Ben Heard blogs that it is not a coincidence in the timing of the attack by the Australia Institute just five days before the release of preliminary findings of the South Australian Nuclear Fuel Cycle Royal Commission. Heard finds it astonishing to note that their attack, funded by none other than the Conservation Council of South Australia, seeks to undermine a plan based on recycling, waste reduction, large-scale clean energy production and minimization of mining for energy.
Heard blogs that the extensively researched, fully referenced, peer-reviewed Commission document offers a solution to a spent-fuel problem that environmental groups continuously complain about. It offers a pathway to the elimination of coal generation. It goes to core of environmental values of reduce, reuse and recycle, and lightening our footprint on the planet. It seems the Conservation Council of South Australia would rather undergo a self-inflicted amputation of core values than take a level-headed look at an innovative proposal using nuclear technology.
The response from The Australia Institute is, by contrast, simplistic, shallow and misguided. In many respects it seeks to deliberately mislead, misrepresent and misdirect. It demonstrates a paucity of knowledge of the industry it seeks to critique. For example, Heard does not understand why the lead image of the attack is a man standing on barrels of what can only be low-level radioactive waste, with gloves, aprons, booties, syringes and the like.
Few groups have such an established record of bias against nuclear technology as The Australia Institute. Their own work in this case is funded by the body that has taken the most prominent role in opposing expansion in the nuclear fuel cycle.
To review the subject Commission reports, see http://nuclearrc.sa.gov.au/our-reports/
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