Shortlist includes three sites in South Australia and one each in Queensland, NSW and Northern Territory, but plan will only proceed with public support

This article is more than 4 years old

This article is more than 4 years old

The Turnbull government has set itself a one-year deadline to lock in a single site to store Australia’s nuclear waste, after revealing a shortlist of six locations and promising it will proceed only with community support.

Conservationists vowed to “closely track every step of this long and contested road”. The deadline of December 2016 sets the scene for the government to make decisions before, or shortly after, the next federal election.

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The resources minister, Josh Frydenberg, emphasised the government would listen to community feedback when he released the list of six options for further consultation on Friday. “We will make sure that every box is ticked when it comes to the regulatory and environmental process,” he said.

The government is looking for a place to dispose of Australia’s low- and intermediate-level radioactive waste. The shortlist includes sites near Sally’s Flat in New South Wales; Hale in the Northern Territory; Cortlinye, Pinkawillinie and Barndioota in South Australia; and Oman Ama in Queensland.

Previous attempts to find such a site failed. Last year, the Northern Land Council withdrew its nomination of Muckaty station in the Northern Territory after a lengthy legal battle launched by traditional owners.



Frydenberg said the earlier efforts amounted to “nearly a 30-year saga” but said the new process would be different because it would be marked by “deep consultation”.

The government would offer the selected landowner up to four times of the value of their property, while the community would have access to a $10m fund for local infrastructure or other projects.

“The difficulty we’ve had in the past is that governments have chosen unilaterally to choose a site, whether it was defence land or whether it was a site that’s been put up by a specific land owner, without having gone through a broader process which we have now done which is to invite a whole range of submissions and to make the precondition a voluntary nomination,” Frydenberg said.

Location of the six proposed sites

Location of the six proposed sites Location of the six proposed sites

Australia has the equivalent of two Olympic-sized swimming pools of radioactive waste, which may include laboratory items such as paper, plastic and glassware, and material used in medical treatments, he said.

The Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation argued holding the material in one place was international best practice. It said the material was currently held at more than 100 locations across the country, including hospitals, medical centres, mining sites and Ansto.

But Jim Green, the national nuclear campaigner for Friends of the Earth, said about 95% of that waste was stored at two sites: Lucas Heights in southern Sydney and Woomera in South Australia.

He said even if a new repository was established, medical and scientific institutions would still need the expertise and capacity to store small amounts on site.

“It’s not at all clear that there’s a problem that needs to be fixed,” Green said. “They should have a consultation which is meaningful.”

Dave Sweeney, a campaigner from the Australian Conservation Foundation, said there were no compelling public health or technical reasons to rush any of the waste to another location.

Sweeney said people “should keep an open mind to how we manage radioactive waste and a closed door to undead and unwanted waste from other nations”. The foundation would support affected communities and closely track the process.

“The approaches of the past – secret deals, surprise announcements, emotively linking the separate issues of nuclear waste and nuclear medicine, commercial-in-confidence ‘agreements’ and the carrot and stick politics of division – have all failed,” he said.

Scott Ludlam, a deputy leader of the Greens, said the voluntary approach stood in contrast to previous “coercive attempts to dump the material on unwilling communities”, but the government was still asking the wrong questions.

He said: “Instead of simply asking ‘which remote location is most suitable for dumping radioactive waste?’ and leaving it at that, we should be engaged in much broader questions: what is the most appropriate way of managing and isolating various categories of radioactive waste? When will Australia prioritise non-reactor production of medical isotopes and cease production of such intractable wastes altogether?”

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The chief executive of Ansto, Adi Paterson, said 80% of the radioactive waste was associated with potentially life-saving nuclear medicine, and one in two Australians would need nuclear medicine during their lifetime.

“Along with the significant benefits of Australia having access to secure medicine supplies, comes a responsibility to deal with the by-products,” Paterson said.

“The Australian obligation to safely deal with waste also extends from the work of other science and research organisations, medical facilities and the mining industry.”

Residents from the NSW central west criticised the nomination of the site at Sally’s Flat, north of Bathurst. The head of Bathurst Climate Action, Tracey Carpenter, said the community was “appalled”.

“There will be quite a big community outcry and lobby to try and stop it,” she told Australian Associated Press.

Luke Sciberras, who has lived for 15 years in Hill End, the closest town to the proposed waste dump, said: “I am not interested in having nuclear waste held in vast quantities in a vicinity where I believe thousands of people like to live in a healthy existence.”

Labor’s resources spokesman, Gary Gray, said his party would work constructively with the government because a national facility was “an important long-term solution”. Gray said he would visit the potentially affected communities to listen to local concerns.

The shortlist was produced after landholders were invited to nominate places. The 28 nominations were reduced to six after being assessed by the government and experts.

Tony Abbott’s industry minister, Ian Macfarlane, was reported to be close to releasing the shortlist before he lost his position in Malcolm Turnbull’s September cabinet reshuffle.

The department will seek feedback over the next four months, which is expected to lead to a further shortlist of two to three sites and the selection of a final site by the end of 2016. An election is due in the second half of 2016.

