Azark says: nuclear waste site process unfair and Napandee unsuitable

Azark Project Pty Ltd    to Senate Inquiry: National Radioactive Waste Management Amendment (Site Specification, Community Fund and Other Measures ) Bill 2020.  Submission No1

Excerpts

This submission is made by Azark Project Pty Ltd who, in conjunction with the Shire of Leonora did apply to be the site to house the storage facility. We were not chosen.

Our submission will deal with, what we believe, was an unfair inquiry by the Department of Industry Innovation and Science who ran the inquiry having already decided that the facility would be above ground. They said as much when they stipulated when calling for applications that “they required no less than 100 hectares of land for the facility”………

The National Radioactive Waste Management Facility project has a Facebook page. Posted on the Facebook site on the 5 March at 16.01 was this statement: “Intermediate level waste will be stored at the NRWMF until a permanent disposal solution is developed. (Attachment 2).

Intermediate level waste disposal will require a different solution- likely a deep geological repository that will take several decades to site and build.” Attachment 3……….

Our submission would like to concentrate on the most important factors in recommending to the senate that this bill not be passed.

There is no greater responsibility that the government has to its people than to keep them safe. The current Corona Virus is a good example. The proposed site at Kimba fails miserably on this score. ILW is deadly to humans if they are exposed to it.

The Kimba proposal by the government admits that it can only be a temporary site for ILW and that it will have to be shifted before that time. This double handling presents yet another danger…………

The second factor the committee should consider is the cost to the taxpayer.Press reports, which have not been denied, put the construction cost of the Kimba facility at $325M. Because this will be borrowed money there is an
additional interest bill of $6.5M per year. That is $65M for ten years and they have a time frame of 30 years……..

There is also the cost of finding a new “deep geological repository” and constructing it within 30 years. It is safe to assume that this will run in to hundreds of millions of dollars given the cost of the current proposal.

At Attachments 4 and 5 are letter from two prominent SA geologists, with over 90 combined years of studying the Kimba region, who both state that the site at Kimba is not suitable and both of them saying what we are saying and that is

Don’t choose Kimba as the site to store ILW.  Bury it underground  Kimba is in an active earthquake zone

Another major consideration is the stability of the land on which the storage facility is sited………  What is important is that the real responsibility for the safe storage is regulated by ARPANSA and it is that body that will enforce the public safety standards

June 9, 2020 - Posted by Christina MacPherson | AUSTRALIA - NATIONAL, Federal nuclear waste dump