uranium Mining
Click here to download details about Ronan's Bill to Ban Uranium Exploration
Why Ronan is concerned about a nuclear Australia
Ronan is passionate about keeping Australia nuclear free. He believes that it is wrong to generate power in such a way that it creates by-products that remain poisonous to humans and every other form of live on the planet for tens of thousands of years.
Nuclear power is not clean. It certainly is not cheap. To date, there remains no answer to the problem of nuclear waste. This is waste that takes hundreds of thousands of years to become in any way safe.
Ronan’s speech to Parliament opposing nuclear energy
There is no such thing as ‘green’ nuclear energy
John Howard liked to tell people that nuclear energy is a cleaner and greener source of energy. That is not the case.
Myth: nuclear power is less destructive to the environment than creating electricity through coal fired power stations.
Truth: This was a common misconception which was made by looking at a very limited and narrow part of the nuclear cycle, a single period during the fuel cycle of uranium.
If we want to assess the climate impacts of any form of power generation, we have to do that from the beginning of the fuel cycle to the end. With nuclear power that includes mining, milling, transportation and enrichment. But most importantly, we have to factor in the costs associated with the long-term storage of the by-products – toxic nuclear waste.
Nuclear Power Plants
Nuclear power plants are forever. In the history of the planet, only one nuclear power station has ever been decommissioned, and that was Chernobyl.
As you may already be aware, the history of Chernobyl is shocking.
Based on current technology, every other nuclear power station on the planet is going to have to run indefinitely. Once a station passes the point at which it can usefully generate electricity, it will still have to be kept humming over, because there is not means by which we can stop the processes within the power stations and shut them down.
When we factor that into the equation, generating electricity through the use of nuclear power will always be worse for the environment and create more problems for climate change than any other form of power generation that we could comprehend.
Useful Links
Nuclear Free – The Wilderness Society
