The long anticipated arrival of reprocessed nuclear fuel rods in the first week of December has thrown the spotlight again on Australia's nuclear industry.
Greenpeace's highlighting of the deficiencies of transport gives little hope that government plans will fit with the usual assurances of 'world's best practice' in this, the world's most dangerous industry.
Greenpeace reported that the BBC Shanghai is currently banned from government cargo by the US and has been detained on safety issues by three countries — including Australia in the last five years.
The spent nuclear fuel rods (termed high level in France and US) were escorted to Lucas Heights in southern Sydney, the nuclear reactor facility run by ANSTO, Australia's national research and development organisation. As former long term Australian Conservation Foundation campaigner David Noonan points out, Lucas Heights' second nuclear reactor was built to last 20 years.
Built with the containment available for onsite storage, with the advantages of onsite expertise, secure space and avoidance of the risks and expense of hazardous further travel, it remains the safest place.
At a screening last month of his film Containment, Harvard Professor Robb Moss agreed with me regarding the 'providence' of its timely showing to Australian audiences. Five years in the making, Containment shows, among other sequences, how the US is attempting to tackle the massive problem of dealing with their own high level radioactive waste.
It includes interviews with government officials and regulator personnel amid their attempts to contain the radioactivity for the expected 10,000 years — a time frame that will embrace 'people who will not share our language, our nation and even our civilisation'. It's unsurprising that the oft repeated phrase from those from the nuclear industry was that 'the hardest thing is to get the community onside'.
During the successful 1998-2004 campaign against the proposed national nuclear dump in South Australia, we noted that Yucca Mountain community, Nevada, was the preferred site in the US. Apparently there is renewed pressure to locate a dump here, but the state of Nevada continues to show its resolve by its longterm refusal, currently led by Nevada's Harry Reid, the US Senate Democratic Leader. Such is their success that President Barack Obama has continued to back their opposition.
It would certainly be beyond their comprehension that any community, any government, would actually volunteer to take other countries' nuclear waste, which remains radioactive for thousands of years. Yet in Australia, this is what nuclear proponents, the SA