Nuclear deal to make Australia dumping ground for world's waste
Friday, 20 July, 2007
by Alec Marr
The Wilderness Society
“The Prime Minister says he wants to develop a nuclear industry but he hasn’t been honest about Australia being lined up to become the world’s nuclear waste dump,” TWS Campaigns Director Alec Marr said.
The Liberal Party Federal Council meeting in June unanimously supported an international waste dump being built in Australia.
“It is more than 60 years since the first atom bomb was made but there is still no safe, long term solution to the nuclear waste anywhere in the world.”
Mr Marr said recent actions by the Federal Government to remove all legal barriers to an international nuclear waste dump had led the country to the point of no return.
“The Prime Minister has misled the Australia public many times over his true intentions for a nuclear industry in Australia and he cannot be trusted now.
“On the final day of parliament last year the Federal Government rushed through changes to legislation that allowed for the first time radioactive waste to be imported from overseas.”
The deal sees Australia move one step closer to joining the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP), which involves a small number of countries enriching uranium, leasing the nuclear fuel to other countries eager to develop nuclear power and taking back the spent fuel for reprocessing and disposal.
Instead of it being a strategic economic opportunity for Australia, the deal benefits the United States, which has failed to find a domestic solution to storing its own nuclear waste, Mr Marr said.
“The Prime Minister is laying down to President Bush, who is desperately seeking somewhere to dump American nuclear waste because he has not been able to build his own in the US.
“The United States is facing a nuclear waste crisis, with the failure of its proposed national high-level nuclear waste dump, at Yucca Mountain, Nevada, to open due to environmental and safety concerns,” Mr Marr said.
A nuclear industry involving 25 reactors in Australia by 2050 would produce up to 45,000 tonnes of toxic waste that would remain deadly to humans for millions of years, the Prime Minister’s nuclear energy and uranium mining inquiry report found earlier this year.