3CR
 Community Radio 855am

THE RADIO-ACTIVE SHOW

With Eric Miller, Ila Marks and Cherrie

Saturday at 10.00am

21st August 1999

Ila Marks: Hello and Welcome to the Radioactive Show brought to you by the Sustainable Energy and Anti-Uranium Service. My name is Ila Marks and with me in the studio is Eric Miller. The Radioactive Show is a weekly program bringing you news and information on nuclear, peace and energy issues.

On today's show we hear about the second annual going Solar Fair, in rural Victoria. We also go to a factory to take a look at the float being built for the Nuclear Free Ways Project.

But first to put us in the picture we speak to Daniel Voronoff, the coordinator of the Nuclear Free Ways Project. The federal government have pushed ahead with their plans for a new nuclear reactor at Lucus Heights in Sydney and a national radioactive waste dump in Northern South Australia.

People in the anti-nuclear movement see these two projects as being linked, each is reliant on the other. If we don't get a new reactor we won't need a nuclear waste dump. And unless we get a nuclear waste dump the new reactor won't be able to proceed. Eric Miller spoke to Daniel Voronoff and asked him how did the Nuclear Free Ways Project come about?

Daniel Voronoff: It was a decision by the anti-uranium collective at Friends of the Earth. We very much saw a need to initiate and embrace a campaign that addressed the fact that the federal government had just a new nuclear reactor to be built in Sydney. And the fact that they have a proposal to have a radioactive waste dump in South Australia. This would necessarily effect a very diverse constituency of people, from sunburn Sydney, through to indigenous communities and remote rural communities in South Australia, but also all those comminutes that will be on route of any radioactive waste transport between Sydney and the dump.

So we saw a need to reach out to those communities to inform them, and to encourage and support the formation of local groups that would work in a network to defeat the proposal. That's the nuts of the hub of the Nuclear Free Ways Project.

Eric Miller: So the government is saying that the waste being buries in this dump is just a few gloves and things like that, but the majority if going to come form Lucus Heights?

Daniel Voronoff: Very definitely, not only by volume but also by radioactivity. Lucus Heights will be the principal source of radioactive waste and has been since the reactor has been going, that is where the bulk of Australia's radioactive waste comes from.

Eric Miller: There is a lot of high level radioactive waste produced at Lucus Heights. What's going to happen to that?

Daniel Voronoff: Lucus Heights produces high level waste in the form of spent fuel rods, that is, the fuel rods become irradiated in the process. The spent fuel rods are reprocessed that is, they are sent overseas to a reprocessing plant. In the pasted it has been Doonray in Scotland, in future it will be in La Hague in France. Both of those sites are notorious for their radioactive emissions into the sea and air, and several accidents also.

The processed waste - what happens with reprocessing is that they take out various substances from the spent fuel, including plutonium and use it for weapons or other forms of nuclear reactor fuel. And then they create a volume of waste in the order of about eighty times the original volume, and that waste is sent back to the place of origin.

So we are going to be the recipient of a waste form that is long-lived intermediate level waste, a fancy name for extremely high level waste. It still has the same amount of radioactivity, but it comes back to us at eighty times the volume. And that's principally the stuff that's going to be amounts other categories of waste, being low level waste, short term intermediately level waste in liquid and solid forms will be disposed of at the dump if we don't stop it.

Eric Miller: So these big casters that we have seen on TV that travel around Europe, that's what these fuel rods go in, and they come back in a big cylinder like that.

Daniel Voronoff: Well, they definitely travel from Sydney the Lucus Heights facility to the dock and to the reprocessing plant overseas in those casters that are used overseas. I've done a lot of inquiries and a lot of research … the network that I work with around the traps really aren’t sure how long lived intermediate level waste is transported. It is likely to be in a form of caster, but probably very different from that that carries spent fuel, mainly because of the heat value. For example, spent fuel rods are still actually quite hot and they require a very specific style of transportation that involves coolant. Whereas long lived intermediate level waste has cooled down a bit even though it is just as radioactive. So there will be a different style of transportation. We're not quite sure of the engineered facilities that will be used for that.

Eric Miller: So with the Nuclear Free Ways Project we will have something like one of the casters and you will be driving around Australia.

Daniel Voronoff: Yeah, what we're doing is, we're building a replica of a nuclear waste transportation based on the caster model and taking that around as a float to these communities we believe will be effected adversely by the nuclear developments and informing of the dangers of the expansion of the nuclear industry. And using that as a means of, we hope to catalyse local governments in these areas and create a network.

Eric Miller: So there will be a load of people with this caster going around and stopping a various communities stopping and explaining what is going on with Australia's nuclear waste.

Daniel Voronoff: Yes, that's basically the number, there will be a team that will be dedicated to informing community groups and holding public meetings and distributing relevant information about the project and the issues.

Eric Miller: There's a lot of people working on the Nuclear Free Ways Project. What are some of the things that are being done with it?

Daniel Voronoff: Well the float has to be built and that's being done and well in hand and you have probably heard from some of the people who are involved in that,

Eric Miller: We will hear their voices soon.

Daniel Voronoff: And that's been fantastic because, its taken the form of a community arts project, and that sculpture project has relied on the goodwill of people … that's a real positive thing. So that's coming together really nicely. Another aspect is the interactive aspect. We are planning to have a touch screen interactive that's part of the float where people can come up to the float and they see a computer screen and play a short animation- series of animations that discuss the issues that are involved in the campaign. What are the dangers of a reactor, what are the dangers of dumping waste, and transporting waste? So this is a fresh way of getting information across and getting out into the community. So there is a team of animators working on that side of the things. And there are a network of people all around the country that are setting up … contacting local groups, setting up contacts all around the country for local campaign groups.

Eric Miller: Now when are Melburnians likely to see this caster.

Daniel Voronoff: We are looking at a launch of the float at the Melbourne Fringe Parade, Brunswick Street, 26th of September. So I would invite listeners to come down and join in.

[Music by Bob Bossin, from his Remedy for Nuclear War and other Related Ailments, the song New Talking Atomic Blues.]

Well plutonium is a man made creature

It's not in the ground

It's not in nature

It's not like wood or gas or coal

And God wouldn't touch it with a ten foot pole.

This stuff is 200,000 times more lethal than cobra venom.

Stays that way for 250,000 years

Creates some difficulty when putting out the garbage,

Ila Marks: And that music with the interview there was Bob Bossin, from his Remedy for Nuclear War and Other Related Ailments, the song was called New Talking Atomic Blues. And before that, Eric was speaking to Daniel Voronoff, the coordinator of the Nuclear Free Ways Project. If you are interested in finding out more, you can call Friends of the Earth on 03 9419 8700.

Next on the Radioactive Show we head off to an old industrial estate in the working class suburb of Footscray in Melbourne, to take a look how the building of the mock radioactive waste transport is going.

Eric Miller: Here we are in Footscray in Melbourne and we are talking to ...

Nick Curmi: Good 'ay, my name's Nick Curmi

Rob: I'm Rob

Sha: My name's Sha

Eric Miller: And you're making this mock radioactive transport down here in Footscray.

Nick Curmi: Yeah, this is for the Nuclear Free Ways Project, its an attempt a building a large scale realistic nuclear waste transporter, that is going to be the same size as the real thing. But we're making it much more emotive, much more of a sense of containing a toxic substance that's trying to get out. …. Part of an effort to travel around Australia with a theatrical troupe and speakers spreading the message about this governments intention to expand the nuclear industry more than it has ever attempted to do before.

Eric Miller: So it's going to down on a tandem trailer. You've been working on that? How long have you been working on that?

Nick Curmi: Well we have pretty well much re-built this tandem trailer, we have been on it about 6 weeks … the trailer ...we have really built the trailer it travel 20,000 k's that sort of thing. Everything is pretty well renewed on the trailer. And we're welding this waste containment cylinder on top, and it all welded in such a way that it can travel thousands of kilometres and cope with a lot of vibrations and still look good a year or two. And it's being built with performers. With their ideas of what they need for them to do a performance as a means of educating people in towns along the route in such a way that it is an informing thing about what the governments intentions are and what implications it has for them As this nuclear waste passed through their town.

Eric Miller: So people will be able to perform on top of it and there will be speaker's spaces and things on top of this waste facility.

Nick Curmi: Yeah that's right and its also got several opening doors and we hope to have two computer monitors in the transporter and people can walk up to the trailer and read a nuclear future or no nuclear future. So its creating an interactive thing as well as a performance thing and the performers will exit the transport … choreographing the theatrical idea … exploring all of those ideas this thing implies ..

Eric Miller: How long is the facility?

Nick Curmi: The whole thing is five metres in length and 3.5 metres wide. It also has about 100 enormous bolts to give it the impression of enormous containment. We are toying with the idea of leakage points where possibly we may leak some toxic looking material for part of the performance. We are trying to think of something that will really portray potentially that this thing may leak. The theatrical people …. we need their input for those special effects.

Eric Miller: How long have you been working on it and when do you think it will be finished?

Rob: It would be two months now …. We started off on the trailer getting that ready, not we are getting the main frame of this ready with all the bits and pieces .. it doesn’t look like much at the moment but its all coming together. We have got most of the metal cut now we just have to put it together.

Eric Miller So you have been building a huge metal frame here.

Rob: Yeah, it’s the size of a small petrol tanker really, it's actually huge. It's very slow though, we sore of need more people to help. There is a lot of work involved, its labour intensive.

Eric Miller: You come down here one day a week and volunteer your labour to do this.

Rob: Two, Wednesdays and Saturdays, when I've got the time , between all of the other commitments you have to survive.

Eric Miller: Do you need special skills to help doing this work?

Rob: No, not really, any one can help, if you can use the tools that's a benefit, but we show people how to use these tools, that haven't used them before, and an hour later they are more than happy to use something they have never seen before. So no problem if you don’t know.

Eric Miller: And you're helping with this mock radioactive transporter?

Sha: Yes, sure I started helping out a couple of weeks ago. I got involved through ACF. Helping out learning how to weld and solder and a whole lot of interesting things.

Eric Miller: Right, so you're learning a whole lot of skills while you help to do this?

Sha: Yes that's right. And I'm hoping to join up as it travels across to Billa Killina, later on in October.

Eric Miller: So you're hoping to get it finished by October and then go on the road with it?

Sha: Yeah, I think that the middle of September is the cut off date, Going up to Lucus Heights in early October then across to Billa Kilina, to up with all of that and see how it goes … and the response from the general public

Eric Miller: And after that I suppose communities can hire it and use it to pueblos the nuclear waste dump.

Sha: Yeah, I hope that it is going to be standing for a long long time, and it can be used in that area , I definitely hope so.

Eric Miller: Thank you very much and I'll let you get back to work

Ila Marks: That was Nick Curmi, Rob and Sha, speaking to Eric Miller as they went about constructing the mock nuclear waste transport. And it was big and it did look like lots of fun building it so if you would like to help them work on it … as they said they work on it Wednesdays and Saturdays. Give Daniel a ring at Friends of the Earth in Melbourne if you are able to help out. Foe's number is 03 9419 8700.

Now to Going Solar…. last year the Going Solars' Renewable Energy and Sustainable Living Fair was an outstanding success and it is on again on the 27th of November. Eric Miller spoke to Liz Andrews from Going Solar and asked her how long they had been in operation.

Liz Andrews: Going solar, the shop has been going over 20 years, we just celebrated our 20th birthday last year.

Eric Miller: You always have been an out let for alternative technology - wind and solar technology?

Liz Andrews: That's right, The shop was started by Steven Ingural and it was out of his idea of from an anti-uranium movement. His idea really was to offer people a positive alternative. Rather than just going with ''don't do this", he was wanting to say "well here is an alternative". It had a really positive beginning.

Eric Miller: And last year you started off the Solar Fair. What happen there?

Liz Andrews: It was just an amazing event. I was the coordinator of it. It was just fantastic. We all of us had never done anything like it before and we all worked really hard together and really the idea came out of the shop, we are really in touch with peoples questions …. People come in and they are really looking for alternatives for sustainable living. Really the idea of the fair was to try to bring together as many answers for people together. We had every thing from just the physical technology, the actual fair ran on a solar array, through to seminars, from people of all sorts of backgrounds. And also the house on the site was a passive solar and ran on a renewal energy system. So it is just looking at how we can present this information in lots of different ways.

Eric Miller: So it is broad acres of different sorts of technology solar and wind - and brought them together with people who are interested in doing something like that.

Liz Andrews: That's right, and at the same time we had that, and then we also felt it was important to try and bring in people who were decision makers as well. So we had people from local government and academics who are researching into technology, environmentalists were there as well. Just from every facet we thought where people were involved and would want to tell people what they were about.

Eric Miller: So you organised about three thousand people to come to that fair and you got many more?

Liz Andrews: We did, it was amazing, we really though like you said maybe one or two thousand, that was what was in my head. And including all of the exhibits and people who participated in the fair I reckon there was probably about 5 and a half maybe 6 thousand came up on the weekend. So it was a really great week end.

Eric Miller: Now this year where are you having it? What's dates is it on?

Liz Andrews: We are holding in at Hanging Rock at Macedon on the 27th and 28th of November. And really part of our reason for choosing this site apart from it just being gorgeous and legionary is to do with the Macedon Shire council is a member of the Cities For Climate Protection Program and they are very reactive in that. They actually approach us saying why don't you hold the fair here and this is hat we're doing in terms of promoting renewable energy and sustainable options. So we thought, "Yeah great idea."

Eric Miller: What are some of the talks you are having over that weekend?

Liz Andrews: The program will in a lot of ways be similar to last years. So there will be a number of who will just speak on the basics of solar, wind and micro-hydro power. Things like maintaining batteries, or installation, or just considerations for sizing, just those nuts and bolts things. Right through to issue based talks, last year we had Dave Sweeney come and talk on Jabiluka. So we want to involve those sorts of speakers again. The other area we really want to flesh out is sustainable agriculture. We haven't finalised any details about that yet, but it is an area we are wanting to expand this year as well. I'm sure it will be around the same number of speakers over the weekend that will be around 60, which is incredible.

Eric Miller: There will be a number of speakers going on at the same time then?

Liz Andrews: That's right, yes, and again the other thing we are looking at ... last year we had building demonstrations there so that will be there again. We're also … Owner Builder Magazine is looking at the possibility organising house tours around the area. And there might be a couple of other things like that actually look at things physically set up. And talk to people who live with that. Then again the fair will set up with a solar grid system …

a solar grid interactive system.

The other really interesting development is we are having an industry day on the Friday. What we're planning is for example Cities For Climate Protection … we are looking at the possibility of having a day where they actually organise for councils to look at possibilities satiability within councils. Another possibility is someone from; say regional waste management group is looking at organising something around school teachers. We are also looking at organising an information day for plumbers and solar hot water. There will actually be specific topics for targeted groups. And people who go to that will have assess to exhibitors stuff as well.

[Music by Bob Bossin, from his Remedy for Nuclear War and other Related Ailments, the song New Talking Atomic Blues.]

You've got power from the sun

And power from the wind

And power from the ocean

Hydrogen

You've got power in the tide

In the ray of sun

If the powers that be would only put up the money

And there's power in the honey bucket

Animal waste,

And don't run out, makes methane gas

It's all very simple when you boil it down

We need hydro from shit not the other way round

Eric Miller: So is it time now for different industry people to contact you and suggest more ideas that they have?

Liz Andrews: Yes, we are really open to that, if you like you can always ring Going Solar if you can think of a great way you would like to be involved in the fair. Our phone number is 932 84123.

Eric Miller: It's over a weekend, so will people be able to get accommodation?

Liz Andrews: Yes, I can give you a number for accommodation in the area, its 542 72033. And around the Macedon area there is quite a range of B& B's through to quite basic caravan parks. The other aspect of it is … we really want to encourage people to use public transport as much as possible. There is a train running to Woodend, or car pool.

Eric Miller: Are you expecting more people to come along this year?

Liz Andrews: Yes, I think there will be. The feedback from last year was amazing. We had exhibitors saying that it was the best thing they had been to for years, and certainly the feeling of it was people were really excited … we are already having a lot of people ringing and asking about it. The feeling is it will build on last years.

Ila Marks: That was Liz Andrews from Going Solar. And their number again for more information on the fair, is 03 938 4123. Now Eric you have some news.

Eric Miller: The news this week … previously we have reported on the plutonium ship with the MOX shipment from France and Britain that left on the 21st of July. It is carrying about 446 kilograms of plutonium, enough plutonium to make about 60 weapons. It is now off the South coast of Australia. The Australian government hasn't complained about this. They probably don't even know where it is, and they probably haven't even been told. And they haven't investigated where this ship is and what the ramifications are. It could have an accident and that would be a terrible detriment to out fisheries and to people around Australia's coast. It's heading around Australia's coast this moment.

The other thing is … ERA's profits are down. Their parent company, North has reported that their profit is down 18% for the twelve months to June the 30th. Their profit was only 21.9 million. But ERA, it says is still buoyant, it says that their largest growth market for uranium is the Asian market. And they claim that there is 15 nuclear power facilities under construction and 50 planned. I don't know where they get that figure of 15, it would be less than half that amount and these additional 50, with the Asian market like it is, is highly unlikely. They have just announced a downward profit margin and so have WMC, the copper price and the uranium price for their giant Roxby Downs mine is under increasing pressure.

And also the Tent Embassy … the Radioactive Show reported on the Tent Embassy in Melbourne last week, they occupied North's building on Tuesday the 17th and there was one arrest. They occupied that building for a number of hours. And afterwards the police came around to their Tent Embassy and dismantled it. So that was closed down on the 17th of this month. That's the News for this week, Ila.

Ila Marks: Thanks Eric.

Ila: That’s all from the Radioactive Show now being heard on the Community Radio Satellite Network.The Radioactive Show is produced in studios of 3CR. You are able to E-mail us if you have an issue you want raised or any comments about the programs, you will find us at ra3cr@hotmail.com And of course our web address www.sea-us.org.au

Transcript produced by Ila Marks - with much thanks!!!
Page last updated September 10, 1999.
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