I’ve only just discovered “Mums for Nuclear” – and they sound just so lovely. They are an Australian offshoot of “Mothers for Nuclear”, which is a very lovely global organisation, full of joy and delight in nature, and of course – all are lovely ladies with lovely children. Here’s a sample of their philosophy:
“I personally went from a fear of nuclear to understanding how many of my assumptions about it were astonishingly far from the truth. The more I read, the more I realized that we direly need more nuclear power to help solve some of the greatest threats to the environment and humanity, including mitigation of climate change, protection of natural resources, reductions in air pollution, and lifting people from poverty. I joined Mothers for Nuclear because I want to help leave a better world for our children.”
That was written by Iida Ruishalme – A Finnish mother, and one of nine women featured on the Mothers for Nuclear website. She works as a science writer, and by the way, is the only one who is not directly involved with the nuclear industry. Most of the others are nuclear engineers.
Anyway, the website is beautiful – and it’s easy to come away from it with enthusiasm for nuclear power.
Those nine women represent the USA, Finland, Germany, and the UK. You don’t learn how many members the organisation has, nor where it gets its funding.
From their website:
“In 2022 Mothers for Nuclear became a fiscal sponsor of Stand Up for Nuclear. Stand Up for Nuclear is the world’s 1st global initiative that fights for the protection and expansion of nuclear energy. We are long-term partners who have worked together on multiple campaigns including in California, Europe, Kenya, and many others.”
Mmm..mm – I wondered – “What is a fiscal sponsor“?
“Fiscal sponsorship refers to the practice of non-profit organizations offering their legal and tax-exempt status to groups – typically projects – engaged in activities related to the sponsoring organization’s mission. It typically involves a fee-based contractual arrangement between a project and an established non-profit.”
Mmmmm – sounds as though Mothers for Nuclear is a real help to the nuclear industry, and quite useful to its own members. Though I don’t for a moment doubt their sincerity.
Now we come to the new – and what a timely newness – Australian version – the more relaxed sounding “Mums for Nuclear“. It has joined the “charity” nuclear front group Nuclear for Australia.
Once again, I’ve found it hard to discover just how many members are in Mums for Nuclear. And also – where it gets its funding.
I have found one member, Jasmin Diab, who is the face of the outfit, but doesn’t call herself a CEO or anything formal like that: “Hi, I’m Jaz! I’m a mum of one human and two dogs.”
However, Jaz does have another role, which is quite a bit more formal.
Jasmin Diab is a nuclear engineer and is the Managing Director for Global Nuclear Security Partners (GNSP) in Australia. Global Nuclear Security Partners is a world leading nuclear management consultancy:
“We work with partners, clients and relevant authorities to ensure that novel technology is secure. Across SMR, AMR and fusion we work to make sure that projects, programmes, processes and products are protected and commercially viable.”
“Our clients include: the UK Department for Energy Security and Net Zero; the UK Ministry of Defence; UK National Nuclear Laboratory; the Canadian Nuclear Waste Management Organistion; the Ukrainian Government and nuclear industry; Magnox; Babcock International; BAE Submarines; University of Bristol; University of Manchester and SMR developers. We’ve worked with the armed police capability of the Ministry of Defence Police, Civil Nuclear Constabulary and US teams in protecting nuclear material and developing doctrine, and with the infrastructure police of some Middle Eastern Governments.”
I don’t doubt that Jasmin Diab is sincere, and that she is a good mum to one human and two dogs. And she can provide for them well, with that good job with GNSP. I’m not sure that her message will go down that well with Australian women. A recent national survey shows that Australian women are strongly opposed to nuclear energy and are most concerned any consideration of the controversial power source will delay the switch to renewables.
The Mums for Nuclear groups seem curiously uninterested in the fact that women, and children, are significantly more vulnerable to illness from nuclear radiation than men are.
Also by Noel Wauchope: Nuclear power is such a mess – Zaporizhzhia plant as the shining example
Dear reader, we need your support
Independent sites such as The AIMN provide a platform for public interest journalists. From its humble beginning in January 2013, The AIMN has grown into one of the most trusted and popular independent media organisations.
One of the reasons we have succeeded has been due to the support we receive from our readers through their financial contributions.
With increasing costs to maintain The AIMN, we need this continued support.
Your donation – large or small – to help with the running costs of this site will be greatly appreciated.
You can donate through PayPal or credit card via the button below, or donate via bank transfer: BSB: 062500; A/c no: 10495969
It is so silly reading this as we know that some nations, usually as a by-product of huge military outlays, have nuclear power generation which once seemed “modern” and the “future.” Many like Japan are de-commissioning steadily, at huge expense and trouble, and with future difficulties and costs too high for guessing. BUT, Australia cannot build this fantasy of the ladies, at all. We have no skills or experience. We COULD buy it all, retail, from others at huge uncontrolled costs and without any future rights ot control, as we do not know now and we will never fully know. AS with USA sourced military material, e g., planes, we get rubbish, “handcuffs”, ongoing uncontrolled costs, future bills, second rate stuff, no backups or guarantees really. We never ever fully control policy behind bought serious “stuff”, the AUKUS shitty deal indicating that. We are a dumping area, a sucker customer, a site for trouble in future about waste, an extension of undesirable policy and it costs us forever. We cannot now make and sell a shitty car profitably, nor basic domestic electrics, or white goods or basics in gear and wear. We can do very little because our skills base in real world terms has gone down and nearly OUT. Use the Brinkley C site in U K as an example. It is French run, the British having given up decades ago, by a natinalised inefficient company, has not been completed as scheduled, has cost more than twice the orignal estimates, may be finished in 2030 but who knows.., and as poor costs ongoing to be met by British taxpayers as well as consumers, and in immense costs and rises. Nuclear works, as growing tomatoes in Antarctica works… all the tech is there to import soil, shelter, skills, equipment, tech and care, so each tomato would be hundreds of dollars.., but we could do it. Is that sense? Dutton is not sense, nor is this plug from some ladies posing. BUT we are solid proven SUCKERS.
I’m not sure if Pakistan is the same now as when I visited in 2014, but I dearly wish they would spend time in places that have nuclear where the power goes off every couple of hours (day and night) to see exactly how unreliable it is as an energy source. Why on earth would we have it here? There have been numerous debates over decades on whether we should get it, and the answer was always ‘no, not in our backyard’.
This conversation should have died out long ago. Why it’s reared its ugly head is only because of profit. These mothers working in the field obviously want their income resource to continue, with no consideration of what everyone else wants.
Mothers or Mums does not matter. The considerations are the same, no matter who we are.
In northerly climes like Finland, they might have a point — they are not blessed with continual, daily solar, particularly in winter months.
However, in Australia, nuclear will always be an expensive nonsense.
That might change if they can make it safe and cheap. But it isn’t. And the expense mostly comes from controlling the safety, a large part of which is dealing with the waste.
This article is deeply unserious, casting the vaguest aspersions while repeating the misleading claim that we Australian women are “strongly opposed to nuclear energy”. The Demos Au poll didn’t find that. It found that when you ask Australian women to consider the statement, “Nuclear power would be good for Australia,” more disagree than agree, but there’s no indication of the strength of dis/agreement, and one-third have the good sense to be undecided on such an ill-defined statement. The difference between men’s and women’s responses is smaller than the difference between Labor and Coalition voters.
When you ask a proper question like, “Do you support or oppose Australia using nuclear power to generate electricity, alongside other sources of energy?” only 3% of women are undecided and a slight majority is in support (Lowy Institute Poll 2024).
Conflating the vulnerability of girls and women to radiation-linked illnesses from atomic weapons with the non-exposure to radiation from nuclear power plants is disgusting.
Unlikely to find any MUMS FOR NUCLEAR in Japan, in particular around such districts as Fukushima, Nagasaki, or Hiroshima, along with the Ukrainian mothers in proximity to Chernobyl, or moms close to the Three Mile Island in the USA, or indeed many other moms in the target areas of radiation fallout from a raft of similar incidents of varying severity and the associated human toll.
As Noel Wauchope’s essay implies, selling the sizzle is as equally important as the charred sausage; ironic doesn’t even begin to cover the potential horrors of human endeavour gone awry, as is so often the case and in particular in this instance of the allure of nuclear-fission based energy sources; tens of thousands of highly trained and knowledgeable engineers & technicians and still, things can and do go disastrously wrong.
Much to the distress of early implementers, Oppenheimer & Einstein for example, the lament was that the nuclear genie has well and truly been released and now mankind must find a way to manage this monstrous entity. The attraction persists, and the list of commercial nuclear reactors is extensive across many countries.
I guess the MUMS FOR NUCLEAR are acting out of self-interest as opposed to a detached rational assessment of the pros & cons of nuclear-derived energy for the general benefit of the wider population, given the range of non-potentially lethal options within the renewables sector. Do they hold hen’s parties, where they sit around fondling lumps of uranium or radium… lights out and enjoy the glow?
Hello fellow concerned citizens, I am Heather Hoff, cofounder of Mothers For Nuclear, and nonprofit based in California, but with informal chapters or groups of mothers and mums around the country and around the world. I appreciate the dialogue starting here, and it is evident that a lot of people have questions about nuclear both in the context of power generation and other uses. I think we should all continue to be curious and explore these, and also reach out to people who know more or different things than we do so that we can learn. Please reach out to us on our website if you would like to know anything more about our group. We are separate and different from the recent organizing Mums for Nuclear under the umbrella of Nuclear for Australia. What can we say, we have a great name and message, of course other people want to use it. And we want that too, but we do emphasize that individuals speak for themselves and that it’s OK to question organizational relationships. As you might suspect, due to Australia not having much of a nuclear industry, there aren’t a whole lot of opportunities for mothers and women to get comfortable and educated about the technology. I personally spent about six years working at a nuclear power plant in California asking a ton of questions before I was able to make sense of a lot of my skepticisms and concerns.
As for the mums in Australia, we have Already shared some of their stories on our website, and now the same mothers are also speaking up on behalf of Nuclear for Australia. We all want the same things, which I believe is plentiful, reliable and affordable clean energy for our planet and our children. I took a long time to change my mind about nuclear energy, and I’m happy to talk with anyone who is still skeptical as I used to have a lot of the same concerns. Please check out mothersfornuclear.org and also send us a message if you want to chat more.
Heather thank you for your contribution.
In Australia we want answers on several fundamental points ranging from where waste will be dumped/stored ?
Is the exemplar for the SMR the Westinghouse model or if not is it a Chinese or Russian alternative (very important)?
What is the delivery/installation/commissioning time frame from time an order is placed ?
What is the fixed cost for acquisition/assembly/installation/commissioning (within ten percent)?
What is the energy output of the small modular reactor (SMR) under consideration : i.e. how many conventional dwellings would be fully serviced and what could an average householder (four persons) expect to pay for that energy over a 12 month period ?
Answers to some of these fundamental questions would certainly assist us in Australia as our politicians have been less than forthcoming.
ThankYou
Thank you for your comment, Heather. Much appreciated.
Terry speaks for the most of us: we do have questions.
Heather, the only question I have is WHY?
Why when we have an abundance of solar power
Why when we have an abundance of wind power
Why when we have battery technology to store energy when wind and sun are not providing that power
Why when nuclear is so hellishly expensive to build
Why when nuclear is not just expensive to build but seems to be too difficult to build in a timely manner
Why when the waste produced becomes a time bomb for future environmental problems.
So yes, Heather, Why?
Oh Andrea, I think you may be misunderstanding our contributor Roswell.
He has a wonderfully understated sense of humour, an Australian sense of humour which at times is layered with soft, gentle sarcasm.
As he so clearly points out, the mums and mothers he cites have a vested interest in promoting nuclear power.
I wonder if these foolish pro-nuclear women and the RWNJs (like that short-sighted political psychopath, Peter Dutton) have STOPPED and given any thought about what the hell our government is going to do with the MASSIVE amount of NUCLEAR WASTE nuclear energy inevitably produces?
Do they realise that nuclear waste is, in fact, RADIOACTIVE for THOUSANDS OF YEARS posing a REAL, perpetual danger and deadly health risk for future GENERATIONS of future Australians? Have they STOPPED – even for a minute – to consider WHERE an inhumane, racist and self-serving LNP regime are likely to DUMP not only the nuclear waste of Australian-generated nuclear power but, likely, to import nuclear waste from other nations (such as America, the UK and/or other European nations) in order to make a “fast buck” at OUR expense?
No doubt, the likes of Dutton et al will consider it quite OK to dump toxic waste in what THEY consider to be “remote” areas of the outback trying to convince themselves (and anyone who will listen) that “nobody lives there” when, in fact, such areas are inhabited by communities of vulnerable indigenous aboriginals and remote farming communities!
Nuclear ☢️ power = RADIOACTIVE NUCLEAR WASTE and, as such, will NEVER be a safe, acceptable alternative for our children, our grandchildren and our descendants! Australians live in the SUNNIEST continent on the planet. As such, the intensive further research and refinement of SOLAR POWER is the SENSIBLE choice because it can be accessed so easily, is inexpensive to process and, by far, the best, safest and cleanest form of energy available!