By Maire Leadbeater
AUCKLAND — While nuclear power is on the decline worldwide, New Zealand received what might be a last, desperate swipe of the dragon's tail when Prime Minister Jim Bolger's Special Committee on Nuclear Propulsion reported back recently. Reflecting the PM's unease about the nuclear issue, the report was released quietly in the pre-Christmas silly season, and Bolger, while making the obligatory complimentary remarks about the report, hastened to add that there was "no rush" to change New Zealand's nuclear-free law, adopted with huge popular support in 1987.
As expected following statements by defence minister Warren Cooper to a United States military magazine, the report concluded that nuclear warships are safe, though just how thoroughly safe might have startled even the more staunch supporters of the government. The committee says the risk of a shipboard nuclear accident is so remote that drinking coffee is a more likely source of reduced life expectancy for New Zealanders.
It seems the committee "investigated" some aspects of the nuclear industry in great detail, blowing a large part of its $500,000 budget on an international junket that included talks with the upper echelons of the Canadian, British and US military and civilian nuclear industries as well as a visit to the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency, originally set up to promote nuclear power.
Many concerned citizens and experts boycotted the committee, which was always and obviously part of a government strategy to dump the 1987 law. Supporters of the law who did meet with the committee will find most of their representations dumped in section 13: "Myths and catch-cries".
Apparently stymied by military secrecy provisions from coming up with convincing proof of nuclear ship safety, the committee, consisting of professors Poletti (physics), Elms (engineering), Berquist (zoology), and judge Sir Edward Somers, fiddled freely with its own terms of reference. Originally charged to investigate safety, environmental and technical issues concerning nuclear-powered ships, the report mentions only US and British nuclear naval vessels and then goes on to range widely over issues concerning land-based reactors.
Dr Bob Leonard, coordinator of an alternative committee set up by concerned scientists and academics, says this is "the first study anywhere in the world to entirely dismiss the possibility of a serious accident on a nuclear-powered ship". Meanwhile, Greenpeace researchers William Arkin and Joshua Handler have documented more than 1200 accidents to the world's nuclear navies, including 261 involving nuclear-powered ships.
The report also takes a remarkably sanguine view of the Three Mile Island disaster (public health effects negligible) and even Chernobyl (about 7000 late cancer deaths attributable to the disaster). Dan nean Atomic Energy Commission and Morris Rosen of the IAEA estimate around 24,000 such deaths due to Chernobyl, while other estimates go as high as 500,000.
The report dismisses scientists such as Dr Rosalie Bertell and Dr John Goffman, who warn there is no permissible level of nuclear radiation dosage, and who call for assessment not merely of cancer deaths, but of contamination of "combined air, water and food pathways". This would challenge the entire military method of assessing radioactivity releases.
With the exception of France, Western countries are no longer ordering nuclear power reactors. A recent Observer article describes nuclear power as a "busted flush" and links many of its problems to an overly close relationship to military requirements. So we can hope that this report is a last lash from the dragon's tail.
With elections less than a year away, Jim Bolger probably wishes the committee had taken another trip around the world before releasing its report.