3CR
 Community Radio 855am

THE RADIO-ACTIVE SHOW

With Eric Miller and Linda Marks

Saturday at 10.00am

22nd 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 news and information on Nuclear, Peace and Energy issues.

On today’s show we hear from Genevieve Rankin, Councillor for the Sutherland Shire and member of People Against A Nuclear Reactor, speaking about how much money the Government is putting into promote a new reactor in the Sydney suburb of Lucas Heights. We also speak to John Hallam from Friends of the Earth Sydney on the reports to the World Heritage Committee that Kakadu should be put on the In Danger list. And finally from David Noonan, the ACF Campaign Officer in Adelaide on new moves to proceed with the Honeymoon uranium mine which is located 70 k west of Broken Hill in northern South Australia.

Now to our first story. The residents of the southern Sydney electorate of Hughes are outraged at the actions of their federal member Dana Vale who actively supported the Federal Government’s push for a new nuclear reactor for Sydney. The Federal member has used her electoral allowance to print and post a glossy six page leaflet supporting the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO) the Federal Government body that runs the reactor. Added to that, residents claimed that many statements in the brochure were incorrect and misleading.

Eric Miller spoke to Genevieve Rankin, asking her about Dana Vale and the leaflets she has been producing in support of the reactor.

Genevieve Rankin: Yes, it’s quite disappointing actually. We have propaganda, written by ANSTO, it’s very similar to material that they have put out previously but with photographs of our local federal member. Now this is at a time when ANSTO has been given 6 million dollars to promote this new reactor. They get millions of dollars a year in their public relations budget and to add insult to injury, we have our federal member using tax payer’s allowances to post to every household in her electorate, a propaganda document on behalf of the new nuclear reactor at Lucas Heights.

Eric Miller: Does this mean that you are up against quite a bit because everything that People Against the Nuclear Reactor gets out, they have to sell cakes and things to pay for it?

Genevieve Rankin: Absolutely! We are running stalls at all the local markets, selling t-shirts, badges, and putting our hands in our own pockets every time we want to do a leaflet. We did ask at the start of the Environmental Impact process, and you would have thought that if that was going to be a fair process, the community would have had a chance to fund some consultants. Or at least be able to put a case with scientific consultant back up, however the Government has refused this. It is a most undemocratic process. And to find our own federal member, who in March 1997 put out her own press releases attacking the decision to build a new reactor and telling John Howard to back off, but as soon as the Government made the decision in September ’97, she has started supporting it. To be putting around this sort of propaganda in a very well resourced, 6 page, glossy leaflet, attacking our community and all the people involved in the campaign against the reactor is just undemocratic and outrageous.

Eric Miller: Would the majority of the people in the electorate be against the reactor?

Genevieve Rankin: Yes and the Government know that. Their own survey showed that 86% of Australians, not just local people thought that you shouldn’t have a reactor in the middle of the suburbs. Locally, when we do surveys, we get more like 95% saying they are against it. So they know well and truly they know that the electorate is not supporting this and this is why they are going to great lengths to not have too much public discussion. But now that the discussion has been flushed out we find enormous mega-dollars being put into propaganda on behalf of the reactor. I think it is up to us to find out just how much tax payer’s money went into the production of this leaflet.

Eric Miller: The EIS is out and the Government has passed it but I see APANSA is doing an inquiry into the siting of the reactor at Lucas Heights.

Genevieve Rankin: Yes, as well as getting approval from the Government, it does have to be licensed. This is why they set up APANSA in the first place because we have no nuclear regulation in this country. We looked ridiculous internationally and you couldn’t go forward to the international nuclear community saying we are having a new nuclear reactor without somebody there to license it. However we find now that they have put an add in the papers, in the Australian and the Sydney papers, giving 3 or 4 weeks notice for public consultation on this matter. Now we have local roads projects down here that are advertised for 3 months and here we have the biggest scientific project in Australia’s history and ARPANSA, which is now based in Miranda, NSW, P O Box 655, doing this job to fast track the license for a new reactor. It is not surprising that they are not acting that independently of ANSTO. In fact the Chief Executive of ANSTO, Helen Garnet, was one of the three people on the committee to appoint the Chief Executive Officer of APANSA. So it is pretty clear that they are working hand in glove.

We would like anybody listening to this to write to ARPANSA. Just tell them that the deadline should be expanded and there should be proper reasons for choosing a site for a new reactor. Plus there should be a full siting study of Australia to see what is an appropriate site and public opinion should be taken into account in that process.

Eric Miller: Thank you Genevieve.

Genevieve Rankin: Thank you Eric.

Linda Marks: That was Genevieve Rankin, Councillor for the Sutherland Shire and member of People Against A Nuclear Reactor, and you can contact People Against A Nuclear Reactor on 02 9545 3077. And the address to send your submissions to ARPANSA, the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency, is PO Box 655, Miranda, NSW, 2228. They also have a web site at www.arpansa.gov.au.

The environment minister, Senator Robert Hill, recently rejected two expert reports that recommended that Kakadu National Park be put on the World heritage In Danger List because of the Jabiluka uranium mine. Eric Miller asked John Hallam from Friends of the Earth Sydney about the three reports that went to UNESCO’s World Heritage Committee, what they were about and where they came from.

John Hallam: One came from the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, otherwise known as the IUCN and the other came from ICOMAS the International Council on Monuments and Sites. The third one is an International Union of Scientists. The two of the three reports, the IUCN and the ICOMAS reports basically reiterated the previous positions of IUCN and ICOMAS which is that Kakadu National park should be placed on the list of World Heritage properties that are in danger. And given that IUCN and ICOMAS have an official role which is written into the World Heritage convention of giving advice to the World Heritage Bureau and the World Heritage Committee, then those reports are absolutely decisive. It makes it reasonable likely, barring diplomatic arm twisting, stabbings in the back and dirty tricks, that Kakadu National Park will be listed as In Danger.

The third report is by a body that doesn’t have a direct relationship with the World Heritage set up and it neither recommended for or against placing Kakadu National Park on the In Danger list. It made no specific recommendation one way or the other.

Eric Miller: These three bodies are pretty conservative bodies, aren’t they, they are not radical at all?

John Hallam: That’s right. They are composed of conservation personnel from various National Parks and Wildlife Services, senior, sometimes retired academics and diplomats. They consist of people who have been on international bodies for much of their working lives. They also consist of people who are highly senior and highly experienced. But they are certainly not radical bodies. They are as mainstream as it is possible to be. They are, after all, part of the internal bureaucracy of the United Nations. So they are what you would expect of that organisation.

Eric Miller: The comments from Senator Hill seem a bit pathetic.

John Hallam: Senator Hill is completely out of line and completely outrageous. These bodies are the word of God as far as environmental standards are concerned and as far as the placing of particular properties on the World Heritage list or on the World Heritage In Danger list and as far as making recommendation for their conservation and improvement is concerned. There simply is no other body to which you could turn for advice other than these bodies. They are the bodies that the set the standards. They are the bodies that decide at a global level what should be done.

Eric Miller: And these would be minimal standards really wouldn’t they, they wouldn’t be progressive?

John Hallam: Well, I wouldn’t say that. I would say that these are extremely reputable bodies and I would say that they would have high standards and they would have expectations. And the World Heritage convention and the record of the World Heritage Committee in dealing with properties that are threatened in various ways is in fact, quite a good one. The World Heritage Committee for example, placed the Mount Nimba District Nature Reserve in Guinea on the In Danger list for precisely the same reasons that they would be thinking of putting Kakadu on the In Danger list. The Guineans decided that they would like to open up a large iron ore mine right in the middle of the Nature Reserve. And believe it or not, the Guinean Government argued that the area where they wanted to operate the iron ore mine was suddenly not part of the World Heritage property. Sound familiar?

Eric Miller: Yes, very much!

John Hallam: Well, the World Heritage Committee placed the Mt Mimbas nature Reserve on the In Danger list and they wrote absolutely damning things about the Guinnean Government. It is the sort of thing that the Australian Government would have looked at this in another incarnation and said look what these third world governments get up to. Well, there we are, in with them, in with Guinea arguing that part of a World Heritage property is not part of a World Heritage property. And arguing that is perfectly fine to have the second or third largest uranium mine in the world in the very heart of a very highly regarded World Heritage property. Of course, UNESCO is not impressed, who would expect them to be?

Singing: If they are mining Kakadu then they are surely killing you because they are killing all the things you care about …..

Eric Miller: Are there any countries as rich as ours had their World Heritage areas placed In Danger?

John Hallam: Yes, the United States has had both the Everglades National Park and the Yellowstone National Park placed on the World Heritage In Danger list. But the US Government was decent enough not to contest the placing. And in fact, the US Government also had the plain responsibility and common sense to halt the gold mine 2 kilometres outside the external boundary of Yellowstone National Park. That was the trigger for placing Yellowstone on the In Danger list. And it had the decency to look at the reasons why Everglades National Park should be placed on the list and to say to the World Heritage Committee, ‘Let us work together to fix these things to get Everglades off the In Danger list by fixing the problem.’ Not by trashing the reputation of the World Heritage Committee.

Eric Miller: This really puts Australia in a sorry state doesn’t it?

John Hallam: Yes, it does. It puts us with the Guinneans in the state that they are denying that there is a problem. The United States has had two of its properties placed on the list but the US Government’s attitude to this has been completely different. They said, ‘It is perfectly fair and reasonable to place these properties on the World Heritage In Danger list because they are in danger, let us work together and fix the problem and put things right so they don’t have stay on the In Danger list.’

Eric Miller: How can this problem be fixed then?

John Hallam: There is one obvious way that the Australian Government can fix this problem and that is to halt the construction of the Jabiluka mine forthwith. Jabiluka construction starts again on Friday and on Friday, the Boyweg site which is sacred to the Mirrar People and which is part of the Natural Heritage values of Kakadu National Park will be desecrated.

Singing: If they are mining Kakadu then they are surely killing you because they are killing all the things you care about …..

Linda Marks: And the demonstrators were singing in the foyer of the head office of North Ltd in Melbourne in October ‘97. They were singing to employees as they walked passed them on their way into work after they had been blockaded out of their offices until after 10o’clock in the morning. And before that was John Hallam from Friends of the Earth in Sydney talking about placing Kakadu on the World Heritage In Danger list. The Friday he referred to was the 21st May so the sites are being destroyed as we speak which is an outrageous and disgraceful act on the part of ERA and the Federal Government.

Now to South Australia. There have been two trial uranium mines operating in the eastern part of northern South Australia. The Beverley and Honeymoon uranium mines. They have both been using the highly controversial acid leach method of mining where acid is pumped underground into the ore body. The solution that is brought to the surface contains the dissolved uranium. The uranium is then separated out. Then the waste, which is still an acidic solution containing 80% of the radioactivity and heavy metals, is pumped back underground into the aquifer.

The Resources Minister Senator Nick Minchin, gave the go ahead to the Beverley uranium mine last March. Eric Miller spoke to David Noonan from the Australian Conservation Foundation in Adelaide:

Eric Miller: David, there has been some movement with the Honeymoon uranium mine.

David Noonan: Indeed, the proponents, Southern Cross Resources have reported to the Canadian Stock Exchange that they intend to release their draft EIS (Environment Impact Statement) for Honeymoon before the midyear. So whether that comes out as soon as, or whether that’s mid June, we are yet to see. And they have made a number of more specific proposals of how they intend to operate. For instance, the existing trial mine at Honeymoon. They intend to connect that up to 11 different uranium deposit sites within 15 kilometres and to use extensions of the pipeline system to allow the one processing plant to deal with the uranium that they would then bring in by pipe from those sites up to 15 kilometres away.

Eric Miller: So they would have pipes going across the land for 15 kilometres?

David Noonan: Up to 15 kilometres, potentially to extract uranium from up to 11 separate uranium deposits within that diameter distance from Honeymoon.

Eric Miller: The Beverley mine had a spill from one of these pipes so I suppose with this length of pipe the spills would be more likely to happen?

David Noonan: Indeed, there is more risk. The more pipe, the more installation, the pressure in the system would have to be high to pump the fluids over those sorts of distances and the higher the pressure the more potential for leak and the more the spread of the leaked material as occurred at Beverley. It sprayed into the air as a fine mist.

Eric Miller: This Honeymoon mine, there has been a trial mine there for quite a few months now.

David Noonan: Yes. It produced uranium throughout last year in what they called a trial capacity and that uranium is stored on site. We now have the proponents putting in what they say are production wells at the Honeymoon site and putting in trial exploration wells at Kalkaroo which is the second extension from Honeymoon within that 15 k area.

Eric Miller: And they have another deposit that is about 70 k away?

David Noonan: They do. Goulds Dam is about 70 kilometres away. The draft EIS is to address that uranium mine as well. In effect it is now a draft EIS for two uranium mines that they would hope to mine sequentially. So they would expand the existing Honeymoon facility that was built in the early 80s to mine the uranium in up to 11 site within 15 ks of Honeymoon. Then they would move much of that plant facility to Goulds Dam, up to 65 – 70 ks away to mine that deposit later on. It’s a serious concern in that they are asking for long term approvals way in advance to run a uranium mine at Gould’s Dam to which there is very little local information available.

Eric Miller: It means that this mine will operate for a number of years, how many years will we expect it to run?

David Noonan: Well the company is talking about 15 – 20 years at least, at a production of 1000 metric tonnes of uranium a year. That could be for longer if they are allowed to use the one facility to access uranium deposits within a 15 kilometre range by extending the pipeline systems and they are allowed approvals well in advance. For example they would hope to have approval by end of this year, start of next year, potentially for a mine at Gould’s Dam which might not be constructed until 15 year’s time. They are trying to get approvals to leave the public inquiry and environmental impact assessment out of the decision making process and to get approvals to use what is an outdated methodology. The facility at Honeymoon was designed in the early 1980s and it’s not been upgraded to the extent of technology that is available. Even to do this which is a risky business, uranium mining. And they may ask for approvals to operate at Gould’s Dam based on the same set more polluting of technology.

Singing: We are here at Honeymoon, we’ll close down this mine very soon. We will stand together we will fight forever we are here at Honeymoon…

Linda Marks: The Honeymoon mine had a trial mine in 1982 when 500 demonstrators occupied the mining site for 24 hours in May 1982. The trial mine was closed because of environmental concerns.

Singing: We are here at Honeymoon, we’ll close down this mine very soon. We will stand together we will fight forever we are here at Honeymoon…

Cheering.

Voice: The cheers are going up now as three parachutists jump out of a plane right above the Honeymoon uranium mine site. The three parachutists at just about to land right in the middle of a circle of the 500 or so demonstrators who are now occupying the site of the Honeymoon uranium mine. Here comes the first down and it’s a perfect landing. Perfect second. The second one is down now the third one is still up about 20 feet. And here he comes. The third one has just touched down right now. Not quite such a soft landing for that one.

Eric Miller: The Beverley mine is using the same technology, in situ leaching, putting its waste back underneath the ground, do we believe that this is going to happen at Honeymoon as well?

David Noonan: Well that is the case so far. The Honeymoon has the approval to discharge all its liquid waste into ground water as has occurred at Beverley and that may be the intention of the company as to their commercial disposal of waste. The proponent at Beverley didn’t put forward any alternative to discharging all the mine’s liquid waste into ground water and we are yet so see whether the proponent at Honeymoon are going to be any more reasonable.

Eric Miller: You said that the company has produced the EIS but when can we expect to see it?

David Noonan: Well we understand that they have produced the draft EIS at the start of this year and they decided not to release it because, as we understand it, they wanted to see the full regulatory arrangement the Commonwealth put in place for the Beverley mine. And they have now gone back and redrawn their EIS to align it more with the thinking of Senator Hill. So they are trying to get passed the public concerns and the technical concerns that people have raised with regard to the use of the sulphuric acid in situ leach uranium mining. And with regard to the threat to adjoining ground water systems which is again a serious threat at the Honeymoon site of contamination. And also the degradation of ground water systems and the threat to other ground water systems from their discharge of all liquid wastes back into the aquifer that they are mining from.

Eric Miller: Now, Senator Hill gave his go ahead for the Beverley uranium mine on Christmas Eve, Senator Minchin, when he gave his go ahead for the Beverley mine, he said that would be stringently monitored. Well, what kind of monitoring have we got at Beverley?

David Noonan: There is really none other than the reporting of the company to the South Australian Department of Mines and some limited reporting to the South Australian Health Commission. Yet the Health Commission are a body that haven’t been particularly helpful or trustworthy in this role in that they were one of the bodies that approved the trial mine in the first place without any public, environmental or health assessment process. The South Australian

Environment Protection Authority is legislatively excluded from having any monitoring or regulatory role or decision making role in regard to the Beverley or the Honeymoon uranium mines.

Eric Miller: So there is nothing like what happens up at Ranger with the Supervising Scientists body that is looking at Beverley?

David Noonan: No, the Commonwealth takes no ongoing role with regard to the management of Beverley. They merely say that the conditions that Senator Hill placed need to be complied with in the future but they leave it up to the company and the South Australian Department of Mines to do that reporting for them.

Eric Miller: So the Department of Mines, do they have monitors up there or do they just look at what the company’s produced.

David Noonan: Well they rely entirely on the company produced information as does the Health Commission entirely rely on the company provide as information. With the case of the leak at Beverley, the company did notify the Department of Mines and the Health Commission but those bodies decided not to notify the public. They decided to keep the matter secret in effect for quite some months and it was only through the intervention of the ACF that the public ever found out about the leak at Beverley. So that we believe that these organisations have an established track record that is entirely unacceptable and demonstrated to be so in regard to their failure to protect the public interest at Beverley and we don’t trust them to act creditably in regard to the Honeymoon proposal.

Eric Miller: How could Senator Minchin say that the Beverley mine is vigorously monitored?

David Noonan: Well, he has an ideology to expand the nuclear industry. He believes and supports that the State Department of Mines is an appropriate level of authority to carry out that task. And he is just expanding his intentions for Australia be locked into the nuclear industry. Whether it is the Beverley and Honeymoon uranium mines, whether it is the National Radioactive Waste Dump that they proposed for central South Australia. The dump that Senator Minchin was recently claiming would only take low level waste when we are well aware that it will take what’s called long lived intermediate level, that’s toxic for some 200,000 years. Whether it’s his support for Jabiluka. He is trying to lock Australia into the nuclear industry and that will bring us under a great deal of influence long term to comply with the Pangea proposal to take back the world’s radioactive waste. So these are staged proposals to give Australia a radioactive future that we the public don’t have a say in.

Eric Miller: Thanks David.

David Noonan: You’re welcome.

Singing: We are here at Honeymoon, we’ll close down this mine very soon. We will stand together we will fight forever we are here at Honeymoon…

Linda Marks: That was Eric Miller speaking to David Noonan, Campaign Officer for the ACF in Adelaide and throughout that interview we heard the voices of demonstrators at the Honeymoon uranium trial mine in 1982.

Eric Miller: Well, that’s all the time we have for the Radioactive Show today Linda, so it’s from Eric.

Linda Marks: And it’s goodbye from Linda.

Transcript produced by Linda Marks - with much thanks!!!
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