The Northern Territory Chief Minister, Clare Martin, has said she will fight "tooth and nail" the building of even a small nuclear waste facility in the Territory.
Australia produces nuclear waste at Lucus Heights., where the Sydney facility undertakes nuclear-related research including for diagnosing and treating cancer, Alzheimer's and multiple sclerosis.
The preferred site for the Lucas Height waste, which is apparently a Federal Government responsibility, is Woomera, but the South Australian government has said "no".
The Northern Territory looks set to end up with the waste facility because the Commonwealth can force it on a Territory.
This issue alone has both sides of politics in the NT united against the Federal Government.
There will be risks associated with the storage of nuclear waste, but as I see it, the stuff needs to be stored somewhere.
While the state and federal governments argue about what to do with the relatively small amount of waste from Lucas Heights, others worry about waste from the 440 commercial nuclear power reactors currently operating in 31 countries across the globe.
These nuclear reactors include power stations which supply 17 per cent of the world's electricity without producing the greenhouse gases associated with the use of coal and other fossil fuels.
A few weeks ago former Prime Minister, Bob Hawke, suggested Australia should take the whole world's nuclear waste.
He said it would be an act of environmental responsibility and economic sanity.
Countries can apparently earn more from storing waste than selling uranium, and when you think about it, no where is as safe as outback Australia.
We live in a politically stable country and outback facilities could be made very secure from terrorists.
Places like the US, Japan and Pakistan are on fault lines and are thus geologically unstable -- in contrast outback Australia sits on a single tectonic plate.
Also, correctly managed, arid regions can be made safe from bushfires and the corrosive potential of dripping water.
Outback Australia is away from the sea and the risk of tsunamis.
The environmental movement once promoted the slogan "think globally, act locally".
It is perhaps this concept that Bob Hawke had in mind when he made the suggestion that we take the world's nuclear waste.
I wonder whether Clare Martin, would reconsider the proposal if it was about taking waste from, for example, her near neighbor Indonesia, rather than from Sydney?
Indonesia has three nuclear reactors, but so far no nuclear power stations.
ADVERTISEMENT
No comments:
Post a Comment