Jim Green
Paper prepared
for South Australian People's Conference
March, 2000
The thin edge of the nuclear waste wedge:
It is important to consider radioactivity and isotopic composition as the prime criteria; waste volume is of less significance. In terms of radioactivity, Dr. Des Levins, head of radioactive waste management at ANSTO, acknowledged at a public meeting in Sydney on March 10, 1999, that there is “no doubt” that in terms of radioactivity, the “major fraction” of the waste sent to any national dump would arise from the nuclear plant at Lucas Heights. The federal environment department said last year that ANSTO is “a major contributor” to the total amount of nuclear waste sent to the underground dump in SA for low-level and short-lived intermediate-level wastes.
The “national” dump is little more than a political clearing exercise for ANSTO, designed to reduce opposition to the plan to build a new reactor in Sydney. If a new reactor is built at Lucas Heights, storage capacity will be limited in order to assure local residents that wastes will be sent to SA rather than remaining in Sydney.
ANSTO has acknowledged that the rate of radioactive waste production will increase dramatically if a new reactor is built. The new reactor would produce another 1500-2000 spent fuel rods. In addition, 1993 ANSTO documents reveal that from 1993-2025, the annual production of intermediate-level liquid waste will increase by 1200% and the production of intermediate-level solid waste and low-level wastes will increase by 400%. These figures have since been revised downwards, but not to any significant degree. ANSTO and the federal government plan to dump most or all of waste generated at the Lucas Height plant in SA. Even the Lucas Heights reactors will be dismantled and dumped in SA.
CO-LOCATION OF LONG-LIVED INTERMEDIATE-LEVEL WASTE STORE WITH THE DUMP
Claims that there is no firm intention to co-locate the store for long-lived intermediate level wastes adjacent to the low-level dump represent a disingenuous attempt to minimise opposition to the dump. The government is playing games, telling Sydney-siders that ANSTO’s ever-growing stockpile of radioactive waste will definitely be dumped in SA, telling South Australians the opposite, and obfuscating as best it can when asked to reconcile the contradiction.
On the one hand ...
The federal government’s strategy is transparent: get the low-level dump up and running, and then attempt to force the store for higher-level wastes on South Australians. As The Advertiser’s Canberra correspondent put it (6/12/99), “blind Freddy” could see that the government plans to co-locate the higher-level wastes with the underground dump.
URGENCY
Overseas reprocessing of spent reactor fuel represents a convenient short-term fix because it allows the Howard government to do what so many previous governments have done: to defer to some future government a number of contentious decisions. Senator Minchin said in The Advertiser (23/12/99) that a decision on the siting of a store for LL-ILW wastes “will not be made for at least a few years” because the government is not required to have a store ready until 2015 when spent fuel wastes will first return from European reprocessing plants.
However the federal environment department said last year that “The current timing is for the store to be in operation by the time the replacement reactor is commissioned in 2005. Clearly, any long-term planning depends on the establishment of such a facility.” So does the government plan to have the store in operation by 2005 or 2015? If the timeframe has been changed, why? Are South Australian’s and Sydney-siders being told different stories again? Would it not be irresponsible to begin generating more spent fuel in the year 2005 in the absence of a LL-ILW store?
There is an even more pressing deadline. Senators Minchin and Hill said last year that construction of a new reactor “should not be authorised until arrangements for the management of spent fuel rods from the replacement reactor have been demonstrated to the satisfaction of ARPANSA (the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency) and the Minister for the Environment and Heritage”. The government hopes to begin construction of a new reactor in May 2002, by which time it promises to be able to demonstrate “satisfactory arrangements” for spent fuel management. Yet a site for a store may not have even been identified, let alone assesses or approved! Unfortunately Senator Hill is likely to find this arrangement “satisfactory”, given his track record as environment minister. ARPANSA may also roll over for a tummy tickle. Who sat on the panel to interview applicants for the position of CEO of ARPANSA - none other than the executive director of ANSTO! Moreover, six staff in ARPANSA’s regulatory branch are former ANSTO employees.
The federal government will exert far more pressure to site a LL-ILW store in SA once a specific site for the underground dump has been selected and the sham environmental assessment completed.
CONTINGENCY PLANS FOR SPENT FUEL:
#1 SPENT FUEL SENT
DIRECTLY TO THE STORE
#2 SPENT FUEL REPROCESSING
/ CONDITIONING - LUCAS HEIGHTS OR SA
Senator Minchin said in February 2000 (Senate Estimates) that there is no contingency plan for spent fuel in the event that overseas reprocessing options become unavailable. He said: “my understanding is, because there is no likelihood whatsoever of any repudiation, no contingency has been entered into.” But there is a possibility that overseas reprocessing options will fall through - just as the plan to send spent fuel to the Dounreay reprocessing plant in Scotland fell through.
Contrary to Senator Minchin’s comment, there is a contingency plan - send the spent fuel directly to the LL-ILW store in SA! ANSTO said in its Draft reactor EIS (p.10-18): “In the unlikely event that the overseas options should become unavailable, it would be possible at short notice to take advantage of off-the-shelf dry-storage casks for extended interim storage at the national storage facility, pending renewed arrangements being negotiated for reprocessing/conditioning of the fuel.” Extended interim storage - an inventive term even by ANSTO’s high standards!
The federal environment department says the same thing: “The only prudent and feasible alternative, consistent with the Government's policy to minimise fuel arisings at Lucas Heights and not to undertake reprocessing in Australia (and assuming that there were to be delays in organising reprocessing), would appear to be short-term storage of any arisings beyond nine years, for the proposed reactor, at a remote repository.”
And if a temporary unavailability of overseas reprocessing options becomes a permanent one, there will be a push to establish a spent fuel reprocessing or conditioning plant in Australia. Reprocessing and conditioning involve dissolving irradiated fuel elements in acid among other processes. Conditioning is the more likely option in Australia since it is not prohibited by federal legislation.
The issue of finding an off-site (i.e. out-of-Sydney) dump and a LL-ILW store are key, urgent issues for ANSTO and the federal government, but a more relaxed attitude has prevailed on the issue of spent fuel reprocessing as indicated by a senior federal government bureaucrat speaking on ABC radio (29/3/98): “I understand that Cabinet considered reprocessing, but decided it was an issue for another generation. They knew that they could dispose of the current spent fuel rods in the US and the UK [now France - JG] and then not have a storage problem until the year 2015. You see the new reactor comes on stream 2005, the spent fuel rods have to cool down for seven years and then be stored for another five, so 2015 they've got to worry about their spent fuel rods. Someone else can worry about it. And reprocessing is a possibility then. The technology might be better, the costs lower, but that's 20 years away. So the government thought, we're not going to make decisions about reprocessing 20 years before we have to.”
The bureaucrat also said: “The big ticket item was the new reactor and it was felt that politically you just couldn't win the reprocessing argument and the new reactor.” The implication is that the government may have attempted - and may yet attempt - to build a reprocessing or conditioning plant if it thought it could keep the political costs within bounds.
Where would a spent fuel reprocessing/conditioning plant be located? ANSTO’s executive director has said that Lucas Heights would be a “reasonable” location for a pilot reprocessing plant. It is also possible that ANSTO’s work on Synroc immobilisation of medical isotope target wastes at Lucas Heights could develop into a reprocessing/conditioning plant for spent fuel. ANSTO’s “cooperative program with the French on Synroc”, as an ANSTO employee describes the relationship, might also have implications in future years.
However the political cost of trying to force a spent fuel reprocessing/conditioning plant on Sydney residents could be overwhelming, and (for what its worth) the federal government has ruled out that option in order to minimise opposition to the planned new reactor. The other obvious location would be SA (if SA becomes the national nuclear dump). The likelihood of SA hosting a reprocessing/conditioning plant would be even greater if at some stage ANSTO and the government implement their contingency plan of sending spent fuel directly to SA in the event of overseas reprocessing options falling through.
FINAL DISPOSAL OF LONG-LIVED INTERMEDIATE-LEVEL WASTE
According to the federal environment department: “It should be noted that the National Storage Facility would only provide for above-ground storage of some wastes. It would not constitute a final solution for disposal of long-lived intermediate-level wastes. Currently, the only such facility in the world for permanent disposal is the experimental deep geologic Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico, USA.”
No progress has been made on final disposal of LL-ILW in Australia. The government says unequivocally that long-lived intermediate-level waste “requires deep underground disposal”. The federal government and ANSTO prefer an “interim” store, offering the excuse that the volume of long-lived intermediate-level waste is insufficient to warrant deep geological disposal. What volume would justify a deep geological repository? A bureaucrat said last year that no decision has been made as to what “magical volume” of waste would be sufficient to justify construction of a deep geological dump. Would a deep geological dump be located in SA - a likely option if the store for LL-ILW is built in SA. What are the environmental and public health implications? Is deep geological disposal really the best solution anyway?
While the issue of final disposal is being portrayed as something for the distant future, there have also been acknowledgements that the issue cannot be put off indefinitely. The environment department said in 1999: “The Department is of the view that it is now timely to consider strategies for the long-term storage and eventual permanent disposal of Australia's long-lived intermediate-level nuclear wastes, and associated issues. This would assist in facilitating public understanding and input into a ‘solution’ (if one exists), and in ensuring that a timely response is developed.”
PANGEA AUSTRALIA : “LITTLE SCIENCE ... HUGE BUDGET”
The federal government claims that it is “scare-mongering” to claim that the national dump could lead to an international dump. We can hope that the federal government will stick to its stated policy of opposing importation of overseas waste, but two problems arise: the Howard government’s record of policy back-flips; and the fact that governments come and go.
The guiding principle, according to Senator Minchin, is that “each nation should look after its own waste” - a laughable comment given the government’s willingness to send spent fuel overseas. For many years ANSTO and the federal government planned to send spent fuel to the Dounreay reprocessing plant in Scotland until the operators of the plant decided in 1998 not to enter into any new contracts. (In fact two shipments were sent to Dounreay.) At a public meeting on March 10, 1999, ANSTO's communications manager described Dounreay as a “dirty, broken-down old plant”. The fact that ANSTO and the government were prepared to send spent fuel to a “dirty, broken-down old plant” suggests that environmental and public health considerations count for little in deliberations on radioactive waste management.
While Pangea Australia claims that its plan to dump 75,000 tonnes of nuclear waste in rural Australia is focused on Western Australia, it would be the height of naivete to believe that the company has no interest in dumping nuclear waste in SA and that public statements by the company and the federal government can be taken at face value:
The federal government’s priority is to provide a short-term fix to the problems of sections of the Australian nuclear industry, in particular ANSTO. Pangea Australia may have to be sacrificed in order to advance domestic nuclear interests. Government bureaucrats are believed to have floated the idea of legislating to ban Pangea’s international dump plan in return for support from the minor parties for the domestic nuclear dump. However, it is highly unlikely that support for the national dump will be won - and it is perhaps a sign of desperation that the government has floated the idea.
As with government policies, so too legislation can be changed. In the early 1990s, the NSW Land and Environment Court ruled that ANSTO was illegally storing certain nuclear wastes at Lucas Heights. The federal Labor government's response was to legislate to make ANSTO immune from NSW environmental and public health laws.
One of the few independent analyses of Pangea's plan comes from Professor John Veevers from the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Macquarie University. Professor Veevers disputes claims made by Pangea concerning the risks associated with transportation and long-term storage of high-level nuclear waste. He concludes: “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. ... Only mischief can come from Pangea's little science and huge budget.”
GOVERNMENT POLICY: “starve opponents of oxygen, keep them in the dark”
The government's strategy to impose another nuclear reactor on Sydney residents was described by a senior bureaucrat involved in the process on ABC Radio National's Background Briefing program on March 29, 1998. He said the government decided to “starve opponents of oxygen” because the government knew it “couldn't win the debate on rational grounds”. “No leaks, don't write letters arguing the point, just keep them in the dark completely”, the bureaucrat said.
According to the federal Senate Nuclear Reactor Inquiry, which completed an inquiry into the proposal for a new reactor last year, “The failure by the Government to carry out the inquiry envisaged by the 1993 Research Reactor Review, its failure to properly investigate alternative sites to Lucas Heights and to take into account community views, and its failure to resolve the issue of the disposal of waste produced and stored at Lucas Heights, makes the decision both premature and open to ongoing controversy.” Calls for an independent Public Inquiry into the reactor proposal - from the Senate Economics References Committee and the Sutherland Shire Council, among others - have been rejected by the Government. In December 1999, the Sutherland Shire Council issued a statement calling for a Royal Commission into the reactor proposal, and the Australian Local Government Association has passed a resolution supporting the call for a Royal Commission.
Elements of the government's scheming to impose a dump on SA include:
In 1995, the SA Premier Dean Brown wrote to Prime Minister Paul Keating saying, “The South Australian Government believes a prerequisite to establishing waste storage sites or repositories in the Woomera region is that the adjacent Lake Eyre region should not be considered for World Heritage Listing. It therefore seeks an agreement from the Commonwealth that it will not proceed with World Heritage Listing of the Lake Eyre Region on the grounds that such listing is inconsistent with the location of storage sites for radioactive waste on the edge of that region. If the Commonwealth Government is able to give these assurances to the satisfaction of the State Government, then the State Government will reconsider its position.”
Do the issues referred to in Dean Brown’s letter partially or fully explain the SA government’s willingness to accept an underground nuclear dump? Might a deal be struck between the federal government and the SA government to secure SA government support for a LL-ILW store?
The Advertiser has floated the idea of a deal. The Advertiser said in a 1998 editorial that, while being “distinctly less than enthusiastic about the idea”, a dump might be acceptable depending on one “all-important” issue: what's in it for SA. The Advertiser suggested some sort of “environmental” pay-off, anything from better quality water to safer roads.
Premier John Olsen said in state parliament on November 19 that, while the state government supports siting a low-level waste dump in SA, “the storage of long-lived intermediate-level waste, such as reprocessed fuel rods from Lucas Heights, is an entirely separate issue. ... I wish to make it very clear that I am opposed to medium- to high-level radioactive waste being dumped in South Australia.” However other comments made by Olsen were equivocal. For example he said: “I repeat - I support a safe disposal site for low-level radioactive wastes - but nuclear material is a completely separate matter. That debate is yet to be had.”
The federal government has refused to rule out attempting to site a LL-ILW store in SA in the event of firm opposition from the SA government. The SA government has said it does not have the legal authority to stop the government proceeding with a LL-ILW store in SA - but that is doubtful, and in any case the SA government undoubtedly has the political power to stop the LL-ILW store (and the underground dump).
CAMPAIGNING AGAINST THE SA DUMP
The federal government will carry out an environmental impact assessment of the dump plan. There will be no surprises with the sham assessment: the government department entrusted with the dump project will write an environmental impact statement, the public will have about three months to make written submissions, and the federal environment department will approve the project with some ambiguously-worded and largely meaningless conditions attached. In a nutshell, the government has decided to dump nuclear waste in SA, and it will write, “review”, and approve the environmental impact statement. Anyone questioning the integrity of the process will be reminded of the government’s extensive “consultation” with South Australians before and during the sham assessment. However the “consultation” involves nothing more than the provision and publication of information and misinformation; it certainly does not involve any decision-making power. Opponents of the dump plan must decide whether or not to involve themselves in the formal environmental assessment. Since it is a sham and the outcome predetermined, it would be naive to hope to influence the outcome of the assessment. Therefore, involvement in or abstention from the process is a purely tactical, political question. Whatever tactical decision is taken in relation to the sham assessment, the key factor is that it should not divert energy and attention from the broader political campaign against the dump.
The campaign against the dump has become increasingly organised and widespread in the past year. Public opposition is strong in Adelaide (as indicated by the attendance of almost one thousand people at a public meeting in the Adelaide Town Hall in November), in rural SA, and along possible transport routes in SA and New South Wales.
The campaign also has a great deal of passive support. Research commissioned by Greenpeace last year revealed that a majority of Australians are opposed to SA being used as the national nuclear dump, and 86% of South Australians are opposed to the dump. Ninety-three percent of respondents to a Channel 7 poll conducted in SA last year expressed opposition to the dump. The nuclear dump plans can certainly be defeated. One key is to stop the thin edge of the wedge - i.e. stop the underground low-level dump. This must remain a key focus even while parallel fights take place over the LL-ILW store and other issues.
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