Lang Hancock, “Nuclear fact and fallacy,”
The Australian, December 13, 1976, p. 6, as a letter to the editor.

If ever a politician condemned himself out of his own mouth it was Mr Chipp when, in writing for your Forum (3/12), he openly admitted to reading the Fox report four times.

I would suggest to Mr Chipp that as his time is paid for by the electorate it would be better spent in reading and rejecting some of the “regulation” and “control” bills that are rushed headlong, unread, through Parliament. Apparently socialist controls, regulations, planning and moratoriums are close to his, and his cohort Doc Cairns’ heart, which is contrary to the platform on which he was elected.

The Fox report has no backing in fact: it is 27 years out of date. Its members are without experience in the fields in which Mr Chipp quotes them as experts.

They obviously are not conversant with the safe methods known to science of either storing or recycling plutonium to be used as a cheap source of power in the very near future in a power-hungry world. Mankind will have a desperate need of it. It is valuable material, not waste.

The Fox committee knows nothing of the future market for uranium. They have no practical experience of selling uranium. They apparently know nothing of the development of breeder reactors which will make production of uranium a drug in the market unless Australia cashes in on it now. They have no knowledge of the vulnerability of Australia in matters of defence if we are to be without nuclear arms.

They have had no experience in the field of mining and are apparently not prepared to take into account the costly economic effect of delays and moratoriums in establishing a major mine. For instance, the Ranger orebody could have been functioning as an economic unit of Australia for $60 million capital outlay, whereas the present estimate is approximately $250 million of risk capital requirement. This is rising almost daily due to our internal inflation rate: a problem which Mr Chipp could be more gainfully employed tacking. Mr Chipp, like the Fox report, obviously knows nothing of these matters.

Instead of wasting his time reading the Fox report four times Mr Chipp owes it to his constituents to act on the Teller committee’s report. Dr Teller’s (father of the hydrogen bomb) expert advice was responsible for the United States and some 30 or 40 other nations going nuclear over the past quarter of a century, during which time the generation of power by nuclear means has proven by actual performance to be the safest, cleanest and cheapest power yet devised by man.

Surely Mr Chipp would be better occupied finding out how far the communists have infiltrated the ecology movement in Australia: he obviously understands nothing of the fact that the world’s civilisation is based on mining, because everything comes from the earth. This is a fact well known the communists, who realise, as Mr Chipp obviously does not, that if they can disrupt mining in Australia they can bring this country to its knees.

If Mr Chipp and his socialist friends wish to deny Australia this great boom of nuclear technology with its attendant hope of the future and thus leave our country defenceless against communist takeover, and if Mr Chipp wishes to condemn Australians to a future which has no power when oil runs out, so that the next generation of Australians are to be left to freeze in the dark, then it is high time that the Liberal Party’s system of electing candidates be reorganised so that only free-enterprise candidates are selected.

LANG HANCOCK
Dalkeith, WA

*****
Lang Hancock, “Being practical over oil alternatives,”
The Australian, December 27, 1976, p. 6, as a letter to the editor.

If any doubting person needs further evidence of the integration of the communist and ecology movements, then the alacrity with which Mr Mundey rushed into print to defend them (17/12) should dispel any doubts on that score. This championing of unbridled conservation by a man who quite openly admits to being a “card-carrying communist” can mean only one thing for Australia and that is the destruction of our society, per medium of the quiet revolution as expounded by Dr Cairns.

In mentioning his globe-trotting, Mr Mundey has obviously avoided those countries where millions are starving because of lack of industry and power, for these are the countries in which reside approximately one thousand million people who suffer either from malnutrition or death through starvation each year.

Each year the world’s population is expanding. 4000 million today, 8000 million in the immediate future, 12,000 million in the years to come, with each expansion gobbling up more and more oil because each population expansion needs more and more power to sustain life. Simultaneously with this population expansion comes a shrinking of the reserves of oil.

The only practical alternative sources of energy would be a vast and almost incalculable expansion of coal-mining at an ever-increasing power cost (which the starving millions cannot afford) or cheap, clean, safe nuclear power. As things stand, mankind can take comfort in the knowledge that we will be able to satisfy more than half the world’s needs of energy by the end of the century by using nuclear power. Any untoward cost in the building of nuclear power plants and the consequent hardships imposed on the people of this earth will be directly attributable to the subversive, disruptive activities of the econuts.

Econuts, academics, communists and the like theorise about solar and tidal power. These have been around long before nuclear power was ever though of but, sad to relate, no one has been able to develop them as yet on a commercial basis. If civilisation can be frightened into believing that the world’s energy needs can be supplied from such a theoretical source in the immediate future, then I am afraid not thousands but millions of people will not only starve to death but freeze in the dark in the process.

If Mr Mundey and the ecologists have any regard for human well-being and human suffering they would emphasise that it should be the duty of every section of the media, of every institution of learning, of every government department, of every author of textbooks to print the following facts:

(1) Men were mining ores containing radioactive matter and uranium for hundreds of years before uranium was discovered.

(2) Not a single member of the public has ever been hurt, let alone killed, as a result of nuclear power station operations around the world, even though the total operating time of such stations now exceeds the equivalent of 2000 years. (See Professor N. Rasmussen & Associates study.)

(3) Nuclear power stations, both the present types and the breeder stations of the future, cannot explode like atom bombs. It is impossible.

(4) Australia desperately needs an alternative energy source if we are to remain in being, because at the present rate of exploration our known oil reserves will cut out in 10 years. Fifteen holes drilled in Australia last year compares with 3000 in Canada, for instance. Nuclear energy is at present the only proven commercial alternative source to oil and coal.

(5) By the turn of the century more than half the world’s power will be generated by nuclear means. If we used coal to generate this extra power requirement, it would cause accidents in mining and transporting coals from which operations 31,000 deaths would occur, with three-quarters of a million injured.

(6) Coal-fired stations discharge more radioactive matter into the atmosphere than do nuclear stations.

(7) The safety aspect of the nuclear debate was won 27 years ago. Since then 30 of the world’s most advanced nations have elected to go nuclear.

Socialist, communist, capitalist, we all want clean air and we all want clean water. The best way to achieve this is for Australia to enter the nuclear age, but such is the miseducation of the public — (and particularly the young folk) — who are being brain-washed by a socialist education system, that every notoriety-seeking mountebank who is capable of constructive achievement and thus earning public admiration is given a prominent hearing in academic circles and the media. Whereas genuine scientists, fully grounded in all phases of nuclear development, who speak with authority gained from actual experience, are seldom if ever quoted because there is no essential news value in printing the fact that nuclear power is the safest type of commercial power yet devised by man.

Because of its lack of oil and water resources and shrinking employment opportunities, Australia needs to enter the nuclear age more desperately than most other countries of the civilised world; a world whose whole civilisation is based fundamentally on mining. Any person or movement which aims to disrupt mining will (if successful) have initiated a chain reaction, the effect of which will cause untold suffering to mankind.

LANG HANCOCK
Dalkeith, WA