Antinuclear

There are compelling reasons to reject it. The project, it now emerges, could go ahead only over resistance from Indigenous traditional landowners, some of whom took part in the Lizard Bites Back convergence in early July.

There are serious environmental dangers in unloading the wastes, maintaining them above ground for decades while they cool and transporting them for final burial. Tens of thousands of people would be at risk.

Several devastating critiques have also shown that the economic case for the scheme is largely guesswork. Conceivably, the project would run at a loss — while burdening South Australians with the costs and dangers of tending to the world’s greatest single radiation hazard, effectively forever…….

Consultation?

Another element of the pro-nuclear “educational process” is to be the work of a “Nuclear Consultation and Response Agency” that will visit “all major regional centres, more than 50 remote towns and all Aboriginal communities” in a “dedicated program to ensure all South Australians can have their say about the state’s future involvement in the nuclear industry”.

There is no guarantee, however, that the massaging will work. For all the loot promised by the Advertiser, public opinion for and against the waste dump plan seems evenly split and active resistance is growing.

In mid-May Indigenous, health, union, faith and conservation groups joined in setting up a No Dump Alliance. On June 25, some 80 protestors heckled Weatherill as he arrived to address the opening session of his first “citizens’ jury”.

A 200-strong July protest at Roxby Downs, Lizard Bites Back, also condemned the government’s plan for a nuclear waste dump on Indigenous land. Spokesperson Nectaria Calan said the convergence was focused on the connections between uranium mining and nuclear waste. “A responsible approach to managing nuclear waste would begin with stopping its production”, she said.

The case presented by the nuclear dumpsters is dissolving. Outspoken opposition from traditional owners is exposing, as a racist charade, the government’s attempts to manufacture “consent”.

The people of the upper Spencer Gulf cities will not be reconciled to having trainloads of lethal wastes rumbling past their doors for the next century. And the economic case for the dump scheme would merit an “F” in any respectable business course. https://world.einnews.com/article/334731841/OM4SBscz5Dp42697