3CR
 Community Radio 855am

THE RADIO-ACTIVE SHOW

With Eric Miller and Linda Marks

Saturday at 10.00am

16th January 1999

Good morning, this is the Radio Active Show brought to you by the Sustainable Energy and Anti-Uranium Service. I'm Linda Marks and with me in the studio is Eric Miller. (Good Morning) The Radio Active Show is a weekly program bringing you news and information on Nuclear, Peace and Energy issues.

On today's show we look at the Federal Government's plans to build a National Nuclear Waste Dump in Northern South Australia.

In 1992 the ALP put in train a process to choose a National Radioactive Waste Dump. Now, over 6 years later, test holes are being drilled in the Billa Kalina region that is North of Port Augusta and South of Coober Pedy and is and area the size of Tasmania. The dump is said to be for low level radioactive waste but we believe that high level waste is destined for it. But it will not be designed to take the massive amounts of radioactive waste from a uranium mine such as Beverley or Honeymoon or Roxby Downs. Here is Dennis Matthews of the Conservation Council of South Australia. He is speaking at the Nuclear Free Australia forum held in December just last month.

Dennis Matthews: Radio active waste? Where does it come from? Well, it comes from things like nuclear reactors. So if anybody wants to stop a nuclear reactor then that's a good way to stop nuclear waste, if not the best. Where do nuclear reactors get it from? They get it from uranium mines, or plants that process that uranium from the uranium mines. So if we close down those plants or we close down uranium mining we won't have any waste either. Any more waste, that is. The trouble is we already quite a bit to deal with.

So what is the local global position? I've been to Coober Pedy a couple of times to talk to people up there, because they are one of the more active groups. When I talk to these people, I've said that it's not a question of getting it out of your backyard and then putting it in someone else's backyard. Doing that you really haven't solved anything. Do you want your friends in the adjoining 100 kilometres away to have your problem? I think that most people are coming around to that way of thinking that it is not a solution to shift the problem from one place to another.

Often when the media and the Government talk to us about these things they say, we've got to put this stuff somewhere. And I said, it already is somewhere isn't it? It's at Lucas Heights, mostly. So it is somewhere. And if those people can't look after it there, who can? That's the biggest concentration of experts in this area in Australia. Yet they want to put it out into someone else's backyard where they actually have to get people to go out there and live a very isolated life trying to look after this stuff.

Politics? The whole process about the nuclear waste dump actually started with a Labor Government. They set the process in place to look for a National Radioactive Waste Repository. And it's interesting. It's like many of our EIS processes, you aren't allowed to raise or talk about certain issues. In typical EIS processes we can't talk about the nuclear fuel cycle. We can only talk about uranium mining in a particular locality. And yet those people will gladly say, look, we are solving the world's greenhouse problem. When it suits them, they will go global, when it doesn't, you're not allowed to. So the Labour Government started this process and there is a very famous letter that we have copies of between a Liberal Premier of South Australia, Dean Brown, and a Labor Prime Minister, Paul Keating. In that letter Dean Brown points out that if you want to make the Lake Eyre Basin a World Heritage area, you won't be able to put a radio-active waste dump there. And that's exactly what happened. That government, that Keating Government, cancelled plans to have a World Heritage listing for the Lake Eyre Basin and the Liberal South Australian Government has now accepted that there will be a radio-active waste dump in South Australia.

That's left the Labor people in a bit of a quandary because at the State level Labor people oppose this dump in South Australia, South Australian Labor people. In fact, they have passed motions at the local level. But the Federal Labor people say, because they started the process, they are happy with the process, they are happy with the present plan to put this dump in South Australia. And again I stress that we don't see a need for a dump anywhere. The stuff should remain where it is. It's where the experts are. It doesn't need any further handling or transport. It's by far the safest thing to do.

In the meantime, you have to minimise the amount of waste. It's the same with any toxic product. The first thing to do is minimise the production of that material. The next thing to do is to try and make it safe.

The Federal Government has plans and the State Government is happy with them at the moment to put this dump in South Australia in an area called Billa Kalina. It's a very large area. It's an area the size of Tasmania. It's a nuclear enclave almost. It's an area that includes places like Woomera which was famous in the days of developing rocketry for nuclear warheads to be delivered around the world, it's where Roxby Downs is, and it gets very close to some of the other uranium areas in South Australia. We are beginning to set up an area now that the nuclear industry can really call their own. If they have Woomera where radioactive waste is already stored, that came from Victoria and NSW, and if they have Roxby and they have Beverley and Honeymoon, they are starting to claim this as their territory.

It is called a National Radio-Active Waste Dump but if fact, as somebody pointed out, in radioactivity terms, not in volume terms, because there is a lot of soil and stuff mixed in with this, in terms of radioactivity, really we are talking about waste from Lucas Heights. It's not a National Dump, it's for waste from one particular area mainly, Lucas Heights.

South Australia essentially already has a dump at Radium Hill, and I think they have been doing that on the sly, it needs to be brought to the public's attention what's going on there. Western Australia has a dump, mainly for rare earth radioactive material from rare earth processing. And Queensland has or is about to have a dump. So various states already have got something like their own radioactive waste dump so it's not a National Dump. That's the first lie.

The second lie is you'll find now that the Federal Government is not talking about a National Radioactive Waste Dump, they are talking about a low-level radioactive waste dump. They keep stressing the word low. Minchin, in parliament recently, in response to this thing about the importation of radioactive waste, referred to the low-level radioactive waste dump. It has never been a low-level dump, in fact, I think that it is fair to call it a high level radioactive waste dump. It is a mere technicality that the word high-level doesn't strictly apply to the sort of materials that are going there, but in all practical terms, this is a high level waste dump. It includes low-level material, it includes short-lived intermediate material and it includes long-lived intermediate-level radioactive waste. High, intermediate and low just refers to how radioactive the material is. And short-lived and long-lived refers to how long that radioactivity continues. Typically, if half the radiation has disappeared in 30 years, they call it short-lived and if it takes more than 30 years for the radioactivity to decrease by half then that's referred to as long-lived.

The stuff that's going there, the Government will keep telling us, is stuff from hospitals. It's the minority, but they know that's what the public is sensitive to. We can't have radioactive stuff in hospitals! But the fact is that hospitals are taking in huge amounts of radioactive materials for diagnostic and treatment purposes. The waste from those processes is actually less radioactive than the materials they bring in, they still say they can't have the waste there. If they can't have the waste there they shouldn't have any radioactive material there. They are always stressing that but in fact the minority material comes from a hospital or a university. Mostly it comes from Lucas Heights.

What about the other sort of materials? We have heard about Lucas Heights. The fuel rods and the reprocessing of those. It looks like the reprocessing is not going ahead very well, but the plan was to reprocess the fuel rods. This means to take out any useable material like uranium and plutonium in some places and to return the rest to the country that supplied those fuel rods in this case, to us. When it comes back it's about 100 times increased in volume but it still has all the radioactivity in it, all the nasties. Because it is essentially diluted it becomes not high level waste, it becomes intermediate level waste. In actual fact, it's just as dangerous as the material that went out.

What is also scheduled to go into this dump is the reactors themselves. There are two reactors at Lucas Heights. One is already decommissioned, sitting in there doing nothing. The other one will be decommissioned around 2003. They'll probably let it sit around for another 10 years or so to cool off a bit, but then it too will be going to this dump. And as far as I'm concerned you can't get much higher level than that. It is pretty much the ultimate as far as I'm concerned.

Linda Marks: That was a bit of Margaret Roadnight with 'It doesn't worry us'. And we were listening to Dr Dennis Matthews from the CCSA. Back to Dennis.

Dennis Matthews: There is a lot of Government brainwashing going on as I think they've learned from Western Mining. Western Mining has done a beautiful job. They have spent a lot money in the process of brainwashing the public. Greenwashing in many cases, making themselves look green. The Government's doing the same thing. They put out literature on this low level dump, at Port Augusta, which is the largest city closest to the potential dump site. The literature talks about radiation. It talks about radiation, not about ionising radiation. They say, radiation is everywhere. Lights! Radiation! The sun! Radiation! A radiator, an electric radiator! Radiation! So radiation is everywhere. It is a complete distortion of what's going on. It is of course, radiation, but it is not ionising radiation. And any mention of ionising radiation, it might be mentioned once, and from then on they talk about radiation. So it's the sort of campaign that's going on that we need to counter and that we have tried to counter it.

We have had some talks with people. For example, up at Coober Pedy, as I mentioned, people at Port Augusta who are active in this area. We have done all the right things, we have put in submissions to the Government inquiries, etc. etc. As I have said, the option of not taking it (the waste) anywhere was never allowed (in Government inquiries). Even the option of keeping the waste above ground was not initially allowed but after the Senate inquiry into the radioactive waste dump, keeping the stuff above ground, rather than trying to bury it underground, is now on the agenda. But this is only for the higher level and the intermediate level. The low level waste is still scheduled to go underground.

Finally I just want to get this into context. They are going to some trouble to move this radioactive waste. If you ask them if it is dangerous they say no. You say, why are you moving it? They are going to a lot of trouble to move it to a central location. Some of it is being housed in concrete bunkers. Some of it's been put underground in specially engineered dam type things covered over with soil.

The interesting thing is that we've got huge amounts of radioactive wastes being generated out at places like Roxby at Ranger. A few metres of earth and a few boulders are simply covering those wastes. For example, at Roxby, they are going to have 720 hectares of radioactive waste covered by 3 metres of soil and some boulders and that mound is going to be 30 – 35 metres high. On top of that they have something like 120 hectares of other radioactive waste from what they call evaporation ponds. The first lot I mentioned was the tailings. Roxby is generating huge amounts of radioactive waste that is not included in the whole scheme to manage our radioactive waste. These wastes are a special case and it's obvious why they are a special case. If they had to do it properly it would cost them a fortune and the whole industry would be uneconomic. And that is what we really should be pushing to do. Make them look after the radioactive waste, make them put it in concrete bunkers even if it is a 700 hectare concrete bunker, make them do that, make it uneconomic and the whole thing goes out of business.

At Beverley, they are putting the radioactive waste down into the underground. After they pump acid underground to dissolve the uranium, and pump it up again, they take the uranium out. All the nasties, all the other radioactive materials, all the toxic things, all the chemically toxic materials get pumped straight back underground in a site adjacent to the mine. Now pumping toxic radioactive waste underground was a practise I thought would have gone out at least 50 years ago. But that is what they are doing right now at Beverley and Honeymoon.

I'm just trying to put it all into context. Let's not be fooled that our radioactive waste is going being looked after by this national dump. They are not.

Thankyou

Linda Marks: That was Dr Dennis Matthews from the CCSA speaking on the National Radioactive Waste Dump planned for Northern South Australia.

Although this process of finding a place for a National Radioactive Waste Dump has been going for over 6 years now, with this new government it is going full steam ahead with indigenous communities being pushed aside and the idea of importing high level radioactive waste on the agenda.

David Noonan of the ACF in Adelaide also spoke on the National Radioactive Waste Dump:

David Noonan: I'll just make a few comments. The waste dump proposal is a staged development proposal for the expansion of the nuclear industry. It is being explained to the public along the rational of a low level facility to facilitate medical science and research. The waste they intend to bury includes materials that need management for up to 400 years, what they call short lived, intermediate level waste.

It is directly contrary to a Senate recommendation from '95 or '96. A Senate inquiry called 'No Time to Waste' said that all radioactive waste materials should be managed above ground in a dry accessible storage. ANSTO have simply discounted that recommendation on the grounds of economic terms. In one presentation they gave to Traditional Owners of the area, they showed a video from South Africa where South African authorities were burying low level waste. They told the Australian indigenous people, if they are doing it in South Africa it must be ok for the lands that you own. That's the level of the sensitivity involved.

At present the Commonwealth Government is proposing to drill on 18 potential sites for this National Waste Dump in Central South Australia. They are trying to get Aboriginal Heritage assessments and clearances out of a group of Traditional Owners. The legal authorities of those people are very much limited now. The Native Title situation is different to what it had been in earlier times. They have little legal authority to constrain that proposal. The South Australian Government had already told the Commonwealth that the Commonwealth has provided sufficient consultation to this community. They also said that the rights that they have under the State Cultural Heritage Act are very limited and it's not a fair expectation to call on those indigenous communities to be a front line to stop this proposal at this stage.

The momentum of the proposal is such that the approvals from the State and the Commonwealth Governments are at such a level that I would clearly expect that they would get rapidly through the drilling stage. They will then fine-tune the number of sites that they wish to consider for the waste dump. I would expect that what used to be DPIE, now the Department of Science, Industry and Resources under Minister Minchin, who is well known for his sensitivity in relation to Native Title issues, and is now facilitating the rest of the interests of the mining industry. What they are actually doing now is writing the draft EIS. They will release it very soon after announcing the favoured site and that could be somewhere between May and July next year (1999). So I would expect the release of the draft EIS very soon after public awareness of a particular favoured site. And in part they are trying to deflect and minimise opposition to the proposal by saying, it could be this area that we have been told is the size of Tasmania, or it could be any one of these 18 sites. It might be in you, an Traditional Aboriginal Owner's land, it might not, it might be in someone else's, so why should anyone get too active or get too concerned or too organised about it just yet.

We had the disclosure, c/- Jean McSorely, of the Pangea Resources' video and promotional work overseas, that Australia was the best site in the world for the world's depository of high level radioactive waste. That US corporation was over in England offering the English Government to take the waste from Sellafield to Australia and the Australian Ministers are trying to have us believe that they weren't involved in the loop.

Back in July when Pangea were in Australia with their President James Voss they were saying that he had ministerial level discussions with the Australian Government in regard to owning and operating Australia's proposed National Radioactive Waste Dump. And the agenda of using that facility should get approval to import waste is just a latter stage of the proposal and of, in some people's minds the real intent for it.

The reaction of Australia's politicians wasn't particularly promising. And even though Senator Minchin said we have a policy against importing waste and we don't intend changing the policy, the South Australian Premier, John Olsen, said, Well, I don't want to exclude anything in the future and I'd certainly like to get a detailed proposal from them.

Linda Marks: That was David Noonan of the ACF in Adelaide. Establishing a Radioactive Waste Dump is connected to the building of a new nuclear reactor at Lucas Heights. Here is Genevieve Rankin, a counsellor with the Sutherland Shire Council in South Sydney and where Lucas Heights is situated:

Genevieve Rankin: This waste dump is being assessed as if it's a low level waste dump. In the communities around Lucas Heights it's being said, what are you talking about? There is no problem with nuclear waste, it's all going off to South Australia. Well, before that it was said, there's no problem, it's all going off to Dounreay. So, I'd just like to emphasise, to be thinking about putting Australia in a position where we are going to have a new nuclear reactor to create more and more nuclear waste, when we don't have any solution to solving the problem of waste, is just appalling.

The McKinnon review into the new reactor back in '93 actually made a finding that there should be no proposal for a new reactor in Australia until a dump site was actually found and operating. So the link between the two is very tight. There is no more storage at Lucas Heights. The way they manage waste! They have fuel rods up there that are supposed to be in dry storage and it was only last year that we found out that water had escaped into those and there was a canister that actually had 90 litres of water. This is in the dry storage for the nuclear waste.

I think we need to link in the reprocessing as well here because now that they can't reprocess overseas they are already experimenting on conditioning at Lucas Heights. Murray Scott who used to work there has already put in a submission to the EIS saying that it is the most dangerous operation he believes is going on at the moment, the conditioning of waste. He said, always in the nuclear industry we get a change of jargon. Whether it's low level or high level. We now have, now that there have been community campaigns against reprocessing, because, as Dennis said, it creates so much more nuclear waste than it gets rid of, the terminology is that we are not reprocessing waste, we are conditioning it. And they are actually experimenting on that. You say to them, what does that mean? It means taking the radioactive fuel out of the fuel rod just exactly the same as they do with reprocessing.

The whole thing we should remember, there is no solution to nuclear waste and as a country we just can't keep condoning the production of it until we can deal with it.

Linda Marks: that was Genevieve Rankin, a counsellor from Sutherland Shire Council in South Sydney speaking at last month's Nuclear Free Australia Forum.

Eric Miller: That's all we have time for in the Radio Active Show this week, Linda, so it's good bye from Eric.

Linda Marks: And it's good bye from Linda.

Transcript produced by Linda Marks - with much thanks!!!
Page last updated February 13, 1999.
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