BY JIM GREEN
The terrorist attack in the United States on September 11 has led to renewed calls for the Australian government to cancel its plan to build a 20-megawatt nuclear research reactor in the southern Sydney suburb of Lucas Heights. But the Coalition insists that the reactor plan will proceed.
Labor is being pressed by environmental and anti-reactor groups to state unequivocally that a future Labor government would cancel the contract with Argentinean reactor constructor INVAP; to date, however, it has only committed to reviewing the contract. A firm commitment from Labor may be required if it is to secure preferences from the Australian Greens in the November 10 election.
If built, the new reactor will replace the 10-megawatt HIFAR reactor operated by the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO) at Lucas Heights.
During the debate over the planned new reactor, ANSTO has dismissed the possibility of a sabotage event leading to a "loss of coolant" accident which would expose the reactor core. This has been challenged by nuclear engineer Tony Wood, former head of ANSTO's Division of Reactors and Engineering.
Wood told a Senate inquiry on October 25 last year that a sabotage event "has the potential to have much worse consequences [than ANSTO's selected 'reference' accident] and the environmental impact statement admits there is no way of assessing its likelihood".
Wood asked for an assessment to be carried out and the results published "of a true upper-bound event based on major sabotage" with involvement from the SAS or other military experts. ANSTO prefers to stick its head in the sand and to continue to deny the possibility of a loss of coolant accident.
If an act of sabotage or terrorism, or a serious accident, does occur, the consequences could be serious. Wood told the Senate inquiry that the proposed new reactor "when operating at full power will contain sufficient fission products to cause great damage off-site if a large fraction were to escape."
The local Sutherland Shire Council has obtained documents from the (now defunct) Nuclear Safety Bureau saying that a loss of coolant accident would be 1000 times worse than the maximum hypothetical accident being planned for by ANSTO and the Argentinean contractor INVAP.
The reactor has been a target in the past. In 1983, nine sticks of gelignite, 25 kilograms of ammonium nitrate, three detonators and an igniter were found in an electrical sub-station inside ANSTO's boundary fence. Two detonators failed, and one exploded but did not ignite the main charge. Two people were charged over this incident.
In 1984, a threat was made to fly an aircraft packed with explosives into the HIFAR reactor; a person was charged and found guilty on two counts of causing public mischief.
On October 9, Australian Protective Services and NSW police conducted a full search of ANSTO following a bomb threat.
Last year, the chief of the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency, John Loy, issued a licence to ANSTO to prepare a site for a new reactor at Lucas Heights despite the absence of a detailed reactor design.
Loy dismissed a loss of coolant accident, saying, "Of course, it is possible to posit all sorts of simultaneous disasters and suggest superhuman powers to saboteurs or enemies; but that does not help the careful evaluation of a real life proposal."
ARPANSA will not commit to insisting on design changes in the wake of the "real life" events of September 11. The agency's regulatory branch is inhabited by no less than six former ANSTO staff members, and the executive director of ANSTO sat on the panel which interviewed applicants for the position of CEO of the "independent" regulator.
ANSTO's website says that "even in the unlikely event that an aircraft was able to hit the relatively small target presented by HIFAR, the radiation doses to persons beyond the buffer zone would be relatively low (comparable to natural background radiation in some parts of the world)".
Translated, this statement means that in the event of an aircraft hitting the reactor, the radiation doses within ANSTO's nuclear plant could be significant and, beyond the 1.6 kilometre buffer zone, thousands of people might be subjected to smaller radiation doses, but would still be at slightly greater risk of fatal cancers and other pathologies.
In addition to direct exposure to radiation, the contamination of land and property could have major social and economic consequences.
ANSTO says the planned new reactor will be designed to withstand the impact from a Cessna 500 Citation aircraft. Sutherland Shire Council is concerned about the adequacy of this standard given the close proximity of both the Sydney and Bankstown airports, which cater for aircraft much larger than a Cessna 500.
The existing reactor, and the proposed new reactor, are not the only risks at Lucas Heights; it is a target-rich environment, to use the military jargon.
ANSTO's isotope processing plant is vulnerable. As at mid-1996, 6000 litres of highly-radioactive liquid waste from irradiated target processing were stored at Lucas Heights. The waste, which is slowly being solidified by ANSTO, was long ago identified as having potential for off-site consequences in the event of an accident (such as an earthquake or a major fire) by the government's Safety Review Committee.
There are no plans for long-term storage or disposal of the waste once it is solidified, and meanwhile, ANSTO plans to expand the annual production of this waste by as much as 12-fold.
Another obvious target at Lucas Heights is the spent fuel from the reactor. On April 2, 1996, maritime workers refused to load a shipment of spent fuel from ANSTO because they had not been forewarned of the shipment. The spent fuel was driven aimlessly around Sydney while the dispute was resolved, because of a law preventing the convoy being stationary for more than two hours (presumably for security reasons).
A spent fuel shipment in the early 1990s was no less farcical: the convoy from Lucas Heights was followed onto a ship by a truck driven by Greenpeace campaigners.