Christine Milne (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

It is interesting that we are debating the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation Amendment Bill 2006 giving ANSTO increased powers on the same day that North Korea has exploded a nuclear weapon. There are two issues that make the nuclear cycle completely unacceptable. The first is weapons; the second is waste. Today we are hearing of both those issues. Only a few months ago, we heard from the Prime Minister about those people who were concerned about proliferation of nuclear weapons because Australia was both planning to export a huge increase in uranium to China and toying with the idea for India. The Prime Minister ridiculed people, suggesting that the safeguards would be such that it would not be a problem—that the world could contain the problem of weapons. Today, we have had a salient lesson in the fact that that is just not possible, and tonight we are talking about the other major problem with the nuclear cycle—that is, waste. There is no safe storage for nuclear waste. That is a fact. Nowhere in the world has anyone perfected a capacity to safely store nuclear waste.