Tuesday, 19 December, 2006

by Jim Green
Letter to the editor

Nuclear accidents

Ron Cameron from the Lucas Heights nuclear agency, the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO), claims that "Internationally, there have been over 7000 shipments of spent fuel since 1971. There has never been an incident resulting in the release of radioactivity" (SMH 19/12, 'Bound for Botany Bay: nuclear fuel rods transported in secret').

In fact, there have been numerous accidents involving nuclear waste and spent nuclear fuel. Shipments of high-level waste to Germany were suspended in 1997 after greatly elevated radiation emissions. In 1997, a train carrying 180 tonnes of high-level nuclear waste derailed in France. In 2004, a truck spilled strontium-90 onto Highway 95 in Roane County, Tennessee, and the US Department of Energy estimated the clean-up cost at over US$1 million.

In July 2006, a reporter from the Daily Mirror planted a fake bomb on a train carrying nuclear waste in north-west London. The British Nuclear Group has been fined 2.5 million pounds in relation to an accident at the THORP spent nuclear fuel reprocessing plant in 2004.

Dozens of other accidents could be listed if space permitted. ANSTO itself has had accidents involving spent fuel. One accident involved the botched cropping of spent fuel elements which resulted in contamination of a cooling pond. Another involved spent fuel rods falling from a container leading to the irradiation of four ANSTO employees.

How can ANSTO be trusted to run a nuclear reactor plant when it cannot be trusted to tell the truth?

Dr Jim Green
Friends of the Earth
Melbourne.