Finally the Labor Government have shown their true colours and overturned everything that they have advocated against in the past,..Nuclear Proliferation, now the Australian version!

It is beyond all sensibility to even consider a Nuclear Waste Facility at Muckaty Station in the Northern Territory.

Aquiescence to this Bill has been achieved by simply nominating certain Indigenous persons as being the rightful traditional owners, and waving a fistful of dollars ( allegedly $10 million or so ) under their noses, to buy their vote accordingly. The nominated representation was obviously very, very selective to attain the required result.

The long term risks and damage to the community associated with this sort of establishment, should the inevitable leak occur, does not bear thinking about!....but maybe this is part of the grand plan to remove the perceived problem of the Indigenous people, many of whom can no longer be pushed aside and trampled over!

The NT Chief Minister Paul Henderson is opposed to the whole deal and believes that the rights of all Australians have been trampled on, and he is Labor, so what does that tell us?

As an alternative to Muckaty and IF the moral conscience of this country decerees that "because we mine and supply Uranium to overseas
interests" then instead of Muckaty Station in the NT, the problem should be "grudgingly" established in the area of Maralinga in SA, where the British and Australian Governments exploded test Nuclear Bombs, and which is now more or less permanently irradiated and thus uninhabitable for man or beast!

Whatever does occur in the future, the business of accepting Nuclear Waste from participating countries worldwide is an exceedingly retrograde step, a step that the people of Australia will be forced to pay the consequences for, for many generations to come.

It remains a "Day of Infamy" in the history of Australia!

Storm, meet teacup.

>>It remains a "Day of Infamy" in the history of Australia!<<

I read this post three times, but all I could think at the end of it was... Kenneth Williams.

"Infamy! Infamy! They've all got it in for me!"

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-446513/Carry-On-quip-voted-funniest-liner.html

Pericles:

Obviously you are not living anywhere near the vicinity of a "Nuclear Waste Depository", and so feel free to ridicule anyone who may show concern about this issue.

I seem to sense a slightly brown odour wafting from your statement and I must remind you that a lot of non-Indigenous people work and reside in the Northern Territory,...these same people may ultimately be at risk as well as the Indigenous landowners and residents.

Please exercise some sense of humanity towards this situation, as none of us have any choice in determining what race or colour we are born to!

Posted by Crackcup, Thursday, 15 March 2012 5:53:06 PM

" ... Please exercise some sense of humanity towards this situation, as none of us have any choice in determining what race or colour we are born to! ... "

Ah yes, *Pericles* the champion of democracy, arts and the literature. Curiously, on most occassions, he is one of the better quality commentators here at OLO i.m.o, though being human and flawed like the rest of, does have his/her less than flattering moments.

Perhaps he's on the grog and in a mood, and genuinely feeling funny? Only he can tell us though, one presumes.

My wife is oft to scold me for deliberately hurting people's feelings, so, I am perhaps no better, however ...

..

I do not know the facts of this issue, but perhaps the location for the dump in question was selected, in addition to any other reasons, based on its geological stability and lack of other resources?

..

It is perhaps little consultation, but my recommendation is not to vote for either of the main stream parties. Also, were it my choice, which clearly it is not, and if the BlakFellas wanted it, in addition to sacred sites (which would also include Blood Lands) I would make a Treaty with you and give you the northern territory in its entirety.

All things said and done though, consideration of their wants would be a primary one.

..

Of course, even if that were done, would that necessarily exclude different groups entering into their own arrangements?

..

I further note the words of one of the *Greens* today in relation to "informed legal consent" and am left wandering whether it has any relevance to the question at hand?

It is not the stuff in the ground we should worry about ,it is the silent,tasteless Caesium and Strontium,that is accumulating in or air and food chain that will destroy our bodies and genetic integrity.Fukushima,Chernobyl,Nukes tests,US depleted Uranium etc all accumulate and stay with us for millions of yrs.

The Labor Party does not control Aust.When Obama came here last yr ,he told Julia to sell Uranium to India,because it looked like moving towards China and Russia.Obama gets told what to do by the Banking Military Industrial Complex.

There you go Crackcup – there's nothing to be concerned about, the proposal would seem to have Arjay's seal of approval… "It is not the stuff in the ground we should worry about..."

A bit of perspective about radiation risks wouldn't go astray – though I admit when I had those two melanomas excised it never occurred to me to say, "Thank you Chernobyl, Fu k-u-shima…"

I was grateful to not be one of the 1200 or so Australians a year who die from such cancers and afterwards to be able to say anything at all.

But overselling and exaggerating real and perceived problems won't ever 'solve' them. For example, claims of them staying with us for millions of years is a bit rich when the environmentally worst isotopes of caesium-137 and strontium-90 have half lives of 30.07 And 28.8 years respectively. (To cope with strontium-94 though avoid it for a couple of multiples of its half life of 75 seconds)

I do understand the psychology of the "not in my backyard mindset" – at its simplest, it's how hundreds of millions of us car owners delude ourselves that we are not polluting the air we breathe because the engine exhaust comes out the back of the car and not through the dashboard air vents!

By the way you forgot to mention in starting this thread in whose backyards nuclear waste is currently stored. Just wondering?

Duly chastened by Crackcup's accusation of racism, I had a fourth look through his opening post.

>>I seem to sense a slightly brown odour wafting from your statement and I must remind you that a lot of non-Indigenous people work and reside in the Northern Territory,...these same people may ultimately be at risk as well as the Indigenous landowners and residents... none of us have any choice in determining what race or colour we are born to!<<

Nope. I will certainly plead no contest to dubious judgement in the sense-of-humour department, but frankly I still don't get it.

For one thing, it is a mystery to me how race features in the issues described, at all. Crackcup, are you suggesting that the reason this particular area was selected was because it is occupied by Aboriginal people?

Or is it - as I had originally perceived it to be - simply a standard-issue nimby rant?

It's in everyones backyards now, but deserves to live in Canberra, within the parliamentary cicrle. That way our politicians could demonstrate just how safe it is, and we could start to import our waste from overseas too, there being no safety issues involved at all.

I listened to the NT Minister expressing his concern
on the news. What he said made a lot of sense. There are
other places for storing nuclear waste - places that are
remote, have no infrastructure, roads, indigenous occupation,
air-strips, farms, and underground aquivers that supply
water to the local needs. The area suggested was in the
location of the South Australia and Western Australia border
region. The current area proposed is in native land areas,
cattle ranches, criss-crossed by roads and scattered with
multiple air-fields as well as being prolific in underground
water supplies. To locate nuclear waste storage in these
areas runs the risk of destroying the productive and
inhabited environment not to mention contaminating the
water supplies which extend for extreme distances underground.
Not a good move all round.

cont'd ...

One major contribution that the current government
can make to this nation is to legislate the NT
becoming an independent state with its own rights
of government equal to all the other states of Australia.
And free of federal control.

DreamOn:

If the site at Muckaty was chosen for its " Geological Stability" then I would suggest that that the Government has a very short memory as Tennant Creek (just down the road) was racked by a 7.5 Richter Scale Earthquake in 1988, I was living there at the time.....Geologically stable?

WmTrevor:

I do not dispute your statement regarding the half lives of Strontium 90 and Caesium 137 being in the vicinity of 28.8 and 30.07 years respectively, but I do wish to point out that once this waste repository is active, it will recieve "fresh" deposits on a very regular basis which will add a continuum to the half life theory, through to infinity ( or for how long the repository remains in business).

Pericles:

Yes, I certainly WAS suggesting that the particular area was selected
because it is predominantly inhabited by Indigenous persons!
The cunning representatives of the Government know only too well
how easy it is to wave dollar bills in front of them to get their attention and their vote....next best thing to filling them full of grog!

Lexi:

I suggested (if all else failed) then the Waste Facility be located at Maralinga simply because the area is already the most contaminated area in Australia and a still dangerous area...(and already has claimed many lives, but the Defence Department is unlikely to admit that!)

I would prefer that NO Nuclear WASTE FACILTY be established in Australia, but moral principles tell us that if we are mining Uranium and supplying it to foreign interests( purely for monetary gain) we have a responsibility to the world to ensure that the waste is disposed of safely, which unfortunately for us all, is in itself a misnomer, because to date there is NO SAFE way to store or dispose of Nuclear Waste,.....so why do we all use it?

When Cando wins the election, he could offer to store it at 10 Downing Street, the building his wife's family seems to own that has so upset Anna 'digemupandsellem' Bligh.

Maybe Cando could use his last tunnel failure, the Clem Jones Tunnel, to store the waste in?

After all, no one goes in there, so there is no risk, and it's underground, so must be totally safe, and there is a road system to the gates he could install at each end.

Best of all, no pesky Indigenous people trying to hunt food in there, so they won't be able to complain.

But if Bligh gets back, with her great regard for the environment, maybe she could plan to tip it all on the Great Barrier Reef, along with all the toxins from Gladstone Harbour?

I see the Commonwealth will benefit too, with their $5 a tonne surcharge, so, the more tonnes the merrier, I say.

Good for tourism too, with a rush of 'see the reef before Anna kills it' tours, which might help to save Paddy's airline from banruptcy as well.

It's wins all round, with all this waste.

Dear Crackcup,

Nuclear reactors produce notoriously hazardous wastes.
Most of it is "temporarily" stored on site.
what is needed is a place that will safely contain the
waste for at least 10,000 years, which is long enough
for most of it to decay.

However the location of such a site is a ticklish
political problem, for the obvious reason that people
are generally unenthused about the prospect of having
a radioactive dump in their own neighbourhood.
The disposal problem seems to be one that so far has
no acceptable technological fix, so in this case a
political solution may have to suffice.

One resource that is very much in short supply is
fresh water. The bulk of the fresh
water is hidden in underground aquifers in our country.
Only a small percentage is available at the surface
for our use - and much of it is in the "wrong place."
Yet our modern society requires huge amounts of water
for domestic, agricultural, and industrial
purposes. We consume enormous amounts of water.
We have to be careful, as I stated earlier where we
can safelt contain the toxic nuclear waste. We have to
ensure that it does not affect our underground water
supplies. Without a dependable water supply, our
vital regions would be largely useless for
agricultural purposes - a situation that could cause
extensive food shortages and make the economic plight
of today's farmers pale by comparison.

As said, not being aware of the facts, I am able to consider that the site may indeed be in a quake prone zone.

It would be better if we could look at the site assessment report of course.

..

U238 certainly has a long half life as *Arjay* suggests and even the UN reports into the U235 Enrichment Waste Munitions note that there is a predominance of conflicting information in this area.

I have read one animal study however that claimed that U238 alone has the potential to induce genomic instability which of course means that it is carcinogenic and studies of VETS who have say sucked in micron sized ceramic particles end up with deformed sperm and give rise to mutant babies, according to some published writers.

Is it that alone though or any number of the potential carcinogens that one can inhale on the battlefield and of course, if one is to believe *Dr Helen Caldicott* some of the left over D.U. munitions have been found to have minute traces of U235 in them, suggesting a blending from something like spent fuel rods?

As to what the truth of it all is, we would have to get some evidenced material up if available, but certainly, as of last I heard, relevant parties were none to willing to co-operate with independent investigations into the area.

Crackup I fully support your concerns with one caveat which was touched on by another poster. That is whoever creates the waste take responsibility for storage/disposal. The 'not in my backyard' scenario applies IMO only to where the rest of the world might be salivating at the prospect of using Australia to dump it's own waste product, then I would say NO.

It would seem ironic, given Australia has wisely not yet gone down the nuclear power path, if we were suddenly to act as a world dumping site. Madness indeed. Especially as the decision to go remote (not remote to the locals though) suggests an acknowledgment of the risk. Otherwise why not locate the dump near metropolitan areas where normally transport costs would dictate.

Disappointing to hear Bob Carr is already touting the prospect of nuclear energy which probably means another fight within the Labor Party over it's current policy. One thing is certain human beings must be the most short sighted mammals on earth if they cannot see the potential big picture risks in nuclear. How many nuclear accidents does a planet need to heed the wake up call?

Dear Pelly,

Hear! Hear!

Quite so Pelican.

Which is why the ACT is such a good place to have the current waste stored.

A guarantee would soon be given that no imported waste would be ever allowed on our shores, I bet.

Peli and Lexi:

I shudder at the thought of the long term situation if indeed they do go ahead with this whole concept and add insult to injury by accepting "foreign" radioactive waste.

Carr will be out there to make a name for himself of course to justify the "job for the boys" that has been gifted to him by Big Julia.

History would decree that the world in general views Australia as a "soft touch", and I should imagine that shipments of radiacative waste will become a big industry, with increasing numbers of foreign vessels plying the route to Australia, which creates another monster?
....what happens when one of these vessels runs aground or rips itself open on a reef,....instead of oil contamination we have radioactive contamination, which no detergent can neutralise or dissolve!

This whole scenario is frought with danger and reminds me of a statement made in the 70`s by Edward Teller, an adviser to the US President, who uttered the immortal words: "The United States is now in a position to survive a limited Nuclear Exchange!" ...that statement coming from a man who knew that at that time there was no such thing as a "limited Nuclear Exchange" in the policies of the US war-machine, and that any nuclear attack upon the US would result in an Armageddon type scenario!

Where is our commonsense in dealing withg these issues?

Dear Crackcup,

We need to make our voices heard.

Lobby our MPs, write letters to newspapers, let
our government know how we feel - and hopefully
we can influence their actions. Shutting up or
being silent about this issue will go against
our children's future, and those of our grandchildren.

There is so little volume in this waste that it will hardly be coming by sea.

That's why we have these massive new Airforce cargo planes.

Russia's has them as do the US (ours is theirs after all) and it is far more likely that the waste would come by air in such beasts, maybe even with a fighter escort, although I'd think not.

Far less to go wrong than some dodgy Panama registered Greek rust bucket all at sea with dangerous cargo.