Antinuclear

Radioactive waste’s journey from Melbourne to Sydney, and now to South Australia

Dangerous waste to be moved
The Age MARK DAVIS September 26, 2009 TWENTY years after it was first uncovered at an old CSIRO site in Melbourne’s Fishermans Bend, nearly 10,000 barrels of radioactive waste are on the move again to yet another ”temporary” storage facility in outback South Australia.

The Department of Defence is planning to move the barrels of contaminated soil currently housed in a corrugated iron shed in the Woomera prohibited area to an explosives storage building a few kilometres away at Koolymilka.

Over the years the 1950 cubic metres of soil has been shifted from Melbourne to Sydney’s Lucas Heights and on to the current location at the Woomera rocket testing range, as politicians squabbled over where to locate a permanent radioactive waste storage facility.A spokeswoman for the Defence Department said the new Koolymilka facility would provide safe and secure storage for waste currently housed in the Woomera prohibited area and at Edinburgh in Adelaide’s northern suburbs…………

The former CSIRO waste represents more than half of Australia’s total stockpile of low and intermediate level radioactive waste, which is expanding by about 50 cubic metres a year mainly due to the use of radioactive materials for medical treatment and research.

This material is stored at a variety of mainly temporary facilities around the country.

Dangerous waste to be moved

September 26, 2009 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | AUSTRALIA - NATIONAL, uranium, wastes | antinuclear, Australia, nuclear, nuclear wastes, radioactive, uranium, wastes