Greenpeace opinion: Nuclear club opens its doors

As Prime Minister John Howard talks up nuclear energy in Australia, the world feels a distinctly less safe place this week, after North Korea barged its way into the nuclear club.

Dr Robert Oppenheimer, Scientific Director of the Manhattan Project, predicted that the world would not be the same on hearing of the bombing of Hiroshima in 1945. But after decades of proliferation many thought the world had turned away from nuclear weapons.

For a short window throughout the post-cold war period it seemed that good sense prevailed with countries, including South Africa and the Soviet Union, dismantling their nuclear programs and renouncing nuclear weapons.

The nuclear genie was kept in the bottle, until now.

As the Western world has been preoccupied with the aftermath of September 11 and the war on terror, those with darker, less obvious agendas have been restocking their arsenals; quietly but assiduously positioning themselves against perceived enemies.

The New York Times reported last weekend that 40 countries now had the skills and technology to make nuclear weapons. And if North Korea proved anything, it was that the so-called "peaceful atom" and nuclear weapons are unavoidably linked.

It proved that the notion that nuclear power could just be a safe, clean energy source was a false and dangerous assumption. And it proved that the nuclear safeguards are hopelessly inadequate.

India and Pakistan have nuclear programs and Israel has made sure everyone knows about its nuclear capacity. Iran is hell-bent on joining the club. Where wil  it all end?

Now we hear diplomatic posturing from Japan that they too might have to look at developing nuclear weapons. After all, if all their neighbours are doing it, why should they be left out? Another step is taken on the road to world destruction.

Surely, the only way to stop this domino effect is for the world's major powers, the US, China, Britain and France, to take decisive action to curtail the spread of nuclear programs, and to quell new nuclear ambitions.

Australia should also play a role in doing so in the Asia-Pacific region.

In this climate, it is not helpful for the Howard Government to be talking up uranium sales to Asia. It is not helpful for Mr Howard to say nuclear power is the solution to climate change.

This view is refuted as nuclear industry propaganda by leading scientists, including retired Australian diplomat and former Australian ambassador to Mexico and Vietnam, Prof Richard Broinowski.

Just because Australia has about 40 per cent of the world's uranium doesn't mean we should be travelling around Asia like yellow cake salesmen, offering it to the highest bidder.

If Australia is serious about regional stability then it must see beyond narrow short-term economic self-interest. There is just too much at stake.

Mr Howard's indication that Australia would be willing to consider supplying uranium to India, despite that country not being a member of the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty, sets a dangerous precedent. Surely the blasts in North Korea prove that point.

The Prime Minister must rethink this position.

The fears of Oppenheimer and other nuclear scientists that proliferation would result in a deadly spiralling arms race across the globe is now being realised. We are on the cusp of potentially insecure times, a legacy that many will remember from the cold war days, but surely not an inheritance anyone would wish their children to be forced to revisit.

The Western world must band together now to avoid this dire scenario. When it comes to curtailing the threat of a new nuclear arms race, now is not the time for world leaders to be asleep at the wheel or preoccupied with tactical or economic self-interest.

James Norman is a casual-based Greenpeace communications officer and environmental journalist.

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