Nuclear Waste Dump:
Pangea nightmare resurfaces

by Peter Mac

There is renewed concern about the possibility of the establishment of a 
huge international dump for toxic nuclear waste near the border of South 
Australia and Western Australia. Plans by the American consortium Pangea 
Resources to establish such a facility were revealed some 12 months ago in 
an ABC Four Corners program.

This showed clearly that Pangea was determined to see the facility 
established and had set aside massive funds to lobby for acceptance of the 
project by the Federal Government.

Following the revelations, Pangea denied that it was considering 
establishing the plant in South Australia, and was only interested in 
Western Australia as a site.

However, as a result of enormous public pressure the Western Australian 
Government recently passed legislation against the disposal of imported 
nuclear waste within the State's boundaries.

Now Pangea says that South Australia is just as good as Western Australia 
for its purposes, since the geological formation in which it was proposed 
to store the waste straddles the boundary!

A representative of the Anti-Nuclear Coalition of Western Australia (ANCWA) 
has pointed out that Pangea intends putting a firm proposal to both State 
and Federal Governments in 2002, and has a target date of 2009 for 
commencement of construction of the facility.

The company has allocated an annual budget of $5 million for public 
relations for the intervening period, and is lobbying Federal, state and 
local governments.

They are employing the best technical and scientific consultants from 
British Nuclear Fuels and have hired top legal advisors to advise on 
matters such as native title.

They now have representatives on the Board of the Uranium Information 
Centre.

The environmental organisation Friends of the Earth (FOE) has called on the 
Federal Government to pass legislation against the importation of nuclear 
waste into Australia.

Greens Senator Bob Brown plans to introduce a Bill in the Senate amending 
the present customs law to prohibit the introduction of the waste.

For its part the Government has simply stated that it has no intention of 
accepting nuclear wastes from other countries. However, its commitment to 
such issues is hardly unequivocal.

For example, it still favours the signing of a Multilateral Agreement on 
Investment, under which a contract to accept foreign nuclear waste would 
override national or state environmental legislation.

Moreover, a representative of FOE has pointed out that Government policy 
and import regulations are easy to change.

Nor is the Coalition united in its stated opposition to the proposal. 
Federal Member Ross Lightfoot has openly stated his support for it, and 
others such as Wilson Tuckey appear to be distinctly ambivalent.

Former Liberal leader in Western Australia, Bill Hassel, now heads Acclaim 
Uranium, the biggest uranium group in the state, and is highly influential 
in Coalition circles.

And even the Western Australian legislation is fundamentally flawed. If a 
case can be made that the waste material could be of some economic value to 
the State, or if it had its genesis in Australia (and some 20 per cent of 
the world's uranium comes from Australia) then it is no longer classed as 
waste, and could be accepted under the legislation.

As time passes and the Federal Government still shows no sign of passing 
prohibitive import legislation, questions are mounting over the Howard 
Government's intentions. It is one of those situations where no news is bad 
news.