Thursday, 5 April, 2007

Adelaide Advertiser

FORMER mining executive Hugh Morgan says an internationally-owned and run nuclear waste facility should be set up in land across the South Australian and West Australian border.

The former head of WMC (Western Mining Corporation) said he was doing preparatory work to establish a nuclear business in Australia.

"What I would propose is that there ought to be an internationally-owned facility in Australia," Mr Morgan told ABC Radio.

Mr Morgan said the facility should be owned by various governments and utilities around the world, together with the Australian government and leading Australian businesses.

He said there were three preferable sites for a nuclear waste dump, the best one being in the Australian outback.

"A site in one of the three most secured geological sequences in the world," Mr Morgan said.

"One of those sequences lies in South Australia and extends into Western Australia, one is in South Africa and one is in China."

Mr Morgan said that Australia offered the best geological and political stability to have such a facility.

"I would say South Australia/Western Australia, that's where the geological sequence lies," he said.

"I know politically they're (anti-nuclear lobbyists) going to get up and say `not over my dead body, etc, etc.'

"I'm saying that's where ... in the international interest ... you would go."

Mr Morgan said fears about nuclear waste disposal were ill-founded.

"There are many satisfactory disposal locations already ... in Sweden, in France, in the U.S.," he said.

"There are technologies that are continuing to come forward to provide changes in the nature of the nuclear power plants themselves – the nature of the waste which reduces the time to achieve half life."

Mr Morgan also wanted the public to stop calling facilities for nuclear waste dumps.

"Call it a repository ... not a dump," he said.