France is obviously not paying a fair price for their uranium reserves.
Uranium Exports: Altruism or Greed
"The Blakeney government argues that Saskatchewan should not ban uranium exports because it would be immoral to deny energy resources to the developing nations. In the Premier's words, "to reduce the energy available to the world is to confine the poorest nations; to untold misery and privation."
This position implies that the sale of nuclear technologies and fuels can improve the quality of life in third world nations. It also suggests that Saskatchewan is exporting uranium out of devotion to the welfare of the world's poor and that a ban on exports would thus be a purely selfish act. Neither of these claims is founded.
The government's argument that an export ban would be immoral is entirely self-serving. It wishes to export uranium because it stands to capture massive royalties and profits from so doing. The NDP is so optimistic about uranium's profit potential that it has invested an estimated $75 million in exploration and development to date. Moreover, the government reserves itself the right to full partnership in all uranium mine development and is thus a major force in the industry itself (the value of its interest in the Key Lake Mine alone was recently estimated at $160 million). Finally, in addition to the profits it will make as a partner, there are the many hundreds of millions of dollars in royalties it stands to receive as owner of the resource.
Energy Need or Corporate Greed?
The sale of energy resources to the world's poor is thus an extremely lucrative business for the Saskatchewan government. as it is for Amok, Uranerz and the state's other multinational partners. It is not surprising that the NDP doesn't care to discuss the moral credentials of its fellow uranium dealers, since the majority profit from grossly exploitative relationships with the third world.
Amok for example, is 30 percent owned by the Commissariat de I'Energie Atornique (CEA), the French government corporation in charge of nuclear weapons development. CEA is a major participant in Frarnatorne, an export consortium building racist South Africa's first full scale power reactors. Thus Saskatchewan is linked with a corporation that is helping consolidate a regime based on overt repression of the local African population.
French and German corporations active in Saskatchewan have been instrumental in developing the huge Rossing uranium deposit in Namibia, a territory illegally occupied by South Africa. UrangeselIschaft, partially owned by the West German government, is among that group; one of its parent firms, Steag Ag, secretly transferred uranium enrichment technology to South Africa to provide it with the means to produce nuclear weapons.
Brinex is another firm exploring for uranium here. Its parent company is Rio Tinto Zinc, a British multinational which is probably the world's's largest uranium supplier. Rio Tinto is the major shareholder - and South Africa's trusted agent - in the Rossing project.
The participation of these corporations in Namibia contravenes United Nations' sanctions to which Canada is a party and attacks the real interests of the local people. It demonstrates clearly that the multinationals are in hot pursuit of profits - a motivation that has nothing to do with aiding the third world - and are thus unlikely agents for the Premier's moral crusade.
The Exploitation of Development
The claim that nuclear power can trigger third world development and improve the quality of life there is fallacious. David W. Rogers, a nuclear physicist and an executive member of Oxfam-Canada, researched the matter and concluded that "nuclear energy is not an economic miracle which will provide cheap power for third world countries."
Since the case for uranium export rests directly on the claim that it promotes development. it is essential to note that people with direct experience in the third world reject it categorically. For example, Rogers indicates that to achieve efficiency in output nuclear reactors must feed into electrical grids of a minimum size. However, he concludes that generally these "minimum requirements are not met in developing countries." A fact which should "immediately rule most countries out of the nuclear game."
Rogers also stresses that nuclear power is the worst possible investment choice a developing country can make. Nuclear reactors represent "the extreme of today's capital intensive industries" and "in countries in which capital is scarce and labor is abundant but poorly trained, the nuclear option represents a gross misallocation of resources."
Investment in nuclear power worsens the lot of the 60 to 90 percent of third world residents who live outside of the urban centers. It not only does not aid their quest for self sufficiency, but it also compounds their dependency by denying there access to needed capital resources. As a result it deepens the division between their needs and those of the urban ruling class. And while the benefits of nuclear power accumulate in the cities, the costs are borne by the entire population through increased taxes and galloping inflation.
Rogers concludes that these dynamics stand to increase "the degree of undemocratic social control exerted in developing countries" and that in general reactors "tend to reinforce the repressive nature of a society". The choice of a technology which denies the aspirations of the majority can only aggravate tensions and in turn increase the "likelihood of repression" by the ruling clique.
Fleecing the Poor
Given that nuclear power is not in the interests of third world peoples. how are we to understand the thrust towards increased exports? As in the case of Saskatchewan uranium. the answer lies with the dollars to be made on the deals.
The foreign sales focus of western suppliers is due to the dampening effect of cost inflation and public opposition on reactor orders in domestic markets. Export markets are increasingly looked to as the means to economic survival for nuclear manufacturers. German, French, Canadian and American companies and governments are "competing fiercely for export sales, especially in developing countries with authoritarian regimes that need not worry about public opposition to nuclear power plants."
Developing nations find themselves besieged by nuclear salesmen flogging their reactor designs and offering 'sweeteners' like fuel reprocessing plants. subsidized loans and outright bribes (Argentina, Korea) in the scramble to fill their order books.
Local elites are receptive to the sales pitch, having been raised to see their countries as technologically underdeveloped to believe that control of avant-garde products will enhance, their status and power. They have been encouraged to view atomic energy as "the ultimate symbol of progress."
There are other, more sinister, attractions. Reactors and fuel enrichment or reprocessing plants have important applications in the development of weaponry. Many regimes - like Argentina, Brazil, Pakistan, India. Israel, Taiwan. South Korea and South Africa - are interested in developing nuclear weapons so as to bolster their military punch in the surrounding regions.
Opposing the Profits Morality
Nuclear sales continue because they spell profits to the supplier nations. Reactor orders secure the transfer of desperately needed development capital to the high-technology industries of the western world.
The motivation for these deals is totally opportunistic. Foreign sales are a bridge to dominance in the world nuclear market the supplier nations are busy building. Chancellor Schmidt of West Germany makes no bones about his attitude: "roughly speaking it's true to say that we're exporting nuclear reactors to any country which wants to buy one. In Germany, it's a future industry and it, at present, does employ about 100,000 people, skilled labor.
Schmidt's candor is preferable to Blakeney's concocted morality about aiding the poor. It shows that financial gain is the root cause of nuclear exports. and indicates only too clearly arguments are added to sugar the pill for the home audience.
The real immorality lies with those prepared to deal phoney technological fixes to the world's poor just because they see a chance to pull profits from it. Saskatchewan can halt this development on its home ground by imposing a ban on uranium mining. We have the power to cut nuclear export at the roots, a genuinely unselfish act that would earn us the lasting respect of the world community and provide others with a positive example to follow."
This was the first in a series of pamphlets produced by the research committee of the Regina Group for a Non-Nuclear Society. This pamphlet was written and published in 1981 by David Cubberly
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