3CR
 Community Radio 855am

THE RADIO-ACTIVE SHOW

With Eric Miller and Linda Marks

Saturday at 10.00am

1st May 1999

Hello and welcome to the Radioactive 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. (Hello) The Radioactive Show is a weekly program bringing you newsand information on Nuclear, Peace and Energy issues.

On today’s show we have a colourful report on last week’s student walkout protest to stop the Jabiluka mine. We also hear about the implications of the Y2K bug in relation to nuclear power from the eminent American Scientist Mary Olson from the Nuclear Information Resource Service in Washington DC.

Chanting: No! Mine! In Kakadu Park, We don’t want our kids glowing in the dark! No! Mine! In Kakadu Park, We don’t want our kids glowing in the dark! No! Mine! In Kakadu Park, We don’t want our kids glowing in the dark! No! Mine! In Kakadu Park, We don’t want our kids glowing in the dark!

Speaker: I’m from Glen Waverley Secondary College and we are going to get in so much trouble when we go back today. And I am just so proud of every single one of you who has come here and are going to get into the same trouble that we are and are proud to stand up for what you believe in and show North Ltd that we are not going to take it any more!!!

Chanting: No! Mine! In Kakadu Park. We don’t want our kids glowing in the dark! No! Mine! In Kakadu Park. We don’t want our kids glowing in the dark! No! Mine! In Kakadu Park. We don’t want our kids glowing in the dark! No! Mine! In KakaduPark. We don’t want our kids glowing in the dark!

Linda Marks: That was the sound of students protesting against the Jabiluka mine in Melbourne on the 29th April when secondary and tertiary students across Australia walked out of their colleges to protest against the Jabiluka mine. There were demonstrations in Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide, Brisbane and Hobart. Secondary students, many of them in uniform, from both public and private schools in Melbourne gathered outside the GPO in the Bourke Street Mall. Eric Miller brought back this report:

Chanting: We are singing the song of Jabiluka. No more uranium, leave it in the ground. No more uranium, leave it in the ground. Oom na na hey ya, hey ya hey ya. Oom na na hey ya, hey ya hey ya.

Speaker: Hello everybody and welcome to the Jabiluka high school walk out. Everybody here has taken the day off school because we believe that this issue is really important. That the theft of Mirrar land is important. That the nuclear cycle is important because it is deadly and we have to stop it. (Cheers) So let’s make this rally really, really loud because this is the sort of thing that we need to stop this mine. To make sure that Howard’s 26 new uranium mines are going to be stopped. And they are going to be stopped by us. We are the people who can make this change and we need to make it now. (Cheers) Our first speaker is Trish. Trish is a member of the Jabiluka ActionGroup, the group that’s organising a lot of the actions to stop the Jabiluka mine.

Trish: This is excellent that so many students have come out today. It’s a big thing for students to stand up to authorities in their schools and say, ‘We don’t like the situation. We don’t want this mine to go ahead and we are prepared to walk out of school and prepared to put up with disciplinary action that comes from our authorities and we are going to do this because we are standing for the environment. (Cheers)

And we are standing for the rights of Aboriginal People in this land. (Cheers) And we are standing up against the Howard Government and all the fucked things that they are doing to the environment, to Aboriginal People and to young people today. (Cheers).

On the posters that we put up around the place for this action it said, ‘Standing strong with the Mirrar People’ and that’s the first point I want to make today. The Mirrar People are the Traditional Owners of the land where the proposed mine site is. These people have been systematically downtrodden for 200 years, for the whole time that white people have actually been in Australia. This mine going ahead is a continuing process of trampling over Aboriginal rights. And we have to take a stand. That’s the Aboriginal People on the land don’t want this mine to go ahead and we are standing with them to say, ‘No! It should not go ahead!’ (Cheers) For the whole history of uranium mining in Australia it has constantly come up against Aboriginal rights. Not only in Kakadu with the Ranger mine and the Jabiluka mine, but also in South Australia where there has been proposed mines going ahead. And also now in South Australia there is another proposed nuclear waste dump that is also going to be on Aboriginal land. This whole nuclear industry is really fucking over Aboriginal People’s rights. And we are standing strong with the Mirrar and we are standing strong with Aboriginal People. (Cheers).

Not only are there more proposed uranium mines, nuclear waste dump in South Australia, but also the Government is pushing for this new reactor. And it has been approved. A new nuclear reactor to be set up in Sydney. This nuclear reactor is really just trying to justify the whole existence of the nuclear industry. It is not necessary. They try to use the excuse that it is for medical uses and that is just bullshit quite frankly. (Cheers)

We are standing here today saying, ‘No’ to uranium mining, ‘No’ to nuclear waste dumps on Aboriginal land and ‘No’ to more nuclear reactors and ‘No’ to the whole industry. (Cheers).

Well how are we going to win? Are we going to win through any of our friends in the Government? Whether they are the Labor Party members or Liberal Party members. Are they actually going to win this campaign for us? No! What about the United Nations? OK it’s great to have this report coming out on the good side but are they going to win this campaign for us? (No!) Well what about the legal avenues? Can we rely on the courts? The Australian courts to win this campaign? (No!) No! obviously not! So who is going to win this campaign? (We are!)

Young people and in particular high school students are really important to this campaign and I really want to thank you all for coming out here today. Young people are the future. We are the future of Australia. We really need to take this campaign into the schools. There are heaps of potential to do more in schools. We’ve got films we can show and we’ve got people who can come out to your schools and do talks. This corporation has got millions of dollars and they can employ people to go and peddle the line of the big corporations in this country. But we only have us. I want to appeal to everyone here, not to just leave the campaign when you go home today, but to keep on campaigning, take it on to your schools. (Clapping and cheering) So once again, thanks everyone for coming and we are going to stop this mine.

Speaker 1: As Trish pointed out at the beginning of the speech, it is really important that we all get involved in this campaign, that we all do more to stop this mine. Anyone else is welcome to come up here and speak, just come up here and ask. Say whatever you want, whatever you feel really strong about. We all need to get this out. Next Angelica wants to get up and speak.

Angelica: I’m not going to say much but I reckon that young people should have their opinions heard. We shouldn’t be taking the land from the Aborigines and that the Jabiluka mine definitely should not go ahead. (Cheers!)

Speaker 2: I’d just like to say that I come from a school where the Principal and the entire school agrees with all of this. We had an assembly where the entire school just said, ‘Yes.’ I’m very proud of the school. It’s Sandringham Secondary College.

Speaker 3: I’d just like to say, you don’t hear much about the bad things that happen up at Lucas Heights. For example, a couple of months ago two workers were working with a spent fuel rod and it fell out of its cover and case. It just lay there completely unprotected on the concrete in front of them and they got a dose of uranium (exposure to radiation) well over what you’re recommended to get over one year maximum, and they got that in under a minute. And they still haven’t been able to deal with the rod.

Speaker 4: Hi there everyone! I’m representing Swinbourne Senior Secondary College. A few of us here would like to say that this just sux! The whole lot of it! We’re just sick of this crap and uranium mining and bullshit that’s happening to our country. Why don’t we just stand up for ourselves and start fighting for what’s right?!

Chanting: (Cheers!) No! Mine! in Kakadu Park! We don’t want our kids, glowing in the dark!

Linda Marks: From there the secondary students marched to Flinders Street Station in Melbourne where they joined with tertiary students, swelling their numbers to over 1,000. As the two groups approached each other there was much clapping and chanting. First we hear from Ben who is with the Jabiluka Action Group with Loretta doing the introductions:

Students: Land rights not mining rights! Stop Jabiluka Now! Land rights not mining rights! Stop Jabiluka Now! Land rights not mining rights! Stop Jabiluka Now!

Ben: We are just talking now how we are going to win this campaign. We are just talking from ERA’s perspective how hard it is for them and why they have decided to spend a year not mining uranium. And the simple facts are this: They ain’t got the science right. They ain’t got the ethics right! And they ain’t got the economics right! The financial backers behind this campaign, WestPac are showing concern about the viability of the project. There’s currently a federal court case that is going to help this campaign, hopefully, depending on the decision in the next few weeks. There are many, many factors that ERA know economically they’re in trouble. Their workers are dissatisfied. How would you feel if you were going to working next year on a mine and you were told, ‘Oh, it’s too hard, we’re going to take a year off.’ Can you imagine the dissatisfaction at that mine? The ethics ain’t right. Even the small ethic that is democracy proves that when 51% of the Labor Party last year on the understanding that if the Labor Party won the election, Jabiluka would not go ahead. What did that prove? Nothing, because, even when we got the majority of the votes, the Liberal Party still won the election. And when we had polls that asked the people what they thought about Jabiluka, 67% of Australians are against Jabiluka uranium mine. ERA know this. They know they are wrong. And on July 12 when the world puts Kakadu National Park on the ‘In Danger’ list, the world will be watching Australia and they will be watching next year especially. And we are responsible to tell the world and telling the rest of Australia that Jabiluka uranium mine is wrong.

Cheers!

Loretta: Thanks Ben. We are not going to hold you up much longer. We are going to actually take it and put it on the doorstep of the people who started this mine. What can you do to stop this mine? You can talk to your friends, your family, you can talk in your schools. You can organise your own high school group or secondary school group, tertiary group, whatever. You can do your own campaigning in your own schools, your own area. You can go to your shopping areas. You can buy a JAG T-shirt to help raise money for the Mirrar. You can buy stickers, you can come to our rallies, you can organise rallies of your own. The list is endless. It is the voice of the people on the street that will stop this mine. (Cheers) But the best thing you can do right now is march with us down to North Ltd. So let’s go everyone.

Chanting: Hey, North, you’re running out of time, You’re never gunna get your Jabiluka mine. Hey, North, you’re running out of time, You’re never gunna get your Jabiluka mine. Hey, North, you’re running out of time, You’re never gunna get your Jabiluka mine.

Loretta: Hello North Ltd. We’re back! As we promised! (Cheers) Just to let the onlookers know what sort of crowd we have here, I’d like everyone to cheer who is a high school student. (Cheers!). Fantastic! For those people in the community who are worried about the presence of students on this march, let us say, this is the students’ future we are talking about. Your voice will be heard. You will be living the reality of your nuclear legacy. Thanks Mr Howard. As you can see, students are standing strong. They are speaking out loud and clear. They are informed. They know what they are talking about.

OK, we’ll have a bit of chanting here while we organise a toxic spill.

Chanting: Export Howard, not uranium! Export Howard, not uranium! Export Howard, not uranium! Export Howard, not uranium!

We can see some North employees looking down on us from up there. (Cheers) Hey guys, we’re a peace-loving group let’s wave to them. Send them some love.

It’s the end of semester and it’s time to give North their marks for the year. We have a giant report card here. Let’s have a look at it. North Ltd, here is your semester report for 1999.

Environmental Sustainability. What do you reckon guys? Fail? Oh! Come on, come on! It’s completely safe! You have Environment Minister Robert Hill saying that it’s fine, there is no problem with it. (Fail) So it’s a fail For Environment Sustainablity.

Human Rights. ERA say they are looking after the interests of the Mirrar People. They get lots of money, what are you worried about? Money will solve the problem. (Fail) Money cannot replace culture. Money cannot replace their environment. Money cannot save the Mirrar people. F!

Public Relations. Well this one’s a bit dodgy. North spent $23,000 on an advert before our blockade last month trying to stigmatise us as environmental terrorists and political terrorists and all sorts of dirty words. Shame I reckon! What do you reckon? (Cheers)

And finally, the elective. Everyone has to an elective, you are forced to do some dodgy elective you are not too keen on. And North has chosen Cake Decoration. What do we reckon, how did North do for Yellow Cake Decoration? A+.

To those of you who can’t see the report card it’s the Inheritors of the Earth who have signed it. We have a little statement for North’s parents, a little comment, I don’t think they will be too pleased. ‘North is easily distracted by large sums of money but displays an obvious talent for destroying life and the environment. Therefore if North could knuckle down and put more energy into good than evil, then there may some hope for tomorrow.’ Signed the Inheritors of the Earth. Thank you.

Linda Marks: And that was students protesting against the Jabiluka mine in Melbourne on the 29th April and there were similar protests in most capital cities. Sydney had 60 people in appalling weather, Brisbane had 150, Adelaide had 700 where Peter Garrett spoke and Hobart had 100. The next day on the 30th April, the Beverley uranium mine in South Australia was given the go ahead. We’ll talk more about that later.

And now to our next story. The predictions of disasters to be caused by theY2K bug are being spoken about everywhere. Of enormous concern is what may happen at nuclear power and weapon establishments. Mary Olson is a Visiting Fellow from the Nuclear Information Resource Service in Washington DC. She was in Australia recently to address the ‘Radioactive Alert’ Symposium held at Old Parliament House in Canberra in March this year. Mary tells us how the double whammy of the Y2K bug and nuclear power stations are placing countless communities in the Northern Hemisphere in enormous danger.

Mary Olson: I came on this issue last June when there was large publications in things like the ‘Washington Post’ and ‘Time’ magazine. And they were referencing the loss of off site power. They didn’t say that, they said the electrical grids could go down. There could be blackouts. But I’ve gotten very personal with this waste. You know, this is my waste. So when I’m reading that the electrical grids could go down, I think, well where’s my waste now? And quite frankly, I’d never crawled into those fuel pools until now. I’m not literally going to do it but, you know, with my heart. And it got very scary very fast for me. I spent 2 months really paralysed when I thought about Y2K and the outcomes. I have to tell you that if we keep going on the path we are going on right now, it’s entirely likely that there is going to be multiple meltdowns of reactors come new year or soon thereafter. I think it can be avoided. But I can tell you that my organisation does not even pay somebody to work full time on this and that in the US we only really have Helen and the organisation she’s associated with there, STAR, Standing for Truth About Radiation on the reactor issues associated with Y2K. So, saying that, I want to tell you what the issues are and then ask for your bravery to take me home because I think it is really more of a Northern Hemisphere issue. But it also cuts across with Lucas Heights and we need to pay attention to that.

There are 433 operating in the world last time I looked at the count. They are in 34 countries. In our daily lives they are there and are a risk. We know that from 3 Mile Island and Chernobyl. But we haven’t really noticed that they are hanging in a digital space and that digital space is at risk with the Y2K stupidity of the 2 digit year intercepting the 4 digit century turn. It isn’t really even the millennium, it is only an accident that it is 2000, 1900 wouldhave done it too.

So there are really 3 sources of risk. First is direct failure due to a digital dysfunction, meaning a computer or an embedded chip in a component failing and triggering some kind of accident or incident. The second is where everything is OK or relatively OK but false data is generated by a digital dysfunction. And reactor operator actions combined with that false data trigger an accident. And our huge examples of this are 3 Mile Island and Chernobyl.

At 3 Mile Island we hear that it is operator error but in fact there was an instrument that was malfunctioning and the operators didn’t look at the back up instrument. So the actions taken by the operators on what would have been appropriate if the data had been appropriate. But the data was false so the actions triggered that accident. Same thing at Chernobyl. There were conditions that the operators did not understand and the information that they were getting told them one thing but it was false. They took action that triggered that accident.

Tiny little events. Huge consequences. But the thing that holds me. I should tell you the huge consequences because they get skipped over. We have an 8,000% increase in childhood thyroid cancer rates. Children getting thyroid cancer is 8,000 times increased over pre Chernobyl levels in the Ukraine. We are seeing an overall 400% increase in thyroid cancers and we are beginning to see breast cancer and prostate cancer. And the others will follow because of the latency period. And anecdotally I want to tell you about a physician who visited my office and told me that there are babies being born with lung cancer in that area.

So these are worth avoiding. We understand that. We understand that. So what shut me down for 2 two months was thinking about the loss of off site power. Basically, a reactor depends on electricity from another source in order to run the cooling pumps, the monitoring systems, the lights, all those things. If the power gets cut, they have back up diesel generators, but in the States we only have about an 87% rate of reliability. It’s like trying to run a truck engine to produce electricity and just like trucks, they just don’t start. And just like trucks they overheat after a while. They’re really geared for short term backups and we don’t know if we lose the electricity how long it will take to restore. The guys who go out with their spotlights and look for downed lines, that’s one thing. But if you are looking for a little embedded chip in a system and you don’t know where it is, that’s another thing.

So, when the Nuclear Regulatory Commission at the National level assessed all of the sources of possible meltdown risk, they said that 50% of the risk comes from the loss of off site power. 50%! So I was really worried about all of this because ¾ of our reactors are in the same power pool.

And that’s the US. We are actually trying to do something about this. The industry actually is trying to pay attention and make a difference. What about Russia? What about Eastern Europe? You know, it is a huge, huge moment that we are facing together right now. And the reason is so important. If you lose your power and you don’t get your diesels on line, you have less than… like minutes before your reactor core goes into a meltdown. Even if they turned off the reactors today, those 433 reactors, there would still only be 12 hours between loss of power and a meltdown. So even turning the reactors off does not solve this problem.

And then, as I mentioned, there’s the fuel pool. We have to make sure that the fuel pools are also hooked up to the back up power because there’s enough heat being generated by the high level waste to cause the fuel pools to boil. The loss of coolant waste in the first 5 years out of a reactor has to be immersed in liquid. If it is not, and it contacts the air, it spontaneously combusts and melts.

So, huge piece of homework here. So I just want to stand back, thank you for listening, join hands, say, ‘This is our common future,’ and reflect back on the fact that we can do this and we can do this together. Thank you.

Linda Marks: That was Mary Olson. Mary is a Visiting Fellow from the Nuclear Information Resource Service, Washington DC. She was speaking about the implications of the Y2K bug. She was in Australia recently at the ‘Radioactive Alert’ Symposium.

Now Eric, the Beverley mine was given the go-ahead yesterday.

Eric Miller: Yes. Nick Minchin, Minister for Minerals and Energy gave the go-ahead and he said that this mine would be strictly monitored. I don’t know who is monitoring that. The only people who are looking at it are the State authorities, the State Department of Minerals and Energy and they were looking at it when this Beverley mine had a leak and it took 5 months for people to find out about it. So he is assuring that it will be monitored, but of course, there’s no body like the Office of the Supervising Scientist there looking at this Beverley mine.

Another piece in the news this week was that Newsweek reported the figures from the Department of Energy in America that show they have lost 2.5 tonnes of plutonium. Half of this is from the Rocky Flats weapons factory in Denver Colarado and they are missing over a tonne of plutonium from this one plant. They say that it is just in the ducts and in the accounting of the plutonium where it is missing, but they don’t know. Plutonium is one of the most carcinogenic substances on this Earth and we really have to account for every millionth of a gram of it and here they have lost 2.5 tonnes in America.

Linda Marks: Well, let’s hope that the Jabiluka mine doesn’t go ahead like the students are assuring us because it is very bad news about Beverley going ahead.

Eric Miller: Yes certainly! And that’s all we have time for on the Radioactive Show, 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 May 10, 1999.
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