Introduction

Alain Touraine (Chapter 2) situates the history of social resistance to new technologies in the ‘ambiguous project of modernity, and in the long history of ideas associated with democratic control of instruments of power’. In this context, the nuclear history of Australia presents both a paradox and a possibility. Today, Australia has no civil nuclear power and no nuclear weapons. Its government participates actively in the programme of the International Atomic Energy Agency, has protested against French tests in the South Pacific, and is a keen advocate of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Yet, the last 40 years have seen a long history of nuclear optimism and opportunism, played out among conflicting political and economic interests, domestic and overseas. Has, then, ‘resistance’ to nuclear technology been successful? If so, what has made it so?

To answer this question requires a grasp of the salient features of Australia's affair with the atom. That relationship, which once embraced nuclear energy as a quintessential element in Australia's post-war development, also embraced characteristic features of resistance, operating upon a landscape well known for its contours of intellectual conservatism and radical dissent. Australia's nuclear destiny has depended, in part, upon the prospect of achieving economic nuclear power for domestic use, and advantageous terms for the sale of uranium in overseas markets. But its nuclear history has also come to reflect changing perceptions of the role that Australians wish to see their country play in the nuclear arena.