Antinuclear

Australia needs a public and independent national commission on nuclear waste management

• Plan to use Aboriginal land as a nuclear waste dump is flawed and misguided     Dave Sweeney    theguardian.com,  Wednesday 31 July 2013

“……..Radioactive waste management is difficult. Only time can take the heat out of the waste – but transparent and robust processes and policy development can take the heat out of the waste debate.

Australia has never had an independent assessment of what is the best (or least worst) way to manage our radioactive waste. Decades ago unelected bureaucrats decided a centralised remote dump was the best model and ever since a chain reaction of politicians have tried – and failed – to find a compliant postcode.

Australia is better placed than some countries to do things differently – and better. We have much less radioactive waste than nations with domestic nuclear power and ours is mostly stored at two secure federal sites – the Woomera prohibited area in South Australia and the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation’s Lucas Heights nuclear facility in southern Sydney.

ANSTO, which produces and houses most of Australia’s radioactive waste, is upgrading its storage facilities. It and the federal nuclear regulator agree ANSTO has the ability and capacity to securely manage all radioactive waste on site, including material due for return from overseas.

This reality provides Australia with some much needed breathing space. For more than two decades, politicians have talked big and listened little – and they have spectacularly failed come up with an agreed, credible and mature approach to radioactive waste management.

It is time to move away from the obsession with finding a place to dump and instead build a space to discuss. We need to get the policy architecture right so future generations of Australians will not have a radioactive legacy that is badly wrong.

A public and independent national commission would advance the discourse on what constitutes responsible radioactive waste management and to move all stakeholders out of the trenches and to the table.

In a long overdue and most welcome change of style, if not yet of substance, the latest federal minister with responsibility for this issue has acknowledged that there are deep Aboriginal and wider concerns over the Muckaty plan.

A minister named Gray should be well-placed to show leadership on an issue of inter-generational national importance that is not – and should never be – just black and white.

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July 31, 2013 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | AUSTRALIA - NATIONAL, wastes