Anti-nuclear chain reaction in the Pacific

Even before the French decision to resume nuclear tests in the Pacific, the region has been allergic to nukes. Johanna Son reports.

MANILA: No nuke is a good nuke. That is the message from the Asia-Pacific to bomb testers, reactor contractors, plutonium shippers and radioactive waste dumpers.

The recent wave of angry protests sweeping the Asia-Pacific was set off by France's decision to resume nuclear tests, but the region has been allergic to radioactivity of any kind. After all, it is the only region where nuclear bombs have used in war.

For groups like the No Nukes Asia Forum, which meets in Taipei in September, nuclear testing is but one concern. They warn of the descent into Asia of nuclear firms, which hope to build here at a time when construction has virtually halted in the North.

"The lack of orders for new reactors in North America and Western Europe has forced the industry to look elsewhere for a substitute market -- that market is Asia," Greenpeace International also said a primer on the nuclear offensive in Asia.

Activists take comfort in the growing awareness of anti- nuclear issues in the Asia-Pacific as more nations in the region encounter problems linked to nuclear technology, such as environment and health hazards of nuclear testing and nuclear power, the issue of accidents and safe waste disposal.

Various campaigns now run the gamut from anti-nuclear testing of weapons to construction of nuclear power plants to reprocessing of radioactive waste and its shipment on the high seas.

"There have been a lot of developments in the nuclear situation, both in nuclear energy and nuclear weapons, that have direct bearing on Asia-Pacific security," says Corazon Fabros, secretary general of the Nuclear-Free Philippines Coalition.

"This has been matched with growing organizing efforts by anti-nuclear activists," she says, adding that moves are underway to link East Asian and South Pacific concerns into a regional network.

Then in June, France announced it would carry out eight final nuclear tests at Mururoa atoll in the South Pacific, starting in September, before winding up its testing program.

That decision prompted Australia, New Zealand and most of the South Pacific to close ranks, even as Paris sent officials on damage-control trips amid political fallout from the decision.

New Zealand, which bans nuclear ships from its ports, froze defense cooperation with France. French arms sales to the South Pacific are now in limbo and moves are afoot to exclude France from the South Pacific Forum.

"From our side of the world, the messages will have to be loud and clear; eight more tests are eight too many," said the Nuclear Free and Independent Pacific, an alliance of anti-nuclear groups in the region.

Protests have also swept through East Asia, where local movements have been working against Japan's plutonium policy and lobbying governments to shun nuclear power generation. In May, China detonated a nuclear device in an underground test.

Indications are that the protests against the planned French nuclear tests have only provided more momentum for anti-nuclear campaigns in the region.

This is good news for groups including media-savvy Greenpeace, which quotes Australian nuclear expert John Roland as saying that as of 1993, 26 of the 53 nuclear reactors being build in the world are in South-east and eastern Asia.

Japan gets one-third of its power from 45 nuclear plants and plans 35 more by the year 2000. South Korea, China and Taiwan also plan to expand nuclear power supplies. Indonesian plans to build nuclear plants has run into opposition from greens. The Philippines has never used its lone nuclear plant, but activists say the government still wants to build reactors.

South Korea is stepping up exports of nuclear power plants 20 years after it learned the technology from the West. With a reputation for nuclear expertise, it is eying contracts in China where up to 30 nuclear plants are planned by the year 2010.

In contrast, the United States has canceled all reactor orders over the past 20 years and many European nations have suspended new construction or scuttled plans after the 1986 Chernobyl accident.

But just as Western countries began facing problems toward the end of their nuclear plants' lifespans, the same problem may well occur in Asia's younger plants. Activists say the region should learn from richer nations' experiences.

In April, officials detected leakage of radioactive water from the Tarapur nuclear plant, India's first nuclear plant built in 1969. The country runs eight other nuclear plants. Medical experts in the area say the leak could be harmful to health, but nuclear officials say it was a very minor mishap.

In Taiwan last year, thousands joined rallies against the construction of nuclear plant No.4 at Yen Liao. The parliament approved US$4.5 billion for the project anyway.

"Although we still are far away from our final goal, our efforts do win more support from our people," Shih Shin Min of the Taiwan Environmental Protection Union said.

In addition. the Union reported finding "gruesomely deformed" fish near Taiwan's nuclear plant No.2. It is also protesting the use of Orchid Island, home of the native Yami people, as a nuclear waste dumpsite since 1974.

Asia-Pacific nations also worry about being on the path of ships ferrying plutonium and nuclear waste to Japan from France or Britain, where Tokyo's used nuclear fuel is reprocessed because of its need for new fuel and problems with waste storage.

Reprocessing allows plutonium to be extracted and stockpiled by Japan for use in its Monju fast-breeder reactor, the only one operating in the world because Western nations find it costly and waste disposal too big a problem. But reprocessing also yields waste that Japan has to take back.

Japanese green groups turned out in droves in April this year, when the 'Pacific Pintail' arrived carrying nuclear waste from France. That was the first of over 30,000 tons of waste to be shipped back to Japan over the next decade.

In 1992, similar protests broke out when the Akatsuki Maru ferried Japan's first shipment of plutonium extracted from spent fuel from its reactors. Asia-Pacific governments say they will bar lethal shipments from traversing territorial waters.

In the eighties, much of the anti-nuclear campaign in the Asia-Pacific focused heavily as well on nuclear weapons on foreign soil or ships.

Another controversy has erupted over the decision by the Marshall Islands to convert remote islands near the atoll of Bikini which contaminated by U.S. hydrogen bomb tests in the 1950's into an international dumpsite for nuclear waste.

The government says since the atolls are radioactive anyway, it wants to cash in on its misfortune. It is banking on Asian countries generating a lot of spent nuclear fuel in future.

While the Cold War's end reduced the immediate risk of nuclear warfare, the threat posed by nuclear weaponry remains. Testing means nuclear states are working on new and potentially stronger and more lethal weapons.

Over the years, the anti-nuclear campaign has expanded to become the concern of environment, energy and other activists and affected communities.

"Radioactivity recognizes no boundaries," says Fabros. "That's why the campaign must not just be regional but a worldwide one."

-- IPS