When it comes to generating power, environmentalists have historically been staunchly anti-nuclear. However, a new movement has embraced new nuclear power technology as the answer to climate change. Anna Watanabe investigates the Environmentalists for Nuclear party, a new minor party waiting to join Australia’s political system.

Goronwy Price is a former adventurer, turned software designer, and is the candidate-to-be for Environmentalists for Nuclear Power Australia (EFN), an umbrella group of the original organization founded in France.

Price and the EFN plan to register as a federal political party when their membership exceeds 500 people.

Reclining on a pile of folded laundry at the head of his couch, using his free hand to emphasise just about everything he says, Price looks as though he’d be more at home in the Roman senate than as the leader of a fringe environmental group.

While gaining members has been a slow process, Price says that there is a surprisingly large online pro-nuclear community and that support for nuclear power in Australia is growing.

“Some people look as though I’m spruiking Bubonic Plague and you get some with a very hostile reaction but…I think that if it ever got put to a referendum there would be surprisingly large numbers supporting it,” Price says.

Although Price admits that the group’s aims of building 10 nuclear power stations by 2025 is “very optimistic”, he insists that it is the popularity and pressure of the organization which makes the difference, not their policies.

“It shows that more people want nuclear . . . [When] we started EFN the whole purpose was to get away from a left-right [political] divide. The aim is to support environmental action but, unlike the Greens, from an economically right side.”

Price’s political leanings have evolved dramatically over the course of his life.

Expelled from high school for a “far-left rebellion”, Price gradually moved further right as he became a small business owner.

Now, he says he’s a “little ‘l’ Liberal, but only economically”.

Before settling down into life in suburbia with his wife and daughter, Price ran an adventure tour company and was the first European to take a group into Tibet and climb the North Face of Everest.

“That’s what inspired an interest in the environment [and] . . . an interest in saving it, kind of thing.”

“I think ours is the worst in the world [Australia’s policy towards climate change] and I don’t think the change in government has made any change at all. It’s extremely depressing, you know.”

“In some ways more so now, because there was an expectation after the last election that we would be doing more.”

But the vast majority of Australia’s Green movement remains decidedly anti-nuclear.

It’s a social mindset that Price finds both frustrating and a little embarrassing.

But it seems that environmentalists feel much the same way about the EFN, although their official responses are varied.

There is the weighted and slightly patronizing reaction from Scott Ludlam, Greens Senator and spokesperson for nuclear issues.

“I think its quite sad that we have a political party of people, who care about the environment, who are supporting nuclear.”

However, Price had an answer ready.

“In actual fact because nuclear is so effective, they’re [the Greens] starting out with the right intentions but they’re actually harming the solution by this [anti-nuclear] advocacy.”

“For most people nuclear is Chernobyl, you know, and the Greens, I think, reinforce that prejudice and that stereotype and don’t look beyond that.”

Dr. Mark Diesendorf, author and deputy director of the Institute of Environmental Studies, UNSW says that he has a more conspiratorial objection to pro-nuclear environmentalism.

“Just like there is big money behind climate change deniers, from the coal industry…there has to be big money behind these so called environmentalists for nuclear power.”

This just makes Price laugh.

“It’s a common thing. People, people just- I’d love to get some support from the uranium industry. But unfortunately we’ve had hardly any financial support.”

An equally overlooked and underfunded pro-nuclear environmentalist is Tom Blees, President of the Science Council for Global Initiatives (SCGI), an international organization dedicated to creating a green but energy rich world.

Like Price, Blees comes from an unlikely background.

The author, environmentalist and honorary doctor spent twenty years captaining a seasonal fishing trawler.

Blees and the SCGI are working to build the first commercially-used Integral Fast Reactor (IFR) in Russia by 2015.

The IFR is a carbon-neutral reactor which recycles 99% of nuclear waste to generate fuel. That includes the stockpiles of nuclear waste we have at the moment.

“You would have the perfect anti-Cold War machine because you could dump nuclear warheads into one end it, and get electricity out of the other. And you would have the US and Russia working on this fantastic technology,” Blees says.

Bless explains that by 2035 there could be so many of these next-generation nuclear reactors online that “you could do away with uranium mining completely.”

What’s more, the IFR removes the need to create radioactive waste dumping sites – Australia’s primary opposition to “going nuclear”.

It’s a controversial piece of technology as the waste recycling process separates plutonium, making the reactor a possible nuclear-proliferation risk.

“The Tom Blees’ and the Jim Hansens are incredibly naïve . . . there is no guarantee that governments will not separate plutonium [for nuclear weapons],” says Diesendorf.

But Bless believes that if Australia were to act now, it could be one of the first countries to adopt IFR technology on a commercial scale.

“Ironically, Australia isn’t going to be ready to build a nuclear reactor for the next 5 years. But in the next 5 years we could have these up and running…and then Australia could go straight to Generation 4 [nuclear power] and then never mine uranium for their own use. “

Dr. Barry Brook, University of Adelaide, is Australia’s leading campaigner for IFR technology. A devoted blogger, Barry debates with fellow scientists from across the world about the IFR and nuclear technology.

He says that the Australian government’s opposition to nuclear power is based on the public’s fear and ignorance of current technology.

“Well I think there are two sides to how Australian nuclear is viewed in Australian politics. One side is what many of the politicians say amongst themselves, and I would include people like the Energy Minister Martin Ferguson, who has historically supported nuclear power. But [the other side is] once Labor got government, and it wasn’t Labor policy to talk about nuclear, he clammed up about it,” Dr Brook says.

“At the moment the mood seems to be that Australians aren’t open to having anything in their backyard. Whether it be a nuclear reactor or a wind turbine or a coal fired power station of a chemical plant or whatever.”

Traditional environmentalists, including Scott Ludlam and Mark Diesendorf argue that the IFR nuclear reactor “doesn’t exist” and technically they are correct.

Tom Blees and the SCGI are working with the Russian Government to build the first commercially used reactor.

But the technology is not currently being used.

However, as Goronwy Price points out, many renewable technologies suggested by these environmentalists are just as ‘non-existant’ on a commercial scale as the IFR.

“A lot of people advocating renewables always say well “this is coming,” “we’ll have this when.” They’re always arguing on the basis of future technologies which aren’t proven yet.”

“People who advocate renewables think that we [the EFN] have something against renewables, well of course we don’t. If you think you can do it with renewables…and it stacks up then of course you should use them, you know. But the main argument is: Don’t exclude the thing that has been shown to be so effective,” Price says.

But despite his grandiose plans to become a politician, Goronwy is realistic about where he and the EFN stand.

“If one of the major parties advocated it, I’d happily close the doors. We’re no longer needed, sort of thing. At the moment we’re really a pressure group for that single issue so if that’s achieved it’s great. “

“I don’t think it’s [the EFN] a total lost cause, put it that way. And I don’t think climate change will go away as an issue. People seemed to have turned it off as the main issue, but..the problem’s not going to go away so eventually the world’s going to have to get serious about the issue. So the earlier the better.”
And with an election looming on the horizon, one can only wonder just how many double takes there could be when voters read “Environmentalists for Nuclear” on their ballot paper.

Follow Reportage Online’s investigation into other Australian minor parties.