The Sydney Morning Herald (Print edition)
April 2, 1999
We love a sunburnt country, not one scorched by radioactive waste.
by
Helen Caldicott and Mary Olson
AUSTRALIA is in grave danger. The international nuclear industry
wants our ancient continent to become the repository for three-
quarters of the world's high-level radioactive waste.
Worse, some of our scientists, political leaders and commentators are
assuming the crouch position before the industry generally, and, in
particular, Pangea Corporation, which is behind the project.
>From that lowly posture they are attempting to soften us by saying
that Australia would become a major player on the world stage if we
became the world's radioactive rubbish tip. And well get jobs, jobs!
When will we stop tugging our forelock to America, England and the
multinational corporations that own them? When will we realise
Australia's stock in the eyes of the world will rise immeasurably if
this nation refuses to be rolled by the amoral and financially
bankrupt nuclear industry?
We are Pangea's last hope. If it can't put the waste here, it can't
put it anywhere and that means the end of nuclear power. Many of the
spent fuel pools at reactors around the world are full and if they
are not emptied, the reactors will have to shut.
Pangea will do anything to change our name to Terra Nucleus. Its
lobbyists are roaming the halls of Parliament, cajoling our elected
officials - many of whom have no moral backbone and are
scientifically illiterate.
Pangea plans to import 75,000 metric tonnes - three-quarters of the
world total - of intensely radioactive waste and bury it in the
desert in either South Australia or Western Australia.
This waste, irradiated fuel from nuclear power plants, contains more
than 95 per cent of the radioactivity produced during the nuclear
age. Global nuclear weapons complexes and other industries contribute
less than 5 per cent of the waste burden. Irradiated fuel, even five
years out of a nuclear reactor, is still a million times more
radioactive than the original uranium fuel, and, if unshielded,
delivers a lethal dose of radiation in less than one minute.
So, there are extraordinary dangers in transporting and handling this
material for the workers who deal with it and the public at large.
Waste from America and England will have to be transported to
shipping terminals around the world; carried on ships vulnerable to
accidents (remember the Exxon Valdez?); unloaded in an Australian
port; transported by truck or rail to the desert; unloaded, and put
in the soil.
Every step in the journey presents enormous risks of radiation
exposure and catastrophic accidents.
In the US, a congressional bill to authorise the annual transport of
1,500 shipments of highly radioactive waste from nuclear power plants
across the country to Yucca mountain in Nevada over the next 30 years
has been dubbed "the Mobile Chernobyl Bill". It is being vigorously
opposed by communities throughout America.
This waste is composed of more than 100 radioactive elements which
accumulate in the food chain. These include strontium 90, which
causes bone cancer and leukemia and is radioactive for 600 years;
caesium 137, which causes highly malignant muscle sarcomas and is
also radioactive for 600 years; iodine 129, which induces thyroid
cancer and has a half life of 17 million years, and plutonium, so
toxic that less than one millionth of a gram can cause cancer, and
which remains radioactive for 500,000 years.
We are dealing with geological and biological time frames that defy
imagination. But they are in fact the time frames of evolution:
Pangea's radioactive waste will produce deleterious mutations in the
genetic material of plants, animals, and humans on this continent.
Although Australia's geology has been relatively stable for eons,
earthquakes occur not infrequently. Further, our climate is changing
rapidly. Indeed, scientists predict massive rains for Central
Australia as a result of global warming. The stainless steel, waste-
filled casks which Pangea proposes to bury in our land will rust
within several decades, particularly if they are exposed to water.
Radioactive elements will be released to travel in underground
waterways, aquifers and streams, to pollute drinking water for
thousands of stations and their livestock.
The fact that we produce uranium is no reason to accept the waste:
one evil does not justify another. The Australian Government is being
utterly hypocritical in promoting uranium mining while claiming to be
opposed to Pangea's plans.
The truth is there will be no market for the uranium mined in
Australia if Australia refuses the waste.
Australia can serve the world best, not by obsequiously accepting the
waste, but by refusing it. Then we will have put the final spanner in
the nuclear works.
Dr Helen Caldicott is founding president of Physicians for Social
Responsibility and the author of Nuclear Madness, What You Can Do (W.
W. Norton).
Mary Olson is a fellow of the Nuclear Information Resource Service,
Washington, DC.
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