Antinuclear

 MICHAEL BRISSENDEN: The Government has shortlisted six sites for a proposed nuclear waste dump.
Earlier this year landholders were invited to nominate land for the facility that will house almost all of Australia’s nuclear waste material. Sally’s Flat, north of Bathurst in central west New South Wales, is one of the areas that has been short-listed. Locals say they’re appalled at the prospect of living near a nuclear dump.

Michael Edwards reports.

MICHAEL EDWARDS: Twenty-eight landowners nominated their properties as a potential site for a nuclear waste dump. The Federal Government has whittled that list down to six potential areas – three in South Australia, one in the Northern Territory, one in Queensland and one in New South Wales.
Sally’s Flat, in the western New South Wales, is one of the places. It’s an area renowned for producing world-class wool.

LINO ALVAREZ: It’s a very fine place. There’s no industries here as such. Everybody works on the land.

MICHAEL EDWARDS: Lino Alvarez lives in Hill End, the nearest town to Sally’s Flat which is about ten kilometres away.  The suggestion the area could be home to a nuclear waste dump scares him.

LINO ALVAREZ: It’s a disgusting proposition that in a lovely part of the world in which people come and enjoy from cities like Sydney, it will be a danger to everything. 
MICHAEL EDWARDS: The regional centre for Sally’s Flat is Bathurst, which is one hour away. Tracy Carpenter is the head of the Bathurst Climate Action Network.

MICHAEL EDWARDS: Australia has the equivalent of around two Olympic-sized swimming pools of low level nuclear waste. It includes laboratory items and material used in medical treatments.
Most of this material is generated at Australia’s only nuclear reactor at Lucas Heights, south of Sydney.
Environmental groups say nuclear waste dumps pose a serious risk to the environment and to the health of those living near them. Dr Jim Green is the national nuclear campaigner with the Friends of the Earth.

JIM GREEN: They had a nuclear waste dump in New Mexico. They had an underground explosion, a chemical explosion because they were using the wrong sort of absorbent and that led to a significant radiation release and 22 workers were exposed to radiation and just in the past month in the United States there have been two fires. There’s an underground smouldering fire which has come within 400 metres of a radioactive waste dump site in the state of Missouri and there’s also been a significant fire at a radioactive waste dump in Nevada.

MICHAEL EDWARDS: The vast bulk of the existing nuclear waste is presently kept at Lucas Heights and at another facility in Woomera in South Australia.

Dr Green says this is where it should stay. JIM GREEN: There’s no obvious reason to be moving that vast bulk of radioactive waste and in particular, Lucas Heights has the facilities, the storage capacity, the expertise and it simply does not make any sense to be moving the waste out of Lucas Heights.