The CSIRO will spend $29.7 million on a three-year project to conduct an assessment, separation and treatment of radioactive waste at a CSIRO facility located on Department of Defence land near Woomera, South Australia. The Woomera facility is one of Australia’s largest storage sites for low and intermediate-level radioactive waste.
An inspection found “significant rusting” on many of the 9725 drums of radioactive waste and other toxic chemicals, which are “deteriorating rapidly” and possibly leaking.
CSIRO apparently has little knowledge of what is inside many of the barrels, some of which contain contaminated soil generated by government research into radioactive ores at Melbourne’s Fishermans Bend in the 1940s and 1950s.
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