Antinuclear

We shouldn’t be the world’s nuclear dump, says Councillor Lynton Vomow

We shouldn’t be the world’s nuclear dump, Adelaide Hills Herald News. By Councillor Lynton Vomow, Lobethal 23 Sep 16,  You may have recently had a say at one of the Nuclear Waste Dump forums being held around the state. My biggest concern, however, being the prevention of an accident at sea and the loss of highly radioactive nuclear waste into the ocean, was not  satisfactorily explained .

Indeed the attendant basically said that we could not guarantee against such a disastrous event, it could be impossible to retrieve every container of waste and modelling is showing it wouldn’t actually be that bad!  Fish and all creatures of the ocean for hundreds of miles around the lost radioactive waste material would be devastatingly affected.

Did you know that medium or high level (depending on whether it’s France or Australia describing it) nuclear rubbish was brought to Australia, in December just last year, in  a rust bucket that had failed three safety inspections in five years?

Can you imagine what could happen if we were to receive dozens of shipments? Can we be guaranteed the waste will make it here safely, every single time?

Some are saying that low level waste is non hazardous, so then why not store it near its source i.e Sydney, and save the fuel costs of transporting it?

Basically a low level waste dump would be coming here to soften us up for a high level dump.

There is a need to have safe repositories for the waste, somewhere, but it will have to be near its usage location.

Countries ought to be looking at phasing out nuclear power so that there is as little waste as possible.

How long does nuclear waste last anyway? Can you imagine two hundred years? Ten times that then takes us back to the birth of Christ. Ten times all of that now takes us back to just before the last ice age, 20,000 years ago.   Then ten times 20,000 years? 200,000 years. That’s when only about half of the atoms in high level nuclear waste will have decayed to less harmful atoms. It is going to be a long wait for this deadly waste to become harmless, to care for our generation’s nuclear waste.

Are we going to be beggars or choosers? We are not so desperate that we have to take the world’s most toxic waste and prevent it from damaging anything for hundreds of thousands of years.

South Australia continues to have huge potential for growing the renewable energy industry instead.

The risk to the world’s environment of transporting high level nuclear waste across the oceans to to the furthest point on the planet, ie, South Australia, just doesn’t make sense.

And people, (including of course the Adnyamathanha Indigenous people of the Flinders Ranges) do not want it.

September 24, 2016 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | Opposition to nuclear, South Australia, wastes