Stop uranium with independent senate

The many people who attended Dr. Caldicott's talk at the Pearl Beach Memorial Hall on Sunday, August 12, were no doubt impressed with her passionate arguments that nuclear energy is not the answer to combat global warming and climate change.

Her explanation of the several serious health dangers of uranium mining was convincing.

The problems with exports and enrichment, as well as the staggering investment required for building new generation nuclear reactors, not to mention the cost of dismantling them, should be avoided.

Such enormous investments are better used for the development of various alternative forms of sustainable energy, Dr. Caldicott said.

In this respect, a nation like Portugal is showing the way.

That country, which has neither oil, nor coal or uranium ore has taken the lead in developing solar energy devices, wind power and wave power, as a recent SBS program demonstrated.

It was revealed that the Halliburton-financed Darwin-Alice Springs railway would now be used by the British transport company SERCO that specialises in the transport of radioactive waste.

This sinister development was not well known but seemed to provide a foretaste of things to come for a geologically-unstable Australia.

Australia has 40% of the world's known reserves of uranium ore and is therefore a key player in what is to happen.

In a highly insecure, energy-hungry world, this provides an awesome responsibility on Australian Governments as well as on the Australian people.

Several of the audience asked "What can we do?" and Dr Caldicott suggested they join the People for a Nuclear Free Australia group.

However, she also strongly advised her audience to vote for anti-uranium parties and Independents, especially in the Senate, in the forthcoming election, so that Governments can be stopped by an independent senate.

A senate that is a rubber stamp for the Government, any Government, does not serve Australia well at all.

The Senate can be a powerful body that could effectively block the development of the 25 nuclear plants the Howard government has in mind, as well as the massive exports the ALP now favours, but only if a large number of committed anti-nuclear senators have the balance of power.

The convenors of the meeting thanked the speaker and presented her with an anthology by Central Coast poets.

Klaas Woldring Pearl Beach