Government backs away from nuclear reactor rhetoric
By Jim Green
When the federal government decided to fund the construction of a new nuclear "research" reactor in 1997, it faced a difficult public relations exercise.
The government decided to exaggerate the benefits of using the new reactor to produce isotopes for nuclear medicine. Peter McGauran, then science minister, began his press release with the words, "The construction of a replacement research reactor at Lucas Heights will build on Australia's life-saving nuclear medicine capabilities".
"There's no doubt that health issues concluded the matter beyond any doubt whatsoever", McGauran said on ABC radio on March 29, 1998.
On the same program, a senior government bureaucrat said, "The government decided to push the whole health line, and that included appealing to the emotion of people ... So it was reduced to one point, and an emotional one at that. They never tried to argue the science of it, the rationality of it."
Faltering rhetoric
Arguing that Australia needs a new reactor to produce medical isotopes faces just one problem: it isn't true. Most countries â including some advanced industrial countries â rely on alternative technologies for isotope production (such as cyclotrons) and imported isotopes. There is no reason why Australia could not do the same.
To avoid acknowledging these facts, the government and the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO) have relied on misinformation and obfuscation. As a former ANSTO scientist wrote in 1998, "It is an unfortunate state of affairs that dear old ANSTO, which lives off taxpayers' money, is feeding us all this propaganda and very little objective information".
Evasion has been another ploy. The bureaucrat interviewed on ABC radio discussed the government's policy of "starving opponents of oxygen" because the government knew it couldn't win the debate "on rational grounds".
"No leaks, don't write letters arguing the point, just keep them in the dark completely", the bureaucrat said.
When asked on ABC radio last year if it would be a life-threatening situation if Australia did not produce medical isotopes locally, Dr Geoff Bower, head of the Association of Physicians in Nuclear Medicine, said, "Probably not life threatening. I think that's over-dramatising it and that's what people have done to win an argument. I resist that."
Dr Khafagi, a prominent nuclear medicine specialist and a member of the ANSTO board, acknowledged in a June 1992 article in ANZ Nuclear Medicine that data on patient outcomes are "scanty" for nuclear medicine.
At least half a dozen current and former ANSTO scientists have disputed the need for a domestic reactor for isotope production, including Professor Barry Allen, who used to be the chief research Scientist at ANSTO and worked there for 30 years.
ANSTO scientists have provided important information which would not otherwise be publicly available. For example, they have revealed that ANSTO imports the most important medical isotope from South Africa, and that the imported product is cheaper and superior to that produced by ANSTO. ANSTO scientists have also provided information on alternative technologies for isotope production.
Squabbling between the proponents of different isotope production technologies has also undermined the rhetoric from the government and ANSTO. For example, proponents of an electron accelerator technique for isotope production argued in the April issue of Nuclear Technology that the reactor method (used by ANSTO among others) "imposes an unnecessary radioactive waste burden on the environment and an unnecessary risk of nuclear proliferation".
Backdown
With the medical arguments for a new reactor becoming increasingly implausible, the government has changed tack. The Department of the Environment and Heritage acknowledged in August: "A combination of alternatives, such as funding for 'suitcase science', importation of radioisotopes, and possible development of spallation and other technologies, could substitute in part for not constructing a new reactor".
A further reflection of the environment department's unwillingness to parrot the familiar rhetoric was its statement, "The Department's assessment concludes that the need and justification for the proposal is ultimately a matter for Government, particularly in defining how best to meet national interest objectives".
The parliamentary Public Works Committee produced a bipartisan report in August which said, "A number of organisations and individuals challenged the need for a research reactor based on a requirement to produce medical radiopharmaceuticals ... The Committee recognises that this issue has not been resolved satisfactorily."
Two years have passed since the government's decision to replace the existing reactor, $300 million has been committed to the project, a sham environmental impact assessment has been completed, the tendering process is under way, and now we have the government acknowledging that the debate over medical isotope supply has not been resolved satisfactorily!
According to the Public Works Committee, "ANSTO's position remains that the national interest criterion could not be satisfied by alternatives. This criterion, therefore, forms the cornerstone of the need for a replacement research reactor â Australia's international commitments in the nuclear fuel cycle and technology, nuclear safety and nuclear non-proliferation."
Reduced to the essential points, the government wants to maintain ANSTO, and to provide it with a new reactor, in order to provide support to the uranium industry and to shore up the nuclear alliance with the US. As Foreign Affairs and the so-called Safeguards Office put it in their submission to a Senate inquiry last year, ANSTO provides an "essential underpinning to Australia's uranium exports and nuclear cooperation policies".
No wonder the bureaucrat said on ABC radio that the government couldn't win the debate "on rational grounds". No wonder the government has rejected the recommendation of the Senate inquiry to subject the reactor plan to an independent public inquiry.
[Detailed information on the Lucas Heights debates can be found at