Can't we ever learn? There is always some mug convinced that if we can sell one sock to every Chinese a fortune is assured.

The Howard Government can't see beyond dollar signs and wedge politics as it rushes headlong into an agreement to open up Australian uranium mining, and sell uranium to China.

We can leave uranium to the market to sell it and foreign companies to dig it up. The dream is that the natural resources of the "lucky country" will save Australia from the incompetence of its political and business leadership by generating squillions in export revenue and arrest the slide into international bankruptcy.

But not everything is hunky-dory, even if the nuclear boosters blind everybody to the nuclear waste elephant. Can't the populace see that even on one of the biggest, most sparsely settled and geologically stable continents in the world, Australians still can't agree about where to store their own relatively small, low and medium-grade nuclear waste.

Amazingly, the Australian Government agreed to build a new nuclear reactor in Sydney's Lucas Heights without any plans about where to put the waste from the existing reactor, let alone the new reactor. Back-to-front planning on this scale is simply pathetic.

This farce could become a tragedy if Australia becomes one of the world's biggest uranium exporters. Does anyone doubt that within a few decades Australia will be asked nicely to take back our high-level waste? If we don't comply, pressure will be applied to ensure we take it whether we like it or not.

Promises will be made. But despite the optimism expressed by Pangea, which set up an office in Perth in 2001 to facilitate the importing of high-level waste (and was blocked by the Gallop state government) or Bob Hawke, who last year supported Australia setting up a world-class nuclear waste dump, I doubt a fortune is to be made from Australia becoming the world's nuclear waste dump, even though it might make the fortunes for a few and their families over time.

Even in the short term, there is no economic bonanza that will solve the balance of payments.
According to the industry lobby, even with a third of the Chinese market at the present high prices, exports would be worth only $300 million to $400 million a year by 2020 - a flea bite in terms of Australia's current account deficit, which is now running at $50 billion a year.

The Chinese know what they want. They want resource security. They want to own the mines that supply their market. They want leverage over prices, and I'm sure they are already thinking about decommissioning and waste disposal.

Nuclear power is no panacea. The Chinese recognise this. China plans to increase its production of electricity from nuclear power from 2 per cent now to 6 per cent of the total in 2020.

In October, China announced plans to increase its renewable electricity generation target from solar and wind energy from 12 per cent to 15 per cent of the total electricity generation in 2020 - three times the amount from nuclear power.

Why? The Chinese can't afford to be silly.
They would know that nuclear power is extremely expensive, even by comparison with renewable energy when decommissioning costs are taken into account. I am sure they would be aware that, at best, nuclear power is carbon-emissions neutral over the full birth, life and death cycle of a nuclear power station.

Yes, you say - in the long term we'll all be dead.
Too right. Greenhouse gas emissions build up in the atmosphere cumulatively. The greenhouse gases we generate this year don't conveniently disappear next year. Within a decade, most of us on spaceship Earth will face the prospect of choking, freezing, burning or drowning, and all of us are likely to be extremely uncomfortable unless measures are taken to reduce greenhouse gases now.

The climate tipping point will be passed before the first nuclear plants being planned get to the point of generating electricity or geo-sequestration has been attached to coal-fired power stations to cut their greenhouse gas emissions.

If Australia could free itself from its quarry mentality, it should be able to see that there are better economic, as well as environmental, prospects in focusing on the development of renewable and conservation infrastructure to exploit its scientific competitive edge in these areas.

The renewable sector already employs 6000 people - three times the number directly employed in uranium mining. Hydro Tasmania has just signed a $300 million contract with the Chinese to help build three wind farms.

Encouraging the industry is not rocket science. The mandatory renewable energy target should be lifted from the present 2 per cent to 5 to 10 per cent, to give the industry the platform to move with confidence into Asia.

And if the Government can't rise above its nuclear obsession, it might give some thought to the taxing regime suitable to a quarry - including a resource-rent tax so we can share some of the profits of the now largely foreign-owned mining industry.