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Uranium Won’t Pay the Bills | newmatilda.com

Uranium Won’t Pay the Bills
New Natilda, Scott Ludlam  18 Sept 08 Colin Barnett hopes to raise billions by lifting WA’s ban on uranium mining. But this dangerous policy doesn’t even make economic sense, writes Senator Scott Ludlam
Uranium mining is frequently presented as the only solution to a range of economic power security and climate change challenges. In reality, however, the uranium industry creates far more problems than it claims to solve…………………….

Decades of deep community opposition is only one of the reasons there has never been a commercial uranium mine in Western Australia. Another is the inherent volatility in the uranium market.

Barnett’s hopes for uranium as the newest phase of WA’s quarry economy should be treated with deep suspicion by West Australians, not only for the serious environmental and social concerns this type of mining raises, but also because the economic reasons for uranium mining are far more shaky than the industry would have us believe.

The fortunes of the uranium miners — and their political supporters — now depend entirely on three factors: the long-term profitability of the global nuclear power industry; the geopolitics of multiple nuclear arms races and the potential for acts of nuclear terrorism; and the determined opposition from those in the community who stopped believing the lies of this industry a long time ago. All three of these factors are entirely out of the hands of the new Premier………………….. A recent status report of the global nuclear industry concluded that on the basis of faltering construction rates, rising costs, legal and political challenges, the ageing of the world’s current reactor fleet and the uncompromising nature of the technology, “…the number of nuclear power plants operating in the world will most likely decline over the next two decades with a rather sharper decline to be expected after 2020.”

Uranium Won’t Pay the Bills | newmatilda.com

Tags: nuclear, antinuclear, uranium, radioactive

September 22, 2008 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | business and costs