PRESENTER: Most antinuclear protests in Australia have been about uranium mining and yellowcake. The fears that some Americans and Europeans have about their nuclear power stations just don't apply here, except at Lucas Heights.

For years, residents of outer Sydney have complained about having to share their suburb with a nuclear reactor. It's the only one in Australia. Its purpose is research for science and industry, and most importantly, we're told, the making of medical radioisotopes. Now, the Federal Government is determined to spend $300 million on building a brand new one: contracts were recently signed with an Argentinian company. But awkward questions are being asked about safety, secrecy and necessity. Beyond the health and environmental issues, we're told there are many important reasons why Australia does have a nuclear reactor. Like them or not, those reasons are too often ignored in the heat of the argument. Alan Sunderland reports on the campaign to convince Australians that a new reactor is safe, useful and important to the nation.
 
REPORTER: ALAN SUNDERLAND: Just a few weeks ago, behind the secure gates of the Lucas Heights nuclear facility, a group of invited guests watched a brief ceremony that had been almost 10 years in the making.

HELEN GARNETT, DIRECTOR, AUSTRALIAN NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY ORGANISATION: But it simply says, "The future: July 13 2000", and I guess that's what we're in essence toasting is the future, and we'll now cut the cake.

REPORTER: The cake was cut and then, more importantly, the contracts were signed for a nuclear reactor costing a massive $300 million, which would guarantee Australia's nuclear industry for another 50 years. Outside, local protesters might as well have saved their breath. The operators of Lucas Heights say it's more dangerous driving through Sydney's traffic than living near their reactor.

HELEN GARNETT: International practice shows that research reactors are in fact designed to be safe and to be operated in and near cities.

REPORTER: They've been splitting the atom at Lucas Heights since the 1950s, when Australia was still debating whether to embrace nuclear power. Some were even considering nuclear weapons. Both options are long abandoned, but the reactor, known as HIFAR, keeps humming. There have been safety worries from time to time: leaking waste drums, a damaged monitoring site, even workers exposed to too much radiation when they pulled out a fuel rod by accident. But generally, the administration remains unconcerned.

SENATOR NICK MINCHIN, FEDERAL INDUSTRY MINISTER: The Lucas Heights reactor has operated so well, so safely and so advantageously for 40 years, there is simply not a case to abandon that.

REPORTER: Its replacement will be safer, more powerful and more expensive. In fact, it will be the single most expensive scientific research facility in Australian history. But in the never ending debate over its safety, a more fundamental question has been overlooked: why do we need such a costly reactor at all? Our search for answers takes us inside the Lucas Heights complex. Not to the reactor itself, but to a very plain looking building beside it: Building 23.

DR STUART CARR, DIRECTOR, AUSTRALIAN RADIO ISOTOPES: This is the main production facility, where we produce most of our products.

REPORTER: Dr Stuart Carr runs Australian Radioisotope Industries at Lucas Heights. In this carefully controlled environment, he oversees the manufacture of radioisotopes used in nuclear medicine.

DR STUART CARR: So what we're going to do is, if you go left here, you can go into the area where we produce iodine 131 products.

REPORTER: In the battle to win public support for the nuclear reactor at Lucas Heights, medical radioisotopes are the chief weapon. The iodine, iridium and technetium produced here are used in cutting edge nuclear medicine around the country.

HELEN GARNETT: The fact is that on average, every Australian is going to need a nuclear medicine procedure in their lifetime. The use of nuclear medicine is growing quite rapidly.

REPORTER: Growing rapidly, and at least 80% of the demand is being met by Lucas Heights. Most of that demand is for one particular isotope: technetium 99, which is supplied to hospitals in sturdy, lead lined generators.

STUART CARR: Each hospital would have one of these garages, and the generator would be loaded into the garage as so, and these are lead doors, to minimise the radiation.

REPORTER: Technetium 99 is used as a diagnostic tool, helping doctors to identify anything from a minor bone fracture to terminal cancer and heart disease. In this Melbourne hospital, radioisotopes are used to test for heart problems. After being injected with the isotope, the patient is wired up for monitoring, and then examined under a powerful gamma camera. The resulting images display not just how the heart looks, but how it functions. In other practices, like this busy nuclear medicine clinic in Sydney's Bondi, radioisotopes help to pinpoint damage from things like sports injuries. But medical radioisotopes are most well known, and most valued by the public, for their use in the diagnosis and treatment of cancer.

PROFESSOR ROD HICKS, PETER MacCALLUM CANCER INSTITUTE: Several of them we couldn't even find, they were so small. One we found down here the size of a pinhead, and if we didn't know there was an abnormality there on that scan, we would have called that a blood vessel.

REPORTER: Professor Rod Hicks works at the Peter MacCallum Institute, one of Australia's leading cancer treatment centres.

PROFESSOR ROD HICKS: I think it's absolutely vital that we have access to this kind of technology. If we're going to be a leading health care provider, we're going to provide world quality research and treatment, we're going to need access to these kinds of chemicals and isotopes.

REPORTER: Isotopes like iodine 131, which has been used for decades in the treatment of thyroid cancer. Its success as a therapy means the survival rate for thyroid cancer is now more than 90%. No one knows that better than Kerry Leith. In 1996, Kerry was diagnosed with thyroid cancer. She had surgery, followed by treatment with radioiodine. It was a difficult and exhausting process.

KERRY LEITH: You're hospitalised for four days in a lead lined room. It sounds funny, but the nursing staff, they do come in and see you, but they wear plastic robes and things, and you throw away all your cutlery, etc. You're there for the four days and then you're radioactive for another probably two weeks.

REPORTER: Four years later, the treatment is continuing, but Kerry's health is good. She's got a bouncing 21 month old daughter, and she has nuclear medicine to thank for that.

KERRY LEITH: Who knows? I mean, I could be here, I might not be here. But if they hadn't have done that, if I hadn't have had that treatment, I do think it would have got a lot bigger and elsewhere in my lungs. Tumours could have appeared anywhere in my body.

REPORTER: It's a ringing endorsement of nuclear medicine, and the implication is that without a reactor at Lucas Heights, success stories like this just couldn't happen.

DR. BARRY ELISON, PHYSICIANS IN NUCLEAR MEDICINE: We as physicians feel it's crucial. It's crucial for the ongoing use of nuclear medicine in this country.

STUART CARR: If we want to maintain a reliable supply to meet the needs of the Australian community and the broader Asian export market, it's essential that we have a replacement reactor.

REPORTER: With so much compelling evidence in its favour, it seems impossible to argue against the reactor. Surely it's necessary to save the lives of countless Australians? Well, plenty of people: both opponents and even some supporters of the reactor: would disagree.

SENATOR MICHAEL FORSHAW, ALP SENATOR: If you can argue that, "Look, if we don't have this reactor then people might die," then it's a pretty powerful argument. But of course, it's an absolute lie.

REPORTER: Those who oppose the building of the new reactor say the very emotive medical debate tends to conceal several important facts. Firstly, the vast majority of isotopes are used for diagnosis, not treatment: very important, but not necessarily life saving. Secondly, almost half of Australia's medical isotopes, based on dollar value, don't come from the reactor at all: they come from cyclotrons like this one at the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital in Sydney. The cyclotron is conventionally powered, it doesn't use nuclear fission, and it's at the cutting edge of modern nuclear medicine.

DR JIM GREEN, SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY, WOLLONGONG UNIVERSITY: Now you can produce a wide range of cutting-edge diagnostic isotopes using cyclotrons, you can also produce some therapeutic isotopes using cyclotrons, and with a greater investment in research and development into cyclotrons, you're going to get the results.

REPORTER: For example, Australia is leading the world in positron emission tomography, or PET scanning. This is the new generation of diagnostic imaging for cancer, and it uses isotopes exclusively from cyclotrons.

PROFESSOR ROD HICKS: Now we can do most of the things that are done on standard nuclear medicine equipment on a PET scanner now, with greater accuracy, higher sensitivity and much greater detail.

REPORTER: Even so, the more environmentally friendly cyclotron can not entirely take the place of a reactor. Professor Ken McKinnon chaired the review into a new reactor in 1993, still the most comprehensive study into the matter.

PROFESSOR KEN McKINNON, REACTOR REVIEW CHAIRMAN: Evidence was put to us that there were alternatives such as isotopes generated by cyclotrons. We didn't find any support for that view at all, and as far as I know, nothing has transpired in the intervening years to support the view that other than a reactor would produce the isotopes required.

REPORTER: So a cyclotron, it seems, will only do half the job. For the rest, we need a reactor. In that case, say the critics, the answer is simple: just import the isotopes. Professor Barry Allen spent thirty years working at Lucas Heights. He's now a cancer researcher at St George's Hospital.

PROFESSOR BARRY ALLEN, ST GEORGE HOSPITAL: Considering the cost of a reactor, from the scientific point of view, it's not justified. From the production point of view of radioisotopes, well, Australia needs radioisotopes, but they can be imported, and we import cars, we import lots of things.

REPORTER: The argument goes that no matter how convenient it might be to have locally made isotopes, the $300 million dollar price tag for the reactor is just too much.

PROFESSOR BARRY ALLEN: A few years ago, there was a list of, like, the 10 top facilities needed for scientific research and development in Australia. A new reactor was one of those: it was worth as much as the other nine.

REPORTER: But is it practical to import radioisotopes? Many of them have short half lives, which means they deteriorate quickly. Well, many countries do. Great Britain, the United States and Japan all import much of their requirements, despite having research reactors of their own.

JIM GREEN: There's been a lot of rhetoric about so called life saving medical isotopes, but very little information. Already, a significant range of isotopes is imported: it's possible to import a greater range.

REPORTER: Jim Green opposes the reactor. He says Australia could easily import the main isotopes. Technetium 99, for example, is used in about 80% of all nuclear medicine, and it only has a half life of six hours. But it is made in these molybdenum generators, which last a week or two and are regularly transported around the world.

JIM GREEN: ANSTO imports molybdenum from South Africa. It's a one stop flight from South Africa to Perth to Sydney.

REPORTER: ANSTO, the operator of Lucas Heights, has long insisted that importation is not an option because Australia is a long way away from major suppliers, and international flights are unreliable.

HELEN GARNETT: If indeed there's a live cargo on a plane, then indeed they don't tend to put the radioisotopes in the same hold, so a racehorse or a dog is at the airport to go on a plane, an isotope pitches up for an emergency: it's the package that stays, not the dog or the horse.

REPORTER: The counter argument is that Australia already relies on imports whenever Lucas Heights shuts down. This year, the HIFAR reactor closed for maintenance for three months, and no one seemed to notice.

PROFESSOR BARRY ALLEN, ST GEORGE HOSPITAL: Every now and then when HIFAR closes down, we have pretty good import conditions. It can go wrong a bit, but they can go wrong at any time.

JIM GREEN: The reactor was shut down for three months earlier this year. I'm told by ANSTO scientists that there were very few, if any, problems relying on Australia's cyclotrons plus imported isotopes, but ANSTO management won't tell us a thing.

HELEN GARNETT: The fact of the matter is that some isotopes are not available during those shutdown periods at all, and that indeed, the supply of several is disrupted every time there is a shutdown.

REPORTER: Concrete examples are hard to find, but some doctors do confirm imported isotopes sometimes go astray. Dr Paul Roach at Sydney's Royal North Shore Hospital occasionally uses two rare isotopes not produced at Lucas Heights.

DR PAUL ROACH, ROYAL NORTH SHORE HOSPITAL, SYDNEY: We have certainly had delays with the importation of both those products, which obviously cause inconvenience to patients and potentially increase in costs. To keep a patient in a hospital like this one unnecessarily for a few days while we wait for the delivery of the isotope can certainly add to the cost to the taxpayer.

REPORTER: The picture being painted is not one of a looming crisis without a reactor, but rather of some delays and inconvenience.

DR BARRY ELISON: It's true: Australia could get their supply from other countries. But I think the word you used is 'reliably'. I don't believe anybody can guarantee reliable delivery.

REPORTER: But if there is no evidence that the closure of Lucas Heights would shut down nuclear medicine in Australia or lead to patient deaths, is the Government pushing the medical argument too hard and too emotively to win over public opinion?

JIM GREEN: Look at it from the Government's point of view. They've got to sell a nuclear reactor in [Australia's] largest city: obviously, they're going to push this argument about so called life saving medical isotopes.

SENATOR NICK MINCHIN: Well, the people who argue that, or make that attack, are those guilty of the most emotional, irrational attacks on the research reactor. Now, I always prefer rational debate of political issues, not emotional debate, but I think inevitably if you start attacking the reactor on emotional grounds, you'll get an emotional response.

REPORTER: So one side of the debate argues that no nuclear reactor could possibly be safe; the other suggests that nuclear medicine couldn't possibly survive without it. Each side uses powerful images of people either dying of cancer or being cured of it. The irony is that medicine is not the only reason, nor even the main reason for building the reactor.

PROFESSOR KEN McKINNON: Medical isotopes are important, but that alone would not justify the investment required for a new reactor.

REPORTER: The McKinnon report found that the main reason for a new reactor was to serve Australia's national strategic interest, not to make isotopes.

PROFESSOR KEN McKINNON: This is a very important and very worthy activity, but it alone would not justify the investment required for a new reactor. Essentially, this was a decision for the government; it involved more factors than could be made public, and if the government wants it on national interest grounds, which we sympathise with, it should just simply go ahead.

REPORTER: The national interest. This takes us deep into the murky waters of international relations and nuclear strategies. Countries in our region are building new reactors for all sorts of purposes. Waste is being transported back and forth across the Pacific: some countries may be doing things they really shouldn't, whether it be producing weapons grade plutonium or disposing of their waste thoughtlessly.

PROFESSOR KEN McKINNON: Some of the reasons why you'd have nuclear expertise in Australia, which are very pertinent from the government's point of view, can't be aired in a way that allows cool debate about it, because for one thing, it would evoke foreign affairs considerations: it might frighten neighbouring countries and so on.

JEAN McSORLEY, NUCLEAR CAMPAIGNER: It's about intelligence gathering, and what we do with that intelligence: who we feed it back to, our allies, particularly the Americans under the ANZUS treaty.

SENATOR NICK MINCHIN: If we're to have a seat at the table in the international community, and to be able to play a constructive and technically well based part in the international effort to contain nuclear weapons, then there is a strong view in our security and defence and foreign affairs community that we need the sort of expertise which the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation possesses.

REPORTER: But will a research reactor at Lucas Heights, which doesn't reprocess or enrich uranium, help us understand nuclear power overseas?

JIM GREEN: I don't think you have to have your own reactor to understand what other countries are up to with their reactors: I mean, they're much of a muchness, these research reactors. The real issues are transparency and accountability, and ANSTO does nothing to further those issues, domestically or internationally.

HELEN GARNETT: In actual fact, practice would show that Australia plays way beyond its weight in international affairs, and particularly in influencing the nuclear area, and that that's due to the depth of technical expertise the country has.

REPORTER: In many ways, this is the debate that Australia needs to have about its involvement in nuclear policy and practice. With the contracts signed for a new reactor, the time for debate might appear to be over. But it's not, for one very important reason nuclear waste, barrels and barrels of it. In the past, Lucas Heights, and a number of other facilities around the country have had real problems storing it safely. They still have problems disposing of it. Some of the low level material will be buried in the outback, but the more serious stuff is still looking for a home.

HELEN GARNETT: We're required to have a strategy for managing the fuel, and there is a strategy for fuel management, so that is in place. The issue of what happens to the very small amount of intermediate level waste that's returned to Australia starting around 2025 is an issue that is still to be resolved.

REPORTER: In fact, the search for a repository hasn't even begun. Yet the issue was meant to be resolved before the contract for a new reactor was signed.

PROFESSOR KEN McKINNON: We believed that there was a big waste issue to be solved, and there isn't really much evidence that it has been solved. It's really half of the decision to take a decision to have a new reactor while not taking the decision to have a decent, safe, long term repository.

REPORTER: Opponents now believe the waste problem is the sleeper in this debate, and it will bring the whole reactor issue back onto the public agenda. The South Australian Parliament has already passed legislation preventing an intermediate waste dump there, and NSW is considering doing the same.

LEE RHIANNON, NSW GREENS MP : It is a very urgent situation because just recently, the Coalition Government has pushed through the contract for the second reactor at Lucas Heights. And for that reactor to go ahead, they have to have some waste management plan: somewhere to get rid of all that nuclear fuel once it has been used. The Federal Government says it will overrule the States if it has to.

SENATOR NICK MINCHIN: That is an absolute furphy by those who oppose having a reactor. They're trying to use the waste issue to somehow stop the reactor being built. Well, I'm sorry: the reactor will be built, and we will have waste facilities built in plenty of time to take waste from the new reactor.

REPORTER: But for the Federal Government, it seems the fight over nuclear waste is just beginning. Next week in Federal Parliament, the Australian Democrats will move for a new Senate inquiry. With Labor backing, they'll pursue not just the waste issue, but the whole question of why the reactor is being built at all.

SENATOR MICHAEL FORSHAW: There are some big battles to come over the whole issue of management and storage of waste.

SENATOR NATASHA STOTT DESPOJA, AUSTRALIAN DEMOCRATS: I think that opens up a whole Pandora's box, and it's one that clearly needs to be examined. Is there a national security issue here, and if there is, well, we'd better hear about it.

Debate on same program

VIVIAN SCHENKER: I`m joined by Professor Helen Garnett, executive director of the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation, ANSTO, and director of the Lucas Heights facility. And in our Canberra studio, Professor Richard Broinowski, who in his 34 years as a diplomat in Vietnam, Korea, Mexico, Japan and Iran has been into many a nuclear reactor. He`s currently writing a book on the uranium industry and nuclear diplomacy.

VIVIAN SCHENKER: Welcome to you both. Helen Garnett, clearly you`re not responsible for making government policy, but is Professor Ken McKinnon right when he says the main justification for having a nuclear reactor is Australia`s national interest?

PROFESSOR HELEN GARNETT, LUCAS HEIGHTS DIRECTOR: Well Vivian, I guess we`ve always said there`s four reasons for a replacement reactor in Australia. One is the science and technology and the benefits that brings to Australia, and historically people from Lucas Heights and all across Australia who`ve used the reactor have contributed to the knowledge and know-how. Another is the applications in industry, and there`s studies to show the benefits to that. The third is the medical area. And the fourth is indeed the national interest. I guess the issue of national interest and the benefits to the strategic national interest have never been hidden. It`s not a sinister issue. It`s been out in the open all the time.

VIVIAN SCHENKER: But is that the real and most important reason, do you think?

PROFESSOR HELEN GARNETT: No. I guess I`ve said clearly, and I restate - all of the reasons are important.

VIVIAN SCHENKER: Are equally important?

PROFESSOR HELEN GARNETT: As far as I`m concerned, they`re all important.

VIVIAN SCHENKER: Richard Broinowski, do you accept that it`s in Australia`s best national interests to have a nuclear reactor?

PROFESSOR RICHARD BROINOWSKI, FORMER DIPLOMAT: No. I`ll tell you why. We`ve done very well in the last five years or so in international diplomacy on non- proliferation. We were at the forefront of getting the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty up; we were also at the forefront of getting an indefinite extension to the Non- Proliferation Treaty. And I can imagine my colleagues in Vienna and at the United Nations in New York and other places - they`re not nuclear-trained, they`re diplomats, and they`re talking about responsible issues. They`re talking about non-proliferation, horizontal non-proliferation - that is, not allowing non-nuclear weapons states to get nuclear weapons, and we`ve done very well. I don`t think it`s been in the back of their mind whether we have a reactor; "We`ve got HIFAR in Lucas Heights - thanks very much and thank God we have it; it adds to our credibility." Or in fact, they haven`t said, "HIFAR"s just about out of date. We need a new nuclear reactor to improve our credibility." You put that to John Rowland, when he was ambassador in Vienna, or even to Richard Butler, who`s recently had his watch in UNSCOM, and I think you`d find just as in my mind, it didn`t count, it didn`t figure. Australia is a sophisticated country - you`ve got enormous technology in all sorts of areas. As a permanent member of the International Atomic Energy Agency for South- East Asia and the Pacific, we - even without the reactor at Lucas Heights - would have enough sophistication to hold that seat, let alone the fact we're one of the biggest repositories of uranium.

PROFESSOR HELEN GARNETT: Well, I guess I have to disagree with Richard. First of all, the fact is the diplomats have had technical people only a matter of weeks ago in a significant debate and discussion on Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty issues. There was the phone call, "Please send relevant people - we need a person from ANSTO to make sure they`re present for the technical aspects." So I just can`t accept that. I don`t think people realise quite how often the technical expertise of the staff at ANSTO is in fact drawn on to provide advice to the people who indeed do make the policy. But it`s the technical advice and the technical underpinning. I think it`s curious and rather interesting that in fact, if you go back in history, way back to 1945, at the beginning of disarmament, Dr Evatt got on the telephone from New York and said, "Send me a scientist urgently." And it`s been like that ever since. Let`s talk about scientific research...

PROFESSOR RICHARD BROINOWSKI: Could I just come in on that point? Why is it, therefore, that ANSTO only has councillors in three places; in Vienna - of course, that`s the IAEA headquarters; in Washington; and in London, according to their latest annual report? Why is it that in my watch, in Korea, which is our second or third-largest customer for uranium, I haven`t had to have a nuclear expert there when I`ve discussed these issues? And why is it that at the UN in New York, we hardly ever have to call upon this? Because I`ll tell you why. The nuclear non-proliferation issues don`t involve technical expertise at ANSTO. Nor do we even need a microbiologist, who runs that place - he`s not a nuclear physicist, apparently. But you know, it`s a political matter, it`s a diplomatic matter, it`s a matter of disarmament.

VIVIAN SCHENKER: Helen Garnett, why do we need a nuclear reactor of our own, in order to have a voice in the nuclear proliferation debate?

PROFESSOR HELEN GARNETT: Well, I guess Richard has mentioned the issue of Vienna, and indeed yes, there is an ANSTO person in the Embassy in Vienna, and there is one in Washington and London. We also send people as required to various places. In fact, the International Atomic Energy Agency is the most technical of all the UN agencies...

VIVIAN SCHENKER: I guess what I`m asking is why do you need technical expertise to argue against the proliferation of nuclear weapons?

PROFESSOR HELEN GARNETT: I guess if I could follow a little bit on, maybe I can explain a little bit of the role of the technical expertise. The Agency requires technical people; you cannot work in the agency unless you`re a technical expert - nuclear engineer working in radiation safety, etc. You`ve got to have experience and you`ve got to be working in it.
People are seconded to the Agency. The committees in the Agency, the work the Agency does in fact relies on the standing of the technical people. Our technical people get on those standing committees; that indeed underpins, then, the technical advice and our seat on the Board of Governors. It isn`t that we just have a reactor; it isn`t that we just have uranium deposits; it`s in fact the technical expertise and the participation in a technical way in the Agency, in its committees, that underpins our Board of Governors seat. Indeed, we get asked many, many, many times over the weeks for advice into these sorts of political aspects from technical experts.

PROFESSOR RICHARD BROINOWSKI: No, again I`d disagree. What we do need is professional diplomats, and we have them; we have a very good number of them who`ve done remarkable things on the non-proliferation front. They haven't had nuclear technology, but they`ve done a very good job, because it is basically a matter of diplomacy.

VIVIAN SCHENKER: The Department of Foreign Affairs seems to believe that a nuclear reactor is the very minimum requirement for us to keep our seat on the IAEA. Do you ...

PROFESSOR RICHARD BROINOWSKI: No, no - that`s not true. The Department of Foreign Affairs said, in answer to your question, without notice, that in fact that's not the case - we do not need that technical expertise. The membership of the Board of Governors is not decided by the Agency; rather, as in most international organisations, it is decided by member states. The IAEA Statute provides, insofar as designation to its board is concerned, that one seat would come to South-East Asia and the Pacific, and it doesn`t rely on the fact that we have a reactor or not.

PROFESSOR HELEN GARNETT: Can I comment on what you`ve just said, Vivian? In fact, the Department of Foreign Affairs and indeed other departments in Canberra have consistently, over many years, when there`s been inquiries - and indeed there`s been many inquiries into the need for nuclear expertise in Australia, and many inter- departmental committees as well. And in each and every one of those, and including in public submissions to Ken McKinnon`s review, to the Environmental Impact Statement, to the Public Works Committee, to the Senate Economic References Committees, they have indeed consistently made the comments that you did - that indeed, a reactor is the very basis of that expertise. But I think it`s important to come back to the issue that it`s the science and technology and the work that`s done at Lucas Heights which also provides the credibility Australia has in the international arena. We are acknowledged for the work we do.

VIVIAN SCHENKER: Richard Broinowski, can I ask you here - let`s turn the debate around. Why not have a nuclear reactor? If it helps produce medical isotopes and it helps at all in scientific research, why not?

PROFESSOR RICHARD BROINOWSKI: Well, I think there`s a certain credibility in those people who are worried about the polluting effects. According to ANSTO`s latest annual review, 1,460 spent fuel rods are now held at Lucas Heights, from HIFAR and there must be some from MOATA, the earlier reactor too which often doesn`t get mentioned but which has been closed down. Now, those rods mainly - 1,300 of them - are going overseas to be reprocessed. According to Helen Garnett - and I find this incredible - we`re required to have a strategy for managing the fuel, and there is a strategy for fuel management, so that is in place. She says: "The issue of what happens to the very small amounts of intermediate-level waste that`s returned to Australia, starting around 2025 - " Helen, I thought it was 2015, or maybe I`ve misread it - "is an issue that is still to be resolved."
Now, isn`t it true that this stuff we`re going to get back from overseas includes transuranics such as plutonium, U235 and others, and also fission products. Are they not high-level waste? Certainly Mr Justice Fox in the Ranger report, which still has a lot of credibility, says that.

PROFESSOR HELEN GARNETT: Well, they`re not high-level waste. There are international standards. The IAEA has three categories of waste - it has low-level, intermediate-level and high-level waste. And indeed, it is a very small quantity - Australia already has some 500 cubic metres of intermediate-level waste in the country, from a variety of industrial, medical, scientific research activities. It is scattered around the country, in about 50 different sites - and that`s not the low-level, that`s the intermediate-level. What will come back from the reprocessing of the HIFAR spent fuel is indeed a matter of about 25 cubic metres, and it`s only 26 because 20 of it is cement, 6 of it is in fact glass. From the replacement reactor, it will be even less - it will probably be 6 or less cubic metres of intermediate-level waste, according to international categories.

VIVIAN SCHENKER: Why is the public still so suspicious? Why don`t they believe your reassurances about safety?

PROFESSOR HELEN GARNETT: I guess, Vivian, that`s something that is an issue we continue to try and work with. We`ve put an enormous amount of effort into trying to work with the public over many, many months. We`ve had open days and we`ve even invited our opponents on-site during our open days so they can put their case as well as us. So it`s not as if we haven`t tried to engage in some dialogue and recognise that there are people with other views. But I guess I`d say there are indeed a very small number of people who really are opposed. I grew up in the Sutherland Shire; I have a lot of friends in the Sutherland Shire, and I don`t actually see this huge sway of opinion against ANSTO. In fact, I see a lot of people who are very supportive of ANSTO.
So clearly there are some people who are against us. But I think there`s a very interesting article in the latest issue of `New Scientist` that came out this week, and indeed Ian Lowe, who has not always been one of our supporters, says he`s "absolutely astounded" by a recent study that`s just been released that says the public looks, or considers that nuclear waste is far more dangerous than a car`s. And as he says, over the last 10 years, 20,000 people in Australia have died from cars - he doesn`t know anybody who`s died from nuclear waste.

PROFESSOR RICHARD BROINOWSKI: Dr John Loy said last weekend, Dr Garnett, that going ahead with this reactor depends upon a number of approvals that he has to give as head of ARPANZA. One of them is that it has to be subject to safe disposal of the spent fuel, or the irradiated fuel rods. Now, we don`t have a disposal yet, do we? And therefore, may I ask you, is this contract subject to certain approvals down the track?

PROFESSOR HELEN GARNETT: Well, I`m not going to talk in detail about contracts, but certainly, it`s well-recognised that we need to have a construction licence and an operational licence. But the issue is I don`t think John Loy actually said at all that there needed to be a disposal; nor do I believe he said that it needed to be disposal for the rods. What I believe he said, that there needed to be movement towards a strategy for having an appropriate storage for intermediate-level waste in Australia.

PROFESSOR RICHARD BROINOWSKI: No, that`s not what he said. I'm sorry, it`s not what he said at all.

VIVIAN SCHENKER: Are you confident, though, it will go ahead?

PROFESSOR HELEN GARNETT: Yes, I am confident it will go ahead. I believe that the...you`re talking about the reactor going ahead? I`m confident that the reactor will go ahead. There has been many, many months of inquiries and review, and there really are a great number of benefits from that facility.

PROFESSOR RICHARD BROINOWSKI: Well, I`ve heard those repeated, the many benefits, but quite frankly, I think there are a lot of benefits that we would have without it. Incidentally, Dr Garnett, the national medical cyclotron that you run produces iodine 123, and there are a lot of other pharmaceuticals that are produced by that. When the reactor, the HIFAR reactor is shut down for days and days on end - about 46 per year...

PROFESSOR HELEN GARNETT: I`m sorry, Richard - you`re wrong. The cyclotron produces 20% of Australia`s supplies of isotopes, and indeed...

PROFESSOR RICHARD BROINOWSKI: OK, but you get them from overseas, don`t you. When the reactor is shut down, you have to import those from overseas, don`t you?

PROFESSOR HELEN GARNETT: We import some isotopes - we cannot import the full range of isotopes. And indeed, when there are problems with our facility, there are patients' treatment which is significantly compromised, and that was the case in the last shutdown.

VIVIAN SCHENKER: OK, we`re going to have to leave it there - I suspect we`re going to have many more debates about nuclear reactors in the next couple of years. Thank you both very much for taking part tonight.