January 2006

BY MIRIAM LYONS

The idea of nuclear power as a ‘clean green alternative’ to fossil fuels may be new to Prime Minister John Howard and environmentalist James Lovelock, but energy companies and industry lobby groups have been pushing the same idea for over twenty years. MIRIAM LYONS reports on one of the longest-running PR campaigns in history.

The seventies were a bad decade for nuclear power companies. The eighties were worse. In the US the cost of building a new reactor rose 500 per cent from 1970 to 1980, partly due to protests and legal challenges from a growing anti-nuclear movement. The 1979 Three Mile Island accident in Pennsylvania seriously dented public support. And the 1986 Chernobyl disaster finished off what little remained of the of the industry’s reputation — and with it, the confidence of its investors.

New nuclear power plants can take years to get approved and decades to make a profit. It’s not surprising then that the industry took a long-term approach to public relations — starting with America’s future voters.

In their book ‘Toxic Sludge is Good for You’, John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton describe a flood of business-funded education materials in US public schools in the late seventies, which portrayed nuclear energy as both safe and green. In one comic-book published by a Florida electricity company, characters promise that “nuclear plants are clean, odourless and generate electricity economically … and most important, help conserve fossil fuels!’’

Over the years the story stayed pretty much the same, but the number of groups telling it has grown. Three separate industry-funded tax-deductible education organizations started up in the early 80s to connect energy and mining companies with the US school system. The Energy Source Education Council for example, produced a million-dollar energy curriculum which is purchased by local energy companies who in turn donate it to schools. The Council claims that the curriculum has reached nearly 12 million students.

In Australia, without a domestic nuclear power industry, the task of teaching kids the virtues of atomic energy has largely been left to one man. Ian Hore-Lacy spends half his time as the Public Communications Director for the World Nuclear Association, and the other half as the manager of the Uranium Information Centre (UIC) — a small group funded by Australian uranium mining companies.

The UIC produces colour information brochures for schools with titles like “Sustainable Energy — Uranium, Electricity and Greenhouse” and “The Peaceful Atom”.

The UIC also co-publishes Hore-Lacy’s school textbook “Nuclear Electricity” with mining lobby group the Minerals Council of Australia. Although Hore-Lacy is open about the UIC’s funding sources, neither “Nuclear Electricity” nor the school brochures make reference to the fact that they are paid for by uranium mining companies.

Hore-Lacy says that there was a lot more education on nuclear power in schools twenty years ago, and that more is needed now. “We need to start to get all this sort of material in school textbooks.”

In August 2005 the federal Resources Minister Ian MacFarlane set up the Uranium Industry Framework (UIF) to help overcome obstacles to the expansion of uranium mining. Of its fifteen members, nine are industry representatives. It is anticipated that this Committee will push to relax the industry’s regulation.

A working group on ‘Information, Communication and Understanding’ has been set up under the framework to look at ways of bringing about greater community acceptance of the industry. The group will be chaired by Ron Mathews, the Australian director of Canadian uranium mining company Cameco. Carolyn Barton from the Department of Industry says that one of the reasons for appointing Mathews was Cameco’s background in schools outreach. “Schools is something that could be looked at” says Barton. “We’ve thought of it as an issue but we haven’t made any decisions yet.”

“There would be resourcing issues if we were to run a major campaign ourselves — it would more be looking at what’s already there — [for example] the Uranium Information Centre, or the Minerals Council of Australia [MCA].”

The MCA, Australia’s peak mining industry lobby group, has over 30 member companies which pay a small percentage of their annual profits as membership fees. The Council currently spends $2 million dollars a year on its National Education Program (NEP), which targets both primary and secondary students. (Council Chairman Mitch Hook estimates that in total the MCA and its members spend over $10 million each year on education.) Delivered through the state and territory minerals councils, the NEP funds the development of educational resources, salaries for a full-time education coordinator in each state’s minerals council, and part-time presenters who deliver the program in schools.

None of the national programs developed through the NEP focus on uranium, but five years ago the South Australian Council of Mines and Energy (SACOME) decided to develop a specific uranium education program on behalf of three uranium mining companies active in South Australia — BHP-Billiton, Heathgate Resources, Southern Cross Resources.

Kerrie Prescott-Prime, SACOME’s education coordinator, says that ‘UraniumSA’ gives “a balanced non-judgmental non-biased view of what happens in the industry”.

The UraniumSA program combines a website, workshops for students and teachers, a teachers’ lesson plan and student activity kit, and has reached about 8000 students and 300-400 teachers since it began.

One of the program's listed aims is that on completing it students will “be able to evaluate the different energy sources in terms of the sustainable development debate.” To help them do this, a chart is provided listing the pros and cons of different energy sources. For nuclear power, the entry under ‘wastes’ is ‘4 milligrams of radioactive spent fuel per kWh’. For solar power, the entry is ‘toxic waste from production of solar panels’. Under ‘environmental impacts’, the entry for nuclear is ‘limited mining and associated tailings storage facilities’. No mention is made, for example, of the groundwater contamination caused by the controversial in-situ acid leaching technique used at the South Australian Beverley uranium mine.

Grant Banfield, an education lecturer at Flinders University, came across UraniumSA four years ago. “I thought ‘it looks a little bit one-sided here — what’s going on?’ … Information that’s given to students should be at least accurate — if there are interests those ought to be declared.”

While the lesson plan provided to teachers by UraniumSA states that the program is funded by uranium mining companies, the student activity kit does not. Prescott-Prime says that the funding behind the program is never mentioned during the student workshops. “It’s never discussed when we’re in the class, because we don’t take a stance, we just present the information.”

Although she describes UraniumSA as “balanced”, Prescott-Prime says that this does not mean the program needs to present all sides of the story. “Teachers can access other materials…and we would encourage them to use science as a basis for that.”

But Banfield says that UraniumSA’s “scientific approach” sidelines other important issues. “There are ethical issues involved, there are political issues involved — the question of where we put nuclear waste in Australia is a political issue, not just scientific.”

“There’s nothing un-factual I suppose, it’s what’s not said.”

To fill in the blanks, Banfield decided to put together a set of ‘counter materials’ addressing the same subject from an environmental perspective. Together with another education lecturer, Banfield started ‘NuclearSA’ — modeled closely on the mining company’s program, but with a different set of biases. “The intention was to put both the UraniumSA and NuclearSA materials in the hands of teachers — what’s silent in one set of materials and what’s illuminated in the other?”

In principle Banfield says he has no problem with industry sponsored education programs. “The UraniumSA materials have a particular slant on things — that’s okay, I don’t think you can avoid that.”

“For me the issue is the amount of resources and opportunity that industry-based material has over other views.”

Starting NuclearSA was difficult, says Banfield. “A group of people were doing it in their spare time…If you put the two packages together side by side, one’s an amateur effort, the other is glossy”

“What I’d ideally like to see is that public education systems support alternative views — so that there wasn’t this competing on an unequal playing field.”

While NuclearSA had to use volunteers to develop its materials, it did get a grant from an international environment group to cover the costs of printing. Prescott-Prime says that the budget of UraniumSA itself was quite small. “Just because it’s industry doesn’t necessarily mean it’s well funded.”

“We’re putting information out there for discussion and debate”, says Prescott-Prime, and SACOME is just one voice among many. “McDonalds sponsor things in schools — electronics companies, the construction industry…there’s a whole host of things like this. Ultimately it’s up to the schools to decide.”

Spot the differences: www.uraniumsa.org/ and nuclearsa.ccsa.asn.au/