Thursday, 15 February, 2007

ABC NT

Territory Senator Trish Crossin's called on the Federal Government to come clean
as she describes it about its intentions for radioactive waste after being told
in a Senate's Estimates Hearing that the Northern Territory will be taking
debris from Sydney's decommissioned Lucas Heights reactor despite assurances it
wouldn't be. She also says she can't find out how much waste there will be or
where it will go. Dr Ron Cameron should be able to shed some light on that
area. He's the Chief of Operations for the Australian Nuclear Science
Technology Organisation that will now be known as ANSTO for the rest of this
interview. Ron, good afternoon.

CAMERON: Good after noon Leon.

REPTR: Ron what exactly is planned to be shipped to the Territory from the
decommissioning of the Lucas Heights reactor?

CAMERON: Well what happens in decommissioning is we take out the fuel and
heavy water and that will be sent overseas and none of that returns to
Australia. Then we leave it for about 10 years to let the radioactivity decay
and then we will dismantle it and that will create some low level waste, which
will go to the repository, and some intermediate level waste that will go to the
store.

REPTR: When you say some intermediate level waste will go to the store does
that mean it will come to the Northern Territory and be stored here?

CAMERON: Clearly, it will go the Commonwealth Radioactive Waste Management
Facility, which is currently planned for the Northern Territory.

REPTR: How much of that medium level waste will there be?

CAMERON: Well it's hard to say exactly because, I mean, one of the things we
do over this 10 year period is learn from good practices around the world and
how to dismantle these things and the process that you use for dismantling is
really the determinate of how much you have. But we will have some hundreds of
cubic metres of intermediate level waste.

REPTR: And how dangerous is medium level waste?

CAMERON: Well of course it's, it's higher activity waste but to compensate
for that it will be in shielded containers, it's in an encapsulated form so its
very secure and those are the sort of containers that we'll be having back from
overseas without spent fuel as well so really we design the package to make sure
that when it's handled it's very safe to handle.

REPTR: But hundreds of cubic metres, as you describe it sounds like a great
deal it will occupy a fair space.

CAMERON: Yes, I mean one hundred cubic metres does sound like a great deal;
but it's always been the intention that the waste from decommissioning would go
to such a store. That's been well known, we're surprised that Senator Crossin
is surprised because that's been known well back for this Government and the
previous Government right back to the 93 Keating Government Report so it's
always been the intention that this waste will go there. There are currently
about 400 cubic metres of intermediate level waste and that's what we have to
look after in the store. The size is about, you know it's smaller than a, a
small house is the sort of size building we're talking about building.

REPTR: How will it be transported Ron?

CAMERON: Well it's transported in special containers as I said and then those
will be put on top of really just in closed containers on trucks and they will
be trucked through. I mean, there are options to transport but that's probably
the favoured option at the moment.

REPTR: Is it, am I correct in understanding that for sometime the Northern
Territory thought they were talking about the issue of handling low-level
nuclear waste, but now it would appear that we're talking about medium level
nuclear waste being brought to the Territory?

CAMERON: No, no that's not correct I mean, the repository that is where you
bury it underground has always been for low-level waste. But the store was
which was always intended to be collocated on the same site was for intermediate
level waste. So Senator Crossin has known that for sometime, it's always been
advised that that was the case. So we have two different things, we will bury
the low level waste but we will store the intermediate level waste.

REPTR: Are you involved in discussions with the group at Muckety Station
about progressing the storage of waste and making this facility there?

CAMERON: No the process of site selection and choosing a site has been done
by the Department in Canberra. We of course will be giving technical advice on
high sets of store. It might be created and likewise a repository might be
built. So we have provided a lot of technical advice but it's not our job to be
involved in choosing which site it should be.

REPTR: Have you told that Department that Muckety Station would be an
appropriate site?

CAMERON: No we haven't been asked for advice on it because the process is
that, there is actually an internationally agreed way of going about collecting
data, understanding what you need to know about, about soils and water and
things like that and we've given that general advice about how you do a site,
assessment of a site but we haven't been ourselves involved in which particular
site it should be.

REPTR: How long do expect that this medium level waste will retain its
radioactivity. What's a likely length of time?

CAMERON: Well, I mean this, intermediate waste has got quite long half life,
so the intention is to store it for a few hundred years and then a decision
needs to made on its ultimate disposal. So it'll be stored above ground and that's only a temporary store for a few hundred years and by that stage we would probably have enough to think about finding another site where it would be
buried deep underground.

REPTR: When do we need to have a store, we're coming up to news time so I
apologise for that, but Ron when do we need to have a decision made and a store
built for this waste to go in?

CAMERON: Well in terms of decommissioning, we're about 15 years away and in
terms of any waste coming back from overseas again, it's about 2015.

REPTR: Ron good to talk to you this afternoon thanks for sharing your time.

CAMERON: Alright then.