Dick Adams (Lyons, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

The purpose of the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation Amendment Bill 2006 is to amend the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation Act 1987 to allow the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation, ANSTO, to condition, manage and store radioactive material and radioactive waste which is not derived from their activities. This will be done by adding six new definitions to allow some changes to be made to the applications.

The government intends that ANSTO, as the most expert body on radioactive materials and radioactive waste technology in Australia with the facilities and trained personnel for managing radioactive material and waste, should be able to fully participate in the management of radioactive material and waste in the possession or under the control of any Commonwealth entity. The bill ensures that ANSTO is able to provide effective assistance to state and territory jurisdictions, if asked, to ensure public health and safety in the event of an incident, including a terrorist or criminal incident, involving radiological material. Authority to accept and manage radioactive material arising from a terrorist incident is an important component of Australia’s counterterrorism response.

Spent nuclear fuel from ANSTO’s reactors is sent overseas under contractual arrangements for reprocessing to convert it into an intermediate-level waste form suitable for long-term storage and eventual disposal in Australia. Australian spent fuel may be combined with spent nuclear fuel from other sources and processed in bulk campaigns. Accordingly, the bill clarifies ANSTO’s authority to condition, manage and store the material returned to Australia as a result of the contractual arrangements entered into for this purpose. The bill allows ANSTO to manage radioactive material at the ANSTO Lucas Heights premises, or elsewhere.

There has been some discussion on this bill. The matter came before the Senate Employment, Workplace Relations and Education Legislation Committee, to which the Federation of Australian Scientific and Technological Societies, FASTS, submitted that, although they agreed with the basis of the bill, they felt there were two additional issues the committee should consider with a view to possible amendments: firstly, to clarify that ANSTO may also condition, manage and store radioactive materials and waste for state and territory organisations and other licensed entities, including private firms; and, secondly, that services provided by ANSTO to the Commonwealth, states and territories and their entities, law enforcement agencies and disaster or emergency services should be on the basis of full cost recovery.

One of the reasons governments invest in public sector research is to build and sustain high-level scientific capacities and capabilities as a form of insurance against risk and uncertainty. It therefore follows that an important policy principle of publicly funded science should be that the knowledge and expertise of organisations such as ANSTO is not unnecessarily constrained and is available to serve the public good.

Permitting non-Commonwealth entities to access ANSTO’s expertise and facilities on the same basis as Commonwealth agencies not only is a rational use of Australia’s pre-eminent nuclear and radioactive materials agency but also ensures there will be no technical and scientific impediments should some or all of the states and territories seek to enter into arrangements with the Commonwealth to consolidate all radioactive waste in the one facility.

FASTS also suggests it is appropriate that ANSTO should provide its expertise and facilities to the Commonwealth, states and territories and their agencies on a full cost recovery basis. This means ANSTO will not be financially penalised through broadening its functions. It is reasonable that governments and their agencies can access the expertise and facilities of a publicly funded agency without a commercial premium being charged above costs. What arrangements ANSTO makes with private firms in such circumstances is a commercial matter for the ANSTO board and management, and there is no need to specify that in this legislation. These suggestions to the Senate committee were clarified in the press recently. Professor Snow Barlow put it very succinctly in an article in the Canberra Times. He stated:

Much of the political debate has focused on site selection for storing radioactive waste. But storage is only one part of the equation. Australia must aim for safe and efficient disposal.

Quite so. He argues:

The key object of safe disposal is to sufficiently dilute radioactive materials so that its radioactivity is comparable to naturally occurring background radiation. In the case of long-lived radioactive waste (materials with a half-life of more than 30 years), radioactive waste needs proper shielding from the biosphere in a geologically stable site.

Australia has the relevant scientific and engineering expertise to design, build and manage disposal of such waste.

At the moment, the amount of waste generated under the state and territory licences is small. This waste is currently stored in over 100 locations around the country in metropolitan and regional sites. Professor Barlow said:

Dispersed storage of radioactive waste is not a viable long-term strategy and is potentially hazardous, inefficient and impossible to be completely secure. That is why the States and Territories must demonstrate political leadership and join the Commonwealth to ensure the proposed site is a comprehensive national facility that is state of the art in terms of environmental safety, efficiency and security.

The next debate will be that Australia needs to adopt a similarly responsible attitude to waste generated from our export of uranium. If we are to seriously ramp up our participation in the nuclear industry then the option of being a full service provider must be considered, including accepting the waste as a part of the deal.

The Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation is Australia’s national nuclear research and development organisation and the centre of Australia’s nuclear expertise, and it is very capable of being the adviser and manager of things nuclear. With a salaried staff of approximately 860, ANSTO is responsible for delivering specialised advice, scientific services and products to government, industry, academia and other research organisations. It does so through the development of new knowledge, delivery of quality services and support for business opportunities.

ANSTO’s nuclear infrastructure includes the research reactor, HIFAR, the high-flux Australian reactor; particle accelerators; radiopharmaceutical production facilities; and a range of other unique research facilities. HIFAR is Australia’s only nuclear reactor. It is used to produce radioactive products for use in medicine and industry, as a source of neutron beams for scientific research and to irradiate silicon for semiconductor applications. A replacement for HIFAR, OPAL—the open pool Australian light-water reactor—is in its final stages of construction. ANSTO also operates the Australian medical cyclotron, an accelerator facility used to produce certain short-lived radioisotopes for nuclear medicine procedures. It is located in the grounds of the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital in Camperdown. ANSTO also manages Australian synchrotron facilities at a number of overseas locations.

ANSTO also undertakes research in its own right. ANSTO has for many years been involved in studies of radioactivity in coastal and marine environments. These investigations focus on applied and strategic research on in situ oceanographic processes relating to the biogeochemical cycling of radionuclides and stable trace elements. Nuclear tracer and dating techniques are combined with advanced analytical facilities and oceanographic expertise to provide a unique perspective on the pathways of natural and contaminant material entering the world’s oceans. There are many projects involved in this process. They have included local investigations on the fate and behaviour of contaminant discharges in Sydney coastal water, studies of climate-induced changes in beach morphology and offshore sediment movements in the New South Wales coastal zone and assessing the contribution of large tropical rivers to the global flux of terrestrial material to the oceans through participation in the international Tropical River-Ocean Processes in Coastal Settings Project. Projects have also included defining the role of plankton—that is, microscopic marine plants and animals—in controlling the natural distribution and dispersion of radionuclides and trace elements in the marine environment, assessment of the radiological situation at Mururoa and Fangataufa atolls following the nuclear testing in French Polynesia, and coordinating International Atomic Energy Agency, United Nations Development Program and AusAID projects sponsored by a regional cooperative agreement.

So we are dealing with an organisation which could be at the forefront of research and environmental monitoring, and it is important that its expertise is available to both state and federal governments. I believe that we have an opportunity here to expand the debate on the value of nuclear technology while having in place a tool to ensure the safety and prudence of current operations. We will be supporting the bill.

Debate interrupted.

See this speech in context