Thursday, 6 September, 2007

by Natalie Wasley
Arid Lands Environment Centre

The Arid Lands Environment Centre (ALEC) condemned the agreement made this week at the APEC summit in Sydney for Australia to join the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP), citing widespread concern that the deal is locking Australia in to becoming an international nuclear waste dump.

Natalie Wasley, ALEC Beyond Nuclear Initiative campaigner, explained that “an integral part of GNEP is the idea for countries like Australia to ‘lease’ uranium, and then take back the waste produced from nuclear power stations overseas. Despite assurances now that the proposed federal dump in the NT would only ever accept domestic waste, the federal government does not have a record conducive to being trusted on promises regarding nuclear facilities”.

Ms Wasley added, “The assessment of Northern Territory sites for a Federal radioactive dump has been procedurally bereft and outrageously undemocratic. Given the appalling process being used for the Federal dump plan, there is little faith that establishing an international dump would be done with more community consultation or regard for opposition”.

Ms Wasley also pointed out inconsistencies in federal government rhetoric. “Minister MacFarlane has stated that Australia’s waste is not safe where it is currently stored in the cities, yet the government is more than happy to dump it just a few kilometres from where people live and run pastoral and tourism enterprises with the assurance that it is ‘innocuous’”.

“Territorians do not overlook the implication from these double standards that their lives, livelihoods and communities are being viewed as political sacrifice zones. Signing up to GNEP provides little assurance that the federal dump is not the thin edge of the wedge to an international radioactive dump,” Ms Wasley concluded.