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BEVERLEY (SA)
The acid-leach
uranium mine in South Australia has moved into production mode, joining
Roxby Downs (SA) and Ranger
(NT) as Australia’s third current uranium mine.
HONEYMOON (SA)
Another proposed acid-leach uranium
mine has been delayed in response to public submissions. The Environment
Minister, Senator Hill, has called for more detail on the project’s
impact on the environment because all liquid wastes will be injected
into the groundwater (which the company is not required to rehabilitate).
The company is expected to report back in June, with Federal government
approvals likely to follow soon after.
The ALP platform is to allow existing mines to keep operating but not
to allow new ones, so Honeymoon will be in a very ‘grey area’
if the ALP is elected.
THE PROPOSED NATIONAL WASTE DUMP (SA)
The Government’s plan is to transport the ‘low level’
and ‘short-lived intermediate’ nuclear waste from th proposed
new Lucas Heights reactor to
a National Radioactive Waste Repository (NRWR) in the Woomera area,
near where the Aboriginal people have already suffered the Maralinga
bomb tests of the 1950’s.
In November 2000, SA passed legislation prohibiting the import, transport,
storage and disposal of medium to high level wastes. However the SA
Government supports a national nuclear dump for short lived intermediate
level and low level wastes, in spite of independent polling showing
87% of South Australians reject this nuclear dump proposal.
As well as serious environmental concerns about the shallow burial waste
disposal method being proposed, many people feel that it’s a ‘thin
end of the wedge’ situation and once a waste dump has been built,
the pressure will be on to take higher grades of nuclear waste.
Anti-nuclear campaigners are insisting that before there can be a long-term
Australian nuclear waste management plan, there must be:
1) a halt to production
of radioactive waste from Lucas Heights
2) a full Public Inquiry into radioactive waste management.
FOOD
IRRADIATION (QLD)
The other nuclear issue that has surfaced lately is the irradiation
industry, which uses radioactive substances to kill the natural organisms
which limit the shelf-life of food, and to sterilise medical supplies.
A company called Steritech, which already operates in Dandenong, Victoria,
is proposing to build an irradiation facility at Narangba in Caboolture,
a dairying shire in Queensland. Many locals are bitterly opposed to
it. Irradiation uses the radioactive isotope Cobalt-60 which must be
imported from Canada. Transport and storage of this material are related
problems of course.
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