No-one wants to take responsibility for the management of the 1900 spent fuel rods stored at Lucas Heights. In the Australian Financial Review (September 24), ANSTO's executive director Helen Garnett is quoted as saying "That's not our problem - ask the government." The journalist asked science minister Peter McGauran, who said go ask the resources minister, Warwick Parer!

The fuel rods have been irradiated in the HIFAR reactor for the best part of a year. They contain a soup of highly radioactive, highly toxic radioisotopes formed from the fission of uranium atoms.

There's no doubt something has to be done with the spent fuel rods, and quickly. ANSTO will run out of storage space by the end of next year. Moreover, the federal government's Safety Review Committee has revealed that a number of "airtight" tubes containing spent fuel rods have been breached by water. According to Dr. Garry Smith, the only community representative on the Committee, a number of fuel rods have corroded as a result. Don't worry, said ANSTO's Helen Garnett - the water may have been there for several years and its not a safety or environmental hazard. Phew!

The US Department of Energy, discussing the corrosion of spent research reactor fuel, says that "In the extreme, uranium could be released from the spent nuclear fuel and settle to the bottom of the storage facility, creating the potential for a chain reaction." As remote as this possibility may be, it highlights the need to act quickly.

The current plan is to ship 1300 fuel rods from Lucas Heights to Scotland, where they will be reprocessed (to extract and re-use the uranium). The reprocessing wastes will be shipped back to Australia. The remaining 600 fuel rods will be shipped to the USA, for long-term storage in facilities that are no more or less adequate than facilities which could easily be built in Australia.

This plan means transporting the fuel rods through Sydney. Regulation and responsibility are open questions. When a box of radioisotopes fell off the back of a truck recently, ANSTO and the NSW Environmental Protection Agency had a public brawl, each claiming the other is responsible for regulating transport of radioactive materials.

Transporting this toxic cargo half way around the world involves public health and safety risks, and environmental risks. It means loading the spent fuel onto shipping vessels. Don't expect the purpose-built vessels used by some other countries; ordinary container vessels will probably be used. Don't assume the vessels will have the necessary security systems or the trained personnel to handle accident or attack.

It means shipping the fuel rods through Pacific Island waters, against the wishes of all South Pacific Forum countries (except, of course, the Australian government).

Overseas shipment also carries a risk of terrorism or sabotage - a small risk for any particular shipment, but one which is obviously magnified the more frequent the shipments.

In short, the government's "strategy" is to shift the problems from country to country and from this generation to the next.

The logic behind this plan is debatable, to say the least. Of course it suits ANSTO and the federal government to get rid of the waste for the time being. All the better if a new reactor can be built while the waste is overseas. The US Department of Energy has its own convoluted reasons for being prepared to accept spent research reactor fuel from numerous countries. In essence it is a diplomatic strategy designed to shore up support for the US government's (selective) non-proliferation policies, and perhaps also to shore up business for the commercial arm of the American nuclear industry.

The Scottish Dounreay plant is financially troubled and is only to happy to secure business from Australia. But no-one else in Scotland (or the USA) wants Australia's radioactive waste any more than we want theirs.

An editorial in a Scottish paper, The Herald, is scathing about the plan to ship Australian waste to Scotland. According to The Herald, operators of the Dounreay plant are attempting to push through contentious proposals before the new Scottish legislature is established. The plant operators, having failed to secure contracts from the USA, are very keen to obtain Australia's waste. "The prospective Australian contract is a particularly worrying one and it is becoming more disturbing by the day," says The Herald.

One bone of contention is how long the waste will remain in Scotland before the reprocessing wastes are shipped back to Australia. The Scottish Environmental Protection Agency (SEPA) says the waste should remain in Scotland for as short a time as possible, and no longer than ten years in any event. SEPA also says that prosecution could follow unless every effort is made to return imported wastes as soon as possible.

How the waste can be returned to Australia within ten years is difficult to imagine. The plan is to ship the fuel rods to Scotland in the next two years, but reprocessing will not begin until 2001 or 2002. There will be strong pressure in Scotland to return the waste as soon as possible, but the Australian government will be equally determined to delay the return, for the simple reason that the government has nowhere to put it.

Another contentious issue is the past record of the Dounreay plant. According to The Herald, the plant regularly leaks pollution into the environment. Radioactive discharges from Dounreay contaminate waters well beyond UK territorial limits. The UK government's pledge to reduce radioactive discharges to the marine environment, given at the Oslo-Paris Convention held in early September, also casts doubt on future operations of Dounreay plant.

A committee representing numerous local councils in Scotland has also voiced its objections to the proposal to ship Australian waste to Dounreay. The committee notes that radioactive discharge authorisations, necessary for the reprocessing to be carried out, have yet to be granted by the relevant UK authority. The committee also expresses concern about on and off-site contamination at the Dounreay plant.

Another problem with the Dounreay reprocessing plant concerns the proliferation of nuclear weapons. The Australian Department of Foreign Affairs has itself acknowledged that reprocessing is "contrary to sound non-proliferation principles." There is little or no chance that highly-enriched uranium (HEU) extracted from Australian fuel rods will find its way into nuclear weapons. However, because the commercial viability of the Dounreay plant is under threat, the operators are prepared to return uranium in whatever form is requested by clients, including weapons-useable HEU.

This goes against the grain of international efforts to eliminate the use of HEU because of the risk of diversion to weapons programs. Under the auspices of the US-led Reduced Enrichment for Research and Test Reactors program, there is strong pressure to convert HEU-fuelled reactors to low-enriched uranium, and to find alternatives to HEU radioisotope targets.

There are two alternatives to shipping spent fuel rods abroad - neither of them attractive, but both preferable to the current plan.

One option is to transport the spent fuel directly to a waste repository in remote Australia. First such a repository would have to be established - no small task. Successive governments have been attempting to establish a low-level waste (LLW) repository for the best part of two decades. Progress has been painfully slow.

In the past few years a short list of eight regions have been identified for a LLW repository. In the near future, one site is expected to be nominated and further investigations carried out, perhaps in the form of an Environmental Impact Statement. However strong opposition can be expected. The government may be forced to compulsorily acquire a site for a LLW repository, against the wishes of the relevant state/territory government and the local community. That possibility was publicly acknowledged by the ALP government in 1992.

That manoeuvring is just for a LLW repository. It will obviously be much harder to find somewhere to put the long-lived intermediate level waste (LL-ILW) arising from reprocessing in Scotland. The intention is to "co-locate" this waste, along with other wastes in this category, at the (so far imaginary) LLW repository. It will probably be dressed up as an "interim" storage facility for LL-ILW. It promises to be one of the longest "interims" going around.

If a remote location is chosen, it may be on Aboriginal land. And it may not be remote in future - after all, Lucas Heights was remote when HIFAR was built.

The other option is long-term, above ground, dry storage at Lucas Heights. This would have two main advantages. The first is that it would force ANSTO to take responsibility for its own mess, and ANSTO's nuclear expertise (such as it is) can be drawn upon to manage the waste. The second advantage is that it would mean no transportation of the fuel rods. While both these advantages are important, there is the obvious problem that ANSTO's Lucas Heights facility is situated amongst the 200 000 residents of the Sutherland Shire.

As if dealing with the existing stockpile of radioactive waste is not a big enough headache, the government proposes to perpetuate the problems by building a new reactor. To its credit the government has a carefully thought out policy to deal with the waste from the new reactor - don't worry about it, heads in the sand, let some future government deal with it.

ANSTO has been given the go-ahead to continue to explore the possible development of the Synroc glass encapsulation technology, under development for the past 20 years at a cost of $40 million.

For many years it was expected that Synroc technology would be of use only for liquid wastes arising from reprocessing. To the extent that Synroc is linked to reprocessing, it must be rejected out of hand because of the links with weapons production. Reprocessing of irradiated uranium is the only way to produce plutonium, the second of two main options for nuclear weapons (the other being HEU).

Evidently more recent versions of Synroc can be used to treat some other forms of radioactive waste. If so, Synroc might be of some value. However while the volume of HLW or ILW material is reduced using Synroc, the overall volume of waste is greatly increased when LLW is taken into account. Certainly Synroc does not reduce the overall level of radioactivity. And the separated and encapsulated wastes still need a repository which we don't have.

There is only one solution to radioactive waste problems. Stop producing it. No uranium mining : it can only end up in bombs or as toxic waste. No new reactor: develop safer, cleaner alternatives.