By Pip Hinman
Environmentalists have cautiously welcomed the findings of "Future Reaction", the Commonwealth's Research Reactor Review released on August 5. Greenpeace's Ben Pearson said that the review's findings reaffirm the safety, environmental and economic concerns raised against the nuclear industry, however, it also leaves the door open for a nuclear reactor to be built.
The $2.5 million report, commissioned in November 1992 by science minister Chris Schacht, examined a number of options for Australia's only nuclear facility at Lucas Heights. They range from closing down the exiting 35-year-old reactor, its refurbishment (estimated by the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO) to cost around $195 million), or the building of a new reactor (estimated at between $200 and $400 million).
The review states that the latter option could not justified on economic grounds alone and proposed extending the life of the Lucas Heights reactor for another 10 years. It says that the decision to build a new one be deferred for five years. In the meantime, a site for high-level nuclear waste had to be found and research be done into whether non-nuclear technologies can produce certain medical isotopes and act as an alternative neutron sources. The review states that, given the development of nuclear facilities in Asia, it would be in Australia's "national interest" to have a nuclear reactor.
Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace, the Movement Against Uranium Mining and Environmental Youth Alliance have been active opponents of the proposal to update the Lucas Heights facility in New South Wales. They are unanimous that none of the options except the closure of the Lucas Heights High Flux Australian Reactor (HIFAR) is satisfactory.
EYA spokesperson James Clarke told Green Left that while it is claimed that the reactor is necessary to produce medical isotopes, the technology is now available to produce all the medical isotopes required in a device called a cyclotron. As for finding a suitable repository for the disposal of radio-active waste, Clarke said, "Nuclear industry experts have been telling us for the last 20 years that this problem will soon be solved, but they are no closer to solving it".
The report leaves open the possibility for Australia to involve itself in the Asian nuclear race, according to Pearson. "National interest" is really a euphemism for Australia's involvement in, and consequent promotion of, the international nuclear industry", Pearson said."As a board member of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Australia has already given $1.1 million to Malaysia for nuclear research, and, hot on the heels of the Japanese government, is currently finalising an agreement with the Indonesian government which has plans to set up 12 nuclear power stations. The recommendation fits into the plans to sign a secret Nuclear Technology Co-operation Agreement with Indonesia under which Australia would provide training and expertise for the Indonesian government."
John Hallam, Friends of the Earth nuclear spokesperson, said that while a new reactor at Lucas Heights would be a colossal waste of taxpayers' money, so too would its refurbishment, which according to ANSTO's own figures, will be almost as costly. "This refurbishment will only just keep HIFAR within minimal safety standards which will neither fit the state of the art equipment the research community wants, nor tackle more deep-seated problems such as the lack of a proper backup shutdown system."
The Lucas Heights reactor has a notoriously poor safety record. John Large, a nuclear engineer of the London-based consultancy Large and Associates, claimed in June that the radioactive waste discharges to the air were "extraordinarily high". In a submission to the review, Large said, "The ANSTO environmental monitoring program is poorly planned and of an ad hoc nature. In some instances crucial radioactive pathways have not been monitored since the early 1980s ... and there is the overriding and quite erroneous assumption that a 'research' nuclear facility ... could not possibly create environmental and health concerns."
Large's submission compared operations at Lucas Heights with the best practices overseas and said that despite the "piddling" size of the Lucas Heights' reactor, Britain's nuclear processing and power plants managed to keep discharges of radioactive waste much lower.
Predictably, the ANSTO submission to the review argued for the money to purchase a new reactor to be operational by 2003. ANSTO, which manages the Lucas Heights reactor, claims the new reactor would earn Australia $87 million a year by 2020, about $48 million through the export of radioisotopes and radiopharmaceuticals.
But the review found that a new reactor would not be financially self-supporting. In addition to its cost, up to $70 million would be needed to close Lucas Heights and up to $35 million would eventually be needed to decommission the new reactor.
According to the review, "Unless a reactor, whether the current HIFAR reactor, or any prospective new one, is considered sufficiently important for scientific purposes and in the national interest, to justify continuing government financing for its capital and a majority of its running costs, it would not be viable."
"The review makes clear that a new reactor cannot be justified on a number of grounds", said Pearson. "The fact that Australia is a world leader in solar and photovoltaic research, and according to the United Nations, we are the best placed in the world to develop wind power generation, it's certainly not a matter of not having any alternatives to nuclear power.
"If we in the 'sunburnt country' don't take advantage of the benefits of solar energy, then who'll set the example for the rest of the world?"