Antinuclear

Julie Fraser: in a wide-ranging Submission calls for nuclear power to be kept ILLEGAL inAustralia

Conclusion

Section 140A of the EPBC Act 1999 states “No approval for certain nuclear installations: The Minister
must not approve an action consisting of or involving the construction or operation of any of the
following nuclear installations: (a) a nuclear fuel fabrication plant; (b) a nuclear power plant; (c) an
enrichment plant; (d) a reprocessing facility.” This should be retained.

As advised by the UN Secretary General following the Fukushima nuclear disaster because Australian
uranium was present in each of the Fukushima Daiichi reactors at the time of multiple reactor
meltdowns, there should be an inquiry into the human and environmental impacts of uranium
mining.

Uranium mining and processing is highly dangerous and pollutive and nuclear reactors tend to react
for thousands of years when climate catastrophes disturb them. Remember that uranium is a finite
resource but infinitely dangerous. It should be kept in the ground.

Renewable energy enjoys broad public support and is significantly cheaper, safer, and cleaner than
nuclear energy. Wind, solar and tidal energy has far fewer legislative implications or requirements
for emergency preparedness and radiation safety. Australia should invest more money and
resources into sustainable renewable energy.

Julie Fraser Submission No 71 against Environment and Other Legislation Amendment
(Removing Nuclear Energy Prohibitions) Bill 2022

As an Australian citizen resident in the NT, I am concerned for the health, safety and well-being of
our children and grandchildren and the natural, living environment we all depend on into the future.
I am deeply concerned at the increasing militarisation of the NT by foreign powers intent on creating
a war with nations not meeting US ideals of democratic or law-abiding decision-making. Making
Northern Australia particularly Tindal Air Base a site from which US B52 planes can be deployed
carrying nuclear arms (which appears to be a distinct possibility)1
puts us directly in harm’s way.

I do not support the development of nuclear energy in Australia as it is primarily unsafe, creates byproducts used to make nuclear weapons and is hazardous to our environments and human health, producing waste that needs to be stored safely for up to a million years.3

When governments are more prepared to spend billions – if not trillions – of public dollars on nonrenewable, dirty fossil (including nuclear) energy and war industries – instead of on sustainable social
and environmental needs – we are rushing life on Earth to extinction.

Senator Matt Canavan is recommending that certain sections of the Environmental Protection and
Biodiversity (EPBC) Act 1999 as well sections of the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear
Safety (ARPANS) Act 1998 be repealed to allow for ‘clean’ nuclear power to be processed and
reprocessed in Australia.

Nuclear power proponents say that establishing nuclear power is as simple as removing s140a from
the EPBC Act and s.10(b) prohibitions for nuclear power in the Commonwealth ARPANS Act. There
are also state legislations in New South Wales, Queensland, WA, and Victoria to consider.

Obviously, the process is far from simple.

Throughout most Australian jurisdictions from the 1960s on, there have been several debates and
inquiries into whether nuclear power should be allowed in Australia. The resounding response has
been that a nuclear power industry is not economically, environmentally, or socially sustainable in
Australia.

In Senator Canavan’s speech to the Bill, he states that nuclear power plants have zero emissions, and
that nuclear power is clean and safe.

The problem with this is when nuclear power plants meltdown, radioactive emissions and waste that
last for thousands of years are released and that when nuclear bombs are ‘tested’ they release
radioactive fallout that kills significant numbers of innocent people and lasts for countless years. As
referenced above spent fuel from nuclear reactors must be stored safely for time periods beyond
the thinking of those involved in the nuclear industry. Decommissioning a nuclear power plant tales
from 20-60 years.

First Nations people and UK Nuclear bomb tests
There were three nuclear bomb tests conducted by Britain in the Monte Bello Islands off the coast of
north West Australia – one in 1952 and two in 1956. The last plutonium bomb was sixty kilotons. It
showered radioactive rain as far as the Queensland coast.

At Emu Fields -250 km from Wallatinna and slightly further from Coober Pedy – after the first
nuclear bomb test in 1953, brought ‘Black Mist’ fallout and radiation sickness to communities along
the track – due to high and unpredictable wind conditions. The existence of people was ignored
because the firing criteria for the bomb test was favourable.

Seven nuclear weapons’ tests were conducted at Maralinga by the British military in 1956-57 as well
as several ‘minor trials’ that left extensive radioactive fallout and crater damage. Indigenous peoples
were moved from their traditional land and many others were ignored and were caught up in the
fallout.

A Royal Commission was set up in 1983 to gauge the extent of damage from these and other tests
on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander
Country.
The Commission found that the presence of Aboriginal people on the mainland near Monte Bello
Islands and their extra vulnerability to the effect of fallout was not recognised by either [Atomic
Weapons Research Establishment – UK] or the Safety Committee.

It was a major oversight that the
question of acceptable dose levels for Aboriginal people was recognised as a problem at Maralinga
but was ignored in setting the fallout criteria for the Mosaic tests’ [on the Monte Bello islands].

The Emu Fields Totem bombs were of far less kilotons than the Maralinga and Monte Bello bombs,
but they produced an unacceptable level of fallout making ‘sickness’ Country and even blinding
people along their range.

The Commission considered their administration as a failure to consider
the traditional lifestyles of community people that made them far more vulnerable to such tests.
The Commission also found that ‘ignorance, incompetence and cynicism’ predominated when
Aboriginal people were ignored, and their land was used as ‘uninhabited.’

A nuclear engineer involved in the Maralinga ‘clean-up’ in 2002 became a whistle-blower who said,
‘What was done at Maralinga was a cheap and nasty solution that wouldn’t be adopted on whitefellas land ‘.
Historical nuclear disasters in Australia

Australia has had a few scares in the past to wake us up to the powerful reality of how important it is
to stay clear of processing uranium and playing with nuclear reaction on our shores.

Hunters Hill was a uranium processing facility in NSW courtesy of our colonial ties with Britain and
lack of domestic legislations and regulatory bodies to ensure social and environmental safety. The
site was abandoned in 1915 but as residential land it was valuable. Houses were built around the site
up until the 1970s when people were made aware of the risk of radiation exposure. Houses were
bought and demolished by the Federal government without site remediation taking place:

In 2008 a government inquiry revealed details of the site. After decades of delay and denial the
government agreed to a remediation process in 2011 – original plans to move the material to a
waste facility at Kemps Creek were abandoned after a community backlash. In 2019 a proposal to
encapsulate and store the material on site was also rejected by the local council and residents.6 7
[NSW Legislative Council – 2008 – Report 28 – General Purpose Standing Committee No. 5 The former
uranium smelter site at Hunter’s Hill Ordered to be printed 30 September 2008 according to
Standing Order 231]

Port Pirie was opened as a purpose-built processing facility for uranium ore in 1955. Sale of the
processed uranium was under contract to the US-UK Combined Development Agency to produce
nuclear weapons for the Manhattan Project

The site now holds approximately 200,000 tonnes of tailings over twenty-six hectares. The dams are
within three hundred metres of homes, there was a lack of fencing for many years making the site
accessible to children who would play at the site. The tailings walls failed in 1981 during high tides.
Stop Gap measures were taken to cap tailings and increase the wall height, build fences, and
develop a trench and evaporation pond to collect run off – at a cost of $1 million.

In 2016 the SA
Government released an environmental management plan for the site identifying climate change as
a significant risk to the existing structures and groundwater levels that could compromise any
containment at the site. [SA Department of State Development 2016 Port Pirie – Former Uranium &
Rare Earth Treatment Plan –Radiation and Environment Management Plan].8
These are two of the many historical Australian nuclear disasters from small, limited nuclear
processing.

Nuclear Reactor fallout overseas

The ten most serious reactor meltdowns from 1957 to 2011 caused countless human deaths and still
result in environmental devastation for hundreds of kilometres around the original reactor sites 9
:
The most notable have been Chernobyl, Ukraine 1986, and Fukushima Japan 2011:
A radiation biologist and former member of the UK Government Committee Examining the Radiation
Risks of Internal Emitters, summarised the worst impacts of the Chernobyl disaster in a 2016
scientific report:

• 40,000 fatal cancers are predicted in Europe over the next 50 years
• 6,000 thyroid cancer cases to date, 16,000 more expected
• 5 million people in Belarus, Ukraine and Russia still live in highly contaminated areas
  (>40 kBq/m2
• 400 million in less contaminated areas (>4 kBq/m2)
• 37% of Chernobyl’s fallout was deposited on western Europe;
• 42% of western Europe’s land area was contaminated
• increased radiogenic thyroid cancers expected in West European countries
• increased radiogenic leukemias, cardiovascular diseases, breast cancers confirmed
• new evidence of radiogenic birth defects, mental health effects and diabetes and children living in
  contaminated areas suffering radiogenic illnesses.10

The impacts of the Fukushima disaster were summarised in a 2015 study as:
 About sixty people died immediately during the actual evacuations in Fukushima Prefecture
in
March 2011.
 Between 2011 and 2015, an additional 1,867 people in Fukushima Prefecture died as a result
of the evacuations following the nuclear disaster. These deaths were from ill health and
suicides.
 It can be reliably estimated (using a fatal cancer risk factor of 10%) about 5,000 fatal cancers
will occur in Japan in the future from Fukushima’s fallout.11
In September 2011 following the multiple nuclear reactor meltdowns at Fukushima, the UN
Secretary-General called on Australia to conduct ‘an in-depth assessment of the net cost impact of
the impacts of mining fissionable material on local communities and ecosystems:12
A month later the director-general of the Australian Safeguards and Non-Proliferation Office of the
Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade confirmed ‘that Australian obligated nuclear material was
at the Fukushima Daiichi site and in each of the reactors’13:
The latest initiative from the Japanese government is to release contaminated (‘treated’) water
from the Fukushima nuclear accident into the ocean against the recommendations of neighbouring
and Pacific nation governments and scientists

Nuclear power is also used to propel world-shattering nuclear weapons on military nuclear
submarines that get lost and found in highly explosive ways15:
Why Nuclear Power is not necessary for Australia

1. The s140A prohibition in the EPBC Act is consistent with other prohibitions in the
   Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety (ARPANS) Act and similar
   prohibitions in state legislation in New South Wales, Victoria, and Queensland.
   Legislation in Western Australia and South Australia prohibits nuclear waste storage
   facilities, which would be a necessity if nuclear power reactors were developed.
2. These legislative prohibitions demonstrate the broad community concern over and
   rejection of nuclear power and nuclear waste storage in Australia.
3. Contemporary safety issues have been exposed including the multiple reactor
   meltdowns, fires, and explosions at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power site.
4. There is still no permanent nuclear waste disposal facility operating anywhere in the
   world for high-level nuclear waste generated by nuclear power reactors.
5. There are still dangerous links between the civilian nuclear fuel cycle and weapons
   proliferation, and the safeguards system remains limited and underfunded.
6. The risk of reactors becoming military targets (as has been the case with research
   reactors in the Middle East on multiple occasions) remains a critical concern.
7. Disturbing patterns of inadequate regulation are still in numerous countries. This
   continues despite the fact that inadequate regulation is widely accepted as a main cause
   of the Fukushima disaster.
8. Removing prohibitions to nuclear power would then require significant reforms across a
   range of existing legislation that is not designed to deal with nuclear power. This would
   require a massive increase in government resources as well as recruiting an
   appropriately skilled and capable workforce16:
9. When we divert resources into nuclear power, we lose essential resources to help us
   mitigate human-induced climate change, to secure a national renewable energy policy
   and to deliver modern environmental protection legislation.

ARPANSA identifies significant barriers to establishing a regulatory system to deal with nuclear
power. Australia would need:

• A review of the legal framework for radiation and nuclear safety across all the jurisdictions,
• A single piece of national overriding legislation
• A national properly resourced government agency that deals with radiation and nuclear safety
• To recruit a workforce with the necessary capabilities

• to establish a long-term education and training program
• to changes the National Radioactive Waste Management Act
• to address the high level of public concern over transporting far more radioactive material across
  Country
• A review of emergency preparedness and response frameworks – to strengthen and resource them
  while providing clear and defined roles in emergency response between the different jurisdictions
  and ARPANSA;
• A review of relevant international conventions and Australia’s obligations to be endorsed into
  domestic legislation

Conclusion
Section 140A of the EPBC Act 1999 states “No approval for certain nuclear installations: The Minister
must not approve an action consisting of or involving the construction or operation of any of the
following nuclear installations: (a) a nuclear fuel fabrication plant; (b) a nuclear power plant; (c) an
enrichment plant; (d) a reprocessing facility.” This should be retained.

As advised by the UN Secretary General following the Fukushima nuclear disaster because Australian
uranium was present in each of the Fukushima Daiichi reactors at the time of multiple reactor
meltdowns, there should be an inquiry into the human and environmental impacts of uranium
mining.

Uranium mining and processing is highly dangerous and pollutive and nuclear reactors tend to react
for thousands of years when climate catastrophes disturb them. Remember that uranium is a finite
resource but infinitely dangerous. It should be kept in the ground.

Renewable energy enjoys broad public support and is significantly cheaper, safer, and cleaner than
nuclear energy. Wind, solar and tidal energy has far fewer legislative implications or requirements
for emergency preparedness and radiation safety. Australia should invest more money and
resources into sustainable renewable energy.

March 24, 2023 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | Uncategorized