Ben Heard founded the South Australia-based  ‘Bright New World’ nuclear advocacy group that accepts secret corporate donations from the nuclear industry.

Like so many other nuclear advocates, Heard very rarely or never says or does anything about the problems of the nuclear industry such as its systemic racism (abundantly evident in his home state, South Australia) or the inadequate nuclear safeguards system and the associated WMD proliferation risks.

A big part of Heard’s schtick is his conversion from a nuclear critic to a supporter. It is a back-story built on slender foundations. A mining industry magazine article said Heard was “once a fervent anti-nuclear campaigner” but in fact he never had any involvement whatsoever in anti-nuclear campaigning. Heard made no effort to correct the error in the magazine article — indeed he put the article, uncorrected, on his own website and only corrected it after the falsehood was publicly exposed. Likewise, Heard made no effort to correct an ABC article which described him as a “former anti-nuclear advocate”.

Heard has a recurring disclosure problem. He rarely disclosed his consulting work for uranium company Heathgate when spruiking for the nuclear industry. He said the reason he rarely disclosed his consulting work with Heathgate was that it was mentioned on his website. So any time you hear anyone speaking about anything in the media, it’s your responsibility to do a web-search to see if they have a financial interest! More recently, he rarely discloses corporate funding — indeed his lobby group (closed in 2021) had a policy of accepting secret corporate donations. And Heard rarely if ever discloses his connection to nuclear power company Terrestrial Energy.

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Table of Contents (with links)

Ben Heard’s industry-funded SMR / Gen IV misinformation

• Small nuclear reactors, huge costs
• Small modular reactor rhetoric hits a hurdle, see below in this webpage. 
• Ben Heard’s “outright lie”, massive hypocrisy and extreme censorship
• More SMR spin and misinformation from Ben Heard
• More misinformation from Ben Heard re SMR costs
• Ben Heard promoting floating nuclear power plants that will be used to exploit Arctic fossil fuel reserves!
• New nuclear push digs deep into vault of alternative facts
• Australia Institute critique of Ben Heard’s idiotic waste-to-fuel Generation IV nuclear fantasies
• Ben Heard’s epic fail … but will he have the decency to repay the $55,593?
• Pyroprocessing flops

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More SMR spin and misinformation from Ben Heard

In 2020, Ben Heard repeatedly wrote and talked about the ‘real costs of small modular reactors’ (SMRs), attacking anyone who thinks that the real costs of SMRs (predictably over-budget and behind-schedule SMR construction projects) ought to factor in a discussion about the real costs of SMRs. Instead, Heard bases his estimates on self-serving, absurdly low company estimates (which are several times lower than expert estimates presented in the report of the SA Nuclear Fuel Cycle Royal Commission).

Could Heard get any sillier? Well, yes. Here’s the beginning of an Oct. 2020 article by Heard. Spoiler alert: Ontario Power Generation (OPG) is 100% government-owned.

Heard:

“Based on the events of 2020, we might now find ourselves at the dawn of the very fast change in the journey of advanced, small modular reactors to commercialisation. A veritable flurry of recent announcements can hearten everyone who cares about a clean energy future.

“A new force is coming that can greatly accelerate our energy transition. On October 6, Canadian utility Ontario Power Generation announced the long awaited outcomes of a comprehensive assessment of SMR technologies, declaring a commitment of support to advance the engineering and design work of three SMRs designs: the BWRX-300 from General Electric-Hitachi, the Integral Molten Salt Reactor from Terrestrial Energy, and the Xe-100 pebble bed reactor from X-energy. To settle on these three designs, vendors passed through a due diligence process described by X-energy as the most comprehensive it has ever been through. That statement highlights the significance of this announcement.

“One of the flippant barbs aimed at the SMR sector by commentators (normally of the ideologically entrenched kind) is that private money is not interested in mere paper reactors, and that the whole class of technology is a distant prospect. It is one of those lazy critiques that are easy to say, and safe from dispute all through the long lead time to falsification. OPG’s decision, along with its joint venture formation with Ultra Safe Nuclear Corporation and Global First Power, goes a long way to putting this simplistic assertion to rest.”

So a 100% government-owned entity is supporting SMR ‘engineering and design work’ (far short of a commitment to invest billions in actually constructing reactors) and that “goes a long way” to dispelling abundant evidence that private funding is far short of getting reactor construction projects off the ground? Could Heard’s nuclear advocacy get any sillier?

Will OPG and some or all of the three above-mentioned companies get reactor construction projects off the ground? Here’s a downbeat Nov. 2020 assessment in World Nuclear News, an industry publication not known for downbeat assessments:

“Ontario Power Generation (OPG) has announced it is resuming planning activities for building new nuclear generating capacity at its Darlington site in Ontario. However, it is now considering the construction of a small modular reactor (SMR) rather than a large conventional reactor, as previously envisaged. …

“No decision on technology has been made yet, OPG said, but it has begun work aimed at identifying potential options. Last month, OPG announced advancement of engineering and design work with three grid-scale SMR developers: GE Hitachi, Terrestrial Energy and X-energy. It said work with the three developers continues and will help inform OPG on potential options for future deployment.”

Does the OPG collaboration with the three companies involve a significant commitment of resources from any of the parties? The relevant announcements don’t mention any financial commitment from any of the parties. An Oct. 2020 World Nuclear News article suggests low-level, low-commitment collaboration: “GEH said it will provide detailed information on the design process, licensing, scheduling and contracting that will help inform OPG on options for siting an SMR in Ontario.” Heard’s comments about the announcement amount to hyperbole.

As for the “flurry” of other announcements noted in Heard’s article which purportedly prove private-sector commitment to SMRs:

— Canadian GOVERNMENT funding for Terrestrial Energy design / pre-licensing work. (Evidently Terrestrial Energy can’t even find private capital for design / pre-licensing work let alone serious capital for reactor construction.)

— GOVERNMENT funding for the US Advanced Reactor Demonstration Program. This “will bring two advanced reactor designs into full operation in the next 7 years”, Heard says, although he surely knows that statement to be implausible and he surely knows about the history of failure of such programs e.g. the US Next Generation Nuclear Plant Project which was abandoned in 2011 because of the unwillingness of the private sector to commit adequate funding.

— US GOVERNMENT funding for NuScale Power (without mentioning that expert evidence from economists, commissioned by the SA Nuclear Fuel Cycle Royal Commission, estimated a hopelessly uneconomic cost of A$225/MWh …  the Minerals Council of Australia says that there will be no market for SMRs above a cost of A$60‒80/MWh).

— Potential GOVERNMENT SMR funding by the US International Development Finance Corporation.

— GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy begins a licencing process in the US for BWRX-300 SMR (no mention of the government subsidies, or of the vast gulf between beginning a licensing process and completing reactor construction … or even beginning reactor construction for that matter).

— Russia’s GOVERNMENT-funded floating reactor (no mention of the fact that its purpose is to support fossil fuel mining operations, or that the capital cost increased four-fold, or that the power it produces costs a hopelessly uneconomic US$200/MWh (A$260/MWh) according to the OECD Nuclear Energy Agency).

— A consortium of British businesses submits proposals to build SMRs (no mention of the fact that they won’t move an inch without vast government funding).

Heard writes: “With so many critics insisting the nuclear sector must develop the flexibility to accommodate variable renewables, the sector is delivering in spades with nimble designs, and now directly embedded storage.” Except that nothing in the real world supports what Heard is saying … not one of the reactors Heard is describing is operating or under construction, and the only things the sector is “delivering in spades” are paper designs, press releases and proposals for government funding. Most (perhaps all) of the handful of actual SMR construction projects have exhibited a familiar pattern of massive cost overruns and multi-year / multi-decade delays.

Heard writes: “In a seeming blink of an eye, the SMR sector has evolved into the strong probability of six or more vendors delivering first power before 2030.” There is literally zero chance of six or more vendors delivering first power before 2030, and a strong probability of zero vendors delivering first power before 2030. For reference, the flurry of worldwide SMR propaganda in the 1990s led to the construction of zero SMRs.

Heard’s lobby group ‘Bright New World’ accepts secret corporate donations from the nuclear industry. It’s a safe bet that the secret corporate donors include companies with an interest in SMRs. Note also that Heard’s article fails to declare his interest in one of the companies mentioned — he is a member of a Terrestrial Energy advisory board. He believes that it’s your responsibility to do the research to ascertain whether or not he has any conflicts of interest!

Heard mentions “the improving development and prospects in large nuclear in many markets”. Really? He is making stuff up.

Heard writes: “2020 looks like being the year a new clean energy sector was born”. But in the past two calendar years (2019 and 2020), nearly 500 gigawatts of renewable capacity was added worldwide while nuclear went marginally BACKWARDS. With the ageing of the global reactor fleet, nuclear power is certain to continue to decline. Its contribution to global electricity supply has already declined from a peak of 17.6% to 10% (whereas renewables now supply around 30%). Numerous industry insiders and supporters freely acknowledge that the nuclear power industry is in crisis — they have in recent years acknowledged nuclear power’s “rapidly accelerating crisis“, a “crisis that threatens the death of nuclear energy in the West“, “the crisis that the nuclear industry is presently facing in developed countries“, while noting that “the industry is on life support in the United States and other developed economies” and engaging each other in heated arguments about what if anything can be salvaged from the “ashes of today’s dying industry”.

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More misinformation from Ben Heard re SMR costs

Brief comments on the Jan. 2021 Ben Heard / BNW submission re AEMO/CSIRO GenCost

The Heard / Bright New World recommendation to exclude SMRs from the AEMO/CSIRO costing work has merit. SMRs could be included at a later stage, if and when there is further information on real-world projects as opposed to mere speculation. The federal, NSW and Victorian governments have all completed nuclear inquiries in recent years and all three governments plan to retain laws banning nuclear power. No state/territory governments are promoting nuclear power. There is a bipartisan consensus at the federal level to retain legal bans.  There is no obvious reason for AEMO/CSIRO to be costing SMRs (or nuclear power more generally) at this stage.

In their Jan. 2021 submission, Heard / BNW promote the report by the Economic and Finance Working Group (EFWG) of the Canadian government-industry ‘SMR Roadmap’ initiative.

The Canadian EFWG report gives a wide range of SMR cost estimates ‒ all but the lowest of the cost estimates suggest that SMRs would be uneconomic in Australia (e.g. the Minerals Council of Australia has said that costs would need to be A$60/MWh or less to be competitive).

The lowest estimates in the Canadian EFWG report assume near-term deployment from a standing start (with no-one offering to risk billions of dollars to build demonstration reactors), plus extraordinary learning rates in an industry notorious for its negative learning rates.

Dr. Ziggy Switkowski noted in his evidence to the federal nuclear inquiry that “nuclear power has got more expensive, rather than less expensive”. Yet the EFWG paper takes a made-up, ridiculously-high learning rate and subjects SMR cost estimates to eight ‘cumulative doublings’ based on the learning rate.

That is creative accounting and one can only wonder why Ben Heard and Bright New World would present it as a credible estimate. One possible answer is nuclear industry funding of Bright New World, and Heard’s role as an adviser to wannabe SMR developer Terrestrial Energy. The Heard / BNW submission ought to declare those interests but fails to do so.

Here are the first-of-a-kind (FOAK) SMR cost estimates from the EFWG paper:

300-megawatt (MW) on-grid SMR:    C$162.67 / MWh

125-MW off-grid heavy industry:       C$178.01 / MWh

20-MW off-grid remote mining:         C$344.62 / MWh

3-MW off-grid remote community:    C$894.05 / MWh

In Australian dollars, the range is A$167 to A$914 / MWh. The Minerals Council of Australia says that SMRs would need to produce power at A$60/MWh to be competitive … almost three times lower than the lowest of the Canadian FOAK estimates.

The government and industry members on the Canadian EFWG are in no doubt that SMRs won’t be built without public subsidies:

“The federal and provincial governments should, in partnership with industry, investigate ways to best risk-share through policy mechanisms to reduce the cost of capital. This is especially true for the first units deployed, which would likely have a substantially higher cost of capital than a commercially mature SMR.”

The EFWG paper used a range of estimates from the literature and vendors. It notes problems with its inputs, such as the fact that many of the vendor estimates have not been independently vetted, and “the wide variation in costs provided by expert analysts”. Thus, the EFWG qualifies its findings by noting that “actual costs could be higher or lower depending on a number of eventualities”.

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Small modular reactor rhetoric hits a hurdle

Heard has been repeatedly writing and talking about ‘the real cost of SMRs’ but insists that the real costs of SMRs — i.e. data on actual SMR construction projects, showing a familiar pattern of massive cost escalations — should be excluded from the discussion about the real cost of SMRs. Beyond ridiculous.

Small modular reactor rhetoric hits a hurdle

Jim Green, 23 June 2020, RenewEconomy

https://reneweconomy.com.au/small-modular-reactor-rhetoric-hits-a-hurdle-62196/

Obviously, the starting point for any serious discussion about SMR costs would be the cost of operational SMRs ‒ ignored by CSIRO/AEMO and by lobbyists such as BNW.

There is just one operational SMR, Russia’s floating plant. Its estimated cost is US$740 million for a 70 MW plant. That equates to A$15,200 per kW ‒ similar to the CSIRO/AEMO estimate of A$16,304 per kW. Over the course of construction, the cost quadrupled and a 2016 OECD Nuclear Energy Agency report said that electricity produced by the Russian floating plant is expected to cost about US$200 (A$288) per megawatt-hour (MWh) with the high cost due to large staffing requirements, high fuel costs, and resources required to maintain the barge and coastal infrastructure.

Figures on costs of SMRs under construction should also be considered ‒ they are far more useful than the estimates of vendors and lobbyists, which invariably prove to be highly optimistic.

The World Nuclear Association states that the cost of China’s high-temperature gas-cooled SMR (HTGR) is US$6,000 (A$8,600) per kW. Costs are reported to have nearly doubled, with increases arising from higher material and component costs, increases in labour costs, and increased costs associated with project delays.

The CAREM SMR under construction in Argentina illustrates the gap between SMR rhetoric and reality. In 2004, when the reactor was in the planning stage, Argentina’s Bariloche Atomic Center estimated an overnight cost of USS$1,000 per kW for an integrated 300-MW plant (while acknowledging that to achieve such a cost would be a “very difficult task”). When construction began in 2014, the cost estimate was US$15,400 per kW (US$446 million / 29 MW). By April 2017, the cost estimate had increased US$21,900 (A$31,500) per kW (US$700 million / 32 MW).

To the best of my knowledge, no other figures on SMR construction costs are publicly available. So the figures are:

A$15,200 per kW for Russia’s light-water floating SMR

A$8,600 per kW for China’s HTGR

A$31,500 per kW for Argentina’s light-water SMR

The average of those figures is A$18,400 per kW, which is higher than the CSIRO/AEMO figure of A$16,304 per kW and double BNW’s estimate of A$9,132 per kW.

The CSIRO/AEMO report says that while there are SMRs under construction or nearing completion, “public cost data has not emerged from these early stage developments.” That simply isn’t true.

BNW’s imaginary reactor

BNW objects to CSIRO/AEMO basing their SMR cost estimate on a “hypothetical reactor”. But BNW does exactly the same, ignoring real-world cost estimates for SMRs under construction or in operation. BNW starts with the estimate of US company NuScale Power, which hopes to build SMRs but hasn’t yet begun construction of a single prototype. BNW adds a 50% ‘loading’ in recognition of past examples of nuclear reactor cost overruns. Thus BNW’s estimate for SMR construction costs is A$9,132 per kW.

Two big problems: NuScale’s cost estimate is bollocks, and BNW’s proposed 50% loading doesn’t fit the recent pattern of nuclear costs increasing by far greater amounts.

NuScale’s construction cost estimate of US$4,200 per kW is implausible. It is far lower than Lazard’s latest estimate of US$6,900-12,200 per kW for large reactors and far lower than the lowest estimate (US$12,300 per kW) of the cost of the two Vogtle AP1000 reactors under construction in Georgia (the only reactors under construction in the US). NuScale’s estimate (per kW) is just one-third of the cost of the Vogtle plant ‒ despite the unavoidable diseconomies of scale with SMRs and despite the fact that independent assessments conclude that SMRs will be more expensive to build (per kW) than large reactors.

Further, modular factory-line production techniques were trialled with the twin AP1000 Westinghouse reactor project in South Carolina ‒ a project that was abandoned in 2017 after the expenditure of at least US$9 billion, bankrupting Westinghouse.

Lazard estimates a levelised cost of US$118-192 per MWh for electricity from large nuclear plants. NuScale estimates a cost of US$65 per MWh for power from its first plant. Thus NuScale claims that its electricity will be 2-3 times cheaper than that from large nuclear plants, which is implausible. And even if NuScale achieved its cost estimate, it would still be higher than Lazard’s figures for wind power (US$28-54) and utility-scale solar (US$32-44).

BNW claims that the CSIRO/AEMO levelised cost estimate of A$258-338 per MWh for SMRs is an “extreme overestimate”. But an analysis by WSP / Parsons Brinckerhoff, prepared for the SA Nuclear Fuel Cycle Royal Commission, estimated a cost of A$225 per MWh for a reactor based on the NuScale design, which is far closer to the CSIRO/AEMO estimate than it is to BNW’s estimate of A$123-128 per MWh with the potential to fall as low as A$60.

Cost overruns

BNW proposes adding a 50% ‘loading’ to NuScale’s cost estimate in recognition of past examples of reactor cost overruns, and claims that it is basing its calculations on “a first-of-a-kind vendor estimate [NuScale’s] with the maximum uncertainly associated with the Class of the estimate.” Huh? The general pattern is that early vendor estimates underestimate true costs by an order of magnitude, while estimates around the time of initial construction underestimate true costs by a factor of 2-4.

Here are some recent examples of vastly greater cost increases than BNW allows for:

* The estimated cost of the HTGR under construction in China has nearly doubled.

* The cost of Russia’s floating SMR quadrupled.

* The estimated cost of Argentina’s SMR has increased 22-fold above early, speculative estimates and the cost increased by 66% from 2014, when construction began, to 2017.

* The cost estimate for the Vogtle project in the US state of Georgia (two AP1000 reactors) has doubled to more than US$13.5 billion per reactor and will increase further. In 2006, Westinghouse said it could build an AP1000 reactor for as little as US1.4 billion ‒ 10 times lower than the current estimate for Vogtle.

* The estimated combined cost of the two EPR reactors under construction in the UK, including finance costs, is £26.7 billion (the EU’s 2014 estimate of £24.5 billion plus a £2.2 billion increase announced in July 2017). In the mid-2000s, the estimated construction cost for one EPR reactor in the UK was £2 billion, almost seven times lower than the current estimate.

* The estimated cost of about €12.4 billion for the only reactor under construction in France is 3.8 times greater than the original €3.3 billion estimate.

* The estimated cost of about €11 billion for the only reactor under construction in Finland is 3.7 times greater than the original €3 billion estimate.

Timelines

BNW notes that timelines for deployment and construction are “extremely material” in terms of the application of learning rates to capital expenditure. BNW objected to the previous CSIRO/AEMO estimate of five years for construction of an SMR and proposed a “more probable” three-year estimate as well as an assumption that NuScale’s first reactor will begin generating power in 2026 even though construction has not yet begun.

For reasons unexplained, CSIRO/AEMO also assume a three-year construction period in their latest report, and for reasons unexplained the operating life of an SMR is halved from 60 years to 30 years.

None of the real-world evidence supports the arguments about construction timelines:

* The construction period for the only operational SMR, Russia’s floating plant, was 12.5 years.

* Argentina’s CAREM SMR was conceived in the 1980s, construction began in 2014, the 2017 start-up date was missed and subsequent start-up dates were missed. If the current schedule for a 2023 start-up is met it will be a nine-year construction project rather than the three years proposed by CSIRO/AEMO and BNW for construction of an SMR. Last year, work on the CAREM SMR was suspended, with Techint Engineering & Construction asking Argentina’s National Atomic Energy Commission to take urgent measures to mitigate the project’s serious financial breakdown. In April 2020, Argentina’s energy minister announced that work on CAREM would resume.

* Construction of China’s HTGR SMR began in 2012, the 2017 start-up date was missed, and if the targeted late-2020 start-up is met it will be an eight-year construction project.

* NuScale Power has been trying to progress its SMR ambitions for over a decade and hasn’t yet begun construction of a single prototype reactor.

* The two large reactors under construction in the US are 5.5 years behind schedule and those under construction in France and Finland are 10 years behind schedule.

* In 2007, EDF boasted that Britons would be using electricity from an EPR reactor at Hinkley Point to cook their Christmas turkeys in December 2017 – but construction didn’t even begin until December 2018.

Learning rates

In response to relentless attacks from far-right politicians and lobby groups such as BNW, the latest CSIRO/AEMO GenCost report makes the heroic assumption that SMR costs will fall from A$16,304 per kW to as little as A$7,140 per kW in 2030, with the levelised cost anywhere between A$129 and A$336 per MWh. The report states that SMRs were assigned a “higher learning rate (more consistent with an emerging technology) rather than being included in a broad nuclear category, with a low learning rate consistent with more mature large scale nuclear.”

But there’s no empirical basis, nor any logical basis, for the learning rate assumed in the report. The cost reduction assumes that large numbers of SMRs will be built, and that costs will come down as efficiencies are found, production capacity is scaled up, etc.

Large numbers of SMRs being built? Not according to expert opinion. A 2017 Lloyd’s Register report was based on the insights of almost 600 professionals and experts from utilities, distributors, operators and equipment manufacturers, who predicted that SMRs have a “low likelihood of eventual take-up, and will have a minimal impact when they do arrive”. A 2014 report produced by Nuclear Energy Insider, drawing on interviews with more than 50 “leading specialists and decision makers”, noted a “pervasive sense of pessimism” about the future of SMRs. Last year, the North American Project Director for Nuclear Energy Insider said that there “is unprecedented growth in companies proposing design alternatives for the future of nuclear, but precious little progress in terms of market-ready solutions.”

Will costs come down in the unlikely event that SMRs are built in significant numbers? For large nuclear reactors, the experience has been either a very slow learning rate with modest cost decreases, or a negative learning rate.

If everything went astonishingly well for SMRs, it would take several rounds of learning to drastically cut costs to A$7,140 per kW. Several rounds of SMR construction by 2030, as assumed in the most optimistic scenario in the CSIRO/AEMO report? Obviously not. The report notes that it would take many years to achieve economies, but then ignores its own advice:

“Constructing first-of-a-kind plant includes additional unforeseen costs associated with lack of experience in completing such projects on budget. SMR will not only be subject to first-of-a-kind costs in Australia but also the general engineering principle that building plant smaller leads to higher costs. SMRs may be able to overcome the scale problem by keeping the design of reactors constant and producing them in a series. This potential to modularise the technology is likely another source of lower cost estimates. However, even in the scenario where the industry reaches a scale where small modular reactors can be produced in series, this will take many years to achieve and therefore is not relevant to estimates of current costs (using our definition).”

Even with heroic assumptions resulting in CSIRO/AEMO’s low-cost estimate of A$129 per MWh for SMRs in 2030, the cost is still far higher than the low-cost estimates for wind with two hours of battery storage (A$64), wind with six hours of pumped hydro storage (A$86), solar PV with two hours of battery storage (A$52) or solar PV with six hours of pumped hydro storage (A$84). And the CSIRO/AEMO high-cost estimate for SMRs in 2030 ($336 per MWh) is more than double the high estimates for solar PV or wind with 2-6 hours of storage (A$90-151).

Reality bats last

The economic claims of SMR enthusiasts are sharply contradicted by real-world data. And their propaganda campaign simply isn’t working ‒ government funding and private-sector funding is pitiful when measured against the investments required to build SMR prototypes let alone fleets of SMRs and the infrastructure that would allow for mass production of SMR components.

Wherever you look, there’s nothing to justify the hype of SMR enthusiasts. Argentina’s stalled SMR program is a joke. Plans for 18 additional HTGRs at the same site as the demonstration plant in China have been “dropped” according to the World Nuclear Association. Russia planned to have seven floating nuclear power plants by 2015, but only recently began operation of its first plant. South Korea won’t build any of its domestically-designed SMART SMRs in South Korea ‒ “this is not practical or economic” according to the World Nuclear Association ‒ and plans to establish an export market for SMART SMRs depend on a wing and a prayer … and on Saudi oil money which is currently in short supply.

‘Reality bats last’, nuclear advocate Barry Brook used to say a decade ago when a nuclear ‘renaissance’ was in full-swing. The reality is that the renaissance was short-lived, and global nuclear capacity fell by 0.6 gigawatts last year while renewable capacity increased by a record 201 gigawatts.

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Ben Heard’s “outright lie”, massive hypocrisy and extreme censorship

June 2020 ‒ Long story short … RenewEconomy published a FoE article about small modular reactor economics. Ben Heard demanded a right of reply. RenewEconomy told him that anyone is welcome to submit a contribution and it would be reviewed. Heard said he had been denied a reply. That was an “outright lie” according to the RenewEconomy editor. Heard’s response to the FoE article was published on his Bright New World website. He denied me (Jim Green) a right of reply (!) so I replied in the comments section and my reply was deleted by Heard (!) and my comment alerting readers to a substantive response on this FoE webpage was not published!

Here are the comments censored by Heard.

Ben Heard: “Then find the cost estimates, add them up and divide it by three, and float that as the cost of SMR nuclear that will inform decision-making in Australia.”

Response: Yes, real-world SMR construction cost data is limited but it is a better guide than self-serving industry claims. Also relevant are real-world data about cost overruns including the huge overruns with SMR projects and the A$10+ billion-dollar overruns with large reactors in western Europe and the US.

Ben Heard: “If Friends of the Earth thinks +50% is too low, they could have stated their reasoning, made their case (succinctly, if at all possible) and proposed their loading.”

Response: The general recent pattern is that EARLY vendor estimates underestimate true costs by an order of magnitude (see my article – citing AP1000s, EPRs, and Argentina’s SMR as examples), while estimates around the time of initial construction underestimate true costs by a factor of 2-4 (numerous examples cited in my article).

So a 100% loading above NuScale’s estimate would be the minimum starting point.

Note that the WSP / Parsons Brinckerhoff LCOE estimate for a NuScale SMR (A$225 or ~US$150 per MWh) is 2.5 times greater than NuScale’s estimate, and it is roughly twice the BNW estimate.

Ben Heard: “We went with vendor first-of-a-kind estimate +50%, consistent with this being a Class 4 cost estimate, independently verified, based on well-known and understood technology …”

Response: None of that changes the fact that numerous recent real-world reactor projects have been subject to vastly greater cost overruns.

Ben Heard: “We look forward to the author securing employment with a major accounting firm and explaining this [that NuScale’s cost estimate is bollocks] the next time the estimates are verified.”

Response: Heard himself adds a 50% loading. WSP / Parsons Brinckerhoff’s LCOE estimate is 2.5 times greater than NuScale’s estimate. No-one believes NuScale’s estimate.

Ben Heard: “Friends of the Earth didn’t understand ‘Class 4 estimate’. It is a defined term, established for estimates of engineer/procure/construct in civil projects. This is clearly described in our submission. We doubt they read it.”

Response: Yes, I do understand the term and have read your various articles and submissions – and referenced three of them at the top of my article. The real-world evidence, for both small and large reactors, demonstrates that Class 4 estimates need a rethink, especially the demonstrably false assertion (or assumption) that a 50% loading will cover any conceivable overruns.

Ben Heard: “‘NuScale’s estimate (per kW) is just one-third of the cost of the Vogtle plant’. Drawing comparison with large nuclear units, the very paradigm SMR is devised to disrupt, while not entirely irrelevant, is pretty dubious.”

Response: The relevance is that there is a solid body of expert opinion that construction costs per kW and LCOE will be greater for SMRs compared to large reactors. For example a 2015 report by the IEA and the OECD Nuclear Energy Agency predicts that costs per MWh for SMRs will typically be 50−100% higher than for current large reactors, and a UK report estimated a 30% cost increase per MWh.

Ben Heard: “‘BNW objected to the previous CSIRO/AEMO estimate of five years for construction of an SMR and proposed a “more probable” three-year estimate’. We neither objected, nor proposed a ‘more probable’ 3 years, nor even used the words ‘more probable’!”

Response: From the cited BNW paper: “No SMR developer is working on the basis of 5-year construction. This would also raise the LCOE considerably compared with a more probable 3 three years on the basis of what those bringing SMR to market are actually devising.”

As noted in my article, SMR projects typically take about a decade from start of construction to completion or near-completion (8 to 12.5 years).

Ben Heard: “‘100% agreed with Friends of the Earth [that there’s no empirical basis, nor any logical basis, for the learning rate assumed in the GenCost report]. There remains lack of transparency and replicability as regards the SMR learning rates applied in GenCost.”

Response: So do the maths … what is a reasonable learning rate based on the 12.5 year Russian floating plant?

What is a reasonable learning rate based on the Argentinian SMR, conceived in the 1980s, with construction of the first prototype currently stalled due to the project’s ‘serious financial breakdown’?

What is a reasonable learning rate based on mPower, abandoned after the expenditure of US$500 million and before construction of a first prototype began?

What is the learning rate for fast neutron reactors? That question could be answered based on 70 years of mostly-failed projects and would usefully inform current SMR / Gen 4 debates. My guess is that the FNR learning rate is negative.

What are the learning rates for large light water reactors? Well, we can answer that question, and I did so in my article: a very slow learning rate with modest cost decreases, or a negative learning rate.

Heard / Bright New World claims about SMR learning rates are 100% speculative.

Ben Heard: “‘Even with heroic assumptions resulting in CSIRO/AEMO’s low-cost estimate of A$129 per MWh…’. Friends of the Earth has studiously avoided all of the other necessary corrections identified by Bright New World, in particular operating costs and capacity factor, which bring this right down to more like $100/MWh.”

We have considered all the real-world data and plenty more besides. That research is synthesised in the RenewEconomy article and there’s loads more info in submissions such as this:

https://www.parliament.vic.gov.au/images/stories/committees/SCEP/Inquiry_into_Nuclear_Prohibition_Inquiry_/Submissions/S22_-_Friends_of_the_Earth_Australia.pdf

Our conclusions are shared by informed expert opinion (cited in the submission), e.g. the pro-nuclear US academic researchers who concluded that for SMRs to make a significant contribution to US energy supply, “several hundred billion dollars of direct and indirect subsidies would be needed to support their development and deployment over the next several decades”.

Ben Heard: “‘NuScale Power…hasn’t yet begun construction of a single prototype’. The reference case technology uses the most commercially established fuel cycle in the world, with standard fuel.”

Response: mPower was based on conventional light water technology, but still went bust after the expenditure of US$500 million. Rolls-Royce is proposing light water technology for SMRs in the UK but won’t proceed unless and until a long list of demands are met and hefty subsidies granted.

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Ben Heard promoting floating nuclear power plants that will be used to exploit Arctic fossil fuel reserves!

2018 – Ben Heard at his corporate-funded greenwashing worst – actively promoting Russian Rosatom’s floating nuclear power plant that will be used to exploit Arctic fossil fuel reserves … even as he claims to be an environmentalist and claims to be concerned about climate change!

Heard appears to be collaborating with Rosatom in this work … is Rosatom one of the secret corporate donors to Heard’s fake environment group ‘Bright New World’?

State news agency Sputnik News, 2017: “Last week, officials from over a dozen countries gathered in Arkhangelsk, Russia for the international forum ‘The Arctic: Territory of Dialogue’. Among the forum’s senior participants was Russian nuclear energy giant Rosatom. Officials from the company and from the government previewed Rosatom’s role in the new wave of intensive Arctic development. Speaking at the forum, Rosatom CEO Aleksei Lihachev emphasized that the company has a wide array of projects and proposals in the areas of transport, energy, mining, and environmental protection, many of them taken into account by the government and by companies operating in the region. For example, Rosatom’s nuclear icebreakers are actively assisting in the creation of the so-called Northern Sea Route, the new northern shipping route running along the Russian Arctic coast from the Kara Sea to the Bering Strait. The Bilibino Nuclear Power Plant, meanwhile, provides power to the Arctic territories.”

More information:

https://sputniknews.com/russia/201704021052211048-rosatom-arctic-development-prospects/

www.greenpeace.org/international/story/16277/5-reasons-why-a-floating-nuclear-power-plant-in-the-arctic-is-a-terrible-idea/

www.greenpeace.org/international/press-release/16562/floating-nuclear-power-plant-reaches-arctic-greenpeace-demands-safety-controls/

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New nuclear push digs deep into vault of alternative facts

In 2017, Heard facilitated an Australian speaking tour by the US Breakthrough Institute. RenewEconomy published a critique of the Breakthrough Institute’s Gen 4 / SMR silliness.

New nuclear push digs deep into vault of alternative facts

Jim Green, 31 May 2017, RenewEconomy

http://reneweconomy.com.au/new-nuclear-push-digs-deep-vault-alternative-facts-90295/

Australia’s nuclear energy debate reaches Peak Idiocy this week with the visit of Jessica Lovering from the U.S. Breakthrough Institute. Lovering has and will be speaking at public events alongside Australian university student Ben Heard.

Both the Breakthrough Institute and Heard’s ‘Bright New World’ present themselves as progressive environment groups but they are single-issue, pro-nuclear lobby groups with little interest in broader environmental issues. Australia’s environment groups ‒ i.e. real environment groups ‒ are united in our opposition to nuclear power.

Real environment groups celebrate the spectacular growth of renewables and the spectacular cost reductions whereas pro-nuclear lobby groups, including Lovering’s Breakthrough Institute and Heard’s Bright New World, are on a never-ending campaign against renewables. Global renewable energy capacity has doubled over the past decade and current renewable capacity of 2,006 gigawatts (GW) is 5.1 times greater than nuclear power capacity of 392 GW (including idle reactors in Japan). Actual electricity generation from renewables (23.5% of global generation) is more than double that from nuclear power (10.7%) and the gap is widening every day.

Lovering’s opinion piece in The Australian on Monday fails to note that her speaking trip is sponsored by the Minerals Council of Australia. Likewise, Heard has also been paid as a uranium industry consultant.

Lovering brings a suitcase full of alternative facts to Australia. The most egregious is that the nuclear industry is in the middle of some sort of renaissance. Even her own institute contradicts this, bleating about nuclear power’s “rapidly accelerating crisis“, a “crisis that threatens the death of nuclear energy in the West“, “the crisis that the nuclear industry is presently facing in developed countries“, the “ashes of today’s dying industry”, and noting that “the industry is on life support in the United States and other developed economies”

As discussed in RenewEconomy in April, the industry is definitely in crisis. US nuclear giant Westinghouse has filed for bankruptcy protection. Westinghouse’s parent company Toshiba states that there is “substantial doubt” about Toshiba’s “ability to continue as a going concern”. These industry giants have been brought to their knees by cost overruns ‒ estimated at US$13 billion ‒ building four power reactors in the U.S.

Likewise, French nuclear utilities EDF and Areva survive only because of repeated, multi-billion-dollar bailouts by the French government. The combined cost overruns for two French EPR reactors under construction in France and Finland amount to at least US$13.5 billion. South Korea is now looking to exit the industry.

As the Breakthrough Institute’s Michael Shellenberger wrote in February:

“Nuclear energy is, simply, in a rapidly accelerating crisis:

• Demand for nuclear energy globally is low, and the new reactors being built may not keep up with the closure of nuclear plants around the world. Half of all U.S. nuclear plants are at risk of closure over the next 13 years.
• Japan has only opened two of its 42 shuttered nuclear reactors, six years after Fukushima. Most experts estimated it would have two-thirds open by now. The reason is simple: low public acceptance.
• While some still see India as a sure-thing for nuclear, the nation has not resolved key obstacles to building new plants, and is likely to add just 16 GW of nuclear by 2030, not the 63 GW that was anticipated.
• Vietnam had worked patiently for 20 years to build public support for a major nuclear build-out before abruptly scrapping those plans in response to rising public fears and costs last year. Vietnam now intends to build coal plants.
• Last month Entergy, a major nuclear operator, announced it was getting out of the nuclear generation business in states where electricity has been de-regulated, including New York where it operates the highly lucrative Indian Point.”

Lovering’s solution to the nuclear power crisis is to sell moonshine. From The Australian on Monday: “Advanced nuclear designs have the capability to be meltdown-proof, using a combination of coolants, fuels, and basic physics. Reactors that are intrinsically safe can also be radically cheaper, especially by making much smaller, modular reactors in factory settings.”

But the only ‘meltdown-proof’ reactors are those that come pre-melted, i.e. concepts based on liquid nuclear fuels. As for WMD proliferation, the UK Royal Society notes: “There is no proliferation proof nuclear fuel cycle. The dual use risk of nuclear materials and technology and in civil and military applications cannot be eliminated.”

As for small modular reactors (SMRs), only a few are under construction: one in Argentina, a twin-reactor floating nuclear power plant in Russia, and three SMRs in China (including two high-temperature gas-cooled reactors). The broad picture for SMRs is much the same as that for fast neutron reactors: lots of hot air, some R&D, but few concrete plans and even fewer concrete pours.

There isn’t the slightest chance that SMRs will fulfil the ambition of making nuclear power “radically cheaper” unless and until a manufacturing supply chain is mass producing SMRs for a mass market ‒ and even then, it’s doubtful whether the power would be cheaper and it is inconceivable that it would be “radically cheaper”. After all, economies-of-scale have driven the long-term drift towards larger reactors.

As things stand, no country, company or utility has any intention of betting billions on building an SMR supply chain. The prevailing scepticism is evident in a February 2017 Lloyd’s Register report based on “insights and opinions of leaders across the sector” and the views of almost 600 professionals and experts from utilities, distributors, operators and equipment manufacturers. Respondents predicted that SMRs have a “low likelihood of eventual take-up, and will have a minimal impact when they do arrive”.

In the absence of a mass supply chain, SMRs will be expensive curiosities. The construction cost of Argentina’s 25-megawatt CAREM reactor is estimated at US$446 million, which equates to a whopping US$17.8 billion/GW. Estimated construction costs for the Russian floating plant have increased more than four-fold and now equate to over US$10 billion / GW.

Ben Heard thinks Australia should take the lead building his preferred version of Generation IV fast neutron reactors. So Australia ‒ a country with virtually no relevant expertise and even less experience ‒ should take the lead developing Generation IV reactors despite the fact that global nuclear industry giants face crippling debts and possible bankruptcy due to cost overruns building a handful of conventional reactors?

That proposition is beyond stupid and it was even rejected by the (stridently pro-nuclear) SA Nuclear Fuel Cycle Royal Commission last year. The Royal Commission said: “[A]dvanced fast reactors and other innovative reactor designs are unlikely to be feasible or viable in the foreseeable future. The development of such a first-of-a-kind project in South Australia would have high commercial and technical risk. Although prototype and demonstration reactors are operating, there is no licensed, commercially proven design. Development to that point would require substantial capital investment. Moreover, electricity generated from such reactors has not been demonstrated to be cost competitive with current light water reactor designs.”

Lovering offers one more alternative fact ‒ the claim that South Australia could accrue A$6 billion in annual economic benefits by importing vast amounts of nuclear waste from around the world.

That claim was tested by the Nuclear Economics Consulting Group, commissioned by a Joint Select Committee of the SA Parliament. The NECG report notes that the $6 billion claim, presented in the SA Nuclear Fuel Cycle Royal Commission’s 2016 report, fails to consider some important issues which “have significant serious potential to adversely impact the project and its commercial outcomes”; that assumptions about price are “overly optimistic” in which case “project profitability is seriously at risk”; that the 25% cost contingency for delays and blowouts is likely to be a significant underestimate; and that the assumption the project would capture 50% of the available market had “little support or justification”.

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Australia Institute critique of Ben Heard’s idiotic waste-to-fuel Generation IV nuclear fantasies

February 2016: An important new report from The Australia Institute shows that a proposal to establish a global nuclear waste industry in South Australia would fail to secure 90% of the imported waste, leaving an expensive and risky legacy for the state. Predictably, Ben Heard responded with an abusive, defamatory attack, saying the Australia Institute “seeks to deliberately mislead, misrepresent and misdirect. ”

In a nutshell, Heard wants South Australia to import 60,000 tonnes of high-level nuclear waste (spent fuel). 4,000 tonnes would be converted to fuel for Generation IV reactors. Or perhaps it won’t, since those Generation IV reactors are a figment of his imagination. He has no idea about the remaining 56,000 tonnes. He claims that this half-baked, hare-brained nonsense “offers a solution to the spent fuel problem”.

See also a separate Australia Institute report, ‘Digging for Answers’, on the economics of plans to import thousands of tonnes of spent fuel / high-level nuclear waste.

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Ben Heard’s epic fail … but will he have the decency to repay the $55,593?

The 2015/16 SA Nuclear Fuel Cycle Royal Commission was led by Kevin Scarce, who’s only prior contribution to nuclear debates was to uncritically parrot the nuclear industry’s lies. A majority of the members of the ‘Expert Advisory Committee’ appointed by Scarce were strident nuclear advocates. Nuclear lobbyists – led by Ben Heard – united behind a plan to import spent nuclear fuel and to build Gen IV ‘fast reactors’, specifically a non-existent reactor type called ‘integral fast reactors’.

To its credit, the Royal Commission flatly rejected the Gen IV fast reactor propaganda peddled by Heard and others. This is what the Royal Commission says in its February 2016 interim report: “fast reactors or reactors with other innovative designs are unlikely to be feasible or viable in South Australia in the foreseeable future. No licensed and commercially proven design is currently operating. Development to that point would require substantial capital investment. Moreover, the electricity generated has not been demonstrated to be cost-competitive with current light water reactor designs.”

The Royal Commission said that nuclear power would not be economically viable in South Australia for the foreseeable future and it added: “If nuclear power were to be developed in South Australia, a proven design should be used that has been constructed elsewhere, preferably on multiple occasions …”

Heard’s consultancy was paid $55,593 by the SA government’s Economic Development Board and he came up with a crackpot idea based on non-existent Generation IV reactors which was completely rejected by the stridently pro-nuclear Royal Commission! Heard should have the decency to repay the $55,593 to the people of South Australia, so it can be used for schools, hospitals, public transport, medical research, civic amenities, extending the Glenelg tram all the way to the end of the jetty, etc.

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Pyroprocessing flops

The USA has infinitely more nuclear expertise and experience than Australia yet Westinghouse filed for bankruptcy due to crippling debts building CONVENTIONAL nuclear power plants. Two of the reactors were cancelled after A$13 BILLION had been spent on the project (V.C. Summer project, South Carolina).

Ben Heard’s bright idea: Australia – a country with infinitely less nuclear expertise and experience – should take the lead building RADICAL GENERATION-4 reactors. What could possibly go wrong?!

As mentioned elsewhere, the stridently pro-nuclear SA Royal Commission completely rejected Heard’s idiotic idea and Heard refused to repay the $55,000 of taxpayers’ money he was given to concoct his Gen 4 fantasy.

Another set of problems is discussed here: the Gen 4 reactors Heard wants you to pay for rely on pyroprocessing … a failed technology. Dr Ed Lyman explains below – Dr Lyman is a physicist whereas Ben Heard is a uni student with a background in occupational therapy. (Note that the sting is in the tail of Dr Lyman’s article: “Everyone with an interest in pyroprocessing should reassess their views given the real-world problems experienced in implementing the technology over the last 20 years at INL. They should also note that the variant of the process being used to treat the EBR-II spent fuel is less complex than the process that would be needed to extract plutonium and other actinides to produce fresh fuel for fast reactors. In other words, the technology is a long way from being demonstrated as a practical approach for electricity production.”)

Here’s a summary of Dr Lyman’s research plus links to short and long versions of his research:

Pyroprocessing: the integral fast reactor waste fiasco

In theory, integral fast reactors (IFRs) would gobble up nuclear waste and convert it into low-carbon electricity. In practice, the IFR R&D program in Idaho has left a legacy of troublesome waste. This saga is detailed in a recent article¹ and a longer report² by the Union of Concerned Scientists’ senior scientist Ed Lyman.

Lyman notes that the IFR concept “has attracted numerous staunch advocates” but their “interest has been driven largely by idealized studies on paper and not by facts derived from actual experience.”¹ He discusses the IFR prototype built at Idaho ‒ the Experimental Breeder Reactor-II (EBR-II), which ceased operation in 1994 ‒ and subsequent efforts by the Department of Energy (DOE) to treat 26 metric tons of “sodium-bonded” metallic spent fuel from the EBR-II reactor with pyroprocessing, ostensibly to convert the waste to forms that would be safer for disposal in a geological repository. A secondary goal was to demonstrate the viability of pyroprocessing ‒ but the program has instead demonstrated the serious shortcomings of this technology.

Lyman writes:¹

“Pyroprocessing is a form of spent fuel reprocessing that dissolves metal-based spent fuel in a molten salt bath (as distinguished from conventional reprocessing, which dissolves spent fuel in water-based acid solutions). Understandably, given all its problems, DOE has been reluctant to release public information on this program, which has largely operated under the radar since 2000.

“The FOIA [Freedom of Information Act] documents we obtained have revealed yet another DOE tale of vast sums of public money being wasted on an unproven technology that has fallen far short of the unrealistic projections that DOE used to sell the project to Congress, the state of Idaho and the public. However, it is not too late to pull the plug on this program, and potentially save taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars. …

“Pyroprocessing was billed as a simpler, cheaper and more compact alternative to the conventional aqueous reprocessing plants that have been operated in France, the United Kingdom, Japan and other countries.

“Although DOE shut down the EBR-II in 1994 (the reactor part of the IFR program), it allowed work at the pyroprocessing facility to proceed. It justified this by asserting that the leftover spent fuel from the EBR-II could not be directly disposed of in the planned Yucca Mountain repository because of the potential safety issues associated with presence of metallic sodium in the spent fuel elements, which was used to “bond” the fuel to the metallic cladding that encased it. (Metallic sodium reacts violently with water and air.)

“Pyroprocessing would separate the sodium from other spent fuel constituents and neutralize it. DOE decided in 2000 to use pyroprocessing for the entire inventory of leftover EBR-II spent fuel – both “driver” and “blanket” fuel – even though it acknowledged that there were simpler methods to remove the sodium from the lightly irradiated blanket fuel, which constituted nearly 90% of the inventory.

“However, as the FOIA documents reveal in detail, the pyroprocessing technology simply has not worked well and has fallen far short of initial predictions. Although DOE initially claimed that the entire inventory would be processed by 2007, as of the end of Fiscal Year 2016, only about 15% of the roughly 26 metric tons of spent fuel had been processed. Over $210 million has been spent, at an average cost of over $60,000 per kilogram of fuel treated. At this rate, it will take until the end of the century to complete pyroprocessing of the entire inventory, at an additional cost of over $1 billion.

“But even that assumes, unrealistically, that the equipment will continue to be usable for this extended time period. Moreover, there is a significant fraction of spent fuel in storage that has degraded and may not be a candidate for pyroprocessing in any event. …

“What exactly is the pyroprocessing of this fuel accomplishing? Instead of making management and disposal of the spent fuel simpler and safer, it has created an even bigger mess. …

“[P]yroprocessing has taken one potentially difficult form of nuclear waste and converted it into multiple challenging forms of nuclear waste. DOE has spent hundreds of millions of dollars only to magnify, rather than simplify, the waste problem. This is especially outrageous in light of other FOIA documents that indicate that DOE never definitively concluded that the sodium-bonded spent fuel was unsafe to directly dispose of in the first place. But it insisted on pursuing pyroprocessing rather than conducting studies that might have shown it was unnecessary.

“Everyone with an interest in pyroprocessing should reassess their views given the real-world problems experienced in implementing the technology over the last 20 years at INL. They should also note that the variant of the process being used to treat the EBR-II spent fuel is less complex than the process that would be needed to extract plutonium and other actinides to produce fresh fuel for fast reactors. In other words, the technology is a long way from being demonstrated as a practical approach for electricity production.”

References:

1. Ed Lyman / Union of Concerned Scientists, 12 Aug 2017, ‘The Pyroprocessing Files’, http://allthingsnuclear.org/elyman/the-pyroprocessing-files
2. Edwin Lyman, 2017, ‘External Assessment of the U.S. Sodium-Bonded Spent Fuel Treatment Program’, https://s3.amazonaws.com/ucs-documents/nuclear-power/Pyroprocessing/IAEA-CN-245-492%2Blyman%2Bfinal.pdf

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#followthemoney

Really important for South Australians and others to expose paid nuclear lobbyist Ben Heard and his fake environment group ‘Bright New World’:

• Heard’s fake ‘environment’ group ‘Bright New World’ accepts secret corporate donations. In his words, he “will respect the company’s right to privacy”! On what principle is that ‘right’ based, Ben?
• Heard’s last gig was for the coal industry-funded, viciously racist Minerals Council of Australia.
• Before that, he did consulting work for General Atomics ‒ a US corporation which is up to its neck in drone warfare and thus in the slaughter of innocents.
• Heard rarely disclosed his General Atomics funding when spruiking for nukes … disclosure wasn’t his strong point then, and it isn’t now (see above re secret corporate donations).
• Heard is possibly the first and hopefully the last person to ask for donations when speaking to small, unfunded community groups.
• This is what the stridently pro-nuclear South Australian Royal Commission said about Heard’s Gen IV nuclear power plans: “[A]dvanced fast reactors and other innovative reactor designs are unlikely to be feasible or viable in the foreseeable future. The development of such a first-of-a-kind project in South Australia would have high commercial and technical risk. Although prototype and demonstration reactors are operating, there is no licensed, commercially proven design. Development to that point would require substantial capital investment.”
• Heard got a $55,000 government grant to come up with his eccentric Gen IV proposal and, needless to say, he refused to repay one cent of that money. And that neatly sums up Heard’s nuclear lobbying business ‒ lots of money, not much sense, and he can’t even win over the most strident nuclear advocates to his crackpot ideas.

Heard’s response to all this – he says he is “proud” to do consulting work for the Minerals Council and General Atomics, to ask for money from small community groups, etc.

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Does Ben Heard’s fake environment group accept secret corporate donations from the coal industry?

Here is an excerpt from this article: Jim Green, 13 June 2019, ‘Nuclear power exits Australia’s energy debate, enters culture wars’, https://reneweconomy.com.au/nuclear-power-exits-australias-energy-debate-enters-culture-wars-47702/

Of course, support for nuclear power in Australia isn’t exclusively limited to the far-right, although it is heading that way. A tiny number of self-styled ‘pro-nuclear environmentalists’ or ‘ecomodernists’ continue to bang the drum. Ben Heard, for example, continues to voice his support for nuclear power ‒ his advocacy lubricated by secret corporate donations and amplified by the right-wing media and by invitations to any number of nuclear-industry talk-fests.

Heard continues undeterred by the South Australian Nuclear Fuel Cycle Royal Commission’s clear acknowledgement that nuclear power is not economically viable in Australia or by its complete rejection of his ‘next generation’ nuclear fantasies.

But what impact could Heard’s nuclear advocacy possibly have in the current context, with fossil fuel interests fighting to protect their patch and to curb the growth of renewables, and with nuclear power being so exorbitantly expensive that isn’t part of any serious debate about Australia’s energy options? Surely the only effect of nuclear advocacy in the current context is to muddy the debate about transitioning from fossil fuels to renewables and thus to shore up incumbent fossil fuel interests.

Australian economist John Quiggin discussed these issues last year (emphasis added):

“The problem is that nuclear fans like Ben Heard are, in effect, advocates for coal. Their line of argument runs as follows:

(1) A power source with the characteristics of coal-fired electricity (always on) is essential if we are to decarbonise the electricity supply
(2) Renewables can’t meet this need
(3) Nuclear power can

“Hence, we must find a way to support nuclear. The problem is that, on any realistic analysis, there’s no chance of getting a nuclear plant going in Australia before about 2040. So, the nuclear fans end up supporting the Abbott crew saying that we will have to rely on coal until then. And to make this case, it is necessary to ignore or denounce the many options for an all-renewable electricity supply, including concentrated solar power, large-scale battery storage and vehicle-to-grid options. As a result, would-be green advocates of nuclear power end up reinforcing the arguments of the coal lobby. … In practice, support for nuclear power in Australia is support for coal. Tony Abbott understands this. It’s a pity that Ben Heard and others don’t.“

(Also see elsewhere in this webpage: ‘Ben Heard promoting floating nuclear power plants that will be used to exploit Arctic fossil fuel reserves!’)

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Ben Heard’s friends on the far right

An article in an IPA publication … consulting work with the far-right MCA … consulting work for the appalling General Atomics … sympathetic coverage from the Murdoch press and from the AFR’s far-right anti-journalist Aaron Patrick. What to make of Ben Heard’s impressive far-right connections? One explanation is to follow the money (see #followthemoney in this webpage). Another explanation (which doesn’t contradict the first) is offered by Australian economist Prof. John Quiggin:

Not everyone likes the grand bargain

John Quiggin, September 3, 2019, http://blogotariat.com/node/3823006

I’ve been very surprised by the extent to which some commentators on the right have been willing to entertain the idea of a carbon price in return for lifting the ban on nuclear power. I mentioned Aaron Patrick in the Fin yesterday. And today, here’s Adam Creighton at the Oz

Reviving the carbon tax debate is probably anathema for many, but if one were set up correctly, with all the money being returned to taxpayers by way of an annual payment, it would make nuclear power stations more viable and provide a political springboard to abandon the massively inefficient clutter of state and federal renewable energy targets. Carbon dividends for all is a much better sell than a carbon tax on everything

On the other hand, one person from whom I confidently expected unqualified support has jibbed at it. As I said a while back, the proposal should appeal to anyone who seriously believes that nuclear power should be adopted as a response to climate change.

The obvious example, for me at any rate, is Ben Heard. So, I was quite surprised when, in a lengthy Twitter discussion (here’s his feed), he would not endorse a carbon price, or any other specific measure to reduce emissions. Not only that, but he professed greater sympathy for rightwing science deniers than for anti-nuclear environmentalists.

It’s easy enough to guess what is going on here. I imagine Heard started out with genuine concern about the climate, and convinced himself that nuclear power was an essential part of the solution. That entailed arguing that renewables couldn’t do the job, even with storage. At this point, Heard would have got plenty of hostility from environmentalists, and plenty of support from denialists. So, when he’s faced with something like a carbon price (or, for that matter, any effective climate policy) that his new friends will hate (check out the old white male Oz commenters on Creighton’s post), he backs away. I’ve previously seen the same pattern with Barry Brook and (from a different starting point) Ted Trainer.

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Heard’s lobby group ‘Bright New World’ closes down

June 2021: Ben Heard’s ‘Bright New World’ group — which received secret corporate donations from the nuclear industry — is closing down.

Concerted efforts to have state and federal laws banning nuclear power repealed have failed in recent years.

At a guess, corporate donors have given up and will no longer fund Bright New World.

A stocktake of Heard’s 10 years of pro-nuclear, anti-renewables campaigning:

1. Renewables capacity grew by an incredible 1500+ gigawatts worldwide and renewables now account for 29% of global electricity generation. Nuclear generation was stagnant and nuclear’s contribution to global electricity generation fell to 10%. In Heard’s home state of South Australia, renewables have grown to 60% of electricity generation (over 70% as of 2023) and the conservative state government is enthusiastically committed to 100% net renewables by 2030.

2. Heard’s efforts to turn South Australia into the world’s nuclear waste dump were unsuccessful.

3. Heard’s efforts to promote ‘Generation IV’ reactors fell flat on their face. Heard and other nuclear enthusiasts united behind a push for (non-existent) ‘Integral Fast Reactors’ and this is how the SA Nuclear Fuel Cycle Royal Commission responded in its final report: in 2016: “[A]dvanced fast reactors and other innovative reactor designs are unlikely to be feasible or viable in the foreseeable future. The development of such a first-of-a-kind project in South Australia would have high commercial and technical risk. Although prototype and demonstration reactors are operating, there is no licensed, commercially proven design. Development to that point would require substantial capital investment.”

Good riddance to Bright New World. #epicfail

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Ben Heard does consulting work for the far-right, climate-denying Minerals Council of Australia

Minerals Council of Australia makes global top 10 climate policy opponents

Minerals Council of Australia – with deep ties to Morrison government – gets number eight global ranking for groups acting against climate policies.

https://reneweconomy.com.au/minerals-council-of-australia-makes-global-top-10-climate-policy-opponents-57698/

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Ben Heard supports a nuclear waste dump in SA despite the UNANIMOUS opposition of Barngarla Traditional Owners

Shamefully, the federal government refused a request from Barngarla Traditional Owners, native title holders of the area, to be included in a community ballot regarding a proposed national nuclear waste ‘facility’ (dump and store) near Kimba in South Australia. So the Barngarla Determination Aboriginal Corporation (BDAC) engaged an independent agent to conduct a confidential postal ballot.

Not a single Barngarla Traditional Owner voted in favour of the dump. BDAC wrote to Mr. Canavan calling on him to abandon the nuclear dump in light of their unanimous opposition, and stating that BDAC will take whatever steps are necessary to stop the dump being imposed on Barngarla Country against their will.

The SA Labor Party argues that Traditional Owners ought to have a right of veto. Deputy Leader of the Opposition Susan Close says that SA Labor are “utterly opposed to the process”, which she described as “appalling”.

Compare that to the federal government, which wants to push ahead despite unanimous Aboriginal opposition. The government’s mind-set seems not to have advanced from the ‘Aboriginal natives shall not be counted’ clause in the Constitution Act 1900.

So where does ‘progressive ecomodernist’ Ben Heard stand on this? He supports the dump despite unanimous Aboriginal opposition. Sickening and disgusting, but we shouldn’t expect any more from a fake environment group which accepts secret corporate donations from the nuclear industry.

See elsewhere in this webpage:

• Aboriginal First Nations and Australia’s pro-nuclear ‘environmentalists’
• Would you do consulting work for General Atomics?
• Ben Heard parrots the racist lies of the right-wing Liberal Party

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Aboriginal First Nations and Australia’s pro-nuclear ‘environmentalists’

Jim Green, 3 July 2018, Online Opinion, http://onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=19825&page=0

The plan to turn South Australia into the world’s nuclear waste dump has lost momentum since 2016 though it continues to be promoted by some politicians, the Business SA lobby group, and an assortment of individuals and lobbyists including self-styled ‘pro-nuclear environmentalists’ or ‘ecomodernists‘.

In its 2016 report, the SA Nuclear Fuel Cycle Royal Commission established by the state government promoted a plan to import 138,000 tonnes of high-level nuclear waste (about one-third of the world’s total) and 390,000 cubic metres of intermediate-level waste. The state Labor government then spent millions on a state-wide promotional campaign under the guide of consultation.

The government also initiated a Citizens’ Jury process. However two-thirds of the 350-member Citizens’ Jury rejected the waste import proposal “under any circumstances” in their November 2016 report. The Jury’s verdict was non-binding but it took the wind out of the dumpsters’ sails.

A key factor in the Jury’s rejection of the waste import plan was that Aboriginal people had spoken clearly in opposition. The Jury’s report said: “There is a lack of aboriginal consent. We believe that the government should accept that the Elders have said NO and stop ignoring their opinions. The aboriginal people of South Australia (and Australia) continue to be neglected and ignored by all levels of government instead of respected and treated as equals.”

The respect shown by the Citizens’ Jury to Aboriginal Traditional Owners had been conspicuously absent in the debate until then. The SA government’s handling of the Royal Commission process systematically disenfranchised Aboriginal people.

The Royal Commission

Royal Commissioner Kevin Scarce ‒ a retired Navy officer ‒ didn’t appoint a single Aboriginal person to the staff of the Royal Commission or to his Expert Advisory Committee. Aboriginal people repeatedly expressed frustration with the Royal Commission process.

The Royal Commission acknowledged the opposition of Aboriginal people to its nuclear waste import plan – but it treated that opposition not as a red light but as an obstacle to be circumvented. The Commission opted out of the debate regarding land rights and heritage protections for Aboriginal people, stating in its report: “Although a systematic analysis was beyond the scope of the Commission, it has heard criticisms of the heritage protection framework, particularly the consultative provisions.”

Despite its acknowledgement that it had not systematically analysed the matter, the Royal Commission nevertheless arrived at unequivocal, favourable conclusions, asserting that there “are frameworks for securing long-term agreements with rights holders in South Australia, including Aboriginal communities” and these “provide a sophisticated foundation for securing agreements with rights holders and host communities regarding the siting and establishment of facilities for the management of used fuel.”

Such statements were conspicuously absent in submissions from Aboriginal people and organisations. There is in fact an abundance of evidence that land rights and heritage protection frameworks in SA are anything but “sophisticated.”

Enter the ecomodernists

Ben Heard from the ‘Bright New World’ pro-nuclear lobby group said the Royal Commission’s findings were “robust”. Seriously? Failing to conduct an analysis and ignoring an abundance of contradictory evidence but nevertheless concluding that a “sophisticated foundation” exists for securing agreements with Aboriginal rights-holders … that’s “robust”? Likewise, academic Barry Brook, a member of the Commission’s Expert Advisory Committee, said he was “impressed with the systematic and ruthlessly evidence-based approach the [Royal Commission] team took to evaluating all issues.”

In a November 2016 article about the nuclear waste import plan, Ben Heard and Oscar Archer wrote: “We also note and respect the clear message from nearly all traditional owner groups in South Australia that there is no consent to proceed on their lands. We have been active from the beginning to shine a light on pathways that make no such imposition on remote lands.”

In Heard’s imagination, the imported spent nuclear fuel would not be dumped on the land of unwilling Aboriginal communities, it would be processed for use as fuel in non-existent Generation IV ‘integral fast reactors‘. Even the stridently pro-nuclear Royal Commission gave short shrift to Heard’s proposal, stating in its final report: “[A]dvanced fast reactors and other innovative reactor designs are unlikely to be feasible or viable in the foreseeable future. The development of such a first-of-a-kind project in South Australia would have high commercial and technical risk.”

Heard claims his imaginary Generation IV reactor scenario “circumvents the substantial challenge of social consent for deep geological repositories, facilities that are likely to be best located, on a technical basis, on lands of importance to Aboriginal Australians”.

But even in Heard’s scenario, only a tiny fraction of the imported spent fuel would be converted to fuel for imaginary Generation IV reactors (in one of his configurations, 60,000 tonnes would be imported but only 4,000 tonnes converted to fuel). Most of it would be stored indefinitely, or dumped on the land of unwilling Aboriginal communities.

Despite his acknowledgement that there was “no consent” to proceed from “nearly all traditional owner groups in South Australia”, Heard nevertheless wrote an ‘open letter‘ promoting the waste import plan which was endorsed by ‘prominent’ South Australians, i.e. rich, non-Aboriginal people.

One of the reasons to pursue the waste import plan cited in Heard’s open letter is that it would provide an “opportunity to engage meaningfully and partner with Aboriginal communities in project planning and delivery”. There is no acknowledgement of the opposition of Aboriginal people to the waste import plan; evidently Heard believes that their opposition should be ignored or overridden but Aboriginal people might be given a say in project planning and delivery.

A second version of Heard’s open letter did not include the above wording but it cited the “successful community consultation program” with Aboriginal communities. However the report arising from the SA government’s community consultation program (successful or otherwise) stated: “Some Aboriginal people indicated that they are interested in learning more and continuing the conversation, but these were few in number.”

Geoff Russell, another self-styled pro-nuclear environmentalist, wrote in a November 2016 article in New Matilda:

“Have Aboriginals given any reasons for opposing a waste repository that are other than religious? If so, then they belong with other objections. If not, then they deserve the same treatment as any other religious objections. Listen politely and move on.

“Calling them spiritual rather than religious makes no difference. To give such objections standing in the debate over a repository is a fundamental violation of the separation of church and state, or as I prefer to put it, the separation of mumbo-jumbo and evidence based reasoning.

“Aboriginals have native title over various parts of Australia and their right to determine what happens on that land is and should be quite different from rights with regard to other land. This isn’t about their rights on that land.

“Suppose somebody wants to build a large intensive piggery. Should we consult Aboriginals in some other part of the country? Should those in the Kimberley perhaps be consulted? No.

“They may object to it in the same way I would, but they have no special rights in the matter. They have no right to spiritual veto.”

Where to begin? Russell’s description of Aboriginal spiritual beliefs as “mumbo-jumbo” is beyond offensive. He provides no evidence for his claim that Traditional Owners are speaking for other people’s country. Federal native title legislation provides limited rights and protections for some Traditional Owners ‒ and no rights and protections for many others (when the federal Coalition government was trying to impose a national nuclear waste dump on Aboriginal land in SA in 2003, it abolished all native title rights and interests over the site).

National nuclear waste dump

The attitudes of the ecomodernists also extend to the debate over the siting of a proposed national nuclear waste dump. Silence from the ecomodernists when the federal government was passing laws allowing the imposition of a national nuclear waste dump in the Northern Territory without consent from Traditional Owners. Echoing comments from the Liberal Party, Brook and Heard said the site in the Northern Territory was in the “middle of nowhere”. From their perspective, perhaps, but for Muckaty Traditional Owners the site is in the middle of their homelands.

Heard claims that one of the current proposed dump sites, in SA’s Flinders Ranges, is “excellent” in many respects and it “was volunteered by the landowner”. In fact, it was volunteered by absentee landlord and former Liberal Party politician Grant Chapman, who didn’t bother to consult Adnyamathanha Traditional Owners living on the neighbouring Indigenous Protected Area. The site is opposed by most Adnyamathanha Traditional Owners and by their representative body, the Adnyamathanha Traditional Lands Association (ATLA).

Heard claims there are “no known cultural heritage issues” affecting the Flinders Ranges site. Try telling that to the Adnyamathanha Traditional Owners who live on Yappala Station, in the Indigenous Protected Area adjacent to the proposed dump site. The area has many archaeological and culturally-significant sites that Traditional Owners have registered with the SA government over the past decade.

So where did Heard get this idea that there are “no known cultural heritage issues on the site”? Not from visiting the site, or speaking to Traditional Owners. He’s just repeating the federal government’s propaganda.

Silence from the ecomodernists about the National Radioactive Waste Management Act (NRWMA), which dispossesses and disempowers Traditional Owners in every way imaginable. The nomination of a site for a radioactive waste dump is valid even if Aboriginal owners were not consulted and did not give consent. The NRWMA has sections which nullify State or Territory laws that protect archaeological or heritage values, including those which relate to Indigenous traditions. The NRWMA curtails the application of Commonwealth laws including the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Heritage Protection Act 1984 and the Native Title Act 1993 in the important site-selection stage. The Native Title Act 1993 is expressly overridden in relation to land acquisition for a radioactive waste dump.

Uranium mining

Silence from the ecomodernists about the Olympic Dam mine’s exemptions from provisions of the SA Aboriginal Heritage Act.

Silence from the ecomodernists about sub-section 40(6) of the Commonwealth’s Aboriginal Land Rights Act, which exempts the Ranger uranium mine in the Northern Territory from the Act and thus removed the right of veto that Mirarr Traditional Owners would otherwise have enjoyed.

Silence from the ecomodernists about the divide-and-rule tactics used by General Atomics’ subsidiary Heathgate Resources against Adnyamathanha Traditional Owners in relation to the Beverley and Four Mile uranium mines in SA.

Adnyamathanha Traditional Owner Dr Jillian Marsh, who in 2010 completed a PhD thesis on the strongly contested approval of the Beverley mine, puts the nuclear debates in a broader context: “The First Nations people of Australia have been bullied and pushed around, forcibly removed from their families and their country, denied access and the right to care for their own land for over 200 years. Our health and wellbeing compares with third world countries, our people crowd the jails. Nobody wants toxic waste in their back yard, this is true the world over. We stand in solidarity with people across this country and across the globe who want sustainable futures for communities, we will not be moved.”

Now, Traditional Owners have to fight industry, government, and the ecomodernists as well.

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Would you do consulting work for General Atomics?

Would you do consulting work for – or promote – a company that supported police brutality against a peaceful protest including the pepper-spraying of the 11-year old grand-daughter of an Adnyamathana Elder? Ben Heard has done both.

Would you do consulting work for – or promote – a company whose parent company in the U.S. is up to its neck in the slaughter of innocents via drone warfare? Ben Heard has done both.

Would you do consulting work for – or promote – a company which has employed spies to infiltrate environment groups? Ben Heard has done both.

Would you do consulting work for – or promote – a company with an appalling environmental record? If so, would you call yourself an environmentalist?!

Please follow this link to read about General Atomics’ disgusting behaviour, and watch the short video below, and ask yourself: Would you do consulting work for this company or promote its uranium mine in South Australia? Ben Heard has done both.

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Ben Heard parrots the racist lies of the right-wing Liberal Party

A new low from Ben Heard, parroting the racist lies of the right-wing Liberal government.

Here is an extract from an article posted at:

http://www.theecologist.org/News/news_analysis/2987853/radioactive_waste_and_the_nuclear_war_on_australias_aboriginal_people.html

Australia’s self-styled ‘pro-nuclear environmentalists’ – academic Barry Brook (a member of the Royal Commission’s Expert Advisory Committee), uranium and nuclear industry consultant Ben Heard, and one or two others – have never once voiced concern about attempts to impose nuclear waste dumps on unwilling Aboriginal communities. Their silence suggests they couldn’t care less about the racism of the industry they so stridently support.

Silence from Brook and Heard when the federal government was passing laws allowing the imposition of a national nuclear waste dump in the Northern Territory without consulting or securing consent from Traditional Owners.

Echoing comments from the right-wing Liberal Party, Brook and Heard said the Muckaty site in the Northern Territory is in the “middle of nowhere”. From their perspective, perhaps, but for Muckaty Traditional Owners the site is in the middle of their homelands – and claims that it is in the middle of nowhere are deeply offensive.

Heard’s comments about the current proposed dump site on Adnyamathanha land in South Australia have been just as offensive. He claims there are “no known cultural heritage issues on the site”. Try telling that to the Adnyamathanha Traditional Owners who live on Yappala Station, in the Indigenous Protected Area right next to the dump site.

So where did Heard get this idea that there are “no known cultural heritage issues on the site”? Not from visiting the site, or speaking to the Traditional Owners. He’s just parroting the federal government’s racist lies.

Brook and Heard are also offering up the state of South Australia for an international high-level nuclear waste dump as if it was their personal property. No mention of Aboriginal Traditional Owners or their fierce opposition to the proposal.

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‘Pro-nuclear environmentalists’ in denial about power/weapons connections

Jim Green, Nuclear Monitor #858, 1 March 2018,

It takes a moment to tell a lie but it can take much longer to deconstruct one. So it is with this deconstruction of claims by pro-nuclear propagandists that “nuclear energy prevents the spread of nuclear weapons” and that “peace is furthered when a nation embraces nuclear power”.

As discussed in Nuclear Monitor #850, nuclear industry bodies (such as the US Nuclear Energy Institute) and supporters (such as former US energy secretary Ernest Moniz) are openly acknowledging the connections between nuclear power and weapons ‒ connections they have denied for decades.¹ Those connections are evident in almost all of the weapons states, in numerous countries that have pursued but not built weapons, and in potential future weapons states such as Saudi Arabia.²

Ideally, acknowledgement of power/weapons connections would lead to redoubled efforts to build a firewall between civilian and military nuclear programs ‒ strengthened safeguards, curbs on enrichment and reprocessing, and so on. But that’s not how this debate in playing out. Industry insiders and supporters drawing attention to the connections are quite comfortable about them ‒ they just want increased subsidies and support for their domestic civilian nuclear industry lest ‘national security’ and ‘national defense’ be undermined.

Some continue to deny the power/weapons connections even though the connections are plain for all to see and are now being acknowledged by a growing number of nuclear insiders and supporters. The silliest of the deniers are those who self-describe as ‘pro-nuclear environmentalists’. One such person is Ben Heard ‒ a paid nuclear lobbyist in Australia whose so-called environment group ‘Bright New World’ accepts secret corporate donations.^3,4

An article by Heard attacks the Australian Conservation Foundation for its failure to acknowledge the “obvious distinction” between nuclear power and weapons and for “co-opting disarmament … toward their ideological campaigns against peaceful science and technology”.⁵

The Australian Conservation Foundation has actively supported the Nobel Peace Prize-winning International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons since ICAN was formed in Australia in 2007. ACF’s nuclear-free campaigner Dave Sweeney was involved in the foundation of ICAN and has been on the ICAN Australia Board from 2007 to the present.

Heard’s response is to note that the Nobel Committee “is well aware of the role of technology in driving peace” and that the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2005. But the Nobel Committee’s 2005 citation says nothing about nuclear power “driving peace” ‒ whatever that means ‒ and it doesn’t endorse or criticize nuclear power.⁶

The citation singled out then IAEA Director General Dr. Mohamed ElBaradei ‒ the Peace Prize was awarded “in two equal parts” to the IAEA and ElBaradei. The citation noted that ElBaradei “has stood out as an unafraid advocate of new measures to strengthen” the non-proliferation regime. During his tenure as IAEA Director General, ElBaradei was strikingly honest about the limitations of the so-called safeguards system. He noted that the IAEA’s basic rights of inspection are “fairly limited”, that the safeguards system suffers from “vulnerabilities” and “clearly needs reinforcement”, that efforts to improve the system have been “half-hearted”, and that the safeguards system operates on a “shoestring budget … comparable to that of a local police department “.⁷

In his Nobel Lecture, ElBaradei said: “We must … strengthen the verification system. IAEA inspections are the heart and soul of the nuclear non-proliferation regime. To be effective, it is essential that we are provided with the necessary authority, information, advanced technology, and resources. And our inspections must be backed by the UN Security Council, to be called on in cases of non-compliance.”⁶

There’s nothing about the limitations of safeguards in Heard’s article. He has never said anything about the limitations let alone made the slightest contribution towards resolving them.

Far from endorsing Heard’s claim about the “obvious” distinctions between nuclear power and weapons, ElBaradei noted in his Nobel Lecture that under the current system, any country has the right to develop operations for producing nuclear materials for civilian uses “but in doing so, it also masters the most difficult steps in making a nuclear bomb.”⁸

Consumption and production of fissile material

Heard says the anti-nuclear movement “simply ignore that the US nuclear power sector was integral in the destruction of no less than 16,000 former Soviet nuclear warheads under a program known as ‘Megatons to Megawatts’.”⁵ That’s another lie ‒ the anti-nuclear movement hasn’t ignored the program.

Heard ignores the production of fissile material in civilian nuclear programs:

• The amount of civilian plutonium (almost all of it produced in power reactors) grows at a rate of about 70 tonnes per year.⁹ That amount of reactor-grade, weapons-usable plutonium¹⁰ would suffice to build about 7,000 weapons.
• As of January 2017, the global stockpile of separated civilian plutonium (i.e. separated from spent fuel by reprocessing) was about 290 tonnes (enough for about 29,000 weapons).¹¹
• A May 2015 report written for the International Panel on Fissile Materials found that as of the end of 2013, civilian stockpiles of highly enriched uranium and separated plutonium amounted to over 50,000 weapons-equivalents.¹² The weapons-equivalents figure jumps dramatically (to several hundred thousand) if plutonium in spent fuel is included.¹³

Nuclear power promotes peace?

Heard claims that nuclear power promotes peace and uses the two Koreas to illustrate his argument: “The South is a user and exporter of nuclear power, signatory to the non-proliferation treaty, and possesses zero nuclear warheads. The North has zero nuclear power reactors, is not a signatory to the non-proliferation treaty, and is developing and testing nuclear weapons.”⁵

Likewise, Michael Shellenberger from the pro-nuclear lobby group ‘Environmental Progress’ claims that: “One of FOE-Greenpeace’s biggest lies about nuclear energy is that it leads to weapons. Korea demonstrates that the opposite is true: North Korea has a nuclear bomb and no nuclear energy, while South Korea has nuclear energy and no bomb.”¹⁴

Heard and Shellenberger ignore the fact that North Korea uses what is calls an ‘experimental power reactor’ (based on the UK Magnox power reactor design) to produce plutonium for weapons.¹⁵ They ignore the fact that North Korea acquired enrichment technology from Pakistan’s A.Q. Khan network, who stole the blueprints from URENCO, the consortium that provides enrichment services for the nuclear power industry.¹⁵ They ignore the fact that North Korea’s reprocessing plant is based on the design of the Eurochemic plant in Belgium, which provided reprocessing services for the nuclear power industry.¹⁵

Heard and Shellenberger also ignore South Korea’s history of covertly pursuing nuclear weapons, a history entwined with the country’s development of nuclear power. For example, the nuclear power program provided (and still provides) a rationale for South Korea’s pursuit of reprocessing technology.¹⁶

[For the rest of this article pls see here.]

References:

1. Nuclear Monitor #850, 7 Sept 2017, ‘Nuclear power, weapons and ‘national security”, www.wiseinternational.org/nuclear-monitor/850/nuclear-power-weapons-and-national-security
2. Nuclear Monitor #854, 4 Dec 2017, ‘Is Saudi Arabia going nuclear?’, www.wiseinternational.org/nuclear-monitor/854/saudi-arabia-going-nuclear
3. Friends of the Earth, ‘Ben Heard and the fake environment group ‘Bright New World’ that accepts secret corporate donations’, https://nuclear.foe.org.au/ben-heard-secret-corporate-donations/
4. www.brightnewworld.org/how-to-give-our-donations-policy/
5. Ben Heard, 12 Dec 2017, ‘Australian Conservation Foundation leverages peace prize against peaceful technology’, www.brightnewworld.org/media/2017/12/12/acfnot4peace
6. IAEA, 2005, ‘2005 Nobel Peace Prize’, www.iaea.org/sites/default/files/nobel2005.pdf
7. The relevant articles and transcripts are no longer posted on the IAEA website but are available from monitor@wiseinternational.org
8. Mohamed ElBaradei, 10 Dec 2005, ‘Nobel Lecture’, https://www.iaea.org/sites/default/files/nobel2005.pdf
9. David Albright and Kimberly Kramer, 2005, ‘Plutonium Watch: Tracking Plutonium Inventories’, http://isis-online.org/uploads/isis-reports/documents/plutonium_watch2005.pdf
10. https://nuclear.foe.org.au/plutonium-grades-and-nuclear-weapons-2/
11. International Panel on Fissile Materials, ‘Fissile material stocks’, http://fissilematerials.org/
12. Zia Mian and Alexander Glaser, 2015, ‘Global Fissile Material Report 2015: Nuclear Weapon and Fissile Material Stockpiles and Production’, International Panel on Fissile Materials, http://fissilematerials.org/library/ipfm15.pdf
13. Institute for Science and International Security, 1 Jan 2005, ‘Global Stocks of Nuclear Explosive Material – End 2003 (Updated 2005)’, Chapters I and II, http://isis-online.org/isis-reports/detail/global-stocks-of-nuclear-explosive-materials/17
14. Michael Shellenberger, 16 Oct 2017, ‘Enemies of the Earth: Unmasking the Dirty War Against Clean Energy in South Korea by Friends of the Earth (FOE) and Greenpeace’, http://environmentalprogress.org/big-news/2017/10/16/enemies-of-the-earth-unmasking-dirty-war-friends-of-earth-greenpeace-south-korea-nuclear-energy
15. David Lowry, 26 July 2016, ‘What Theresa May forgot: North Korea used British technology to build its nuclear bombs’, www.theecologist.org/News/news_analysis/2987935/what_theresa_may_forgot_north_korea_used_british_technology_to_build_its_nuclear_bombs.html
16. Nuclear Threat Initiative, ‘South Korea’, http://www.nti.org/learn/countries/south-korea/

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Ben Heard in the Australian Financial Review

Some notes by FoE’s national nuclear campaigner Jim Green responding to comments in an Australian Financial Review article in September 2019:

“A South Australian energy modeller and pro-nuclear campaigner, Ben Heard, says that before pretty much every second public appearance he agrees to, the organisers express second thoughts after lobbying by Friends of the Earth or others.”

‒ Sometimes FoE suggests that organisers require Heard to disclose his financial interests including his solicitation and acceptance of secret corporate donations for his lobby group … because Heard has a track record of failing to disclose financial interests. Sometimes we have suggested that a ‘debate’ requires representation from more than one viewpoint, since Heard evidently believes otherwise (see elsewhere in this webpage: ‘Ben Heard’s fake ‘debates”).

“I have been called a racist,” he says.

‒ See elsewhere in this webpage: ‘Ben Heard parrots the racist lies of the right-wing Liberal Party’. Also see elsewhere in this webpage: ‘Aboriginal First Nations and Australia’s pro-nuclear ‘environmentalists’

“I have been called corrupt.”

‒ Not by FoE.

“I have been accused of taking public money to deliver ridiculous ideas.”

‒ The obscenely pro-nuclear South Australian Nuclear Fuel Cycle Royal Commission flatly rejected Heard’s Generation IV fantasies which were developed with the assistance of taxpayers’ money. See below: ‘Ben Heard’s epic fail … but will he have the decency to repay the $55,593?’

“I have been called not an environmentalist. I am an environmentalist. I am associated with a company that makes drones and I am somehow accused of being associated with killing children.”

‒ An environmentalist who is “proud” to do consulting work for a company that has hired private investigators to infiltrate environment groups!! Sounds more like a corporate-funded greenwasher.

‒ Heard can call himself whatever he wants. I call him a nuclear lobbyist whose fake environment group accepts secret corporate donations.

‒ Heard says he is proud to have consulted for a General Atomics’ subsidiary. Plenty of people would be ashamed to work for the company in light of its appalling environmental record and its involvement in drone warfare, etc. See elsewhere in this webpage: ‘Would you do consulting work for General Atomics?’ and see this information and video about General Atomics.

“I receive thinly veiled death threats.”

‒ A serious death threat, reported to the police? Or is Heard referring to a mentally-ill man in Adelaide who sings an offensive ‘song’ attacking nuclear advocates, and verbally attacks me and many others (not just nuclear advocates).

“This is my life.”

‒ I’ve had cordial, interesting communications with pro-nuclear people over the years. Heard’s problem is not that he is pro-nuclear – it is everything else: failure to disclose financial interests, aggressive and sometimes defamatory attacks, peddling misinformation, fake ‘debates’ with only pro-nuclear speakers, etc. etc.

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Ben Heard’s fake ‘debates’

In 2011, Heard organised a fake ‘debate’ with all pro-nuclear speakers! Referring to the fake ‘debate’, Heard claimed that Friends of the Earth “tried to have our event shut down”. That claim was another one of Heard’s blatant lies.

In 2018, Heard is involved in another fake ‘debate’ featuring all pro-nuclear speakers – organised (or at least hosted) by the Warren Centre. We don’t know if Heard helped to organise the fake debate including the speaking list. Friends of the Earth wrote to the Warren Centre asking why this fake ‘debate’ features all pro-nuclear speakers and seeking assurance that the audience would be made aware that Heard’s so-called environment group accepts secret corporate donations. There was no response from the Warren Centre. Here’s a link to the unanswered questions we sent to the Warren Centre.

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Exposing Ben Heard’s misinformation regarding nuclear waste import business proposals

Feb. 3, 2017

EXPOSING THE LATEST MISINFORMATION FROM BEN HEARD – THE PAID NUCLEAR LOBBYIST WHOSE FAKE ENVIRONMENT GROUP ACCEPTS SECRET CORPORATE DONATIONS.

The Advertiser has today run an article including false claims from nuclear lobbyist / uranium industry consultant / PhD student Ben Heard that Jay Weatherill’s plan to turn SA into the world’s high-level nuclear waste dump could be pursued without the need to gamble hundreds of millions or billions of dollars with no guarantee of any return on the investment.

Mr Heard is quoted saying that the “notion of high upfront cost to South Australia is a persistent and deliberate lie first peddled by deceitful environmental groups and now, sadly, taken up by the Liberal Party.”

In fact, the necessity of gambling hundreds of millions or billions of dollars ‒ without the slightest guarantee of any return on the investment ‒ is clearly spelt out by Jacobs, the economics consulting firm commissioned by the Nuclear Fuel Cycle Royal Commission.

Jacobs Project Manager / Consultant Tim Johnson told the SA Joint Select Committee that “total expenditure prior to the decision to proceed” is likely to be from around A$300 million to in excess of A$600 million, depending on the timing of the decision to proceed. (Letter to Joint Standing Committee, 5 July 2016.)

Dr Johnson told the Joint Select Committee that the project entails very significant economic risks: “It isn’t a risk-free process to go into this. There is a very significant risk.” Yet the nuclear waste dump lobby persist with the fabrication that the project can be pursued without economic risks.

Jacobs noted the potential for initial outlays in the billions in its report for the Royal Commission: “Under the cash-flow assumptions of the baseline, where no revenues ahead of delivery are assumed (a deliberately conservative assumption), there is an initial outlay of A$2.4 billion (real) in net terms.” (Jacobs, Paper 5, sec 4.4, Cash flow profile for the baseline, p.205.)

Any suggestion that the nuclear waste dump project could be a quick fix for the SA economy were dispelled by the Royal Commission’s report, which stated (emphasis added): “Careful characterisation over several decades is required to confirm the suitability of the geological conditions.”

The only way to avoid gambling hundreds of millions or billions of SA taxpayers’ dollars would be in the wildly improbable scenario that potential client countries would take that gamble. If anyone needs any convincing as to the improbability of that scenario, it came late last year in correspondence from the Taiwanese government’s energy and nuclear agencies. As Daniel Wills reported in The Advertiser: “Taiwan’s state-owned energy company has bluntly rejected Investment and Trade Minister Martin Hamilton-Smith’s claim the country would consider paying to help set up a nuclear waste dump in SA, saying in a letter that it “hereby declares this is a false information”.”

Taipower clearly states that it would not consider sending waste to another country unless and until that country has developed a repository. Yet the economic case developed by Jacobs and MCM collapses if revenue (and waste) is not received before construction of a repository. The Final Report of the Royal Commission states (p.300) (emphasis added): “Figure J.8 also demonstrates that a facility configuration scenario is viable only with the establishment of a surface interim storage facility capable of accepting used fuel prior to construction of geological disposal facilities. Configurations 3 and 4, which did not include interim storage facilities (see Table J.1), did not generate profits because of the delay in receiving waste and associated revenues.”

Taiwan’s Atomic Energy Council is clearly sensitive to SA public opinion, pointing to the Citizen Jury’s rejection of the proposal and noting that: “Without the understanding and support from Australian … nuclear waste storage cannot be developed.”

The nuclear waste dump lobbyists are hanging on to the ludicrous proposition that potential client countries will gamble hundreds of millions or billions of dollars on a waste dump plan that is:

* Opposed by three political parties in SA (Liberals, Greens, NXT) and by many within the ALP.

* Opposed by a majority of South Australians (e.g. 31% support vs. 53% opposition in the SA Government’s statewide consultation process; and a November 2016 poll commissioned by the Sunday Mail found just 35% support.)

* Opposed by a vast majority of Aboriginal Traditional Owners on whose land the high-level nuclear waste dump would necessarily be located. (The SA government’s Community Views Report said: “There was a significant lack of support for the government to continue pursuing any form of nuclear storage and disposal facilities. Some Aboriginal people indicated that they are interested in learning more and continuing the conversation, but these were few in number.”)

* Rejected by two-thirds of the 350-strong Citizens’ Jury “under any circumstances”.

Taiwan has clearly stated that it has no intention of gambling vast sums of money on a nuclear dump in SA and it is equally improbable that any other potential client country would do so. In which case South Australians would need to gamble hundreds of millions or billions of dollars on a project with no guarantee of any return on the investment.

Late last year, Mr Heard had to correct a statement falsely claiming that most South Australians support the high-level nuclear dump plan and he begins 2017 with another falsehood. He should have the decency to apologise to the Liberal Party and to environment groups for his latest falsehood and slander.

Interestingly, the statement falsely claiming that most South Australians support the high-level nuclear dump plan was endorsed by SA’s Chief Scientist, Dr. Leanna Read. Shamefully, the state’s chief fact-checker didn’t bother to check her facts.

Mr Heard also conveniently ignores real-world experience with nuclear waste projects:

* Estimates of the clean-up costs for a range of (civil and military) UK nuclear sites including Sellafield have nearly doubled from a 2005 estimate of £56 billion (A$91.6 billion) to over £100 billion (A$163.6 billion)

* In 2005, the French government’s nuclear waste agency Andra estimated the cost of a deep geological repository at between €13.5 and €16.5 billion (A$19.0‒23.2 billion). In 2016, Andra estimates the cost of the repository at between €20 billion to €30 billion (A$28.1‒42.2 billion). As with the UK, the latest French estimates are nearly double the earlier estimates.

* Between 2001 and 2008, the estimated cost of constructing the Yucca Mountain high level nuclear waste repository in the USA and operating it for 150 years increased by 67%, from US$57.5 billion to US$96.2 billion (A$75.1 billion ‒ $125.7 billion). Yucca Mountain was abandoned – so the USA wasted US$13.5 billion (A$17.6 billion) and still doesn’t have a repository.

The Nuclear Economics Consulting Group report commissioned by the SA Joint Select Committee concluded that the nuclear waste import project could be profitable under certain assumptions but the report then raises serious questions about most of those assumptions. The NECG report notes that the Royal Commission’s economic analysis didn’t even consider some important issues which “have significant serious potential to adversely impact the project and its commercial outcomes”; that assumptions about price are “overly optimistic” and if that is the case “project profitability is seriously at risk”; that the 25% cost contingency for delays and blowouts is likely to be a significant underestimate; and that the assumption the project would capture 50% of the available market had “little support or justification”.

Finally, Mr Heard’s promotion of fast breeder reactors is beyond stupid. For all the rhetoric about Generation IV fast breeder reactors, and the US$100+ billion invested worldwide, only five such reactors are operating worldwide (three of them experimental) and only one is under construction (in India). Most of the countries that invested in fast breeder reactors have given up, deciding not to throw good money after bad. Last year, Japan decided to give up on the Monju fast breeder reactor, a fiasco that will cost Japanese taxpayers A$17.3 billion in construction, operation and decommissioning costs despite the fact that the reactor rarely operated.

The Royal Commission completely rejected proposals advanced by Heard and others for ‘advanced fast reactors’, noting in its final report that such reactors are unlikely to be feasible or viable in the foreseeable future; that the development of such a first-of-a-kind project would have high commercial and technical risk; that there is no licensed, commercially proven design and development to that point would require substantial capital investment; and that electricity generated from such reactors has not been demonstrated to be cost competitive with current light water reactor designs.

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Scientists debunk the disgraceful anti-renewables propaganda of Ben Heard, the paid nuclear lobbyist whose fake environment group accepts secret corporate donations

Can we get 100 percent of our energy from renewable sources?

New article gathers the evidence to address the sceptics

Public release ‒ 17 May 2018

Lappeenranta University of Technology

https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2018-05/luot-cwg051718.php

Is there enough space for all the wind turbines and solar panels to provide all our energy needs? What happens when the sun doesn’t shine and the wind doesn’t blow? Won’t renewables destabilise the grid and cause blackouts?

In a review paper last year in the high-ranking journal Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Master of Science Benjamin Heard and colleagues presented their case against 100% renewable electricity systems. They doubted the feasibility of many of the recent scenarios for high shares of renewable energy, questioning everything from whether renewables-based systems can survive extreme weather events with low sun and low wind, to the ability to keep the grid stable with so much variable generation.

Now scientists have hit back with their response to the points raised by Heard and colleagues. The researchers from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, the South African Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, Lappeenranta University of Technology, Delft University of Technology and Aalborg University have analysed hundreds of studies from across the scientific literature to answer each of the apparent issues. They demonstrate that there are no roadblocks on the way to a 100% renewable future.

“While several of the issues raised by the Heard paper are important, you have to realise that there are technical solutions to all the points they raised, using today’s technology,” says the lead author of the response, Dr. Tom Brown of the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology.

“Furthermore, these solutions are absolutely affordable, especially given the sinking costs of wind and solar power,” says Professor Christian Breyer of Lappeenranta University of Technology, who co-authored the response.

Brown cites the worst-case solution of hydrogen or synthetic gas produced with renewable electricity for times when imports, hydroelectricity, batteries, and other storage fail to bridge the gap during low wind and solar periods during the winter. For maintaining stability there is a series of technical solutions, from rotating grid stabilisers to newer electronics-based solutions. The scientists have collected examples of best practice by grid operators from across the world, from Denmark to Tasmania.

Furthermore, these solutions are absolutely affordable, especially given the sinking costs of wind and solar power.

The response by the scientists has now appeared in the same journal as the original article by Heard and colleagues.

“There are some persistent myths that 100% renewable systems are not possible,” says Professor Brian Vad Mathiesen of Aalborg University, who is a co-author of the response.

“Our contribution deals with these myths one-by-one, using all the latest research. Now let’s get back to the business of modelling low-cost scenarios to eliminate fossil fuels from our energy system, so we can tackle the climate and health challenges they pose.”

The research papers for further information:

T.W. Brown, T. Bischof-Niemz, K. Blok, C. Breyer, H. Lund, B.V. Mathiesen, “Response to ‘Burden of proof: A comprehensive review of the feasibility of 100% renewable-electricity systems’,” Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, DOI:10.1016/j.rser.2018.04.113, 2018.

B.P. Heard, B.W. Brook, T.M.L. Wigley, C.J.A. Bradshaw, “Burden of proof: A comprehensive review of the feasibility of 100% renewable-electricity systems,” Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, DOI:10.1016/j.rser.2017.03.114, 2017.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rser.2017.03.114

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Another scientific critique of Ben Heard’s anti-renewables propaganda

(The following article also critiques the anti-renewables propaganda of Barry Brook, the academic who self-promoted a bogus Outstanding Scientist award and insisted there was no credible risk of a serious accident at Fukushima even as nuclear meltdowns were in full swing.)

Mark Diesendorf and Ben Elliston, ‘The feasibility of 100% renewable electricity systems: A response to critics’, Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Volume 93, October 2018, Pages 318–330.
Highlights
‒ Large-scale electricity systems based on 100% renewable energy can meet the key requirements of reliability, security and affordability.
‒ This is even true where the vast majority of generation comes from variable renewables such as wind and solar PV.
‒ Thus the principal myths of critics of 100% renewable electricity are refuted.
‒ Arguments that the transition to 100% renewable electricity will necessarily take as long or longer than historical energy transitions are also refuted.
‒ The principal barriers to 100% renewable electricity are neither technological nor economic, but instead are primarily political, institutional and cultural.
Abstract:
The rapid growth of renewable energy (RE) is disrupting and transforming the global energy system, especially the electricity industry. As a result, supporters of the politically powerful incumbent industries and others are critiquing the feasibility of large-scale electricity generating systems based predominantly on RE. Part of this opposition is manifest in the publication of incorrect myths about renewable electricity (RElec) in scholarly journals, popular articles, media, websites, blogs and statements by politicians. The aim of the present article is to use current scientific and engineering theory and practice to refute the principal myths. It does this by showing that large-scale electricity systems that are 100% renewable (100RElec), including those whose renewable sources are predominantly variable (e.g. wind and solar PV), can be readily designed to meet the key requirements of reliability, security and affordability. It also argues that transition to 100RElec could occur much more rapidly than suggested by historical energy transitions. It finds that the main critiques published in scholarly articles and books contain factual errors, questionable assumptions, important omissions, internal inconsistencies, exaggerations of limitations and irrelevant arguments. Some widely publicised critiques select criteria that are inappropriate and/or irrelevant to the assessment of energy technologies, ignore studies whose results contradict arguments in the critiques, and fail to assess the sum total of knowledge provided collectively by the published studies on 100RElec, but instead demand that each individual study address all the critiques’ inappropriate criteria. We find that the principal barriers to 100RElec are neither technological nor economic, but instead are primarily political, institutional and cultural.

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Ben Heard’s dishonesty regarding nuclear power/weapons connections

Ben Heard claims that: “Peace is furthered when a nation embraces nuclear power, because it makes that nation empirically less likely to embark on a nuclear weapons program. That is the finding of a 2017 study published in the peer-reviewed journal International Security.”

That’s a lie twice over. Firstly, it isn’t true. Secondly, Heard’s assertion isn’t supported by the International Security journal article, written by Nicholas Miller from Dartmouth College.

Miller’s article downplays the power/weapons connections but much of the information in his article undermines his own argument (and Heard’s). In Miller’s own words, “more countries pursued nuclear weapons in the presence of a nuclear energy program than without one”, “the annual probability of starting a weapons program is more than twice as high in countries with nuclear energy programs, if one defines an energy program as having an operating power reactor or one under construction”, and countries that pursued nuclear weapons while they had a nuclear energy program were “marginally more likely” to acquire nuclear weapons ‒ almost twice as likely if North Korea is considered to have had a nuclear energy program while it pursued weapons.

So why does Heard claim that “when a nation embraces nuclear power, because it makes that nation empirically less likely to embark on a nuclear weapons program”? He ignores most of Miller’s article (and Miller himself ignores much that is known about power/weapons connections) and focuses on these findings:

1. The annual probability of starting a weapons program is more than twice as high in countries with an operating power reactor or one under construction (a statistically-significant finding).
2. The annual probability of starting a weapons program is somewhat lower in countries with operating power reactors compared to countries without them (a statistically non-significant finding).

So why does Heard privilege the second of those findings when only the first is statistically significant? Why does Heard privilege the finding that excludes countries with power reactors under construction (but not in operation) when the inclusion of such countries provides a fuller, more accurate assessment of the power/weapons connections? Perhaps Heard’s selectivity is connected to his work as a nuclear lobbyist whose fake environment group accepts secret corporate donations.

Nuclear power/weapons connections are multifaceted, repeatedly demonstrated, disturbing and dangerous:

‒ Nuclear power programs were involved in the successful pursuit of weapons in four countries (France, India, Pakistan, South Africa) according to Miller (and India and North Korea could be added to that list) and have provided many other countries with a latent weapons capability.

‒ Power programs have provided ongoing support for weapons programs to a greater or lesser degree in seven of the nine current weapons states (the exceptions being Israel and North Korea).

‒ The direct use of power reactors to produce plutonium for weapons in all or all-but-one of the declared weapons states (and possibly other countries, e.g. India and Pakistan).

‒ The use of power reactors to produce tritium for weapons in the US (and possibly other countries, e.g. India).

‒ Power programs (or real or feigned interest in nuclear power) legitimising enrichment and reprocessing programs that have fed proliferation.

‒ Power programs (or real or feigned interest in nuclear power) legitimising research (reactor) programs which can lead (and have led) to weapons proliferation.

‒ And last but not least, the training of experts for nuclear power programs whose expertise can be (and has been) used in weapons programs.

More information:

Power / weapons connections

Links to literature on power / weapons connections

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Dear Electric Energy Society of Australia 

February 2018
Re the Feb 21, 2018 Electric Energy Society of Australia (EESA) webinar with nuclear lobbyist Ben Heard talking about nuclear power:
1. Will EESA be organising a separate webinar to provide a perspective from someone who isn’t a nuclear lobbyist? If not, is that lack of balance consistent with the Engineers Australia Code of Ethics and Guidelines on Professional Conduct?
2. Will you amend the bio-note on the EESA webpage to note that Heard’s so-called environment group accepts secret corporate donations? If not, why not? The bio-note on the EESA webpage claims that his group ‘represents the community’ … if such dubious claims are allowed to stand then it surely needs to be acknowledged that his group accepts corporate donations including secret corporate donations. Is such disclosure not required by the Engineers Australia Code of Ethics and Guidelines on Professional Conduct?
3. During the webinar, will it be made clear that Heard’s group accepts corporate donations including secret corporate donations? Is such disclosure not required by the Engineers Australia Code of Ethics and Guidelines on Professional Conduct?
4. During the webinar, will you make it clear that Heard’s asinine contribution to the SA Royal Commission was rejected by the Commission? Specifically, the final report of the Royal Commission said: “[A]dvanced fast reactors and other innovative reactor designs are unlikely to be feasible or viable in the foreseeable future. The development of such a first-of-a-kind project in South Australia would have high commercial and technical risk. Although prototype and demonstration reactors are operating, there is no licensed, commercially proven design. Development to that point would require substantial capital investment.”
5. Will you ensure that webinar participants are provided with some basic factual information that Heard certainly won’t be volunteering, e.g.
— A$40 billion capital cost for two new reactors in the UK (A$20 billion each)
— A$16 billion capital cost for new reactors in France and Finland
— bankruptcy filing of Westinghouse due to catastrophic cost overruns building conventional reactors in the US (including A$13+ billion wasted on reactors in South Carolina that were cancelled last year).
— Westinghouse, Toshiba and a number of other utilities exiting the reactor construction business
— Ziggy Switkowski, head of the Howard government’s Nuclear Energy review, now says he believes “the window for gigawatt-scale nuclear has closed”. He also said that nuclear is no longer lower cost than renewables and that the levelised cost of electricity of the two is rapidly diverging.
6. Will you ensure that webinar participants are informed that Heard has continued lobbying for the importation of 138,000 tonnes of high-level nuclear waste to SA despite being well aware of the overwhelming opposition of Aboriginal Traditional Owners?
7. What steps will you take to ensure that participants are provided with some credible information about high-temperature gas-cooled reactors given that these seem to be Heard’s latest fixation? Some information is copied below.
8. If Heard claims that high-temperature gas-cooled reactors are ‘meltdown-proof’, or other such inanities, will you ensure that his falsehoods are corrected?
Yours sincerely, Jim Green
—————————————
HIGH-TEMPERATURE GAS-COOLED REACTORS (HTGRs)
Excerpt from M. V. Ramana, April 2016, ‘The checkered operational history of high-temperature gas-cooled reactors’, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00963402.2016.1170395
“Proponents of HTGRs often claim that their designs have a long pedigree. … But if one examines that very same experience more closely – looking in particular at the HTGRs that were constructed in Western Europe and the United States to feed power into the electric grid – then one comes to other conclusions. This history suggests that while HTGRs may look attractive on paper, their performance leaves much to be desired. …
“Although Germany abandoned this technology, it did migrate to other countries, including China and South Africa. Of these, the latter case is instructive: South Africa pursued the construction of a pebble-bed reactor for a decade, and spent over a billion dollars, only to abandon it in 2009 because it just did not make sense economically. Although sold by its proponents as innovative and economically competitive until its cancellation, the South African pebble-bed reactor project is now being cited as a case study in failure. How good the Chinese experience with the HTGR will be remains to be seen. …
“From these experiences in operating HTGRs, we can take away several lessons – the most important being that HTGRs are prone to a wide variety of small failures, including graphite dust accumulation, ingress of water or oil, and fuel failures. Some of these could be the trigger for larger failures or accidents, with more severe consequences. … Other problems could make the consequences of a severe accident worse: For example, pebble compaction and breakage could lead to accelerated diffusion of fission products such as radioactive cesium and strontium outside the pebbles, and a potentially larger radioactive release in the event of a severe accident. …
“Discussions of the commercial viability of HTGRs almost invariably focus on the expected higher capital costs per unit of generation capacity (dollars per kilowatts) in comparison with light water reactors, and potential ways for lowering those. In other words, the main challenge they foresee is that of building these reactors cheaply enough. But what they implicitly or explicitly assume is that HTGRs would operate as well as current light water reactors – which is simply not the case, if history is any guide. …
“Although there has been much positive promotional hype associated with high-temperature reactors, the decades of experience that researchers have acquired in operating HTGRs has seldom been considered. Press releases from the many companies developing or selling HTGRs or project plans in countries seeking to purchase or construct HTGRs neither tell you that not a single HTGR-termed “commercial” has proven financially viable nor do they mention that all the HTGRs were shut down well before the operating periods envisioned for them. This is typical of the nuclear industry, which practices selective remembrance, choosing to forget or underplay earlier failures.”

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A new low from Ben Heard

This is a response to the latest defamatory spray from Ben Heard – the paid nuclear lobbyist whose fake environment group ‘Bright New World’ accepts secret corporate donations. Heard’s latest defamatory spray is directed at the Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF). [1] The ACF has actively and tirelessly supported the International Campaign Against Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) for over a decade. ICAN was largely responsible for the United Nation’s nuclear weapons ban treaty established in mid-2017, and ICAN was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in late-2017 in recognition of its extraordinary ‒ and extraordinarily successful ‒ work.

Heard says that his fake environment group Bright New World “stands with efforts to rid the world of the abhorrence that is nuclear weapons.” That’s not true. Heard has never lifted a finger in support of nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament campaigns. His only connection to the Nobel laureates responsible for the UN nuclear weapons ban treaty is that he routinely attacks and slanders them.

Note that this isn’t Ben’s first attempt at pretending to be something that he isn’t. He once posted an article on his website stating that he was “once a fervent anti-nuclear campaigner” before he saw the nuclear light.[2] In fact, he literally never lifted a finger in support of anti-nuclear campaigns, and that fabrication was only corrected on his website after it was publicly exposed.

Heard notes that the 2005 Nobel Peace Prize was received by Dr Mohamed ElBaradei on behalf of the International Atomic Energy Agency.[3] True, but why doesn’t Heard note that Dr ElBaradei was best known for his striking honesty regarding the severe limitations of the so-called safeguards system? During his tenture as Director General of the IAEA, Dr ElBaradei noted that the IAEA’s basic rights of inspection are “fairly limited”, that the safeguards system suffers from “vulnerabilities” and it “clearly needs reinforcement”, that efforts to improve the system have been “half-hearted”, and that the safeguards system operates on a “shoestring budget … comparable to that of a local police department “.

So why is Heard silent about the clearly inadequate safeguards system? Perhaps his secret corporate donors include uranium mining companies who have a vested interest in ignoring and lying about the inadequacies of the safeguards system.

Heard attacks the ACF for failing to acknowledge the “obvious distinction” between nuclear power and nuclear weapons. But in fact, there are manifold connections and 20+ countries have deliberately sought to bring themselves closer to a weapons capability via ‘peaceful’ nuclear programs.[4] Five of the 10 countries to have built nuclear weapons did so under cover of ‘peaceful’ nuclear programs. And in the other five countries ‒ the ‘declared’ nuclear weapons states ‒ there are important connections between power and weapons, not least the direct use of power reactors to produce plutonium for bombs (or the current use of power reactors in the US to produce tritium for nuclear weapons).[5] Australia’s only serious pursuit of nuclear power was driven by a hidden weapons agenda as then Prime Minister John Gorton later acknowledged.[4]

It is important to note that prominent nuclear advocates are now openly acknowledging ‒ repeat, openly acknowledging ‒ the connections between nuclear power and weapons, particularly in the US and the UK.[6] Even the Nuclear Energy Institute, which represents nuclear power companies, has been openly acknowledging the connections.[6] And to give one more example, an organisation headed by former US energy secretary Ernest Moniz argues that the US nuclear power industry “helps the U.S military meet specific defense priorities” and is “essential to the global projection of U.S. military capability.”[6,7]

Why would the nuclear power industry and some of its prominent supporters openly acknowledge the power/weapons connections? It’s a sign of their desperation: they are seeking to increase the already massive government subsidies for nuclear power by arguing that nuclear weapons programs will be adversely affected if not underpinned and supported by a strong, heavily-subsidised nuclear power industry.[6]

It’s disappointing that Heard ignores the obvious connections between nuclear power and weapons. But we should have some sympathy for his position: his secret corporate donors wouldn’t be impressed if he was to talk openly and honestly about the repeatedly-demonstrated connections between ‘peaceful’ nuclear programs (including nuclear power programs) and nuclear weapons. His secret corporate donors wouldn’t be impressed if he was to talk openly and honestly about the severe limitations of the nuclear safeguards system. And his secret corporate donors would be even less impressed if he was to do something about the problems, such as campaigning for a strengthened safeguards system.

References:
[1] www.brightnewworld.org/media/2017/12/12/acfnot4peace
[2] https://decarbonisesa.com/2012/04/29/not-so-strange-bedfellows/
[3] https://www.iaea.org/newscenter/focus/nobel-peace-prize
[4] https://nuclear.foe.org.au/power-weapons/#casestudies
[5] www.wiseinternational.org/nuclear-monitor/804/myth-peaceful-atom
[6] https://www.wiseinternational.org/nuclear-monitor/850/nuclear-power-weapons-and-national-security
[7] https://energyfuturesinitiative.org/news/2017/8/15/efi-releases-nuclear-energy-enterprise-study

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Ben Heard campaigns against renewables and then denies doing so!

Ben Heard – the paid nuclear lobbyist whose fake environment group ‘Bright New World’ accepts secret corporate donations – actively campaigned against a solar thermal plant being built at Port Augusta in South Australia … then said it was a “complete lie” that he campaigned against a solar thermal plant!

Specifically, Heard wrote a report arguing that plans for a solar thermal plant at Port Augusta should be abandoned in favour of nuclear power, and he used the report as a tool for public, political and media lobbying and campaigning.

Meanwhile, real environmentalists successfully campaigned for the coal plant at Port Augusta to be replaced with renewables!

By the way, why is it that none of these self-styled ‘pro-nuclear environmentalists’ such as Ben Heard play any role whatsoever in campaigns against fossil fuels? We (i.e. real environmentalists) have never once had any support from them whatsoever in fossil fuel campaigns in SA or Victoria or anywhere else. Presumably Heard’s excuse is that he’s too busy campaigning against renewables!

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Ben Heard’s misinformation about the Fukushima death toll

Heard trumpets that “absence of radiologically-related health impacts” from the Fukushima disaster.[1] He is well aware of ‒ but chooses to ignore ‒ the World Health Organisation report that concluded that for people in the most contaminated areas in Fukushima Prefecture, the estimated increased risk for all solid cancers will be around 4% in females exposed as infants; a 6% increased risk of breast cancer for females exposed as infants; a 7% increased risk of leukaemia for males exposed as infants; and for thyroid cancer among females exposed as infants, an increased risk of up to 70% (from a 0.75% lifetime risk up to 1.25%).[2]

Heard ignores numerous other impacts from the Fukushima disaster. For example, he is silent on the plight of evacuees. Six years after the disaster, over half of the original 164,000 evacuees remain dislocated, with tens of thousands still living in temporary housing.[3] Local authorities said in January 2017 that only 13% of the evacuees in five municipalities in Fukushima Prefecture have returned home after evacuation orders were lifted.[4]

The Japanese government’s estimate of Fukushima clean-up and compensation costs has doubled and doubled again and now stands at ¥21.5 trillion (US$187bn). Indirect costs will likely exceed that figure and total long-term direct and indirect costs will likely exceed US$500 billion.[5]

References:
[1] https://static1.squarespace.com/static/58254e216a496325c2d90145/t/58bcada9579fb33e05be9098/1488760245016/AIIB_BNW.pdf
[2] www.who.int/mediacentre/news/releases/2013/fukushima_report_20130228/en/
[3] www.reconstruction.go.jp/english/topics/Progress_to_date/pdf/201608_process_and_prospects.pdf
[4] http://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20170129/p2g/00m/0dm/047000c
[5] www.wiseinternational.org/nuclear-monitor/836/economic-impacts-fukushima-disaster

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Ben Heard’s misinformation about the Chernobyl death toll

28 April 2016 ‒ This is a response to Ben Heard’s response to a Friends of the Earth article (for a much longer, referenced version of the FoE article see this article in The Ecologist).

Heard ignores a fundamental point: it’s perfectly reasonable for anyone to follow the lead of the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation (UNSCEAR) and argue that the long-term Chernobyl death toll is uncertain, but conflating that uncertainty with a long-term death toll of zero clearly isn’t defensible. Heard could refute the evidence that nuclear advocates (including Heard himself) routinely conflate or confuse an uncertain long-term death toll with a long-term death toll of zero. But the evidence is there for all to see and Heard doesn’t attempt to refute it. So Heard’s entire article can be read as an exercise in obfuscation.

Following UNSCEAR’s lead, Heard objects to the use of collective radiation dose estimates and risk estimates to arrive at an estimate of the Chernobyl cancer death toll. Fair enough, except that there’s no other way to arrive at an estimate of the death toll. That’s why UNSCEAR itself has previously used that approach (as Heard concedes) … as have the IAEA, the WHO etc. etc. (see here for links to some of their literature). That’s why articles in peer-reviewed scientific journals use the approach (e.g. this one).

That’s why Timothy Jorgensen, an Associate Professor of Radiation Medicine, writing in The Conversation a few days ago, notes that “an international team of scientists completed a comprehensive analysis of the dose and health data” and estimated 22,800 radiation-induced non-thyroid cancers from exposure to Chernobyl radiation … based on radiation dose estimates! Heard completely ignores thyroid cancers but as Jorgensen notes: “Scientists estimate that there will ultimately be about 16,000 excess thyroid cancers produced as a result of iodine-131 exposure from Chernobyl.”

Heard thinks the epidemiological record can be used to estimate the Chernobyl death toll. The Jorgensen article notes that the estimated 22,800 radiation-induced non-thyroid cancers represents a 0.01% increase in cancer incidence across 40 exposed countries. So Heard apparently believes that epidemiological studies ought to be able to detect a 0.01% increase in cancer incidence across 40 countries and to confidently ascribe that increase to Chernobyl.

Jorgensen is discussing cancer incidence but the same point applies to cancer mortality. See for example Table 12, p.108 of the WHO 2006 report: very small percentage increases in cancer mortality (ranging from 0.003% to 1%) add up to an estimated 9,000 cancer fatalities in the three most heavily exposed ex-Soviet states.

Heard states: “Then comes the area of credible uncertainty: the possibility, based on modelled impacts, that some additional thousands of fatalities may be attributable based on the most exposed populations.” So having completely rejected the use of radiation dose estimates and risk factors to estimate the Chernobyl death toll, Heard now regards this as “an area of credible uncertainty”. Idiot.

Earlier comments on Heard’s misinformation regarding the Chernobyl death toll

Heard acknowledges a total of 43 deaths from the Chernobyl disaster from acute radiation exposure and thyroid cancer. He argues that the long-term non-thyroid cancer death toll is zero. He arrives at that conclusion by repeatedly misrepresenting a report by the UNSCEAR and ignoring all other estimates of the long-term cancer death toll.

The UNSCEAR report argues that the long-term cancer death toll from Chernobyl cannot be meaningfully estimated because of “unacceptable uncertainties in the predictions”, i.e. the limitations of epidemiological studies, and the uncertainties of applying a risk estimate (e.g. based on the linear no-threshold theory) to the collective radiation dose estimate (e.g. the IAEA’s collective dose estimate of 600,000 person-Sieverts).

Heard conflates UNSCEAR’s unknown long-term cancer death toll with a long-term cancer death toll of zero. Obviously they are two very different propositions yet the distinction is lost on Heard. An obvious question for Heard − how could UNSCEAR arrive at a long-term cancer death toll of zero at the same time as it argues that the death toll cannot be estimated because of “unacceptable uncertainties in the predictions”? In truth, UNSCEAR doesn’t estimate a long-term cancer death toll of zero − it simply declines to provide any estimate whatsoever.

UNSCEAR participated in the Chernobyl Forum study which estimates a death toll of 4,000 among the highest-exposed populations (with a follow-up World Health Organisation study estimating an additional 5,000 deaths among populations exposed to lower doses in Belarus, the Russian Federation and Ukraine.) On the broader issue of the cancer risks of exposure to low-level ionising radiation, UNSCEAR’s view is that “the current balance of available evidence tends to favour a non-threshold response for the mutational component of radiation-associated cancer induction at low doses and low dose rates.”

Back to the Chernobyl death toll:

• A study published in the International Journal of Cancer in 2006 estimates that Chernobyl will have caused 16,000 thyroid cancers and 25,000 other cancers in Europe by 2065, and that 16,000 of these cancers will be fatal. The study does not consider emergency workers exposed to relatively high doses.
• Research published in 2006 by UK radiation scientists Ian Fairlie and David Sumner estimates 30,000 to 60,000 deaths.
• A 2006 scientific study commissioned by Greenpeace estimates a death toll of about 93,000.

Studies such as those listed above typically use a risk estimate derived from the linear no-threshold theory (LNT). There is uncertainty about the accuracy of the LNT-derived risk estimate in relation to low doses and low dose rates. However that does not mean − as many nuclear advocates state or imply − that the LNT-derived risk estimate overstates the true risk. It may be accurate or it may understate or overstate the true risk. Thus the 2005 report of the Committee on the Biological Effects of Ionising Radiation (BEIR) of the US National Academy of Sciences states that (p.6) “combined analyses are compatible with a range of possibilities, from a reduction of risk at low doses to risks twice those upon which current radiation protection recommendations are based.”

Heard makes great play of the psychological impacts of nuclear disasters such as Chernobyl and Fukushima, which he blames on radiophobia spread by nuclear critics. However the enormous psychological impact of the Fukushima disaster is not a result of ‘radiophobia’ — it is an understandable reaction to the circumstances people face, in particular the 160,000 people evacuated from the 20-km exclusion zone. They are homeless, jobless, and many are separated from friends and family. Compensation has been too little, too late. The clean-up of contaminated areas has been slow and contentious. Likewise, the enormous psychological impact of the Chernobyl disaster is a result of the circumstances people face, in particular the 350,000 people evacuated from the exclusion zone.

Some useful discussions on the Chernobyl death toll:

• Lisbeth Gronlund, 17 April 2011, ‘How Many Cancers Did Chernobyl Really Cause?’, http://allthingsnuclear.org/post/4704112149/how-many-cancers-did-chernobyl-really-cause-updated
• Sue Wareham, 2009, ‘The nuclear industry: a history of misleading claims’, Briefing Paper #20, http://www.energyscience.org.au/factsheets.html
• An article exposing the misinformation of Heard and other self-styled ‘pro-nuclear environmentalists’ regarding the Chernobyl death toll.

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Nuclear Waste

Some comments from an article by Ben Heard and Barry Brook (BH/BB) and my (Jim Green) responses.

BH/BB: “The best start for responsible management of any hazardous waste is to capture and contain it at the source. Nuclear power does this.”

About one-third of the spent fuel produced in power reactors has been reprocessed and this results in considerable releases of radioactive materials (it is “environmentally dirty” according to the Deputy Director General of the World Nuclear Association). Then there are accidents and leaks − for example in April 2005 it was revealed that 83,000 litres of highly-radioactive liquid containing dissolved spent nuclear fuel (and 160 kgs of plutonium) had leaked from the THORP reprocessing plant in the UK, and the leak went undetected for at least eight months.

Uranium mine tailings waste isn’t captured and contained, nor is the liquid waste from in-situ leach mining.

Hanford, Dounreay, Sellafield, Chelyabinsk/Mayak − these are synonymous with environmental pollution as a result of serious, protracted nuclear waste management problems.

BH/BB: “[R]adioactive waste is perceived as complex. This is far from the truth. Radioactive material is one of the most predictable, easily monitored and best understood forms of waste. We know what it does, and how it does it, forever, and we manage it accordingly.”

Obviously there is no experience with the management of high-level nuclear waste over periods of centuries or millenia let alone “forever”. Research continues to throw up surprises, e.g. colloidal migration of plutonium, and studies from the Äspö Hard Rock Laboratory in Sweden suggesting that copper-encapsulated canisters will corrode much faster than previously expected.

2023 update: The only operating deep underground nuclear waste repository anywhere in the world – the WIPP repository in the USA – suffered a chemical explosion in 2014 following years of staggering mismanagement and under-regulation.

BH/BB: “[T]he quantities in question are relatively very small. … A large-scale 25 GW nuclear power industry would add a mere 50 tons, taking up just 250 m3 (six-and-a-half standard shipping containers).”

BH/BB ignore waste streams across the nuclear fuel cycle − mine tailings waste, depleted uranium, etc. Over a 50-year lifespan, a 25 GW nuclear power industry would be responsible for:

• 900 million tonnes of low-level radioactive tailings waste − assuming the uranium came from the Olympic Dam mine in SA. (If the uranium came from in-situ leach mines, there would be no tailings waste but there would be many aquifers polluted with radionuclides, heavy metals and acid.)
• 215,000 tonnes of depleted uranium waste, a by-product of the uranium enrichment process.
• 37,500 tonnes of high-level nuclear waste (spent fuel).
• 375,000 cubic metres of low-level and intermediate-level waste.

(The Switkowski report is the basis for most of the above calculations. The figure on tailings waste comes from BHP Billiton’s literature regarding the Olympic Dam open-cut mine expansion plan.)

The figures for one reactor (1 GW) for one year are: 720,000 tonnes of radioactive tailings waste (Olympic Dam), 170 tonnes of depleted uranium waste, 30 tonnes of high-level nuclear waste (spent fuel) and 300 cubic metres of low-level and intermediate-level waste.

Volume and mass are not the only parameters to consider. High-level nuclear waste (spent fuel) produced in power reactors around the world contains enough plutonium to build about 200,000 nuclear weapons. Heat generated by high-level nuclear waste is another concern.

The interesting part of the BH/BB article concerns fast reactor technology. In theory fast reactor technology is attractive (potentially consuming more waste and weapons-useable material than the reactors produce) but in practice it has been highly problematic − fast reactor programs have contributed to several nuclear weapons programs; they have been leak-prone, fire-prone, and accident-prone; and there are a number of multi-billion-dollar white elephants such as the French Superphenix fast reactor. (On fast reactor technology see this report (PDF) by the International Panel on Fissile Materials.) Likewise the theory of conventional reprocessing is attractive but in practice it has been highly problematic.

BH/BB conclude their fast reactor promo: “So nuclear waste stops being a major headache, and turns into an asset. An incredibly valuable asset, as it turns out. In the US alone, there is 10 times more energy in already-mined depleted uranium (about 700,000 tonnes) and spent nuclear fuel, just sitting there in stockpiles, than there is coal in the ground. This is a multi-trillion dollar, zero-carbon energy resource, waiting to be harnessed.” Nuclear utilities around the world disagree − they are keen to dump their nuclear waste in Australia or anywhere else that will take it and they are prepared to pay billions of dollars to get rid of it. In theory, nuclear waste is a multi-trillion dollar asset; in reality it is a multi-billion dollar liability.

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Heard platforms self-confessed liar Michael Shellenberger

Why did Ben Heard’s ‘Bright New World’ invite Michael Shellenberger to speak at a mid-2020 zoom public meeting? Shellenberger is, amongst other things:

— a serial liar who acknowledges a long history of failing to be truthful

— a dangerous nutjob who promotes the worldwide proliferation of nuclear weapons

— a dangerous nutjob who promotes the abolition of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

So why provide a platform for Shellenberger to promote his misinformation and dangerous nonsense? If Heard provides an answer, it will be posted here.

More info: https://nuclear.foe.org.au/michael-shellenbergers-pro-nuclear-lobby-group-environmental-progress/

Click here to download a March 2012 briefing paper, ‘Japan’s Nuclear Scandals and the Fukushima Disaster’.

Here is a brief summary of the paper:

1. Safety breaches and cover-ups

The Japanese nuclear industry has been plagued by safety breaches, scandals, cover-ups, inadequate regulation and a myriad of other failings over a long period of time.

2. Corruption and collusion in Japan’s ‘nuclear village’

Japan’s nuclear industry is run by a clique of public- and private-sector interests that have promoted personal and corporate gain at the expense of public safety.

3. Nuclear accidents in Japan

Managerial and regulatory failures have contributed to numerous nuclear accidents in Japan.

4. Earthquake and tsunami risks

TEPCO (operator of the Fukushima plant) did not adequately protect against earthquake and tsunami risks, nor was it forced to by the government regulator.

5. Responsibility for the Fukushima disaster

Primary responsibility for the disaster lies with TEPCO. Others are culpable including Japanese government agencies and regulators, and overseas suppliers who have turned a blind eye to serious problems in Japan’s nuclear industry over a long period of time.

6. Australia’s role in the Fukushima disaster

Australia’s uranium mining industry has done nothing to try to rectify the patterns of unsafe mismanagement in Japan’s nuclear industry, or the inadequate regulation. Successive Australian governments have been equally passive.

Appendix: Spinning Fukushima

Two ABC opinion articles (March 2011 and February 2012)  on the ‘spinning’ of the Fukushima disaster by nuclear power advocates.

Looking back, looking forward

Brook’s bravenewclimate website is dead. If you want to follow any of the bravenewclimate links in this webpage, you’ll need to use a web.archive.org link such as this one.

Just skimming this webpage in September 2024 and noticed this:

A [2015] guest post on Brook’s website claims that Generation IV fast neutron reactors will be mass produced and “dominating the market by about 2030.”

Well, it’s 2024, there has been near-zero progress with fast neutron reactors since 2015 and the likelihood that fast neutron reactors will be mass produced and dominating that market by 2030 is, literally, zero.

This begs the question: Is Barry Brook so stupid that he ever really believed that fast neutron reactors might be mass produced and dominating that market by 2030? The claim was as implausible in 2015 as it is now.

In fact, there is evidence that Brook has deliberately misled his readers. In 2009 Brook wrote a puff-piece about Generation IV fast reactors for the Murdoch press. On the same day he said on his website that “although it’s not made abundantly clear in the article”, he expects conventional reactors to play the major role for the next two to three decades but chose to emphasise Generation IV reactors “to try to hook the fresh fish”.

The above comments suggest that Brook intentionally misleads people about Gen 4 fast reactors.

Brook was particularly keen to promote ‘integral fast reactors’. To learn more about the miserable history and miserable prospects for IFRs, see Appendix 3 (p.79-95) in this submission to an Australian parliamentary inquiry.

The South Australian Nuclear Fuel Cycle Royal Commission wasn’t buying Brook’s bullshit about fast reactors, stating in its 2016 final report:
“Advanced fast reactors and other innovative reactor designs are unlikely to be feasible or viable in the foreseeable future. The development of such a first-of-a-kind project in South Australia would have high commercial and technical risk. Although prototype and demonstration reactors are operating, there is no licensed, commercially proven design. Development to that point would require substantial capital investment.”

As for Brook’s claim that conventional reactors will play the major role for the next two to three decades … in 2023, renewables enjoyed record growth for the 22nd consecutive year (507 GW) and passed 30% of global electricity generation. Nuclear power went BACKWARDS in 2023 (1.7 GW) and now accounts for 9% of global electricity generation, barely half its historic peak of 17.5%.

Brook would make a fascinating case study for a PhD thesis. How could an otherwise intelligent scientist become such a raving lunatic on one particular issue? Exploration of this conundrum might be of lasting benefit to science and academia in Australia and beyond.

Barry Brook, Pinchy Lobster and Clive Palmer: Three Outstanding Scientists & Intellectuals

Tas Uni academic Barry Brook’s university webpage (see the Career tab, under “Awards and Prizes”) says that in 2005 he was listed as one of the “2000 Outstanding Scientists of the 21st Century” by the International Biographical Centre (IBC). But the IBC is a zero-credibility, money-making operation.

The WA Government’s Dept of Commerce ‘ScamNet’ website states: “The material promoting the International Biographical Centre creates a false impression about the credentials of the organisation. It also wrongly implies that the receiver of the letter has been picked through a special research process considering their work and qualifications.”

If there was any doubt about the IBC’s illegitimacy, one of Brook’s academic colleagues nominated a squeaky toy lobster and Prof. Lobster was accepted for inclusion as one of the ‘2000 Outstanding Scientists of the 21st Century’.

And the IBC has accepted a nomination for Clive Palmer to be listed as one of the ‘2000 Outstanding Intellectuals of the 21st Century’. A ‘Medal of Intellect’ will be sent to Palmer on payment of a $240 fee. Following an “investigation” by its “research and editorial departments”, the IBC further decided to include Clive Palmer in its list of ‘Top 100 Professionals 2016’ and invited Palmer to part with $775 for a Certificate and Commemorative Medal – laminated for an extra $150.

Feel free to test the IBC’s credibility yourself … you’ll have no trouble getting the Wiggles or the Bananas in Pyjamas or Thomas the Tank Engine or Humphrey B. Bear or even Ben Heard accepted as Outstanding Scientists or Outstanding Intellectuals or Top Professionals.

Given that the illegitimacy of the IBC is beyond doubt, why does the IBC accolade remain on Brook’s university webpage?

Update – the sham award was removed from Brook’s university webpage approx. 12-18 months after it was publicly revealed here and 12+ months after the Tas Uni V.C. was alerted to Brook’s self-promotion of a sham award.

Barry Brook promotes barking-mad conspiracy theorists

Excerpt from an article posted at The Ecologist.

Australian ‘ecomodernist‘ academic Barry Brook says that before 2009 he hadn’t given much thought to nuclear power because of the ‘peak uranium’ argument. By 2010, Brook was in full flight, asserting that the linear no-threshold (LNT) model is “discredited” and has “no relevance to the real world”.

In fact, LNT enjoys heavy-hitting scientific support. For example the US National Academy of Sciences’ BEIR report states that “the risk of cancer proceeds in a linear fashion at lower doses without a threshold and … the smallest dose has the potential to cause a small increase in risk to humans.” Likewise, a report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences states: “Given that it is supported by experimentally grounded, quantifiable, biophysical arguments, a linear extrapolation of cancer risks from intermediate to very low doses currently appears to be the most appropriate methodology.”

On Chernobyl, Brook said: “The credible literature (WHO, IAEA) puts the total Chernobyl death toll at less than 60. The ‘conspiracy theories’ drummed up against these authoritative organisations rings a disturbingly similar bell in my mind to the crank attacks on the IPCC, NASA and WMO in climate science.”

But the WHO, IAEA and other UN agencies estimated 9,000 deaths in ex-Soviet states in their 2005/06 reports, and more recently UNSCEAR has adopted the position that the long-term death toll is uncertain.

Brook repeatedly promotes the work of Ted Rockwell from ‘Radiation, Science, and Health’, an organisation that peddles dangerous conspiracy theories such as this: “Government agencies suppress data, including radiation hormesis, and foster radiation fear. They support extreme, costly, radiation protection policies; and preclude using low-dose radiation for health and medical benefits that apply hormesis, in favor of using (more profitable) drug therapies.”

Brook promotes the discredited ‘hormesis’ theory that low doses of radiation are beneficial to human health (for a scientific assessment see Appendix D in the BEIR report).

And for comic relief Brook promotes his citation as one of the ‘Outstanding Scientists of the 21st Century’. But in fact the citation comes from the International Biographical Centre, an organisation whose raison d’etre is to separate the gullible and the narcissistic from their money. One of Brook’s academic colleagues nominated a squeaky toy lobster and Prof. Lobster was accepted for inclusion in the list of Outstanding Scientists.

Barry Brook loses plot, temper

Jim Green, Spinning Fukushima, New Matilda, 16 March 2011, http://newmatilda.com/2011/03/16/spinning-fukushima

When will they call it a disaster? Jim Green looks at just how wrong Australia’s leading advocates of nuclear power got it on Fukushima this week

How have Australian scientists handled the difficult task of keeping us informed about the unfolding nuclear disaster in Japan? Well, precious few Australian scientists have actually featured in the media. The most prominent have been Professor Aidan Byrne from the Australian National University, RMIT Chancellor Dr Ziggy Switkowski, and Professor Barry Brook from Adelaide University.

A clear pattern is evident: those with the greatest ideological attachment to nuclear power have provided the most inaccurate commentary.

The best of the bunch has been Byrne. He has presented the facts as he understands them — and has willingly acknowledged major information gaps.

Switkowski has been gently spinning the issue, repeatedly reassuring us that lessons will be learned, improvements will be made. However, history clearly shows that nuclear lessons are not properly learned. The OECD’s Nuclear Energy Agency notes that lessons may be learned but too often they are subsequently forgotten. Or they are learned but by the wrong people. Or they are learned but not acted upon. The Nuclear Energy Agency says the pattern of the same type of accident recurring time and time again at different nuclear plants needs to be “much improved”.

The situation in Japan illustrates the point — it has become increasingly obvious over the past decade that greater protection against seismic risks is necessary, but the nuclear utilities haven’t wanted to spend the money and the Japanese nuclear regulator and the government haven’t forced the utilities to act.

Barry Brook is a strident nuclear power advocate and host of the bravenewclimate.com blog, which has received an astonishing half a million web hits since the crisis in Japan began. Right now, Brook has egg on his face. Make that an omelette. He has maintained a running commentary in the media and on his website insisting that the situation in Japan is under control and that there is no reason for concern.

His message has not changed, even after efforts to cool the nuclear reactor cores met with mixed success, even as deliberate and uncontrolled radiation releases occurred, even as the outer containment buildings exploded, even as 200,000 people were being evacuated, even as a fire led to spent nuclear fuel releasing radiation directly to the environment — and even as radiation monitors detected alarming jumps in radioactivity near the reactor and low levels of radiation as far away as Tokyo.

On Saturday, Brook came out swinging, insisting that “There is no credible risk of a serious accident.” Phew.

That afternoon, after the first explosion at Fukushima, Brook kept going, making numerous assertions in the comments section of his website, most of which turned out to be wrong. Try this one:

“The risk of meltdown is extremely small, and the death toll from any such accident, even if it occurred, will be zero. There will be no breach of containment and no release of radioactivity beyond, at the very most, some venting of mildly radioactive steam to relieve pressure. Those spreading FUD [fear, uncertainty and doubt] at the moment will be the ones left with egg on their faces. I am happy to be quoted forever after on the above if I am wrong … but I won’t be. The only reactor that has a small probability of being ‘finished’ is unit 1. And I doubt that, but it may be offline for a year or more.”

On Saturday night, Brook continued, responding to a commenter on his website with the following words: “When the dust settles, people will realise how well the Japanese reactors — even the 40 year old one — stood up to this incredibly energetic earthquake event.” The dust is (hopefully) settling and it seems likely that four reactors will be write-offs.

It didn’t stop all weekend. On Sunday morning, Brook reflected on the unfolding disaster: “I don’t see the ramifications of this as damaging at all to nuclear power’s prospects” and that “it will provide a great conversation starter for talking intelligently to people about nuclear safety.” Actually Fukushima will likely prove a great conversation starter for talking intelligently to people about nuclear hazards. Not recommended at parties.

On Sunday afternoon, Brook was congratulating himself on his “just the facts” approach in media interviews. He pondered on the comments thread: “What has this earthquake taught us? That it’s much, much riskier to choose to live next to the ocean than it is to live next to a nuclear power station.” Well, the lesson for people in Fukushima is that if you live next to the ocean and next to a nuclear power station, then you’re really stuffed.

On Monday, when the second explosion at Fukushima occurred, Prof. Brook was still insisting that “the nuclear reactors have come through remarkably well”. On Monday evening, half a dozen people were banned from posting comments directly on the website. True, some of their comments were silly and unhelpful, but by that criterion Brook ought to have banned himself. And on Tuesday, with a fire at Fukushima spewing long-lived radioisotopes directly into the environment, Brook was rallying the pro-nuclear lobby, arguing that “now, more than ever, we must stand up for what we believe is right”.

Cracks were starting to appear on Tuesday night, with Brook finally acknowledging an “ongoing crisis situation”, banning another 40-50 “random nobodies” from posting comments directly on his website, and quoting Rudyard Kipling:

“If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build’em up with worn-out tools”

Make of that what you will.

One contributor to Brave New Climate summed it up nicely: “Unfortunately, Prof. Brook has really abdicated a neutral position on this event. His clear support of nuclear power seems to have impacted his critical thinking skills. … Every time he states something in this crisis is ‘impossible’, it seems to happen the next day.”

Andrew Bolt has been urging people to read the “marvellously sane and cool explanation” from “our friend Professor Barry Brook”. Both Bolt and Brook claim that no more than 50 people died from the Chernobyl catastrophe. More on that next month — the 25th anniversary falls on 26 April 2011. The scientific estimates of the Chernobyl death toll vary. The World Health Organisation puts the figure at 9000. A 2006 report based on Belarus national cancer statistics, paints a much gloomier picture: approximately 270,000 cancers and 93,000 fatal cancer cases caused by Chernobyl.

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Barry Brook’s nuclear misinformation

To read a detailed, referenced critique of Barry Brook’s nuclear misinformation online click here.

A shorter version of this material was published in New Matilda on 12 March 2012 and a similar version from Indymedia is copied below.

The detailed paper covers these topics: Introduction – Energy options – Nuclear power and WMD proliferation – Ionising radiation and Chernobyl – Safety and Fukushima- Terra Nullius – Radioactive waste – The responsible nuclear advocate – Conclusion

Conclusion to the detailed paper:

Many people concerned about climate and energy are wrestling with some enormous dilemmas:

• Coal burning is a major cause of climate change, and efforts to develop ‘clean coal’ technology have been half-hearted and progress has been glacial.
• Widespread nuclear power proliferation will run the WMD proliferation risks “off the reasonability scale” as Al Gore puts it. There is no reason to believe that the industry will seriously improve its performance on this front − it refuses even to address relatively simple problems such as stopping the stockpiling of separated plutonium. There is no reason to believe that fast reactor technology will come to the rescue − attractive theories notwithstanding − given that fast reactor programs have to date contributed to several WMD proliferation programs (e.g. India, France, Yugoslavia) without contributing in any way to the resolution of any WMD proliferation problems anywhere.
• Renewables are generally benign but there are limitations to consider (and hopefully overcome through concerted R&D) and interrelated cost issues.

Some people live in a parallel universe where global warming is a myth, or clean coal technology is just around the corner. Some people live in a parallel universe where a global transition to renewables is simple, cheap, and potentially quick. Prof. Brook lives in a parallel universe where nuclear power is benign − the WMD connection is trivialised, nuclear waste is a multi-trillion-dollar asset, nuclear power is the safest energy source, low-level ionising radiation is harmless, Chernobyl killed less than 60 people, ‘integral fast reactors’ can’t produce fissile material for weapons, reactor-grade plutonium can’t be used in weapons, and problems such as inadequate safeguards and the (further) disempowerment of Aboriginal people are ignored.

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Prof Barry Brook – Brave New Climate

Jim Green, 31 March 2012, Indymedia

http://www.indymedia.org.au/2012/03/31/prof-barry-brook-brave-new-climate

One of the loudest nuclear advocates in Australia is Professor Barry Brook, a climate change scientist at the University of Adelaide who runs the Brave New Climate website.

The Brook mantra is this: “it’s nuclear power or it’s climate change”. However numerous studies exist that map out the options to sharply reduce emissions without recourse to nuclear power. See for example the UNSW study a more ambitious scenario that replaces all coal and gas with renewables.

Brook has shown himself willing to trivialise the repeatedly demonstrated connections between nuclear power and weapons. He has slipped up on this, claiming for example that North Korea never signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty although Pyongyang’s accession to — then withdrawal from — the NPT is central to the unfolding story of North Korea’s nuclear program.

Brook claims to be concerned about nuclear weapons proliferation but the evidence suggests otherwise. Here is an example of his indifference: asked at a public forum what needs to be done to fix the safeguards system and what role he sees for scientists such as himself to help address the problems, Brook responded: “That’s a political and legal question and I have no further comment.”

To get a handle on the proliferation risks of the nuclear “renaissance”, if it eventuates, here are some figures:

• Of the 65-odd countries with a nuclear program of any significance (involving power and/or research reactors), over one-third have used their ‘peaceful’ programs to advance weapons ambitions.
• Of the 10 countries to have built nuclear weapons, six did so with support and political cover from their “peaceful” programs (India, North Korea, South Africa, Pakistan, France and Israel).
• About 45 countries have the capacity to produce significant quantities of fissile material (more or less depending on where you draw the line with small-medium research reactors), and a vast majority of those countries acquired their fissile material production capacity through peaceful nuclear research or power programs.

As former US Vice President Al Gore has argued, a major horizontal expansion of nuclear power will “run the proliferation risk off the reasonability scale”.

Brook claims that the integral fast reactors (IFRs) he champions “cannot be used to generate weapons-grade material.” The claim isn’t true. To quote George Stanford, who worked on an IFR research program in the US: “If not properly safeguarded, they could do [with IFRs] what they could do with any other reactor — operate it on a special cycle to produce good quality weapons material.”

The misconceptions pile up. Brook states: “Prior to the Fukushima Daiichi accident, caused when a 14 metre tsunami crashed into a 40-year old power station in Japan, no member of the public had ever been killed by nuclear power in an OECD country.” However the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation (UNSCEAR) has estimated the collective effective dose to the world population over a 50-year period of operation of nuclear power reactors and associated nuclear facilities to be two million person-Sieverts (it does not provide OECD figures separately). Applying a standard risk estimate (0.05 fatal cancers per Sievert of exposure to low-dose radiation) gives an estimated 100,000 fatalities. Whatever the uncertainties with the dose and risk estimates, and whatever the OECD/non-OECD breakdown, Brook’s statement clearly doesn’t hold up.

Brook states that the linear no-threshold (LNT) theory of radiation exposure and cancer causation is “discredited” and has “no relevance to the real world”. However, the 2005 report of the Committee on the Biological Effects of Ionising Radiation of the US National Academy of Sciences states that “the risk of cancer proceeds in a linear fashion at lower doses without a threshold and … the smallest dose has the potential to cause a small increase in risk to humans.” And one further example of many, a study published in the Proceedings of the US National Academy of Sciences in 2003 concluded that: “Given that it is supported by experimentally grounded, quantifiable, biophysical arguments, a linear extrapolation of cancer risks from intermediate to very low doses currently appears to be the most appropriate methodology.”

Brook gets it wrong on Chernobyl, too. He states: “The credible literature (WHO, IAEA) puts the total Chernobyl death toll at less than 60.” However the studies he is referring to do not estimate a death toll of less than 60. He is referring to reports by the UN Chernobyl Forum  and the World Health Organisation in 2005-06 which estimate up to 4000 eventual deaths among the higher-exposed Chernobyl populations and an additional 5000 deaths among populations exposed to lower doses in Belarus, the Russian Federation and Ukraine. (The Chernobyl Forum includes UN agencies such as the IAEA, UNSCEAR, and WHO.)

Still Brook is adamant that “nuclear power is the safest energy option”. Safer than wind and solar? He could only arrive at that conclusion by using the nuclear industry’s methodology: only consider accidents at nuclear power plants rather than accidents across the energy chain; understate the death toll from accidents by several orders of magnitude; only consider accidents rather than routine emissions; and ignore the greatest hazard associated with nuclear power — its repeatedly demonstrated connection to WMD proliferation (most recently with North Korea’s use of an “experimental power reactor” to produce plutonium for weapons).

As the Fukushima nuclear disaster unfolded in March 2011, Brook maintained a running commentary in the media and on his website insisting that the situation was under control and that there was no reason for concern. There was no correction until Brook had been publicly held to account for spreading misinformation. Andrew Bolt from the Herald Sun was urging people to read the “marvellously sane and cool explanation” from “our friend Professor Barry Brook”. Both Bolt and Brook subscribe to conspiracy theories about environmentalists with a hidden, authoritarian “political manifesto” to return to a pre-industrial society.

Brook wrote an ABC opinion piece in December 2011 which states that “no-one was killed by radioactivity” from Fukushima and is silent on the problem of long-term cancer deaths from exposure to radioactive fallout [see here for a recent estimate of the long-term cancer death toll, ~5,000].

Many people concerned about climate and energy are wrestling with some enormous dilemmas about how to move to a less emissions intensive energy economy. Some people live in a parallel universe where global warming is a myth, or clean coal technology is just around the corner. Some people live in a parallel universe where the global transition to renewables is simple, cheap, and potentially quick. Barry Brook lives in a parallel universe where nuclear power is benign, the WMD problem is trivial, nuclear waste is a multi-trillion-dollar asset, nuclear power is as safe as wind and solar power, ionising radiation is harmless, Chernobyl killed less than 60 people, and problems such as inadequate safeguards will magically fix themselves.

Finally, a few examples of Prof. Brook’s attacks against environmentalists − a problem that his employer, Adelaide University, needs to address:

• accusing a Friends of the Earth campaigner of “intellectual dishonesty” with no attempt to justify that defamatory accusation.
• another defamatory accusation of dishonesty (“anti-intellectual sleight-of-hand”) directed at Friends of the Earth in relation to a World Water Day statement.
• falsely accusing anti-nuclear and climate action groups of vote-rigging at a public debate in Melbourne (“frankly pathetic, but not unexpected”).
• claiming that “all they [Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace] care about is being anti-nuclear” and that Friends of the Earth “doesn’t care about climate change” − despite an abundance of readily-available evidence to the contrary.

[Jim Green is the national nuclear campaigner with Friends of the Earth, Australia.]

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Tas Uni academic less than “abundantly clear” about Generation IV nuclear reactors

Jim Green, 23 June 2015

http://tasmaniantimes.com/index.php?/weblog/article/Tas-Uni-academic-less-than-abundantly-clear-about-G/

Academic Barry Brook began working at the University of Tasmania last year. He is a strident nuclear power supporter and is particularly enthusiastic about non-existent ‘Generation IV’ reactor types.

The enthusiasm is understandable. Theoretically, Generation IV fast neutron reactors could gobble up waste and weapons material and convert them into low-carbon power, solving several problems at once. Unfortunately, these fast neutron reactors aren’t actually new and they have failed spectacularly to live up to their potential. The history of fast reactors has largely been one of extremely expensive, underperforming and accident-prone reactors.

For example, Japan’s Monju fast reactor operated for 205 days after it was connected to the grid in August 1995, and a further 45 days in 2010; apart from that it has been shut-down because of a sodium leak and fire in 1996, and a 2010 accident when a 3.3 tonne refuelling machine fell into the reactor vessel. The lifetime load factor of the French Superphenix fast reactor − the ratio of electricity generated compared to the amount that would have been generated if operated continually at full capacity − was a paltry 7%, making it one of the worst-performing reactors in history.

Fast reactors haven’t helped to resolve weapons proliferation problems; on the contrary, France has used a fast reactor to produce plutonium for weapons and India plans to do the same in the coming years.

Not easily deterred, Brook and other nuclear lobbyists promise a new generation of fast neutron reactors. A recent guest post on Brook’s website claims that Generation IV fast neutron reactors will be mass produced and “dominating the market by about 2030.”

Compare that claim with the following:

1. The intergovernmental Generation IV International Forum states: “Depending on their respective degree of technical maturity, the first Generation IV systems are expected to be deployed commercially around 2030-2040.” (emphasis added)

2. The International Atomic Energy Agency states: “Experts expect that the first Generation IV fast reactor demonstration plants and prototypes will be in operation by 2030 to 2040.” (emphases added)

3. A 2015 report by the French government’s Institute for Radiological Protection and Nuclear Safety (IRSN) states: “There is still much R&D to be done to develop the Generation IV nuclear reactors, as well as for the fuel cycle and the associated waste management which depends on the system chosen.”

IRSN is also sceptical about safety claims: “At the present stage of development, IRSN does not notice evidence that leads to conclude that the systems under review are likely to offer a significantly improved level of safety compared with Generation III reactors, except perhaps for the VHTR …” Moreover the VHTR (very high temperature reactor) system could bring about significant safety improvements “but only by significantly limiting unit power”.

4. The World Nuclear Association noted in 2009 that “progress is seen as slow, and several potential [Generation IV] designs have been undergoing evaluation on paper for many years.”

In 2009 Brook wrote a puff-piece about Generation IV fast reactors for the Murdoch press. On the same day he said on his website that “although it’s not made abundantly clear in the article”, he expects conventional reactors to play the major role for the next two to three decades but chose to emphasise Generation IV reactors “to try to hook the fresh fish”.

So that’s the game plan − making absurd claims about Generation IV reactors, pretending that they are near-term prospects, and being less than “abundantly clear” about the truth.

The guest post on Brook’s website was written by conspiracy theorist Geoff Russell (who holds me personally responsible for all the death and suffering from the Fukushima disaster … go figure).

Russell cites the World Nuclear Association (WNA) in support of his claim that “The Chinese expect these [fast reactors] to be dominating the market by about 2030 and they’ll be mass produced.”

Does the WNA reference support the claim? Not at all. Russell is making stuff up. According to the WNA, China has one very small experimental fast reactor and plans for a larger ‘Demonstration Fast Reactor’ by 2023 and plans its first fast reactor “for commercial operation from 2030”.

So China doesn’t expect fast reactors to be dominating the market by 2030. China may have one commercial fast reactor by 2030 … but almost certainly won’t. One of the reasons China’s fast reactor program is going nowhere fast is that China is collaborating with Russia, and Russia’s fast reactor program is going nowhere fast.

Rosatom subsidiary Rosenergoatom recently indefinitely postponed construction of the BN-1200 sodium-cooled fast neutron reactor, citing the need to improve fuel for the reactor and amid speculation about the cost-effectiveness of the project. The decision to indefinitely postpone the project might be reviewed in 2020. The reactor had been scheduled to start commercial operation in 2025, depending on experience operating a pilot BN-800 fast-neutron reactor which achieved first criticality in June 2014 but has not yet started commercial operation.

As recently as July 2014, Rosenergoatom’s director general said that Russia planned to begin construction of three BN-1200 reactors before 2030. OKBM − the Rosatom subsidiary that designed the BN-1200 reactor − previously anticipated that the first BN-1200 reactor would be commissioned in 2020, followed by eight more by 2030.
Rosenergoatom spokesperson Andrey Timonov the BN-800 reactor “must answer questions about the economic viability of potential fast reactors because at the moment ‘fast’ technology essentially loses this indicator [when compared with] commercial VVER units.”

Another fast neutron reactor project − the BREST-OD-300 − is stretching Rosatom’s funds. Bellona’s Alexander Nikitin said that Rosatom’s “Breakthrough” program to develop the BREST-OD-300 reactor was only breaking Rosatom’s piggy-bank.

Nuclear lobbyists claim that the next generation of fast neutron reactors are near-term prospects and they will be the best thing since sliced bread. In reality, fast neutron reactors have a long and troubled history, and most of the countries that invested in fast reactor technology have abandoned those efforts; they decided not to throw good money after bad.

Small modular reactors

The federal government’s 2014 Energy Green Paper promotes ‘small modular reactors’. Here’s a sample of the government’s rhetoric: “The main development in technology since 2006 has been further work on Small Modular Reactors (SMRs). SMRs have the potential to be flexibly deployed, as they are a simpler ‘plug-in’ technology that does not require the same level of operating skills and access to water as traditional, large reactors.”

Perhaps SMRs would be an ideal fit for Tasmania? Some nuclear lobbyists certainly think so. But as with fast neutron reactors, the rhetoric doesn’t match reality. Interest in SMRs is on the wane. Thus Thomas W. Overton, associate editor of POWER magazine, states: “At the graveyard wherein resides the “nuclear renaissance” of the 2000s, a new occupant appears to be moving in: the small modular reactor (SMR). … Over the past year, the SMR industry has been bumping up against an uncomfortable and not-entirely-unpredictable problem: It appears that no one actually wants to buy one.”

Overton explains the chicken-and-egg problem: “The problem has really been lurking in the idea behind SMRs all along. The reason conventional nuclear plants are built so large is the economies of scale: Big plants can produce power less expensively per kilowatt-hour than smaller ones. The SMR concept disdains those economies of scale in favor of others: large-scale standardized manufacturing that will churn out dozens, if not hundreds, of identical plants, each of which would ultimately produce cheaper kilowatt-hours than large one-off designs. It’s an attractive idea. But it’s also one that depends on someone building that massive supply chain, since none of it currently exists. … That money would presumably come from customer orders − if there were any.”

Dr Mark Cooper, Senior Fellow for Economic Analysis at the Institute for Energy and the Environment, Vermont Law School, notes that two US corporations are pulling out of SMR development because they cannot find customers (Westinghouse) or major investors (Babcock and Wilcox). Cooper points to some economic constraints: “SMR technology will suffer disproportionately from material cost increases because they use more material per MW of capacity. Higher costs will result from: lost economies of scale; higher operating costs; and higher decommissioning costs. Cost estimates that assume quick design approval and deployment are certain to prove to be wildly optimistic.”

Westinghouse CEO Danny Roderick said in January 2014: “The problem I have with SMRs is not the technology, it’s not the deployment − it’s that there’s no customers.” Westinghouse is looking to triple its decommissioning business. “We see this as a $1 billion-per-year business for us,” Roderick said. With the world’s fleet of mostly middle-aged reactors inexorably becoming a fleet of mostly ageing, decrepit reactors, Westinghouse is getting ahead of the game.

Some SMR work continues. Argentina is ahead of the rest, with construction underway on a 27 megawatt reactor − but the cost equates to an astronomical US$15.2 billion per 1000 megawatts. And that cost would be greater still if not for Argentina’s expertise and experience with reactor construction − a legacy of its covert weapons program from the 1960s to the early 1980s.

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The myth of the peaceful atom − debunking the misinformation peddled by the nuclear industry and its supporters

Click here for a detailed article responding to misinformation peddled by Barry Brook, Corey Bradshaw and others.

See also: Response to Barry Brook / Corey Bradshaw’s 2014 ‘open letter to environmentalists’

See also these three responses to the Brook/Bradshaw article:

Diesendorf M. Subjective judgments in the nuclear energy debate. Conservation Biology 2016;30:666–9. doi:10.1111/cobi.12692, https://conbio.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/cobi.12692

Henle K et al. Promoting nuclear energy to sustain biodiversity conservation in the face of climate change: Response to Brook and Bradshaw 2015. Conservation Biology 2016;30:663–5. doi:10.1111/cobi.12691, https://conbio.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/cobi.12691

Hendrickson O. Nuclear energy and biodiversity conservation: Response to Brook and Bradshaw 2015. Conservation Biology 2016;30:661–2. doi:10.1111/cobi.12693, https://conbio.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/cobi.12693

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Nuclear power and biodiversity – don’t forget WMD proliferation!

Jim Green, 18 Dec 2014, The Ecologist

http://www.theecologist.org/News/news_analysis/2680005/nuclear_power_and_biodiversity_dont_forget_wmd_proliferation.html

Nuclear energy is essential to preserve the world’s biodiversity, according to 69 conservation scientists. But there’s a mysterious omission in their analysis, writes Jim Green: nuclear weapons proliferation. And after a major exchange of nuclear bombs, and the ‘nuclear winter’ that would follow, exactly how much biodiversity would survive?

A group of conservation scientists has published an open letter urging environmentalists to reconsider their opposition to nuclear power. The letter is an initiative of Australian academics Barry Brook and Corey Bradshaw. The co-signatories from 14 countries “support the broad conclusions drawn in the article ‘Key role for nuclear energy in global biodiversity conservation’, published in Conservation Biology.”

The open letter states: “Brook and Bradshaw argue that the full gamut of electricity-generation sources – including nuclear power – must be deployed to replace the burning of fossil fuels, if we are to have any chance of mitigating severe climate change.”

So, here’s my open letter in response to the open letter initiated by Brook and Bradshaw:

Dear conservation scientists …

If you want environmentalists to support nuclear power, get off your backsides and do something about the all-too-obvious problems associated with the technology. Start with the proliferation problem since the multifaceted and repeatedly-demonstrated links between the ‘peaceful atom’ and nuclear weapons proliferation pose profound risks and greatly trouble environmentalists and many others besides.

The Brook / Bradshaw journal article emphasises the importance of biodiversity – but even a relatively modest exchange of some dozens of nuclear weapons could profoundly effect biodiversity, and large-scale nuclear warfare undoubtedly would.

The Brook / Bradshaw article ranks power sources according to seven criteria: greenhouse gas emissions, cost, dispatchability, land use, safety (fatalities), solid waste, and radiotoxic waste. WMD proliferation is excluded. By all means ignore lesser concerns to avoid a book-length analysis, but to ignore the link between nuclear power and weapons is disingenuous and the comparative analysis of power sources is a case of rubbish in, rubbish out.

Integral fast reactors

While Brook and Bradshaw exclude WMD proliferation from their comparative assessment of power sources, their journal article does address the topic. They promote the ‘integral fast reactor‘ (IFR) that was the subject of R&D in the US until was abandoned in the 1990s. If they existed, IFRs would be metal-fuelled, sodium-cooled, fast neutron reactors.

Brook and Bradshaw write: “The IFR technology in particular also counters one of the principal concerns regarding nuclear expansion – the proliferation of nuclear weapons – because its electrorefining-based fuel-recycling system cannot separate weapons-grade fissile material.”

However Brook’s claim that IFRs “cannot be used to generate weapons-grade material” is false. George Stanford, who worked on an IFR research program in the US, states: “If not properly safeguarded, [countries] could do [with IFRs] what they could do with any other reactor – operate it on a special cycle to produce good quality weapons material.” IFR advocate Tom Blees notes that: “IFRs are certainly not the panacea that removes all threat of proliferation, and extracting plutonium from it would require the same sort of techniques as extracting it from spent fuel from light water reactors.”

Brook and Bradshaw argue that “the large-scale deployment of fast reactor technology would result in all of the nuclear waste and depleted uranium stockpiles generated over the last 50 years being consumed as fuel.” Seriously? An infinitely more likely outcome would be some fast reactors consuming waste and weapons-useable material, while other fast reactors and conventional uranium reactors continue to produce such materials.

The reality of fast reactor technology

The Brook/Bradshaw article ignores the sad reality of fast reactor technology: over US$50 billion invested, unreliable reactors, numerous fires and other accidents, and one after another country abandoning the technology.

Moreover, fast reactors have worsened, not lessened, proliferation problems. John Carlson, former Director-General of the Australian Safeguards and Non-proliferation Office, discusses a topical example: “India has a plan to produce such [weapon grade] plutonium in fast breeder reactors for use as driver fuel in thorium reactors. This is problematic on non-proliferation and nuclear security grounds. Pakistan believes the real purpose of the fast breeder program is to produce plutonium for weapons (so this plan raises tensions between the two countries); and transport and use of weapons-grade plutonium in civil reactors presents a serious terrorism risk (weapons-grade material would be a priority target for seizure by terrorists).”

The fast reactor techno-utopia presented by Brook and Bradshaw is theoretically attractive. Back in the real world, there’s much more about fast reactors to oppose than to support.

Creative accounting

Brook and Bradshaw also counter proliferation concerns with the following argument: “Nuclear power is deployed commercially in countries whose joint energy intensity is such that they collectively constitute 80% of global greenhouse-gas emissions. If one adds to this tally those nations that are actively planning nuclear deployment or already have scientific or medical research reactors, this figure rises to over 90%. As a consequence, displacement of fossil fuels by an expanding nuclear-energy sector would not lead to a large increase in the number of countries with access to nuclear resources and expertise.”

The premise is correct − countries operating reactors account for a large majority of greenhouse emissions. But even by the most expansive estimate − Brook’s − less than one-third of all countries have some sort of weapons capability, either through the operation of reactors or an alliance with a nuclear weapons state. So the conclusion − that nuclear power expansion “would not lead to a large increase in the number of countries with access to nuclear resources and expertise” − is nonsense and one wonders how such jiggery-pokery could find its way into a peer-reviewed journal.

The power-weapons conundrum is neatly summarised by former US Vice-President Al Gore: “For eight years in the White House, every weapons-proliferation problem we dealt with was connected to a civilian reactor program. And if we ever got to the point where we wanted to use nuclear reactors to back out a lot of coal … then we’d have to put them in so many places we’d run that proliferation risk right off the reasonability scale.”

Safeguards

The Brook / Bradshaw article adds one further comment about proliferation: “Nuclear weapons proliferation is a complex political issue, with or without commercial nuclear power plants, and is under strong international oversight.”

They cite a book by the committed IFR advocate Tom Blees in support of that statement. But Blees argues for the establishment of an international strike force on full standby to attend promptly to any detected attempts to misuse or to divert nuclear materials. That is a far cry from the International Atomic Energy Agency’s safeguards system. In articles and speeches during his tenure as the Director General of the IAEA from 1997-2009, Dr Mohamed ElBaradei said that the Agency’s basic rights of inspection are “fairly limited”. The safeguards system suffers from “vulnerabilities” and “clearly needs reinforcement”, he went on, while efforts to improve the system had been “half-hearted”, and the safeguards system operated on a “shoestring budget … comparable to that of a local police department”.

Blees doesn’t argue that the nuclear industry is subject to strong international oversight – he argues that “fissile material should all be subject to rigorous international oversight” (emphasis added). This conflation between reality and wishful thinking is a recurring feature of Barry Brook’s nuclear advocacy.

Strengthening safeguards

Of course, the flaws in the nuclear safeguards system are not set in stone. And this gets me back to my original point: if nuclear lobbyists want environmentalists to support nuclear power, they need to get off their backsides and do something about the all-too-obvious problems such as the inadequate safeguards system.

Environmentalists have a long record of working on these problems and the lack of support from nuclear lobbyists has not gone unnoticed.

To give an example of a topical point of intervention, Canada has agreed to supply uranium and nuclear technology to India with greatly reduced safeguards and non-proliferation standards, and Australia seems likely to follow suit. Those precedents will likely lead to a broader weakening of international safeguards – and make it that much more difficult for nuclear lobbyists to win support from environmentalists and others. The seriousness of the problem has been acknowledged by, among others, a former Chair of the IAEA Board of Governors and a former Director-General of the Australian Safeguards and Non-proliferation Office. It is a live debate in numerous nuclear exporting countries and there isn’t a moment to lose.

To mention just one more point of intervention, the separation and stockpiling of plutonium from power reactor spent fuel increases proliferation risks. There is virtually no demand for the uranium or plutonium separated at reprocessing plants, and no repositories for the high-level waste stream. Yet reprocessing continues, the global stockpile of separated plutonium increases year after year and now stands at around 260 tons. It’s a problem that needs to be solved; it’s a problem that can be solved.

Endorsing the wishful thinking and misinformation presented in the Brook / Bradshaw journal article is no substitute for an honest acknowledgement of the proliferation problems associated with nuclear power, coupled with serious, sustained efforts to solve those problems.

“Radioactive by-products of Australian uranium have been spewing into the atmosphere from Fukushima” reported Natalie Lowrey of FoE Australia  at the recent FoE Asia Pacific meeting in Seoul, Korea.

“BHP Billiton and Rio Tinto export uranium from Australia to TEPCO’s Fukushima nuclear power plant from the Olympic Dam and Ranger mines in Australia, respectively. Heathgate Resources, operator of the Beverley uranium mine in South Australia, has probably also supplied TEPCO.

“Approximately 70% of uranium used in nuclear reactors are sourced from the homelands of Indigenous minorities worldwide, this is no different in Australia. Aboriginal communities in Australia have publicly announced their sadness at the uranium that has be taken from their lands without their consent and resulted in the nuclear disaster in Japan. These Aboriginal communities know too well that the nuclear industry has lead to sickness, divided communities and contaminated land.

“On 6th April in a letter to Ban Ki Moon the Secretary General of the UN, Yvonne Margarula of the Mirrar people, Traditional Owners of the land that the Ranger uranium mine is located on in Australia, expressed solidarity with the people of Japan and much sorrow that uranium from the land of the Mirrar was used in the Fukushima plant.

“Yvonne like many people around the world believe that the Fukushima disaster is a dire warning of the risks posed by the nuclear industry. Production and exports from Australian uranium mines have averaged 9600 tonnes of uranium oxide (8140 tU) per year since 2004.

“Australia exports uranium to both Korea and Japan. As a major uranium supplier, Australia could have played a role in breaking the vicious cycle of nuclear safety breaches, data falsification and cover-ups in Japan over the past decade by making uranium exports conditional on improved management of nuclear plants and tighter regulation.

“But the mining companies and state/territory governments did nothing. And they continue to do nothing.

“The Fukushima disaster has not changed the situation for uranium mining in Australia, but it has had some effect. Public opposition to uranium mining has strengthened in Australia. A recent poll found 50% opposition to uranium exports compared to 44% support.

“This heightened opposition has had flow-on effects such as the Western Australia Labor Party’s reaffirmation of its no-uranium-mining policy at its state conference last week. Uranium is the first link in the toxic nuclear fuel chain, and is the primary source of radioactive materials used in nuclear weapons and nuclear reactors. Uranium mining adversely affects Indigenous peoples, our global environment and health, and when enriched for use in nuclear weapons and nuclear reactors, threatens our security and survival.

“The nuclear-free world envisioned by Friends of the Earth Asia Pacific will require an end to uranium mining. The nuclear option does not make sense on any level: economically, environmentally, politically or socially. It is too costly, too dangerous, too slow and has too small an impact on global warming.

“We MUST turn off the toxic tap with an end to uranium mining. We MUST challenge the green washing of governments and the nuclear industry that nuclear power is a solution to climate change. We MUST bring an end to the deadly and toxic nuclear cycle that results in poisoned lands, sickness and the potential for nuclear weapon proliferation.

“Friends of the Earth Australia joins our colleagues in South Korea, Sri Lanka, Malaysia and Japan, and all our brothers and sisters in the Asia Pacific region to build a nuclear free Asia Pacific and create a clean energy future for the next generations.”

Natalie Lowrey Friends of the Earth Australia Thursday 30 June 2011 Seoul, Korea

Secret advice: avoid reactor health study

By ANDREW CLENNELL in Canberra
28/6/2000

http://www.smh.com.au/news/0006/28/national/national14.html

The Federal Government was at pains to avoid a detailed health study of residents living near the Lucas Heights nuclear reactor before a
replacement reactor was built, according to a document released under Freedom of Information laws.

“Be careful in terms of health impacts – don’t really want a detailed study done of the health of Sutherland residents,” the document warns.

Obtained by Sutherland Shire Council, it was prepared by the Department of Industry, Science and Resources to offer advice to officers on how they
might answer questions at a Senate inquiry into the proposed reactor. It includes suggested questions on public health.

Question: “Is it better to locate a replacement reactor in a remote location or in a suburban location?”

Answer: “There is no difference where it is located in terms of public health.”

Question: “Was it not the case that persons living next to lead smelters were perfectly happy with those establishments, but were not truly aware of the risk they were facing?”

Answer: “The replacement is going to be a safe facility wherever it is located, because it will be safe by design.”

It says there is “no point in consulting with potential/hypothetical recipients of a new reactor. It was discovered through the course of inquiry into the new airport that such a course of action serves only to inflame the communities for no good reason.”

A spokesman for the Industry, Science and Resources Minister, Senator Minchin, said the only reason the department would not have wanted a detailed health study was because it “wasn’t required”.

“There was already extensive evidence there was no impact on the health of people in the Sutherland Shire,” he said. “There is absolutely no evidence of cancer clusters, as claimed by Sutherland Shire Council.”

The Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation said the maximum dose of radiation from the reactor was “one-hundredth the annual rate approved by the National Health and Medical Research Council”.

It also emerged yesterday that the Government is about to sign the contract for the new reactor without knowing if the proposed fuel will be ready in time.

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Revealed: A Nuclear Nightmare in Sydney’s Backyard

Anthony Hoy, The Bulletin, November 12, 2003

The deportation of accused al Qaeda bomber Willie Brigitte, suspected of plotting an attack on Sydney’s Lucas Heights nuclear reactor or other military sites, coincides with warnings of a major public health catastrophe resulting from a terrorist attack. Why residents have not been told and how emergency services may be hamstrung by all the secrecy are just two of the serious questions raised by a former ANSTO employee turned whistleblower. Anthony Hoy reports.

Australia is about to confront the reality of the war on terrorism. The head of the nuclear watchdog, the Australian Radiation Protection and Safety Agency (ARPANSA), has warned of the danger of an aerial terrorist attack on the Lucas Heights nuclear research reactor, 40km to the south-west of the Sydney CBD.

Reports that suspected al Qaeda bomber Willie Brigitte, who was deported to France last month, may have been plotting attacks against Lucas Heights or other military sites followed a briefing to local government by the NSW government last week on plans to evacuate people within 3km of the nuclear reactor in the event of such an attack.

ASIO reportedly reaffirmed suspicions that Brigitte was a skilled bomb-maker sent to Australia to commit a serious terrorist act.

The NSW Health Department has told both council and emergency services that other households – possibly within an 80km radius of the reactor – would be advised to stock up on iodine tablets at their own expense as a protective measure against radioactive contamination.

But fire brigade, ambulance and some other emergency services personnel, concerned about a lack of preparedness for a possible strike and the state government’s refusal to distribute iodine tablets, have indicated their personnel might refuse to respond to any attack on Lucas Heights on the grounds of personal safety.

Speculation is growing that a secret “radiation consequences analysis” commissioned by ARPANSA confirms that an estimated 4 million residents living within 80km of the reactor – virtually Sydney’s entire population – risk radioactive contamination in the event of a successful strike on the reactor.

The September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in the United States show that the most wildly imaginative incident is possible, ARPANSA CEo Dr John Loy told a Senate inquiry. “And of course it is incumbent on me, as a safety regulator, to think about that [and] to think about the implications of it. We certainly looked at what might be the consequences of crashing an aircraft into the facility.”

Loy argued that if a terrorist attack penetrated the reactor’s shielding, exposing its nuclear core, “there would be a buoyancy because of the fire and the radiation distribution would go higher into the atmosphere than in an accident, and that you might expect some radioactive contamination at a distance further from the reactor than in the case of an accident”.

Loy detailed government sensitivity about the threat, plus the possible misuse by terrorists of any official radiation data, to a Senate community affairs estimates hearing in June. ARPANSA, ASIO and bureaucrats involved in the “children overboard affair” have joined forces to prevent the public release of the radiation consequences analysis.

“At one end, you can characterise a report like that as a description of how to go about the sabotage of an installation and a suggestion on how to produce maximum consequences,” Loy said. “If you go to the extreme of assuming everything away – nothing works and the whole inventory is released and you get an absolute extreme case – the value of advising the public of that seems to me to be pretty limited.”

Bureaucrat Jane Halton, who had a key role in the children overboard affair, told the Senate inquiry: “I do not think that [the radiation consequences analysis] has a value in public discussion … My view is that, in the present security environment, releasing that information would not be of assistance to the public.”

The local government custodian in and around Lucas Heights, Sutherland Shire Council, has confirmed that the principal player in the children overboard affair, then-cabinet secretary Max Moore-Wilton, has also played a key role in frustrating the community’s “right to know” charter concerning the reactor’s operations.

“Our extensive freedom of information applications concerning Lucas Heights were blocked by Moore-Wilton with what are kn ˇown as conclusive certificates, generally on the grounds that the material we sought was ultimately contained in cabinet documents,” said Dr Gary Smith, the council’s principal science officer and a member of the federal government’s Nuclear Safety Committee.

Loy has confirmed that, in a revised security plan developed by federal security agencies in conjunction with ARPANSA and the operator of the reactor, the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation, about $18m is being spent over four years on increased security at the Lucas Heights site.

But in the face of a terrorist threat, ANSTO continues to operate with what was described in a Senate report as “a culture of secrecy so embedded that it has lost sight of its responsibility to be accountable to parliament”.

Loy confirms that it is whistleblower John Mulcair, a former ANSTO employee, who has been alerting ARPANSA and the federal government over the operator’s continuing secretive modus operandi, continuing accidents involving Lucas Heights staff, and serious shortcomings in the construction of a replacement nuclear reactor on the site.

THE WHISTLEBLOWER

John Mulcair was ANSTO’s communications manager for 51D′ years. From 1994 to 1999, he trudged daily through ANSTO’s security gates and along avenues named after prominent research scientists. One was named for Marie Curie, who discovered radium and provided the key to a basic understanding of matter and energy, thus ushering in a new era in medical research and treatment to which the Lucas Heights reactor is dedicated.

During his time there, Mulcair doggedly but unsuccessfully championed the rights of the broader Sutherland Shire community to know more about Lucas Heights’ operations. In particular, he was a strong advocate of the community’s right to information on the likely local impact of any serious major nuclear accident or incident.

The existing research reactor, which first achieved fission power in 1958 ⁄ and began routine operation in 1960, was to be shut down and decommissioned by 2005. In June 2000, the government announced the Argentine company INVAP S.E. was the successful tenderer for the construction of a replacement research reactor.

Mulcair oversaw the community processes associated with the environmental impact statement for the new reactor. “It was a case of ‘do I really need this shit anymore?’,” he said. “Basically, I got to the end of my time for doing the job. It is part of the make-up in being a journalist. So I paid off my mortgage and resigned. It was one step removed from winning the lottery and pouring the inkwell over the boss’ head. I contacted Fairfax Community Newspapers and while I left ANSTO on very good terms I took a job Fairfax created for me on the St George Leader.” His role as a reporter on the Lucas Heights hometown newspaper has effectively lifted the veil of secrecy that had surrounded the research facility.

It was to Mulcair that many ˜ ANSTO staff living with their families in the immediate environs – in suburbs such as Engadine, Heathcote, Lucas Heights (now called Baden Ridge) and Menai – turned when they felt the need to discreetly raise their concerns about aspects of ANSTO’s operations.

Mulcair alerted the Sutherland Shire community, John Loy and ARPANSA to serious problems with standards and communications between the parties building the replacement reactor. Mulcair also disclosed that ANSTO had intentionally withheld some of that information from ARPANSA for more than three months. “Indeed, and he [Mulcair] appears to have some good sources,” Loy told the Senate inquiry.

Says Mulcair: “All the motivations of my sources have been of the very best order. These people have only one interest, and that is to get the job done properly. I have a great deal of faith in the people I worked with at ANSTO to make good decisions. They are driven by principle. They don’t want something dodgy to affectthem and their families. From a public relations perspective, the replacement reactor should have been built somewhere else.”

A BOTCHED JOB

The worst fears of the community – and Mulcair – about the construction of the replacement reactor were quickly confirmed: the inquiring senators calling it “a comedy of errors”.

ANSTO was meant to seek ARPANSA approval for the construction of individual structures and components. Through the press, Mulcair progressively advised ARPANSA, the government and the community of repeated licence breaches by ANSTO and the contractor. As far as Loy was concerned, these mistakes raised the question of whether other mistakes had been made, and whether the system that allowed for the mistakes to be made needed further examination. Fresh licensing conditions were progressively imposed.

But Mulcair eventually blew the whistle on a communications gap between ARPANSA, ANSTO and INVAP, and the Argentine company’s Australian construction partners, John Holland, Evans Deakin and their subcontractors. He confirmed that ANSTO had, in effect, defied ARPANSA’s licence conditions preventing penetrations for the heavy water system in the bottom of the reactor’s pool tank. Mulcair’s alert, Loy says, resulted in “a significant investigation as to how that happened”. Such a communications gap was “a concern, yes”.

From then on, Loy required that INVAP’s procedures be amended to ensure ARPANSA’s directions were “explicitly included in all … written chains of command”.

ANSTO’s subsequent three-month delay in informing ARPANSA of the discovery of faulty welds in the pipework was, according to Loy, “a matter of concern” requiring “further investigation”. A full-time ARPANSA officer was to begin “intelligence gathering” and conduct full-time inspections at the new reactor site and manufacturing points.

Loy told the Senate inquiry: “There will be complexi kties of instrumentation and control and there will be issues connected with the fuel, the fuel type and the core complex systems … I would expect issues to arise in many of those, just from a priori experience.”

Loy has also confirmed that before he even considers issuing an operating licence for the replacement reactor, he will need to be satisfied there will be storage for Lucas Heights’ spent fuel waste when it is brought back from conditioning overseas. “ANSTO has talked about 2005 for the operation of the reactor, but whether that comes to pass or not, I do not know.”

HELL ON EARTH

Sydney residents will be relieved to know that in the event of a worst-case scenario, there is an evacuation contingency plan for those living within 3km of Lucas Heights.

But officers of the Ambulance Service of NSW have refused to join any post-incident distribution of iod ?ine “due to the lack of appropriate Personal Protective Equipment”. Similar arguments exist for the NSW Police Force, the Rural Fire Service, the State Emergency Service and crews under the umbrella of the Volunteer Rescue Association. The NSW Fire Brigade Employees Union is also among those highly critical of the contingency plans.

Only this month, the NSW government reluctantly agreed to accept the World Health Organisation’s safe level of radioactive exposure of 10milligray (mGy) – a third of the level advocated by ANSTO and ARPANSA, according to FBEU president Darryl Snow. “ANSTO and ARPANSA are concerned that their advocacy of the WHO contamination threshold would amount to their tacit admission that a nuclear incident is a possibility,” he says. “A comprehensive and effective emergency response to the affected ar Lea is beyond the scope of agencies tasked with dealing with such an incident. Our critical concern is whether an evacuation might take place smoothly, effectively and in a timely manner.”

The NSW Fire Brigade is the designated combat agency for radioactive incidents. “There is no guarantee that contaminated water will be contained and that local water supply and catchment areas will not be affected,” Snow says, warning that crews may cease to respond “to unsafe levels of radioactivity”.

There were also concerns that “any actions taken by firefighters may be ultimately ineffective in containing the incident. Consideration must also be given to the possibility that a terrorist attack on a nuclear facility will be but one part of a co-ordinated attack.” In short, Snow says, procedures in place in the event of a terrorist attack “are -breathtakingly inept in their inability to comprehend how an incident might be fought effectively”.

 

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Sydney’s nuclear target

Jim Green
October 2001

Introduction

The terrorist attack in the United States on September 11 has led to renewed calls for the Australian government to cancel its plan to build a 20-megawatt nuclear research reactor in the southern Sydney suburb of Lucas Heights.

The Coalition government insists that the reactor plan will proceed. Labor is being pressed to state unequivocally that a Labor government would cancel the contract with Argentinean reactor constructor INVAP; to date, Labor has only committed to reviewing the contract. A firm commitment from Labor may be necessary to secure preferences from the Australian Greens in the November 10 election.

If built, the new reactor will replace the 10-megawatt HIFAR reactor operated by the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO) at Lucas Heights.

In the 1970s, an assessment of the danger of a terrorist attack on the HIFAR reactor found that the reactor could be vulnerable and an explosive in the ‘right’ place could have severe consequences.

In 1983, nine sticks of gelignite, 25 kilograms of ammonium nitrate, three detonators and an igniter were found in an electrical sub-station inside ANSTO’s boundary fence. Two detonators failed, and one exploded but did not ignite the main charge. Two people were charged over this incident.

In 1984, a threat was made to fly an aircraft packed with explosives into the HIFAR reactor; a person was charged and found guilty on two counts of causing public mischief. In 1985, after vandalism of a pipe, radioactive liquid drained into Woronora river, and this incident was not reported for 10 days. In 1986 an act of vandalism resulted in damage to the sampling pit on the effluent pipeline.

On October 9, 2001, NSW and federal police were alerted to a bomb threat directed at ANSTO. Australian Protective Services and NSW police conducted a full search of ANSTO after a threat was made, Sergeant Jim McGrath of Sutherland police said. Channel Ten received the anonymous call at about 10pm. “There was a veiled threat the reactor was going to go up,” McGrath said. The grounds of ANSTO were searched but no device was found. (news.ninemsn.com.au/national/story_19935.asp)

Increased terrorist risk?

A number of recent reports on possible terrorist activities in Australia are summarised below. It should be noted that:
* in most cases it is impossible to judge the accuracy of these reports;
* some of the statements/activities reported below may be politically motivated and/or may constitute racist scapegoating (just as the New Zealand saga evoked ignorant, racist commentary). Again, it’s difficult to comment on the basis of the limited information on the public record.

Prime Minister John Howard said on September 21 that terrorist cells linked to Osama bin Laden could be operating in Australia. “It’s possible”, he told Melbourne radio 3AW. “I said earlier you can’t assume that Australia is immune from the threat of terrorism. We are not as high on the scale of vulnerability as other countries but we are on it and you can’t rule it out.” (Sydney Morning Herald Online, September 21, 2001.)

Howard said on October 3, “We should also understand that this country is more vulnerable as a result of what happened on September 11. … We should not be alarmed, nor should we be complacent, nor should we lazily assume that it can’t happen here.” Asked about suggestions terrorist organisations were present in Australia, Howard said, “It’s always hard in an area like this as to what one can say to keep the public informed and equally what one can’t say so as not to compromise traditional approaches to intelligence and security”. (“Howard warns Australia more vulnerable to terrorism”, Sydney Morning Herald Online, October 3, 2001.)

Howard said on October 8 that Australia will be involved in a long military campaign with the US against the Taliban that will result in casualties and a greater risk of retaliation from terrorists. He said, “I don’t want to overdramatise, but equally I don’t want to underestimate or understate the obvious, and that is that all of those who stand with our American friends are potential targets.” (“We are potential targets, warns PM”, The Age, October 9, 2001.)

The (Melbourne) Age reported on September 22 that a number of Australian-based supporters of bin Laden, based primarily in New South Wales, came to the attention of Australian authorities in the late 1990s as ASIO and the Australian Bureau of Criminal Intelligence made security preparations for the Olympics. The CIA and the FBI discovered the link during investigations into the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Centre. The investigations found that those eventually convicted had telephoned Australia in the months before and after the bombing. Australian DIO operatives have expressed alarm at the growth of bin Laden “cells” throughout South-East Asia. (Paul Daley, Bin Laden’s Australian links, The Age, September 22, 2001.)

The Sun Herald reported on September 30 that ASIO agents investigating “sympathy links” to the US terrorist attacks have conducted a series of home raids in Sydney’s south-west. Backed by 70 federal and NSW police, operatives from ASIO executed warrants on at least five houses in Sydney, seizing passports, financial records and other documents. According to the Sun Herald report, one address targeted is believed to be that of a Middle Eastern Australian employed as a baggage handler at Sydney airport. (“ASIO swoop in hunt for bin Laden link”, John Kidman, The Sun Herald, 30 September, 2001; also Sydney Morning Herald Online www.smh.com.au)

The Australian reported on October 12 that “About 100 members of four international terrorist groups linked to Osama bin Laden have been identified living in Sydney and Victoria raising funds for the holy war against the United States.” (“Bin Ladin groups in our suburbs”, The Australian, October 12, 2001.)

The Australian reported on September 29 that “Australian intelligence sources have confirmed that associates of terrorist Osama bin Laden are active in Australia. … Senior intelligence sources told The Weekend Australian yesterday that information about activities of bin Laden’s associates in Australia was uncovered during intensive investigations shortly before the 2000 Sydney Olympics. … The official confirmed that ASIO was investigating a number of individuals in Australia suspected of having links with bin Laden or his terrorist groups.” (Cameron Stewart, “Bin Laden’s men are here”, The Australian, September 29, 2001.)

Dr Rohan Gunaratna of the Centre for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence at the University of St Andrews in Scotland says there is evidence of terrorist operations in Australia. He said terrorist groups were increasingly looking for money and support within countries such as Australia and New Zealand because of tighter anti-terrorist measures in Europe and America. (Mark Metherell, “Terrorist groups already here, academic warns”, Sydney Morning Herald, September 27, 2001.)

Howard said on September 16 that the risk of terrorist activity against Australia was greater than in the past. “I don’t share the complacency of some that this can’t happen in Australia. I think it can”, he said. Howard said that Australia may be at a greater risk because of Federal Cabinet’s decision to invoke the ANZUS treaty. (Chelsey Martin and Steve Lewis, “Threat of terrorist attack in Australia is rising: PM”, Australian Financial Review, September 17, 2001.)

ANSTO and its reactor are connected to the ANZUS alliance – and therefore potentially more attractive terrorist targets. The Department of Foreign Affairs and the Australian Safeguards Office stated in 1998 that the operation of a research reactor “first and foremost” serves “national interest requirements”. One of the “national interest requirements” said to justify the operation of a reactor, and the construction of a new reactor, is the ANZUS alliance. The Coalition and the Labor Party not only support the US nuclear weapons program, but also consider the US nuclear umbrella to be a centerpiece of Australian defence policy.

New reactor challenge

During the debate over the planned new reactor, ANSTO has dismissed the possibility of a sabotage event leading to a ‘loss of coolant’ accident which would expose the reactor core. This has been challenged by nuclear engineer Tony Wood, former head of ANSTO’s Division of Reactors and Engineering. Wood told a Senate inquiry on October 25 last year that a sabotage event “has the potential to have much worse consequences [than ANSTO’s selected ‘reference’ accident] and the environmental impact statement admits there is no way of assessing its likelihood.”

Industry minister Nick Minchin said in an August 26, 2000 media release that “The ANSTO facility is a research reactor and as such its fundamental design greatly limits the risk to public safety from an accident.” In fact, research reactors are designed for ease of access in order to facilitate the range of purposes for which they are used – isotope production, scientific research and commercial applications such as silicon irradiation. This ease of access bring with it obvious risks. Wood told the Senate inquiry last year, “Pool reactors have a free water surface and this very feature, which is desirable for flexible access to the core, also makes it vulnerable. The EIS claims credit for the massive reinforced concrete block of the pool but this is the very thing which would direct the force of an explosion into the reactor core and expel fuel and water.”

Wood asked for an assessment to be carried out and the results published “of a true upper-bound event based on major sabotage” with involvement from the SAS or other military experts: “When it comes to the confidential assumptions about types and quantities of explosives which could realistically be used I would like to see input from SAS or other military experts because I believe, in the light of what has been said on this topic in the EIS, a degree of realism is missing at ANSTO.”

Wood does not believe that such an assessment would conclude that the risks are unacceptable, but merely asks that an assessment be carried out. ANSTO prefers to stick its head in the sand and to continue to deny the possibility of a loss of coolant accident.

US-based nuclear expert Daniel Hirsch, in a 1998 report commissioned by Sutherland Shire Council, makes the important point that the trivialisation of safety risks actually increases risks: “… a blind belief that no serious harm can occur, no matter what goes wrong with the reactor, no matter how serious the operator error, produces a markedly increased risk, as any review of past nuclear accidents will demonstrate.”

Wood says he has “confidence that the security arrangements will match the perceived threat”. Perhaps so, but one aspect of the security system is vetting access to ANSTO’s reactor plant, and I’ve entered on numerous occasions without showing my visitor’s pass or having my bag inspected – and I’m sure the same applies to others. Yet ANSTO says on its website, “Employees and long term visitors always have to show passes – this is nothing new and car boots are often checked. Indeed ANSTO security is constantly under review to ensure that the highest standards are maintained.” Bollocks.

Another risk is the possibility of sabotage carried out by an ANSTO staff member. Anonymous ANSTO staff members, self-described as ANSTO “Staff Representing Truth in Science”, said in a March 3, 2000 letter to a Sutherland Shire councillor: “The last 4 years have seen unprecedented industrial actions resulting in lost-time for ANSTO. The staff morale is exceptionally low … because of unprecedented ineptitude at senior management level.” In October 2000, an ANSTO scientist described management/staff relations as being on a “permanent war footing”.

If an act of sabotage or terrorism, or a serious accident, does occur, the consequences could be serious. Wood told the Senate inquiry that the proposed new reactor “when operating at full power will contain sufficient fission products to cause great damage off site if a large fraction were to escape.”

Sutherland Shire Council has obtained documents from the (now defunct) Nuclear Safety Bureau saying that a loss of coolant accident would be 1000 times worse than the maximum hypothetical accident being planned for by ANSTO and the Argentinean contractor INVAP. Daniel Hirsch said in a written submission to the Senate inquiry: “We [Hirsch and ANSTO] all appear now to agree that if the replacement reactor were to suffer a loss of coolant, or a power excursion accident that tosses out the coolant, and if the confinement fails or is bypassed, radioactivity releases thousands of times higher than that assumed in the Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) could result. Indeed, we are in fairly close agreement how large those releases would be, and presumably, how many cancers would result.”

Puppet regulator

Last year, the CEO of the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency, John Loy, issued a licence to ANSTO to prepare a site for a new reactor at Lucas Heights. That licence was granted despite the absence of a detailed reactor design. Loy issued a statement saying: “I accept that the critical point in the evaluation of the reference accident is the exclusion of a fast loss of coolant. But I believe that the ARPANSA review and the international peer reviews commissioned in the EIS process demonstrate that this is a valid scenario. Of course, it is possible to posit all sorts of simultaneous disasters and suggest superhuman powers to saboteurs or enemies; but that does not help the careful evaluation of a real life proposal.”

ARPANSA will not commit to insisting on changes to design specifications for the proposed new reactor in the wake of September 11 terrorist attack and subsequent events. ARPANSA’s regulatory branch is inhabited by no less than six former ANSTO staff members, and the executive director of ANSTO sat on the panel which interviewed applicants for the position of CEO of the ‘independent’ regulator, ARPANSA.

ANSTO’s website says that if an aircraft hit HIFAR, “even in the unlikely event that an aircraft was able to hit the relatively small target presented by HIFAR, the radiation doses to persons beyond the buffer zone would be relatively low (comparable to natural background radiation in some parts of the world).” ARPANSA says that “even if the HIFAR was struck by a large aircraft, radiation doses to persons beyond the 1.6 km buffer zone would be relatively low (comparable to natural background radiation in some parts of the world).” The near-identical wording may say something about the lack of independence of ARPANSA.

Decoded, these statements from ANSTO/ARPANSA mean that in the event of an aircraft hitting the reactor, the radiation doses within ANSTO’s nuclear plant could be significant, and beyond the 1.6 km buffer zone, thousands of people might be subjected to smaller radiation doses, but would still be at slightly greater risk of fatal cancers and other pathologies. In addition to direct exposure to radiation, the contamination of land and property could have major social and economic consequences.

ANSTO says the planned new reactor will be designed to withstand the impact from a Cessna 500 Citation aircraft. Sutherland Shire Council is concerned about the adequacy of this standard given the close proximity of both the Sydney and Bankstown airports, which cater for aircraft much larger than a Cessna 500.

Target-rich environment

The existing reactor, and the proposed new reactor, are not the only risks at Lucas Heights; it is a target-rich environment, to use the military jargon.

The isotope processing plant, in which irradiated targets, including enriched uranium targets, are processed, is vulnerable. The targets and the liquid waste stream contain uranium fission products and transuranics including long-lived plutonium isotopes. As at mid 1996, 6000 litres of this waste was stored at Lucas Heights. The waste is slowly being solidified by ANSTO. It was identified as having potential for off-site consequences in the event of an accident (such as an earthquake or a major fire) by the government’s Safety Review Committee, which complained on several occasions in the 1990s about the delays in the solidification of this waste. There are no plans for long-term storage or disposal of the solidified waste.

Another obvious target at Lucas Heights is the irradiated (spent) fuel from the reactor. On April 2, 1996, maritime workers refused to load a shipment of spent fuel from ANSTO because they had not been forewarned of the shipment. The spent fuel was driven aimlessly around Sydney while the dispute was resolved, because of a law preventing the convoy being stationary for more than two hours (presumably for security reasons). (Sydney Morning Herald, September 5, 1998.)

A previous spent fuel shipment was no less farcical: a spent fuel convoy from Lucas Heights was followed onto a ship by a truck driven by Greenpeace campaigners.

Insurance

In the event of a serious reactor accident at Lucas Heights, Sydney residents would find it extremely difficult or impossible to pursue compensation claims. (For more information click here.)

With respect to government indemnity, Tony Wood said in his written submission to the Senate inquiry that both ANSTO and the government have “misled” the public and that ANSTO’s EIS was “genuinely confused, or … had set out deliberately to confuse.”

Wood notes that, unlike many countries in Europe, North America, and elsewhere, Sydney residents are not protected by absolute liability, which frees the claimant from having to prove anything other than damage as a result of a reactor accident. Instead, Sydney residents effected by a nuclear accident would only have recourse to common law, which requires that the aggrieved party prove both damage and negligence.

Wood says it is a “mystery” to him why the Government has not accepted absolute liability: “It looks as if the Commonwealth lacks confidence in the low level of public risk claimed for the new reactor in the EIS. If it is so low what is to be lost by offering the guarantee.”

Nuclear weapons

A perception that ANSTO might be involved in weapons production might make it more attractive as a terrorist target. From the 1940s to the early 1970s, successive Australian governments pursued nuclear projects which, by design or accident, brought Australia closer to a nuclear weapons capability. Consequently, as former ANSTO scientist Murray Scott noted in a submission during the reactor EIS process, there has been an accumulation of programs and facilities at Lucas Heights which could be seen internationally to have ambiguous potential for weapons development. These facilities, which have been publicly declared and in most cases shut down, include a fluorine plant, a uranium hexafluouride synthesis plant, a laser enrichment project, a centrifuge cascade development (uranium enrichment), a split table experimental facility, fuel irradiation facilities in HIFAR, and hot cells in current use for chemical extraction of components from irradiated uranium targets.

There is no interest in pursuing a nuclear weapons program in Australia, although anyone (e.g. state or sub-state terrorists) could be forgiven for believing otherwise given that the stated objectives of the plan for a new reactor – isotope production and scientific research – are barely credible. The real agenda behind the reactor – which the government describes as the “national interest” agenda – includes supporting the nuclear alliance with the US, continuing to play a nuclear watch-dog role in the Asia Pacific (which also ties into the US alliance), maintaining Australia’s place on the Board of Governors of the International Atomic Energy Agency and other such activities.

Radioactive materials at Lucas Heights might be fashioned by terrorists or saboteurs into a ‘radiation bomb’ in combination with explosive materials – not nearly so lethal as a nuclear bomb but nonetheless capable of spreading radiation far and wide.

Fresh fuel and spent fuel at Lucas Heights contain highly enriched uranium which might provide the fissile material for a nuclear weapon, although it would require extensive facilities and expertise; far simpler for a terrorist to blow up the reactor, spent fuel, or the isotope processing plant or associated liquid waste stockpile.

 

More articles on the security issue:

http://pandora.nla.gov.au/pan/30410/20090218-0153/www.geocities.com/jimgreen3/nuclearterroroz.html

 

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Sydney’s new nuclear reactor: safe as houses?

Jim Green
November 2000
Despite ANSTO’s attempts to trivialise the safety risks of the proposed new reactor at Lucas Heights in southern Sydney, there’s no doubt that it would contain sufficient radioactivity to cause major off-site contamination in the event of a major accident and the failure of containment systems. Nuclear engineer Tony Wood, former head of ANSTO’s Division of Engineering and Reactors, told the 2000-2001 Senate inquiry into the reactor plan that the proposed new reactor “when operating at full power will contain sufficient fission products to cause great damage off site if a large fraction were to escape.”

Likewise, a 1995 report from MHB Technical Associates, commissioned by the Sutherland Shire Council, said that HIFAR, or any similar or larger reactor, “is potentially subject to severe accidents involving fuel melting which have the potential to release sizable quantities of radioactive material into the environment.”

The safety debates involve issues such as what type of accident would constitute a worst-case accident (or “reference accident”), the likelihood of such an accident, what proportion of the reactor’s radioactivity might escape to the environment, and what consequences a serious accident would have.

The Senate inquiry heard from Daniel Hirsch, the former director of a nuclear policy research program at the University of California and currently co-chair of the Santa Susana Field Laboratory Advisory Panel, an independent oversight body for the US Department of Energy. Hirsch is visiting Australia at the invitation of the Sutherland Shire Council.

Hirsch disputes ANSTO’s dismissal of an accident in which coolant (or water) would be lost thus exposing fuel rods. Hirsch says that at least half a dozen loss-of-coolant accidents have occurred around the world.

ANSTO’s assertion that a loss-of-coolant accident can be dismissed as being too unlikely to  contemplate is premature, since a detailed design for the proposed reactor has yet to be produced. ANSTO uses the conditional clause, as in the Final EIS: “The pool structure and beam tube penetrations would be designed to be so robust that a large loss of coolant accident is not considered credible.”

Hirsch said he was astonished to find that the environmental impact statement for the proposed new reactor took place in the absence of a reactor design.

An October 31 media release from ANSTO says, “three independent peer reviews of the Draft Environmental Impact Statement for the replacement research reactor … confirmed that the “reference accident” assumptions and outcomes, were appropriate.” This assertion is partly misleading, partly false:
* the review by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said “full justification for the selected Reference Accident is not included in the EIS”.
* the Review by Parkman Safety Management said, “As no specific design has yet been chosen, it is not possible for a full and detailed safety assessment to be undertaken at this stage.”
* and the Review by CH2M Hill said “The probability of occurrence and potential consequences of a given accident sequence are highly dependent on the specific design and operational features of a reactor facility. Because these details have not yet been finalised for the proposal, it is not possible to develop a detailed quantitative assessment of accident hazards and risks at this stage.”

Sabotage

The Sutherland Shire Council is concerned that ANSTO all but ignores sabotage as a risk, particularly in light of previous attempts at sabotage such as the 1983 discovery of significant quantities of gelignite and ammonium nitrate, and three detonators, inside ANSTO’s boundary fence.

Tony Wood says a sabotage event “has the potential to have much worse consequences [than ANSTO’s selected reference accident] and the EIS admits there is no way of assessing its likelihood.”

At the October 25 hearing of the Senate inquiry, Wood expressed concern about the pool-type reactor proposed by ANSTO: “Pool reactors have a free water surface and this very feature, which is desirable for flexible access to the core, also makes it vulnerable. The EIS claims credit for the massive reinforced concrete block of the pool but this is the very thing which would direct the force of an explosion into the reactor core and expel fuel and water.”

Wood urged the Senate committee to urge the federal government and ANSTO to conduct an assessment of the potential consequences of sabotage:  “When it comes to the confidential assumptions about types and quantities of explosives which could realistically be used I would like to see input from SAS or other military experts because I believe, in the light of what has been said on this topic in the EIS, a degree of realism is missing at ANSTO.”

A related issue is the poor status of staff/management relations at ANSTO. ANSTO staff members, self-described as ANSTO “Staff Representing Truth in Science” said in a March 3 letter to a Sutherland Shire Councillor that, “The last 4 years have seen unprecedented industrial actions resulting in lost-time for ANSTO. The staff morale is exceptionally low … because of unprecendented ineptitude at senior management level.” This raises the spectre of sabotage, and it could lead to an exacerbation of an already critical problem: the lack of nuclear and engineering expertise at ANSTO.

Earthquake

ANSTO’s dismissal of earthquakes as a potential initiator of a serious accident has also been called into question. The federal government commissioned the New Zealand Institute of Geological and Nuclear Sciences and other experts to assess the likelihood and potential impacts of an earthquake on the Lucas Heights nuclear plant.

The chair of the technical review committee concluded that: “The TRC considers the assessment provided by IGNS Ltd. does represent the most comprehensive review of potential earthquake motion in the Lucas Heights region that has been undertaken to date, and the general methodology employed conforms to recognised international standards.”

The IGNS report found that the impact of an earthquake could be almost twice that previously predicted. Subsequently, the government refused to release the report for some months, and the IGNS report is currently being “reviewed” by government agencies behind closed doors.

Dr. Garry Smith, from the Sutherland Shire Council, told the October 25 Senate hearing, “The report of that independent consultant was to the effect that the estimation for earthquake came up with an earthquake size, a peak ground acceleration, approximately twice the size of that previously assessed by ANSTO and others. Our concern is that that measure of twice the earthquake has not entered into the specification process for the design of the reactor. From what we have seen – we are addressing this with ANSTO and ARPANSA – it was to some degree the earlier earthquake specifications that were initially used for the tendering process and so on. And we do not know what the current earthquake specification for the design is: whether that New Zealand study, which is agreed to be the most comprehensive study to date, has been taken on board, or whether there is some earthquake number in between, or whether it is the low number. … What is of particular concern is that the process of assessing this issue is occurring post-EIS, it is occurring in a non-public process between ANSTO and ARPANSA, and the public has no access to how that government information is being used. It is a real concern to us.”

Smith said, “If there is any uncertainty with respect to the size of an earthquake which can potentially affect radioactivity release, surely the public can expect that the government will err on the side of caution and safety. You do not ignore a report just because you are not sure or the estimates have some level of uncertainty. You build in an inherent level of safety to overcome the uncertainty. I am not confident, having been part of those committee processes and now part of ARPANSA, that under the current process those levels of uncertainty are being adequately addressed. … I have real concerns about the level of safety that will be achieved by the reactor with respect to things like earthquake specification. It costs money to build in safety features.”

Consequences

ANSTO claims the most “credible serious accident” would release one millionth of the radioactivity of the core of the reactor. Based on previous reactor accidents, Daniel Hirsch says that a more appropriate figure would be several-hundredths of the core radioactivity. ANSTO arrived at its optimistic conclusion in part by ignoring many of the radionuclides that would be released in the event of a serious reactor accident.

A serious reactor accident at Lucas Heights would have health effects (e.g. fatal cancers, non-fatal cancers, genetic effects) and many other effects: decontamination costs, evacuation costs, restrictions on food consumption, litigation costs, and overall impacts on economic output. As MHB Technical Associates notes, “Even relatively small radiological accident releases have resulted overseas in large societal costs within the ‘evacuation shadow’.”

Dr. Greg Storr, an ANSTO scientist giving evidence to the Senate inquiry on October 25, described a fatal research reactor accident at the SL-1 reactor in the USA in 1961:  “Three operators died. It was a research sized reactor. It was caused by what was called a reactivity excursion. It was caused by one of the operators deliberately withdrawing one of the control rods – that is one of the pieces of material which controls the neutron reaction –  and that action sent the reactor to what they call superprompt critical. When it went superprompt critical, there was a large increase in the temperature in the reactor core, the water boiled and it caused a water hammer effect which accelerated the slug of water above the core up in to the pressure vessel. The pressure vessel broke and it accelerated up and hit the roof, pinning one of the operators to the roof. The two other operators died later from radiation exposure. That is the SL-1 accident.”

Several other fatal research reactor accidents have been recorded, most recently in the USA in 1998 during maintenance operations at a research reactor.

Health effects of radiation

Another safety-related debate concerns the health effects of low-level radiation.  Despite being Australia’s largest nuclear agency, ANSTO cannot make up its mind on this topic. On October 30 (as reported in the October 31 Sydney Morning Herald), ANSTO said that in the “improbable event of an accident, community impacts would be negligible”. The following day, ANSTO announced that a reactor accident would have “no health impacts on the community” (emphasis added).

This confusion was also evident in an internal Department of Industry, Science and Resources (DISR) 1998 briefing document, obtained by the Sutherland Shire Council under freedom of information legislation. The document ponders the best euphemism to describe the health risks from radioactive emissions from the planned new reactor. “Don’t say no extra risk – acceptable risk?? … There are risks associated with everything.”

“Be careful in terms of health impacts – don’t really want a detailed study done of the health of Sutherland residents”, the DISR document said. (Alan Parkinson noted in his Senate submission that a senior DISR bureaucrat did not one of the most basic facts in the field of radiation studies – the difference between alpha and gamma radiation. An adviser to Senator Minchin is revealed by Parkinson not to know the difference between an acid and a base.)

Further safety concerns derive from the lack of nuclear expertise at Lucas Heights. Tony Wood said in his submission, “It is a fact … that ANSTO now only has a small team of dedicated reactor professionals most of whom are operating HIFAR and they are fully extended. … I suggest that the [Senate] Committee seek assurance from the Government that experienced reactor engineers be hired by ANSTO to pursue the proposal from now on. So far they have been conspicuous by their absence in the team.”

ANSTO staff members – self-described as “Staff Representing Truth in Science” – wrote to a Sutherland Councillor on March 3, saying, “Because of inept executive management there is no succession planning within the organisation. Although it will be strongly denied by ANSTO, it is well known by those in the field that the new reactor project is having difficulty finding sufficient nuclear literate staff to address the tender process. It is understood that the current full-time staff on the program had their origins in the AAEC and are up for retirement. Inept management, no succession planning? Who is going to safely operate a new reactor in Sutherland Shire.”

Another issue which impinges on safety is the significant likelihood of a cost blow-out associated with the new reactor project, which could lead to cost-cutting in areas affecting safety (e.g. design parameters for the proposed new reactor, e.g. staff retrenchments). Jim Fredsall, former president of the Australian Nuclear Association and a former ANSTO nuclear engineer, said in his submission to the Senate Inquiry that the new reactor would be a constant drain on the taxpayers of this country for the next half century.

ANSTO “Staff Representing Truth in Science” wrote in their March 3 letter, “it is known that the reactor replacement costs are projected to blow out considerably more than the amounts told to the Federal Government, but once the project is started it will have to be completed irrespective of costs. A number of staff believe there should be an independent external review of financial management at ANSTO and the real costs of a new reactor.”

ANSTO claims that even for the “hypothetical maximum credible accident”, no countermeasures beyond the 1.6km buffer zone would be required. Emergency planning is inadequate and will remain so because of the head-in-the-sand approach taken by ANSTO and by federal and state governments.

Daniel Hirsch makes the important point that the trivialisation of the safety risks associated with the Lucas Heights nuclear plant actually increases the risks: “… a blind belief that no serious harm can occur, no matter what goes wrong with the reactor, no matter how serious the operator error; produces a markedly increased risk, as any review of past nuclear accidents will demonstrate.”

Insurance

In the event of a serious reactor accident at Lucas Heights, Sydney residents would find it extremely difficult or impossible to pursue compensation claims.

According to Michael Priceman from the Sutherland Shire Environment Centre, “The [ANSTO EIS] report on the suitability of Lucas Heights as the site for a new reactor … found that it was perfect, based on what ANSTO described as its pessimistic assumptions that the frequency of a worst case accident was one in a million per year and therefore the maximum risk to an individual developing a fatal cancer was one in 6 billion per year. Armed with those sporting odds the Insurance Council of Australia still refuses to insure the public.”

With respect to government indemnity, Tony Wood said in his written submission to the Senate inquiry that both ANSTO and the government have “misled” the public and that ANSTO’s EIS was “genuinely confused, or … had set out deliberately to confuse.”

Wood notes that, unlike many countries in Europe, North America, and elsewhere, Sydney residents are not protected by absolute liability, which frees the claimant from having to prove anything other than damage as a result of a reactor accident. Instead, Sydney residents effected by a nuclear accident would only have recourse to common law, which requires that the aggrieved party prove both damage and negligence.

The government knows that it has misled the public, Wood says, “yet not only has it chosen to do nothing about it, but it has misinformed the community that a Deed of Indemnity it has produced for a different purpose does provide equivalent financial security, when clearly it does not.”

Wood says the Deed of Indemnity was designed to attract bidders for the reactor project: “In the absence of absolute liability of the operator in Australia the Government faced a dilemma because no overseas reactor vendor would consider bidding because if he (sic) were successful he (sic) could be held liable in the event of an accident. Although the Government has chosen not to indemnify its own citizens, it must indemnify the reactor vendor if it wants a new reactor. Hence the Deed of Indemnity was produced last year, which does in fact indemnify the vendor.”

Wood says it is a “mystery” to him why the Government has not accepted absolute liability: “It looks as if the Commonwealth lacks confidence in the low level of public risk claimed for the new reactor in the EIS. If it is so low what is to be lost by offering the guarantee.”

Wood quoted the US Presidential Commission on Catastrophic Accidents, which said in 1988 that applying common law principles to nuclear accidents would result in an outright denial of recovery or a difficult and protracted process.

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Reactor engineer says safety inadequate

Sydney Morning Herald
December 17, 2001

A former engineering director at Australia’s only nuclear reactor said today that safety measures at the existing facility were inadequate and did not cover public safety.

Speaking at the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency (ARPANSA) public forum on the building of a new reactor at Sydney’s Lucas Heights, Tony Woods said the facility “didn’t have adequate protection for anything”.
“Our (safety) procedures are so cumbersome, and they’d take so long to implement, they’d be ineffective,” he said.

Mr Woods, who retired in 1991 after 30 years service at Lucas Heights, said the “safety culture” at the facility had to be greatly improved.

He said the current Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO) safety plan only considered plant employees and did not include any measures for the public.

Mr Woods said the Sutherland Shire Council’s contingency plan anticipated many emergencies, including earthquakes, but did not consider a nuclear accident.

“If you look at the plan regarding the public, there’s no mention of the reactor. It’s like it isn’t there,” he said.
He cited the example of a reactor employee who was refused admission to Sutherland Hospital, one of the nearest medical facilities to Lucas Heights, because of a wound that was contaminated.

Mr Woods urged planning for a worst-case scenario of complete core meltdown plus major containment failure, including evacuation procedures and prior distribution of medicines.

He also said a smaller research reactor like the one planned would be more vulnerable to an act of sabotage or terrorism because it isn’t as well fortified.

“The main reason a terrorist would attack this (facility) is not to kill a lot of people but to terrify them,” he said.
“If we’ve got a good plan we can protect people … that’s more effective than fortifying the reactor.”

But there was one very significant positive in Mr Woods’ presentation – nuclear accidents were not as catastrophic as people imagined.

He said research showed that many of the illnesses anticipated after the accidents at Chernobyl and Three Mile Island, including leukaemia, did not manifest themselves among the population as expected.

Thyroid cancer was the only illness that boomed after Chernobyl, which Mr Woods said could be nipped at the bud by using iodine tablets.

He said the biggest health hazard in the event of a reactor accident was the psychological effect of the incident, and better communication was needed.

“People don’t have the correct perspective as far as radiation is concerned,” he said.

“You’d go in an get an X-ray and you wouldn’t ask what the dosage is.

“I think ANSTO has a problem in so much as it likes to sugar-coat its information.

“They feel the public can’t take information that could cause them concern.

“I think (consulting and informing external bodies) is better for the project and better for everyone.”

–AAP

 

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Insurance and the Lucas Heights nuclear plant

In the event of a serious reactor accident at Lucas Heights, Sydney residents would find it extremely difficult or impossible  to pursue compensation claims.

According to Michael Priceman from the Sutherland Shire Environment Centre, “The [ANSTO EIS] report on the  suitability of Lucas Heights as the site for a new reactor … found that it was perfect, based on what ANSTO described as its  pessimistic assumptions that the frequency of a worst case accident was one in a million per year and therefore the maximum  risk to an individual developing a fatal cancer was one in 6 billion per year. Armed with those sporting odds the Insurance  Council of Australia still refuses to insure the public.”

With respect to government indemnity, nuclear engineer Tony Wood, former head of ANSTO’s Division of Engineering and Reactors, said in his written submission to the Senate inquiry that both ANSTO  and the government have “misled” the public and that ANSTO’s EIS was “genuinely confused, or … had set out deliberately  to confuse.”

Wood notes that, unlike many countries in Europe, North America, and elsewhere, Sydney residents are not protected by absolute liability, which frees the claimant from having to prove anything other than damage as a result of a reactor  accident. Instead, Sydney residents effected by a nuclear accident would only have recourse to common law, which requires  that the aggrieved party prove both damage and negligence.

The government knows that it has misled the public, Wood says, “yet not only has it chosen to do nothing about it, but it has  misinformed the community that a Deed of Indemnity it has produced for a different purpose does provide equivalent  financial security, when clearly it does not.”

Wood says the Deed of Indemnity was designed to attract bidders for the reactor project: “In the absence of absolute liability  of the operator in Australia the Government faced a dilemma because no overseas reactor vendor would consider bidding  because if he were successful he could be held liable in the event of an accident. Although the Government has  chosen not to indemnify its own citizens, it must indemnify the reactor vendor if it wants a new reactor. Hence the Deed of  Indemnity was produced last year, which does in fact indemnify the vendor.”

Wood says it is a “mystery” to him why the Government has not accepted absolute liability: “It looks as if the  Commonwealth lacks confidence in the low level of public risk claimed for the new reactor in the EIS. If it is so low what  is to be lost by offering the guarantee.”

Wood quoted the US Presidential Commission on Catastrophic Accidents, which said in 1988 that applying common law principles to nuclear accidents would result in an outright denial of recovery or a difficult and protracted process.

Wood told the Senate inquiry on October 25, 2000, “If I had to sum up my concerns in one sentence, it would be that for the first time in my long association with … ANSTO, I do not feel comfortable with what the organisation is telling the public and its own staff.”

Senate inquiry into the contract for a new reactor at Lucas Heights
October 25, 2000
Tony Wood (former head of ANSTO’s Division of Engineering and Reactors)
Transcript of comments on insurance from: www.aph.gov.au/hansard/senate/commttee/comsen.htm

“I would like to concentrate now mainly on the two questions of ‘nuclear liability’ and ‘the worst accident’, because these two items are still both open to the committee to influence change, should it choose to do so. First, on nuclear liability, in our society, if we feel exposed to some risk of financial loss from the activities of some third party, we have two options: we can take out insurance, or we can accept the risk, knowing that if we are damaged later we may exercise our common law right to seek damages through the law courts. However, it would be prudent to check first on the financial status of the party we intend to sue—it could be a man of straw and not worth suing.

It is little different with respect to possible damage from nuclear installations, as Mr Priceman mentioned earlier, because we all know that we are not insured against this risk. He mentioned in Australia; I say around the world, because nobody around the world these days is insured against nuclear risk. For the last 20 years or so, all of our insurance policies have had nuclear exclusion clauses. This does not worry most of us because we are not exposed to the risk.

But let us consider the people living near the reactor, who are exposed to the risk. Let us think the unthinkable: say there was a reactor accident at Lucas Heights and the affected people wanted to sue ANSTO for damages. There are no worries about ANSTO’s ability to pay—the Commonwealth owns ANSTO. However, you may be aware that it is a common law requirement that, for a damages claim to be successful, the claimant must be able to establish not only that he has been damaged, but also that the damage arose from the defendant’s negligence. This last part is the tricky part, because the classical defence is to show there has been no negligence. It would be claimed that either all reasonable steps had been taken or that someone else was to blame. There is no doubt that this would happen. If it did not, the crown lawyers would be in breach of their ethical duty to their client.

In the USA, this is what the Presidential Commission on Catastrophic Accidents had to say in 1988 on the effectiveness of common law in nuclear accidents, and I am quoting from the OECD report, Liability and compensation for nuclear damage: “The Commission expressed the belief that applying the common law principles of actions for damages would result in an outright denial of recovery or a difficult and protracted process.” That is quite unambiguous. Other nations have recognised this too and responded, through conventions or other means, by waiving the requirement to prove negligence. They did this through legislation based on certain conventions in which the plant operator was declared absolutely liable. This removed fault from the basis of liability, just leaving causation.  The citizens of Britain, USA, Canada, Japan, Germany, France and the Netherlands all enjoy this concession.

Given that the Australian government is looking for public support for the project, and given that the EIS tells us that the worst accident would have trivial consequences and hence a close to zero pay-out, one would think there would be a rush to offer this concession to Australian citizens. But, no, the government has refused to offer absolute liability. As a consequence, Australians seeking compensation would have to prove negligence. Recall that the American commission said that this may amount to outright denial of recovery. You might ask: why would the government take such an extraordinarily negative position on this matter? I tried to pursue this in Canberra, with conflicting responses from two ministries. Finally I think I have a clue. It comes from a letter I received from Senator Minchin’s head of science and technology policy, Dr Tucker, which says:

“You have raised the issue of absolute liability. I understand this means the liability irrespective of intention or negligence. It is apparent that the issue of absolute liability has financial implications well beyond the risks associated with research reactor operations at Lucas Heights. I am informed that the Commonwealth, as a matter of financial policy, does not accept such liability.”

What does this mean? I think that the lawyers and advisers in Canberra are not familiar with the concept of absolute liability and are worried and suspicious that if this is offered to the nuclear industry others will want it too. My response to this is that the lawyers in North America, Japan, Britain and other places have managed to negotiate this hurdle. Their world has not fallen in.

Perhaps our people need a little shove from this committee.

Now I come to the worst part of the liability story and that is the deception part. A not so well known aspect of the nuclear liability problem is that no reactor vendor around the world would build a reactor here or anywhere else without receiving indemnity. The government’s response was to produce the so-called deed of indemnity, which we heard about earlier, which indemnifies ANSTO and its officers and agents against loss. There is nothing wrong with this and the vendor was satisfied but then someone had the idea of misrepresenting the deed of indemnity as being something that it is not. ANSTO said in its submission to the parliamentary works committee: “The deed therefore ensures residents are adequately protected in terms of nuclear compensation claims.”

And Senator Minchin said in a letter dated 18 February 1999, which justifies the absence of absolute indemnity, that the same ends will be achieved by alternative means. He then went on to describe these means as being the deed of indemnity. This invites us to believe that offering the assurance that ANSTO will pay its bills provides adequate compensation protection to residents and somehow this is equivalent to waiving the legal obligation to prove negligence in a court of law.

I do not know whether you would believe this but I cannot. I seek the committee’s support in influencing the government to offer absolute liability then the deed of indemnity can go back to being what it truly is and that is just a means of indemnifying INVAP. The residents could then enjoy the degree of protection offered to their overseas counterparts and this at no cost to the government.”

 

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Whistleblower exposes Lucas Heights nuclear accidents

Jim Green
March/April 1999 (plus updates)

An employee of the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO) has revealed information about a series of accidents at the nuclear reactor plant in the southern Sydney suburb of Lucas Heights.

The ANSTO whistle blower provided a statement to a journalist from the St George and Sutherland Shire Leader and to Sutherland Shire councillor Genevieve Rankin.

The statement began, “Some very serious accidents have happened at ANSTO over the last few weeks. The first accident was, while retrieving a spent fuel rod from its mortuary hole in the waste management section, the operators didn’t realise that the rod was in a very poor condition. The rod fell off the retaining mechanism while being transported in its flask. As the operators opened the flask door the spent fuel rod fell out of its shielded flask and onto the floor in front of them. These rods, although they have been stored for many years, are in very poor condition and are highly radioactive. The operators quickly lowered the transport flask onto the rod so that they were shielded from massive doses of radiation. I believe this happened a few weeks ago and they still do not know how they will ever retrieve the rod from the floor under the flask.”

ANSTO released a statement acknowledging that the accident occurred on February 1. According to ANSTO, four staff members were exposed to radiation doses between 50 to 500 microsieverts; the upper figure is half the ANNUAL limit for members of the public.

On March 16, ANSTO confirmed that the spent fuel rod remains where it fell. ANSTO says it intends to design and build a device to grasp the fuel rod and place it inside its flask.

Last year, it was revealed that a number of “airtight” tubes containing spent fuel rods had been breached by water and a number of fuel rods had corroded as a result. Increased humidity levels suggested other tubes also contained water, and it was during investigation of these tubes that the February 1 accident occurred. When the revelations were made last year, ANSTO’s executive director, Helen Garnett, said the fuel rods posed “no safety or environmental hazard” regardless of the infiltration of water.

Former ANSTO scientist Murray Scott says “the corrosion of old spent fuel HIFAR rods is a real concern. A few rods are already deemed unacceptable for reprocessing in the US.”

Radioisotope processing emissions

The ANSTO whistle blower described another accident which occurred in February 1999 and involved the processing of radioisotopes: “A large amount of radioactive gas was emitted from building 54 two weeks ago. I am told the filters were bypassed at the time, a mistake was made and radioactive gas was emitted into the atmosphere. The escape was that large that the monitors in the HIFAR nuclear reactor were set off. This distance would be about 500 metres. I am also led to believe that staff members working outside were contaminated. ANSTO have covered this incident up and have not even told the staff that this incident occurred. Many staff believe that a site emergency should have been declared.”

Yet another accident was described as follows by the ANSTO employee: “A large amount of radioactive iodine was released into the atmosphere from ARI (ANSTO’s radioisotope processing plant). Again ANSTO has covered up the incident. I received this information from a very reputable source and we think these incidents have been covered by ANSTO as they are desperate to get the new reactor approved. These incidents I’m sure would not go down well with the environmental impact statement being considered at the moment.”

Responding to these claims, ANSTO acknowledged that during a period of three weeks in February 1999, there were two occasions when radiation releases above routine levels required its isotope processing plant to be shut down. One involved the release of xenon and krypton, and the other, iodine. According to ANSTO, “On neither occasions did the release exceed the permitted level of emissions. There were no significant personnel exposures and no offsite health impacts.” ANSTO did not confirm or deny the claim that alarm systems in the HIFAR reactor were triggered by the release of radiation some distance away.

At odds with ANSTO management’s version of the accidents were the ANSTO staff members who wrote in a March 3, 2000, letter to Genevieve Rankin: “The ANSTO Board has a very limited idea of what is really transpiring at Lucas Heights. For instance, the radiation contamination scare last year was only brought to the staff’s attention because of a local newspaper. The incident was of such gravity, that the executive should have made an announcement over the site emergency monitor about the incident to inform the staff. Instead the management practiced a culture of secrecy and cover up, even to the extent of actively and rudely dissuading staff from asking too many questions about the event. The unions were outraged at the executive management concerning this incident but passively towed the management line because they wanted job security with a new reactor.”

Who is to be believed? ANSTO management, despite its documented record of secrecy and its documented record of being fast and loose with the truth? Or anonymous ANSTO staff members?

Cover up

In a clumsy attempt to diffuse concern and anger about the accidents, ANSTO asserted that “None of the events was associated with the HIFAR research reactor.” However the fuel rods were originally used to fuel the reactor, and most or all of the radioisotopes were produced in the reactor.

The accidents, and the cover up, occurred at a crucial juncture in the debate over the plan to replace the HIFAR nuclear reactor. The ANSTO whistle blower said “these incidents have been covered up by ANSTO as they are desperate to get the new reactor approved. These incidents I’m sure would not go down well with the environmental impact statement being considered at the moment.”

Genevieve Rankin said:

“Neither the Health Department, the Sutherland Council or local schools were notified about the February accidents although Council has an agreement with ANSTO that it would be notified of such accidents.”

“It is a disgrace that ANSTO management continues to be allowed to expose the community to high levels of radioactive gases and doesn’t even bother to inform the community when this happens. We only find out by way of information supplied by public spirited staff who believe the community should be informed.”

“Local residents can’t help wondering how many other accidents have been covered up over the years. ANSTO has clearly tried to suppress the information on the latest accidents during the assessment period for the new reactor. The environment minister Senator Hill decided to delay the announcement of the approval for the new reactor until the Monday after the NSW state election in order to minimise public comment on the issues during an election period.”

ARPANSA

ANSTO denies covering up the accidents, saying the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency (ARPANSA) was notified. However, ARPANSA was nonexistent at the time of the accidents involving fuel rods, the most noteable of which took place on 1 February 1999 when a fuel rod fell from its flask. ARPANSA came into existence on 5 February 1999.

ARPANSA itself said, “These incidents occurred at facilities that are not yet regulated by ARPANSA.” (First Quarterly Report of the Chief Executive Officer for the period 5 February to 31 March 1999.)

If the acting CEO of ARPANSA was notified about the accidents, he did not release the information publicly.

ARPANSA said: “Four incidents at the Lucas Heights Science and Technology Centre run by the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO), have recently been reported in the media and discussed at the Senate Inquiry hearings at Sutherland, NSW on 14 April 1999. One incident did not involve radiation (the release of water into the Woronora River), while the others were not serious incidents in the sense of causing significant exposures of workers or the public to radiation. These incidents occurred at facilities that are not yet regulated by ARPANSA. Under the ARPANS Act ANSTO has until 5 August 1999 to apply for facility licences. However, the three incidents are being fully investigated by both ANSTO and ARPANSA to determine their root causes and to establish improvements which will help to ensure that such incidents do not recur.” (ARPANSA, First Quarterly Report of the Chief Executive Officer for the period 5 February to 31 March 1999.)

ANSTO says the government appointed Safety Review Committee was notified of the recent accidents. But the Safety Review Committee was abolished during the restructuring of regulatory bodies. What power did the Committee have at the time of the accidents? Perhaps the Safety Review Committee was advised of the accidents, but the Sutherland Council’s representative on the Committee was not.

Evidently the Nuclear Safety Bureau was also notified, but it too was abolished as part of the restructuring. (And approximately half of the NSB staff were former ANSTO employees.)

ALP skeletons

NSW premier Bob Carr attempted to minimise the electoral fall out from the ANSTO accidents and cover up. Carr said the ANSTO nuclear plant is on commonwealth land and that state powers to regulate ANSTO were removed in 1992. He did not note that it was a Labor federal government who passed the 1992 law making ANSTO immune from state environmental and public health regulations.

 

More info on accidents at Lucas Heights:

http://pandora.nla.gov.au/pan/30410/20090218-0153/www.geocities.com/jimgreen3/accidents.html

 

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Safety first: Lucas Heights told to face plane truth

By Andrew Stevenson
Sydney Morning Herald
April 22, 2002

The operator of the Lucas Heights nuclear reactor has been ordered to significantly upgrade its emergency response plans for its planned new reactor to include the consequences of a successful terrorist attack.

The Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation’s application for the replacement reactor had argued off-site emergency arrangements would not be necessary because the facility would be so safe.

But John Loy, the head of the Federal Government’s nuclear watchdog, the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Authority, has confirmed that an independent review of emergency responses must be undertaken before the reactor can begin operation.

The new reactor, near the aging Hifar reactor, is expected to be operational in 2005.

While he does not believe the terrorist threat to be credible, Dr Loy wants the scenario, plus the impact of a commercial aircraft crash, to be considered in emergency response plans.

The strictures – contained in the safety authority’s approval documents – come as the existing emergency plans have been strongly criticised by the chair of the Sutherland Emergency Management Committee, Genevieve Rankin, and Tony Wood, a former ANSTO controller of reactors.

Both say there are no logical plans in place to give residents around Lucas Heights access to iodine tablets if there is a significant radiation leak.

Mr Wood says existing emergency plans are a shambles. He says ANSTO must review its plans for the existing reactor at Lucas Heights in light of a possible terrorist attack.

“There is no recognition this could be a problem; this is the problem,” he said. “The emergency planning is inadequate because they have made assumptions which understate the potential consequences about the worst-case accident.”

Mr Wood said saturating the thyroid gland with potassium iodide tablets would dramatically lower the risk, especially among children, of contracting thyroid cancer.

“It’s like a magic pill, but you’ve got to take it within hours, and I’m not at all confident the people who are going to make the decisions realise how important the time element is.”

Councillor Rankin says the emergency framework is a “disaster plan based on the idea you’ll never have a disaster”.
“It’s very much beset by internal contradictions and these should be sorted out and they should have been sorted out before ARPANSA signed a licence for ANSTO,” Cr Rankin said.

“Fundamentally, the plan calls for shelter and for people to seal off any air source coming into the house. But to get the iodine tablets they’ll have to leave.”

The tablets, stored at Sutherland district ambulance stations, would be made available at potential evacuation points, such as Waratah Park, a fact which is not advertised because the plan is based on taking shelter.

“The emergency management committee, which includes the local chiefs of the fire brigades, ambulance, police and a representative of NSW Health, was unanimous in saying [to ANSTO] that the plans ought to be reassessed,” Cr Rankin said.
ANSTO has rejected a meeting with Cr Rankin and the Sutherland Police Superintendent, Henry Karpic, to discuss the issue, preferring to work through an ANSTO-chaired local liaison group.

Dr Loy said he saw no fundamental problem with the plans. “Maybe we need to work out in a bit more detail about who does what to whom on the day, but I don’t have any sense of concern from the NSW agencies that, provided they have the right information, they can do what they need to do.”

See also: The push for nuclear weapons in Australia 1950s-1970s.

See also: Research reactors and nuclear weapons.

Nuclear Weapons & Lucas Heights

Jim Green
May, 2000

Tony Wood, a former ANSTO scientist, argues that “if it were unacceptable to undertake research which can have both peaceful and military results, the world would not have the jet engine, the transistor or the computer” (Great service to our nation, St. George & Sutherland Shire Leader, May 2, 2000).

A good point, but there are some special considerations with respect to the dual-use civil/military character of nuclear technologies. First, nuclear weapons are far more destructive than any other form of weaponry yet devised. Second, there are ongoing international efforts to reduce and hopefully eliminate nuclear weapons altogether.

Third, to relate Wood’s comment to the plan for a new reactor at Lucas Heights, whereas engines, transistors and the like have undoubted value, there has not even been an attempt from ANSTO or the government to argue that a new reactor will yield greater medical and scientific benefits than could be gained by spending an equivalent sum on alternative technologies and programs. In other words, there has been no effort to consider the opportunity costs. As Professor Barry Allen, former Chief Research Scientist at ANSTO, notes, “the cost of replacing the reactor is comparable to the whole wish list that arguably could be written for research facilities by the Australian Science, Technology and Engineering Council”. And as the CSIRO noted in 1993, “more productive research could be funded for the cost of a reactor”.

The Department of Foreign Affairs acknowledges that “it is a fact that the possession of nuclear fuel cycle technology and facilities may shorten the time required to develop nuclear weapons”. Needless to say, this applies to Lucas Heights. Murray Scott, another former ANSTO scientist, noted in his EIS submission that over the years there has been an accumulation of programs and facilities at Lucas Heights which could be seen internationally to have ambiguous potential for weapons development.

In most but not all cases, these facilities have been declared and shut down. But now we have a plan for a new reactor, and make no mistake about it, this is raising eyebrows internationally. Perception is everything in the murky world of nuclear proliferation. Last year I was contacted by a South Korean nuclear scientist visiting Sydney. It was clear to him that the medical isotope justification for a new reactor was just dishonest public-relations spin, and he was keenly interested to discover the real agenda behind the reactor plan.

Once you get on the nuclear hobby-horse, it isn’t easy to get off. The government’s plan for a remote store for spent fuel wastes in SA is falling apart at the seams – 86% of South Australians, including the SA Premier, are opposed to it. A likely contingency plan is spent fuel reprocessing at Lucas Heights – ANSTO’s chief executive is on record saying this would be “reasonable”.

Persisting with dual-use nuclear technologies, such as the plan for a new reactor at Lucas Heights, clearly goes against nuclear disarmament initiatives despite the absurd claim to the contrary from ANSTO management. Australia ought to be at the forefront of the development and export of alternative, non-reactor technologies for medical and scientific applications – that in itself would be a small, but useful, contribution to international efforts to stem nuclear proliferation.

ANSTO was deeply complicit in the covert push for nuclear weapons in Australia in the 1950s and ‘60s. And if a future government chose to go down that path, ANSTO would inevitably be drawn into the project. This is not likely to happen any time soon, but it remains a possibility. The international non-proliferation regime is under constant threat because of the intransigence of the nuclear weapons states.

Murray Scott said in his EIS submission, “If future international tensions should ever bring about a decision to build nuclear weapons in Australia, I would not be prepared to live near Lucas Heights, mainly through fear of irradiated uranium reprocessing operations. Apart from the obvious threat of hostile attack, e.g. Israel’s strike destroying an Iraqi research reactor, the environmental and safety record of military nuclear programs worldwide is appalling. …The historical entanglement of military and civil nuclear operations in all the weapons states is well recognised as compromising safety accountability”.

To complicate the matter further, it is unlikely that such a course of action would be made public knowledge – even in general terms let alone the details of a weapons program and the risks it posed to the Sutherland Shire. The only discernible change might be an even more obsessively secretive attitude from ANSTO. Certainly politicians lied blatantly and repeatedly in the 1950s and ‘60s about their interest in, and pursuit of, nuclear weapons, just as politicians and ANSTO management lie on other matters relating to Lucas Heights today.

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Murray Scott (former ANSTO scientist)
Submission on ANSTO’s Draft EIS, 1998

(Summary notes and transcription of relevant comments from Murray Scott’s submission by Jim Green)

“If future international tensions should ever bring about a decision to build nuclear weapons in Australia, I would not be prepared to live near Lucas Heights, mainly through fear of irradiated uranium reprocessing operations. Apart from the obvious threat of hostile attack, e.g. Israel’s strike destroying an Iraqi research reactor, the environmental and safety record of military nuclear programs worldwide is appalling. Disasters at e.g. Chelyabinsk, Windscale and Hanford and the environmental contempt of weapons test programs come as no surprise when national imperatives, urgency and military secrecy override any pretence of community consultation or consideration. Who knows what horrors will eventually emerge from the Chinese, Indian and Pakistani weapons programs. The historical entanglement of military and civil nuclear operations in all the weapons states is well recognised as compromising safety accountability …”

“Over the years there has been an accumulation of programs and facilities at Lucas Heights which could be seen internationally to have ambiguous potential for weapons development. These have been publicly … declared and in most cases shut down. The facilities were exposed (perhaps only after related programs were terminated) to numerous visiting scientists …”

“On the enrichment path there were at Lucas Heights, ostensibly for commercial purposes, a fluorine plant, a UF6 synthesis plant, a laser enrichment project, and the centrifuge cascade development. … On the alternative plutonium path, which appears more easily accessible at Lucas Heights, there are fuel irradiation facilities in HIFAR and hotcells in B54 in current use for chemical extraction of components from the irradiated uranium. These facilities have been developed for production of Mo-99 medical radioisotopes but differ from a “reprocessing” plant only in respect of the types of chemicals and column materials used to extract specific elements from the dissolved irradiated uranium. The resulting intermediate level radioactive liquid waste is clearly the most dangerous material stored at Lucas Heights and is now belatedly being solidified. The scale of this operation is currently larger than that for reprocessing of HIFAR’s spent fuel … and with the replacement reactor could grow four fold.”

“Whichever path were taken to produce fissile material, the design of an explosive device or a reactor core is highly specific to the purity of the fissile and structural material available. Despite extensive theory, data and computer calculation “codes” maintained worldwide including at Lucas Heights, it would be necessary in achieving military reliability to test particular configurations for “reactivity” without risking an actual nuclear explosion of criticality incident. In 1972 Prime Minister William MacMahon opened at Lucas Heights a Split Table Critical Facility explicitly intended for this purpose. It was ostensibly built for a proposed fast power reactor development program that was never funded.”

The concrete containment building for the split table later used as beamline hall for ANTARES.

“Far from disqualifying this building (JG – the concrete containment building for the split table later used as beamline hall for ANTARES) from housing a refurbished critical facility, the proximity of the tandem accelerator would offer a convenient pulsed neutron source, as commonly used for reactivity measurements. Contrary to the statement in the Draft EIS that “cyclotrons are not a source of neutrons”, any accelerator of more than ~0.4 MeV beam energy can produce neutrons using a variety of e.g. (d,n) and (p,n) reactions, though not at the flux level available from a reactor. During the brief experimental program actually conducted on the critical facility, a small “neutron generator” accelerator was thus employed. The potential conjunction of the much more powerful tandem accelerator and critical facility in B53 is eerily reminiscent of the setup ~20 years previously in B22 where a beamline from the 3 MeV Van der Graaf accelerator was extended into the reflector of the MOATA reactor, and into a number of special BeO moderated and thorium metal reactor core mockups for similar reactivity or “neutron die away” measurements. One might almost think the tandem accelerator installation was designed with this in mind.”

“These ambiguous programs were published and, with the exception of the Mo-99 production, shut down and the equipment mothballed. As with any once-hi-tech equipment, the practicability of refurbishing these facilities is uncertain and perhaps the potential timescale for thus producing even one weapon impractically long. I hope so, but to my understanding these relics remain in storage and now, in considering a 30-40 year extension of reactor operation at the site, I believe we are entitled to know why. It could be suspected that in ANSTO’s interpretation of the “national interest”, the existence of these things at Lucas Heights is one reason that no other site was considered for HIFAR’s replacement.”

Scott’s submission asks for:
* estimates of the capacity of each of the enrichment related facilities and of the replacement reactor together with the B54 irradiated uranium processing facility if adapted for Pu-239 production, in terms of the time it would take to process sufficient material for a nuclear explosive device
* a schedule for complete disposal of the above and any other relic facilities of potential weapons proliferation significance.

 

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Debate

May/June 2001

This (unpublished) debate was prompted by a review of Wayne Reynolds’ book “Australia’s bid for the atomic bomb”, which was published in the Sutherland Shire Historical Society Bulletin (and elsewhere).

JOHN GREEN:

Letters to the Editor.
Editor, Sutherland Shire Historical Society Bulletin
Sutherland Shire Historical Society
PO Box 339, Sutherland, NSW 1499

Dear Les,

I have just received our latest copy of the History Society’s Bulletin, which I must say improves with. every edition. However, one item included in the latest edition has caused me some concern. I refer to the review by Dr Jim Green (no relative of mine!) of W. Reynolds’ book titled “Australia’s bid for the atomic bomb.”

In Dr Green’s review some statements are made which lead me to believe that they are not only Mr Reynolds’ opinion but also those of the reviewer and that such statements may be considered as representing established facts. I believe that such sentiments are totally out of order and not one scintilla of evidence exists which substantiates such assertions.

Two such examples of the type of statements to which I refer are;

“It has been known for many years that Australian governments were considering, and to some extent pursuing, the development of nuclear weapons from the 1950s to the early 1970s. Reynolds reveals that the planning and pursuit of nuclear weapons in Australia stretches back to World War II, and that the project was monumental in scale.”

Then again later in the article the statement is made that;

“The AAEC’s beryllium research was wound down in the mid-1960s, but research into uranium enrichment was pursued from 1965 for both civil and military purposes – initially in secret in the basement of a building at Lucas Heights.”

The implication from both these and other comments is that factual evidence exists which proves that some personnel at Lucas Heights were actually engaged in research related to nuclear weaponry.

Such an implication is, I believe, untrue and is, once again, another case where innuendo and inference are deemed as accepted fact when no tangible evidence exists to support such a conclusion.

I was employed at Lucas Heights for over 20 years and ended my professional career there as a Principal Research Scientist. Throughout my time at the AAEC I worked in Nuclear Technology Research and during the early 1970s was a member of the team of scientists which technically assessed the tenders submitted for the Jervis Bay reactor.

Whilst employed at Lucas Heights I knew most of the professionals and the projects they were engaged upon, not only because of my professional capacity in the organisation but also because of positions I held as Group Secretary, NSW State Secretary; and Federal Councillor of the Professional Officers Association, an association which represented all professionals on the site.

Moreover in 1985, as the thesis for one of my masters degrees (M.Eng. Sci. Soc.), I wrote … “A History of the AAEC and an Analysis of its Research Performance”.

When writing that thesis I had access to documents and papers which would not have been readily available to members of the public.

In consequence of these considerations, I believe that I am well qualified to comment on the assertion that work was conducted at Lucas Heights which was directed toward the military use of Atomic Energy. To such an assertion, I can state quite unequivocally that I have never seen, heard or read of any such work and that I am of the very firm belief that no such work was ever performed at Lucas Heights.

Indeed, at Lucas Heights there were no computational codes either developed or available which were able to investigate the manufacture and testing of nuclear weaponry. No expertise existed on the complex problems of designing, manufacturing and testing of a nuclear bomb nor on the important triggering devices which would be needed. Moreover, work which was conducted in regard to enrichment was directed at low enrichment processes which were only of a commercial interest. Those enrichment research programmes were not carried out in the emotively described “secret basement of a building at Lucas Heights” but were performed in a complex of buildings known as building 64. It is certainly true that building 64 had extra security provisions imposed upon it, but such provisions were imposed not because atomic weaponry was being researched but because the processes being investigated were novel and quite possibly commercially important to Australia.

Having expressed my concern that an article has appeared in the Society’s Bulletin which contains what I believe to be unsubstantiated assertions and which is misleading in regard to the work scientists and technicians undertook at Lucas Heights in the past; I do accept that it may well have been the case that in Canberra, some politicians and bureaucrats might have secretly wished and considered that Australia would, at some time during the period 1945 to 1970, obtain nuclear weaponry.

However, notwithstanding all the rumour and hype which were prevalent in that era, the reality was, as every scientist and technician at Lucas Heights knew, that such technology was not being pursued at Lucas Heights. The sad thing for all those who worked for the AAEC at that time was that the Atomic Energy Act was so draconian that it effectively prevented any scientist or employee from being able to comment on what was really happening within the organisation. Those restrictions were one of the reasons I wrote my Thesis in 1985 on the AAEC.

But that was many years ago and I have now retired and, whilst I have written this letter, I should like to make it perfectly clear that I do not wish to become involved in the nuclear debate which is still occurring in the Shire regarding Lucas Heights. Rather my objective is, as a member of the Sutherland Shire Historical Society;
(a) to provide the members of the Society with factual information of which I am aware and
(b) to point out that assertions by others, who have their own agendas to follow, cannot be considered as proven historical facts.

W. J. Green B.Sc (Hon 1), M Eng Sci, M Sci Soc.
30th May 2001

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JIM GREEN:

John Green says “I do accept that it may well have been the case that in Canberra, some politicians and bureaucrats might have secretly wished and considered that Australia would, at some time during the period 1945 to 1970, obtain nuclear weaponry.”

Secretly wished?! The ‘bomb lobby’ – which involved Australian Atomic Energy Commission (AAEC) personnel such as its chief Philip Baxter – not only wanted weapons, they were actively taking steps to bring Australia towards a nuclear weapons capability. Moreover, their manoeuvrings were not infrequently a matter of public record. To give a few examples:
– Baxter publicly advocated weapons construction, as did John Gorton (prior to becoming Prime Minister in 1969) and others.
– the 1963 decision to purchase F-111 aircraft from the US was partly motivated by the ability to modify these aircraft to carry nuclear weapons.
– the AAEC was commissioned to investigate and report on the cost of building nuclear weapons in Australia in 1965 and another study was commissioned by the government in 1967.
– in 1967, the Minister for National Development announced that uranium companies would henceforth have to keep half of their known reserves for Australian use, and he acknowledged in public that this decision was taken because of a desire to have a domestic uranium source in case it was needed for nuclear weapons.
– the decision not to sign the Non-Proliferation Treaty from 1969-71 clearly reflected the influence of the ‘bomb lobby’, not least Baxter.

John Green says that he was involved in the assessment of tenders submitted for the Jervis Bay reactor. One wonders how he could have failed to notice the intrigues surrounding the Jervis Bay project vis-a-vis weapons. Any lingering doubts that the project was driven, in part, by a desire to bring Australia closer to a weapons capability have been dispelled by recently declassified Cabinet documents and by John Gorton’s January 1999 admission in the Sydney Morning Herald that: “We were interested in this thing [Jervis Bay] because it could provide electricity to everybody and it could, if you decided later on, it could make an atomic bomb.”

With respect to the involvement of the AAEC in the historical pursuit of weapons, this issue is complicated by the dual-use nature of many nuclear technologies. For example, AAEC scientists may have been interested only in the commercial applications of uranium enrichment, but others which much greater influence – not least Baxter – were also interested in the military implications. Baxter publicly made the link between enrichment R&D and weapons production. Moreover, archives held at the University of New South Wales include notes from Baxter on the weapons potential of the enrichment R&D carried out at Lucas Heights.

John Green’s statement that the AAEC’s enrichment work was directed “at low enrichment processes which were only of a commercial interest” ignores the obvious point that a low-enrichment plant could be modified for production of highly-enriched, weapons-grade uranium. As former ANSTO employee Tony Wood noted in the St George and Sutherland Shire Leader (May 2, 2000), “Although the Australian research team contained only a small number of centrifuge units, it is not a secret that one particular arrangement of a large number of centrifuge units could be capable of producing enriched uranium suitable to make a bomb of the Hiroshima type.”

John Green says the enrichment research was not carried out in the “emotively described ‘secret basement of a building at Lucas Heights’ but was performed in a complex of buildings known as building 64”. Clarence Hardy notes in his 1996 book “Enriching Experiences” (published by Glen Haven, NSW, p.31) that the project was given the code name “The Whistle Project” and was carried out initially in the basement of Building 21. It is an established fact that the AAEC’s research was initiated in 1965 but was not publicly revealed until the 1967-68 AAEC Annual Report.

The implications for safeguards of the enrichment research are addressed in chapter 8 of Hardy’s “Enriching Experiences”. The delicacy of the enrichment project was such that even the safeguards work was kept secret!

John Green’s statement that the extra security provisions associated with the enrichment program reflected nothing other than its commercial potential is, at best, extraordinarily naive. Former AAEC scientist Keith Alder notes on page 30 of his 1996 book “Australia’s Uranium Opportunities” (Sydney: P.M. Alder) that the enrichment work at Lucas Heights was kept secret “because of the possible uses of such technology to produce weapons-grade enriched uranium.”

John clearly has not read the recent research on the historical pursuit of weapons in Australia and thus I recommend the following:
– Alice Cawte, 1992, “Atomic Australia: 1944-1990”, Sydney: New South Wales University Press.
– Jim Walsh, “Surprise Down Under: The Secret History of Australia’s Nuclear Ambitions”, The Nonproliferation Review, Fall, 1997, pp.1-20.
– Jacques Hymans, “Isotopes and Identity: Australia and the Nuclear Weapons Option, 1949-1999”, The Nonproliferation Review, March 2000.
– Wayne Reynolds, 2000, “Australia’s bid for the atomic bomb”, Melbourne University Press.
– Jim Green, “Shifting nuclear debates: from ‘Fortress Australia’ to ‘virtual capacity”, Social Alternatives, Volume 18, No.4, October 1999. (This article links the historical pursuit of the weapons with the ‘national interest’ agenda driving the Coalition government’s current plan for a new reactor at Lucas Heights.)
– in recent years, further information on the historical pursuit of weapons has become available each year with the release of federal Cabinet archives under the 30-year rule; some of this information appears in the major newspapers on the first of January each year.

Jim Green
June 2001.

1. Quotes from former IAEA Director-General Dr Mohamed El Baradei

2. Australia

3. International

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1. Quotes from former IAEA Director-General Dr Mohamed El Baradei

“The IAEA’s Illicit Trafficking Database has, in the past decade, recorded more than 650 cases that involve efforts to smuggle such [nuclear and radioactive] materials.” (1)

“Today, out of the 189 countries that are party to the NPT, 118 still do not have additional protocols in force.” (1)

“IAEA verification today operates on an annual budget of about $100 million – a budget comparable to that of a local police department. With these resources, we oversee approximately 900 nuclear facilities in 71 countries. When you consider our growing responsibilities – as well as the need to stay ahead of the game – we are clearly operating on a shoestring budget.” (1)

“… we are only as effective as we are allowed to be.” (1)

“In specific cases of arms control, the Security Council’s efforts have not been very systematic or successful.” (1)

“Under NPT rules, there is nothing illegal about any State having enrichment or reprocessing technology – processes that are basic to the production and recycling of nuclear reactor fuel – even though these operations can also produce the high enriched uranium or separated plutonium that can be used in a nuclear weapon.

An increasing number of countries have sought to master these parts of the “nuclear fuel cycle”, both for economic reasons and, in some cases, as a good insurance policy for a rainy day – a situation that would enable them to develop at least a crude nuclear weapon in a short span of time, should their security outlook change. Whatever the reason, this know-how essentially transforms them into “latent” nuclear-weapon States. That is, regardless of their peaceful intentions, they now have the capability to create weapon-useable nuclear material, which experts consider to be the most difficult step towards manufacture of a nuclear weapon, and can use this capability as a deterrent. In today´s environment, this margin of security is simply not adequate.” (1)

“If a country with a full nuclear fuel cycle decides to break away from its non-proliferation commitments, a nuclear weapon could be only months away.” (2)

“… the Agency’s legal authority to investigate possible parallel weaponisation activity is limited …” (2)

“More countries have sought to master the nuclear fuel cycle, both for economic reasons and, in some cases, as a good insurance policy for a rainy day. Whatever the reason, this know-how essentially transforms them into what might be called a “virtual” or “latent” nuclear-weapon State. Experience has shown that a “choke point” for nuclear weapons development is the acquisition of weapon-useable nuclear material. If a country with a full nuclear fuel cycle decides to break away from its non-proliferation commitments, a nuclear weapon could be only months away. In such cases, we are only as secure as the outbreak of the next major crisis. In today´s environment, this margin of security is simply untenable.” (2)

“If a country with a full nuclear fuel cycle decides to break away from its non-proliferation commitments, a nuclear weapon could be only months away. In such cases, we are only as secure as the outbreak of the next major crisis. In today´s environment, this margin of security is simply untenable.” (3)

“Five years ago, I addressed the 2000 NPT Review Conference – hopeful that the new millennium would bring renewed vigour to these commitments. Many of you were here, and many shared this hope. Are we more or less hopeful now? In five years, the world has changed. Our fears of a deadly nuclear detonation – whatever the cause – have been reawakened. In part, these fears are driven by new realities. The rise in terrorism. The discovery of clandestine nuclear programmes. The emergence of a nuclear black market. But these realities have also heightened our awareness of vulnerabilities in the NPT regime. The acquisition by more and more countries of sensitive nuclear know-how and capabilities. The uneven degree of physical protection of nuclear materials from country to country. The limitations in the IAEA´s verification authority – particularly in countries without additional protocols in force. The continuing reliance on nuclear deterrence. The ongoing perception of imbalance between the nuclear haves and have-nots. And the sense of insecurity that persists, unaddressed, in a number of regions, most worryingly in the Middle East and the Korean Peninsula.” (4)

“Earlier this year, four American éminences grises, Henry Kissinger, William Perry, George Shultz and Sam Nunn – representing a wealth of experience in defense and security strategies – declared that reliance on nuclear weapons as a deterrent is becoming “increasingly hazardous and decreasingly effective”. They called for urgent international cooperation to move towards a world free from nuclear weapons. The following week, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists announced that they were moving the hands of their famous Doomsday Clock two minutes closer to midnight. “Not since the first atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki,” they reported, “has the world faced such perilous choices.” In recent years, it is clear that nuclear threats have become more dangerous and more complex. A new phenomenon of illicit trade in nuclear technology has emerged. Countries have managed to develop clandestine nuclear programmes. Sophisticated extremist groups have shown keen interest in acquiring nuclear weapons. In parallel, nuclear material and nuclear material production have become more difficult to control. Energy security and climate change are driving many countries to revisit the nuclear power option. But with that, there is also an increasing interest in mastering the nuclear fuel cycle to ensure a supply of the necessary nuclear fuel. The concern is that by mastering the fuel cycle, countries move dangerously close to nuclear weapons capability. Add to that the threat of the nuclear weapons that already exist. Roughly 27,000 nuclear warheads remain in the arsenals of nine countries. Strategic reliance on these weapons by these countries and their allies undoubtedly motivates others to emulate them. And of course, plans to replenish and modernize these weapons creates a pervasive sense of cynicism among many non-nuclear-weapon States — who perceive a “do as I say, not as I do” attitude.” (5)

“Why, some ask, should the nuclear-weapon States be trusted, but not others – and who is qualified to make that judgment? Why, others ask, is it okay for some to live under a nuclear threat, but not others, who continue to be protected by a ‘nuclear umbrella’?” (5)

(1) Putting teeth in the nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament regime. 2006 Karlsruhe Lecture, Karlsruhe, Germany, 25 March 2006, www.iaea.org/NewsCenter/Statements/2006/ebsp2006n004.html

(2) Reflections on nuclear challenges today. Alistair Buchan Lecture, International Institute for Strategic Studies, London, UK, 6 December 2005

(3) Mohamed El Baradei, December 2005, ‘Reflections on Nuclear Challenges Today’, www.iaea.org/NewsCenter/Statements/2005/ebsp2005n019.html

(4) Mohamed ElBaradei, 2 May 2005, United Nations, New York, USA. Speech to 2005 Review Conference of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, www.iaea.org/NewsCenter/Statements/2005/ebsp2005n006.html

(5) Preventing Nuclear Catastrophe: Where Do We Go From Here? May 24, 2007, www.wagingpeace.org/articles/2007/05/24_ElBaradei_Preventing_Nuclear_Catastrophe.htm

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AUSTRALIA

“Nuclear energy is a bad fuel, a dirty fuel, a dangerous fuel. This is not a good industry to encourage, and anyone that has an electricity program, ipso facto ends up with a nuclear weapons capability.”

– Former Prime Minister Paul Keating, October 16, 2006, Herald Sun / AAP.

“Again and again it has been demonstrated here and overseas that when problems over safeguards prove difficult, commercial considerations will come first.”

– Mike Rann, 1982, ‘Uranium: Play It Safe’.

“[T]he Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty disintegrates before our very eyes … the current non-proliferation regime is fundamentally fracturing. The consequences of the collapse of this regime for Australia are acute, including the outbreak of regional nuclear arms races in South Asia, North East Asia and possibly even South East Asia.”

– Kevin Rudd, Shadow Minister for Foreign Affairs, Trade & International Security. Leading, not following. The renewal of Australian middle power diplomacy. Sydney Institute, 19 Sep 2006.

“The nuclear non-proliferation treaty continues to fracture. And there has been little if any progress on nuclear arms reduction – let alone nuclear disarmament.”

– Kevin Rudd, 5 July 2007 – Lowy Institute.

“A world free of nuclear weapons will be much more readily achieved and sustained were nuclear power generation being phased out.”

– Assoc. Prof. Tilman Ruff, ‘Hiroshima and the World: We can imagine and build a world free of nuclear weapons’, Nov 9, 2009, www.hiroshimapeacemedia.jp/mediacenter/article.php?story=20091109140250161_en

“On top of the perennial challenges of global poverty and injustice, the two biggest threats facing human civilisation in the 21st century are climate change and nuclear war. It would be absurd to respond to one by increasing the risks of the other. Yet that is what nuclear power does.”

– Dr Mark Diesendorf, University of NSW, ‘Need energy? Forget nuclear and go natural’, October 14, 2009, www.theage.com.au/opinion/society-and-culture/need-energy-forget-nuclear-and-go-natural-20091014-gvzo.html

“We were interested in this thing [a planned nuclear power reactor at Jervis Bay] because it could provide electricity to everybody and it could, if you decided later on, it could make an atomic bomb.”

– Former Prime Minister John Gorton reflecting on the plan to build a nuclear power plant at Jervis bay in the late 1960s and early 1970s, quoted in Pilita Clark, ‘PM’s Story: Very much alive… and unfazed’, Sydney Morning Herald, January 1, 1999.

“The nuclear power industry is unintentionally contributing to an increased risk of nuclear war. This is the most serious hazard associated with the industry.”

– Ranger Uranium Environmental Inquiry, 1977

“Australia, if it so decided, could embark on a nuclear weapons program… It would take some time, it would be expensive, it would involve significant risks, but we have retained a degree of nuclear expertise that could give us the capability to embark on a basic nuclear weapons program.”

– Andrew O’Neil, former analyst with the Australian Defence Intelligence Organisation

“Almost every action, every piece of research, technological development or industrial activity carried out in the peaceful uses of atomic energy could also be looked upon as a step in the manufacture of nuclear weapons. There is such an overlap in the military and peaceful technologies in these areas that they are virtually one.”

– Sir Phillip Baxter, former head of the Australian Atomic Energy Commission, ‘Australian Doubts on the Treaty’, Quadrant, Vol.XII(3), 1968, p.31.

“The potential for proliferation of weapons is real and needs to be reduced and controlled.”

– Simon Clarke, Australian Uranium Association, CarbonEdge, edition 3, July 2009, www.carbonedge.com.au/CarbonEdge3.pdf

“You can guarantee that mining uranium will lead to nuclear waste. You can’t guarantee that uranium mining will not lead to nuclear weapons.”

– Anthony Albanese, – Australian Labor Party’s environmental spokesman, quoted in the New York Times, August 2, 2006 page A9

“Whether or not Aussie uranium goes directly into Chinese warheads — or whether it is used in power stations in lieu of uranium that goes into Chinese warheads — makes little difference. Canberra is about to do a deal with a regime with a record of flouting international conventions.”

– The Taipei Times editorial 21/1/06.

“…States which possess nuclear weapons must, within a reasonable time-frame, take systematic action to eliminate completely all nuclear weapons in a manner which is safe and does not damage the environment.”

– Gareth Evans, ICJ Oral hearings, Oct 30, 1995

“India has an excellent non-proliferation record other than their own nuclear weapons’ programme.”

– Foreign Affairs Minister Alexander Downer, ABC 7.30 Report, Aug 2007

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INTERNATIONAL

“The spread of nuclear technologies and expertise is generating concerns about the potential emergence of new nuclear weapon states and the acquisition of nuclear materials by terrorist groups.”

– US National Intelligence Council, 2008, “Global Trends 2025 – a Transformed World”, www.dni.gov/nic/NIC_2025_project.html

The US National Intelligence Council also warned of the possibility of a nuclear arms race in the Middle East and noted that a number of states in the region “are already thinking about developing or acquiring nuclear technology useful for development of nuclear weaponry.”

“[T]he rise in nuclear power worldwide … inevitably increases the risks of proliferation”.

– US State Department, 2008, quoted in www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=9269&page=0

“For eight years in the White House, every weapons-proliferation problem we dealt with was connected to a civilian reactor program. And if we ever got to the point where we wanted to use nuclear reactors to back out a lot of coal … then we’d have to put them in so many places we’d run that proliferation risk right off the reasonability scale.”

– Former US Vice President Al Gore, 2006, www.grist.org/article/roberts2

“Many believe that a responsible approach to sharply reducing global warming pollution would involve a significant increase in the use of nuclear power plants as a substitute for coal-fired generators. While I am not opposed to nuclear power and expect to see some modest increased use of nuclear reactors, I doubt that they will play a significant role in most countries as a new source of electricity. The main reason for my skepticism about nuclear power playing a much larger role in the world’s energy future is not the problem of waste disposal or the danger of reactor operator error, or the vulnerability to terrorist attack. Let’s assume for the moment that all three of these problems can be solved. That still leaves two serious issues that are more difficult constraints. The first is economics; the current generation of reactors is expensive, take a long time to build, and only come in one size – extra large. In a time of great uncertainty over energy prices, utilities must count on great uncertainty in electricity demand – and that uncertainty causes them to strongly prefer smaller incremental additions to their generating capacity that are each less expensive and quicker to build than are large 1000 megawatt light water reactors. Newer, more scalable and affordable reactor designs may eventually become available, but not soon. Secondly, if the world as a whole chose nuclear power as the option of choice to replace coal-fired generating plants, we would face a dramatic increase in the likelihood of nuclear weapons proliferation. During my 8 years in the White House, every nuclear weapons proliferation issue we dealt with was connected to a nuclear reactor program. Today, the dangerous weapons programs in both Iran and North Korea are linked to their civilian reactor programs. Moreover, proposals to separate the ownership of reactors from the ownership of the fuel supply process have met with stiff resistance from developing countries who want reactors. As a result of all these problems, I believe that nuclear reactors will only play a limited role.”

– Al Gore, September 2006, speech at NYU Law School, www.grist.org/article/more-on-gores-speech

“The push to bring back nuclear power as an antidote to global warming is a big problem. If you build more nuclear power plants we have toxic waste at least, bomb-making at worse.”

– Former US President Bill Clinton, 2006, Clinton Global Initiative.

“The development of atomic energy for peaceful purposes and the development of atomic energy for bombs are in much of their course interchangeable and interdependent. … Fear of such surprise violation of pledged word will surely break down any confidence in the pledged word of rival countries developing atomic energy if the treaty obligations and good faith of the nations are the only assurances upon which to rely.”

– Dean Acheson & David Lilienthal, 16 March 1946, A Report on the International Control of Atomic Energy, US Government Printing Office, Washington, DC. This report was the basis of the Baruch Plan for international control of nuclear weapons submitted to the United Nations by the U.S. in 1946.

“There is no prospect of security against atomic warfare in a system of international agreements to outlaw such weapons controlled only by a system which relies on inspection and similar police-like methods. The reasons supporting this conclusion are not merely technical, but primarily the insuperable political, social, and organizational problems involved in enforcing agreements between nations each free to develop atomic energy but only pledged not to use bombs…So long as intrinsically dangerous activities [i.e., production and use of weapons-useable materials such as plutonium and highly-enriched uranium] may be carried out by nations, rivalries are inevitable and fears are engendered that place so great a pressure upon a system of international enforcement by police methods that no degree of ingenuity or technical competence could possibly hope to cope with them.”

– Dean Acheson & David Lilienthal

“We are convinced that if the production of fissionable materials by national governments (or by private organisations under their control) is permitted, systems of inspection cannot be by themselves made “effective safeguards … to protect complying states against the hazards of violations and evasions.”

– Dean Acheson & David Lilienthal

“[R]oughly two-thirds of the energy and effort required to produce HEU goes into enriching natural uranium with 0.711 percent U-235 to fuel grade low-enriched uranium with 3.6 percent U-235, while only about one third goes into further enrichment of that LEU to produce highly enriched uranium with 90 percent U-235.”

– Brice Smith, Insurmountable risks. Institute for Energy and Environmental Research. Takoma Park, Maryland, May 2006:127.

“Reprocessing provides the strongest link between commercial nuclear power and proliferation.”

– US Congress, Office of Technology Assessment, Nuclear proliferation and safeguards. June 1977:12.

“No system of safeguards that can be devised will of itself provide an effective guarantee against production of atomic weapons by a nation bent on aggression.”

– Harry S Truman, CR Attlee & WL Mackenzie King. Declaration on atomic bomb by President Truman and Prime Ministers Attlee and King. 15 Nov 1945.

“It would be so easy for us to produce nuclear warheads – we have plutonium at nuclear power plants in Japan, enough to make several thousand such warheads.”

– Ichiro Ozawa, leader of the Liberal Party in Japan, Lecture in Fukuoka, April 2002.

“I admit that we have excessive amounts of plutonium, but our purpose is for research.”

– Yuichi Tonozuka. President, Japan Nuclear Cycle Development Institute, April 2005.

“We are approaching a point at which the erosion of the non-proliferation regime could become irreversible and result in a cascade of proliferation.”

– UN High-Level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change. A more secure world: Our shared responsibility. Report to the Secretary-General. 30 Nov 2004:39

“In fact, the NPT is the weakest of the treaties on WMD in terms of provisions about implementation.”

– Weapons of Mass Destruction Commission. Weapons of Terror. Final Report. WMD Commission, Stockholm, Sweden. 1 June 2006:63.

“It is clear that no international safeguards system can physically prevent diversion or the setting up of an undeclared or clandestine nuclear programme.”

– IAEA, Against the Spread of Nuclear Weapons: IAEA Safeguards in the 1990s, 1993.

“Safeguardability remains a R&D priority. There is no proliferation proof nuclear fuel cycle. The dual use risk of nuclear materials and technology and in civil and military applications cannot be eliminated. The technical expertise of the International Atomic Energy Agency plays a central role in managing this dual use. Improving the efficiency and effectiveness of international safeguards remains a priority for non-proliferation Research and Development (R&D).”

– UK Royal Society, 13 October 2011, Fuel cycle stewardship in a nuclear renaissance

http://royalsociety.org/policy/projects/nuclear-non-proliferation/report

“[S]erious consideration should be given to the possibility of phasing out reprocessing plants altogether. …as an adjunct to any nuclear disarmament treaty, it would be essential to create international institutions to operate and safeguard both enrichment and reprocessing plants (if they cannot be eliminated altogether) and spent fuel storage sites. … Even with stringent and equitable new rules to govern nuclear power, its continued operation and certainly any global expansion will impose serious proliferation risks in the transition to nuclear disarmament. A phase-out of civilian nuclear energy would provide the most effective and enduring constraint on proliferation risks in a nuclear-weapon-free world.”

– International Panel on Fissile Materials, Global Fissile Material Report 2009, www.fissilematerials.org/ipfm/pages_us_en/documents/documents/documents.php

“The fundamental constraint against effectively protecting against nuclear energy use leading to bombs is the near-universal assumption that we can afford only so much protection as will allow full exploitation of nuclear energy. In international affairs, nuclear energy trumps just about everything. Even so-called arms controllers fall over themselves trying to establish their bona fides by supporting nuclear energy development and devising painless proposals that grandfather everything that’s already in place. … It’s time to take a more serious view. Security should come first–not as an afterthought. We should support as much nuclear power as is consistent with international security; not as much security as the spread of nuclear power will allow.”

– Victor Gilinsky, former member of the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission, ‘A call to resist the nuclear revival’, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 27 January 2009, www.thebulletin.org/web-edition/op-eds/call-to-resist-the-nuclear-revival

“As we see it, however, the world is not now safe for a rapid global expansion of nuclear energy. Such an expansion carries with it a high risk of misusing uranium enrichment plants and separated plutonium to create bombs. The use of nuclear devices is still a very dangerous possibility in a world where Russian and U.S. ballistic missiles are on hair trigger and long-standing conflicts between countries and among peoples too often escalate into military actions. As two of our board members have pointed out, ‘Nuclear war is a terrible trade for slowing the pace of climate change.'”

– Editorial – Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 14 January 2010

www.thebulletin.org/content/media-center/announcements/2010/01/14/it-6-minutes-to-midnight

“I do not like this word bomb. It is not a bomb; it is a device which is exploding.”

– Jacques Le Blanc – French Ambassador to New Zealand (describing France’s nuclear tests).

“In conventional war, mistakes cost lives, sometimes thousands of lives. However, if mistakes were to affect decisions relating to the use of nuclear forces, there would be no learning curve. They would result in the destruction of nations.”

– Former US Secretary of Defence, Robert MacNamara, “Apocalypse Soon”, May/June2005.

“A full scale nuclear exchange, lasting less than 60 minutes … could wipe out more than 300 million Americans, Europeans, and Russians, as well as untold numbers elsewhere. And the survivors–as Chairman Khrushchev warned the Communist Chinese, `the survivors would envy the dead.’ For they would inherit a world so devastated by explosions and poison and fire that today we cannot conceive of its horrors.”

– President John F. Kennedy, address to the nation on the Limited Test Ban Treaty, 26 July 1963

“In an all-out nuclear war, more destructive power than in all of World War II would be unleashed every second during the long afternoon it would take for all the missiles and bombs to fall. A World War II every second–more people killed in the first few hours than all the wars of history put together. The survivors, if any, would live in despair amid the poisoned ruins of a civilization that had committed suicide.”

– President Jimmy Carter, Farewell Address to the American People, 14 January 1981

“By far the greatest single danger facing human-kind, in fact all living beings on our planet, is the threat of nuclear destruction…”

– The Dalai Lama.

“I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.”

– Albert Einstein

“The splitting of the atom has changed everything save our mode of thinking, and therefore we drift toward unparalleled catastrophe. The solution to this problem lies in the heart of mankind. If only I had known, I should have become a watchmaker.”

– Albert Einstein

“The discussion of the peaceful applications of nuclear explosives has produced some concrete ideas that surely can be realized and it has also produced some promising possibilities which for the time being we must consider as dreams. First, we shall mention those applications about which we can feel quite sure. They boil down to a single fact: We can make a hole in the earth — if anybody wants to do that.”

– Edward Teller, ‘father’ of the hydrogen bomb, 1963.

Information about the flawed ‘clean up’ of the Maralinga (South Australia) nuclear test site in the 1990s.

Lots of articles posted at this link — scroll down to the ‘Maralinga clean-up’ section

Critical analysis of the Maralinga ‘clean up’ by nuclear engineer Alan Parkinson:

• 2015 submission to SA Nuclear Fuel Cycle Royal Commission
• Book: ‘Maralinga: Australia’s Nuclear Waste Cover-up’, Alan Parkinson, ABC Books, 2007, 233 pages, $32.95 (pb). Review posted here. To purchase the book, try ABC book sellers or order online at http://shop.abc.net.au (enter Maralinga or Parkinson in the search engine). Now available as a Kindle e-book at Amazon for $15.99.
• Numerous articles by Alan Parkinson – online web archive, see the Maralinga ‘clean-up’ section.
• Maralinga – Australia’s nuclear waste cover-up, Ockham’s Razor – ABC Radio National, September 2, 2007
• “The Maralinga Rehabilitation Project: Final Report”, Medicine and Global Survival, Volume 7, Number 2, February 2002.
• Maralinga Rehabilitation Project, 2000, text of conference presentation + photos
• Comments in ABC Radio National, Background Briefing program, “Maralinga: The Fall Out Continues”, April 16, 2000
• Maralinga and Lucas Heights, ABC Ockham’s Razor, 22 Sept 2002.
• Second-round submission to ARPANSA 2003-04 inquiry into Proposed National Radioactive Waste Repository
• “Maralinga: Clean-Up or Cover-Up?” Australasian Science, July, 21 (6), 2000, p.16. (not available online)
• ‘The Maralinga Rehabilitation Project: Final Report’, Medicine, Conflict and Survival, Vol.20, 2004, pp.70-80, London: Frank Cass. (not available online)

Plutonium at Maralinga – Alan Parkinson

Dust at Maralinga ‒ Alan Parkinson

Maralinga Mystery – Alan Parkinson

Maralinga MARTAC Muddle – Alan Parkinson

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Critical analysis of the Maralinga ‘clean up’ by nuclear physicist Prof. Peter Johnston:

• See the notes below in this webpage.
• P.N. Johnston, A.C. Collett, T.J. Gara, “Aboriginal participation and concerns throughout the rehabilitation of Maralinga”, presented at the Third International Symposium on the Protection of the Environment from Ionising Radiation, Darwin. See pp.349-56 in this PDF: http://www-pub.iaea.org/MTCD/publications/PDF/CSP-17_web.pdf
• Written submission #256 and second-round submission to ARPANSA 2003-04 inquiry into Proposed National Radioactive Waste Repository, both available from jim.green@foe.org.au and see notes below in this webpage.

Critical analysis of the Maralinga ‘clean up’ by scientific whistleblower Dale Timmons:

• http://pandora.nla.gov.au/pan/30410/20090218-0153/www.geocities.com/jimgreen3/martac.html
• http://pandora.nla.gov.au/pan/30410/20090218-0153/www.geocities.com/jimgreen3/timmons.html

Australian government propaganda:

• http://www.ret.gov.au/resources/radioactive_waste/maralinga/Pages/MaralingaRehabilitationProject.aspx

Propaganda from the Australian nuclear regulator ARPANSA:

• http://arpansa.gov.au/RadiationProtection/basics/maralinga.cfm
• http://arpansa.gov.au/pubs/basics/maralinga.pdf (this PDF file ends with a list of references to literature on Maralinga and the ‘clean up’)

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Cabinet papers reveal British Government denied compensation to people affected Maralinga, Emu Fields nuclear tests

Tory Shepherd, The Advertiser, 1 Jan 2014

http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/news/south-australia/cabinet-papers-reveal-british-government-denied-compensation-to-people-affected-maralinga-emu-fields-nuclear-tests/story-fni6uo1m-1226793288275

THE British Government did not want to pay to clean up the South Australian Outback after its nuclear testing program and was reluctant to pay compensation to the Australians it exposed to radiation.

Cabinet documents from 1986 and 1987, released by the National Archives of Australia, detail how the Australian Government told the British that people who had to take samples from the toxic cloud were “undoubtedly inadequately protected and monitored for radiation exposure and that was a direct result of British assurances that they faced negligible risks of radiation exposure”.

The Hawke/Keating Government was also keen to “constrain” how much money it gave to the victims of the radioactive material released at Maralinga and Emu Fields.

…

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Fallout from nuclear tests at Maralinga worse than previously thought

ABC 2021 article, here’s the link and here’s a summary:

• Radioactive particles in Maralinga remain reactive for longer than previously thought
• These particles can leach into groundwater, affecting plants, wildlife and humans
• Native foods from around nuclear sites are still too risky to consume

Why cabinet sought only a partial clean-up of British nuclear test site

1 January 2014, Paul Chadwick

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/31/why-cabinet-sought-only-partial-clean-up-of-british-nuclear-test-site

The complete rehabilitation of areas of Australia used to test British nuclear weapons may not be possible, the Hawke cabinet was advised in 1986. Cabinet was warned that a full clean-up may have been more expensive than the British government would be willing to contemplate, according to documents released this week by the National Archives. They provide new insights into the Hawke government’s response to the recommendations of the McClelland royal commission into British nuclear tests in Australia.

The documents cover technical aspects of the clean-up, collection of data about persons who may have been exposed to radiation and compensation issues affecting veterans of the testing and Indigenous people whose lands had been damaged. The material shows how ministers perceived these seemingly distinct issues as being connected.

In addressing the royal commission’s recommendation that the sites be cleaned up “so that they are fit for unrestricted habitation by the traditional Aboriginal owners as soon as possible”, cabinet heard from the minister for resources and energy, Gareth Evans, that such a clean-up of all affected areas would be extraordinarily expensive. At least as expensive as plutonium clean-up operations at Palomares in Spain and in the Marshall Islands – in 1970s dollar values, more than $US200m.

“But even expenditure on this scale cannot on present indications be expected to achieve a fully effective rehabilitation of the area given the experience that residual contamination, albeit at significantly lower levels, would continue to be present,” Evans reported.

This, and the remoteness of Maralinga, the area in South Australia where the tests took place, meant it “may be reasonable to set aside, even at this early stage, the option of absolutely unrestricted habitation”.

A clean-up costing in the order of $20m to $25m was “much more within the ballpark that the UK government is likely, on present indications, to be prepared to contemplate”. Cabinet was looking for a contribution from Britain of 50% of the clean-up cost.

In an overview report to cabinet in May 1986, Evans noted that “a non-confrontational approach had been adopted in all dealings with the UK government and an amicable and productive working relationship has so far been maintained”.

The Thatcher government’s view was interpreted for the Hawke cabinet as follows:

“While the British government will continue to minimise its obligation to clean up the sites, its final willingness to pay in whole or in part will depend on both a mix of legal and moral argument, and on the extent of the clean-up insisted upon. The British have also stated their concern that if personal compensation awards are opened up, precedents will be set for compensation of their own nuclear veterans.

“There is a connection between the compensation and clean-up issues only in so far as restraint by the Australian government on this compensation issue may assist the negotiating climate when it comes to seeking recovery of clean-up costs,” Evans advised his colleagues.

There were indications that Maralinga Aboriginal representatives may accept that, once the main hazards were dealt with cost effectively, the “very large additional sums that may need to be spent to secure the ‘unrestricted habitation’ criterion might be much better spent elsewhere”.

Compensation in the form of services such as water and roads “could be very helpful in securing Aboriginal acceptance of a reasonable ultimate clean-up program”, Evans reported.

Studies necessary for a reduced scale of clean-up were approved by cabinet. An aerial survey of radioactivity around the test sites would be followed by a more detailed ground survey. Five studies would “define the areas – hopefully quite small – which must remain surrounded by fences, and further outer areas in which activities such as food gathering and excavation should not occur”.

A report by technical experts attached to the cabinet submission states: “Aboriginals living and gathering food on the Maralinga lands may be exposed [to contaminants] … in three major ways – by inhalation, by ingestion and by entry of contaminated material through open flesh wounds and abrasions.”

The experts considered options for burial of contaminated soil. They noted that since one of the contaminants had a half life of 24,000 years it was a prerequisite to make a prediction about the sort of changes in the earth expected to occur in the Maralinga area in the timeframe.

Cabinet rejected the royal commission’s recommendation for the creation of a new register of persons who may have been exposed to “black mist” or radiation at the tests. It reasoned that two substantial lists of persons involved in the tests and potentially exposed to radiation already existed and that obtainable information would add nothing of significance.

The Minister for Aboriginal Affairs, Clyde Holding, presented cabinet with a submission in response to the royal commission’s recommendation that Aboriginal people be compensated for dispossession of the lands used for testing.

Holding was blunt and evocative: “… we have no option but to accept the principle of compensation for dispossession. The actions of previous Australian government [sic] in shepherding Aboriginal people from their traditional lands for the purpose of conducting atomic tests were both immoral and appallingly executed. The resultant disruption to Aboriginal life has been catastrophic; Yalata, where many were resettled, is testimony to that. If we deny compensation we shall stand condemned as surely as those who committed the outrage of dispossession in the first place.”

Cabinet accepted Holding’s recommendation that $500,000 be provided in 1986-87 for services, such as roads and water, for Indigenous communities with a traditional interest in sites at Maralinga affected by the atomic test program, with future amounts to be subject to further consideration.

Holding advised: “This would in effect be a down payment on an unspecified overall sum, which would need to be calculated at a later stage when more information is available on needs and on the extent of continuing restrictions on use and enjoyment of areas of the Maralinga lands. It will be seen as a low figure and will be criticised for that; we can counter such criticism by pointing out that it is the first instalment, and that there needs first to be consultation with the traditional owners on what is to be done.”

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Maralinga sites need more repair work, files show

November 12 2011

Philip Dorling

http://www.theage.com.au/national/maralinga-sites-need-more-repair-work-files-show-20111111-1nbpp.html

MORE than a decade after the Howard government declared the clean-up of Maralinga to be finished, the Australian government is continuing to support remediation work at the former British nuclear weapons test site.

Confidential federal government files released under freedom of information also show Canberra bureaucrats have at times been primarily concerned with ”perceptions” of radioactive contamination, while rejecting a request by the Maralinga Tjarutja Aboriginal community for a site near the Maralinga village to be cleared of high levels of toxic uranium contamination.

Files released by the Department of Resources, Energy and Tourism show that erosion of the massive Taranaki burial trench north of Maralinga, described by federal bureaucrats as ”a large radioactive waste repository”, has required significant remediation work. Other burial pits scattered across the former nuclear test range have also been subject to subsidence and erosion, exposing asbestos-contaminated debris.

While the released documents indicate ”no radiological contamination of groundwater” has been detected, the federal government has been obliged under its 2009 agreement with Maralinga Tjarutja for the hand-back of the Maralinga test site to initiate a range of further remediation work.

The Taranaki trench was excavated in the mid-1990s and used to bury radioactive-contaminated debris and soil, principally from numerous ”minor trials”, British nuclear weapons safety and development experiments conducted between 1956 and 1963 that caused the heaviest radioactive contamination at Maralinga.

Records of a Maralinga Lands and Environmental Management Committee meeting in October last year show that ”erosion of the Taranaki trench was noted” and that repair work funded by the Commonwealth would be carried out by the Maralinga Tjarutja. An annual survey of 85 debris pits revealed that 19 pits had been subject to erosion or subsidence, with eight requiring ”major work” and at least four containing exposed asbestos.

A brief prepared for Resources and Energy Minister Martin Ferguson in April this year questioned the capacity of the Maralinga Tjarutja to manage the former nuclear test site.

”We understand that [the Maralinga Tjarutja’s] site manager is to be replaced with a community member at the end of June 2011. While it is not for the department to dictate who fills this position, it is necessary that Maralinga Tjarutja appreciates the need for competent management of the site.”

The released files also show that the Australian government declined requests by Maralinga Tjarutja to clean up the trials site closest to the Maralinga Village.

Situated east of the Maralinga airstrip, the Kuli site was used by British nuclear weapons scientists to conduct 262 trials that explosively dispersed 7.4 tonnes of uranium into the environment.

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Maralinga’s nuclear nightmare continues

2 November 2007
By Phil Shannon
http://www.greenleft.org.au/node/38547

Review of:
Maralinga: Australia’s Nuclear Waste Cover-up
By Alan Parkinson
ABC Books, 2007, 233 pages, $32.95 (pb)

Federal science minister Peter McGauran was almost incontinent with joy in 2003 — the clean-up of the plutonium-contaminated British atomic bomb testing site at Maralinga in South Australia’s remote north had “achieved its goals”, exceeded “world’s best practice” and was “something Australia can be proud of”. Not so happy, however, was nuclear engineer Alan Parkinson, whose book Maralinga: Australia’s Nuclear Waste Cover-up shows that the “clean-up” was more a “cover-up” of a cost-cutting dumping of hazardous radioactive waste in shallow holes in the ground.

Seven of the 12 British atomic bombs exploded on Australian territory 50 years ago were at Maralinga in 1956 and 1957. Even more so than the bomb tests, it was the hundreds of related trials, which continued until the mid-1960s, that contaminated 100 square kilometres of land with plutonium and other radioactive elements. Twenty-four kilograms of highly dangerous plutonium was used but only 0.9kgs was repatriated to Britain. The remainder was spread over a wide area, while thousands of tonnes of plutonium-contaminated debris (concrete, steel, cable, etc) lay in poorly covered bare earth pits following inadequate British clean-ups, the last in 1967.

By 1993, Parkinson had become the key person on the project, representing the then federal Labor government (through the Department of Primary Industry and Energy) and as a member of the minister’s advisory committee, MARTAC (the Maralinga Rehabilitation Technical Advisory Committee). What followed was a mounting catalogue of problems that became a fully-fledged disaster after Parkinson was sacked in 1997 by the new Coalition government.

The main problem concerned the clean-up of the contaminated debris in the pits. In-situ vitrification (ISV), which used electricity to melt the pit contents and soil, cooling to form a hard glass-like rock that immobilises the radioactive contaminants, had been adopted as the best available solution. The project team, however, were badly misled by inaccurate, 20-year old British recollections of the pits and their contents. Parkinson’s team found that the total volume of contaminated debris was three times greater than they had been led to believe. The ISV treatment would therefore cost much more and the government department went into zealous cost-cutting mode.

The situation had been exacerbated from mid-1997 with a changing of the management guard in the department, which put a person in charge who knew nothing of radiation and had no program management experience. Parkinson, the specialist scientist who wanted to do a proper job, clashed with the bureaucrat out to wind up the job and save money.

In secret meetings, the department arranged an extension to the existing clean-up project management contract with Gutteridge, Haskins & Davey (GHD) to take over the management part of the ISV project from the ISV engineering experts Geosafe. GHD, which had originally tendered for the job but not made the shortlist, had bought the successful tenderer, the government’s Australian Construction Services, during a post-election festival of privatisation.

So, a failed tenderer was now in charge of a process for which they had no expertise. GHD, in turn, reported to a similarly ignorant department, while MARTAC was partially blinded by the failure of cooperation and information flow between the direct market competitors, GHD (managing the ISV project) and Geosafe (conducting it). This, says Parkinson, “doomed” the project.

As Parkinson feared, cost-cutting undid the project. An unexplained explosion of something flammable in vitrification Pit No. 17 in March 1999 — a legacy of the undocumented British pit stocktake two decades ago — gave the department and MARTAC the excuse to scrap the costly but effective ISV, blaming the process not the pit contents. With ISV red-lined, the next best option, which was to encase the debris in a concrete-lined facility (the minimum requirement for such disposal in the US and Britain), was also scratched and shallow trench burial under just one to two metres of soil was adopted.

The clean-up, by simply burying long-lived radioactive debris in a hole in the ground with no treatment or lining, had thus been “botched”, says Parkinson, but the Coalition’s then science minister, Nick Minchin, declared the site safe in March 2000. Parkinson exposed the disgraceful outcome through the ABC, provoking the government into a furious rebuttal composed of scientific distortion and personal abuse.

When the new minister, McGauran, then waved the subsequent MARTAC report as a true and proper record sanctifying the clean-up, Parkinson unpicked this alleged seal of approval at its shonky seams. Written by a part-time advisory committee that did not have day-to-day contact with, or full information on, the project, the report was riddled with mistakes and errors. That six “eminent” scientists signed it, is, to Parkinson, evidence that MARTAC had become “a puppet advisory committee”. Also failing the scientific test was ARPANSA (Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Authority), the government’s “independent” nuclear regulator, which also gave the “clean-up” the all-clear.The government claims that the “clean-up” has exceeded world’s best practice. Parkinson argues that the higher standards proposed for the national low-level nuclear waste depository (containment drums stored in a deep-engineered facility, with a concrete base and covered by impervious layers), make the government’s statements about Maralinga’s hole-in-the-ground approach being world’s best practice utterly “frivolous”.

Equally disturbing for Parkinson is the fact that the nuclear waste depository project itself has the same client (the renamed Department of Employment, Science and Training), the same contractor (GHD) and the same regulator (ARPANSA) that so dismally mismanaged the Maralinga clean-up to save a dollar.

If the government’s claims of a safe site at Maralinga are true then why, asks Parkinson, is not the government agreeing to total indemnity? Perhaps because it doesn’t want the financial liability for people (traditional owners, souvenir hunters, site maintainers) contaminated from the hundreds of square kilometres of soil known still to be contaminated (often well-above the clean-up criteria) but which were not involved in the partial clean-up; from the “hundreds and possibly thousands of tonnes of contaminated soil” that blew away as radioactive dust during the scraping and dumping process by the earthworks machinery; from the radioactive material and pits that have not yet been found; from the 20kgs (84% of the original amount) of plutonium still out there.

It is no disrespect to say that, as a writer, Parkinson makes a very good nuclear engineer, or that the big picture sometimes goes a little out of focus because of his intense gaze at the personal level of his intimate involvement with the project and its personalities. What Parkinson has delivered, however, is an invaluable service in blowing the lid on the “cheap and nasty scheme” of an incompetent and lying government, and its tame and leashed scientists and senior bureaucrats. Parkinson has more integrity than the lot of them. Maralinga has not been cleaned up. The government’s assurances on anything nuclear should be taken with a grain of contaminated Maralinga soil.

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Maralinga – Australia’s nuclear waste cover-up

Ockham’s Razor – ABC Radio National

September 2, 2007

http://www.abc.net.au/rn/ockhamsrazor/stories/2007/2019647.htm#transcript

Robyn Williams: Isn’t it fascinating to contemplate how the world changes. Twenty-five years ago we saw the first CDs replace those large vinyl discs we used to call LPs. Fifty years ago the space age really began with the launch of Sputnik, the first satellite, followed by Laika the dog. And at about the same time, out in the desert in South Australia, the British were exploding bombs, atomic bombs, something that may come as a surprise to younger listeners.

Alan Parkinson has written a book about all this and about what happened next. It’s called ‘Maralinga, Australia’s Nuclear Waste Cover-up’.

Alan Parkinson:

Most people living in Australia today probably do not know that twelve atomic bombs have been exploded on Australian territory.

Seven of those bombs were exploded at Maralinga, in South Australia, in the 1950s. Following those explosions, Britain conducted a series of experiments in which they exploded another 15 bombs in a manner which precluded an atomic explosion. Those experiments spread plutonium and uranium over hundreds of square kilometres of the South Australian landscape.

Before they abandoned the site, the British conducted a final clean-up in 1967, and the Australian government accepted their assurance that Maralinga was clean. In the mid 1980s, scientists from the Australian Radiation Laboratory surveyed the site and found it was far from satisfactory.

In 1989, I prepared estimates for some 30 options for cleaning the site, ranging from simply fencing the contaminated area to scraping over 100 square kilometres of land and burying the contaminated soil. The Federal government agreed with the South Australian government and the Maralinga Tjarutja to implement a partial clean-up.

This partial clean-up was to be in two parts: the first was to scrape up and buy the most contaminated soil. The second part was to treat 21 pits containing thousands of tonnes of plutonium-contaminated debris by a process of vitrification, which would immobilise the plutonium for perhaps a million years.

In 1993, I was appointed a member of the Maralinga Rehabilitation Technical Advisory Committee whose purpose was to advise the Minister on progress of the project, and a few months later, I was appointed the government’s representative to oversee the whole project.

By the end of 1997, the collection and burial of contaminated soil was nearing an end. However, as that soil was scraped up, we found the state of the 21 debris pits was not at all what we had been led to believe from the British reports.

The pits were very much larger than the British reports told us, with about three times as much debris as we had expected, and therefore treatment by vitrification would clearly cost a lot more.

By then we had completed a three-year program to match the vitrification technology to the Maralinga geology, and a company called Geosafe had built the equipment ready to use it to treat the pits. Unfortunately, when the department signed the contract with Geosafe, they failed to include that most basic feature of any contract: a statement of what had to be achieved.

The equipment was tested in Adelaide before being taken to site, and those tests, which I witnessed, showed that the technology was going to be just as successful as we had hoped.

It was at this time that the department held three meetings with a company that had no knowledge at all of the vitrification technology; they had not been involved in the three-year development program, and nobody from that company had even seen the full-size equipment. Similarly, the two attendees from the department had no knowledge of the technology, or any project management experience. Add to that, nobody in those meetings had any nuclear expertise or experience in the disposal of nuclear waste.

Even though I was the government’s representative overseeing the whole project, I was excluded, as was Geosafe.

The department then proposed to appoint this company as project manager and project authority over the vitrification part of the project. I resisted this and advised them not to proceed along this path. Geosafe also objected, telling the department several times in writing and face-to-face that the company was not qualified to take over the project, having no knowledge at all of what was involved. The department persisted and against all advice, appointed the company. For my pains I was removed from the project and the advisory committee. I was sacked.

So the world’s experts in the vitrification technology found themselves contracted to the department but reporting to a company that knew nothing about the technology. In turn, that company reported to people in the department who were similarly ignorant of the technology, had no nuclear expertise and no project management experience. From that point on, the project was almost certainly likely to fail.

Within a few weeks of being appointed, the new project managers put forward a proposal that some of the pits should be exhumed and their contents buried, claiming this would be cheaper. The department accepted the suggestion and introduced what they called the hybrid system, a mixture of dubious practice and the best available technology. And I maintain they did this merely to save money, in fact later when Mr Peter McGauran inherited the project, he tried to defend the saving of over $5-million.

Vitrification of some pits continued until, as treatment was nearing completion on one pit, there was a huge explosion within the pit. The steel hood over the pit was extensively damaged, and molten glass was spewed some 50 metres from the pit. Fortunately, nobody was injured in the incident, but it gave the government an excuse to cancel vitrification altogether.

They then exhumed all the pits, including those that had been vitrified, and placed the whole lot in a shallow grave and covered it.

In March 2000, Senator Minchin visited Maralinga and declared the site was safe, and could be returned to the Aborigines. He was accompanied on that visit by Dr John Loy, the Head of the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency, ARPANSA.

Dr Loy went on to claim that the shallow burial of plutonium contaminated debris was world’s best practice. Three years later, on 25th March, 2003, Mr McGauran tabled the government’s final report of the project in parliament. In his speech, he said, ‘The project achieved its goals and a world best practice result’, oblivious to the fact that a partial clean-up cannot, by definition, be world’s best practice.

It would be a pity if the only record of the project was that published by the government. That final report contains so many incorrect statements that it cannot be said to describe what really happened on the project.

And now, seven years after the government claimed the project a success and four years after Mr McGauran’s declaration, it is time to put a few things into perspective and look back on how the project was managed and what it bodes for the future.

In this I am mindful of the Prime Minister’s push towards nuclear power. Dr Switkowski’s inquiry drew attention to three things that are relevant to the Maralinga project.

The first is for there to be an independent nuclear regulator. The Maralinga project was half way through its final phase when ARPANSA was born.

The second is the need to recruit scientists and engineers with experience in the nuclear industry. The last phase of the Maralinga project was managed by a company with no nuclear expertise, reporting to a client similarly devoid of nuclear experiences, and in some cases, no technical knowledge.

And the third is the problem of nuclear waste disposal. The Minister and the Chief Nuclear Regulator claim the shallow burial of plutonium to be world’s best practice. So why does the rest of the world not follow suit? Why do they insist that long-lived nuclear waste, such as that at Maralinga, should be disposed of in a deep geological facility?

In August 2003, I visited Sellafield in Northern England; that is where the plutonium now spread over a huge area of South Australia originated. There, people with far more experience in dealing with plutonium place plutonium-contaminated material in stainless steel drums and store those drums in an airconditioned building on a guarded site, awaiting permanent deep geological disposal.

It is the same story in America where trials similar to those at Maralinga were conducted, except on a much smaller scale. In their clean-up, the Americans bagged the contaminated soil and debris and transported the whole lot over 300 kilometres to a nuclear waste storage facility on a guarded site.

Those countries clearly do not agree that burial of plutonium in a shallow grave with no packaging and in totally unsuitable geology is world’s best practice.

In July 2001, the government published a document called ‘Safe Storage of Radioactive Waste’ which says that long-lived low and intermediate level waste is not suitable for shallow burial. And yet that is what has been done at Maralinga and claimed to be world’s best practice.

And the government puts similar spin on other features of the project.

In his speech to Parliament Mr McGauran said the clean-up would ‘permit unrestricted access to about 90% of the 3,200 square kilometre Maralinga site’. But there was unrestricted access to 90% of the site before the project started. The only additional area in which there is unrestricted access is half a square kilometre. Admittedly another 1.6 square kilometres have been cleaned, but that is within the area to which access is restricted. And one part of that restricted area is 300 times more contaminated than the clean-up criteria.

In truth, after spending $108-million, less than 2% of the land contaminated above the clean-up criteria has been cleaned. I am not criticising that, it was what was planned, but let us keep it in perspective.

Anybody listening to the government’s statements might be under the impression that the whole site is now clean and all the plutonium used in those British trials has been buried. In fact, almost 85% of the original 24,000 grams of plutonium remains on the surface.

In 24,000 years time, half of that plutonium will still be there, but in about 400 years from now, it will be difficult, if not impossible, to detect it.

On my last visit to Maralinga in September 1999, I was farewelled with, ‘Well, see you in February for the handover’. I have heard many times that the site will be returned ‘later in the year’, or ‘in the next few months’, and seven years later I am still waiting for that event.

Will the Aborigines accept return of their land?

If they do, then for thousands of years, they will have to rely on the Federal government to honour any agreements they might enter, in full knowledge that only a few years ago, the government unilaterally broke their agreement to clean the site using the best available technology and then failed to do so.

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Double Standards with Radioactive Waste

Australasian Science, September 2002

Alan Parkinson says the government is cutting corners.

Australia’s disposal of its radioactive waste is ill-considered and irresponsible. Whether it is short-lived waste from Commonwealth facilities, long-lived plutonium waste from an atomic bomb test site on Aboriginal land, or reactor waste from Lucas Heights, the government applies double standards to suit its own agenda. There is no consistency, and little evidence of logic.

Most of Australia’s current inventory of stored radioactive waste is at Woomera. This includes 2000 m3 of lightly contaminated soil from a CSIRO site at Fishermens Bend in Melbourne – said to be naturally occurring uranium from research into processing radioactive ores. It also includes 60 m3 of waste from Defence facilities such as St Mary’s on Sydney’s outskirts, being old radium-painted dial gauges, watches and compasses.

The removal of radioactive waste from both sites was an “intervention”, which is defined by National Health and Medical Research Council Health Series No 39 as: “Action taken to decrease exposures to radiation which arise from existing situations”; taken to mean improving an already-contaminated site.

The government will dispose of low-level waste from Fishermens Bend and government laboratories in its national waste repository, which is in the early stages of construction in South Australia. It will be packaged in drums, placed on a solid foundation in a trench up to 20 metres deep, and covered by several layers of impervious materials.

An undefined “appropriate authority” will impose an “institutional control period” of 200-300 years, after which the waste will have decayed to safe levels and no further control will be necessary.

The controversial clean-up of the atomic bomb test site at Maralinga was also an “intervention”, but there are significant differences between the treatment of Maralinga debris and that from other sites.

The radioactive contaminant at Maralinga is plutonium, which has a half-life of 24,000 years. It will not decay to “safe” levels in 200-300 years. Since the government intends to return the land to the Maralinga Tjarutja people, there will be no institutional control.

Surprisingly, there was no study to find a proper site for disposal of the Maralinga debris, and no call for a site with suitable geology. The disposal trenches at Maralinga are only 15 metres deep in limestone and dolomite strata exhibiting many cracks and fissures. This geology is totally unsuitable.

The plutonium-contaminated debris at Maralinga was not packaged; it was simply dropped into a bare hole in the ground and covered. It is not on a compacted base, and is not covered by several impervious layers.

On 20 June Trish Worth, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Health, admitted in a letter to me: “While both uranium and plutonium are radiotoxic, gram for gram plutonium is far more hazardous”. But she maintains it is correct to package the uranium from the CSIRO site, while burial in a bare hole in the ground is appropriate for plutonium debris.

In a statement issued in April 2000, Dr John Loy, head of the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency within the Department of Health, supported the shallow disposal of long-lived plutonium debris at Maralinga as “world’s best practice”. This is inconsistent with a government paper of July 2001 stating that low or intermediate level long-lived waste is not suitable for near-surface disposal.

Surely if short-lived waste needs to be packaged for disposal at a carefully selected site, so too does the long-lived Maralinga debris.

The government’s actions don’t lend confidence to how they will dispose of waste from the replacement reactor being constructed Lucas Heights. This is the same reactor that Dr Loy said in July 2000 should not go ahead until the method of handling the spent fuel is “written in blood”. Yet Loy has licensed its construction while the process for handling spent fuel is not resolved.

The government’s double standards between pushing its agenda for the reactor or cleaning up Commonwealth sites, and the treatment of far greater contamination on Aboriginal land are all too apparent.

It is high time that clear and firm guidelines for the disposal of radioactive waste are published, and adherence to these guidelines made mandatory. The government also must accept long-term responsibility for sites that were contaminated with their approval.

Alan Parkinson is a nuclear engineer with more than 40 years’ experience. He was previously the Commonwealth’s representative overseeing the Maralinga rehabilitation project.

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ConScientious Fallout on Radioactive Waste

Peter Pockley, Australasian Science, September 2002

The reaction to nuclear engineer Alan Parkinson’s criticisms of the Federal government’s handling of radioactive waste (conScience, AS, August 2002, p.14) showed that the issue has not been swept under the dry soil of South Australia.

Like July’s conScience column on CSIRO by Dr Max Whitten, Parkinson’s forthright views attracted considerable attention in the media, with ABC TV and Radio National carrying items prominently, as did The Canberra Times, The Age, The Daily Telegraph and The Adelaide Advertiser.

The Australian Conservation Foundation and the SA Labor government supported Parkinson’s contention that the Federal government’s handling of the clean-up of plutonium contamination at Maralinga and its unrealised plans for disposal of low and medium level radioactive waste from the existing and future reactors at Lucas Heights are “irresponsible”, apply “double standards” and are far removed from assertions of “world’s best practice”.

But Dr John Loy, CEO of the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency (ARPANSA), maintains that Parkinson’s views are “sheer rubbish” (see pp.18-19).

Meanwhile, all states and territories have rejected the search by Science Minister, Peter McGauran, for a site for a national repository. South Australian Environment Minister, John Hill, confirmed on Radio National that his government was opposed to a site anywhere in SA.

Parkinson says that Loy’s response is “deliberately misleading” and “sheer government propaganda”. He disputes government claims that ARPANSA is “the independent regulator”, saying ARPANSA is an integral arm of government that is responsible to the Minister of Health. Yet Loy – who exercises the legal power of ARPANSA, which has no governing Board – approves or licenses the actions of another ministry (Science). “He provides answers that suit the government’s prior decisions,” Parkinson claims.

Parkinson agrees that packaging of contaminated soil at Maralinga was never an option, but he has never claimed that it should have been. He says Loy has confirmed double standards since none of the soil from Fishermens Bend is as hazardous as highly radioactive debris – such as steel plates, concrete slabs and lead bricks – left from trials at Maralinga that the government merely shovelled into a trench.

Regarding approval for the new reactor, Parkinson asserts: “Loy wanted firm plans for reprocessing and waste disposal before he would grant a construction licence for the new reactor, but after he granted that licence without firm plans, he switched to wanting that evidence before granting an operating licence. And he says he is independent.”

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Flawed ‘clean-up’ of Maralinga

Jim Green

2003

What was done at Maralinga was a cheap and nasty solution that wouldn’t be adopted on white-fellas land.” — Nuclear engineer Alan Parkinson, ABC Radio National, ‘Breakfast’, August 5, 2002.

In the 1990s the Australian Government carried out what was supposed to be a final clean-up of the Maralinga nuclear test site in South Australia. The clean-up stemmed from recommendations in the 1985 report of the Royal Commission.

A large majority of the contamination resulted not from the nuclear tests per se but from so-called minor trials which were discontinued in 1963. The stated purpose of the trials was to physically test the safety and security of British nuclear weapons in case of accident, and some experiments were designed to improve the trigger mechanisms. The trigger mechanisms of the weapons were subjected to chemical explosions, heat and other tests. The resultant destruction produced plumes of radioactive material in the form of fine particles. These particles fell to earth over a wide area of the test range and in some cases, beyond it. The ‘minor trials’ contaminated Maralinga with approximately 8,000 kg of uranium, 24 kg of plutonium, and 100 kg of beryllium.

In March 2000 the then Minister for Industry, Science and Resources, Senator Nick Minchin, declared Maralinga safe after $108 million had been spent on the clean-up. However, the clean-up generated a great deal of controversy, much of it generated by criticisms expressed by scientists who worked on the project, namely:
* Mr. Alan Parkinson. In 1989, Mr. Parkinson, a nuclear engineer, developed some 30 options for rehabilitation of the Maralinga atomic bomb test site. In August 1994, he was appointed the Government’s Representative to oversee the whole of the clean-up project and was also a member of the government’s advisory committee (MARTAC). In December 1997, he was removed from both appointments for questioning the management of the project.
* Mr. Dale Timmons, a geochemist involved in the in-situ vitrification (ISV) of contaminated debris at Maralinga.
* Professor Peter Johnston, adviser to the traditional owners, the Maralinga Tjarutja, and Professor of Applied Nuclear Physics at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology.

Mr. Parkinson’s view is that the clean-up was significantly flawed, especially the shallow burial of plutonium-contaminated debris. Prof. Johnston’s view is that the clean-up was successful overall despite poor project management by the Australian Government. Mr. Timmons has not commented on the overall status of the clean-up, restricting his comments to the ISV component in which he was heavily involved.

DEST clearly failed to properly manage the Maralinga clean-up. Professor Johnston wrote in his submission to ARPANSA:

“In the Maralinga Rehabilitation Project, DEST had no in-house capacity for engineering or scientific assessment of its contractors for a substantial part of the project. It had internal engineering support for the early part of the project but that individual was removed. As a consequence, DEST contracted for services in extremely deficient ways, e.g. the Geosafe contract contained no performance criteria.” (The Geosafe contract was for vitrification of contaminated debris.)

“In the case of Maralinga, there were mitigating circumstances that kept the project going forward but in a sub-optimal way. These were the MARTAC [Maralinga Rehabilitation Technical Advisory Committee] advisory group, the Maralinga Consultative Group as well as ad-hoc advice sought from ARPANSA at various times. While these groups greatly aided in the successful completion of the project, there were still very large expenditures and significant hazards resulting from the deficient management of the project by DEST.”

Inevitably the poor project management had adverse consequences for the clean-up. Professor Johnston’s presentation for an ARPANSA forum listed some examples:

“DEST concluded a contract with Geosafe Australia for technical services that contained no performance criteria. Draft documents prepared by DEST have often been technically wrong due to a lack of technical input. Non-technical public servants made decisions where technical expertise was needed. Technical advice often not sought except from a contractor.”

Mr. Parkinson illustrates DEST’s inadequate project management capabilities in his submission to ARPANSA (cited above):

“A glaring example of the lack of expertise in project management is provided by the appointment by the department of GHD to manage the ISV phase of the Maralinga project. In spite of the fact that several aspects of GHD’s performance on the earlier phases of the project were less than satisfactory, and the fact that they had absolutely no knowledge or experience of the complex process and equipment of ISV, the department appointed them Project Manager and Project Authority. And those responsible cannot claim they were not aware of GHD’s ignorance in the ISV technology; it was spelled out in writing to them. It is almost a fundamental requirement for the project manager to have a good knowledge and some experience of the project – in this case GHD had none. To emphasise the department’s lack of project management skills, they also appointed GHD Project Authority, in which position they should have had a detailed knowledge of the process and equipment. No wonder the Maralinga project became such a failure.”

Consultation with the Maralinga Tjarutja was inadequate. Prof. Johnston et al note in the conference paper (cited above):

“The Australian Government responded to these [Royal Commission] recommendations by forming in February 1986, a Technical Assessment Group (TAG) to address the technical conclusions stemming from the Royal Commission and a Consultative Group was formed as a forum for discussion of the program. TAG’s task was to provide the Australian Government with options for rehabilitation rather than a recommendation. Membership of the Consultative Group was as envisaged by the Royal Commission for the Maralinga Commission but with additional representatives of the West Australian Government. Notably this structure which formed the basis for the entire rehabilitation project left the traditional owners and the South Australian Government out of direct decision making. It ensured that real authority remained with bureaucrats within the Department of Primary Industries and Energy which obtained advice from TAG and later the Maralinga Rehabilitation Technical Advisory Committee (MARTAC).”

The roles of these groups is explained in the same paper:

“The Maralinga Consultative Group met on an ad hoc basis during the TAG investigations in order to provide information on the progress of scientific studies, planning the rehabilitation work, during the rehabilitation work and in the preparation of the final reports. The consultative group was established to discuss and monitor the TAG studies was re-established in 1993 involving South Australian Government and Maralinga Tjarutja to discuss the MRP. It first met in March 1994. During 1997 and 1998, while a great deal of the rehabilitation work was done, there were few meetings of either MARTAC or the consultative group.”

The most problematic aspect of the project was the decision to abandon ISV in favour of shallow burial of plutonium contaminated debris in totally unsuitable geology. The Australian Government claims that ISV was abandoned because of safety concerns following an explosion on March 21, 1999. However, the use of ISV was curtailed even before the explosion and the decisions to curtail and then abandon ISV were clearly motivated by cost-cutting objectives. This is revealed by numerous statements in the project documentation. To give some examples:
* an October 1998 paper by MARTAC said: “The recent consideration of alternative treatments for ISV for these outer pits has arisen as a result of the revised estimate for ISV being considerably above the project budget.”
* a July 17, 1998 paper written by the chair of MARTAC gives the following criteria for considering options for the Taranaki pits: time savings; cost savings; nature of waste form; potential for exposure of waste; and efficiency of operation.
* at an April 13, 1999 meeting, Garth Chamberlain from GHD, the construction company which was appointed as project manager (despite having little knowledge about ISV and no experience with the technology), said it was a much easier, quicker and cheaper option to exhume and bury debris rather than using ISV.

As Prof. Johnston et al. note in their conference paper (cited above), the decision to abandon ISV: “… was announced to the Maralinga Consultative Group in the middle of a meeting in July 1999 without the consent of the other members of the Consultative Group, particularly Maralinga Tjarutja and South Australia. … The Consultative Group has continued to meet through 2000 and 2001, but there was diminished confidence in the consultative process as a result of the Commonwealth unilateral decision to abandon ISV.”

The unilateral decision to abandon ISV was taken despite previous agreement that no changes to the clean-up methodology would be taken without discussing the proposed changes with the Maralinga Tjarutja.

Senator Minchin said in a May 1, 2000 media release that: “As the primary risk from plutonium is inhalation, all these groups have agreed that deep burial of plutonium is a safe way of handling this waste.” By “these groups” the Minister meant ARPANSA, the Maralinga Tjarutja and South Australian Government. The Minister’s statement is false on two counts. Firstly, the burial of plutonium-contaminated debris is not ‘deep’ no matter how loose the definition – the soil cover is just 5 metres. Secondly, the Maralinga Tjarutja certainly did not agree to the decision to abandon ISV in favour of burial – in fact they wrote to the Minister disassociating themselves from the decision (Senate Estimates, May 3, 2000).

The Australian Senate passed a resolution on August 21, 2002, which reads as follows:

That the Senate-
(a) notes:
(i) that the clean up of the Maralinga atomic test site resulted in highly plutonium-contaminated debris being buried in shallow earth trenches and covered with just one to two metres of soil,
(ii) that large quantities of radioactive soil were blown away during the removal and relocation of that soil into the Taranaki burial trenches, so much so that the contaminated airborne dust caused the work to be stopped on many occasions and forward area facilities to be evacuated on at least one occasion, and
(iii) that americium and uranium waste products are proposed to be stored in an intermediate waste repository and that both these contaminants are buried in the Maralinga trenches;
(b) rejects the assertion by the Minister for Science (Mr McGauran) on 14 August 2002 that this solution to dealing with radioactive material exceeds world’s best practice;
(c) contrasts the Maralinga method of disposal of long-lived, highly radioactive material with the Government’s proposals to store low-level waste in purpose-built lined trenches 20 metres deep and to store intermediate waste in a deep geological facility;
(d) calls on the Government to acknowledge that long-lived radioactive material is not suitable for near surface disposal; and
(e) urges the Government to exhume the debris at Maralinga, sort it and use a safer, more long-lasting method of storing this material.

The Australian Senate passed another resolution on October 15, 2003, which inter alia condemned the Maralinga clean-up. The resolution was as follows:

That the Senate:
(a) notes:
(i) that 15 October 2003 marks the 50th anniversary of the first atomic test conducted by the British government in northern South Australia;
(ii) that on this day “Totem 1”, a 10 kilotonne atomic bomb, was detonated at Emu Junction, some 240 kilometres west of Coober Pedy;
(iii) that the Anangu community received no forewarning of the test;
(iv) that the 1984 Royal Commission report concluded that Totem 1 was detonated in wind conditions that would produce unacceptable levels of fallout, and that the decision to detonate failed to take into account the existence of people at Wallatinna and Welbourn Hill;
(b) expresses its concern for those indigenous peoples whose lands and health over generations have been detrimentally affected by this and subsequent atomic tests conducted in northern South Australia;
(c) congratulates the Kupa Piti Kungka Tjuta – the Senior Aboriginal Women of Coober Pedy – for their ongoing efforts to highlight the experience of their peoples affected by these tests;
(d) condemns the Government for its failure to properly dispose of radioactive waste from atomic tests conducted in the Maralinga precinct; and
(e) expresses its continued opposition to the siting of a low-level radioactive waste repository in South Australia.

The problems with the Maralinga clean-up raises an important issue with respect to the proposed national radioactive waste dump – many of the same organisations and individuals involved in the flawed Maralinga clean-up are now involved in the radioactive waste dump project, namely DEST, ARPANSA, and at least one private contractor.

Prof. Johnston argued in his written submission to ARPANSA that DEST had failed to demonstrate an ability to properly manage the dump project:

“The applicant for a licence [DEST] does not have the technical competence required to manage the contracts of a proposed operator. The operator who may have the necessary technical competence is not a co-applicant. I am not convinced the applicant will have effective control of the project. I believe the application has not demonstrated that the applicant has the capacity to ensure that it can abide by the licence conditions that could be imposed under Section 35 of the ARPANS Act because of a lack of technical competence in managing its contractors.”

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Statements by nuclear physicist Prof. Peter Johnston

Verbal submission to ARPANSA dump inquiry, Adelaide, 2004.

Prof. Johnston was unable to attend so what follows is from someone reading his PowerPoint presentation into the record.

Prof of Nuclear Physics at RMIT

DEST was an ineffective manager of the Maralinga Cleanup in a number of key ways. The pattern of contracting required services for the Repository project is similar to the Maralinga cleanup.

Effectiveness of DEST during the Maralinga Cleanup:

DEST follows the philosophy of contracting all requirements to a Repository Operator, who is a contractor. Safety is in the hands of the operator. The equivalent organisation to the Repository Operator at Maralinga could bid for other work that would be under its operational management. The primary source of advice came from this contractor. At times the project was not fully in DEST’s control.

Failures:

DEST concluded a contract with Geosafe Australia for technical services that contained no performance criteria. Draft documents prepared by DEST have often been technically wrong due to a lack of technical input. Non-technical public servants made decisions where technical expertise

was needed. Technical advice often not sought except from a contractor.

Accountabilities:

The Project Director is non-technical. The Repository Manager is a contractor. The Radiation Safety Officer is a contractor employed by the Repository Operator.

So where does the effective control and the risk lie?

Effective Control and Risk:

Effective control lies with the contractor not DEST, because it lacks the technical skills to supervise its contractor. The risk associated with the release from the repository lies with the community and the Government of Australia.

Inability to manage:

The applicant has not demonstrated effective control. There is a note – see Regulatory Guidelines on Performance Standards for Licence Applicants & Licence Holders. Effective control is normally required by the licence conditions imposed under section 35 of the ARPANS Act.

Mitigating of Control Problems at Maralinga:

Oversight by the Maralinga Rehabilitation Technical Advisory Committee. Maralinga Consultative Group. ARPANSA was the supporting contractor, not a regulator until 2000 – when the work was essentially complete.

Some quotes from written submission #256 to ARPANSA dump inquiry.

Prof Peter Johnston, Acting Head and Professor of Applied Nuclear Physics, Dept of Applied Physics, RMIT University, 22-10-03.

(Writing in personal capacity but also works as adviser to Maralinga Tjarutja re ‘suboptimal’ clean-up of Maralinga nuclear test-site.)

“I believe the application has not demonstrated that the applicant will have effective control of the project or has the capacity to ensure that it can abide by the licence conditions that could be imposed under Section 35 of the ARPANSA Act because of a lack of technical competence in managing its contractors.”

“In the Maralinga Rehabilitation Project, DEST had no in-house capacity for engineering or scientific assessment of its contractors for a substantial part of the project. It had internal engineering support for the early part   \ of the project but that individual was removed. As a consequence, DEST contracte3d for services in extremely deficient ways, e.g. the Geosafe contract contained no performance criteria.”

“The underlying philosophy of not having expertise relies on the concept that the risk can be contracted out. I reject this as the risk is to the Australian community not the contractor.”

“In the case of Maralinga, there were mitigating circumstances that kept the project going forward but in a sub-optimal way. These were the MARTAC advisory group, the Maralinga Consultative Group as well as ad-hoc advice sought from ARPANSA at various times. While these groups greatly aided in the successful completion of the project, there were still very large expenditures and significant hazards resulting from the deficient management of the project by DEST.”

“The applicant for a licence does not have the technical competence required to manage the contracts of a proposed operator. The operator who may have the necessary technical competence is not a co-applicant. I am not convinced the applicant will have effective control of the project. I believe the application has not demonstrated that the applicant has the capacity to ensure that it can abide by the licence conditions that could be imposed under Section 35 of the ARPANS Act because of a lack of technical competence in managing its contractors.”

Quote from: Peter Johnston et al, “Aboriginal participation and concerns throughout the rehabilitation of Maralinga”, presented at the Third International Symposium on the Protection of the Environment from Ionising Radiation, Darwin, 22-26 July 2002, IAEA-CSP-17, IAEA, Vienna, 2003, p.349-356, http://www-pub.iaea.org/MTCD/publications/PDF/CSP-17_web.pdf

“A considerable problem throughout the MRP was a lack of technical skills within the Department managing the project. Until 1997, engineering skills were provided by Alan Parkinson, but there was no Radiation Protecion expertise. Technical advice had to come from contractors, MARTAC or ARL and on important occasions it was not sought.”

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Cleanup and effects

From Wiikipedia, accessed 16 Jan 2012

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_nuclear_tests_at_Maralinga

The initial cleanup operation was codenamed Operation Brumby, and was conducted in 1967.^[1] Attempts were made to dilute the concentration of radioactive material by turning over and mixing the surface soil.^[23] Additionally, the remains of the firings, including plutonium-contaminated fragments, were buried in 22 concrete-capped pits.^[23]

By the 1980s some Australian servicemen and traditional Aboriginal owners of the land were suffering blindness, sores and illnesses such as cancer. They “started to piece things together, linking their afflictions with their exposure to nuclear testing”. Groups including the Atomic Veterans Association and the Pitjantjatjara Council pressured the government, until in 1985 it agreed to hold a royal commission to investigate the damage that had been caused.^[20]

The McClelland Royal Commission into the tests delivered its report in late 1985, and found that significant radiation hazards still existed at many of the Maralinga test sites, particularly at Taranaki,^[19] where the Vixen B trials into the effects of burning plutonium had been carried out. A Technical Assessment Group was set up to advise on rehabilitation options, and a much more extensive cleanup program was initiated at the site.^[23]

The TAG Report plan was approved in 1991 and work commenced on site in 1996 and was completed in 2000 at a cost of $108 million dollars.^[19][24] In the worst-contaminated areas, 350,000 cubic metres of soil and debris were removed from an area of more than 2 square kilometers, and buried in trenches. Eleven debris pits were also treated with in-situ vitrification. Most of the site (approximately 3,200 square kilometres) is now safe for unrestricted access and approximately 120 square kilometres is considered safe for access but not permanent occupancy.^[19] Alan Parkinson has observed that “an Aboriginal living a semi-traditional lifestyle would receive an effective dose of 5 mSv/a (five times that allowed for a member of the public). Within the 120 km², the effective dose would be up to 13 times greater.”^[25]

A Department of Veterans’ Affairs study concluded that “Overall, the doses received by Australian participants were small. … Only 2% of participants received more than the current Australian annual dose limit for occupationally exposed persons (20 mSv).”^[26] However, such findings are contested. A 1999 study for the British Nuclear Test Veterans Association found that 30 per cent of involved veterans had died, mostly in their fifties, from cancers.^[27]

Successive Australian governments failed to compensate servicemen who contracted cancers following exposure to radiation at Maralinga. However, after a British decision in 1988 to compensate its own servicemen, the Australian Government negotiated compensation for several Australian servicemen suffering from two specific conditions, leukemia (except lymphatic leukemia) and the rare blood disorder multiple myeloma.^[28]

One author suggests that the resettlement and denial of aboriginal access to their homelands “contributed significantly to the social disintegration which characterises the community to this day. Petrol sniffing, juvenile crime, alcoholism and chronic friction between residents and the South Australian police have become facts of life.”^[5] In 1994, the Australian Government reached a compensation settlement with Maralinga Tjarutja, which resulted in the payment of $13.5 million in settlement of all claims in relation to the nuclear testing.^[19]

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Maralinga: The Fall Out Continues

Australian Broadcasting Corporation – Radio National’s Background Briefing
Produced by Gregg Borschmann
April 16, 2000
www.abc.net.au/rn/talks/bbing/stories/s120383.htm

Summary

Maralinga. The fall out’s not over yet.  Experts say the plutonium clean up isn’t good enough and they question the validity of the code of practice used by authorities. There’s evidence of shenanigans and expediency at Maralinga. Then there’s the man who wore a contaminated T-shirt all the way from Adelaide to Melbourne. Background Briefing spoke to some key insiders who went on the record for the first time.

Full Transcript

Gregg Borschmann: Moving the goal posts, milking the cow, short-cuts, cover-ups and the shit really hitting the fan. It doesn’t sound like world’s best practice, but it all happened during the clean-up of the Maralinga nuclear test site. These vivid descriptions are not our words; rather, they come straight from the experts who took on the toughest job in the world: making plutonium safe, forever. Hello, I’m Gregg Borschmann and today Background Briefing raises serious questions about the $108-million clean-up of the former British A-bomb test site in outback South Australia. It’s claimed that this has been a world first, the biggest and most successful clean-up ever, of an old nuclear weapons testing range. Sixteen years since planning for the clean-up began, contractors are due to leave the site this month. But leaked documents show that behind the scenes, the project has been increasingly troubled. Some key insiders, including the government’s own advisers, say that the job has not been finished properly.

Alan Parkinson: I don’t believe it is international best practice. I don’t believe that the code that they quote selectively was written considering burial of plutonium 239. Plutonium 239 has a half-life of 24,000 years, which means that there’s something like quarter-of-a-million years before it can be considered safe.

Gregg Borschmann: Engineer, Alan Parkinson has worked in the nuclear industry for over 40 years. For much of the past decade, he has been an official adviser on the project to either the government or the Maralinga Tjarutja Aboriginal people. He compares the Maralinga clean-up unfavourably with what the Americans did at their Nevada nuclear testing site.

Alan Parkinson: At the site that I visited, it was a project called “Double-tracks”, the Americans removed 53 grams of plutonium from about, I think it was 1500 cubic metres of soil. They bagged that soil, that contaminated soil, and they ten transported it 80 miles on public highways to be placed in a nuclear waste repository on a site that is guarded by the US Army. I compared that with burial of 2-1/2 kilograms of plutonium in 250,000 cubic metres of soil, and 2-1/2 kilograms of plutonium mixed in the debris in what is nothing more than a hole in the ground, on a site which is not guarded and which at some date in the future, might be returned to the Maralinga Tjarutja to live their semi-traditional lifestyle. I think there is a huge discrepancy in the way that Maralinga has been treated and overseas treatment of similar sites.

Gregg Borschmann: In other words, the Americans bagged around 50 grams of plutonium contaminated soil and put it into a military repository under lock, key and guard. Australia, by comparison, has put 100 times that amount of plutonium into several large unlined, unguarded holes in the ground.

Alan Parkinson is talking publicly about Maralinga for the first time today on Background Briefing. It’s two years since his contract with the government was terminated in tense and unusual circumstances. He says what has been done at Maralinga since would not be acceptable anywhere else in Australia, or indeed anywhere else in the world.

Alan Parkinson: Whatever is done at Maralinga should be made public, and the Department and ARPANSA should be able to defend the actions. Some of the stuff that’s gone on and some of the stuff that I’ve heard about does not make good reading, and I don’t think they can defend some of the things that they have done, like this burial of debris. They’ve no idea what’s buried there so they can’t defend it, can they?

Gregg Borschmann: Background Briefing has also confirmed that the official code being used to sign off on the clean-up was never intended by the majority of its authors to apply to Maralinga. In addition, Alan Parkinson lifts the lid on how a key Maralinga job was won by the large Australian engineering firm Gutteridge Haskins and Davey, or GHD. The deal was done without competitive tender, and before the government knew how much it was going to cost.

Alan Parkinson: That was a meeting I had with the Department on the 18th November, ’97, and it was at that meeting that I was told by a senior officer, Rob Rawson, that the decision had already been made to appoint GHD as Project Manager. I found out later that this was the day before the Department sent out a short letter inviting GHD to submit a proposal, and before they’d even been told how much this new arrangement would cost. I told Rawson that he might as well tear up another letter that he’d just signed, because he’d just changed the ground rules. But really, I shouldn’t have been surprised, because for some time, GHD had been acting as though they already had the job.

Gregg Borschmann: This arrangement and the story of GHD’s subsequent project management was to become critical as the Maralinga clean-up ended in acrimony and uncertainty.

Gregg Borschmann: Maralinga is now a ghost town. Most of the buildings have been removed or looted. You can’t see the debris from the nuclear test days. If it wasn’t taken back or sold by the British, it was buried. There were holes in the ground everywhere, for everything, from empty fuel drums and household garbage to plutonium contaminated firing pads. Despite this, a major part of the problem remained literally on the surface: plutonium contamination scattered over thousands of hectares at three main test sites called Taranaki, TM and Wewak. What was agreed at the beginning of this project was already a compromise. A perfect job would have been too expensive and the health risks didn’t warrant it. Instead, it was agreed that there were two jobs to be done. The first would remove and bury only the worst of the plutonium contaminated topsoil, spread over more than several hundred hectares. The second job had to do with several kilograms of plutonium contaminated debris buried in pits at Taranaki. This was the most heavily contaminated of the three clean-up sites.

Alan Parkinson: There were 21 of these pits. What happened during the set of trials known as Vixen B trials, was that the Brits detonated an atomic bomb in a manner which would not allow it to explode as an atomic bomb. It was what we call one-point trial. These trials would melt the plutonium, shoot it up into the air and be spread all over the place, but it also damaged the structure on which these devices were placed. So at the end of each one of these trials, (and there were 15 of them) the equipment had to be thrown out and the best way to do that was to dig a pit alongside where the firing pad had been and bury the stuff.  So although we had a report from the British to tell us what was in these pits, it was in very general terms, like steel joists, cables, lead bricks, concrete and soil, and that was about the sum total of our knowledge of those pits.

Gregg Borschmann: Engineer, Alan Parkinson. That’s the sound of leading-edge waste clean-up technology. It’s called in situ vitrification, or ISV, and it’s cost Australia more than $30-million. In 1996, the scientists, government and the dispossessed Maralinga Aboriginal community agreed it was the best, final solution for the Taranaki pits. But last year, it was dumped in favour of simply burying the remaining plutonium in yet another big hole in the ground. This switch troubled some of the government’s own experts. The project was guided by a scientific committee called MARTAC, the Maralinga Rehabilitation Technical Advisory Committee. Background Briefing has a copy of leaked official notes from a MARTAC meeting in August last year. The meeting was with the South Australian Government and the Maralinga Tjarutja. The notes quote a member of the committee, Dr Mike Costello, who is an international authority on plutonium. Here is an edited reading from the official notes of Dr Costello’s comments.

Reader: I don’t believe that shallow burial is 1) Within the spirit of the UK National Radiation Protection Board Code. I accept it is within the letter; or 2) That it’s accepted practice. However I’m out-voted by my colleagues. I have experienced with plutonium at Sellafield in the UK, there are much smaller quantities of plutonium there. The amounts varied, yet whilst minuscule, it had to be enclosed in concrete. I don’t believe this shallow burial is the best that we can do, as it could be encapsulated in concrete.

Gregg Borschmann: Dr Costello would not be interviewed for Background Briefing. In 1954, the British Government asked Australian Prime Minister, Bob Menzies, for a permanent site to test nuclear weapons. The arid lands between the Great Victoria Desert and the Nullarbor Plain in South Australia seemed to be ideal. Isolated in the outback, the Maralinga Range became home to a secret city of more than 2,000 people. As well as it’s bomb factories and test sites, it boasted its own Post Office, Bank, tennis courts, swimming pool, cinema, international airport, two churches, sewer system and a gymnasium.

Voice-over: The mighty power of the atom is unleashed. The Maralinga blast is caused by a low yield bomb. This scientifically, is a small explosion.

Gregg Borschmann: The British detonated seven A-bombs at Maralinga in the late 1950s and then over the next six years, conducted several hundred smaller, sometimes clandestine experiments, using plutonium, uranium and other radioactive materials. Ironically, it was mainly these so-called minor trials, and not the A-bombs, which left the legacy of plutonium contamination at Maralinga. The Maralinga Tjarutja Aboriginal people were prevented from entering their lands once the tests started in the 1950s. Barrister Andrew Collett has been working to help get that country restored and returned to the Tjarutja since the 1985 Royal Commission into British Nuclear Tests in Australia. Andrew Collett.

Andrew Collett: You have to bear in mind and keep firmly in mind, that what the community has is the legacy of probably the most environmentally irresponsible act ever committed in Australia, when British scientists exploded plutonium and got it up in the air just for the sake of seeing where it went. It went all over Aboriginal land, and the government is now trying to stabilise and clean that up. But the clean-up, which is coming to a close now, is at least the fourth clean-up since 1962. The community would be mad to assume that this clean-up got all of that plutonium and took away all of the risk. We’re dealing with contamination irresponsibly put there by a foreign power who then has not told the Australian government precisely what was there, or where it was. The community has to assume that there’ll be problems in the future, particularly when plutonium will be a contaminant and a danger for the next quarter-of-a-million years, a time scale that is impossible for us to contemplate, longer ago than an Ice Age.

Gregg Borschmann: As much as the Tjarutja want their land back, uncertainty over the long-term safety of the clean-up remains a stumbling block which will be discussed this week in talks between the Tjarutja and the South Australian Premier, John Olsen. Andrew Collett again.

Andrew Collett: There’s a very, very heavy burden on the community to weigh up how effective this clean-up will be, so the issues include how good is the clean-up, what does that mean in the future, will there be problems in the future, will the proposed burial of plutonium in a deep burial trench last quarter-of-a-million years, what happens if it doesn’t, who’s going to meet the cost if it doesn’t.

Gregg Borschmann: Lawyer for the Tjarutja, Andrew Collett. Early last month, there was a carefully controlled set-piece of modern day media management at Maralinga that was meant to set the stage for the eventual hand-back of the Maralinga lands to the Tjarutja. The specially invited TV networks and a handful of newspaper and radio reporters flew to the site to witness the Minister for Industry, Science and Resources, Senator Nick Minchin, declare that the clean-up had been successful, coming in on time and within budget.

Nick Minchin: We can shut the book on it, but in a way that is very positive for the future in the way that we have worked together with the Aboriginal people to clean up this area and rehabilitate it, not just to say sorry, but you know, sorry it happened but we’ll walk away. We’ve actually as a people, and this is Labor and Liberal together, have worked with the Aboriginal people to rehabilitate this area.

Gregg Borschmann: Part of the theatre on that day was the handing over, to the Minister, of a letter from ARPANSA. That’s the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency, Australia’s independent nuclear regulator. The letter, signed by the Head of ARPANSA, Dr John Loy, refers in part to a radioactive waste safety code published in 1992. Here is an edited reading of the key paragraph.

Reader: ARPANSA certifies that the burial trenches at Taranaki have been constructed consistent with the National Code of Practice for the near surface disposal of radioactive waste.

Gregg Borschmann: But that code was never intended to be used for large amounts of long lived radioactive waste like that found at Maralinga. Background Briefing has spoken to all of the scientists who wrote the Code. One refused to comment, and another didn’t return our calls. But the remaining three all confirmed that the Code was for low level, short lived wastes only. One of the scientists who wrote it is from Canada’s Radiation Protection Bureau. Here he is on the phone from Ottowa. Bliss Tracy.

Bliss Tracy: The understanding that I had of the task at that time was that we were to look at various industrial ways, perhaps incidental wastes, that might be generated by hospitals or research laboratories, that kind of problem, that was what we had to deal with.

Gregg Borschmann: So it was never your understanding that that 1992 Code of Practice would apply in Maralinga-type situations?

Bliss Tracy: No. Our discussions at that time, we never mentioned Maralinga as part of this, and since I have worked on both problems I think I would have been aware of that if they had intended to apply it to Maralinga. It never came up for the discussion when I attended the meetings, anyway.

Gregg Borschmann: Does it surprise you to hear now that the Australian Government is using this code as its benchmark for the disposal of plutonium at Maralinga in a burial pit?

Bliss Tracy: Yes, it’s surprising, although probably not appropriate for me as a Canadian to comment on policies of another government.

Gregg Borschmann: Scientist, Bliss Tracy in Ottowa. This week, the Chair of the committee that drafted the Code, Neville Hargreave, confirmed that it was written for low level industrial and medical wastes. It was not meant for the radioactive waste that would come from nuclear power or weapons testing programs such as at Maralinga. This was confirmed again for Background Briefing by another scientist who helped write the code, Dr Loel Munslow-Davies, from Western Australia. Despite this overwhelmingly important question about the validity of the Code in these circumstances, the Department in charge of Maralinga was still using it last week to claim the clean-up had been a success. Jeff Harris:

Jeff Harris: Some of the key guidelines that we followed, included the International Atomic Energy Agency’s guidelines for disposal and rehabilitation of contaminated sites, and we’ve also followed our own National Code of Conduct for burial of radioactive materials. So indeed the procedures that have been followed here have been perfectly safe and have been well suited to the site.

Gregg Borschmann: Jeff Harris, a senior officer of the Department of Industry, Science and Resources. Senator Minchin has also used the Code repeatedly recently to reassure Australians about the quality of the clean-up. And yet according to leaked minutes of a meeting of the Maralinga scientific advisers last year, the Minister has already been given an out. The official minutes record a senior officer from the nuclear regulator ARPANSA saying it was not necessary to meet the letter of the Code, since what was being done at Maralinga was an ‘intervention’. The minutes do not explain what this means. The ARPANSA officer involved did not return our calls this week.

Gregg Borschmann: A lot of plutonium-contaminated soil was buried at Maralinga. Almost 400,000 tonnes of it. It was buried in three massive holes. The largest at Taranaki was bigger than four football fields, and as deep as a five-storey building. It’s widely acknowledged that a good job was done with this first soil removal phase of the Maralinga clean-up. It won two National Case Earth Awards for environmental best practice. As the soil removal operations wound down in late 1997, it was time to move to the final and most difficult part of the project: cleaning up the 21 highly contaminated pits at Taranaki. That was the job for ISV, signed off on by the experts as the best, final solution.

Gregg Borschmann: So just what is this ISV, or in situ vitrification? Developed in America over the past decade, it is designed to safely immobilise all manner of nasty wastes, from toxic chemicals to long-lived plutonium. While the process is complex, the concept is simple. After five years of research and testing in Australia specifically for the conditions at Maralinga, four large electrodes were inserted into each pit at Taranaki. The electric current then effectively ‘cooked’ the contaminated debris soil at temperatures over 1500 degrees. This molten mass, looking not unlike the lava from a volcano, cooled and solidified into a large glass-like or vitreous block. It was designed to permanently encase the plutonium. But after only five months on site, things didn’t seem to be going well. There was dispute about just what ISV was meant to be doing. Background Briefing has a copy of a leaked email written in October, 1998 by the head of the company contracted to do the ISV work. His name is Leo Thompson, from Geosafe Australia. He refused to be interviewed for this program but he did give us a written statement in which he stood behind the safety and effectiveness of ISV technology. The leaked email we had received earlier, shows that in late 1998, he was under intense pressure to prove it on site. Here is a reading from that email.

Reader: The shit has really hit the fan in the past couple of weeks. GHD have been critical of everything they can to cast doubt on Geosafe and ISV. They’re saying the process is not living up to expectations and Geosafe is unable to manage the project. I must be losing my mind, because a lot of people, including MARTAC members, are remembering things I don’t recall.

Gregg Borschmann: The email goes on to refer to trouble over whether or not his contract stipulated any requirement to melt all the steel buried in the pit. Some members of the scientific committee MARTAC were worried about a piece of unmelted steel which had been found inside an ISV block. Again, a reading from Leo Thompson’s same October email.

Reader: It really should not be a big deal. From a risk standpoint, the fact that unmelted plates are embedded in the central core of the block, should be considered an acceptable solution in my view. Seems like GHD and others are moving the goalposts so they can discredit me personally, Geosafe as a company, and the ISV process in general.

Gregg Borschmann: Five months later, a large explosion occurred at Taranaki in Pit 17, as it was being melted. To this day, there is no officially agreed explanation for what happened. But Background Briefing has uncovered startling new evidence. That evidence comes first hand from Avon Hudson, a former leading aircraftsman in the Royal Australian Air Force, who worked at Taranaki during the Vixen B nuclear trials. In late 1960, he saw a box of explosives which were dumped by a British Royal Army soldier into a pit at Taranaki. Several months later, he came across an equally dubious and dangerous burial: a 3,000 lb pressurised hydrogen gas cylinder.

Avon Hudson: This was a separate hole to where I seen the box of explosives put; it wasn’t too far away, it might have been less than 100 metres, it might have been about that distance. There was a hole there, probably 10 to 12 foot deep, a round hole, and it would have been probably maybe 10 or 12 feet in diameter, something of that order. And there was a cylinder dumped there, it was a hydrogen cylinder, a red hydrogen cylinder about 7-feet long. That was thrown there by the hole, with other debris. It wasn’t the debris from these actual explosions, these Vixen explosions, and when I went back there some time later, that cylinder was partly in the hole, it had been put into the hole but it was still not completely down, it was sticking out. So I assumed that that was buried there.

Gregg Borschmann: Nuclear veteran Avon Hudson. Last year, in the months after the explosion, he tried to go public with this key information and his concerns about the Taranaki pits. He range the media and a host of politicians, including Senator Minchin. He says the Minister’s office never phoned him back.

Avon Hudson: The way Maralinga operated, if you could picture back in that era, not too many people cared about very much at all, and if they had to get rid of anything, well it just was chucked into a pit. They didn’t distinguish between a nuclear debris and say a barrel or a cylinder or any other debris, it all was chucked in together. They didn’t really separate those into categories, because nobody really give two hoots. They had one interest, and that was getting out of Maralinga; most people hated the joint.

Gregg Borschmann: When the explosion occurred on site in March last year, you were obviously very concerned about the possibility of future explosions. Why were you so concerned about say, something like a hydrogen cylinder?

Avon Hudson: Well when I heard about the explosion, I was concerned that if they were to strike this cylinder by the melting process, the vitrification, and it exploded, somebody would possibly be killed. That was my immediate concern. And I tried to draw this to the attention of relevant people I thought; I thought they were relevant, but I’m not so sure now. But I couldn’t get anywhere.

Gregg Borschmann: It was a time of crisis for the project, when everyone was looking for the most credible reason for the explosion. Avon Hudson, and his potentially critical evidence, was ignored. The precise contents of the pits at Taranaki had long been a mystery and the subject of considerable debate. Last year, following the explosion, the Australian Government wrote to Britain seeking clarification yet again of what was in the 21 pits. The British doubted there would be anything explosive in them, but they weren’t prepared to give Australia any guarantees. Another key piece of evidence also went missing last year. A drum was dug up by contractors excavating one of the other pits at Taranaki. Remarkably, instead of being set aside for examination, it was simply re-buried. Alan Parkinson and the Tjarutja knew about the incident, but other people who should have, didn’t, at a meeting in May last year.

Alan Parkinson: The cause of the explosion had not yet been identified. We thought it could have been a closed acetylene bottle, a closed drum of bitumen, or some other closed vessel. So that was why we asked had a drum been uncovered; we knew that one had during exhumation of another pit. When the question was put forward, it was immediately denied, No, there’s not been any drum recovered, so the question was put again. And it was only after putting it a second time that it was acknowledged that a drum had been uncovered, and we said, Well, what happened to it? Oh, we buried it again. What disturbed me about that was the Department and members of MARTAC who were at the meeting, didn’t know that a drum had been uncovered, neither did ARPANSA.

Gregg Borschmann: Engineer, Alan Parkinson. After the explosion in Pit 17, the game changed. Work and planning on the site was thrown into chaos, combining with pressure to keep the project rolling to this year’s deadline. But despite the gravity of the situation on such a high profile Commonwealth job on Commonwealth land, Jeff Harris from the Department of Industry, Science and Resources, says there was no need for any formal government inquiry.

Jeff Harris: The ISV contractor undertook an investigation and we received their final report in October. You might recall that the explosion took place in March, so that took a considerable length of time. The ISV contractor had a view of what the cause of the explosion was. We then commissioned an independent review of that by experts based in Britain and Australia, and they reviewed that, they didn’t comer to the same conclusion, and indeed it left the cause of the accident up in the air. Once that had occurred of course, we were then in a very critical point of having to decide whether to proceed with the technology after the explosion when the cause was not known, and what risks would that entail for worker safety. We elected to go for worker safety and also for burial option that we knew worked, that the levels of contamination were much less than we’d anticipated, and that we had very good experience in a number of sites at Maralinga, including Taranaki.

Gregg Borschmann: The Geosafe report that Jeff Harris speaks about said that the most likely cause of the explosion was due to the detonation of buried explosive materials. This is a conclusion that would be strongly supported by nuclear veteran Avon Hudson’s first hand account. So why was Mr Hudson ignored and the Geosafe report dismissed? Could it be that the explosion provided the final excuse to dump ISV, that there were other concerns not related to its technical performance? Background Briefing has confirmed that there was constant pressure over the last two years of the project to modify or abandon the ISV process, as the job of melting the Taranaki pits became bigger and more complicated than originally anticipated. But why dump leading-edge technology when already more than $30-million had been spent on it? It’s the Big Question for which no convincing answer has been provided. Jeff Harris from the Department says the decision was based on safety considerations, not price.

Jeff Harris: Price didn’t come into the calculations at all. What came into the calculations was the safety to our workers on site. The explosion that occurred on 21 March caused very substantial damage to the ISV equipment and risked fatalities. In the end, there were no injuries and there was no radiation uptake by any workers, but that was cause for us to do a thorough risk assessment of whether we should proceed with that procedure or whether we should review the experience that we had in burying the material under a cover of 5 metres of soil at depths of up to 10-15 metres. At the end of the day that was the process that we chose, and I think it was a very good decision.

Gregg Borschmann: The concern about worker safety is understandable, but the timing is curious. If you remember, Jeff Harris told Background Briefing that the Geosafe report on the explosion was delivered to the Department in October last year. But the decision to abandon ISV was announced by the Commonwealth three months earlier to the South Australian Government and the Maralinga Tjarutja. So why dump the process before you’ve even got your report? The Maralinga Tjarutja Aboriginal people were so concerned about losing ISV that they wrote back to Senator Minchin disassociating themselves from the decision. They also asked for Mr Harris to be removed as Chair of the consultative group meetings.

Gregg Borschmann: There was always going to be intense scientific scrutiny of ISV at Maralinga. This was its largest commercial application treating a plutonium contaminated site in the world, and everyone wanted to get it right. Minister Minchin acknowledged this point last month on the Radio National Breakfast program.

Nick Minchin: At all times we were operating under the strict guidance and on the basis of the advice of an expert technical advisory group, and the Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency, we didn’t make a move without that expert advice and the subsequent approval of the independent agency that regulates this matter, so at no stage have we done anything other than according to the best scientific advice.

Gregg Borschmann: But what is the best scientific advice? The scientists were not in agreement. For example, the ISV process had some strong supporters on the MARTAC advisory committee. One committee member says in a leaked email that ISV had not been given ‘a fair go’. Background Briefing has evidence that personal and political, as well as scientific judgements, were being made. For example, in late 1998, the Chair of MARTAC, Des Davy, sent out a rather strange email to his fellow committee members. He more or less said he had asked Jeff Harris if the Department wanted a negative finding about ISV. Here is a reading of part of that email from Des Davy.

Reader: I asked Jeff Harris on Monday would he welcome advice to terminate Geosafe’s contract, and go for excavation trench disposal at some nominal depth, say 10 metres of cover.

Gregg Borschmann: The spokesman for the department, Jeff Harris, says the Department got the best possible advice and that disagreement among experts is not unusual.

Jeff Harris: They are a group of scientists and at times I’ve likened it to herding cats when you see them out on site, they want to go off and investigate where a particular bit of wire leads, or what a particular trench might contain. But they’re an excellent group that have worked together, they have differences of views, and generally speaking, they come to common decisions, which of course is what we need. It’s no good if you have a committee that it has 20 different opinions. They can have those different opinions, but they need to come together and say, Well what’s the best advice we can provide to the Minister and the Department on each of these technical issues as they arise.

Gregg Borschmann: It’s significant that the Government’s independent nuclear umpire, ARPANSA, was also feeling uncomfortable with the way things were panning out at Maralinga. Geoff Williams, a senior officer at ARPANSA, was responsible for ensuring that the site was cleaned to agreed standards. He became upset when he unofficially received a copy of an audit of the occupational health and safety at the site. He felt the Department of Industry, Science and Resources, ISR, or the project managers, should have let him know about the report and provided him with an official copy earlier. Here is a reading of an email he sent in August last year.

Reader: To date, no-one from ISR or GHD has thought fit to provide us with a copy of the audit report, even though it mentions, and has implications, for ARPANSA operations and independence. As the regulator, this is unacceptable to us, to my way of thinking at least. Also I am very concerned, putting it mildly, at the host of indiscretions, short-cuts and cover-ups that have been whispered to me but which have never been officially advised. Nor have the inquiries been fruitful when I’ve asked direct questions.

Gregg Borschmann: A reading from an email sent by Geoff Williams, from nuclear regulator, ARPANSA. This personal comment, while never officially recorded, does not paint a pretty picture of relations between Australia’s independent nuclear umpire and the company that was by then managing the entire project, GHD. So if ARPANSA wasn’t always happy with this relationship, what about the department; how did it get on with GHD? The answer to this question may help explain both the way in which Alan Parkinson was sacked and why ISV was dumped. The appointment of GHD as project managers for the final ISV phase of the project was consummated on Christmas Eve, 1997. It had been a whirlwind, and often clandestine courtship. From the Department, Jeff Harris says it was a simple affair.

Jeff Harris: The tender for project management was won by GHD prior to the commencement of this project. The contract was extended; it was not a case of a new contract, their contract was simply extended to cover another element of the project, and it’s been a very successful outcome.

Gregg Borschmann: The tender for project management that Jeff Harris refers to, was not won by GHD. It had been awarded to a Commonwealth Government owned company in 1994. GHD didn’t make the shortlist of six, and were not invited to tender. But GHD became involved in the Maralinga project by buying this Commonwealth company when it was privatised in mid-1997. At that stage, GHD had no involvement with, or authority over the ISV process. So how did this crucial change come about?

Gregg Borschmann: There is no doubt that the high tech ISV melting process was a big job, with high stakes and potential risks. Jeff Harris says this is precisely why the Commonwealth needed a strong, reputable project manager like GHD to look after the job. But this doesn’t explain how GHD came to get the job without even having to tender for it. The three-page agreement that was signed between GHD and the Department on 24th December, 1997, describes the new arrangement to take over that project management of ISV as a ‘contract variation.’ This was a convenient piece of housekeeping for both the Department and GHD, sidestepping the Department’s tendering and purchase guidelines. These guidelines require any new contract over $100,000 to be subject to scrutiny and approval by a three-person assessment panel. This assessment never occurred, because the deal was a described as a ‘variation’ rather than a new contract. GHD would not speak to Background Briefing. All matters were referred back to the Department. Jeff Harris again.

Jeff Harris: When we commenced the ISV operations on site, we reviewed our project management arrangements, and we determined that it would make sense and be very sound management for us to extend the project management arrangements for Gutteridge, Haskins & Davey to include the ISV process.

Gregg Borschmann: On the 21st November, 1997, the company responded to an invitation by the Department to put a proposal for management of the ISV contract. Background Briefing has a copy of this letter. In it, GHD estimated their additional services would cost in ‘the order of a quarter-of-a-million-dollars.’ Background Briefing also has copies of GHD monthly reports to the Department. These provide details of project expenditure. Not all of the money that GHD has earned since is related to ISV. But the monthly reports indicate that over the past two years or so, the company has been paid, in staff costs alone, more than $2.5-million. This is ten times the cost of the original estimate. I put these figures to Jeff Harris.

Jeff Harris: We have a fee structure with GHD, and within the overall budget, we’ve maintained those fees; we’ve got very good value for money for the public, for the taxpayer in terms of this is an excellent outcome in terms of the clean-up criteria that have been met, the safety of the site for handover back to the Maralinga Tjarutja, the consultations that we’ve had with the traditional owners and with other stakeholders, and overall this project has worked out very well indeed, and it’s been extremely good value for money for the taxpayer.

Gregg Borschmann: Background Briefing has documents which show that some people connected with the project disagreed, and thought there wasn’t enough supervision of GHD by the Department. Alan Parkinson is one of them. He has important background detail on the origins of the ISV deal between GHD and the Department. Between 7th November and the 2nd December, 1997, there were three secret meetings between GHD and the Department. Background Briefing has a copy of the official ‘talking points’ for two of these meetings which confirm that the main topic of discussion was the project management of the ISV contract with Geosafe. Neither Geosafe nor Alan Parkinson, as the Department’s representative with GHD and Geosafe, were told about or invited to these meetings. Alan Parkinson.

Alan Parkinson: I found it astonishing that since I was the Department’s representative on both contracts, I should have been excluded from a meeting which was to discuss the future of both of those contracts. I found that quite astonishing. The people from the Department who attended the meeting had no project experience, little knowledge of the project, none at all of ISV. They had no experience in conducting these negotiations and no experience dealing with contractors. I found out about the meeting quite by accident, and I did ask why was I excluded, and the response was, You’re only an adviser, we don’t need to seek your advice if we don’t wish to.

Gregg Borschmann: If Alan Parkinson was astonished, Leo Thompson from Geosafe was equally amazed and upset when he was officially informed of the proposal on 19th November. This was the day the Department’s letter of invitation went to GHD. Thompson faxed a reply to the Department the next day. Here is a reading from that letter.

Reader: It is very surprising and disturbing that you would consider taking such action without first consulting with me. If you have concerns about how the ISV project is progressing, or being managed, I expect you to bring these concerns to my attention so that I can work to resolve them. Your proposal raises for Geosafe some very serious legal and commercial issues.

Gregg Borschmann: Why didn’t the Department discuss such a major change to arrangements with Geosafe before inviting GHD, and only GHD, to submit the proposal to project manage the ISV contract? From the time of that crucial meeting on 7th November, between GHD and the Department, it was clear that the deal was heading for conclusion. This was 12 days before GHD were officially invited to submit their proposal. This is confirmed by a hand-written note penned by a senior departmental officer on the official ‘talking points’ for that meeting. The officer notes, ‘I am inclined to support GHD assuming project management of the Geosafe contract.’ Out at Maralinga a few weeks later, in November, 1997, Alan Parkinson was left in no doubt which way things were going to go. There had been another discreet meeting between the Department of Primary Industry and Energy, or DPIE as it was then known, and GHD. Here is a reading from an email written by Alan Parkinson to the MARTAC advisory committee to explain his version of events.

Reader: A few days later, on the 26th November, there was another secret meeting held at site between DPIE and GHD, attended by Messrs Rawson and Perkins from DPIE, and Rosenbauer, Chamberlain and Ryan from GHD. Again I was excluded, even though I was on site and available to attend. As I drove Messrs Rawson, Perkins and Rosenbauer to the airport next morning, 27th November, I asked how the meeting went. There was a very strained silence. But when we were standing in the airport apron, (CENSORED) came over to me, stood very close and in a threatening voice said, ‘It will come about’, meaning that GHD would take over.

Gregg Borschmann: Perhaps none of this would matter if the Maralinga clean[up was not ending under such a cloud. How good was the clean-up? How safe is Maralinga now? There are many insiders who say we will never know because of the way the job was finished. These are questions which weigh heavily on the Maralinga Tjarutja people. Barrister, Andrew Collett.

Andrew Collett: The community want the land back, but not to the extent of compromising their safety in the future. Obviously the community will be negotiating with the Commonwealth the basis of the hand-back of the land, and the community no doubt will want to be satisfied that any future problems will be remediated, not at a cost to Aboriginal people, before they are likely to take the land back.

Gregg Borschmann: As much as they want their land back, they must now make a tough choice about whether or not to accept it with all the uncertainties. It remains to be seen whether the Commonwealth and South Australian Governments will be prepared to give them the guarantees they will seek. Administrator for the Maralinga Tjarutja, Dr Archie Barton, the community itself and especially its elders, want to make sure that future generations don’t suffer the way the old people did.

Archie Barton: And I think they want to be pretty sure of getting the land back and they depend on good instruction from their advisers and that puts us in a very difficult decision because we have to be pretty sure of ourselves of accepting something and pass it on to those people. So we’re becoming the meat in the sandwich as advisers.

Gregg Borschmann: Making the choice very more difficult for the Tjarutja, just before we went to air, we hard about another significant and unexpected find of plutonium at Maralinga. There’s been no official announcement, but it begs the question, how many more hot spots are there? Background Briefing has evidence of several incidents that have been hushed up. We confirmed that in early 1998, a man who had worked on the project flew to Melbourne from Adelaide wearing a plutonium contaminated shirt. This was only discovered accidentally when the man was given his final routine lung monitor test in Melbourne. The authorities at the time admitted the event was of concern because control of safety procedures at Maralinga was, in their phrase, ‘lost’. But was the airline which flew the man to Melbourne notified? Were radiation control procedures at Maralinga revised or changed? No. One of the people we spoke to for this program said that is such an incident had occurred in America, there would have been a major investigation. That didn’t happen at Maralinga. After working on the project off and on for more than a decade, nuclear engineer Alan Parkinson says there’s key elements of the clean-up story which are yet to be unravelled, and important lessons to be learned for the future.

Alan Parkinson: It’s not up to me to say should there be any inquiry. It is funny that the people in the Senate seem to press for inquiries into all sorts of things, but something such as this, a nuclear waste repository in what is nothing more than a hole in the ground, certainly should have some assessment by politicians. When you consider that people who are in charge of this project are the same people who are responsible for a national nuclear waste repository, which will be used to dispose of far less hazardous waste than this, that they’re the people who could easily just say, ‘Well, just put a hole in the ground, throw it in’. That’s what we’ve done with the plutonium at Maralinga. And if the politicians have accepted that without any demurring, then why should we bother?

Gregg Borschmann: He remembers a comment in the early days of the project from one of the tenderers.

Alan Parkinson: One company, they had an American in their team, and he just said out of the blue, Of course, this won’t be the final clean-up at Maralinga. Now I agree with him, I don’t think it will be. I went out to Nevada test site in 1995, and the person who replaced me on MARTAC, Terry Vaith, was then the head of the test site, and on my return to Australia, he sent me an aerial photograph of the Nevada test site, and at the bottom was a little caption which said Old Test Sites Never Die.

Gregg Borschmann: Coordinating Producer, Linda McGinness; Research, Julie Browning; Technical operator, Anne Marie de Bettencor; Additional reporting, research and Japanese green tea, provided by Chris Bullock. Background Briefing’s Executive Producer is Kirsten Garrett. I’m Gregg Borschmann.

Further information:

Senator Nick Minchin, Federal Minister for Industry, Science and Resources (Australia) responds to this Background Briefing program
http://www.isr.gov.au/media/2000/april/cmr153%2D00.doc

Background on the Maralinga clean-up courtesy of the Department of Industry, Science and Resources (Australia)
http://www.isr.gov.au/media/2000/march/maralinga%5Fquestions.doc

Details of the Maralinga cleanup thus far from the Department of Industry, Science and Resources (Australia)
http://www.isr.gov.au/media/2000/march/maralinga%5Fbooklet.doc

Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency (ARPANSA)
http://www.arpansa.gov.au/

Relevant information and web links courtesy of the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency (ARPANSA)
http://www.arpansa.gov.au/sites.htm

Commonwealth Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry (Australia)
http://www.dpie.gov.au

Australian Conservation Foundation
http://www.acfonline.org.au

Gutteridge Haskins & Davey Pty Ltd (GHD) (the company contracted to design and manage site rehabilitation at Maralinga)
http://www.ghd.com.au

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Exchange of letters in the Australian Financial Review

Australian Financial Review, letters, 16/8/02
I almost choked on my cereal hearing Federal Science Minister Peter McGauran describe the ‘clean-up’ of the Maralinga nuclear test site as ‘world’s best practice’ on ABC radio recently.
Thanks to nuclear engineer and Maralinga whistle-blower Alan Parkinson, we have a wealth of internal project information which clearly contradicts the minister’s claim. For example, a senior official in the regulatory agency, the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency, complained about ‘a host of indiscretions, short-cuts and cover-ups’ at the Maralinga clean-up site.
Likewise, project documents clearly and unequivocally demonstrate that vitrification of plutonium-contaminated debris was abandoned in favour of shallow burial as a cost-cutting measure. Vitrification was described as world’s best practice, then when that was abandoned as a cost-cutting measure, shallow burial was described as world’s best practice. Both cannot be true.
Sadly, this sort of Orwellian double-speak is also in evidence in relation to the federal government’s plan for a national nuclear dump at Woomera, South Australia.
Jim Green
Sydney, NSW

Australian Financial Review, letters, 19/8/02
Maralinga Clean-up Meets All Standards
The Maralinga project is one we can be proud of. This is the first time that a clean-up of a former test site on this scale has been completed anywhere in the world (“Double-speak on Maralinga clean-up”, AFR Letters, August 16). The program of remediation was developed and monitored by leading technical specialists and was consistent with guidelines produced by the International Atomic Energy Agency on the rehabilitation of contaminated sites. The clean-up of the main test sites at Maralinga was successfully completed in 2000 and the independent regulator, the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency, has confirmed that the clean-up met the standards agreed to by the Commonwealth, South Australia and the traditional owners (Maralinga Tjarutja) at the start of the project.
Claims that the Government cut corners at Maralinga and abandoned the in situ vitrification process because of cost concerns are completely wrong. More than $108million was spent on site remediation and the Government at all times acted on expert scientific advice, achieving a world’s best-practice result.
The Government is adopting a similarly responsible approach to the establishment of a national repository for Australia’s low-level waste. The national repository represents the best long-term solution to the management of this material.
Peter McGauran, Federal Minister for Science
Canberra, ACT.

Australian Financial Review, letters, 20/8/02
Maralinga claims a fiction
The Minister for Science, Peter McGauran, continues the fiction that the treatment of plutonium-contaminated debris at Maralinga was not a cost cutting exercise. (“Maralinga clean-up meets all standards”, AFR Letters, August 9).
As the Commonwealth’s Representative from 1993 until January 1998, I oversaw the whole project. When the contaminated soil was removed in 1997 from around 21 pits, we found huge quantities of plutonium-contaminated debris only a few centimetres beneath the surface. There was some three times more debris than Britain had reported, so it would cost more to treat the pits by in situ vitrification (ISV). Towards the end of 1997, the department started to seek ways to reduce this cost.
At this time I was removed from the project for voicing my opposition to the way that the department proposed to manage the final phase. On my removal from the project I became an adviser to the Maralinga Tjarutja until I collaborated in the ABC Radio program Background Briefing in April 2000 exposing the shortcomings of the project.
Long before the ISV treatment started at site in May 1998, the department had asked their recently appointed project manager, GHD, a company which had no knowledge at all of the ISV process or equipment, to look at various options, which all included some simple burial of the debris. The project documents of the time show a distinct relationship between the options and cost. For example, one document states: “The recent consideration of alternative treatments for ISV for these outer pits has arisen as a result of the revised estimate for ISV being considerably above the project budget.” And this is not an isolated statement.
The Minister also echoes the so-called independent chief nuclear regulator with the ridiculous claim that the shallow burial of this plutonium-contaminated debris is “world’s best practice.” A discussion paper issued by McGauran’s own department says that such long-lived waste is not suitable for near-surface disposal, but that is exactly what has been done.
Alan Parkinson
Weetangera ACT

Australian Financial Review, letters, 20/8/02
Time for government to come clean on Maralinga
Science minister Peter McGauran makes some odd claims about the Maralinga ‘clean-up’ (AFR letters, August 19). He says the government relied on the advice of the Maralinga Rehabilitation Technical Advisory Committee (MARTAC) – but that committee unanimously recommended vitrification of plutonium-contaminated debris, not shallow burial.
Worse still, the shallow burial took place in unlined trenches in totally unsuitable geology. MARTAC member Dr. Mike Costello said at a MARTAC meeting in August 1999: “I have experience with plutonium at Sellafield in the UK, there are much smaller quantities of plutonium there. The amounts varied, yet whilst minuscule, it had to be enclosed in concrete.”
The minister denies that vitrification was abandoned as a cost-cutting measure, but a written statement from MARTAC openly acknowledged that alternative treatments were considered because the debris pits were larger than expected and the cost of vitrification would therefore increase.
Shallow burial was not a superior option, or even an acceptable one, but it was cheaper.
As nuclear engineer Alan Parkinson said recently on ABC radio, “What was done at Maralinga was a cheap and nasty solution that wouldn’t be adopted on white-fellas land.”
The minister should stop revising history and organise another clean-up of Maralinga instead. His dissembling is an insult to all South Australians.
Jim Green
Sydney NSW

Australian Financial Review, letters, 21/8/02
Nuclear reaction
No doubt nuclear engineer Alan Parkinson’s critique of the ‘independent’ regulator’s role in the Maralinga debacle will draw a response from the ‘independent’ regulator himself, namely the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency’s John Loy (Marlainga claims a fiction, AFR Letters, August 20).
It is a matter of public record that Helen Garnett, head of the Lucas Heights nuclear agency, the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO), sat on the panel which interviewed applicants for the top job at ARPANSA. Moreover, six ex-ANSTO staff now work for the ‘independent’ regulator.
ARPANSA is also too close to government. For example, Loy said a new reactor would not be approved until “progress” was made on establishing a store for intermediate-level waste. The government’s one and only plan for this waste – co-location with a planned waste dump at Woomera – was abandoned in the face of public opposition, but Loy still approved a new reactor.
Bruce Thompson
Fitzroy Vic

Australian Financial Review, letters, 22/8/02
Maralinga clean-up exceeded the standards required
Nuclear engineer Alan Parkinson was the Commonwealth’s representative on the Maralinga project until January 1998 and has limited knowledge of the later stages of the project (“Maralinga claims a fiction”, AFR Letters, August 20).
His insistence that he oversaw the whole project and was thus privy to current views and opinions of the expert advisory committee is inaccurate.
It is outrageous to suggest that the in-situ vitrification (ISV) was dropped due to cost considerations, as Parkinson repeatedly insists. More than $108 million was spent on the remediation work and the technique was abandoned because of safety concerns.
The Government considered every option to ensure the safety of the Australian public and followed the advice of scientific experts who, unlike Parkinson, were monitoring the progress of the rehabilitation work and were involved with the project from start to finish.
The independent authority, ARPANSA, has confirmed that the clean-up met the standards agreed to at the start of the project by the Commonwealth, South Australia and the traditional owners.
Moreover, in 2000 they further advised the Government that the amount of plutonium buried at Maralinga was less than what was allowed for by the National Health and Medical Research Council’s “code of practice for the near-surface disposal of radioactive waste in Australia (1992)”.
The facts are that not only has the Government achieved all the objectives of the remediation work but that the end result exceeded the standards required.”
Peter McGauran, Federal Minister for Science
Canberra, ACT.

Australian Financial Review, letters, 23/8/02
Personal attacks unfair, Mr McGauran.
Science minister Peter McGauran resorts to ad hominem attacks regarding the clean-up of the Maralinga nuclear test site (“Maralinga clean-up exceeded the standards required”, AFR Letters, August 22). He falsely accuses nuclear engineer Alan Parkinson of misrepresenting his involvement in the project, but Parkinson accurately stated in his August 20 letter that: “As the Commonwealth’s Representative from 1993 until January 1998, I oversaw the whole project.”
A retraction and apology from the minister is in order.
The minister says it is “outrageous” to suggest that vitrification of plutonium-contaminated debris was abandoned in favour of shallow burial due to cost considerations. But project documentation repeatedly states otherwise, and both Parkinson and myself cited specific examples from the documentation in letters published in the Financial Review on August 20.
The minister’s claim that vitrification was abandoned because of safety concerns is a furphy – demonstrably so. See for example Parkinson’s article in the February edition of the journal Medicine and Global Survival.
The minister says the government followed expert advice. But who was following and who leading? ABC radio’s Background Briefing exposé (16/4/00) revealed that the head of the Maralinga Rehabilitation Technical Advisory Committee e-mailed a senior government official in late 1998 asking if the latter would “welcome” advice to abandon vitrification in favour of shallow burial. That is inconsistent with the role usually ascribed to independent expert committees – namely issuing advice on scientific criteria.
The minister refers to the 1992 NH&MRC Code of Practice, but this Code was of no relevance to Maralinga as its authors have indicated. Indeed McGauran’s predecessor Nick Minchin said in a 17/4/00 media release that: “The Government has always made clear that the Code of Practice for the near-surface disposal of radioactive waste in Australia (1992) does not formally apply to this clean up.”
Jim Green
Sydney NSW

Australian Financial Review, letters, 26/8/02
The Science Minister, Peter McGauran is again quite wrong in his statements concerning the decisions to abandon in situ vitrification (ISV) of debris pits at Maralinga (Maralinga clean-up exceeded the standards required, AFR 22 August 2002). He asserts that I was not privy to views and opinions concerning the later stages of the project.
I was fully involved in the project until January 1998, and by then the government was seeking ways to minimise the cost of treating the debris pits. From then until April 2000 I was an adviser to the Maralinga Tjarutja and so received all of the information provided to the South Australian government and the traditional owners. When I severed my connection with the project, the decisions first of all to limit the application of the ISV technology and then to abandon it had already been made.
So if I did not have all of the information which led to these awful decisions, then neither did the South Australian government nor the Maralinga Tjarutja.
The latter part of the Minister’s letter is so ridiculous that it beggars belief. When will the government stop referring to the “independent” regulator? When will they stop hiding behind a code that even they admit was not applicable? And when will they stop claiming that the project exceeded the standards, when they know that the regulator granted concessions because some parts of the clean-up did not meet the criteria?
Alan Parkinson
Weetangera ACT

Nuclear regulator ‘too close’ to ANSTO

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2011/07/07/3264086.htm
8 July 2011

A review of Australia’s nuclear industry regulator, ARPANSA, has found an improper relationship with the main agency it monitors.
The Health Department’s audit and fraud control branch has been investigating how ARPANSA handled allegations of safety breaches and bullying at the nation’s only nuclear reactor in Sydney. Whistleblowers had alleged ARPANSA was too close to the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO), which runs the Lucas Heights research facility.
The whistleblowers claimed that safety reports were being compromised.
The Health Department review also questioned ARPANSA’s impartiality.
Greens Senator Scott Ludlam told ABC1′s Lateline the review vindicates the whistleblowers.”The whistleblowers were right and the people who have been raising concerns about practices with these hazardous materials were right to raise their concerns,” he said. “It also tells us the regulator and the regulated were too close.”
The Federal Government is now reviewing ARPANSA’s regulatory powers, with Thursday’s report recommending they be strengthened if necessary.

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Nuclear regulator investigated over safety review

www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2011/03/30/3178186.htm”>http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2011/03/30/3178186.htm
March 30, 2011

Australia’s nuclear industry regulator, ARPANSA, is under review over its handling of safety breaches at the nation’s only nuclear reactor.

Last year, ABC 1′s Lateline revealed allegations of serious safety and operational breaches at the Lucas Height’s reactor in Sydney, which were later backed up by Australia’s workplace regulator, COMCARE. A departmental investigation was launched by Science Minister Kim Carr last month, but now a party to that investigation – ARPANSA – is itself under review.
The Chief Auditor is investigating how ARPANSA handled the original allegations of safety breaches and bullying at the nuclear site.
ARPANSA last year released two conflicting reports on the claims at the Lucas Heights facility.

Read the full story here.

ARPANSA being investigated for “improper relationship” with nuclear agency

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Australian National Audit Office report

Click here to download this critical 2005 Australian National Audit Office report.

Australian National Audit Office, March 2, 2005, “Regulation of Commonwealth Radiation and Nuclear Activities: Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency”, Audit Report No.30 2004–05.

Some quotes from the ANAO report:

The Regulatory Branch’s operational objectives and activities are numerous, vary considerably in scope, are not prioritised, and are insufficiently specific to be clear or assessable.

ARPANSA has a risk management framework. Its risk profile focuses on risks to ARPANSA as an entity. It does not identify risks to key regulatory processes, such as unlicensed activity, or non-compliance by licence holders.

ARPANSA’s Chief Executive Instructions (CEIs) address management of the potential for conflict of interest between the regulatory function and other functions. However, overall management of conflict of interest is not sufficient to meet the requirements of the ARPANS Act and Regulations. … Potential areas of conflict of interest are not explicitly addressed or transparently managed.

ARPANSA has a documented process for recording and actioning complaints. However, the Regulatory Branch does not maintain a complaints register, as required.

The bulk of license assessments—some 75 per cent— were made without the support of robust, documented procedures. Assessments of applications were supported by draft procedures only, which staff were not required to follow.

ARPANSA advised that the effort spent on compliance monitoring is roughly proportional to the level of hazard. However, it does not have an overarching framework to articulate the role, or emphasis, for the various approaches to managing compliance. Nor does it have a strategy for identifying prohibited activity by nonlicensed entities.

ARPANSA does not monitor or assess the extent to which licensees meet reporting requirements. The ANAO found that there had been under-reporting by licence holders. For example, incidents or changes to inventories had sometimes not been reported within the time required, or not reported at all. As well, ARPANSA had not regularly received all annual reports required of licence holders.

ARPANSA has reported only one designated breach to Parliament. This is notwithstanding that there have been a number of instances where ARPANSA has detected non-compliance by licensees. For example, ARPANSA issued a direction to a licence holder to cease use of radiation equipment following a serious injury. The direction was later revoked. The incident was not classified as a breach, notwithstanding that it was acknowledged that safety management had been inadequate.

Overall audit conclusion

The ANAO concluded that improvements are required in the management of ARPANSA’s regulatory function. While initial under-resourcing impacted adversely on regulatory performance, ARPANSA’s systems and procedures are still not sufficiently mature to adequately support the cost-effective delivery of regulatory responsibilities.

In particular, deficiencies in planning, risk management and performance management limit ARPANSA’s ability to align its regulatory operations with risks, and to assess its regulatory effectiveness.

As well, procedures for licensing and monitoring of compliance have not been sufficient, particularly as a licence continues in force until it is cancelled or surrendered. Current arrangements do not adequately support the setting of fees in a user-pays environment, nor ARPANSA’s responsibilities for transparently managing the potential for conflict of interest.

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Nuke agency hit

Luke McIlveen, 4 March 2005, Herald Sun

AUSTRALIA’S nuclear facilities are poorly regulated and could pose a serious risk to public safety, an audit has found.

The Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency is supposed to protect the public from radiation produced by Government facilities — ranging from the Lucas Heights nuclear reactors to X-ray machines.

But the Commonwealth Auditor-General yesterday found the agency was in disarray, failing to keep track of safety breaches and handing out nuclear licences almost at will.

The blistering report surfaced as ARPANSA this week announced a team of international nuclear safety experts had begun reviewing Australia’s application for a licence to operate its new reactor at Lucas Heights.

The report found that on one occasion two workers at an unnamed Government facility were injured after being exposed to radiation.

An almost identical accident occurred at the same place six months earlier, prompting the agency to warn the facility.

Even then, the warning was withdrawn without explanation two days later and no official breach recorded.

Despite several nuclear threats to public safety, the Auditor-General found the agency had reported a problem to Parliament on only one occasion, breaching its own code of conduct.

“This is notwithstanding that there have been a number of instances where ARPANSA has detected non-compliance by licensees,” the report finds.

Agency inspectors often failed to report whether the facilities were in working order. “Some reports did not clearly state whether a licensee was, overall, in compliance with conditions of the licence,” the report says.

While safety measures on the front line were found to be well below standard, the report also found the agency was unable to keep track of nuclear licences.

Government departments are supposed to undergo a gruelling process before being allowed to work with radioactive material. But the report says: “The bulk of licence assessments — some 75 per cent — were made without the support of robust, documented procedures.”

The report also says “deficiencies in planning, risk management and performance management limit ARPANSA’s ability to align its regulatory operations with risks, and to assess its regulatory effectiveness”.

While departments were supposed to pay hefty licence fees, the report found fees were not charged in 60 per cent of cases.

The Auditor-General made 19 recommendations for improvements, which the agency promised to introduce.

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ARPANSA: our independent nuclear regulator … or ANSTO’s puppet?

Written c2002 – a summary of the formation of ARPANSA

The Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency (ARPANSA) was established in 1999 under the provisions of the ARPANS Act.

Ostensibly ARPANSA is meant to regulate Commonwealth nuclear activities. In reality, the establishment of ARPANSA was fast-tracked by the federal Coalition Government in order to facilitate the expansion of the nuclear industry. A partner in the Freehill Hollingdale and Page legal firm told Business Review Weekly (March 15, 1999) that establishing ARPANSA was a ‘critical aspect’ of the Government’s desire to ‘enliven activity and debate in the area of atomic energy and nuclear waste’.

Most importantly, ARPANSA was established to massage through the construction of a new reactor at Lucas Heights, following the scathing comments made by the 1993 Research Reactor Review (McKinnon report) on the nature of the ‘regulation’ of ANSTO.

Reflecting the importance of the debate over a new reactor, and the fear that a genuine independent regulator would stop the project, the Government allowed Helen Garnett, then Executive Director of the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO), to sit on the three-member panel which interviewed applicants for the position of CEO of ARPANSA. Helen Garnett agreed to involve herself in this scandalous process for selecting the ‘independent’ regulator. Interestingly, when asked to justify this cosy arrangement at a public meeting in March, 1999, ANSTO’s then Communications Manager could only say that he thought it was indefensible.

It will come as no surprise that the successful applicant for the position of CEO of ARPANSA, John Loy, has expressed no concern at the circumstances of his appointment. Who will protect the independent regulator’s independence if the independent regulator does not? Worse still, Dr. Loy was appointed even before the ARPANS legislation was enacted.

It is understood that the original ARPANS Bill had ARPANSA headed by a Board, which would have included a representative of the public. However, That model was scrapped in favour of a single person answerable to the Minister and appointed on Helen Garnettπs advice.

ARPANSA’s independence is further undermined by the employment of six former ANSTO staff in ARPANSA’s Regulatory Branch. The Government has ignored a hard-won provision in the ARPANSA Act for a representative of the general public to be appointed to the ARPANSA Council. The position remains vacant. The federal government, without explanation has rejected several candidates. ARPANSA has done little if anything to speed this process.

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Submission to Australian National Audit Office

Jim Green, Friends of the Earth, Australia, April 2004

Introduction

The following acts of Parliament were proclaimed on 5th February 1999 and are now in operation:

* Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Act No. 133, 1998 (the Bill was passed by both Houses of Parliament on 10th December 1998).

* Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety (Licence Charges) Act No. 134, 1998.

* Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety (Consequential Amendments) Act No. 135, 1998.

The Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency (ARPANSA) also operates under the provisions of the ARPANS Regulations 1999.

The object of the ARPANS Act is “to protect the health and safety of people, and to protect the environment, from the harmful effects of radiation”. The Act provides a framework for the regulation of radiation sources and nuclear and other facilities controlled or operated by Commonwealth agencies. The Act is administered and enforced by a statutory office holder – the Chief Executive Officer of ARPANSA – as part of the Commonwealth Department of Health and Aged Care.

In addition to regulating facilities and sources of radiation owned or operated by Australian Commonwealth departments and bodies, ARPANSA is expected to:

* promote uniformity of radiation protection and nuclear safety policy and practices across the Commonwealth, States and Territories;

* provide advice on radiation protection, nuclear safety and related issues;

* undertake research in relation to radiation protection, nuclear safety and medical exposures to radiation; and

* provide services in relation to radiation protection, nuclear safety and medical exposures to radiation.

The ARPANS Act applies to “controlled persons” (generally Commonwealth agencies or contractors) who undertake activities in relation to nuclear installations or prescribed radiation facilities and dealings with controlled material or controlled apparatus. (Non-Commonwealth agencies are regulated by applicable State or Territory radiation protection and environment legislation.)

The ARPANS Act 1998 requires the CEO to take the following matters into account when assessing licence applications:

a) Whether the application includes the information asked for by the CEO.

b) Whether the information establishes that the controlled apparatus, material or the conduct can be dealt with without undue risk to the health and safety of people, and the environment.

c) Whether the Applicant has shown that there is a net benefit from dealing with the controlled apparatus, controlled material or controlled facility.

d) Whether the Applicant has shown that the magnitude of individual doses, the number of people exposed and the likelihood that potential exposures will actually occur is as low as reasonably achievable (ALARA), having regard to economic and social factors;

e) Whether the Applicant has shown a capacity for complying with these Regulations and the licence conditions that would be imposed under Section 35 of the Act. Please refer to the Source Licence Application Pack and the facility Licence Application Pack for more detail regarding how to apply for a licence.

f) Whether the application has been signed by the applicant.

Flaws in the ARPANS Legislation

A number of criticisms of the ARPANS Bill were made in a June 1998 paper by lawyer Tim Robertson (from Frederick Jordan Chambers) prepared for the Sutherland Shire Council, e.g.:

* the Bill did not answer site-specific questions concerning the immunity of the ANSTO site from State environment, health and safety laws.

* the regulatory framework which the Bill established was not accountable, transparent, or fully independent.

* all regulatory functions are vested in the CEO not the Agency.

* the Bill provided wide exemptions for anything done for national security or defence purposes in relation to nuclear material or installations. Amorphous concepts such as reasonable likelihood of prejudice to national security or defence are the basis for refusing to abide by the CEO’s direction or licence:

“… ANSTO can simply refuse to obey any directive of the CEO and any condition of a facility licence because it holds to the belief that to obey may be prejudicial to national security and defence.”

The ARPANS Act contains all the flaws identified in the ARPANS Bill by Mr. Robertson.

There are a number of other flaws in the ARPANSA Act, e.g.:

* only the applicant can challenge a licence decision. Applicants can challenge decisions from the CEO of ARPANSA to reject a licence application, to impose conditions on a licence, to suspend, cancel or amend a licence, or to refuse to approve the surrender of a licence. Appeals are lodged with the Minister who is empowered by the ARPANS Act to override decisions made by the CEO of ARPANSA. Applications may be made to the Administrative Appeals Tribunal for review of a decision of the Minister to confirm vary or set aside the licence decision.

* there is provision in the legislation for a representative of a licensed agency to play a role in the selection of the CEO of ARPANSA (hence Helen Garnett’s inclusion on the panel which interviewed applicants for the ARPANSA CEO job).

* provisions for meaningful public consultation are lacking in the legislation.

* Section 83 of the ARPANS Act allows for a law of a State or Territory to be prescribed such that it does not apply to the activities of controlled persons under the Act. In other words, the ARPANS Act can be used to override state/territory legislation prohibiting legislation, such as the South Australian Parliament’s legislated prohibitions on the establishment of a national radioactive waste repository, or a national long-lived intermediate-level waste store, being sited in SA.

Senate Select Committee Recommendations

The 2001 Report of the Senate Select Committee for an Inquiry into the Contract for a New Reactor stated:

10.1 The Committee finds that the provisions for public consultation in the ARPANS Act leave many questions unanswered. Although the present CEO, Dr John Loy, has indicated that he intends to follow a comprehensive process of public consultation, the Committee is uneasy that this is left to the judgement of the CEO rather than being legislatively guaranteed. The Committee would like to see the requirement for public consultation strengthened and made explicit in legislation and the process clearly defined.

10.2 The Committee notes that there is currently a review of the ARPANS legislation being conducted as part of the National Competition Policy. This will deal with a number of matters outside the scope of this inquiry, including the continuing problems of variations between the states on nuclear regulatory matters. However this review could raise significant issues of relevance to the current inquiry and there is a need to ensure the ARPANS legislation review is completed before any further commitments are made about the proposed new reactor at Lucas Heights.

10.3 In relation to the new research reactor project, the Committee understands that the licensing process will probably be well under way before any such changes to the legislation could be put in place. Further, it notes Dr Loy’s commitment to extensive public consultation.

Recommendation

Nonetheless, the Committee recommends that, if the new research reactor project is to go ahead, the Government put in place a number of mechanisms to ensure that full and thorough public scrutiny of the proposal takes place during the licensing process. This is to ensure, to the greatest extent practicable, that the construction and operation of the proposed reactor would not adversely affect the health of the community or damage the environment. At a minimum, these mechanisms must include: publication of all submissions made to ARPANSA; publication of ARPANSA’s responses to concerns raised in these submissions, detailing in what way those concerns have affected the CEO’s decision; release of the full details of the design and the construction contract except for those items which are determined as truly commercial-in-confidence.

10.4 The Committee is of the opinion that the licence applications for the new reactor should be subject to a similar process of judicial public hearings as occurs in the United States. This will ensure world’s best practice and allow for greater public involvement.

Recommendation

Given that there are doubts about privilege and the powers of such an inquiry to obtain documents because the ARPANS Act is silent on these issues, the Committee recommends that the Government appoint a panel including the CEO of ARPANSA under other legislative powers to conduct the inquiry.

Recommendation

The Committee further recommends that, in the longer term, the Government undertake a public review of the kinds of public consultation process required in other jurisdictions and in relation to other proposals with public health and environmental implications. The object of such a review should be to determine best practice and to amend the ARPANS Act accordingly.

Non-independence of ARPANSA

A draft ARPANS Bill had ARPANSA headed by a Board. That model was scrapped in favour of a single person – the CEO of ARPANSA – answerable to the Minister. The current CEO, John Loy, accepted the position of Acting CEO before ARPANSA was even established by law – the original notion of having a Board had been dismissed by the government prior to parliamentary discussion on the proposed legislation.

The federal government undermined ARPANSA’s independence by allowing the then Chief Executive of ANSTO, Helen Garnett, to sit on panel which interviewed applicants for the position of CEO of ARPANSA. Asked to comment on Garnett’s role in the appointment of the CEO of ARPANSA during the Senate Select Committee’s Inquiry into the Contract for a New Reactor, ANSTO’s response was: “ANSTO does not see what relevance this question has to the Committee’s terms of reference.” (ANSTO, submission to the Senate Select Committee, 2000.) However, when asked to comment on that process at a public meeting in March 1999, ANSTO’s then Communications Manager John Mulcair said he thought Garnett’s involvement was indefensible.

ARPANSA’s independence is also compromised by the employment of approximately six ex-ANSTO staff members in ARPANSA’s Regulatory Branch.

Council & Committees

The legislation provides that that the Radiation Health and Safety Advisory Council, the Nuclear Safety Committee, and the Radiation Health Committee include a person to represent the interests of the general public. However, the Government ignored a hard-won provision in the ARPANS Act for a representative of the general public to be appointed to the Radiation Health and Safety Advisory Council by leaving the position unfilled for a lengthy period of time.

The Nuclear Safety Committee must include a person to represent the local government or the local administration of an area affected by a matter related to the safety of a controlled facility. Was that provision scrapped??

Maralinga ‘clean-up’

ARPANSA’s 29/2/00 letter to Senator Minchin, the Minister for Industry, Science and Resources regarding the Maralinga rehabilitation, said, “ARPANSA also certifies that the burial trenches at Taranaki, TM 100/101 and Wewak have been constructed consistent with the national Code of Practice for the near-surface disposal of radioactive waste.” It was well known to ARPANSA that the 1992 NH&MRC Code of Practice did not apply to the Maralinga rehabilitation – in the jargon the rehabilitation was an ‘intervention’ not a ‘practice’. The authors of the NH&MRC Code stated that the Code was not applicable to a situation such as that which prevailed at Maralinga. Yet the irrelevance of the NH&MRC Code has never once been acknowledged by ARPANSA. By contrast, Senator Minchin belatedly acknowledged in a 17/4/00 media release that “… the Code of Practice for the near-surface disposal of radioactive waste in Australia (1992) does not formally apply to this clean up.” Leaked minutes from a Maralinga Rehabilitation Technical Advisory Committee meeting quoted a senior officer from ARPANSA saying it was not necessary to meet the letter of the NH&MRC Code since it was not meant to apply to situations such as the Maralinga rehabilitation (ABC Radio National, Background Briefing, April 16, 2000, <www.abc.net.au/rn/talks/bbing/stories/s120383.htm>)

Dr Loy said in an April 17, 2000 media release that the Maralinga clean-up was “world best practice” although it was clearly short of “world best practice”; for example shallow burial of plutonium in unlined trenches certainly would not be tolerated in the UK. ARPANSA officials made suggestions about options for managing contaminated debris – such as encasement with concrete – which were simply dropped when the Department and its consultants proposed cheaper, inferior options. The contaminated debris has been buried just a few metres below grade in an unlined trench. (Alan Parkinson, DEST National Radioactive Waste Repository – A Second Round Submission to ARPANSA, 25/2/04; see also Alan Parkinson, “Maralinga: The Clean-Up of a Nuclear Test Site”, Medicine and Global Survival, Volume 7, Number 2, February 2002, <www.ippnw.org/MGS>.)

In the 1990s the Australian Radiation Laboratory was contracted to provide services to the Department of Primary Industries and Energy for the Maralinga clean-up. That contract was taken over by the Environmental and Radiation Health Branch of ARPANSA when ARL was merged into the newly-formed ARPANSA in the late-1990s. Yet ARPANSA also had regulatory responsibilities. (Issue of a Facility Licence for the Maralinga Rehabilitation Program, Statement by the CEO of ARPANSA, 30/10/2000, <www.health.gov.au:80/arpansa/mar_stmt.htm>.)

ARPANSA rarely had personnel on-site at Maralinga and thus its first-hand knowledge of the rehabilitation project was limited as was its capacity to regulate the project.

Nuclear engineer Alan Parkinson wrote in his submission to the Senate Select Committee for an Inquiry into the Contract for a New Reactor at Lucas Heights (September 2000) that “The newly formed Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency (ARPANSA) also has not performed particularly well in its first major assignment – the Maralinga project. Unless their performance as regulators improves, then the new reactor project will be a trail of compromises as is the case on the Maralinga project.”

ANSTO Licensing

ARPANSA originally intended to licence all of ANSTO’s nuclear facilities simultaneously. The process was so problematic that eventually it was abandoned in favour of a staged licensing process. Jean McSorley, then representing the interests of the public on ARPANSA’s Nuclear Safety Committee, argued:

The credibility of ARPANSA, particularly in relation to its regulation of ANSTO, has been further strained since early 1999 because of the way in which ARPANSA had handled the licensing process. In early 1999, ANSTO was keen to start the licensing process for the new reactor. A major issue for the public, however, was that the existing facilities had not yet been licensed. In April 1999, however, ANSTO submitted its first licence application – to prepare a site for the new reactor. Under the terms of the licensing process the licence for the new reactor had to establish the suitability of the site for where it would be built. How could ARPANSA and the public assess the suitability of the site for the new reactor, if the current facilities and arrangements had not been fully assessed?

When the above point was put to ARPANSA the reply was that it has accepted the licence application from ANSTO, as it was the first application it (ANSTO) had submitted. So much for ARPANSA being a regulatory agency. Surely it should have directed ANSTO to put the licence to prepare a site in context – that context would have meant delaying the licence application until the existing facilities had been thoroughly examined.

This is one example of where ARPANSA appears to the working to ANSTO’s timetable, rather than setting the agenda itself. Moreover, despite the best intentions of some parts of the Agency, it is basing its decisions on what it knows of ANSTO, of its “understanding” of what happens on site. This ‘understanding’ comes from people who were members of the Nuclear Safety Bureau, as well as former ANSTO staff who now work for ARPANSA. This is not quite as sinister as it might appear, but it this close relationship inevitably means that there is a lack of transparency because ARPANSA and ANSTO are working on an unwritten ‘understanding’ rather than due and open processes in which all salient points are raised for examination.

(Jean McSorley, Supplementary submission to the Senate Select Committee for an Inquiry into the Contract for a New Reactor at Lucas Heights: Comments on the role of Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency (ARPANSA) and the new reactor, 7/10/00.)

ARPANSA’s handling of ANSTO’s application for a licence to prepare a site for a new reactor was also problematic, e.g.:

* ARPANSA’s advertising of ANSTO’s application was extremely limited;

* the time allowed for public comment was insufficient;

* many were excluded from the process because they could not access a hard copy of the ANSTO application (and related documents) nor could they access the information via the Internet;

* ARPANSA failed to address some issues raised in public submissions, while other issues were dealt with in a cursory manner. ARPANSA allowed ANSTO to apply for a licence to prepare a site for a new reactor even though existing facilities had not been licensed.

Those and other problems have been evident in relation to ARPANSA’s handling of other licence applications.

ARPANSA has unnecessarily and unjustifiably limited the scope of its licence application assessments. For example ARPANSA sidestepped the crucial issue of liability and insurance arrangements (or the lack of them) when assessing ANSTO’s application for a licence to prepare a site for a new reactor at Lucas Heights. ARPANSA simply asserted in its Safety Evaluation Report that liability and insurance arrangements fell outside the scope of its assessment.

Waste/Reactor Linkages

Dr Loy repeatedly stated that a reactor construction licence would not be granted unless progress was made towards the establishment of a store for long-lived intermediate-level waste (LLILW):

* Dr. Loy is quoted in the 3/8/00 St George and Sutherland Shire Leader saying: “… by the time a licence to construct is applied for … the store would need to be pretty well on track so we would have confidence that it would be located and built by that time. … Just kind of saying, ‘we are going to have a store but we do not know where or when, but don’t you worry about that’, would not be good enough.”

* “I have said … that at the construction stage I would want to see progress towards a store. … Should it proceed and go to a commissioning time, I would want to be very much assured that there would be a store.” (Dr. Loy in evidence to the Senate Select Committee for an Inquiry into the Contract for a New Reactor, Canberra, 9/2/01, p.553 of transcripts.)

The government’s one and only plan for an above-ground store for LLILW was co-location of the store adjacent to the planned underground dump for lower-level wastes near Woomera in South Australia. Co-location was the “first siting option” identified by the Consultative Committee of Commonwealth and State Officials in 1997.

The intention to co-locate the store with the dump influenced Dr. Loy’s decision to grant a licence to prepare a site for a new reactor: “It is true that the waste repository proposal is still in the development stage, that the long-lived intermediate level waste storage facility is yet to be definitely planned and no decisions have been taken on final disposal of long-lived intermediate level waste. There are significant environmental, social and political issues that will need to be dealt with for these plans to come to fruition. The question for me in this application is whether, at least in principle, I could see that there was sufficient commitment to the current plan and the general availability of alternative approaches so as to be confident that a way through would be found in a reasonable timescale. I took into account that there is clear progress on the siting of a low level waste repository and a Government commitment to examine co-locating a store for long-lived intermediate level waste in association with the repository.” (CEO of ARPANSA, 22/9/99, Issue of a Licence to ANSTO to Prepare a Site for Replacement Research Reactor Facility.)

However, by the time Dr. Loy came to consider ANSTO’s application for a licence to construct a new reactor, the co-location plan had been abandoned by the federal government, and no alternative plan had been put in place. In a February 8, 2001 media release, then Minister for Industry, Science and Resources Senator Nick Minchin said:

* co-location of the LLILW store with the planned dump for lower-level wastes had been ruled out.

* the federal government would initiate a search on Commonwealth land for a site for a LLILW store and a National Store Advisory Committee had been established to identify potential sites.

The National Store Advisory Committee provided a report containing short-listed sites to the current science minister, Peter McGauran, in mid-2003 but the minister refuses to release either the report or the short-list of sites.

Dr. Loy breached his previous commitment by granting a reactor construction licence even though no progress had been made towards establishing a LLILW store.

Strangely, having cited co-location in support of his decision to grant a licence to prepare a site for a new reactor, Dr. Loy now has a very different view. For example at the February 26, 2004 forum regarding the planned dump, Dr. Loy said: “Co-location of the store I suspect ultimately might have been a political solution. The siting criteria, some of them are the same but many of them are very different in my view, and co-location was not necessarily ever a good idea.”

Dr. Loy has said that he will need to see progress on the establishment of a LLILW store before granting a licence to operate the new reactor (the application is expected to be lodged by ANSTO in late 2004):

* Dr. Loy said he would need to see “really clear progress” towards a LLILW store before issuing a reactor operating licence, “… my view is now that I wouldn’t issue such a licence if there weren’t substantial progress toward the store”. (ABC Radio National, Breakfast, 8/8/02).

* “I certainly don’t want to leave it until 2015 before a store exists, and I think it’s important as far as my licensing of the replacement reactor is concerned, that at the time we come to considering the license for its operation, I can be convinced that there will be a store. Not that it’s in existence, but the processes are sufficiently proceeding, and are leading to a result that will convince me that there will be a store at the time it’s needed.” (ABC Radio National, PM, 13/9/02).

* “You don’t necessarily have to have every loose end tied at the time of the operation license, but I have to be convinced that there will be a store.” (ABC Radio National, PM, 13/9/02).

* “The issue of the long term storage of the intermediate level waste arising from the processing of spent fuel is also debated. The Government is proceeding with the planning for a national intermediate level waste store – there is political controversy about this as illustrated by the passage of legislation in South Australia to prevent the store being sited in that State. I expect that political controversy to continue, but with careful discussion and consultation with potential communities that may host the store I have no reason to believe that one will not be established within the time scale required for management of the returning waste from the RRR, noting that the first waste would not be expected to be returned to Australia until the mid 2020s. Nonetheless, I am expecting that the matter will be pursued vigorously and that there will be significant progress by the time any licence to operate the RRR is sought. I will be writing to the Minister for Science advising him of this expectation.” (Statement by the CEO of ARPANSA, Dr John Loy – Licence to construct the Replacement Research Reactor, 5/4/02).

However Dr Loy has a track-record of breaching or revisiting and weakening similar commitments. Moreover Dr Loy has refused to specify what he means by progress – his statements have been so vague as to leave open the possibility of granting a reactor operating licence even if the government has yet to identify a site for a LLILW store let alone complete environmental approvals and complete other processes such as overriding state/territory legislation (all state governments are opposed to hosting a LLILW store, and SA and WA have legislated to ban it).

More on the reactor/waste issues:

http://pandora.nla.gov.au/pan/30410/20090218-0153/www.geocities.com/jimgreen3/arpansa.html

ARPANSA CEO Ignores ARPANSA’s Nuclear Safety Committee

Dr. Loy ignored a number of recommendations contained in a February 2002 report by ARPANSA’s Nuclear Safety Committee (<www.arpansa.gov.au/pubs/rrrp/nsc150302.pdf>). In particular, Dr. Loy ignored the recommendations that contingency plans for the management of radioactive waste generated at Lucas Heights be prepared by ANSTO and submitted to ARPANSA prior to the granting of a reactor construction licence. No such contingency plans were prepared either before or after the granting of the licence. Specifically, Dr. Loy ignored these recommendations from the Nuclear Safety Committee:

* “A contingency plan for additional spent fuel storage arrangements and/or spent fuel conditioning in Australia should be submitted to ARPANSA by ANSTO as part of its conditions of licence to construct the RRR [Replacement Research Reactor]. The Applicant should demonstrate a ‘fall-back’ position which is feasible, practical and socially and politically acceptable in case the international options are not available.”

* “That ANSTO submit a workable contingency plan for the management of Lucas Heights-generated wastes, before a licence is issued to construct the RRR. The nature of such plans should inform the conditions of the construction licence. This contingency plan should contain provisional information about alternate arrangements to the proposals for a national repository and national store currently under discussion.”

Final disposal of LLILW

The September 1999 Safety Evaluation Report of ARPANSA’s Regulatory Branch said: “A licence to operate the reactor would not be issued by ARPANSA without there being clear and definite means available for the ultimate disposal of radioactive waste and spent nuclear fuel.”

However, there remain many obstacles to the interim storage of long-lived intermediate-level waste and no progress whatsoever has been made in relation to final disposal of LLILW.

Senate Community Affairs Committee – Minority Report

The following minority report by Senator Dee Margetts (The Greens (WA)) and Senator Natasha Stott-Despoja (Australian Democrats) was included in the Senate Community Affairs Legislation Committee Report on the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Bill 1998 and Related Legislation, tabled in December 1998 and available at: <www.aph.gov.au/senate/committee/clac_ctte/radiation/report/index.htm>

Preface

The introduction of legislation providing for the protection of the Australian community from the adverse effects of radiation and for the safety of Australians who deal with radioactive materials is extremely important. Too important to be allowed to go through Parliament without the opportunity for the Australian community to register its concerns about the regulatory regime which we will have to rely onto protect us from hazards which have the potential to remain with us for an indefinite period of time.

For that reason, this committee was called at Senator Margetts’ instigation and, as predicted, heard a range of concerns expressed. Many of those concerns have the potential to be addressed by way of amendment to the legislation and the hearing has clarified the issues, providing a way forward to strengthen the protection provided by the Bill.

A number of community groups expressed concern about how much of the framework of nuclear regulation is to be contained in regulation rather than in the legislation itself.

The Government, however, is to be commended for going some way towards meeting those concerns and particularly for allowing a period of open public consultation on the Regulations which are so important to the effective functioning of ARPANSA as a regulatory body.

It does not, however go far enough and concerns remain which are outlined in this report.

The Issues

One of the key concerns raised by several parties to the hearing and others who made written submissions is the fundamental issue of whether there is such a thing as a safe level of exposure to radiation.

It is the view of the minority report that there is no safe level of exposure and to legislate to allow any increase in the radiation to which any Australians are exposed is fundamentally flawed. Even following the presentations by ARPANSA and ANSTO, concern remains about the allowable exposure to radiation. A particular concern is the power of the CEO to grant exemptions which could see workers exposed to higher doses of radiation than otherwise allowed. The aim should be to have exposure as close to zero as is technically possible and there should not be power to grant exemptions.

The standard in the legislation, purports to be ‘World’s Best Practice’. Whilst this should mean ‘As low as technically achievable’ (ALATA), the standard in this legislation is set ‘As low as reasonably achievable’. If this is ‘world’s best practice’, it is not good enough, especially when we know that better standards ARE achievable elsewhere. World’s best practice does not equate to IAEA acceptable levels. Standards are constantly under review and technological developments are taking place, but ‘best practice’ in the nuclear industry is constrained by economic forces which should not be the primary concern in a Bill to protect Australians from radiation and provide for nuclear safety.

The precautionary principle MUST be the most important consideration where nuclear health and safety issues are concerned. For this reason, we will seek to delete the threat of imprisonment for ARPANSA inspectors making a false or misleading statement in a warrant. Criminal law should quite adequately deal with criminal fraud, should that be a problem. Including threats of imprisonment in this way in this legislation could be seen as intimidatory – and not necessarily in the best interests of the community.

Despite our stated problems with the use of the term ‘world’s best practice’, the inclusion of a requirement for the CEO to have regard to ‘world’s best practice’ when issuing licences is an improvement on the original Bill.

For the regulatory authority set up under this legislation to have the confidence of the Australian community, it must clearly be independent of the Government of the day and be responsible to Parliament. The regulatory authority (the Chief Executive Officer of the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency) falls some way short of this standard because it is not an independent statutory authority. We are pleased, however, to see that the Government has now agreed that the CEO have direct power over the staffing of ARPANSA.

The recommendation to exclude nuclear power reactors from the legislation is an improvement in accountability. The Greens and Australian Democrats, however, are concerned that licenses for ‘a nuclear fuel fabrication plant’, ‘an enrichment facility’ ‘a fuel storage facility’ and ‘a reprocessing facility’ remain possible under this legislation, albeit with the approval of the CEO. These activities should either be specifically prohibited under this legislation, or at the least, should not be able to take place without full and separate Parliamentary scrutiny.

Separate approval should also be obtained for ANY other new facilities, such as a spent fuel conditioning plant, a nuclear waste disposal facility, a waste storage facility or an isotope production facility. It should be noted however that any proposal for such a facility would itself be of great concern to The Greens.

If our concerns regarding scrutiny of any proposal for any new nuclear facility are not satisfactorily addressed, we will seek to amend the definition of ‘nuclear installation’ to delete reference to any nuclear installation which does not currently exist.

Major nuclear installations require much greater prior scrutiny than is envisaged in the Bill. In particular there must be a comprehensive public inquiry into and Parliamentary scrutiny of the question of whether there is a need for the installation before the process even gets to the stage of an impact statement or an inquiry into the proposal itself.

No licence proposal should be considered until a public, open inquiry into the need for the installation and an impact assessment process have been completed. An amendment to achieve that end will be moved in the Committee stage of the Bill.

The proposed government amendment to give public notice of the licensing of a nuclear installation is grossly inadequate. The whole process must be open to public participation and this should be reflected in the Regulations.

There is no reference in the Bill to the regulation of, or setting of standards in the uranium mining industry, yet codes of practice in the industry were covered by the Environment Protection (Nuclear Codes) Act which is repealed by a Consequential Amendments Bill. It is desirable for the Commonwealth to have oversight of such standards and for there to be an open public process for the ongoing development and improvement of the Codes. The Bill is silent on this question.

We commend the Government on clarifying the situation regarding existing codes and development of improved codes by agreeing to have the current requirements of the Environment Protection (Nuclear Codes) Act included in the Regulations.

The only role for the community in this Bill is a purely advisory one and even there it is a role severely constrained by the legislation. A further amendment is required for protection from prosecution for Committee or Council members who make public any information or concerns they may have about radiation protection or nuclear safety.

We commend the introduction of conflict of interest provisions for Committee and Council members in the Regulations and would like to see that extended to include a register of financial interests.

There is clearly a need for the strengthening of reporting requirements throughout the Bill. We are particularly concerned that the CEO’s functions include the monitoring and reporting on the operations of the Agency and it’s advisory bodies, and it is pleasing to see that the Government will be moving appropriate amendments in this regard.

In summary, whilst the Greens (WA) and Australian Democrats are pleased that the Government has made some concessions to acknowledge community concerns about this Bill, we feel that further amendments are required to ensure adequate protection for the community from the dangers of radiation and nuclear activities.

Senator Dee Margetts, The Greens (WA)

Senator Natasha Stott Despoja , Australian Democrats, South Australia