Nuclear Waste Dump: Pangea nightmare resurfaces The following article was published in "The Guardian", newspaper of the Communist Party of Australia in its issue of Wednesday, December 15th, 1999. Contact address: 65 Campbell Street, Surry Hills. Sydney. 2010 Australia. Phone: (612) 9212 6855 Fax: (612) 9281 5795. CPA Central Committee: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> "The Guardian": <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Webpage: http://www.cpa.org.au> Subscription rates on request. ****************************** There is renewed concern about the possibility of the establishment of a huge international dump for toxic nuclear waste near the border of South Australia and Western Australia. Plans by the American consortium Pangea Resources to establish such a facility were revealed some 12 months ago in an ABC "Four Corners" program. by Peter Mac This showed clearly that Pangea was determined to see the facility established and had set aside massive funds to lobby for acceptance of the project by the Federal Government. Following the revelations, Pangea denied that it was considering establishing the plant in South Australia, and was only interested in Western Australia as a site. However, as a result of enormous public pressure the Western Australian Government recently passed legislation against the disposal of imported nuclear waste within the State's boundaries. Now Pangea says that South Australia is just as good as Western Australia for its purposes, since the geological formation in which it was proposed to store the waste straddles the boundary! A representative of the Anti-Nuclear Coalition of Western Australia (ANCWA) has pointed out that Pangea intends putting a firm proposal to both State and Federal Governments in 2002, and has a target date of 2009 for commencement of construction of the facility. The company has allocated an annual budget of $5 million for public relations for the intervening period, and is lobbying Federal, state and local governments. They are employing the best technical and scientific consultants from British Nuclear Fuels and have hired top legal advisors to advise on matters such as native title. They now have representatives on the Board of the Uranium Information Centre. The environmental organisation Friends of the Earth (FOE) has called on the Federal Government to pass legislation against the importation of nuclear waste into Australia. Greens Senator Bob Brown plans to introduce a Bill in the Senate amending the present customs law to prohibit the introduction of the waste. For its part the Government has simply stated that it has no intention of accepting nuclear wastes from other countries. However, its commitment to such issues is hardly unequivocal. For example, it still favours the signing of a Multilateral Agreement on Investment, under which a contract to accept foreign nuclear waste would override national or state environmental legislation. Moreover, a representative of FOE has pointed out that Government policy and import regulations are easy to change. Nor is the Coalition united in its stated opposition to the proposal. Federal Member Ross Lightfoot has openly stated his support for it, and others such as Wilson Tuckey appear to be distinctly ambivalent. Former Liberal leader in Western Australia, Bill Hassel, now heads Acclaim Uranium, the biggest uranium group in the state, and is highly influential in Coalition circles. And even the Western Australian legislation is fundamentally flawed. If a case can be made that the waste material could be of some economic value to the State, or if it had its genesis in Australia (and some 20 per cent of the world's uranium comes from Australia) then it is no longer classed as waste, and could be accepted under the legislation. As time passes and the Federal Government still shows no sign of passing prohibitive import legislation, questions are mounting over the Howard Government's intentions. It is one of those situations where no news is bad news. -- Leftlink - Australia's Broad Left Mailing List mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.alexia.net.au/~www/mhutton/index.html Sponsored by Melbourne's New International Bookshop Subscribe: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]?Body=subscribe%20leftlink Unsubscribe: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]?Body=unsubscribe%20leftlink
LL:ART: NUCLEAR WASTE DUMP NIGHTMARE RESURFACES
Communist Party of Australia Tue, 14 Dec 1999 22:40:44 +1100
