Campaign Against Nuclear Dumping

Better active today than radioactive tomorrow!

Roxby Downs and Uranium Mining

Friends of the Earth & Campaign Against Nuclear Dumping

June, 2005.

 

BHP Billiton and the South Australian Labor government want to massively expand the uranium output at Roxby Downs to make it the biggest uranium mine in the world. The mine, located 500 kms north of Adelaide on Kokatha country, has been operating since 1988.

 

Radioactive & toxic waste

 

Since the Roxby Downs / Olympic Dam mine opened, it has produced a staggering amount of tailings waste - 60 million tonnes, currently growing at a rate of 10 million tonnes annually. Eighty percent of the radioactivity of the original ore remains in the tailings - as well as a range of other toxic materials. Uranium tailings contain over a dozen radionuclides, the most important being thorium-230, radium-226, radon-222 (radon gas) and the radon progeny including polonium-210. The large number of bird deaths recorded in a 2004 survey attests to the toxicity of the tailings.

 

The tailings waste is simply dumped on site at Olympic Dam with no plans for its long-term management. WMC says it plans to manage the waste to “industry standards” - in other words, the company will walk away from its toxic legacy soon after the mine’s closure, yet the radioactive waste will pose an environmental and public health threat for thousands of years. What sort of a legacy is that to be imposing on future generations of South Australians for thousands of years to come?

 

Overseas, nuclear power plants are producing over 10,000 tonnes of high-level waste annually yet there is not a single disposal site for any of this waste. As Premier Mike Rann argued in his 1982 book, uranium ought not be exported from Australia until disposal solutions for high-level waste have been "conclusively demonstrated" not just "promised hopefully in the future".

 

Water

 

The mine uses over 30 million litres of water daily, drawn from the Great Artesian Basin (GAB). The GAB supports many Mound Springs - unique arid land habitats that have world-class natural and cultural significance. The Mound Springs support rare and delicate micro flora and fauna; many species are unique to a particular spring. They also have high cultural significance to the Arabunna, traditional custodians of the land in which these mound springs are located. The Mound Springs have been adversely effected by WMC’s water take. To accommodate the planned expansion, WMC wants to increase its water take by 120 million litres per day, from the GAB and/or a desalination plant.

 

Weapons proliferation

 

Australian uranium exports have resulted in the production of 78 tonnes of plutonium, the fissile material used in many weapons. That is enough plutonium to build about 8,000 nuclear weapons of similar yield to the plutonium bomb dropped on Nagasaki on August 9, 1945. If 99% of this plutonium is indefinitely protected against military use, that still leaves enough plutonium to build about 80 nuclear weapons.

 

Olympic Dam is responsible for about one quarter of all of the uranium that has been exported from Australia, so we can estimate that Olympic Dam uranium has resulted in the production of enough plutonium to produce approximately 2,000 nuclear weapons. If the planned expansion goes ahead, Olympic Dam uranium will result in the production of enough plutonium to build over 500 nuclear weapons each year.

 

Why does WMC sell uranium to nuclear weapons states - such as the USA and France - which have no intention whatsoever of fulfilling their disarmament obligations under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty?

 

Why does WMC sell uranium to Japan when the resultant plutonium stockpile is demonstrably fuelling regional tensions and proliferation risks in North East Asia? Foreign Minister Alexander Downer acknowledged on February 10, 2005, that recent developments in North Korea make it more likely that Japan will pursue nuclear weapons. Should Japan construct nuclear weapons, it is likely that plutonium produced from Australian uranium - including Olympic Dam uranium - would be used.

 

Even in the absence of a systematic weapons program, Japan’s plutonium stockpile fans regional tensions in North East Asia. Diplomatic cables from US Ambassadors in Tokyo describe Japan's accumulation of plutonium as "massive" and question the rationale of the plutonium program since it appears to be economically unjustified. A March 1993 diplomatic cable from US Ambassador Armacost in Tokyo to Secretary of State Warren Christopher, posed these questions: "Can Japan expect that if it embarks on a massive plutonium recycling program that Korea and other nations would not press ahead with reprocessing programs? Would not the perception of Japan's being awash in plutonium and possessing leading edge rocket technology create anxiety in the region?"

 

Now WMC and other uranium mining companies want permission to sell to China - one of the few remaining growth markets. Safeguarding Australian uranium (and its derivatives including plutonium) in China will prove all the more difficult because of the nature of the regime. China refuses to ratify the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (as does the United States). And who will Beijing target for the dumping of high-level reactor waste? Tibet would certainly be on the short list.

 

The international nuclear safeguards system has been discredited time and time again. Efforts to improve the system have been slow and partial. A detailed critique of the safeguarding of Australian nuclear exports is provided by retired diplomat Professor Richard Broinowski in his 2003 book Fact or Fission? The Truth About Australia’s Nuclear Ambitions. Professor Broinowski details how the safeguarding of Australian nuclear exports has been steadily weakened in many ways and he argues that accounting for Australian nuclear exports is “tenuous, and subject to distortion or abuse.”

 

Worker’s health & public health

 

WMC workers are told that the doses they receive from working at Olympic Dam are below or close to background levels, the implication being that the radiation doses are ‘safe’. However, the doses received at the mine site are additional to background radiation and thus workers are at additional risk of fatal cancers.

 

Specifically, international cancer incidence and mortality data demonstrate statistically significant links between radiation and all solid tumours as a group, as well as for cancers of the stomach, colon, liver, lung, breast, ovary, bladder, thyroid, and for non-melanoma skin cancers and most types of leukaemia.

 

WMC’s data from 1999-2000 show that worker doses averaged 1.7 millisieverts with some workers receiving 10 mSv. In the mine, 60% was external gamma exposure and 36% radon decay products; in the mill 77% was long-lived alpha-emitting radiation and 23% gamma radiation.

 

Over the years the permitted levels of radiation exposure for workers and the public have dropped dramatically as research, particularly from radiation biologists, indicates harmful effects still exist at much lower exposure levels. For workers, the permitted dose was set at 500 millisieverts per year in 1934, 150 mSv in 1950, 50 mSv in 1956, and 20 mSv (averaged over five years) in 1991. The limit for members of the public is just 1 mSv. Why are WMC workers considered to be 20 times more expendable than members of the public?

 

Based on previous experience, we can confidently expect further reductions in permitted doses. In fact in 2003, the European Committee on Radiation Risk, comprising 30 independent scientists, released a report arguing for the total maximum permissible dose to members of the public arising from all human practices to be set at no be more than 0.1 mSv (a ten-fold reduction), with a limit of 5 mSv for nuclear workers (a four-fold reduction).

 

WMC’s legal favours

 

WMC enjoys completely unjustifiable legal privileges under the SA Roxby Indenture Act. The Act overrides the proper process and powers of the Environment Protection Act, the Water Resources Act, the Aboriginal Heritage Act and even the the Freedom of Information Act. It would make sense for Olympic Dam, as the biggest mine in the state, to be subject to the most stringent performance standards, but it is illogical and indefensible that the mine is subject to the weakest standards. If WMC is such as good environmental performer and such a good corporate citizen, as it claims, why doesn’t the company voluntarily relinquish these outrageous legal privileges?

 

Jobs

 

Already, the planned Roxby expansion is being sold as a large job generator. Don’t believe the hype. The expansion in the 1990s resulted in a 20% increase in full-time jobs while water input, energy input and uranium output all increased more than two-fold. As always, the task for WMC management will be to minimise jobs by adopting cheaper, mechanised processes wherever and whenever possible.

Last updated 28 November 2005

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