This file contains various new items published in January and February 2001 on the Australian government's plans for an underground dump for low-level waste and a national store for long-lived intermediate level waste (LLILW).

The federal government plans to release an environmental impact assessment in 2001-02.

As for the LLILW store, the federal government has announced that it will be sited on Commonwealth land, not on State/Territory land. This is a major backdown and a major concession to public opposition. A protracted site selection process will take place over the coming 18-24 months. It seems clear that the government has made a tactical decision to get the underground dump up-and-running, and then worry about the LLILW waste store. It is of course possible that once the dump is established, promises made in relation to the LLILW store (in particular the promise not to co-locate it with the dump) will be reversed.

Nuclear waste decision too hot before election
By Andrew Clennell
Sydney Morning Herald
10 February 2001.

Minchin rules out double nuclear dump
By Phillip Coorey in Canberra
The Advertiser
9 February 2001

Intermediate radioactive waste store to be built on Commonwealth land
Media Release from Senator Nick Minchin, Federal Minister for Industry, Science and Resources.
8 February 2001

Government announces preferred sites for nuclear dump
By Jim Green
Green Left Weekly #434
January 31, 2001

Threat of $5m fines for nuclear dumps
By Kim Wheatley
The Advertiser
3 February 2001.

Australia's site for the storage of highly radioactive nuclear waste will not be announced until after the next Federal election, the Science Minister, Senator Minchin, said yesterday. He also indicated it may not be in his home state of South Australia.

The Government must build an "intermediate-level" radioactive waste dump as part of the conditions to build the replacement research reactor at Lucas Heights in Sydney's south.

Senator Minchin said the facility would be built on Commonwealth land because of resistance from the States and Territories.

He said it would not be placed with a low-level waste site, which is to be based in remote South Australia.
The Government is not ruling out any State or Territory for the site.

Opposition in South Australia to the dump has been strong and generated protests and much press.

"Despite the endorsement of co-location by the Consultative Committee of Commonwealth and State Officials in 1997 ... this is an entirely separate process to the search for the low-level repository," Senator Minchin said.

He has set up a committee to find the preferred site and said "the earliest the site for a national store could be announced would be late 2002".

The South Australian Premier, Mr Olsen, welcomed the decision yesterday.

But the Federal Opposition's environment spokesman, Senator Bolkus, said the "timing had changed but Minchin's intention hasn't. No-one will believe him when he says no co-location ... he was on the record in support of it [before]. We will play it hard in the electorate and the fact is Minchin's so closely linked to [the campaign for] two marginal seats in South Australia - Makin and Hindmarsh."

Yesterday, the Senate inquiry into the new reactor at Lucas Heights and the contract with controversial Argentinian company INVAP heard from a Labor senator that court action in Argentina may decide whether the Government will be able to carry through a key part of the reactor plan. INVAP has guaranteed the Government body which runs the site, the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO), that if it cannot get the spent fuel reprocessed in France it will export some of it to Argentina for "conditioning" before sending it back to Australia for storage.

But a section of the Argentinian Constitution forbids the importation of nuclear waste. And environmental group FUNAM recently used that section to win a case against a ship carrying highly radioactive nuclear waste entering Argentinian waters.

At the Senate inquiry, Labor Senator Jan McLucas asked ANSTO's chief executive, Professor Helen Garnett: "[Isn't there] the potential for us having to go through a legal process in Argentina if this option is
pursued?"

Professor Garnett said that would not be the case as the advice ANSTO had was that the official definition of the material travelling to Argentina would be "spent fuel". It would only become "waste" once it was conditioned and sent back to Australia for storage.

THE Federal Government has ruled out an intermediate-level radioactive waste dump at the Woomera site earmarked for a low-level dump.

But the intermediate-level dump could still be built elsewhere in SA.

Industry Minister Nick Minchin said last night the decision to rule out co-location was prompted by the anti-dump campaign "waged against us" in SA.

"It's time to put an end to the deliberate scare campaign by extremist groups seeking to whip up community concern about co-location and to use South Australians to give weight to their anti-nuclear stance," he said.

Senator Minchin said the intermediate-level dump would be built on Commonwealth land somewhere in Australia and would take only waste generated by Commonwealth agencies.

State governments with their own intermediate-level waste could build their own dump or ask the Commonwealth for permission to use its site.

The Australia-wide search for an intermediate-level waste site would continue. "I'm not ruling out SA," Senator Minchin said.

An intermediate-level dump in SA is fiercely opposed by state and federal Labor, the State Government and the Australian Conservation Foundation.

Premier John Olsen welcomed the decision to abandon co-location.

But he warned Senator Minchin SA would be equally intolerant of plans to build the intermediate-level dump anywhere else in the state.

The Federal Government will establish a safe purpose built facility on Commonwealth land for the storage of national intermediate-level radioactive waste produced by Commonwealth agencies," Minister for Industry, Science and Resources Senator Nick Minchin said today.

The national facility will house Australia's existing inventory of intermediate level waste generated by the Lucas Heights Reactor and other Commonwealth agencies including the Department of Defence, as well as the 35 cubic metres of intermediate waste which has temporarily been stored on the Woomera Prohibited Area since 1995. 
Senator Minchin said the decision resulted from the lack of unanimity among States and Territories about the desirability of a national store for all of Australia's intermediate-level radioactive waste.
"Individual States and Territories will now have to decide whether to build their own storage facility for intermediate-level waste or to negotiate with the Federal Government for access to the national store," he said. 
"In August last year, after I announced the nationwide search for a site for the national store, I sought cooperation from all States and Territories, given that all Australians benefit from radioisotopes used in medicine, industry and research.

"Regrettably some States also indicated that they would not support the siting of a national store in their jurisdiction. Despite this the Federal Government will proceed with the search, broadly following the process outlined in August last year."

Senator Minchin has also ruled out co-location of the national intermediate level radioactive waste store with the national low level repository in South Australia.

"Despite the endorsement of co-location by the Consultative Committee of Commonwealth and State Officials in 1997, I instigated the nationwide scientific search for the best site in Australia for an intermediate store. 
"This is an entirely separate process to the search for the low level repository and it is time to put an end to the deliberate scare campaign by extremist groups seeking to whip up community concern about co-location and to use South Australians to give weight to their anti-nuclear stance."

The nationwide search for the intermediate store will be comprehensive, transparent and based on scientific and environmental criteria. A safe site will be selected following the advice of scientific experts.

An independent, expert advisory committee has been established to oversee the site selection process for the national store for intermediate level waste.

The scientific experts have been chosen to serve on the committee for their expertise in the fields of radiation protection, and in other disciplines relevant to the site selection study.

Committee members include scientists from the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency, the Australian Geological Survey Organisation, and the Bureau of Rural Sciences. Independent Australian consultants, experts from the International Atomic Energy Agency, a representative from the Queensland Department of Health, and the Victorian Department of Human Services will also serve on the committee.

The earliest the preferred site for a national store could be announced would be late 2002. 

The federal government announced on January 24 its preferred sites in South Australia for a national dump for about 10,000 cubic metres of low-level radioactive waste.

The preferred site, and two alternative sites, will be the subject of an environmental assessment which is expected to take a year or more.

The preferred site, known as Evetts Field West, lies to the west of the Woomera-Roxby Downs road within the Woomera Prohibited Area controlled by the federal Department of Defence.

The Woomera Prohibited Area was established in 1947 and was used by the British military for long-range rocket tests in the 1950s and 60s.

According to reports in the Adelaide Advertiser last year, the preferred site is about 2 km from a RAAF bombing range and the Department of Defence opposed the shortlisting of the site. The staging of the Automatic Landing Flight Experiment by the Japanese government in 1996 was delayed due to concerns about temporary nuclear waste storage on the range.

Bob Little, president of Woomera's Small Business Association, said the dump is likely to tarnish the region's image and that Woomera's future would be better served in promoting the rocket and space industries. "I would sooner see these people coming in and the rockets going up again for the tourists, and the commercial side of it and bringing money into the state, rather than the stigma and all the negatives and all the protesters coming up every 12 months to upset our livelihood", Little told ABC radio on January 25.

The other two sites to be considered in the environmental assessment are located in the east and north-east of the Woomera/Roxby Downs road.

Coondambo station owner Rick Mould said in August that pastoralists were concerned about the impact of a waste dump. The proposed site in the Woomera Prohibited Area is 3 kms from the boundary fence of Mould's property. "We are concerned about quality assurance for our stock," he said. "We rely on the clean and green image."

Environment minister in the South Australian Liberal government, Iain Evans, said the planned dump will not affect SA's reputation as a "clean, green" state.

"All of us drink champagne and champagne in France has one of the largest nuclear storage facilities in Europe", Evans told ABC radio on January 24.

Environment spokesperson for the SA Labor Party, John Hill, said the announcement meant that SA was one step closer to being chosen as the site for a national store for higher-level wastes including those arising from the reprocessing of irradiated fuel rods from the nuclear research reactor in Sydney. "There is no other reason to create a single national dump for low-level waste", Hill said.

Federal Labor's environment spokesperson Nick Bolkus complained in the January 25 Adelaide Advertiser about federal science minister Senator Nick Minchin's "stubborn arrogance riding roughshod over public opinion".

However, Minchin noted that the former federal Labor government moved much of Australia's radioactive waste to temporary storage facilities within the Woomera Prohibited Area in 1994/95. That took place without an environmental impact assessment or even a more limited public environmental report.

The Kupa Piti Kungka Tjuta, senior Aboriginal women of Coober Pedy, have stepped up their campaign against the proposed nuclear waste dump. One campaigning tool will be their recently-launched website, (<http://www.iratiwanti.org>) which details the effects of atomic testing on their lives in the 1950s and their current struggle to stop the nuclear dump.

The preferred final site for the nuclear dump is the traditional lands of the Kokatha people. Rebecca Bear Wingfield, a senior Aboriginal woman from Kokatha country and spokesperson for the Kungka Tjuta, said, "Senator Minchin has just confirmed what we've known all along. That the community consultative process has been a sham and has actively excluded traditional owners from dialogue and negotiations as to the proposal for the dump."

Australia talks of reconciliation but how can we reconcile when this waste is going to be dumped on the ancestral lands of the Kokatha people. How can the government continue to negotiate and make decisions about stolen lands, without the consent of all the Kokatha people who are the custodians and who have already had their lands stolen back in the 1950's when their lands were annexed by the Commonwealth Government using the doctrines of ' Terra Nullius'", Bear Wingfield said.

While the precise form of the environmental assessment of the three sites has not yet been decided by federal environment minister Robert Hill, the broad parameters are clear: the federal government will itself review and rubber-stamp the dump proposal. However, public opposition could prevent the establishment of a dump. A poll commissioned by Greenpeace found that 86% of South Australians oppose a low-level nuclear waste dump.

COMPANIES would be fined up to $5 million if the Federal Government allowed a medium-level radioactive waste dump to be established in South Australia.

State Environment Minister Iain Evans gave the warning to a Senate inquiry yesterday in one of the State Government's strongest public statements to its federal colleagues.

"We'd certainly consider utilising those powers if someone has taken action to create a storage facility that is in conflict with the (Nuclear Waste Storage Prohibition) Act," Mr Evans said.

Asked what would be done if the Federal Government attempted to override state laws, Mr Evans said there would be "a very significant dispute between the SA Government and the Federal Government".

The inquiry was hearing submissions in Adelaide into plans to build a new nuclear reactor at Lucas Heights but it extended its terms of reference to include the dump issue.

Last week, the Federal Government announced Area 52A, in the Woomera Prohibited Area, had been chosen as the preferred site for the storage of low-level radioactive waste. Mr Evans said bipartisan legislation passed in November banning a medium-level dump was a reflection of the community's overwhelming opposition to the issue.

Opposition environment spokesman John Hill raised the spectre of the Franklin Dam constitutional dispute.
Tabling numerous reports supporting co-location of a low and medium-level dump site, Mr Hill also claimed federal Industry Minister Nick Minchin had already decided on SA but was stalling until after the next election.
Senator Minchin said the best site was the subject of a scientifically-based search that "responsible politicians" should support. He described the State Government's threats as "extraordinary".

The scientific community was represented at the inquiry by former Adelaide University physics department associate professor John Patterson, who said a central waste repository at Area 52A would be an "excellent site".
"I believe it would have zero effect on the townships nearby and certainly it will not increase the radiation exposure to people living in Adelaide by one iota," he said.