A nuclear waste jobs bonanza for regional South Australia? http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=19959, – Jim Green, 27 Sept 19
The federal government is trying to persuade regional communities in South Australia to host a national radioactive waste facility – an underground burial repository for lower-level radioactive wastes and an above-ground ‘interim’ store for long-lived intermediate-level waste. One site under consideration is near Hawker in the Flinders Ranges, and two other sites under consideration are on farming land near Kimba at the top of the Eyre Peninsula.
The government is promising 45 jobs, three times its earlier claim that there would be 15 jobs at the proposed facility. The compensation package on offer has also tripled and now stands at $31 million.
Forty-five jobs would be welcome in small regional communities. But is it plausible that 45 jobs would be created? When the Howard government was attempting to establish a radioactive waste repository in SA from 1998 – 2004, the government said there would be zero jobs – not even any security guards. The government-commissioned PR company Michels Warren said: “The National Repository could never be sold as “good news” to South Australians. There are few, if any, tangible benefits such as jobs, investment or improved infrastructure.”
From 2005 to 2014, Coalition and Labor governments targeted sites in the Northern Territory for a radioactive waste repository and said there would be just six jobs, all of them security guards.
Last year, with SA once again in the firing line, the government said: “At least 15 full-time equivalent jobs will be needed to operate the facility. These will be in site management, administration, security, environmental monitoring, site and building maintenance as well as receiving and packaging waste materials.”
Recently, the jobs estimate was upped to 45, with the government saying: “In addition to the 15 operational jobs already confirmed, the structure now includes roles for community liaison, management, tourism, environmental monitoring, security, health and safety: a total of 45 staff.”
This is the breakdownof the 45 jobs:
14 – security and safeguards
13 – waste operations and technicians
8 – site management and community outreach
5 – environmental protection and quality control
5 – safety and radiation protection
That estimate comes with caveats: “the final workforce design and structure will be based on a number of factors including advice from security agencies, the views of the independent regulator and the details of the final business case, with inputs from across government.”
Overseas comparisons
The Centre de Stockage de l’Aube (CSA) radioactive waste facility in France handles over 200 times more waste per yearcompared to the proposed facility in SA yet it employs only four times as many staff as the proposed facility in SA. CSA processes 73 cubic metres (m3) per employee per year (13,164 m3 / 180 staff).
Is the estimate of 45 jobs credible? Not if overseas radioactive waste facilities are any guide.
The El Cabril radioactive waste facility in Spain has a staff of 137 people and processed an average of 1,395 m3 per year from 1993 to 2016. That equates to 10.2 m3 per employee per year.
Yet the Australian government estimates a workforce of 45 people to process 45 m3 per year: 1 m3 per employee per year compared to 10.2 in Spain and 73 in France. The government evidently has a dim view of the productivity of Australian workers, or, more likely, its jobs estimate is grossly inflated.
Will the government pay staff to do nothing?
Measuring jobs-per-employee doesn’t account for some jobs required whether a facility processes 1 m3 or 1 million m3 per year: administration, security and so on. As a government official stated: “There are a base number of jobs related to the management of the waste which are not linear with volume and a number of jobs that would scale with larger volumes.”
Nevertheless, productivity at the proposed Australian facility would be dramatically lower than comparable facilities overseas.
If we assume that Australia matched the lowest of the figures given above – 10.2 m3 per employee per year at El Cabril in Spain – then the staff at an Australian facility would be processing waste for just one month each year and they’d have 11 months to play ping-pong.
The current government might be willing to pay 45 staff to play ping-pong for 11 months each year, but it’s not a sustainable situation. The Department of Finance wouldn’t tolerate it. If staff at the waste facility are paid by the federal government to do nothing for most of the time, what sort of a precedent does that set, and why shouldn’t the rest of us be paid to do nothing for 11 months out of 12 at a cost to taxpayers of several million dollars each year?
Almost certainly, staffing would be dramatically culled. Almost certainly, a future government would revert to the plan pursued by previous governments: keeping the waste facility closed most of the time, and opening it occasionally for waste disposal and storage. In the jargon, this is called a campaign-based approach with occasional waste disposal ‘campaigns’.
Previous governments said that waste would be sent to the facility just once every 3 – 5 years. For example, the government said in 2003 that waste would be transferred to the facility just once every five years: “It is considered for planning purposes that an average period of 5 years between campaigns will be appropriate” (Volume III of DEST application to ARPANSA, Ch.9, ‘Waste – Transfer and Documentation’, p.5).
In a recent attack on me for questioning its estimate of 45 jobs, the Department of Industry, Innovation and Science said it was unable to locate any previous government documents regarding periodic, campaign-based plans. The federal government can’t find federal government documents? Seriously?
The government says that it wants continuous operation of the repository (for reasons unexplained) rather than a periodic, campaign-based approach. But even so, the government only plans to shift waste to the facility once or twice each yearaccording to a 2016 document. A July 2018 government document states: “This facility will be an operational facility and not as some have suggested, a minimally crewed warehouse to be opened once or twice a year.” But it is the government itself which says that waste will only be transported to the facility once or twice each year!
Broader economic impacts Continue reading →
September 28, 2018
Posted by Christina MacPherson |
employment, Federal nuclear waste dump, South Australia |
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.Fight To Stop Nuclear Waste Dump In Flinders Ranges SA, 12 Sept 18 There is also some other interesting news regarding Lake Torrens National Park and it’s proximity to the proposed site being outside the site characteristic criteria.
There are so many evidence based flaws in this proposal that are now percolating to the surface. The AECOM report under Hydrology and Flood Risks Assessment Finding referred ONLY to the floods of 1955 and 2005. The report DID NOT take into account the floods of 1989.
This is the study/report by Flinders University and the Army on the LAKE TORRENS floods of 1989, where flood waters flowed into Spencer Gulf. There have been 5 major flooding events since 1944 and when this happens again, it will be not only devastating for the community and farming in the wake of the floods, but also our Tuna Farming Industry in Port Lincoln, which it will destroy overnight.
HERE’S AN ABSTRACT: “On 14th March 1989 an extreme rainfall event caused record historical floodings in Lake Torrens and in the Pirie-Torrens corridor. The results of a joint Flinders University/Army expedition to monitor these events in which the water level and major ion content of the floodwaters in Lake Torrens were measured over the duration of the flood (March–December 1989), and the volume flow and major ion content of the flood in the Pirie-Torrens corridor which discharged into Spencer Gulf at Port Augusta.”
The risk here is far reaching, not to mention the convoy of road, rail and maritime dangerous radioactive cargo traversing South Australia. All South Australians are part of this, as we will share not only in the catastrophic outcomes in the event of an incident, but also the major immediate effect it will have on our economy, as we see our $8 billion dollar tourism and our $5 billion dollar agriculture industries disappear. There are infinitely better options for a national radioactive nuclear facility. The Flinders Ranges and KIMBA in the very heart of farmland do not provide the right characteristics. https://www.tandfonline.com/…/03721426.2015.1065467…
September 12, 2018
Posted by Christina MacPherson |
Federal nuclear waste dump, South Australia |
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Last week, I went to Port Augusta and Hawker to meet with residents fighting against the Federal Coalition Government’s plans to build a national nuclear waste dump in South Australia. It was great to see both the Kimba and Flinders Ranges communities working together to show that they are NOT the “willing” communities that the Government was hoping for.
This ill-conceived push by the Federal Government to dump low to intermediate level nuclear waste in regional South Australia has seen farmers, residents, business people, Traditional Owners, community campaigners and the Greens join together, united in their call for the dump to be dumped.
I was pleased to speak at the rally held in Port Augusta on 19 August, outlining the Greens’ continued opposition to the dump and highlighting the grossly mismanaged site selection process that the Federal Government has conducted and how divisive this has been to the affected South Australian communities.
I had timed my visit to the region to coincide with the ballot of local residents to gauge their views on the dump. However, days before the ballot papers were due to be sent out, the vote at both locations was postponed following a Supreme Court injunction brought by the Barngarla people – the Traditional Owners of much of Eyre Peninsula including land in the Kimba region.
The Barngarla people successfully argued that it was potentially a matter of racial discrimination to allow property owners to vote in the ballot, but not Native Title holders. Similar arguments apply to the Adnyamathanha people of the Finders Ranges, all of whom have strong attachments to the land, but most live outside the narrow area to be balloted. The case has now been referred to the Human Rights Commission.
Additionally, the people of Port Lincoln, Whyalla and Port Pirie are seriously concerned that they too have no opportunity to participate in the ballot. The Greens want to see the community consultation and ballot extended to local Traditional Owners as well as those living in the proposed nuclear waste ports or along the nuclear waste transport corridor.
Everyone who is potentially impacted by this plan should be included and their voices should be heard.
To have your voice heard, make a submission to Federal Minister for Resources Senator Matt Canavan via email at radioactivewaste@industry.gov.au by 24 September.
Let’s take this stand together.
August 31, 2018
Posted by Christina MacPherson |
Federal nuclear waste dump, politics, South Australia |
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