In the news this week also is Julia Gillard’s swing to support export of Australian uranium to India. India is not a signatory to the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty and Australia has a long-standing policy of not selling uranium to nations which have not signed the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty.
India uses some uranium to produce nuclear power and some to produce nuclear weapons. Uranium from Australia for nuclear power would free up uranium from other sources for nuclear weapons production.
However India is currently well-supplied with uranium from other sources.
India has been quite hostile to Australia in recent years distressingly so for those of us who have older affections for India.
So the question we come back to is: What does this mean for us locally?
In Brisbane we live in a ‘Nuclear-Free Zone’. We even have a sign in our area announcing that.
However we do not live in a ‘Nuclear-Free World’.
In the late 1970s the world’s nuclear clock moved to five minutes to midnight and the nuclear temperature was very high. In one of the great miracles of the 20th Century the nuclear pressure cooled down and for the next three decades our memory of nuclear threat died right away.
Now the nuclear temperature of our world is rising high again.
The US is posturing towards Iran and Iran is being accused more and more of raising the nuclear weapons stakes.
If the nuclear stakes in Iran rise too high the most immediate effect we might notice is a sharp rise in petrol prices. This week I have read one prediction of a possible rise to $200 per barrel for oil because of Iran.
In the movie houses a nuclear war film is now showing.
Also this week the ABC reran two old movies both with horrific war messages.
One was the movie Paths of Glory with and the other was Dr Strangelove Or: how I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Bomb. Together they provide a powerful message of the decision-making at the top in relation to weapons and war. And Dr Strangelove gives the message of total global nuclear annihilation as the result of crazy decisions.
So in the short to medium term the question to be asking is:
How dependent on cheap petrol prices am I? Would our household be able to keep funtioning if fuel prices doubled?
The other question is what position Australia takes on uranium sales. No doubt Julia Gillard’s current change of heart on India was acting on almost direct instruction from Washington but we aren’t going to escape a nuclear world even by staying at the edges of uranium sales.
Uranium supply is quite a finite supply that could be used up in not many decades. But it can cause us problems with almost eternal duration that we cannot escape from living quietly here.