By Jim Green
Pangea Resources, the company that wants to dump 75,000 tonnes of high-level nuclear waste in Australia, is spreading its wings. A new company, Pangea Resources International (PRI), is being set up, and Pangea Resources Australia will become a subsidiary. Countries in southern Africa and South America will be targeted.
Pangea has spent US$15 million so far on its Australian venture, and will continue to try to win political support for a nuclear dump in Western Australia. The company says it still plans to put a formal proposal to government authorities in 2002.
The establishment of PRI can be read two ways. It could reflect a realistic assessment by Pangea of the slim chances of establishing an international nuclear dump in Australia. Research commissioned in October found that 85% of Australians would support federal government legislation banning the importation of nuclear waste.
The second reading is that PRI is designed to take the political heat off the company, and other nuclear interests, in a sensitive political period. Companies hoping to mine several uranium deposits in WA face a bigger than usual public relations problem in that the establishment of a uranium mining industry in the state will facilitate Pangea's dump plan.
"We can't expect to benefit from exporting uranium if we are not prepared to deal with the waste created from its use", WA Senator Ross Lightfoot said last year (West Australian, March 26). Similar comments have been made by right-wing media drones and consultants on Pangea's payroll, including Sir Gustav Nossal, the new Australian of the Year.
Nossal said in December 1998, "Australia, with ... 10% of the [global uranium] market, is already part of the worldwide nuclear power industry and cannot escape its moral obligation to ensure the consequences of uncontrolled nuclear waste are not visited on future generation".
Pangea may believe its best chance of gaining approval for its Australian venture is to downplay its interest in rural WA for a few years, and make another push should uranium mines be established.
Pangea's activities have also complicated the government's plans for a national nuclear dump in northern South Australia. South Australians are understandably concerned that a national dump will open the door to an international dump in the same region.
Again, it would seem to suit the interests of Pangea, the federal government and the nuclear industry for Pangea to go to ground for a few years; better still if the company goes to Africa and South America.
Federal resources minister Nick Minchin, in a newsletter circulated in northern SA last year, said that claims that a national dump in the state could lead to an international dump there are "dishonest" and "scaremongering". However, it would be naive to believe the federal government's assertion that it will never approve Pangea's dump proposal, or to believe Pangea's assertion that it is not interested in dumping nuclear waste in SA.
Last year, Pangea was forced to admit that it lied to the Australian public, in relation to ministerial meetings it claimed had not taken place. As for transparency, or the lack of it, Pangea was operating behind the scenes for several years before its existence was revealed by the leaking of a corporate video in December 1998. Earlier in 1998, Pangea's head, Jim Voss, visited Australia proposing to operate the proposed national dump in SA as a private operation.