SOUTH Australians are overwhelmingly opposed to any type of nuclear waste dump in their state.
And they also want a referendum on the issue at the next state election - due by March, 2002.

An Advertiser poll conducted on Wednesday shows:
87 PER CENT of people are opposed to a low-level waste dump in the Far North of SA.
95 PER CENT oppose an intermediate to high-level dump in the same area.
96 PER CENT would resist a privately-owned waste dump that would accept waste from other countries.
78 PER CENT say there should be a referendum on the issue.
66 PER CENT are dissatisfied with the handling of the issue by federal Industry and Science Minister Nick Minchin, who is from SA.

The Olsen Government is on a collision course with the Federal Government over the issue of nuclear waste storage. Legislation is due to go before State Parliament again in October banning the storage of any radio-active waste - except that regarded as low-level - in this State.

But there are fears in political circles that any low-level dump in SA will automatically mean that a high-level dump will be located on the same site.

Senator Minchin has warned SA the Commonwealth will use its powers to override any state laws on the issue.
He has said no potential sites had been earmarked for the dump - although a federal-state committee recommended several years ago that the low-level and intermediate level dumps be located on the same site near Billa Kalina, in the Far North.

The legislation aimed at banning an intermediate waste dump was introduced in the last session of State Parliament but lapsed in the Legislative Council.

It will be restored to the notice paper on October 3 when Parliament resumes.

The ALP and the Democrats already have foreshadowed amendments to the legislation aimed at ensuring there is a referendum on the issue.

The Government has consistently opposed the idea of a referendum, citing cost - as much as $5 million.
However, the 500 people polled supported the referendum proposal.

Highest support came in the 25-39 and 40-54 age groups, where 79 per cent in each age bracket said a referendum should be held. On the general issue of siting a dump in SA, the strongest opposition came from females, with 91 per cent opposed to a low-level dump (82 per cent for males), 98 per cent opposed to an intermediate to high-level dump (92 per cent for men) and 98 per cent opposed to a privately run facility (93 per cent for men).

On the basis of age, 96 per cent of 18 to 24-year-olds were opposed to a low-level dump, 92 per cent of those in the 25-39 age bracket, 80 per cent of those aged from 40-54 and 81 per cent of people 55 and over.

When asked about an intermediate to high-level dump, the figures were 97 per cent of 18-24 opposed, 98 per cent for 25-39, 93 per cent for 40-54 and 94 per cent for 55 and over.

All age groups were in the high 90 per cent bracket when it came to opposition to a privately owned dump.

Opposition to the nuclear dump issue was evenly spread in the metropolitan and country areas.

What part of the word NO doesn’t the federal science minister Nick Minchin understand?

A poll conducted by Channel 7 in July 1999 found that 93% of South Australians are opposed to hosting a national radioactive waste dump. A 1999 survey commissioned by Greenpeace, and conducted by Insight Research Australia, found that 86% of South Australians (and a majority of all Australians) oppose the federal government's planned dump.

A poll conducted by the Advertiser, SA’s only mass circulation newspaper, in July 2000 found that:
- 87% of South Australians are opposed to a dump in the north of the state;
- 95% oppose an intermediate to high-level dump in the same area;
- 96% would resist a privately-owned dump that would accept waste from other countries;
- 78% say there should be a referendum on the issue; and
- 66% are dissatisfied with the handling of the issue by Senator Minchin, who is from SA.

The fiercest opposition to the nuclear dump plan comes from traditional owners, especially those who were scarred by the British nuclear weapons tests at Maralinga and Emu Plains in the 1950s and 1960s.

The lower house of the SA parliament voted 46-1 in July in favour of a Bill prohibiting the storage of long-lived intermediate-level waste in SA. The Bill is likely to pass through the upper house of state parliament when it next sits, in October.

Despite this overwhelming opposition, the federal government is proceeding with its plan for a low-level underground dump in SA - which the SA Liberal government supports - and it is threatening to override the SA legislation in order to “co-locate” a store for intermediate-level waste adjacent to the underground dump.

Privatisation

Later this month, Senator Minchin's department intends to appoint a private corporation to manage the dump project. The project manager would then engage a contractor - likely to be a private company - to construct and operate the dump.

The federal government’s tender document says “it is expected that the project manager will ... finalise a contract with the successful tenderer before the end of the environmental impact assessment and the relevant licensing application processes.”

According to the Australian Conservation Foundation’s (ACF) nuclear campaigner David Noonan, "The plan to finalise the construction contract before the environmental assessment and licensing processes are completed shows complete disregard for public consultation and would prevent any legitimate public role in decision making for the dump."

The federal government’s confidence in the outcome of the environmental assessment rests on the fact that the government will itself write, “review” and rubber-stamp the environmental impact statement.

ACF has further condemned the secrecy provisions of the planned dump. “Commercial Confidentiality” exclusion clauses will be used by the federal government to prevent the disclosure of commercial or financial affairs of the private dump operator.

Wedge politics

Claims that a low-level radioactive waste dump will be the “thin edge of the wedge” are not “scare-mongering”, as Nick Minchin repeatedly claims. Numerous government reports make it quite clear that the proposed low-level dump will in fact be the thin edge of the wedge.

A dump could be followed by an above-ground store for long-lived intermediate-level radioactive wastes (including wastes from the reprocessing of spent fuel from the reactor in the Sydney suburb of Lucas Heights). In addition, the federal government plans to dismantle nuclear reactors at Lucas Heights and to dump them in SA.

The Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO), which operates the Lucas Heights reactor plant, says that if overseas reprocessing contracts fall through, spent fuel could be sent to SA for “extended interim storage”. In the event of reprocessing contracts falling through, the federal government might also attempt to establish a spent fuel reprocessing/conditioning plant in SA.

If the federal government succeeds with its plan to use SA as the dump for all of Australia’s nuclear waste, then Pangea Resources, the company which wants to dump 75,000 tonnes of high-level waste in Australia, can be expected to try its luck in SA.

James Voss, president of Pangea Resources, visited Australia in 1998. Voss offered to operate the proposed low-level waste dump as a private operation. Later that year, a leaked corporate video revealed that Pangea, with funding from British Nuclear Fuels Limited, was actively scheming to dump 75,000 tonnes of high-level radioactive waste in rural Australia. In 1999, Pangea admitted lying to the Australian public, and Minchin apologised in the federal Senate for falsely claiming that no federal minister had met with Pangea.

Labor

The SA Labor opposition jumped onto the no-dump campaign in late 1999, several months before the SA government. Almost all Liberal and Labor politicians in SA support the siting of a national underground dump for low-level waste in northern SA, despite a recent Advertiser poll indicating that 87% of South Australians oppose a dump. SA Liberal and Labor attempt to differentiate themselves from the federal government and from each other only in relation to a planned above-ground store for long-lived intermediate-level waste.

The SA Labor Party wants a referendum to be held in SA as a formal expression of opposition to a store for intermediate-level waste, while the Liberals say a referendum would be a waste of money.

The federal Labor Party continues to hedge its bets. In the early 1990s, the federal Labor government threatened to seize land for a national radioactive waste dump if no state volunteered. In 1994, the federal Labor government moved 2000 cubic metres of low level waste to Woomera, in SA, without any public consultation. In 1995, the government moved 35 cubic metres of intermediate-level waste to Woomera without any public consultation.

In July, federal Labor’s science and industry spokesperson, Martyn Evans, and Labor leader Kim Beazley, said that a nuclear dump in SA could not be ruled out under a future Labor government. Since then, however, the federal Labor Party has changed its tune.

On July 31, the federal Labor conference unanimously passed a resolution, moved by SA Labor leader Mike Rann, that Labor would “respect community concerns and State legislation” in dealing with “medium to high level nuclear waste storage”. That statement has been widely interpreted (perhaps optimistically) as meaning that South Australian opposition would prevent an intermediate-level waste store being built in the state. The Labor resolution says nothing about the planned low-level underground dump - which South Australians are also overwhelmingly opposed to.

Nick Minchin said the Labor resolution was "a complete humiliation" for Martyn Evans: "Evans should resign really, because his policy has been thrown out the door. This is clearly a short-term, populist attempt to curry favor in SA and give Mr Rann some comfort in his attempt to win government."

Minchin says that SA Labor’s opposition to a nuclear dump is “cynical, short-sighted and irresponsible manipulation of this issue in pursuit of short-term political gain”.

No doubt it is. But Minchin is in no position to be casting the first stone. A federal government bureaucrat said in 1998 that managing spent fuel wastes is “a matter for another generation ... someone else can worry about it.”

In 1995, then Liberal SA Premier Dean Brown wrote to Prime Minister Paul Keating suggesting that if the federal government dropped its proposal to list the Lake Eyre region as a World Heritage site, the state government would “reconsider” its opposition to a low-level dump. It appears that a deal was struck.

The recent scandals surrounding the federal government’s botched “clean-up” of the Maralinga weapons-testing site - which left at least 120 sq km uninhabitable - further undermines the federal government’s credibility in SA.

The bureaucrats responsible for the Maralinga “clean-up” are also driving the waste dump plans, the same minister is involved, and the same “regulatory” agency is involved. Moreover, the game plan is the same - dump radioactive waste in unlined trenches and insist, straight-faced, that it is “world’s best practice”.

Engineer Alan Parkinson, writing in the July 24 Canberra Times, made the link between Maralinga and the proposed nuclear dump: “Those with responsibility for the proposed national waste repository are the same people who have recently buried long-lived plutonium waste (half-life 24,000 years) in an unlined burial trench only 2-3 metres below ground - slightly deeper than we place human corpses. If accepted, this precedent should now allow the Commonwealth to place all radioactive waste in shallow, unlined burial trenches, with no regard for its longevity or toxicity, and no regard for the suitability of the site.”

Reactor

The federal government asserts that the plan for a centralised waste dump and store are driven by scientific and safety considerations. However, the agenda is a political one: getting radioactive waste away from Lucas Heights to reduce opposition to the plan for a new reactor. If built, a new reactor would generate another 1600 fuel rods, and according to ANSTO documents the annual generation of radioactive wastes at Lucas Heights would increase 4-12-fold depending on the waste category.

The federal government disputes claims that most of the radioactive waste sent to any national dump or store would come from Lucas Heights. Yet the director of radioactive waste management at ANSTO has acknowledged that the "major fraction" of Australia’s waste is generated at Lucas Heights, and the federal environment department acknowledged in 1999 that ANSTO is a “major contributor” to the national stockpile.

The government downplays ANSTO’s contribution by calculating waste volumes and ignoring the far more important parameters of radioactivity and isotopic composition. As British Nuclear Fuels Limited said on June 23, “Because [radioactive] discharges contain many elements with varying impacts, the volume of what is actually discharged is almost irrelevant - it is the radiation dose impact which must be considered.”
 

ADELAIDE - About 4000 people protested against the federal government’s plan to dump radioactive waste in northern South Australia at a rally on the steps of Parliament House here on August 16.

Rally organisers agreed to SA senator and federal science minister Nick Minchin’s request to address the rally. Presumably, Minchin hoped that he would get some sympathetic media coverage for fronting a hostile crowd. And hostile it was. For 5-10 minutes, Minchin could not be heard over the jeering. It was only after rally organisers had made three appeals to the crowd that Minchin could be heard. “Waste Minchin, Not SA!”, read one placard.

Two people approached Minchin as he spoke and were held back by security guards. These “attacks” featured in some commercial media coverage of the rally.

One of the people who approached Minchin was Avon Hudson, who was involved in the Maralinga weapons tests in the 1950s and has spent over 40 years attempting to get the test sites cleaned up and to get fair compensation for military personnel and Aborigines effected by the tests. Hudson has been marginalised and ignored by successive governments and he is, to say the least, frustrated.

Other speakers at the rally were David Noonan from the Australian Conservation Foundation; anti-nuclear campaigner and paediatrician Helen Caldicott; Ken McDonell, Mayor of the Sutherland Shire Council (home to the Lucas Heights reactor plant); and 80-year-old SA resident Ivy Skowronski, who gained some notoriety last year for a law-and-order crusade.

Speakers discussed a range of issues other than the planned dump, including uranium mines in SA, the reactors at Lucas Heights, and the medical effects of radiation. Skowronski announced that 125,000 South Australians have signed a petition protesting against the federal government’s plan to dump radioactive waste in SA.

Singer-guitarist John Williamson expressed solidarity with the traditional owners of northern SA land at the rally and sang three heart-warming ditties, “Its Raining on the Rock”, “True Blue” and “Waltzing Matilda”. Traditional owners were not invited to speak at the rally.

Prior to the rally, about 200 protesters, including high-school students who walked out of school, rallied at Adelaide University and then marched to Genocide Corner, outside the SA governor’s house, before proceeding to Parliament House.

At Genocide Corner, Rebecca Bear-Wingfield, representing the Kupa Piti Kungka Tjuta, the senior Aboriginal women who are custodians for the proposed dump area in northern SA, told protesters about the impact on Aborigines of the British weapons tests at Emu Plains and Maralinga, uranium mining and the radioactive waste dump plan.

“We’ve had atomic testing, uranium mining and now this waste dump.  We need to pay respect to our old people and not create this waste in the first place”, Bear-Wingfield said.

‘Hijacked’

Minchin issued a press release after the rally saying that “prominent international anti-nuclear activists” - he named Helen Caldicott and Ken McDonell - had “hijacked” the campaign to stop nuclear waste dumping in SA “in a desperate attempt to stop the replacement of the research reactor at Lucas Heights”.

“The organisers of the rally, and the broader anti-nuclear lobby, have stated publicly on a number of occasions that if they can prevent the establishment of a national repository for low-level waste and a national store for intermediate-level waste, they will somehow stop the construction of the replacement research reactor”, Minchin said.

However, Minchin was confusing conspiracy with solidarity. The 4000 South Australians at the rally understood that most of the waste the government plans to dump in SA would come from the Lucas Heights reactor plant, they expressed cynicism when Minchin repeated his mantra that a new reactor is “needed” for medical isotope production, and they expressed solidarity with the campaign to stop a new reactor being built.

Senate inquiry

On August 15, the Democrats and Labor used their combined vote to establish a Senate inquiry into the proposed new reactor at Lucas Heights. Key questions to be determined by the inquiry include: whether a new research reactor is justified, the process leading up to the signing of a contract in July with INVAP of Argentina for the construction of a new reactor, and the adequacy of proposed fuel and waste management provisions.

Labor voted with the Coalition to defeat an amendment put forward by the Democrats for the Senate inquiry to appoint an independent commissioner - a current or former judge of a superior court or a senior counsel - to assist the inquiry.

Three dump sites short-listed

On August 14, Minchin announced three short-listed sites for a near-surface dump for low-level waste. All sites are located between Woomera and Roxby Downs in SA.

One of the three sites is in the Woomera Prohibited Area, and the other two are east of the Woomera/Roxby Downs road on pastoral leases owned by Western Mining Corporation and Kidman Pastoral Holdings. A Western Mining Corporation spokesman said, “It’s purely a government decision.”

The site in the Woomera Prohibited Area is about 2 km from a RAAF bombing range. The Adelaide Advertiser reported on August 15 that the federal Department of Defence opposes the short-listing of the site.

Coondambo station owner Rick Mould said pastoralists were concerned about the impact of a waste dump. The short-listed site in the Woomera Prohibited Area is 3 km from Mould's boundary fence. “We are concerned about quality assurance for our stock. We rely on the clean and green image”, Mould said.

Bob Norton, of the Andamooka Progress and Opal Miners Association, said Andamooka residents would continue to resist the planned dump. Norton said one short-listed site is about 40 km from the Andamooka township. “We've got about 1200 children living in Andamooka and Roxby Downs - we don't want this in their backyard. The rest of Australia thinks that this is the empty Outback, but there are people here, there are communities living here”, Norton told the August 15 Advertiser.

Further test drilling of the three sites will be undertaken over the next couple of months. A single preferred site will be identified later this year.

Store for intermediate-level waste

On August 11, Minchin announced that he intends to to establish an “expert, independent high level scientific committee” to recommend a preferred site for an above-ground store for long-lived intermediate-level waste. No state or territory will be ruled out, Minchin said.

Minchin said the earliest the preferred site for a national store could be announced would be late 2002. It appears that Minchin is hedging his bets on the timeline. On the one hand, the government needs to make progress with its waste management plans in order to facilitate the construction of a new reactor at Lucas Heights. On the other hand, the government wants to defer the contentious issue until after the next federal election and until after construction of a new reactor at Lucas Heights, and a low-level dump in SA, have commenced.

Western Australian Premier Richard Court said on August 14 that WA would fight any proposal to host a national store for intermediate-level waste in WA. "We've got a simple message - we don't want it. We're quite prepared to look after our own waste that's generated here, and let every state take the same position”, he said.

Greens WA upper house member Giz Watson has given notice that she will reintroduce the Nuclear Activities (Prohibition) Bill, which would attempt to prohibit the dumping of national waste in WA, into state parliament on August 20.

WA already has legislation to prevent Pangea Australia, a company which gets most of its funding from British Nuclear Fuels Limited, from setting up an international nuclear waste dump in WA.

Australia’s long-lived intermediate-level waste is to be stored indefinitely, but may be destined for deep geological disposal at some stage in the future. Pangea Australia wants to establish a deep geological dump for 75,000 tonnes of high-level waste from nuclear power plants around the world.

Before Pangea’s plans to turn rural WA or SA into an international nuclear dump were publicly revealed by a leaked corporate video in late 1998, the head of Pangea visited Australia offering to operate the planned low-level national dump as a private operation. Clearly, Pangea intended to piggy-back an international nuclear dump on national facilities.

Minchin said in an August 16 press release, "The Government is not prepared under any circumstances to consider involving bodies in Australia's nuclear waste facilities which may be seen as promoting Australian storage of international radioactive waste.”

“Such bodies will not be considered for any involvement in either of Australia's national radioactive waste management facilities, the repository for low-level waste, or the store for intermediate-level waste”, Minchin said.