THE NUCLEAR INDUSTRY: A SHORT HISTORY OF INCOMPETENCE AND STUPIDITY
By Ken Setter

The history of the nuclear industry is a heady mixture of deception, incompetence and stupidity. The record shows they cannot be trusted, end of story.

The growing awareness of climate change and a rise in the price of uranium oxide, has rekindled the nuclear debate in Australia. The Howard government has long salivated at the thought of a nuclear Australia. If we cannot have the bomb, they reason, we can join the ‘big boys’ by exporting uranium to those who can. However there are powerful overseas interests that require more from us, they envisage our role as being the repository of the worlds high-level nuclear waste, a tempting prospect for those who see only profits, prestige and glory, we too, they dream, can be a’ big player’ with a secure and profitable market.

But with their record can we trust them?

Putting to one-side arguments concerning the high cost of nuclear generated electricity, the dangers of handling and transporting radioactive materials, the cost of decommissioning, and the dangers of terrorists getting hold of nuclear material, that I leave them to others more qualified. The storage of nuclear waste requires a great deal of trust in the ability of government, the military and industry to secure dangerous materials for long periods of time, possibly thousands of years. So who have we done so far, what has our record been over the past hundred years? That is the big question; answer that correctly before we move on to a longer time frame. As Australian’s we delight in the victories and world records achieved on the sports field, yet we overlook, forget, and regretfully forgive the stuff up’s at home; most of us have no little or no recollection of the dismal record keeping of our government, the military, and industry.

How many residents of Hunters Hill, an affluent Sydney suburb, can remember back to 1978 when some 3,000 tonnes of radioactive soil required removal as in order to decontaminate six building blocks? Not many I’d guess, the six building blocks were an old factory site once used for extracting radium from crude uranium oxide, the factory owners it seems had dumped radioactive thorium and radium residues in the area during the early part of the twentieth century. Nice place Hunters Hill, who would imagine such a thing, but it’s true, no doubt the Hunters Hill residents said, as concerned parents do, not in my back yard. Poor record keeping or incompetence?

There are many such stories from around Australia, from the Queensland government storing radioactive waste in a tin shed for over forty years in inner-city Brisbane to the Commonwealth’s Antarctic Division’s proposal to dump its research isotopes into the Derwent River. From radioactive waste stored in the basement of a government building in Melbourne, unknown to the government workers until fire exposed the unsuitability of its location to the negligent export of radioactive contaminated metals to Singapore and being forced to take back the garbage, all 110 drums of it. That is the way we do business by staggering from stuff-up to stuff-up as they say snafu. By the way did you know Australian diplomats used to transport radioactive isotopes in diplomatic bags on normal QANTAS services? Incompetence or stupidity?

However my particular favorites remains the Dunston Downs screw-up. Dunston Downs is near Sale, one of Victoria most beautiful woodland areas, chosen by the Government as a safe and secure site to store radioactive substances, only to discover that the site was in fact an RAAF bombing range. If two Government State and Federal can be so incompetent as they were shown them to be, what hope do we have? Stupidity?

Trust us they say, and blindly we do, over the years we have trusted the men in white coats, (they are mostly men) what is it about those white coats that transforms these normally insignificant men into authority figures? Have you noticed the Russian scientists wear white hats as well as white coats yet they managed to give the world the Chernobyl thus doing the Americans Three Mile Island

Let us not forget the numerous secret documents high ranking military officers have lost in cars, airports, and in computers. Then of course I must mentioned the tailings dams, supposed to contain low level waste, as well as radon gas released by mining and milling operations, along with the chemical solvents used in the process need to be carefully monitored and controlled. However there have been many instances of contaminated water flowing through drinking water taps. Contaminated water from tailings dams floods into surrounding areas and endanger the wild life we are duty bound to protect. Australia is unique with its schizoid policy of allowing uranium mines in national parks. On one hand we rightly proclaim the wonders of Kakadu and on the other, we do our best to kill and deform everything in sight, then blindly ask, ‘where the bloody hell are you’

I am not filled with confidence that when I find lead residues emanating from old factory sites, and that tonnes of PCB’s are stored behind chain wire fences. Over the years the mining industry has walked away from old worked out mines, leaving holes in the ground for free animals to fall into. Mining companies have walked way from clapped our workings for hundreds of years, then we cover up such shameful episodes as of asbestos mining in Wittenoom West Australia by disconnecting the electricity and the withdrawal of services, when that failed they erased the name from the map. That’s what we call record keeping folks.

We are expected to refrain from questioning the authorities, trust us they say it is safe sound and secure, there is no immediate danger they say at each and every mishap, as Chernobyl release radioactivity from its fractured concrete case, they said no immediate danger, when Three Mile Island began to melt they said the same, just a few weeks back the Japanese said there was no danger yet the nuclear power plant was forced to close for an indeterminate period.

Trust us, trust us to keep nuclear waste safe they repeat like a broken record. Trust us say the people who once told us we about the ‘nuclear matchbox’, nuclear energy they said was so powerful that we will be able to sail a ship around the world for years on a matchbox full of nuclear fuel. Later they said automation would give us so much free time that we will be working 20 hours a week. Even later they said computers would soon herald the paperless society. All have proven to be untrue. However all is not lost their generic engineering may yet bring us flying pigs.

Maybe the men in white coats could develop a non-farting pill for cows as good a solution to climate change. I am not taking a cheap shot here; it is as rational as building twenty-five nuclear power stations, one or two in every capital city and a few in Cape York just for the hell of it.

Our nuclear future, at least as far as the government envisions it, is the worlds high-level nuclear waste dump. Pangea, the waste specialist, might have left Australia for the time being but the exploration work they did in the 1990’s remains filed away for safe keeping, their proposal was for storage of high-level waste in Australia, they wanted part of this country the size of Western Europe, according the ABC’s Four Corners program (April 20.1999) I see no reason why they would shelve their plans simply because they were unacceptable at the time.

But let us not get tangled in economic arguments alone some look at nuclear waste dumps and see profits, others look and see glory. In a report headed A Wasted Opportunity (Sydney Morning Herald 23.03.1999), Gerard Henderson of the Sydney Institute claimed ‘Australia could earn more than money from the disposal of nuclear waste’. Being a part of the nuclear ‘club’ and taking the worlds nuclear waste Australia could reawaken the glory days with a return to the high status we 'enjoyed' following the 'braking of the German lines in 1918’. Henderson enthusiastically endorses the proposal so energetically canvassed by the nuclear company PANGEA, he goes on the make the argument that Australia with its small population cannot have much 'say' in world affairs, it therefore needs some extras punch to bring it into the chambers of world affairs. Tragically he is probably right.

I could have written of fires at Roxby Downs, and secret plans by the Joh Bjelke-Peterson government to build a reprocessing plant in Queensland. I have left out so many things that needed reporting but space has got away from me, what is most important to my mind is the enormous trust we would have to place in the hands of government, the military, the scientist and industry, the trust is such that it is too great for mortal man, (as the saying goes) 24,000 years is beyond our ability to control. Think about it, it’s twelve times the amount of time since the crucifixion; consider the changes in the world since then. Let us not be fooled by the line that all is better now, we have computers, they say, we can control things better, just pause a moment, ask yourself how long has it been since you’re computer crashed? I guess is you don’t know how it happened, I don’t.

For Australia to become a part of the ‘big boys club’ we would have to trust the untrustworthy. Future generations deserve better.