By Patrick Gower
There's an old saying in the nuclear industry: you can't shut the reactor door after the uranium has bolted.
That's the scenario New Zealand now faces after letting uranium transit through our ports for twenty years - most of that time with virtually no checks to what it was going to be used for at all.
My story last night revealed the extent of New Zealand's links in Australia's nuclear supply chain - allowing shipments of uranium to transit here effectively in secret for two decades, and now at a rate of almost once a week.
I guess that makes us nuclear-free New Zealand: with a sideline in facilitating the trade of its main ingredient - uranium.
This will divide opinions. Some, like the Government will view the uranium as "not much more than Australian dirt" (those are the words of Environment Minister Nick Smith).
But for others, uranium is a dirty word - etched firmly on the Kiwi lexicon thanks to David Lange, when he famously said he could smell the uranium on the breath of a nuclear supporter.
Whatever your view, I think many will be surprised that this went on for so long without anyone knowing.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs told me yesterday it had been going on for "twenty years". They wouldn't give any more details, but I guess the shipments started under the 1990 National Government.
New Zealand's nuclear free legislation was only passed by Lange's Labour Government in 1987 and a uranium shipment so soon afterwards would have no doubt been very controversial, so it’s no wonder it was kept so quiet.
MFAT also said that because the shipments were only transiting - staying aboard the ships in port - there was no requirement for them to get any consent at all.
It says it was "common practice" for the shippers to cooperate with the National Radiation Laboratory, even though they didn't have to. So who knows what standards were adhered to.
These rules have only just changed in the past year. MFAT started vetting the uranium shipments - which is in its early-stage process form known as "yellow cake - in April 2009 as part of its new requirements for "strategic goods" under the Customs and Excise Act.
MFAT says this includes checking that the uranium is going to be used for civilian nuclear power, and not nuclear weaponry.
The Environment Risk Management Authority has also changed its practices, saying "it only became apparent last year" that the uranium fell within the scope of the Hazardous Substance and New Organisms Act.
That meant the shipping company applications had to be notified - effectively blowing the lid on what's been going on.
Yellow cake is deemed low risk. It is only a step above raw uranium and has a very low level of radioactivity - you'd have to munch your way through a few bowls -full before you got kidney problems.
But the real question is what the uranium has been used for.
Phil Goff says he didn't have a clue about the uranium shipments even though he held the relevant portfolios of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Defence during nine years of the last Labour Government.
He was defensive about that when he spoke to me, and downplayed the shipments, saying there was no need to fuss over uranium.
He said there was no evidence it had been used for anything other than producing nuclear power for the United States. He may be right. But good luck getting concrete evidence of what happened to uranium - and any downstream by-product - that was processed by corporate nuclear companies in 1990, when Paul "Gazza" Gascoigne was getting yellow cards for England at the World Cup and George Bush (senior) was President of the United States.
Goff wasn't too worried about the uranium shipments. He got a lot more exercised about uranium earlier in the year when it was revealed that John Key had shares in an Australian company that mined it, saying that was "not a good look".
Key described that as "sloppy". I'd say a Labour Government that either didn't know or didn't tell the public that uranium was coming through our ports was at least lax.
There's a division in the current Labour caucus between Goff's position and that of his own spokesman on disarmament, Phil Twyford.
Twyford believes New Zealanders should be shocked at the uranium shipments. He's calling for the Government to give guarantees that it was not used for weaponry. He now has to extend that call to his own colleagues who let it through as well.
The shipments have increased massively this year. MFAT said they previously happened once a year - its now "three or four a month", which is basically weekly.
Last night I revealed details of a fortnightly shipment leaving Auckland on boats like the Paranagua Express.
These are allowed to have up to 40 shipping containers of yellow cake each time. Like the other four applications, it has been approved by ERMA's chair, New Zealand's former top spy Richard Woods.
The shipments are going to a plant owned by Honeywell, in Metropolis, Illinois. Honeywell is a major American conglomerate, with interests in everything from traffic lights to nuclear power to the the defence industry. You can watch its own "day in the life" advert here.
A Honeywell spokesman assured me that 100% of its uranium went to civilian nuclear power. It says it just processes uranium at the plant for the mining companies and it then goes on to other outfits for the next steps in the nuclear power process.
But that won't stop questions from the likes of Twyford and peace activists who are concerned about downstream by-products of the uranium ore, known as depleted uranium, being used for weapons.
Honeywell is a company that the New Zealand superannuation fund sold off its shares in saying its link to "the simulated testing of nuclear explosive devices was critical to the development of those devices”.
So despite Honeywell's assurances, there will be questions and doubts about it.
There'll be some opposition to this as word gets out. But there's a broader question here: that's the mockery of our anti-nuclear stance. We helped ship uranium to nuclear plants for twenty years. So what does our anti-nuclear stance really mean? What's the point?
So New Zealand is now a weekly transit point for uranium. But we're still nuclear-free. We've got a lot more relaxed about the whole nuclear thing. Some people will say it's a bit like being anti-drugs but selling cold and flu drugs to a P-cook - as long as the cook promises you he's using them to treat a cold.