Stay away from electricity poles!

By Jim Green

More than 100 people working in the nuclear industry, and about eight anti-nuclear activists, attended a two-day conference hosted by the Australian Nuclear Association (ANA) in Canberra on October 27-28.

The conference theme was the "nuclear renaissance" in Australia, but the conference was more like a wake. All participants received a tub of maple syrup from the builders of Maple nuclear reactors, but Advanced Hair vouchers might have been more appropriate giveaways to participants, whose average age appeared to be over 50.

Several speakers complained about the closure of almost all nuclear engineering and physics courses in Australian universities. Twenty-eight speakers discussed their pet projects.

Most of the talks were incomprehensible and/or extremely boring. One speaker claimed that more people have died from climbing electricity poles in Australia than the nuclear industry has killed worldwide.

Ian Hore-Lacey from the industry-funded Uranium Information Centre gave a pseudo-intellectual spray contrasting the "rational, fact-based" paradigm of the nuclear industry and the "subjective, disconnected from logic and reality" paradigm of anti-nuclear activists.

Frank Devine, the right-wing journalist from the Australian newspaper, gave a rant about press reporting of nuclear issues and the Luddite zombies, frauds and zealots in the anti-nuclear movement. Undoubtedly the highlight of the conference was seeing Devine fall off the stage after giving his talk.

Anti-nuclear campaigners protested outside the conference. They were joined by Nuclear Freeways' mock nuclear waste container, which is now travelling through sections of the proposed route for nuclear waste transport from the Lucas Heights reactor in Sydney to the Billa Kalina region of South Australia, the site of a proposed nuclear waste dump.

On October 28, Greenpeace hosted a public meeting at the Canberra Workers' Club to discuss nuclear waste issues. The meeting, attended by about 70 people, was addressed by three anti-nuclear activists and a scientist from the Lucas Heights nuclear plant.

From GLW issue 384