Lyn Allison (Victoria, Australian Democrats) Share this | Hansard source

The Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation Amendment Bill 2006 is designed to extend the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation’s functions to handle radioactive material in three broad additional scenarios: firstly, to participate in the management of radioactive material and waste in the possession or under the control of any Commonwealth entity, including material designated to be stored at the proposed Commonwealth radioactive waste management facility in the Northern Territory; secondly, where requested by a Commonwealth, state or territory law enforcement or emergency response agency, to deal with radioactive material and waste arising from a relevant incident, including a terrorist or criminal action; and, thirdly, to deal with intermediate level waste originating from spent nuclear fuel from ANSTO’s nuclear reactors that is returned to Australia from overseas reprocessing facilities for storage and/or disposal.

While the Democrats understand that the provision to give ANSTO authority to handle radioactive waste material returned to Australia fulfils a contractual obligation, we are very concerned indeed that this opens the door to the importation and disposal of foreign nuclear waste, particularly given that there is no legislative prohibition against this. More specifically, the legislation allows the government to impose an international high-level nuclear waste dump on unwilling communities and states and territories.

Call me cynical, but I think it is most unlikely that the government’s push for a radioactive store is a genuine attempt to address a growing environmental issue. More likely, I think it is a move to facilitate an industry expansion that would result in the creation of even more radioactive waste in this country. Our suspicions have been heightened by the recent deal to sell uranium to China and the possibility of selling uranium even to India, which has not signed the nuclear non-proliferation treaty and which has nuclear weapons.

We are concerned that the Australian government intends or is under increasing pressure for Australia to be a repository for high-level waste generated by countries to which we export uranium. The uranium industry framework established by the government in August last year to examine uranium mining expansion has very quietly expanded its terms of reference to include so-called nuclear stewardship. The interim report to the federal government is reported to recommend that the government and mining industry should start planning for broader engagement in the nuclear fuel cycle from mining to processing, enrichment, domestic nuclear energy, export and reimportation of waste for storage, recycling and disposal. That is a massive step in the wrong direction. It is hard to believe that the government would even contemplate that without much more debate on this issue and without taking into account the objections of the vast majority of Australians.

The plan was, by all accounts, outlined to the Prime Minister during his visit to the United States in May this year. The news in August that the United States supports Australia developing a uranium enrichment industry, previously a concern for them, adds further weight to the prospect of nuclear stewardship in Australia. The proposal by the US to lease nuclear fuel and return the spent fuel to the supplier for reprocessing and storage would mean that Australia would be forced to store highly radioactive waste. No doubt that would be a relief to the United States. It is a huge political and environmental problem there. Yucca Mountain was supposed to be the great hope for nuclear waste storage but has turned out to be a dud. It has been discovered that radioactive material will leak from that facility, and it is a huge problem for George Bush and others there who need to deal with the massive quantities that America has.

Not a single repository exists anywhere in the world for the lifetime of storage of high-level waste from nuclear power because that technology just does not exist. High-level waste, particularly in centralised storage, as the government proposes, creates a dangerous legacy for future generations. These concerns of ours form the basis of the second reading amendment which has been circulated in my name. I will move my second reading amendment after we have dealt with Senator Stephens’s amendment. I will go through the motion at this point to foreshadow it. It says:

... the Senate:

  (a)     notes that there is growing evidence that the Prime Minister and Coalition Government want to make Australia the nuclear waste dump of the world and store high-level waste;

  (b)     notes that high-level waste is radioactive for hundreds and thousands of years and that no single repository exists anywhere in the world for the disposal of high-level waste from nuclear power; and

  (c)     calls on the Government to rule out a high level waste dump in Australia.

Further, the government should use the current legislative process to give legal weight to its previously stated view of opposition to Australia’s hosting of a high-level international nuclear dump. I will, on behalf of the Democrats, also move an amendment in the committee stage that would prohibit ANSTO and any health or medical facility operating within Australia from being able to deal with high-level waste that is not generated by or associated with the Lucas Heights operations.

I think it is fair to say that Australians have well-founded doubts about nuclear waste material disposal in Australia—doubts that it can ever be made safe. This government and those before it have not really instilled in the community a great deal of confidence in their ability or willingness to take this issue seriously. The management of waste at uranium mines—whether at Ranger, more recently at Beverley or in the long-overdue clean-up of Maralinga after the British tests, where plutonium contaminated waste has been disposed of in simple earth trenches covered by just a few metres of soil—is hardly reassuring. The Prime Minister’s plans to expand a nuclear mining and possibly enrichment operation in Australia make them even more nervous.

I also think it is very hypocritical of the government to call for a national code for the siting and development of wind farms to make sure community concerns have been taken into consideration, having just overridden, with the Commonwealth Radioactive Waste Management Bill 2005, Territory government opposition and huge community opposition to a dump in the Northern Territory.

Debate interrupted.