Tuesday, 30 January, 2007

ABC NT Local News

ANSTO says transporting nuclear waste is low-risk.

The organisation operating Sydney's Lucas Heights nuclear facility has dismissed concerns over shipping the old reactor to a future radioactive waste dump proposed for the Northern Territory.

The Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO) officially closed the reactor today.

The Federal Government wants to build a nuclear waste dump in the NT and is assessing three possible sites.

ANSTO chief of operations Ron Cameron says it is expected the Lucas Heights HIFAR reactor will be dismantled after a decade and disposed of in an NT-based nuclear waste dump.

Environmental groups have cautioned against such a move, but Dr Cameron says radioactive levels in the reactor will have declined to a low level in 10 years.

"I think the risk is extraordinarily low - there's tens of millions of such transports that take place every year, and there's never been an instance which has had any impact on the health of people," he said.

"That is a superb record compared to the transport of petrol and LPG and explosives, and various hazardous goods that go on our roads every day."

Dr Cameron says the radioactivity is currently at an intermediate level and will be low level waste in 10 years, when it can be discarded in a Federal Government waste disposal facility.

"We have been storing waste safely here for over 40 years," he said.

"But what the Government has decided is rather than having radioactive waste stored in various places around the country, we would follow international practice and establish a purpose-built facility, which was designed to store this waste if it's intermediate or to dispose of this waste in a repository if it's low-level waste."