Antinuclear

Gambling Central Australia’s future, with nuclear wastes

A major omission in Dr Switkowski’s comments concerns what effects over thousands of years that leaking and leeching radioactive waste might have upon Australia’s precious subterranean aquifers. For a nation as reliant as we are on underground water, that represents a massive gamble to say the very least.

NUCLEAR UNDER TONES?, Larry Buttrose,  15 March, 2010, “…Dr Switkowski continues: “Eventually spent fuel is transported to a national repository, a well-engineered deep hole in the ground, probably in central Australia.”

Here we have the price for nuclear power – turning an area of central Australia into a “deep hole in the ground” for highly toxic waste.

Northern Territory lands are already under threat from Rudd Government plans to bury tonnes of radioactive waste accumulated over decades – but that would be nothing compared to the waste that would accrue from a commercial nuclear power programme.

One can only wonder how most people in indigenous communities would feel about yet another dose of radioactivity, another Maralinga on their tribal lands, courtesy white Australia.

And what would Dr Switkowski have to say if and when toxic waste escapes and poisons the land and mutates generations of Aboriginal children? That’s right: Sorry.

Central Australia is not a blank, there for the grabbing and polluting. It is a part of our continent, precious to us all, but especially so to the peoples who have lived there for tens of thousands of years. If there is nothing whatever to fear from nuclear waste, perhaps Dr Switkowski should drill his big hole where the nuclear shareholders will be, in Paddington, or Toorak. Those living there need have nothing to fear, as the hole will be very well engineered, to world’s best practice.

Larry Buttrose: NUCLEAR UNDER TONES?

March 16, 2010 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | environment, Northern Territory, water | aboriginal, antinuclear, nuclear wastes, renewable, water, Ziggy Switkowski