Nuclear conference fails waste and weapons tests
The program for World Nuclear Fuel Cycle 2009 shows the nuclear industry promotional conference, held in Sydney 22-23 April 2009, fails to address longstanding unresolved concerns about nuclear waste management and the ‘dual use’ of uranium – for electricity and deadly nuclear weapons.
The Australian Conservation Foundation said other countries were backing away from the toxic nuclear industry.
“US President Obama has recently withdrawn support and budget for the proposed nuclear waste disposal site at Mt Yucca in Nevada, after 20 years and more than A$13 billion having been spent on this one project,” said ACF Nuclear Free campaigner David Noonan.
“Nuclear waste management remains unresolved in the USA – the home of nuclear power.
“This is a toxic industry with no place in a responsible and sustainable society.
“Delegates to the World Nuclear Fuel Cycle conference will not hear about how nuclear capital costs are soaring, how the industry is heavily reliant on public subsidies and how it is unable to pay accident insurance in this era of terrorism and weapons proliferation.
“Delegates will learn nothing about how Australian uranium produces plutonium and nuclear waste in nuclear reactors overseas and contributes to the increasing risk of terrorist dirty bombs produced from nuclear fuel cycle waste.
“BHP Billiton should explain how it will exercise responsibility for nuclear risks from the uranium it proposes to export from the world’s largest uranium project at Olympic Dam and how it proposes to manage the expanded mine’s bulk radioactive tailings waste for the 10,000 years the tailings remain a radiological hazard and need to be isolated from the environment.”
The uranium mining industry in Australia has a record of failed standards, radioactive leaks and spills, unresolved long-lived radioactive waste problems, disproportionate impacts on Traditional Owners and health and safety risks for workers – including incidents of uranium in the drinking water at two of the three operational uranium mines.
A 2003 Senate Inquiry found an industry characterised by “a pattern of underperformance and non-compliance” and concluded “changes were necessary in order to protect the environment and its inhabitants from serious or irreversible damage.” The Commonwealth, SA and Northern Territory governments have not implemented this Inquiry’s recommendations.
You can’t have uranium mining or nuclear power without radioactive waste. No country has yet been able to establish a final repository for high level nuclear waste. Australia must stop contributing to the intractable nuclear waste problem.
Also, there is no way to guarantee that Australian uranium will not end up contributing to nuclear weapons programs.
