Meeting condemns nuclear cycle

Meeting condemns nuclear cycle

By Jo Williams

MELBOURNE — The Australian nuclear industry's justifications for building a new nuclear reactor at Lucas Heights in suburban Sydney are untrue, a public meeting here on March 15 heard.

Anti-nuclear campaigner and Greenpeace activist Jean McSorley told the 200 people present that the real purpose for building the reactor was to keep Australia in the nuclear game and, in particular, to allow a presence on the International Atomic Energy Agency, a body for promoting nuclear power.

The meeting, called by the Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF), Friends of the Earth (FoE) and Greenpeace, focused on the campaign against nuclear power, uranium mining and nuclear waste dumping.

ACT representative Dave Sweeney gave an overview of Australia's expanding role in the nuclear industry and FoE activist Daniel Voronoff detailed the plans for a nuclear waste dump in South Australia and the environmental dangers this presented.

FoE has called a protest action to demand Australia's withdrawal from the nuclear cycle for March 26, noon, outside the GPO, Bourke Street.

From GLW issue 398