Understorey: Learning the Nuclear Lesson

Another nuclear energy inquiry, this time held by the House of Representatives Standing Committee on the Environment and Energy: for many environmental campaigners, it’s back to basics. revisiting much of the same territory involved in responding to the 2016 South Australian Nuclear Fuel Cycle Royal Commission.  That earlier report attempted to argue that nuclear power plant disasters like Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima were something Australia could positively learn from; and that governments could take these design and technical lessons into future nuclear energy policy.  However, public health professor, Tilman Ruff AM, believes the design, technical, and governance failures of Fukushim persist to this day.  Moreover, these policy failures have significantly damaging and negligent public health impacts.  The Japanese Govenment continues to conceal the scale of the health risk, and predictable harsh consequences.  Even if nothing has been learned from this, Western Australia may still not ever get nuclear power here: Shadow Minister for the Environment, Steve Thomas MLC says that our South West electricity grid simply isn’t big enough to warrant a nuclear power plant. (Image: US/Japan Survey Data; Professor Tilman Ruff, by E PO’, IAEA CC2)