Antinuclear

Australia’s inadequate nuclear safety culture

A Homegrown Fukushima, New Matilda, By Jim Green,  23 Aug 2012 Japan’s parliament said the Fukushima disaster was “made in Japan” but inadequate safety practices and regulation proliferate in Australia’s nuclear industry.

Jim Green on the nuclear danger closer to home…… The chair of the Nuclear Accident Independent Investigation Commission  , Kiyoshi Kurokawa, states in the foreword to the report that “…this was a disaster ‘Made in Japan.’” But the serious, protracted problems with the nuclear industry’s culture in Japan have parallels in Australia. The uranium industry provides plenty of examples; here the focus is on the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO), which operates the Lucas Heights nuclear research reactor site south of Sydney.

A 1989 review of ANSTO by Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd found major problems including “poor morale and poor management-staff relations”; “a deficiency in safety culture”; key personnel not being trained; out-of-date operating manuals; poor health and safety practices; improper management of high-level radioactive waste; inadequate emergency arrangements; and the HIFAR reactor’s emergency core cooling system had been compromised resulting in unnecessary risks for two years.

On 11 June 1992, an inspection of ANSTO  by the NSW Environment Protection Authority found that drums of radioactive waste were leaking, vital safety equipment was out of order, and leaking waste may have washed into the stormwater system. The federal government passed legislation making ANSTO exempt from NSW environmental and public health laws.

An internal 1998 federal Department of Industry, Science and Resources briefing document, obtained under freedom of information legislation by Sutherland Shire Council, warns government officials: “Be careful in terms of health impacts — don’t really want a detailed study done of the health of Sutherland residents.” (The FOI was reported here.)

Around the turn of the century, when the debate over ANSTO’s plan for a new reactor was unfolding, whistleblowers repeatedly provided public information about accidents at Lucas Heights. Whistleblowers wrote in an April 2000 letter to Sutherland Shire Council:
“The ANSTO Board has a very limited idea of what is really transpiring at Lucas Heights. For instance, the radiation contamination scare last year was only brought to the staff’s attention because of a local newspaper. The incident was of such gravity, that the executive should have made an announcement over the site-emergency monitor about the incident to inform the staff. Instead the management practiced a culture of secrecy and cover-up, even to the extent of actively and rudely dissuading staff from asking too many questions about the event.”

Emergency planning is inadequate and will remain so because of the head-in-the-sand approach taken by ANSTO and by federal and state governments. Nuclear engineer Tony Wood, former head of ANSTO’s Division of Engineering and Reactors, noted in 2001 that ANSTO’s safety procedures “…are so cumbersome, and they’d take so long to implement, they’d be ineffective”.

Wood said the Sutherland Shire Council’s emergency plans conspicuously failed to even not the existence of a nuclear reactor in the Shire. “If you look at the plan regarding the public, there’s no mention of the reactor. It’s like it isn’t there,” he wrote.
In 2004, ANSTO produced a report into an accident at Lucas Heights during which five workers were exposed to radiation. The report, released after a Freedom of Information request by The Australian, identified a range of familiar problems including staff complacency, “under appreciation of the hazard”, contradictory instructions and a lapse in safety supervision.

In recent years, ANSTO’s inadequate safety standards and its treatment of several whistleblowers have been the subject of ongoing controversy and multiple inquiries. Details are posted on the Friends of the Earth website. Suffice it here to list media headlines which provide some insight into this saga:…..http://newmatilda.com/2012/08/23/we-could-have-fukushima-here

August 23, 2012 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | AUSTRALIA - NATIONAL, safety