Antinuclear

Australia’s radiation protection agency is far too cosy with ANSTO and the nuclear industry

A Homegrown Fukushima, New Matilda, By Jim Green,  23 Aug 2012 “…..In Australia as in Japan, there are patterns of inadequate safety practices stretching back for decades. In Australia as in Japan, whistleblowers have provided a great deal of information about nuclear accidents and safety problems.

If nuclear regulation has been found to be substandard in Japan, it is clearly substandard in Australia. The Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency (ARPANSA) has been compromised from the start. The CEO of ANSTO was allowed to sit on the panel which interviewed applicants for the ARPANSA CEO job when the organisation was created in the late 1990s. ANSTO’s communications manager/spin doctor John Mulcair could only say, “There are two views about that. There’s my view and then there’s the official ANSTO view.”

There is a revolving door between ANSTO and ARPANSA, further undermining regulatory independence. At times ARPANSA has employed as many as six ex-ANSTO employees, perhaps more. Recent controversies have been complicated by a relationship between an ANSTO employee and an ARPANSA employee.

ARPANSA’s handling of the “clean up” of the Maralinga nuclear test site was its first test and it was a failure. ARPANSA’s handling of ANSTO’s applications to build and operate a new research reactor was problematic in many respect

A 2005 Australian National Audit Office report was highly critical of ARPANSA. It said: “[O]verall management of conflict of interest is not sufficient to meet the requirements of the ARPANS Act and Regulations… Potential areas of conflict of interest are not explicitly addressed or transparently managed.”

The Audit Office report also said that ARPANSA does not monitor or assess the extent to which licensees meet reporting requirements and that there had been under-reporting by licence holders. It also noted that ARPANSA had reported only one designated breach to Parliament despite “a number of instances” where ARPANSA had detected non-compliance by licensees.

Problems identified by the ANAO in 2005 are still in evidence. Since 2007, ARPANSA has been drawn into the ongoing saga regarding accidents at Lucas Heights and ANSTO’s treatment of whistleblowers. In 2010 ARPANSA released two conflicting reports on accidents at Lucas Heights leading to an investigation into ARPANSA itself by the Chief Auditor.

In July 2011, Parliamentary Secretary for Health and Ageing Catherine King said in amedia release that the regulatory powers of ARPANSA would be reviewed after the Audit and Fraud Control Branch of the Department of Health and Ageing found that ARPANSA’s handling of a safety incident at Lucas Heights lacked of consistency in evidence and transparency in the handling.

In June 2012 a KPMG report found that ARPANSA’s interim and final reports into contamination incidents at ANSTO did not sufficiently examine statements made by a whistleblower.

Long-standing patterns of inadequate nuclear safety practices and inadequate regulation are evident in both Japan and Australia. The difference is that Australia’s industry doesn’t have any nuclear power reactors to blow up. A good thing too. http://newmatilda.com/2012/08/23/we-could-have-fukushima-here

August 23, 2012 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | AUSTRALIA - NATIONAL, secrets and lies