“Normalising” radioactive trash – Maralinga as tourist attraction

The indigenous people who used to wander these lands called the radioactive plume the “puyu,” or black mist, and still are reluctant to visit despite having fought hard for the land to be returned.

“They deem it as a bad place, what they call ‘mamu,’ like a devil country,” says Mr. Matthews, whose wife is indigenous to the area…….

Australia’s Newest Tourist Attraction: Nuclear Test Zone At Maralinga, Australia, visitors are given an unusual welcome: Don’t stay too long and never, ever dig. WSJ, By

ROB TAYLOR June 5, 2015 MARALINGA, South Australia—At the gateway to Australia’s newest tourist attraction, visitors are given an unusual welcome by Robin Matthews: Don’t stay too long and never, ever dig.

Maralinga, a deserted former military base in the Outback, has become ground zero for an unusual type of vacation Down Under. In a country best known for its white beaches and coral reefs, Mr. Matthews wants vacationers to wish they were here: on land once used for nuclear-weapons explosions.

Nearly 2,000 warning signs ring the red soil around Maralinga, displaying a Ghostbuster-style graphic prohibiting camping ……

The stark beauty of the hills here, on the edge of the vast Nullarbor Plain where the sun sinks in the same ocher color of the desert, belies its notorious past. The area has a history that equally fascinates and horrifies most Australians, sung about in songs but rarely seen.

Between 1956 and 1963, Britain’s government, with the blessing of Australia, detonated seven nuclear bombs here, from aircraft or tethered to balloons and towers. One 27-kiloton blast was more powerful than either of the World War II atomic bombs U.S. forces dropped, on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Two other bombs were detonated just north of here, at a site known as Emu.

The blasts sent giant mushroom clouds into the sky and dust floating across the continent. The indigenous people who used to wander these lands called the radioactive plume the “puyu,” or black mist, and still are reluctant to visit despite having fought hard for the land to be returned.

“They deem it as a bad place, what they call ‘mamu,’ like a devil country,” says Mr. Matthews, whose wife is indigenous to the area…….

Maralinga’s Cold War history is relatively short compared with the U.S., which occasionally opens test areas to visitors. The former Nevada Test Site saw a total of 928 nuclear weapons detonated between 1951 and 1992.

Cleanup operations around Maralinga have been sporadic. Efforts in the late 1960s involved turning over contaminated soil and mixing it with cleaner soil below. Builders created 22 concrete-capped pits to contain the remains of the nuclear firings, including an estimated 4 kilograms of pure plutonium in fragments.

Three decades later, around 350,000 cubic meters of soil and debris were removed and buried in trenches at a cost of more than 100 million Australian dollars (US$78 million). Still, wary Australian government officials waited more than a decade before declaring the area safe for regular tours.

Most of Maralinga now has unrestricted access, including the former military village and airport built at huge cost and never touched by fallout…..http://www.wsj.com/articles/australias-newest-tourist-attraction-nuclear-test-zone-1433524432