REPORT FROM DOWN UNDER

The issue: uranium mining. Australia has been mining uranium ore of modest quality since the 1950's, but in 1970 and 1973 abundant, high-quality deposits were discovered in a small area in the Northern Territory, about 125 miles east of Darwin. These finds represent 20% of the Free World's lowcost proved reserves (though only a few percent of the total reserves at any cost), and even under the somewhat ridiculous assumption that there are no more such deposits in the area, the total potential revenue from the finds will run to some $40 billion, promising eventually to exceed any other Australian export industry.

But mining never started. By 1974, the issue had become a political football Communist-dominated unions refused to ship uranium for export, and permission to mine was withheld by the Australian government pending an inquiry by a commission headed by Justice Fox. Meanwhile, the environmentalists moved in with their entire arsenal of superstitions from explosions to genetic damage, Paul Ehrlich and Ralph Nader were brought in to boost the noble cause of deindustrialization, and an anti-uranium campaign was unleashed along the US anti-nuclear model but with the interesting variation that Australia has no nuclear plants, so that the pretense to be concerned about health or safety is even more ludicrous than in the US.

The Fox Report, released a year ago, was a wishy-washy affair with something for everybody, basically in favor of mining, but hedged with recommendations of delay.

In August of this year, the present government decided to go ahead in principle, though a code of practice and other regulations must first be issued. The hitch is that the Australian government rules the country only partially (unlike the British government, which rules its country not at all); the decision must yet be accepted by the trade union bosses. who can strike construction work,transportation, shipping, or anything else connected with uranium mining.

They are, however, split on the issue: It involves jobs for thousands directly, and ultimately for everybody (what will Australia do with her iron ore when Japan and others have been denied their energy?). Besides, apart from the misled and the gullible, the anti-uraniam movement is not embraced by the working man, but by the same type of upper-middleclass intellectualoid as in the US. The anti-uranium union bosses are unsure of their members' support, for it is not the blue-collar workers, but conformist college students and frustrated housewives who shout "Down with uranium!" On the contrary, many workers in the Northern Territory have moved there to escape the union autocracy in the populous South, and a bumpersticker often seen in Darwin reads DOWN URANIUM? (UP URANUS!)

The Labor Party, based largely on Trade Union support,opposes uranium mining; but no matter who wins the December elections (probably the pro-mining incumbent Liberals), mining of the rich deposits in the Alligator River area near Darwin cannot begin before the present wet season ends in March, and then it takes 3 to 4 years for production and sales to.start.

On the other hand, no matter which way superstition,politics and union bosses may go, they can only delay, but not prevent, the go-ahead. The government or trade union that can keep its hands of the $40 billion has not yet been elected, installed or even imagined; and both will, of course, help themselves amply to some of the despised uranium profits.

Australia has large deposits of low-sulfur coal, almost enough oil, enough natural gas for export, and an impressive hydroelectric capacity. She can do without nuclear power, but not for long. A continent the size of the (contiguous) US inhabited by only 14 million people, mostly concentrated in the Melbourne-Sydney area, will not long be able to resist the expansive pressures of other Pacific populations. Desalination of sea water could make the continent support 100 million people. How exactly that might be done without nuclear energy is a secret jealously guarded by the imitation intellectuals who are so concerned about future generations.