[Oz-envirolink] Review of ISA's nuclear energy balance report

[Dave Kimble]

http://www.peakoil.org.au/news/index.php?isa.review.htm 
Review of ISA's nuclear energy balance report

by Dave Kimble 
Australia's review of the nuclear industry has been published in draft form for 
feedback. The report takes its energy balance and GHG emissions data from a report 
it commissioned from ISA at University of Sydney. This article looks at the ISA report.

In June 2006 the Australian Federal Government commissioned a report "Uranium Mining, Processing and 
Nuclear Energy - Opportunities for Australia ?".  Dr Ziggy Switkowski was chosen to head the Prime Ministerial Taskforce 
conducting the review. He has a doctorate in nuclear physics, but is better known as the former chairman of Telstra, Australia's former-monopoly telephone company. 

Switkowski was appointed to the board of ANSTO (Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation)
in January 2006, so his appointment to this taskforce was seen by some as compromising 
the report's independence. In response,  Switkowski then resigned from his ANSTO board position. 
Obviously this strategy can have had no bearing on his pro-nuclear bias. 
This is a report written by the nuclear industry trying to justify its very existence. 
If they fail to make a solid case for nuclear energy now, they will soon be out of a career.

The Taskforce in turn commissioned a report from the Integrated Sustainability Analysis team (ISA)
of University of Sydney, entitled "Life-Cycle Energy Balance and Greenhouse Gas Emissions
of Nuclear Energy in Australia". This article looks at some of the information that appears in the ISA report

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