Jeffrey Lantis Probes Australia's Nuclear Dilemma in Journal Article

Piece by associate professor of political science appears in April 2008 issue of Arms Control Today

Jeffrey Lantis

WOOSTER, Ohio - Conversations about nuclear proliferation rarely, if ever, mention the Commonwealth of Australia, but the pacifist nation from the land down under currently finds itself at the crossroads of a very important decision, according to an article in Arms Control Today written by Jeffrey Lantis, associate professor of political science at The College of Wooster.

Lantis, who recently spent a semester in Australia as a Fulbright Senior Scholar to conduct research for a book on international treaty ratification, became intrigued by the country's ongoing nuclear policy debate. The discussion centers on whether Australia should remain a bastion of nuclear non-proliferation or export its reserves of uranium - the world's largest - for regional security and economic gains.

An expert on international relations, foreign policy analysis, and international security, Lantis' status as a Fulbright Scholar afforded him access to top officials who were advising Australia's Prime Minister John Howard on nuclear energy, including the country's foremost nuclear physicist, Dr. George Dracoulis, and the head of the Prime Minister's Taskforce on Nuclear Energy, Dr. Ziggy Switkowski.

In the article, Lantis provides a concise summary of Australia's nuclear history, which began in 1944 when the government mined uranium that was used in the Manhattan Project to develop the first nuclear bomb during World War II. After the war, larger deposits of uranium were discovered, mined, and exported to the United States and United Kingdom. The country's involvement in nuclear weapons development increased throughout the 1950s and 1960s as regional security concerns deepened, especially after China conducted its first nuclear test in 1964. In the late 1960s Australia came very close to developing nuclear reactors, expanding uranium exports, and acquiring nuclear weapons when then Prime Minister John Gorton advanced a plan to develop a large nuclear reactor and negotiated a secret deal with France to construct a uranium-enrichment plant. None of these plans came to fruition, however, as the Labor Party took over in the early 1970s.

For the next 30 years the party cultivated a legacy that influenced government action even after Labor party's defeat in 1996. "Australia remained an active supporter of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, the indefinite extension of the Non-proliferation Treaty, and the International Court of Justice ruling that declared the use of nuclear weapons illegal in cases other than national self-defense," writes Lantis.

Patterns have again changed in the past decade, however, and Australia now faces a real dilemma: Surveys and national opinion polls conducted in 2006 are finding that there is latent support for nuclear power as a response to climate change. Nuclear energy production can be effectively carbon-free and relatively cheap, yet the whole idea of nuclear power is an anathema to most environmentalists. Lantis says, "If Australia wants to serve as a primary source of minerals and natural resources - which it does - and if it wants to build ties with China and India - which it does - then the government must find a way to balance its concerns about the environment with trade policy." He goes on to point out there are also strong economic and energy security incentives for Australia "to change course and participate more fully in the recent renaissance of interest in nuclear energy."

As recently as 2007 there were signs that the government was looking for a way to sell uranium to Russia, China, India, and others. However there are significant obstacles to Australia taking a greater role in the global supply chain. Exporting to Russia, a country with ties to controversial regimes, such as Iran and Syria, could draw Australia into what Lantis calls "a web of proliferation crises." Exporting to China, with its controversial human rights record, also raises important policy questions. Lantis says that exporting to India, a Nonproliferation Treaty non-signatory, "would be interpreted as the ultimate double standard in the Labor government's foreign policy profile." Other obstacles include the logistics of storing nuclear waste and a possible regional energy or arms race if Australia moves towards development of uranium-enrichment.

"I have always viewed the nuclear energy question - in the United States or abroad - as one closely interconnected with nuclear weapons proliferation," says Lantis. "I view even tentative steps by some countries toward energy capability with a suspicious eye."

Article written by Laura McHugh