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Leslie Kemmeny on August 25 when writing in these pages advocated the establishment of schools of nuclear engineering in Australian universities. He said that because Australia is currently considering uranium mining at Kakadu, a new reactor at Lucas Heights, an international nuclear waste repository and the possible use of domestic nuclear power, our educational system needs to become involved in teaching students how to develop nuclear energy for use in Australia. He supports his argument by saying that because nuclear power is the answer to global warming it is therefore the logical energy source for our future .

His assertions are inaccurate . Let�s look at the facts.

Contrary to nuclear industry propaganda, atomic power adds considerably to the global production of carbon dioxide because large amounts of fossil fuel are necessary to enrich the uranium for use in reactors. For example, during the 1970s, the US used seven one thousand megawatt coal fired plants for this purpose . There can be no doubt: uranium enrichment is extraordinarily energy consuming. But that�s not all: fossil fuel is also used to mine, mill and transport the uranium; to build the nuclear reactor itself; to cool the fissioning uranium core and the spent fuel; and to transport and store the radioactive waste. Add all the resultant CO2 from these activities to that produced by the uranium enrichment process and you have an industry adding significantly to global warning, not reducing it.

Dr Kemeny is closer to the truth when he states that � Australia is the top coal exporter and because of global warming needs to make a paradigm shift in energy policy.� The trouble is he is spruiking for exactly the wrong paradigm. Solar energy is what a clever country � and one bathed in sunlight � should be concentrating on for we are in a perfect position to harness and develop the sun�s power both for domestic consumption and for export to an energy hungry world. Indeed Australian scientists and researchers are world leaders at the forefront of innovative solar technology; the irony is that they are doing this work in a country where their efforts are largely ignored.

I therefore agree with Dr Kemeny that �projects comparing the reliability, safety, economics and societal impacts of nuclear, hydrocarbon and renewable energy sources be undertaken�. These projects are of the utmost importance because the two main forms of energy production that the world is currently choosing -- fossil and nuclear -- are threatening the very future of many species. But what�s also needed is a better level of education at the secondary and tertiary levels about societal and environmental risks and benefits of all forms of electricity production for without that, informed critical thinking about these issues will continue to be an impossibility.

SECONDARY STUDENTS


I would begin at high school level with mandatory curricula which would examine the biological and ecological risks and benefits of hydrocarbon, nuclear and alternative energy production. Children at this age are as capable of assessing these comparative risks as they are of solving algebraic equations or writing critical essays on the Romantic poets.

They would learn for example that the nuclear fuel cycle which Dr Kemeny advocates generates massive quantities of mutagenic radioactive isotopes when the uranium atom is fissioned. Some of these elements are toxic for periods of 500,000 years or longer and they all concentrate by orders of magnitude in the food chain. They would also learn, as a recent Four Corners program documented , that the fossil fuel cycle is inducing global warming at a rapid rate with potentially disastrous medical and ecological consequences.

TERTIARY STUDENTS
A broad-based education in science and the scientific method should be required for all university students regardless of their area of concentration. Poets and philosophers and historians and musicians need to know enough science � including the science of energy production � to be capable of the informed critical thinking that all citizens must exercise in a modern democracy.

Those embarked on professional education will need more specific instruction. For instance medical schools in this country do not have in their curricula specific courses devoted to the biomedical consequences of the nuclear fuel cycle, even though Australia is on the verge of becoming heavily nuclearised. Any accident involving the transportation of radioactive waste or a criticality accident like the recent Tokaimura event in Japan would immediately involve the medical profession which at present is woefully ill-prepared to deal with such an eventuality. Indeed if South Australia agrees to become the recipient of the radioactive waste from the Lucas Heights reactor and from US and British nuclear power plants, the medical profession will inevitably have to cope with the mutagenic and carcinogenic consequences of this political decision. The learning curve is steep to put it mildly.

POLITICIANS
One of the gravest problems we face as a nation is that political decisions with profound medical and ecological consequences are being made by elected officials who are scientifically illiterate. David Suzuki did a poll of federal Canadian MPs and found that less than 3% were so educated. It is hard to imagine that Australian politicians would rank any higher. Yet it is imperative that our political representatives be well versed in science and biology for otherwise they are at the mercy of lobbyists from the multinational corporations for whom questions of public health are of little consequence in the pursuit of profit.

Dr. Kemeny ended his article with a call for greater emphasis on nuclear energy based on �informed realism and not on the basis of urban myth.� One wonders whether the people of Tokaimura think what has happened to them is an �urban myth.�