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The Forum > Article Comments > Don't waste the homelands: community opposition to a national radioactive waste dump in WA > Comments

Don't waste the homelands: community opposition to a national radioactive waste dump in WA : Comments

By Anica Niepraschk, published 15/5/2015

The process (and the relevant legislation) is lacking clear participatory, deliberative mechanisms, meaning that the community and wider civil society are not given an arena for actually influencing the decision-making.

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I think the medium level waste repository only needs to be 50-100 km from a city. There is no need to involve indigenous communities. Mind you the touted $12m annual fee is not to be sneezed at. Most of the material is currently sitting in hospital store rooms without any drama. If the ex Lucas Heights material returning from France is to go there it will be vitrified (ie encased in glass) inside a 6 metre long concrete and steel canister. Just keep it in a similar spot to what they use for garbage tips in the city outskirts.
Posted by Taswegian, Friday, 15 May 2015 8:01:44 AM
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Yes. The naysayers never seem to wonder what happens to our own waste now. We need safe storage for that, so why not make some money out of countries who don't have room to store the waste from material they probably bought from us in the first place?

Win/win for Australia.
Posted by ttbn, Friday, 15 May 2015 8:32:15 AM
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Anica, I'll contend you have no interest in finding a good place to store this waste.
Posted by Cobber the hound, Friday, 15 May 2015 8:51:47 AM
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I suppose it explains why they are suddenly so desperate to move Aboriginal people out of their comunities.

Child welfare, indeed!
Posted by paul walter, Friday, 15 May 2015 10:28:50 AM
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Sorry Anica, you're wrong!

We have this thing called a vote!

And the right therefore, to vote exclusively for those who's views we essentially agree with!

And confounded by anti everything activists, who for the most part, propose we refuse to use our vote!

And so we'll feel essentially helpless, and therefore prime candidates for some serious radicalization!?

Some of the candidates over the years, have proposed a bill of rights, which would likely have included a citizens initiated referendum!?

And exactly the very instrument you say we don't have!?

Why not?

Well in all probability, political activists (control freaks?) not unlike your good self, have refused to get out of bed and go down and vote for it, when various candidates or parties have proposed it!?

How do the whiners, mostly young folks with no real gumption, expect to ring in overdue and peaceful change. When as a 40% demographic of the voting age vox populi; thanks to the advice of activists, refuse to vote!?

But as always are ready to fight almost anybody who dares disagree with their mostly moribund or brain washed views?

A bit of old fashioned attitudinal adjustment would likely be not out of place here Anica!

You can lead a camel to water, but you can't make him drink: unless you use a couple of bricks, where they'll produce the required effect; which then causes a huge intake of air or water?

Without bias and no offence intended!
Rhrosty.
Posted by Rhrosty, Friday, 15 May 2015 12:24:11 PM
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Why do greenies have to make everything so hard. OK, yes I know it is the nature of the beast.

However, is it really too hard to drop the stuff, now depleted, back in the place it came from.

We could dig a hole at Rum Jungle, if we have been silly enough to fill the old one in, & drop it back where it sat for up to millions of years.

Nah, too simple & no hundreds of millions for academics to research the problem.
Posted by Hasbeen, Friday, 15 May 2015 4:03:11 PM
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Yes Has, you'd think one or two would stop and smell the Co2 they say is threatening an extinction event!

And if they should be right, we're threatened much more by Co2, than any peaceful use of nuclear fuel!

It has to be stored somewhere, and where in the world would you find a better place than the virtually waterless McDonald ranges?

Even traditional Aboriginals need a fairly permanent water supply, so they'd not be troubled by a selected site such as that?

So what, if a small minority of tail wagging the dog minority don't like it?

We elect decision makers to make the to hard decisions for us; and without a shadow of doubt, basket case S.A., could use the extra income!

But hey, as usual for the (can't see the forest for the trees) greens, they don't give a plugged nickle for anybody else's economic circumstances; or at least those not permanently coupled to soul destroying handouts!?

And have reportedly said, we can always print more money! Perhaps they weren't looking when Zimbabwe tried that?

What's a loaf of bread cost there now? A million Zimbabwe dollars; and consequently, the only place in the world where you can find a million dollar note!?
Rhrosty.
Posted by Rhrosty, Friday, 15 May 2015 5:28:59 PM
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The government has not made a clear distinction between the nuclear wastes generated at Lucas Heights, and sent overseas for processing, and the radioactive wastes from medical facilities.

In the first case, Australia is legally bound to take back the reprocessed highly radioactive wastes from UK, France and Argentina. Though a small amount, there is an argument for storing them away from Lucas Heights. The logical thing now is to shut Lucas Heights down, and not produce any more.

The medical radioactive wastes are short-lived, and should be stored onsite. Canada is now producing radionuclides by cyclotron, a non-nuclear process. That's expensive, but cheaper in the long run than relying on a nuclear reactor, which produces long lived toxic wastes.

The fumbling efforts of Australian governments to deal with these issues open the door to a greedy few who dream of making Australia the world's radioactive waste dump - importing radioactive trash from nuclear nations
Posted by ChristinaMac1, Saturday, 16 May 2015 12:14:45 PM
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PaulWalter,

I could be wrong but that's a hell of a long bow you've drawn there.

There are around five thousand 'communities' around Australia, and close to half of those actually have people living in them.

[Hmmm ..... problem: how to somehow implicate the Murdoch press in all of this]. [And Abbott].

Got it !

(a) The Murdoch press publishes articles about Barnett's (and Giles') plans to focus services in relatively larger Aboriginal 'communities'. Therefore, they support the forcible closure of most of them. B@stards !

(b) And Abbott is nefariously pushing Barnett and Giles, his Liberal mates, to plot and plan to forcibly close those 'communities'. B@stards !

(c) And/or distribute nuclear waste dumps on a couple of thousand of them.

Conclusion: Therefore, Murdoch, Abbott, Barnett and Giles want to drive Aboriginal people from their 'communities' in order to use all of that land, all two million square kilometres of it, for nuclear waste dumps.

Is that what you're claiming ?

All you need is some evidence at (a), (b) and/or (c) :)

Joe
Posted by Loudmouth, Sunday, 17 May 2015 6:10:45 PM
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I can't believe how ignorant this article is.

Nuclear 'waste' IS NOT waste, it is fuel for GenIV reactors like the IFR and LFTR.

There will be a final pile up of broken atoms (fission products), but most of the longer lived actinides will have been burned up by the IFR / LFTR.
1. Most of this waste will be back to safe levels within 300 years.
2. The tiny portion of it that isn't will be safe enough after 1000 years.
3. It's only 1 golf ball per person (of actual waste: there is also nuclear power plants to decommission after 60 to 80 years of use, and a few parts to bury).

Waste = fuel, and never more so than in modern reactors!
It has been calculated that the world's nuclear waste could run the world for about 500 years and is worth about $30 TRILLION dollars as a result! Australia's got to put in a bid to 'store' it so that we can then let GE build a few dozen S-PRISM's here, so we can BURN IT!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S-PRISM

Storing 1 golf ball per person for 300 years drowned in concrete is so easy it doesn't even have to leave the reactor site. Dig a bunker out back, fill each layer with concrete, and you're done! Too easy!

Please: no hysterical posts about safety, unless you're going to lie down in front of coal trucks! George Monbiot explains: “Coal kills more people when it goes right than nuclear power does when it goes wrong. In fact coal kills more people every week than nuclear power has in the entire history of its deployment.”
http://www.monbiot.com/2012/10/09/the-heart-of-the-matter/

I've done the math: depending on whether you believe WHO or the IAEA as to how bad Chernobyl was, coal is a Chernobyl either every day or every 3 days!
Posted by Max Green, Sunday, 17 May 2015 10:00:08 PM
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Another illustration of so-called democracy failing the interests of the people.

Government of the people by the people for the people is democracy.

Government of the people by the politicians and officials for those who can buy them is not.

Especially when the buyers and owners of the politicians are bribing them with the wealth created by the people.

Who actually gets to decide whether or not Australia will become a nuclear waste dump?
Posted by EmperorJulian, Monday, 18 May 2015 1:20:35 PM
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Hi Emperor Julian,
if your concerns about democracy are addressed by the South Australian Royal Commission as representing a mature, peer-reviewed discussion about our energy options, then maybe there's some democratic input after all?

I used to be anti-nuclear. That is, until I realised coal kills about a Chernobyl's worth of people every few days! I would LOVE Australia to become a 'nuclear waste dump' because it would SAVE LIVES! Coal is 4000 times more deadly than nuclear. Fact. Google it. Google 'Death's per terrawatt'.

Also, nuclear waste = fuel! Burn it, and then bury the FINAL, real waste products for just 300 years and then they're safe. 1 golf ball per human lifetime of waste. That's tiny. That's NOTHING compared to "800 elephants" of a lifetime of coal waste going into the atmosphere for the average Australian citizen!
Posted by Max Green, Monday, 18 May 2015 1:44:08 PM
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In response to Max Green: I’m familiar with the managed data that purport to show how much safer than every other form of energy production that nuclear fission is, but my sticking point is insurance, The nuke industry is all gung ho about uranium fuel until someone mentions public risk insurance. Who paid damages for Chernobyl being reduced to a wasteland? Or Fukushima? The costs to people in both cases were horrendous – and borne by the nation, not the industry. The Germans may have had that in mind in deciding to junk nuclear energy.

However my point is about democracy, not energy production. The entire issue that Max has raised, and a lot more, can be canvassed with the only stakeholders who have a right to decide whether Australia is to become a nuclear waste dump, namely the Australian people. Not pollies and officials purporting to represent our interests. Only we can express our interests. By referendum.

In a democracy, referenda would also settle other major issues such as whether the stakeholders (all who are affected by it) do or don’t permit the opening of huge coal mines, or the port facilities that threaten the Great Barrier Reef for example.

The Greens by the way have a visceral loathing of democracy. In WA we had had three referenda on daylight saving, and said no to the lot. After all that the issue came before the Legislative Council and the Green MLCs, despite entreaties to speak for the people, debated the issue as though it was about the pros and cons of daylight saving – and waved it through. So we were stuck with a couple more years of it following which Barnett, thinking we were cowed enough to agree, put it to referendum a fourth time. We again said no, and the big end of town gave up on it. Gone! Any controversial major matter of policy should in the end be decided by the people. Including opening Australia to nuclear waste dumps. Electoral voting doesn’t cut it.
Posted by EmperorJulian, Monday, 18 May 2015 10:16:49 PM
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You obviously need to read about Kerala, India, to understand what an absolute farce abandoning Fukushima was. Seriously! Kerala is 3 times more radioactive, and have *less* cancer. The human body seems to adapt.
http://thebreakthrough.org/index.php/issues/nuclear/five-surprising-public-health-facts-about-fukushima

You also need to read a bit more about modern reactor technologies that would have politely refused to melt down at Fukushima. LFTR's *cannot* melt down, they're already a liquid! The moment there is a power failure the reactor fuel drains away to a safe drain tank where it *cannot* react: there are no moderator tubes. This is gravity and laws of physics stuff. When was the last time gravity failed?

And IFR *cores* are designed to expand as they overheat. When the fuel pellets expand too far, the nuclear reaction shuts down. Some people call it built in 'neutron leak'. The EBR2 was a perfect example of a IFR prototype, and they ran a TOTAL power cut test that famously passed.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integral_fast_reactor

Besides, if we take Dr James Hansen seriously on climate change, maybe we should take him seriously on the solution?

“Can renewable energies provide all of society’s energy needs in the foreseeable future? It is conceivable in a few places, such as New Zealand and Norway. But suggesting that renewables will let us phase rapidly off fossil fuels in the United States, China, India, or the world as a whole is almost the equivalent of believing in the Easter Bunny and Tooth Fairy.”
http://bravenewclimate.com/2011/08/05/hansen-energy-kool-aid/

Australia has a lot of deserts. We could build them out there with massive cooling towers so they don't require as much water.
1. There won't be a melt down with modern reactors
2. Even if there is through some FLUKE series of events, Australia has lots of desert. We can abandon a bit.
3. Statistically, I would rather *yesterday's* history of Gen1 and Gen2 reactors than climate change! One Chernobyl every generation (now impossible!) would be preferable to climate change! We can manage one Chernobyl every generation. (You haven't really addressed coal which is one Chernobyl EVERY DAY!) But climate change? Sorry. That's game over.
Posted by Max Green, Monday, 18 May 2015 10:54:35 PM
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Hi Jules,

My limited understanding is that Chernobyl was one of the first generation reactors and was about to be de-commissioned when it blew up, thanks to Soviet bureaucratic inaction and incompetence. It was a sort of worst-case scenario. And it was thirty years ago, many generations in nuke-life.

I wish more people would drive over, or around, Australia. It's a dirty big country, as we used to say. Bloody big. And if they can store nuclear waste at Lucas Heights for decades, and in your local hospital, why not in Midlanowea ?

If global warming is aggravated because of the burning of coal, then it makes the building of nuclear power stations more imperative. Isn't that so ?

Joe
Posted by Loudmouth, Monday, 18 May 2015 11:36:06 PM
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Not surprisingly, the question of democracy is being bypassed by intricate discussion of the technological pros and cons of turning Australia into a nuclear waste dump, against the background of the war on CO2 which in my own opinion and that of many others is the most comprehensive attack on science by faith masquerading as science since the eugenics boondoggle. This discussion of nuclear energy in general and burying the world's nuclear waste in Australia in particular belongs in a public debate preceding a referendum to decide the issue for the 23 million Australian stakeholders. Not the pollies. Not corporate business. Not officialdom in any of its forms.

My own pitch in such a debate would be centred on the persistent failure of those who benefit financially from nuclear energy (and weapons) production to agree to a public risk insurance policy to pay for any deleterious results of the uranium cycle from its womb to the tomb. If it's as safe as its proponents claim, insurance premiums would be cheap and manageable. If not, then not.

As a sideline, one must wonder why the companies that seek a piece of the uranium action don't invest in thorium. My suggestion: thorium produces energy but not weapons, and the Yank military industrial complex is behind the drive for nuclear power.
Posted by EmperorJulian, Wednesday, 20 May 2015 1:45:02 PM
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Just to be paranoid for a minute, if you were in charge of a large company involved in the nuclear industry, who would you fund - your fellow-energy-producers in coal or oil or gas, or the Greens ?

Do we see the Greens going on about uranium and the dangers of letting it sit there in the ground ? No, we don't. Instead, we hear screams about coal and oil and gas. Given that nuclear energy is an obvious(if unspoken) alternative to these CO2 producers, are we all being set up by the Greens to accept the nuclear alternative ?

You know it makes sense.

Joe
Posted by Loudmouth, Wednesday, 20 May 2015 2:09:09 PM
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Oh, right, so EmperorJulian pretends to be all about saving democracy, and not intricate technological pro’s and con’s, and then of course *proves* that he just wants to bypass *actual* technical pro’s and con’s in the interest of his opinion about those technical bits.

EG: “CO2 which in my own opinion and that of many others is the most comprehensive attack on science by faith masquerading as science since the eugenics boondoggle”
Oh, right, it’s all a conspiracy. Quick, let’s pretend we’re saving democracy while forgetting that climate change is basic physics discovered by Joseph Fourier nearly 200 years ago!

EG: “If it's as safe as its proponents claim, insurance premiums would be cheap and manageable. If not, then not.”
An incredibly complex intricate technological discussion is bypassed by a gigantic leap of faith in the insurance industry.

Here are 2 gigantic leaps of faith: 1. Global Warming is a Conspiracy! 2. Nuclear safety is best measured not by nuclear experts (or, let’s say, historical statistics!) but by an insurance corporation. Yeah. Like they understand neutron leak and liquid reactors!

Dude, take the tinfoil hat off. It seems to be a little too tight!
Posted by Max Green, Wednesday, 20 May 2015 8:45:52 PM
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Loudmouth wrote: "Do we see the Greens going on about uranium and the dangers of letting it sit there in the ground ? No, we don't. Instead, we hear screams about coal and oil and gas. Given that nuclear energy is an obvious(if unspoken) alternative to these CO2 producers, are we all being set up by the Greens to accept the nuclear alternative ? "

Right on the money! The Greens would not have that objective, but they're are very much part of the setting up which is being pursued by the nuclear industry and its ideological camp followers. (Wanna sell the idea of nuclear energy? Talk about coal.) Was Eisenhower wearing a tinfoil hat when he warned about a military industrial complex and its power and influence? List the countries using nuclear energy? List the countries brandishing nuclear weapons. Notice anything?

And basic physics does not account for the dire computer-modelled predictions underlying AGW hysteria any more than basic genetics accounted for the eugenics boondoggle.

Insurance companies don't refuse public risk policies for nuclear energy because they don't understand the technology. They refuse it because they do, as they have the resources to assess the risk of getting stuck with a crippling payout. It's why they wrote to me years ago slapping a nuclear exclusion on my ordinary suburban house policy as all insurance companies were doing with all home insurance policies.

But OK - call for a referendum to show dinkum.
Posted by EmperorJulian, Thursday, 21 May 2015 12:37:23 PM
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EmperorJulian strikes again!
" List the countries using nuclear energy? List the countries brandishing nuclear weapons. Notice anything?"
Woah! What a simplistic equation you have there.
1. Nuclear bombs can be produced without a nuclear power industry.
2. Nuclear power have made an AMAZING market to eat nuclear bombs! EG: About 10% of American electricity for 20 years came from fissioning old Soviet bombs. Bombs are expensive to maintain, so when states are in financial trouble there is a motive to sell the nuclear material to another power to BURN the bomb as clean energy. Read a bit more at the wiki. 10% of American electricity is like powering the whole of Australia for 20 years on old Soviet bombs!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megatons_to_Megawatts_Program
3. An absolute majority of the world's highest CO2 emitters ALREADY have nuclear bombs! Sorry pal, but that horse bolted a long time ago. Want to solve the VERY REAL threat of global warming as demonstrated by the repeatable, demonstrable, provable physics of CO2 and the Radiative Forcing Equation? (Physics and maths). Then go GenIV nuclear, in breeder reactors that can safely burn nuclear waste and warheads for abundant clean energy forever.*
*(Uranium from seawater only costs $300 to $600 per kilogram, which is one human lifetime of energy! Our oceans are constantly being topped up with uranium particles by erosion).

Remember: America already has enough nuclear waste to run her for 1000 years, and the UK enough to run her for 500 years, if we burned it all in IFR's and LFTR's.
Posted by Max Green, Thursday, 21 May 2015 1:18:03 PM
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