Woomera nuclear dump provides 'opportunities'

BY JIM GREEN

On July 26, the federal government released a draft environmental impact statement about the planned national radioactive waste dump near Woomera in South Australia — and a fine farce the EIS is, too.

The government claims that the approval and licensing process for the dump is both “comprehensive and rigorous”. However, the government itself will “review” and then rubber-stamp the EIS. It is nothing more than an expensive, bureaucratic whitewash.

The EIS begins with: “No warranty or guarantee, whether expressed or implied, is made with respect to the information reported or to the findings, observations or conclusions expressed in this EIS.” In other words, don't believe a word of it.

The report skates over the alleged “need” for a national dump, stating that: “A national repository is required to dispose of Australia's accumulated and expected future low level and short-lived intermediate level radioactive waste. Without a national repository, radioactive waste would continue to be stored in over 100 sites around Australia, largely in facilities that were not purpose built. This poses potential public health and safety risks, including possible theft or misuse by terrorists.”

That rationale ignores numerous points. Even with a national dump, most of these 100 sites — comprising hospitals, research institutions, and industry and government stores — will remain as radioactive-waste storage sites (even if only for interim storage pending transfer to the dump). So inadequate storage arrangements ought to be improved whether or not the Woomera dump proceeds.

In some cases, waste is being more or less adequately managed and the advantages of moving it to a centralised dump are outweighed by the risks associated with moving it. Waste is usually best managed at the site it is produced because that minimises transport risks. It also encourages less radioactive waste production.

The EIS does not justify the proposal for an underground dump as opposed to above-ground storage. Advantages of above-ground storage can include easier monitoring and problem fixing.

The EIS invokes the threat of nuclear terrorism — and specifically mentions the September 11 attacks in the United States — to justify a centralised dump. However, terrorists would have no interest in the relatively small radioactive inventories stored at more than 100 sites around Australia (nor is a dump at Woomera likely to pose a terrorist target).

The EIS provides nothing more than an “indicative design” and “preliminary design layout” of the planned dump, along with an “indicative borehole design”. While identifying “operational hazards” associated with the dump, it dismisses them with the assertion, “Appropriate procedures would be developed to address these issues”.

For some years the government has tried to deny that, once the dump is established, more waste than is currently proposed could be stored there by asserting that a “total radionuclide inventory” will be established. However, the EIS does not specify the limit, stating only that it will be established by the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency (ARPANSA).

The EIS attempts to justify the dump with vague references to the “national interest” and tenuous, inaccurate attempts to link the dump to the production of medical radioisotopes. The EIS says that the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO) estimates that “in 2000-01 there were about 525,000 people in Australia who underwent a nuclear medicine procedure for the treatment of medical conditions such as cancer”. The real figure is 50-100 times lower.

The EIS reveals that more than three quarters of the waste to be trucked to Woomera — including dismantled nuclear reactors — will come from ANSTO's reactor plant in the southern Sydney suburb of Lucas Heights.

Woomera residents might take some comfort if, as the government claims, the region was found to be the safest site for a dump on scientific criteria. But it was not. The government's own siting study found equally suitable geology in the Olary region of western New South Wales. The Olary region also has the advantage of being closer than Woomera to the main waste source — ANSTO's reactor plant.

The dump proposal could not possibly survive a risk-benefit analysis because the project will provide no benefits whatsoever to Woomera.

Radioactive racism

The EIS says: “The siting phase has involved consultation with Aboriginal groups on heritage, and the engagement of relevant individuals and advisers to report on the heritage values of possible sites. Further opportunities for the involvement of Aboriginal people may be available during the construction stage, including involvement in fencing or other works, or through site visits.”

Aboriginal groups are overwhelmingly — perhaps unanimously — opposed to the dump. The federal government has attempted a number of manoeuvres to override Aboriginal opposition to the dump. One ploy in the late 1990s was to negotiate with some Aboriginal groups but not others, but widespread opposition nullified that manoeuvre.

Another ploy — this one more successful — was to threaten to compulsorily acquire the land short-listed for the dump. Aboriginal groups gave permission for test drilling on short-listed sites in the late 1990s, but only because they were between “a rock and a hard place” according to Stewart Motha from the Aboriginal Legal Rights Movement. “If Aboriginal groups do get involved in clearances [for test drilling] they face the possibility that the government will point to that involvement as an indication of consent for the project. If they refuse to participate, who will protect Aboriginal heritage, dreaming and sacred sites?”

Missiles

The preferred site for the dump is in the Woomera Prohibited Area owned by the federal defence department, which is just three kilometres from the Range E target. The EIS states that the risk of missiles inadvertently striking the dump is “medium” using a US Department of Defense methodology. The EIS says that “larger or higher velocity weapons may strike with sufficient kinetic energy to penetrate the five metre soil cover of the waste”.

These risks were highlighted by a failed rocket test on July 14 at Woomera. In October 2001, an experimental supersonic scramjet launched at Woomera veered off course and crashed.

The EIS says that the defence department “advises that there are on average 60 weapons firings per year that could potentially strike the repository”. According to state Labor MP Lyn Breuer, whose electorate covers Woomera, defence personnel have privately expressed concern about the potential impact of storing radioactive waste near the rocket range.

The staging of an automatic landing flight experiment at Woomera by the Japanese government in 1996 was delayed due to concerns about nuclear waste stored near Woomera.

One of the many problems with the latest “clean-up” of the Maralinga nuclear weapons testing site in north-western South Australia was the failure to establish “waste acceptance criteria” before vitrifying contaminated debris. The EIS justifying the Woomera dump defines waste acceptance criteria as “the set of requirements that must be met before radioactive waste can be accepted for disposal”, but it fails to specify the criteria, merely asserting that they “would be developed for the facility before operations begin”.

Nuclear engineer Alan Parkinson, who was involved in the Maralinga “clean-up” until his criticisms of the project saw him removed from it in December 1997, has drawn a parallel to the planned dump.

“The disposal of radioactive waste in Australia is ill-considered and irresponsible”, Parkinson wrote in the August edition of Australasian Science. “Whether it is short-lived waste from Commonwealth facilities, long-lived plutonium waste from an atomic-bomb test site on Aboriginal land, or reactor waste from Lucas Heights. The government applies double standards to suit its own agenda; there is no consistency, and little evidence of logic.”

Many of the individuals and organisations involved in the Maralinga “clean-up” are also involved in the planned Woomera dump. These include federal government bureaucrats, construction company GHD, and the puppet regulator ARPANSA:

lBureaucrats: Parkinson wrote in the February 2002 Medicine and Global Survival: “The public servants responsible for the last years of the [Maralinga] project had no background in radiation or project management, as is illustrated by several statements they made on the public record, asking, for example, what was meant by alpha radiation, or how to convert a milliSievert (a unit of radiation dose) to a picoCurie (a unit of radioactivity), or claiming that soda ash is neutralized by limestone.”

lGHD: Construction company GHD played a major role in the botched Maralinga “clean-up” and has also won a contract with the federal government as private project manager and community consultation manager for the planned radioactive waste dump. GHD's role as “community consultation manager” is particularly ironic given that it refused media requests to respond to criticisms of the Maralinga “clean-up” and has threatened a critic of the “clean-up” with a defamation suit for putting Alan Parkinson's critique of the company's work on a website.

lARPANSA: ARPANSA is described as the “Commonwealth's independent regulator” in the EIS, but it is not independent and has not shown itself much inclined to regulate. ARPANSA is too close to government — it is effectively a government agency. It is also too close to ANSTO, with six former ANSTO staff working for ARPANSA and ANSTO having a direct role in the selection of the chief executive of ARPANSA.

Public comments on the draft EIS will be accepted until September 20. The EIS is on the internet at <http://www.dest.gov.au/radwaste/DraftEIS>. Hard copies can be purchased for $50 from Australian government bookshops (phone 132 447). A summary can be purchased for $2.50.

From Green Left Weekly, August 7, 2002.
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