Friday, 8 September, 2006

by Dennis Shanahan
The Australian

LABOR resources spokesman Martin Ferguson has warned his colleagues to stop "scaremongering" over radioactive waste and backed a low-level nuclear waste centre in Australia.

Mr Ferguson told parliament there needed to be a debate about whether Australia was "mature enough to select a site where we should store our low-level and intermediate-level nuclear waste".

The Labor frontbencher's comments come only weeks after the deputy Labor leader, Jenny Macklin, used an accident at the Lucas Heights reactor in Sydney to campaign against nuclear reactors.

Ms Macklin told parliament that residents near Lucas Heights needed to be told of accidents within the plant and it showed "the community is right to be concerned about the safety of nuclear reactors".

"This accident is a stark reminder that things can go wrong with nuclear reactors," Ms Macklin said.

But yesterday, Mr Ferguson said in a debate about radioactive waste sites in the Northern Territory that the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation, which runs Lucas Heights, played a vital role in nuclear medicine.

"ANSTO is too often pilloried for their own political purposes by those who should know better," Mr Ferguson said. "It is one thing to run an anti-nuclear campaign underpinned by sound science, logic and belief. It is quite another to stoop to ludicrous fearmongering about ANSTO and the Lucas Heights nuclear facility."

He said the amendments dealing with ANSTO dealt with "the unavoidable consequences of nuclear medicine and nuclear technology in industry".

The federal, state and territory governments have long debated the site of a low- to medium-level nuclear waste facility for radioactive material from medicine and research. "It is time the games stopped at a state, territory and national level and at a political level," Mr Ferguson said.

Mr Ferguson said those who stooped to fearmongering "in the suburbs of our capital cities and regional communities" ignored that low-level radioactive waste, such as gloves, plastic cups and glassware, were already stored in 100 locations in cities around Australia.