Australia as the world's nuclear waste dump?

Information on proposals to build an international high level nuclear waste dump in Australia
 

Here is Pangea Resources' corporate video which was leaked to Friends of the Earth (UK) in the late 1990s. Until this video was leaked, Australians had no idea that we were being targeted as the world's nuclear dump.

Australia as the world's nuclear waste dump?

Jim Green     jim.green@foe.org.au         January 2012

National nuclear campaigner - Friends of the Earth, Australia

Some argue that Australia should establish a deep geological repository and accept high level nuclear waste from overseas. A variation of the argument is that Australia should accept high level waste arising from the processing of Australian uranium ('fuel leasing').

It is argued that Australia would be making a contribution to global non-proliferation efforts by accepting nuclear waste from overseas. However it is not clear that non-proliferation efforts would be advanced. It would depend on many factors, not least whether the waste contains weapons-useable plutonium (spent fuel contains plutonium, but the high level waste stream from reprocessing does not).

A few other points regarding proliferation risks:

  • There are simpler and better ways to reduce proliferation risks, e.g. banning plutonium separation (reprocessing) and stockpiling, or tightening the safeguards system. Advocates of an Australian dump are generally disinterested in methods of reducing proliferation risks other than establishing a dump in Australia - i.e. their professed concern about proliferation risks appears opportunistic.
  • South East Asia is, mainly through good luck and historical accident, free of countries with large-scale fissile (explosive) material stockpiles or with the capacity to produce large quantities of fissile material. That would change if Australia took possession of large quantities of plutonium contained within spent fuel.
  • There has been too little consideration of the practicalities and realpolitik of fuel leasing proposals. For example, if India was buying uranium from and returning waste/plutonium to Australia, would that arrangement have survived India's 1998 weapons tests and Australia's response (which included trade sanctions)? Would Australia's response to India's tests have been tempered and compromised in order to protect a nuclear fuel leasing arrangement? Would the arrangement 'free up' other uranium sources for weapons production even if the leasing arrangement provided some confidence that Australian uranium (and its by-products) was not used directly in weapons? Would Australia allow India to reprocess Australian-obligated nuclear material under a leasing arrangement and would India be permitted to use the separated plutonium in its 'advanced' plutonium/thorium nuclear power program (which is outside the scope of IAEA safeguards, strongly suggesting a military dimension)?

It is argued that Australia has a responsibility to accept waste arising from the processing of uranium exports. However the larger share of the responsibility lies with the countries that make use of Australian uranium. Moreover while uranium mining companies arguably ought to take some responsibility for the waste arising from their exports, it is not clear that that responsibility lies with Australia as a whole. One plausible scenario is uranium being mined on Aboriginal land regardless of Aboriginal opposition, and the resulting high level waste being dumped on Aboriginal land, again without consent.

The argument that Australia should accept high level nuclear waste imports rests on the questionable assumption that it would be carefully and responsibly managed in Australia. To give a fairly recent example of monumental mismanagement of radioactive waste in Australia, the 'clean up' of the Maralinga nuclear test site in the late 1990s was botched. Even after the 'clean up', tonnes of plutonium contaminated waste remain buried in shallow, unlined pits in totally unsuitable geology. An officer with the Commonwealth nuclear regulator complained of a "host of indiscretions, short-cuts and cover-ups". Nuclear engineer and whistleblower Alan Parkinson said of the 'clean-up': "What was done at Maralinga was a cheap and nasty solution that wouldn't be adopted on white-fellas land."

There are serious environmental and public health risks associated with high level nuclear waste. As Professor John Veevers from Macquarie University wrote in the Australian Geologist in August 1999: "[T]onnes of enormously dangerous radioactive waste in the northern hemisphere, 20,000 kms from its destined dump in Australia where it must remain intact for at least 10,000 years. These magnitudes - of tonnage, lethality, distance of transport, and time - entail great inherent risk."

Dr Mike Sandiford from the School of Earth Sciences at University of Melbourne writes: "Australia is relatively stable but not tectonically inert, and appears to be less stable than a number of other continental regions. Some places in Australia are surprisingly geologically active. We occasionally get big earthquakes in Australia (up to about magnitude 7) and the big ones have tended to occur in somewhat unexpected places like Tennant Creek. The occurrences of such earthquakes imply that we still have much to learn about our earthquake activity. From the point of view of long-term waste disposal this is very important, since prior to the 1988 (M 6.8) quake, Tennant Creek might have been viewed as one of the most appropriate parts of the continent for a storage facility. Australia is not the most stable of continental regions, although the levels of earthquake risk are low by global standards. To the extent that past earthquake activity provides a guide to future tectonic activity, Australia would not appear to provide the most tectonically stable environments for long-term waste facilities. However, earthquake risk is just one of the 'geologic' factors relevant to evaluating long-term integrity of waste storage facilities, and other factors such as the groundwater conditions, need to be evaluated in any comprehensive assessment of risk."

There is strong public opposition to an international nuclear dump in Australia. For example, a 1999 survey by Insight Research Australia found that 85% of respondents wanted the federal parliament to pass legislation to ban the import of foreign nuclear waste into Australia.

Pressure to dump nuclear waste in Australia will persist:

  • There is still no repository for high level nuclear waste anywhere in the world. Only Finland and Sweden are within perhaps 10-20 years of establishing such a repository. There have been many failed attempts to establish dumps, none more spectacular than the Yucca Mountain fiasco in the US - by the time this project was abandoned it was 23 years behind schedule and A$10 billion had been wasted.
  • About 290,000 tonnes of high level waste (in the form of spent nuclear fuel) have been produced in power reactors over the decades, of which about 90,000 tonnes have been reprocessed. As at 2012, power reactors are producing an additional 12,000 to 14,000 tonnes of spent fuel annually.

Support for Australia hosting an international nuclear dump

An international consortium – Pangea Resources – was secretly (then publicly) lobbying to establish a high-level nuclear waste dump in Australia from the late 1990s until 2002. In 2002, Pangea Resources rebranded itself as ARIUS - the Association for Regional and International Underground Storage - and it is still lobbying to build a nuclear dump here.

The head of the World Nuclear Association, John Ritch, is one of numerous foreign corporate voices calling for Australia to accept the world's nuclear garbage.

On June 3, 2007, the Federal Council of the Liberal Party unanimously endorsed a resolution supporting the establishment of a foreign nuclear waste dump in Australia. The resolution stated: “Australia should expand its current nuclear industry to incorporate the entire uranium fuel cycle, the expansion of uranium mining to be combined with nuclear power generation and worldwide nuclear waste storage in the geotechnically stable and remote areas that Australia has to offer.”

The Howard government joined Australia to the US-led Global Nuclear Energy Partnership, a scheme in which 'supplier' nations supply nuclear fuel and take back high-level nuclear waste from 'user' nations which operate reactors.

Politicians / ex-politicians supporting the development of a high level nuclear waste dump in Australia to take waste from overseas include:

  • Liberal Senator Judith Troeth called for Australia to build nuclear power reactors and for the high-level waste to be dumped at Muckaty in the NT
  • former Prime Minister Bob Hawke
  • former foreign minister Alexander Downer
  • former foreign minister Gareth Evans
  • Liberal/National Coalition Senators refused to support a Senate motion opposing an international nuclear dump in May 2006
  • in 2005 Martin Ferguson responded to Bob Hawke's call for Australia to establish a high level waste dump by saying: "In scientific terms Bob Hawke is right. Australia internationally could be regarded as a good place to actually bury it deep in the ground."

Australian groups lobbying for Australia to host an international high-level nuclear waste dump:

  • Nuclear Fuel Leasing Group. Head of the NFLG, Dr. John White, has been promoting the group's vision of establishing a uranium enrichment plant, a fuel fabrication plant, and an international nuclear waste repository in Australia.
  • Under the Howard government, the government-led Uranium Industry Framework promoted the idea. Specifically, a draft report of the UIF's stewardship working group recommended that Australia acepts international high-level nuclear waste arising from uranium exports.

More information on plans to build an international nuclear dump in Australia

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