The federal government and the nuclear industry might have hoped the leaked video identifying Australia as the "world's best" site for an international nuclear dump would have made the more modest plan to dump Australia's waste on Aboriginal land in SA more palatable. However the speculation about an international dump had the opposite effect.

Aboriginal groups were shocked by the video, produced by the US-based company Pangea Resources, which identifies land in SA and WA for a massive underground dump for nuclear waste. Some of the land is freehold Aboriginal land and other areas are subject to native title claims.

The federal government has been bullying Aboriginal groups in SA to gain permission for test drilling in the Billa Kalina region, with a view to finding a dump for Australia's stockpile of nuclear waste. However Aboriginal groups - already sceptical - have been all the more reluctant to allow drilling since the Pangea plan was revealed. The prospect of a dump for Australian nuclear waste becoming an international dump is not a welcome one.

The Pangea video was not meant for public viewing. It was obtained by Friends of the Earth in the UK and released to Australian media in December by nuclear campaigner Jean McSorley.

The likelihood of Australia becoming the world's nuclear waste dump in the near future is slim. As the eccentric conservationist David Bellany says, just try putting that proposal in the electoral pipe and smoking it. Nevertheless the proposal has attracted support from scientist Sir Gustav Nossal (who accepted a consultancy assignment with Pangea to push the project forward), right-wing think tanks such as the Institute of Public Affairs, and a number of right-wing media commentators. Mainstream politicians have distanced themselves from the Pangea project, but SA premier John Olsen said he would "have a look" at any firm proposal put to him.

Another supporter is Robert Galluci, president Clinton's special envoy on weapons of mass destruction. US officials confirmed that the Pangea plan is one of three international proposals being circulated in Washington. The other proposals are to dump nuclear waste on Wake Island (in the Pacific) or in Russia.

"The project would have a profoundly beneficial economic impact. Thousands of jobs would be created", the Pangea video promises. Mike Nahan, Executive Director of the Institute of Public Affairs, says nuclear waste storage could generate $25 billion annually on a global scale. Like the prime minister, Nahan appears to have been bitten by the reconciliation bug: "It (the Pangea dump) would probably need to be located on Aborigines' land which would require their permission and, if given, provide much-needed income and jobs."

An accident could give the economy quite a boost, too. An accident involving a release of radioactivity from a container in an urban area could have economic "consequences" in the order of US$2 billion, according to a 1980 study by the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

Another criterion for the honour of hosting an international nuclear waste dump is a stable, democratic political system. Australia is approaching the centenary of federation. After around 200 000 years, nuclear waste is no more radioactive than many natural geological formations, the Pangea video says. Pencil in a party for the year 202,000.

The video notes that the major risk with geological disposal is waste dissolving in rainwater and migrating. Vast areas of inland Australia are flat, remote, arid, extremely impermeable, and there is very little groundwater according to Pangea. Hence Australia's "world's best" billing.

However the CSIRO published research last week which paints a very different picture. According to CSIRO scientists Dr Jon Olley and Dr Peter Wallbrink, new scientific evidence indicates that since European invasion/settlement, Australians have had a "far more catastrophic impact on their landscape than previously suspected." European settlement "unleashed an episode of erosion, sediment deposition and change in river systems orders of magnitude greater than we have assumed to date", they say.

"There's little doubt modern Australians have underestimated the extent of change we have inflicted on our landscape", says Dr Wallbrink. "In some cases the rates are staggering. We're talking about changing the very face of Australia in comparatively few years, so dramatic is the scale of these events."

Ironically, the CSIRO scientists have used new research techniques including measurements of caesium-137 deposited by nuclear weapons tests in the 1950s.

These findings do nothing to inspire confidence in the stability or safety of a underground dump. They also cast doubt on the wisdom of the federal government's plan to dump Australia's nuclear waste in unlined trenches in the Billa Kalina region of SA.

"International transport of used nuclear fuel has been taking place since the early 1960s covering more than 15 million miles without any incident involving escape of radioactivity", the Pangea video claims. This conflicts with a study conducted by CH2M Hill, a consultancy firm commissioned by the federal government to prepare a report on the Lucas Heights reactor EIS: "Cross-border shipments of radioactive materials are of major concern in North America, as well as in most Western European countries. In the United States, the US Department of Energy made more than 14,000 hazardous materials shipments in 1996. Of this number, 242 resulted in equipment, personnel and/or environmental radioactive materials contamination. During the period from 1971 through 1996, there were 2,379 shipping accidents involving Type A packages, with 219 of these resulting in release of package contents."

The Pangea video acknowledges that hundreds or thousands of kilometres of truck and train transport would be necessary for each shipment. Contrary to Pangea's assurances that this poses no risk, the American Petroleum Institute says that heavy truck accidents occur about 6 times per million miles travelled. Fires occur in 1.6% of all truck accidents and 1% of all train accidents.

"After transportation by rail to the customer country's port a purpose-built ship will carry the cask to a dedicated port terminal in Australia. The ships have many special safety features making them the safest afloat, and both they and the port terminal will use tried and tested technology, ensuring safe operation." If purpose-built ships are the most suitable for spent fuel transport, why does the Australian government send the spent fuel from Lucas Heights in normal cargo ships?

Worldwide, nuclear power plants generate about 14,000 tonnes of spent fuel annually. The current stockpile amounts to some 160,000 tonnes. According to Mary Olsen, from the US Nuclear Information and Resource Service, nuclear power accounts for 95% of the radioactivity generated in the last 50 years from all sources, including nuclear weapons production.

"There is a good degree of consensus worldwide by governments and scientists that geological disposal is the most viable option", the Pangea video claims. Needless to say, if there was scientific and political consensus on the wisdom and safety of "geological disposal" (underground dumps), they would be operating successfully overseas and there would be no push to establish an international dump in Australia.

Overseas experiences are instructive. In the US, a centralised underground dump was first proposed in 1972, and in 1987 Yucca Mountain in Nevada was identified as the preferred site. After a series of delays and cost blow-outs, the expected operation date for the Yucca Mountain dump has been pushed back to 2023, and it is far from certain that the dump will ever operate. A recent economic analysis puts the construction cost at over US$50 billion. As a temporary fix, the government and the nuclear industry hope to establish an "interim" dump on Native American land in New Mexico or adjacent to Yucca Mountain. Between 1991-94, 30 communities refused Monitored Retrievable Storage (MRS) proposals, i.e. temporary dumps.

In Germany, the long-term plan was to build a deep geological dump. As a result of public opposition to the proposed establishment of a permanent underground dump, "interim" dumps were established. The transport of nuclear waste to these sites has generated mass public opposition. In March 1998, a shipment was accompanied by 30,000 police. There were tens of thousands of protesters and more than 1000 arrests.

According to the US Nuclear Information and Resource Service, a scientific advisory body to Canada's nuclear agency recently recommended against underground dumping as scientifically suspect and politically impossible.

So-called "disposal" in underground dumps is an out-of-sight, out-of-mind con job. The least problematic of a bad bunch of options is engineered, above-ground storage at the point of production/use. On-site storage beats centralised stores or dumps because it avoids the risks associated with transportation. On-site storage also forces producers/users to deal with their own mess and this encourages the minimisation of waste production.

Above-ground storage beats underground dumps because: it is easier to monitor above-ground stores; there is a better chance of effective remedial action if problems are discovered; and a greater number of future management options will be available.

Above-ground storage is the best option, but not a good or permanent one. There are security risks, and greater exposure to weather conditions and other hazards. The useful life of dry stores is measured in decades, not millennia. As Jean McSorley says, "There's no environmentally proven way for disposal - nuclear waste means eternal vigilance."

Pangea Resources, and other supporters of the project, have adopted a moralistic tone. Nuclear waste is a "world problem", they say. Rubbish. The nuclear industries of just three countries - the US, France and Japan - account for almost 60% of all nuclear power plants. For every country with nuclear power plants, there are five without.

Another line of argument is that Australia chooses to sell uranium so "we" should accept the waste. But according to a 1998 Newspoll, two thirds of the Australian population oppose the Jabiluka uranium mine, yet the mine proceeds.

Another aspect of the guilt tripping is the argument that the dump would be a safe resting place for plutonium from dismantled nuclear weapons. There's no doubt that the world inventory of plutonium - hundreds of tonnes and increasing steadily - represents a major risk in relation to weapons proliferation. But only a portion of the stockpile is from dismantled weapons. Japan, for example, has amassed a huge stockpile of plutonium, ostensibly for its nuclear power program.

All of the eight nuclear weapons states - the US, UK, France, China, Russia, Israel, India and Pakistan - intend to maintain and in some cases upgrade their arsenals. The argument that dumping a portion of the plutonium stockpile will be a step towards the global disarmament of nuclear weapons is dishonest and opportunistic. Dumping plutonium would represent a technical fix - more accurately a technical non-fix - to the POLITICAL problems such as the intransigence of the nuclear weapons states, and the political and economic causes of militarisation.

In terms of immediate steps, the first demand must be to deactivate the 5,000 nuclear weapons on hair-trigger alert around the world - preferably before the millennium bug bites. The next step is immobilisation of fissile material using solid matrices such as concrete or glass.

The dump proposal is not being driven by concerns about weapons proliferation. It is an attempt by the nuclear power industry to dump its waste problems on isolated and politically vulnerable communities in order to increase its chances of survival.

Australia's high-level nuclear waste - the spent fuel from the Lucas Heights reactor in Sydney - is to be sent overseas. Now we have a plan to bring the rest of the world's high-level nuclear waste into Australia. Make sense? This is the logic of the nuclear industry. Got a problem - shift it somewhere else and onto someone else, stall for time, make it look like something's happening.

Western Australians are stepping up their campaign against Pangea Resources, the consortium which wants to use rural WA for an international nuclear waste dump, now that the company has established an office in Perth.

Pangea has a three-pronged strategy to drive the proposal forward, encompassing economics ("profitable but not profit driven"), gaining public and political acceptance, and conducting technical studies which, according to a Pangea spokesperson, are "primarily focused on demonstrating safety".

Pangea's efforts to win the safety arguments have been undermined by Professor John Veevers, a fellow of the Australian Academy of Sciences and an academic in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Macquarie University. Veevers has argued against Pangea's plan to turn Australia into "terra nuclear" in several newspapers, on ABC Radio National, and in scientific journals such as Australian Geologist.

Veevers points to research questioning the geological stability of the Great Victoria Desert, the region of WA being proposed for the dump. His research also throws into question claims made by Pangea concerning the risks associated with transportation and long-term storage of high-level nuclear waste.

Veevers wrote in the Australian Geologist, "The inevitable risk in the proposal stems from the magnitudes: ... tonnes of enormously dangerous radioactive waste in the northern hemisphere, 20,000 kms from its destined dump in Australia where it must remain intact for at least 10,000 years. These magnitudes - of tonnage, lethality, distance of transport, and time - entail great inherent risk."

To his technical analysis Veevers added the following comments: "Cogent as they may be, these (technical) arguments themselves are overridden by a higher logical rule: don't put all your eggs in the one basket. The superpowers disperse missile-bombs in silos on land, in submarines in the ocean, and in aircraft in the atmosphere. The rule applies no less to radioactive waste. Concentrating international waste in a single site in the Great Victoria Desert would be a huge single target for today's terrorists or the next 10 millennia's vandals, and Australians would be the first victims of the fallout."

Veevers urges Australians to force politicians to give Pangea its marching orders by refusing exploration and development rights. He says Britain - British Nuclear Fuels Limited is the major backer of Pangea resources - should avert another round of nuclear opprobrium by abandoning the plan for a waste dump in WA and devoting more resources to a thorough clean-up of the weapons testing site at Maralinga.

Pangea's originally proposed building dedicated port and rail facilities if the project proceeds. However Pangea now says that its "state of the art" ships would use a "dedicated and secure" dock at an existing port and that existing rail lines would be used. It also flags the possibility of road transport if rail links are not available.

Pangea has recruited a range of academics, former bureaucrats, right-wing think tanks and columnists to push its proposal. The Fairfax and Packer media empires also support the plan according to "sources" cited in the March 15 Business Review Weekly.

According to Veevers, "Eminent biomedical and information scientists have gone out of their way to welcome Pangea. Why? Presumably because the money is right: scientific jobs and science-driven prosperity will accompany Pangea's promised 1% boost to our GDP."

Most politicians from the major parties have distanced themselves from the proposal. However some Liberal MPs openly support the plan, and a majority of Liberal and National MPs could be persuaded to support the dump according to Ross Lightfoot, a Liberal senator in the federal parliament.

Activists opposing the Pangea plan are attempting to pressure both the federal government and the WA government to enact legislation prohibiting importation of nuclear waste.

Some progress has been made in relation to parliamentary motions. For example on April 22 a motion opposing the Pangea plan was passed unanimously in the federal senate.

However getting legislation enacted is proving to be more difficult. The federal government declined an opportunity to legislate to prohibit the importation of nuclear waste during the passage of a nuclear safety bill last year. The WA state government has also refused to legislate.

The WA Greens are coordinating efforts to win local government support for the campaign against Pangea. A number of local councils have already declared their council areas "nuclear free zones".

The Shire of Chapman Valley has amended its town planning scheme to make it illegal for nuclear materials to be stored, transported or processed in the region and other councils are planning similar moves. Chapman Valley Shire chief executive officer Maurice Battilana said the council took the action to protect its agricultural industry, the biggest revenue earner in the shire.

WA Greens' Senator Giz Watson said in state parliament on August 19, "What concerns me is that a "no" now might turn into a "yes" later, especially when we are talking about enormous financial incentive. The solution is to legislate to prevent this type of proposal. That legislation must be at all levels of government. Local councils are already moving down that track. Legislation is required at state government level and it is also necessary to have legislation at the federal level as there is always a possibility, if a decision were to be taken by a federal government to allow the importation of this waste material, that state authorities would be in an exceedingly difficult position to oppose it."

Pangea has attracted some support from the nuclear industry, such as from the industry funded Uranium Information Centre. However the plan for a waste dump is proving to be a double-edged sword for companies planning to mine uranium in WA. Those companies have to confront, or side-step, the argument that uranium mining in WA will open the door for Pangea.

The connection has been made by Senator Ross Lightfoot, among others. Lightfoot said, "We are not grappling with our global responsibilities - we can't expect to benefit from exporting uranium if we are not prepared to deal with the waste created from its use."

Similarly, WA energy minister Colin Barnett told the WA parliament on April 20 that countries producing uranium have a "moral and international responsibility to take part in the nuclear waste debate".

Pangea Resources, the company which wants to dump thousands of tonnes of high-level nuclear waste in rural Western Australia, has had to deal with a number of problems since setting up offices in Perth earlier this month.

There has been speculation that British Nuclear Fuels Limited (BNFL), which put in 70 per cent of Pangea's seed funding, may terminate its involvement in the venture. Robin Chapple, research officer with the Anti-Uranium Coalition of WA, said "Sources close to BNFL have indicated a desire to distance themselves from Pangea." Chapple said that Pangea would probably press on with its plan even without the support of BNFL, as it could find other investors.

On September 21, Pangea was publicly berated by BHP for using a picture of a BHP train and rail track in a brochure without seeking permission. BHP expressed concern that readers of the brochure might assume that BHP is prepared to transport nuclear waste on its Port Hedland to Newman rail line, which runs to within 100 kms of an area identified as a potential site for the proposed nuclear dump.

"We have had nothing to do with Pangea and we are not looking for anything to do with them," BHP spokesperson Stedman Ellis said. He said BHP reserved the right to take legal action. However a Pangea spokesperson said the "generic" picture was properly licensed for reproduction.

Political opposition

The Fremantle City Council recently passed a motion calling on the federal government to legislate to prohibit the development and/or construction of any waste facility that might receive, process and/or store imported radioactive material. The motion - which also calls on the federal government to disallow the development of any further uranium mines in Australia - will also be debated at the national assembly of the Australian Local Government Association in late October.

On September 28, the Esperance Council voted 11-0 to oppose storage, transport and  processing of nuclear waste in the shire. This followed a council meeting which was addressed by a Pangea spokesperson. Esperance Council president Ian Mickel said, "I thought it was a very professional and slick presentation. If all that was said is to be believed then I would think other countries would be putting their hand up for this."

The opposition of Esperance Council is significant because of the possibility that Pangea might want to build a new port, or use an existing one, at Esperance to import nuclear waste. Pangea hopes to import waste via a "dedicated and secure" dock at an existing port, in contrast to earlier statements that a dedicated port would be constructed to handle nuclear waste shipments.

It has been revealed that the British government is the major backer of Pangea Resources, the company scheming to build an international nuclear waste dump in Australia.

The issue came to public attention in December, with the leaking of a promotional video produced by Pangea Resources. An article published in the industry journal Nuclear Fuel on December 14 reveals that British Nuclear Fuels Ltd (BNFL) is the major financial backer of Pangea and has also provided considerable technical support. BNFL is 100% owned by British government.

Pangea proposes an underground dump which would be able to house 76,000 metric tons of spent fuel, taking 3,000 tonnes annually when fully operational. This is about 20% of the spent fuel generated annually by nuclear power reactors. For comparison, the total capacity of the proposed dump is over 30,000 times the total volume of waste generated by Sydney's Lucas Heights reactor over its lifetime.

According to the Nuclear Fuel article, Pangea was created specifically to explore the possibilities for an international dump, and is a spin-off of the international geotechnical company Golder Associates, which is based in Toronto. Investors in Pangea Resources include BNFL, the Swiss radioactive waste agency Nagra, and the Canadian based company Enterra Holdings Ltd, which is Golder's parent holding company.

The British connection

According to the British paper The Observer (21 February), Britain has the world's second largest store of nuclear power waste (after the US), plus enough stockpiled plutonium for 5000 bombs.

The British nuclear industry's efforts to deal with radioactive waste have been farcical. Historically, reprocessing has been favoured, but residual wastes from reprocessing must still be disposed of. Numerous problems with reprocessing plants, including the decision to shut down the Dounreay reprocessing plant in Scotland, have jeopardised the future of reprocessing in the UK.

In 1998 the British government decided that an underground dump for intermediate level nuclear waste could not be made safe over the lifespan of the waste. This left the nuclear industry's waste management policies "in tatters" according to Dr David Lowry from the Nuclear Control Institute. Failed efforts to establish a permanent dump have cost hundreds of millions of dollars.

In December a British nuclear regulatory agency noted continuing poor management of 70,000 cubic metres of intermediate level nuclear waste held at BNFL's Sellafield site and other sites around the country. In the same month, a report by the British government's Health and Safety Executive concluded that the UK Atomic Energy Authority has been operating nuclear facilities "without clear knowledge of some of the risks" and made 143 recommendations for change.

Small wonder that the industry is looking for an off-shore dump. BNFL acknowledges having invested approximately £5 million in Pangea Resources. A BNFL spokesperson said that the search for a UK dump continues, but other options are being explored including the Pangea Resources proposal.

"International solution"

The strategy of the British nuclear industry - hedging its bets by exploring a range of possible options - is shared by many other countries. Nuclear power utilities the world over have been unable to address the range of technical, economical and political problems posed by nuclear waste. Surveys indicate that dumps are feared even more than nuclear power stations. A French survey found that 94% of respondents would not live near a nuclear waste disposal site.

As nuclear power operators have tried and failed to find a domestic solution to radioactive waste, the so-called "international solution", i.e. dumping waste overseas, has looked increasingly attractive.

German and Swiss nuclear agencies investigated the possibility of locating a dump in China's Gobi Desert in the 1980s. In the mid 1990s, US nuclear agencies were advocating the establishment of a dump on a South Pacific island. German nuclear power utilities have floated the idea of locating a dump in South Africa.

Richard Stratford, director of the US State Department's Office of Nuclear Affairs, advocates an international dump and has suggested countries in the Far East as well as cash-poor former Soviet Union countries.

According to the Environmental News Service (February 8), the Russian Minister of Atomic Energy wrote to the US Energy Secretary Richardson in December, offering to consider a long-term commercial arrangement to import spent fuel from US nuclear power plants into Russia for storage, and the Russian Duma is considering legislation to allow this practice.

The Environmental News Service also reports that Greenpeace leaked documents last year indicating that Russian officials are planning to import nuclear waste from a number of other countries in addition to the U.S.

Pangea Resources search for possible locations turned up four options - Australia, Argentina, China and western South Africa. According to Pangea's chairman Jim Voss, sites in China and South Africa were eliminated because they didn't have the right mix of good geology, strict regulatory regime, and solid democratic politics. Nuclear Fuel reports that initial, informal interest in Australia resulted in the Argentine site being put on the back burner.

Australian support

More and more information is becoming available on the level of support for the Pangea Resources' proposal within Australia. Jim Voss says Australia suggested the idea of an international dump in 1992, without clarifying whether the suggestion was for a dump in Australia or saying exactly who in Australia made the suggestion.

Detective work by Len Kanaar from Friends of the Earth has uncovered several corporate links between Australian companies and Pangea Resources. For example, two former directors of Pangea Resources are now involved with the Australian gold-mining companies Mogul Mining and Bolnisi Gold. The significance (if any) of the links remains unclear.

The Pangea Resources' proposal has attracted support from right-wing think tanks such as the Institute of Public Affairs and a number of right-wing media commentators. Mainstream politicians have distanced themselves from the Pangea project, but SA premier John Olsen said he would "have a look" at any firm proposal put to him.

Members of the federal government have repeatedly said it is not government policy to allow the importation of radioactive waste, and deny having met with Pangea Resources. A Pangea spokesperson said "We have been puzzled at the reluctance of the Australian government even to hear the story. Given the amount of energy of both sides of politics to present Australia as a favourable investment destination, to not even wish to meet with us is rather inexplicable."

It was reported in The Australian last year that Voss met with government ministers about his ambition to operate the proposed national dump in the Billa Kalina region of South Australia as a private facility. It is unclear whether the international dump proposal was discussed - or if there were any discussions at all in 1998. (As at September 2000, Pangea claims to have no interest in operating national dump/s, and the federal government has ruled Pangea out of any involvement in national dump/s or national stores.)

It has been acknowledged that discussions have been held between Pangea Resources and government bureaucrats about the international dump proposal. The article in Nuclear Fuel cites an Australian "source" who says that the government's opposition is not unbending.

In the Senate on December 10, the Coalition defeated an amendment to a nuclear bill which would have prohibited the construction of nuclear waste storage facilities in Australia.

Certainly Pangea Resources has not been deterred by reactions to its proposal since it was publicly revealed in December. Liberal Party pollster Mark Textor has been testing public opinion for Pangea. The Canberra based form Access Economics was commissioned to prepare a gee-whiz report on the economic benefits of an international dump - $200 billion over a 40 year period, equivalent to $8200 for each of Australia's six million households.

The latest supporter of the Pangea Resources proposal is David Reese, Australia's (so-called) ambassador for disarmament from 1989 to 1990. Reese presents the familiar furphies. Australia is "uniquely placed" to provide a "safe" solution to this "international problem", Reese claims. And by dumping a tiny proportion of the global stockpile of weapons-useable plutonium in Australia, "we may be able to help and contribute to the effort to achieve a safer world free of nuclear weapons." And pigs might fly.

Reese says, "The only attempt to canvass the question dispassionately so far has been by the distinguished scientist Sir Gustav Nossal." However, as Reese well knows, Nossal has already declared a financial interest, having accepted a consultancy assignment with Pangea Resources to push the project forward.

Western Australia

Pangea Resources' promotional video identifies South Australia and Western Australia as having suitable sites. It appears that the greatest interest is in north-west WA. A report in The Australian says that Pangea Resources has earmarked an area 100 kilometres inland in WA.

A WA Greens parliamentarian, Giz Watson, says that an $80 million upgrade on the road from Port Hedland to Marble Bar, and an extension leading a further 132 kms east, is paving the way for the dump.

Watson says the road is the closest distance between a large industrial port and the geological formation currently proposed by Pangea Resources.

A spokesperson for the WA government denied any knowledge of Pangea Resources' proposal, saying the road was being built to service two mines and local Aboriginal communities. However Watson says, "Even the most gullible of us doesn't believe any government, let alone a Liberal economic rationalist government, would spend that much money on the small mining companies which are en route".

No doubt South Australia is still under consideration and would be an even stronger bet if the federal government successfully pushes through a national nuclear dump in the Billa Kalina region.

Pangea Resources, the company which wants to dump 75,000 tonnes of high-level nuclear waste in Australia, is spreading its wings. A new company, Pangea Resources International, 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 forward a formal proposal to government authorities in 2002.

The establishment of Pangea Resources International can be read two ways. It could reflect a realistic assessment 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 foreign nuclear waste.

Another reading of the establishment of Pangea Resources International is that it 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 Western Australia face a bigger-than-usual public relations problem in that the establishment of a uranium mining industry in the state will facilitate Pange’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 so-called “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 Western Australia 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 company goes to Africa and South America. Should a national dump be built in SA, then there is a strong possibility that Pangea will target South Australia for an international dump.

The Australian uranium industry says a new national nuclear policy is needed to allow potentially billions of dollars worth of new projects, including waste reprocessing and disposal, uranium enrichment and, ultimately, nuclear power stations. The need has become urgent, with the presentation to the Government of a formal proposal for a private-sector high-level waste dump that alone could generate hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue, the industry says.

Ian Hore-Lacy, general manager of the industry's Uranium Information Centre in Melbourne, says "it is more than ever clear that we need a properly considered national policy on nuclear energy". He says "a strong case for development of a bipartisan national policy" can be made because of recent developments that add to Australia's leading role as a uranium miner.

These include the development of promising enrichment technology by the listed company Silex, which is being funded by the US Government; the US Government's adoption of the Australian Synroc technology for encapsulating high-level waste; the proposed construction of a dump in South Australia for domestic low-level waste disposal; the high-level dump for international waste planned by Pangea Resources; and the possibility of nuclear energy in Australia becoming competitive with coal power.

New federal legislation should also be seen as throwing open the question of an expanded nuclear industry. The legislation, which could allow a privately owned and operated commercial dump, came into force last month mainly to create a new federal nuclear industry regulatory body and to allow the low-level waste dump to go ahead.

National law firm Freehill Hollingdale and Page says the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Act has wider implications. Daniel Moulis, a partner in the firm, says: "What we are seeing now is a platform for regulating the industry and extending the boundaries of what can be done in Australia in relation to nuclear waste and nuclear energy, the bringing together of a lot of different and disparate processes."

Pangea's proposal, submitted to the Government early this month, has renewed the bitter national nuclear debate. Its plans encompass a $10 billion dump and associated infrastructure, including ships and a railway from Whyalla, that could return up to $3 billion over its almost 40-year life in royalties to state and federal governments.

Pangea, a US company, is backed by the British Government's nuclear fuel authority, BNFL, the Swiss Government/private-sector waste disposal co-operative Nagra and the US engineering firm Golder Associates. Pangea says its dump could take up to 75,000 tonnes of waste from overseas, including reprocessed weapons-grade material, at 2000 tonnes a year and generate up to $200 billion in export revenue.

Despite the company's close links to the Liberal Party, it has had little success in winning public political support from the Government. The federal Industry, Science and Resources Minister, Senator Nick Minchin, has told Pangea that "regardless of your views about the stability of Australia to host the international nuclear waste repository, the Government has no intention of considering Pangea's proposal".

Minchin has also reiterated that he will not meet Pangea representatives and that the Government has no intention of changing its policy, which forbids the import of high-level waste. Prime Minister John Howard, the South Australian Premier, John Olsen and his Western Australian counterpart, Richard Court, have all publicly opposed the plan. But some Liberals have supported it, including SA backbencher Graham Gunn, whose electorate covers part of the area Pangea is interested in, and WA's Senator Ross Lightfoot.

There are undercurrents swirling around the Pangea proposal that suggest there may be more political support for it than meets the eye. For example, a recent report in the British journal Nuclear Fuel said "Government opposition was not unbending". Other lobbyists for the industry and several state Liberal sources have also told BRW that there is a degree of support for it at some higher levels in the party.

The latest Uranium Information Centre bulletin says of the Pangea plan that "Labor leaders initially reacted with cautious interest due to its non-proliferation implications". Opposition Leader Kim Beazley has said that "we don't want a dump here but we have got to recognise that there are some problems". Countries with nuclear facilities,he has said, should look after their own waste.

The uranium industry in Australia says this should be seen as an equivocal response. Pangea says "a nation that generates waste must be responsible for the safe management and disposal of its waste. However, this does not preclude a country from exporting waste for disposal in another country." Beazley's office says his response is clear, and that the proposal is unlikely to go ahead.

And several people who have been involved in discussions about the proposal say Pangea representatives have hinted strongly that the company has met Beazley or other senior Labor politicians or officials. Beazley's office says he has not been briefed by Pangea. Howard and Minchin officials have stressed that neither has met Pangea or its representatives.

'Not aggressive'

Pangea managing director James Voss says the company "is not seeking a great deal of comfort from any particular government. Our approvals cycle ... to get all the necessary permits is so long that we have to work on a bipartisan basis. We are not at all being aggressive in trying to get the Howard Government or any other government to be supportive of us."

At a recent conference, Pangea Australia president David Pentz said the submission to the Government's Strategic Investments Office was "to initiate discussions which will enable us to more fully assess the feasibility and strategy of our proposal. This will enable us to engage in a dialogue with the Government on the merits of the proposal".

Australia is coming under international pressure to at least discuss the proposal. US President Bill Clinton's special envoy on nuclear waste, Robert Gallucci, is said to have urged the Government to give it the go-ahead. Gallucci met Howard early last year but is reported to have denied discussing the proposal with him, although he believed the White House had been briefed on it. Pangea says it has presented its proposal to US disarmament officials.

The company has spent $15 million on a five-year quest to find a suitable site for its dump, and prefers north-western South Australia, where the Federal Government is already proposing to dispose of its low-level waste. About $13 million of the cash has come from BNFL and $1 million from Nagra.

Most of the waste that would be dumped in Australia under the Pangea plan would come from reprocessed spent fuel from the world's 400-plus nuclear power reactors, but some would also come from reprocessed plutonium from dismantled nuclear weapons. The waste would be transported to Whyalla in purpose-built ships carrying special containers.

It would be transported by a special-purpose rail link to the dump, which would cover up to 20 square kilometres 500 metres beneath a five-square-kilometre security area. The waste would be encapsulated in glass or Synroc and sealed in steel drums.
Pangea is hardly friendless in its campaign. Apart from its British and Swiss Government parentage, it is using a range of influential consultants in Australia, including the prominent scientist Sir Gustav Nossal; a former executive with the Australian Geological Survey Organisation, Peter Cook; and two men close to the Liberal Party, pollster Mark Textor and political strategist Toby Ralph.

Textor and Ralph are highly regarded within the party and outside, and are said to form a tough and effective team: the National Australia Bank recently included them in a group to lobby in favor of banking policy reform. Textor in particular has a reputation in the party as a can-do operator who has the ear of Howard and power brokers such as former party director Andrew Robb and his replacement, Lynton Crosby. Polling by Textor, whom Howard has described as "a very effective pollster for the Liberal Party", played a crucial role in the Liberals' re-election campaign.

The 32-year-old former Northern Territory statistician also has a reputation for taking on the hard jobs: he provided the data that led to the recent sacking of New South Wales Opposition Leader Peter Collins, and his Australian Research Strategies was sub-contracted to provide the Government with research on public attitudes to waterside workers during the waterfront dispute.
Textor has also provided research to the Conservative Party in Britain and the Republican Party in the US and he has conducted polling for the Australian Republican Movement. According to state sources involved in discussions with Pangea in November 1997 and a couple of months later, Textor's presence was a compelling reason for those around Olsen and WA Deputy Premier Hendy Cowan to ensure that both politicians were represented, if at some remove in the case of South Australia.

The involvement of Textor and Ralph is seen by the two states as a continuation of the Federal Government pressure they have been under since the early 1990s to take some form of nuclear waste repository. SA sources say pressure for the low-level waste dump began in earnest under Labor in 1992 when the storage of some external waste at the Lucas Heights reactor in Sydney was ruled to be illegal, and they quote a letter from former Labor Energy Minister Simon Crean's office in support of a South Australian site in 1994.

Easiest site

The choice of South Australia for the low-level site became a fait accompli during the first Howard Government, according to the sources, although there were equally good alternatives in WA and on the New South Wales-Victoria border. The reason, they say, is that SA was regarded as the easiest site politically because of the history of the Billa Kalina area and its surrounds - the big WMC Roxby Downs copper-uranium mine, the Maralinga atomic test site, the Woomera rocket range and the US spy base at Nurrungar.

Some South Australian Liberals believe the Howard Government thought the argument about the low-level repository would give them a good handle on attitudes to the Pangea proposal. The state sources say that although they believed the Pangea team had been talking to at least two senior federal Liberal advisers, they remain convinced that neither Howard nor Minchin has been directly involved. "They indicated that they had been told by the feds to shut up until after the next election," one says. They also indicated that they had the support of the Fairfax media group, publisher of BRW, and the Packer organisation.

Cowan and several officials, including one from Premier Richard Court's office, met the Pangea team, and in SA at least one bureaucrat and an outside adviser met them. Cowan officials say the Deputy Premier told Voss and Textor that public perceptions would prevent the proposal being accepted in WA, that Australia should not be accepting other people's waste and that he absolutely opposed the plan personally.

Sources close to SA Premier John Olsen say he did not see Pangea and has not been officially briefed on the plan. Olsen is said to oppose the idea. Nevertheless, the economic projections presented to the state, which is in difficult economic circumstances, might be enough to change people's minds, the sources say.

Sources in both states say that, in any case, it was indicated to them in November 1997 by Pangea that the Federal Government had told the company that the project could go ahead under federal legislation; no state legislation prevented it, provided environmental regulations were met. The new Nuclear Protection and Safety Act was presented to the House of Representatives in November last year and was passed in December.

A Greens amendment prohibiting the authorising or licensing of types of installations that Australia does not already have, such as nuclear power plants, fuel enrichment and fabrication and reprocessing, was accepted. But a second Greens-sponsored amendment prohibiting nuclear waste storage was defeated. Therefore, Freehills says, the new Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency (Arpansa) created by the act will have the power to licence the construction and operation of nuclear waste stores.

The new act "is a critical aspect of the Commonwealth's desire to regulate and enliven activity and debate in the area or atomic energy and nuclear waste", says Freehills, which has several industry clients, including Pangea. But the legislation covers only Commonwealth sites, activities and contractors.

One of the stumbling blocks to disposal of foreign waste is Customs regulations prohibiting the importation of certain radiation sources. But the prohibition is not absolute: radioactive substances can be imported with the permission of Arpansa. Freehills' Daniel Moulis, who is the partner responsible for nuclear waste and site remediation issues, says Australia has agreed to take back its own treated waste. "The real issue that is yet to be decided is whether other countries' high-level nuclear waste can be imported and stored."

Moulis says other significant aspects of the legislation are that the Commonwealth can proscribe state or territory laws, making them inapplicable to the activities of people or activities licensed under the act. It also provides for the right of appeal to the federal Administrative Appeals Tribunal for people refused a licence.