Ship carrying nuclear waste arrives in Australia

 

A ship carrying 25 tonnes of radioactive waste

arrived back in Australia on Saturday, met by

activists who warned against the vast nation

becoming a nuclear dumping ground.

About a dozen Greenpeace protesters, some

carrying signs such as “Don’t waste Australia”,

stood near the entrance to Port Kembla south of

Sydney as the BBC Shanghai arrived in a well-

policed operation.

Environmentalists have raised concerns about the

safety of the ship, which left the northern French

port of Cherbourg in October, with one French

lawmaker describing it as a “dustbin ship”.

This is not the kind of ship you would want to see

transporting nuclear waste,” Greenpeace

campaigner Emma Gibson, who was on board a

boat following the BBC Shanghai on Saturday,

told AFP.

But the Australian Nuclear Science and

Technology Organisation (ANSTO), which has

previously stressed that the ship’s seaworthiness

had been certified by French officials, said there

was no credible chance of an incident during the

transport.

This container is so well shielded that you could

sit on it for five hours and receive no more of a

radiation dose than you would on a flight to

Singapore,” said general manager for nuclear

security Paul Jones in a statement.

It is a feat of engineering that is made from

forged steel, and could withstand a drop of 9

metres, temperatures of 800 degrees Celsius or

even a jet plane strike.”

ANSTO would not comment on the transport

operation while it was underway but there was a

strong police presence at Port Kembla as the bulk

carrier arrived.

Australia sent spent nuclear fuel to France for

reprocessing in the 1990s and early 2000s over

four shipments, and it has now been returned for

long-term storage.

Reprocessing involves the removal of uranium

and plutonium, stabilising the remaining

substances in glass, and placing it all in a

container suitable for transport and storage.

The waste will initially be housed at the Lucas

Heights reactor in southern Sydney, which is used

for science and research, until a nuclear waste

dump site is selected and built. It is expected to

be trucked there from Port Kembla overnight.

The government has said the nuclear waste dump

site would only be used to store Australia’s

radioactive waste but Greenpeace has warned

that creating a new waste facility is an invitation

to other countries to use Australia as a dumping

ground.

The group said a poll of 3,144 people last month

that it had commissioned from ReachTEL

suggested that most Australians opposed plans to

store nuclear waste for other countries.

Asked about Australia accepting nuclear waste

from overseas, 18.3 percent supported it, 72.1

percent opposed it and 9.6 percent were

undecided.

Most Australians rightly don’t want their country

to become a nuclear waste dump for the rest of

the world,” Gibson said in a statement.

Nobody has yet worked out a safe way to manage

long-term nuclear waste, which can remain

dangerous for hundreds of thousands of years.”

Six sites, all hundreds of kilometres from major

cities and including some Outback locations, have

been shortlisted for Australia’s first nuclear waste

dump.

All the land owners are willing to house low to

intermediate waste — mostly by-products of

nuclear medicine — which is currently stored at

about 100 different sites around the country.