By Jim Green

Nuclear campaigner -Friends of the Earth, Australia.

Over the past year the nuclear industry has once again tried to exploit concern about climate change to reverse its ongoing decline. Nuclear power is being promoted not only as the solution to climate change, but also to water shortages (by desalination), the drought (by John Anderson), and world poverty (too cheap to meter … or too expensive to matter?). You begin to wonder if there's anything nuclear power can't solve.

One positive aspect of this debate is that it has highlighted the need for action to avert the social and environmental impacts associated with climate change. But it's been a limited debate. Only the nuclear 'solution' solution to climate change is being debated. Never mind that nuclear power simply can't do the job. Never mind that the adverse impacts of nuclear power are every bit as alarming as those of climate change. Thus the 'debate' has diverted attention from the range of renewable energy sources and energy efficiency measures that, combined, can avert climate catastrophe.

The 'debate' has been based on several premises - all of them demonstrably false:

• It is not true that nuclear power is enjoying a resurgence - the global picture is one of stagnation and decline. If there is a resurgence of interest in nuclear power, it is only because the manufactured nuclear 'debate' in Australia is being played out elsewhere.

• The media have also made play of alleged divisions within the environment movement over nuclear power - but you could name the pro-nuclear 'environmentalists' on one hand. The loudest of these, Professor James Lovelock, talks absolute nonsense but is still a media star. Lovelock wants high-level nuclear waste in his basement for home heating and food irradiation, and he wants high-level waste to be used to guard fragile ecosystems against human intrusion!

• A third false premise of the debate is the claim that nuclear power is 'greenhouse-free'. Significant emissions arise across the nuclear fuel 'cycle'. Nuclear power can only reduce greenhouse gas emissions if the comparison is with fossil fuels. In comparison with renewables and energy efficiency, nuclear power increases greenhouse gas emissions, in addition to its proliferation, environmental and public health and safety problems. As Professor Ian Lowe says, if nuclear power is the answer, it must have been a pretty stupid question.

The 'debate' has also been almost entirely one-sided, with critics of nuclear power excluded. Even while excluding critical voices, the corporate media have had the gall to frame the nuclear 'debate' in 'free speech' terms. Why can't we at least debate nuclear power, they bleat. The same ploy is used by the corporate politicians who try to score points against environmentalists, and divert attention from their policies, by calling for a debate without lining up directly in support of nuclear power.

If anyone is stopping anyone debating anything, it is the Howard government, which made nuclear power illegal in Australia in the 1998 Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Act. And it's the corporate media, who have excluded critics from the debate.

Nuclear is no solution to climate change

There are significant constraints on the growth of nuclear power, such as its high capital cost and, in many countries, lack of public acceptability. As a method of reducing greenhouse gas emissions, nuclear power is further limited because it is used almost exclusively for electricity generation, which is responsible for less than one third of global greenhouse gas emissions.

Because of these problems, the potential for nuclear power to help reduce greenhouse gas emissions by replacing fossil fuels is limited. Few predict a doubling of nuclear power output by 2050, but even if it did eventuate it would still only reduce greenhouse gas emissions by about 5% – less than one tenth of the reductions required to stabilise atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases. And that assumes that nuclear power displaces fossil fuels rather than renewables and energy efficiency measures.

Nuclear power is not a 'renewable' energy source. High-grade, low-cost uranium ores are limited and will be exhausted in about 50 years at the current rate of consumption. The estimated total of all conventional uranium reserves is estimated to be sufficient for about 200 years at the current rate of consumption. But in a scenario of nuclear expansion, these reserves will be depleted more rapidly.

Claims that nuclear power is 'greenhouse free' are incorrect as substantial greenhouse gas emissions are generated across the nuclear fuel cycle. Fossil-fuel generated electricity is more greenhouse intensive than nuclear power, but this comparative benefit will be eroded as higher-grade uranium ores are depleted. Most of the earth's uranium is found in very poor grade ores, and recovery of uranium from these ores is likely to be considerably more greenhouse intensive. Nuclear power emits more greenhouse gases per unit energy than most renewable energy sources, and that comparative deficit will widen as uranium ore grades decline.

The hazards of nuclear power

Nuclear hazards include the risk of accidents, routine releases of radioactive gases and liquids from nuclear plants, the intractible problem of nuclear waste, and the risks of terrorism and sabotage. But there is another hazard which is unique to nuclear power and which is of such concern that alone it must lead to a clear rejection of a nuclear 'solution' to climate change ... even if such a solution were possible. This is the repeated pattern of 'peaceful' nuclear facilities being used for nuclear weapons research and production.

The proliferation problem is profound:

• Of the 60 countries which have built nuclear power or research reactors, over 20 are known to have used their 'peaceful' nuclear facilities for covert weapons research and/or production.

• Four or five countries have produced nuclear arsenals under cover of a 'peaceful' nuclear program – Israel, India, South Africa, Pakistan, and possibly North Korea. Others have come close – most notably Iraq from the 1970s until the 1991 Gulf War.

• Nuclear power programs also provide pools of expertise for weapons programs in the five major nuclear weapons states – the US, Russia, the UK, France, and China. These five countries account for almost 60% of global nuclear power output.

• The 'peaceful' nuclear power industry has produced sufficient plutonium to produce about 160,000 nuclear weapons, each with a yield similar to the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. If 99% of this plutonium is indefinitely safeguarded against military use - a monumental challenge - the remaining plutonium would suffice to produce 1,600 nuclear weapons. Australian uranium has resulted in the production of over 78 tonnes of plutonium - sufficient for about 7,800 nuclear weapons.

• The UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has considered a scenario involving a ten-fold increase in nuclear power over this century, and calculated that this could produce 50-100 thousand tonnes of plutonium. The IPCC concluded that the security threat "would be colossal."

The International Atomic Energy Agency's (IAEA) safeguards system still suffers from flaws and limitations despite improvements over the past decade. Recent statements from the IAEA and US President George W. Bush about the need to limit the spread of enrichment and reprocessing technology, and to establish multinational control over sensitive nuclear facilities, are an effective acknowledgement of the fundamental flaws and limitations of the international non-proliferation system. The NPT enshrines an 'inalienable right' of member states to all 'civil' nuclear technologies, including dual-use technologies with both peaceful and military capabilities. In other words, the NPT enshrines the 'right' to develop a nuclear weapons threshold or breakout capability.

Nuclear smuggling – much of it from civil nuclear programs – presents a significant challenge. The IAEA's Illicit Trafficking Database records over 650 confirmed incidents of trafficking in nuclear or other radioactive materials since 1993. In 2004 alone, almost 100 such incidents occurred. Smuggling can potentially provide fissile material for nuclear weapons or a wider range of radioactive materials for use in 'dirty bombs'.

Civil nuclear plants are potentially "attractive" targets for terrorist attacks because of the importance of the electricity supply system in many societies, because of the large radioactive inventories in many facilities, and because of the potential or actual use of 'civil' nuclear facilities for weapons research or production.

The problem of radioactive waste management is nowhere near resolution. Not a single repository exists anywhere in the world for the disposal of high-level waste from nuclear power. Only a few countries – such as Finland, Sweden, and the US – have identified potential sites for a high-level waste repository.

The legal limit for the proposed repository at Yucca Mountain in the US is less then the projected output of high-level waste from the reactors currently operating in the US. If global nuclear output was increased three-fold, new repository storage capacity equal to the legal limit for Yucca Mountain would have to be created somewhere in the world every 3-4 years. With a ten-fold increase in nuclear power, new repository storage capacity equal to the legal limit for Yucca Mountain would have to be created somewhere in the world every single year.

Attempts to establish international repositories are likely to be as unpopular and unsuccessful as was the attempt by Pangea Resources to win support for such a repository in Australia.

Synroc – the ceramic waste immobilisation technology developed in Australia – seems destined to be a permanently 'promising' technology. As nuclear apologist Leslie Kemeny concedes, Synroc "... showed great early promise but so far its international marketing and commercialisation agendas have failed".

In addition to the hazards posed by catastrophic accidents such as Chernobyl, radioactive emissions are routinely generated across the nuclear fuel cycle. The United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation has estimated the collective effective dose to the world population over a 50-year period of operation of nuclear power reactors and associated nuclear facilities to be two million person-Sieverts. Applying the standard risk estimate to that level of radiation exposure gives an alarming total of 80,000 fatal cancers.

Safety concerns are not limited to the ex-Soviet states. For example, the Japanese nuclear power industry has been in turmoil since the August 2002 revelations of 29 cases of false reporting on the inspections of cracks in numerous reactors. There have also been a number of serious accidents, including fatal accidents, at nuclear reactors and other nuclear facilities in Japan in the past decade.

Commercial pressures and inadequate regulation have clearly played some part in the flawed safety standards in Japan. Such pressures are by no means unique to Japan, and they will intensify if privatisation and liberalisation of electricity markets proceeds.

Calculations indicate that the probability of an accident involving damage to the reactor core is about one in 10,000 per reactor per year for current nuclear power reactors. In a world with 1,000 such reactors, accidents resulting in core damage would occur once per decade on average. With a ten-fold nuclear expansion, a reactor core damage accident would occur every 2-3 years on average.

The hype about future reactor designs with supposedly 'passive' safety systems has attracted scepticism and cynicism even from within the nuclear industry, with one industry representative quipping that "the paper-moderated, ink-cooled reactor is the safest of all."

Energy efficiency and renewables

Renewable energy, mostly hydroelectricity, already supplies 19% of world electricity, compared to nuclear's 16%. The share of renewables is increasing, while nuclear's share is decreasing. Wind power and solar power are growing by 20-30% every year. In 2004, renewable energy added nearly three times as much net generating capacity as nuclear power.

But in Australia, only 8% of electricity is from renewable energy – down from 10% in 1999.

The biggest gains are to be made in the field of energy efficiency. Government reports have shown that reductions in energy consumption of up to 70% are cost effective in some sectors of the economy. Energy experts have projected that adopting a national energy efficiency target could reduce the need for investment in new power stations by between 2,500 – 5,000 MW by 2017 in Australia (equal to about 2-5 large nuclear power stations). The energy efficiency investments would pay for themselves in reduced bills before a nuclear power station could generate a single unit of electricity.

The Australian Ministerial Council on Energy has identified that energy consumption in the manufacturing, commercial and residential sectors could be reduced by 20-30% with the adoption of current commercially available technologies with an average payback of four years.

A number of studies have considered the relative cost of various means of reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Replacing fossil fuels with nuclear power does not fare well in these studies. Energy efficiency measures are shown in an American study to deliver almost seven times the greenhouse gas emissions reductions as nuclear power per dollar invested.

The argument that nuclear power could be a "bridging" energy source while renewables are further developed is erroneous. Nuclear expansion would require such vast expenditure that renewables would fall by the wayside. Of the funds spent by 26 OECD member states between 1991 and 2001 on energy R&D, 50% was spent on nuclear power and only 8% on renewable energy.

A July 2002 study by The Australia Institute maps out a plan to achieve a 60% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions in Australia by 2050. The study envisages widespread energy efficiency measures, a major expansion of wind power, modest growth of hydroelectricity, significant use of biomass, and niche applications for solar photovoltaic electricity. ()

In 2004, the Clean Energy Future Group – which comprises renewable energy companies and the Worldwide Fund for Nature – produced a report which details how major greenhouse gas emissions reductions can be achieved. It finds that Australia can meet our energy needs and halve greenhouse gas emissions by 2040 using a range of commercially-proven fuels and technologies. The study envisages the following energy mix by 2040: natural gas provides 30%; biomass from agriculture and plantation forestry residues provides 26%; wind provides 20%; photovoltaic and solar thermal systems provide 5%; hydroelectricity provides 7%; and coal and petroleum continue to play a minor role in electricity generation. ()

There are many other studies detailing how major reductions in greenhouse gas emissions can be achieved through a combination of energy efficiency and renewable energy sources. See chapter 13 of the Clean Energy Future Group report for a survey of a number of these studies.

The extent to which renewable energy sources and energy efficiency measures can replace fossil fuels and nuclear power depends to a significant extent on investment in research and development programs. The Howard government provides fossil fuel industries with $9 billion of subsidies annually, according to a 2003 report from the UTS Institute for Sustainable Futures. By contrast, the Howard government:

• Closed the Energy Research and Development Corporation in 1997-98

• Withdrew funding from the Co-operative Research Centre for Renewable Energy in December, 2002

• Introduced the Mandatory Renewable Energy Target but set the target at a measly 2%

• Appointed a Rio Tinto employee as the government's Chief Scientist; and

• Allowed fossil fuel companies to buy their way onto the Australian Bureau of Agricultural Resource Economics panel dealing with climate change issues

On Friday the 4th of August 2006, the first SPOONERISM's BYO ART exhibition was held at Lentil As Afrika in East Brunswick. The night was a spontaneous art happening featuring photography, painting, illustration, printmaking and sculptures by over a dozen artists from Melbourne's creative fringes, including Paul Kalemba, Lucas Maddock, Michael Chu, Tim Parish, Antonia Green, Daniel Worth, Andrew Timmerman, Kia Maddock and more.

Car parks have always struck me as the saddest of places.
Returning from cinemas,
with our eyes attuned to the process of perceiving a two dimensional image,
we are struck by the presence of the third dimension,
by the real.

Everything is heightened.

‘…who threw their watches off the roof to cast the ballot for Eternity outside Time, & alarm clocks fell on their heads everyday for the next decade.’ – Allen Ginsberg.


‘The Mind is the great Slayer of the Real. Let the Disciple slay the Slayer.’ – H.P. Blavatsky




Seeing that our once small and esoteric order is becoming larger and more public with each year, I have decided to write an account disclosing its origins and founders of which I am one. Of course, in reality, the order began many ages before our births -- back with the first human to ever achieve freedom from his lower nature. That moment of initiation was the true beginning and no mortal is the founder. But what I offer here strictly relates to the modern movement: our particular push and our current task. I trace it back to one man in particular: Lars Yenin. People often express to me their suspicion about Yenin because his early life was in no way similar to his later life. It is, someone once told me, as if he were two different people.

Funnily enough, that isn’t so far from the truth, which Yenin revealed to me himself in great detail. Let me elaborate:

During the last months of his ‘old life’, Lars Yenin had a midlife crisis. Others saw it as a negative phase, but he perceived it to be a rare moment of clarity. His family and friends advised him to take some rest, and then ‘climb back on the horse’. But Yenin saw them only as distractions. His job was monotonous and was never enough to free him of his financial worries. Just when he was beginning to get on top of things, a national holiday would turn up or his car would need registering, and Yenin would have to pay more money out. His family obligations were a source of constant anxiety. He could not help notice that his hair was going grey, and his body was becoming softer and flabbier.

It came to a stage where Yenin felt that all his anxieties, his worries and desires, could be likened to tentacles -- latching onto him and pulling him deeper into the rat race that was society. They even affected his sleep. He had to pull against these emotional tentacles in order to relax enough to get to sleep, and rather than just waking up anymore, these tentacles would drag him out of the dream world and back into the rat race when morning came.

As a result of this, Yenin did not get enough sleep. Say, for one hour of sleep he missed out on in every night; that would be seven hours of sleep that he still needed at the end of a week. Returning from work, Yenin would look at homeless people on the street and he’d think to himself, “How easy it would be to stretch out next to them and just let everything slip away.”

Then everything fell apart in a day. That morning Yenin went to work and attended an important meeting. He was informed along with many others that the company could no longer afford to keep him. When Yenin arrived home he discovered a note left by his wife explaining that she’d left him and took the children with her. It had been brewing for a while, but nevertheless it shocked poor Yenin. He felt incredibly old. Then, after fretting about his misfortunes for half an hour, Yenin suddenly stopped and had a realisation: for the first time in many years he had nothing to do. It was almost freedom. He could have set about finding a new job, but he pushed that thought away and went for a walk to the bottle shop on the corner. The rest of that day Yenin sat at home and drank bourbon with his stereo turned up. When the bottle was empty he decided to catch up on some sleep.

It was only after dropping onto his bed that Yenin realised just how tired he was. He loosened his collar and belt, stretched out, and trying to swipe away the ‘tentacles’, he drifted off to sleep.
It was a deep and dreamless sleep.

Later, he drifted back into a half-conscious state and vaguely realised that he must have slept for hours. Perhaps I should get up now, he thought. There are things to do. But he was still very tired and felt more peaceful than he had ever been; so he swiped away that last ‘tentacle’ and went back to sleep. This was the day that Yenin completely let go. The hours stretched on and on. The telephone rang and people knocked on the door, but he remained asleep. The hours stretched on until they became days -- and the days stretched on. Nothing could wake him now. Yenin was cashing in on all the overdue sleep he had ever missed out on -- with interest. Although he was completely unaware, the days turned into weeks … then months … then years. And the years stretched on into centuries….

Nobody with any relation to him knew that Yenin slept for that long. This is because while he was sleeping – in fact, only two weeks into his sleep – a new Lars Yenin appeared. This Lars Yenin was fifteen years younger than the first Lars Yenin. He staggered home deliriously one night, collapsed onto the bed next to himself and fell unconscious. He was soaked from head to foot and he was bearded. But nobody knew those details either. All that his associates knew was that at around that time, when “Larsy” lost his job and his wife took the kids and left him, he became an entirely changed man.

For a start he renounced everybody he ever knew. Nobody saw him anymore. When they called, he was very short in explaining to them that he was busy. They thought, as you would, that this was because of his recent losses. When a group of his old work buddies finally decided to confront him at his home, they found he had moved out and left the house to his wife. And she had not met with him face-to-face since they broke up. For six months after that, there were occasional rumours of Yenin sightings, as his old friends called them. People said they saw him drive passed on the road, or at the airport, or in a crowd. He looked different somehow, said the rumours. Maybe he had a face-lift to make him look younger, and something was wrong with his right eye. Maybe it was not Yenin but actually his illegitimate son – that would explain why his wife left him. Either way, by then nobody really cared anymore.

All the while, the first Yenin kept sleeping.

About five years later, the second Yenin became a millionaire and moved into a country property. Whenever he moved anywhere, he would cart around the sleeping Yenin too, so that nobody would discover him and cause trouble. He had an underground room made at his property especially for the first Yenin to sleep in, safe and undisturbed. It was at that time, when the new Yenin was financially secure, that he began his work in the new psychology. The Yenin I shall tell you about here is the second one. The original Yenin is asleep during the entire discourse of all the events that follow.
The second Yenin never slept at all.

to be continued.

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