The long conflict between the federal government plan for a national radioactive waste facility in South Australia and the opponents of the plan has continued to escalate in the past months. On 19 November, Kimba on SA’s Eyre Peninsula was declared South Australia’s Agricultural Town of the Year. Notwithstanding this significant honour, on 29 November the federal Minister for Resources Keith Pitt finally made the formal declaration that Napandee in the Kimba district was the chosen site for the proposed federal radioactive waste dump.
With just 4.5 per cent of South Australia as arable farming, the Napandee site is on premier farming country. The Barngarla peoples are the Traditional Owners of the area.
The federal government plan is for two adjacent facilities: one for low-level radioactive waste and the other for long-lived intermediate waste (ILW) from Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO). It was quite extraordinary that when interviewed then by SA ABC radio Minister Pitt said only that the facility would be used ‘for low level waste.’
In addition to the ILW already at ANSTO will be the latest shipment of two tonnes of reprocessed nuclear waste from the United Kingdom to Australia. The shipment consists of four 500kg canisters held inside a forged steel container called a TN-81.
Since the late 1990s, the supposed needs of nuclear medicine have always been promoted as key in successive government claims for hosting the nation’s radioactive waste in what understandably might be an otherwise unpalatable addition to any community. Throughout 2021, in the face of opposition, Resources Minister Keith Pitt occasionally emerged to make exaggerated claims of the necessity of the dump for the future of nuclear medicine in Australia.
In this debate around nuclear medicine, it is essential to present up-to-date facts. Nuclear expert Dr Jim Green addressed relevant facts in his paper, Nuclear waste and nuclear medicine in Australia, ‘…According to Medicare figures, nuclear medicine represents less than three percent of medical imaging. Nuclear medicine should not be confused with X-rays using iodine contrast, radiotherapy or chemotherapy, which are used much more commonly used…Nuclear medicine typically uses short-lived radioisotopes and the waste does not require special handling after a short period of radioactivity…’
'It would be far safer, cheaper and completely possible to keep the long lived intermediate level waste at ANSTO until a required "world’s best practice" underground site is identified and built.'
For decades, ANSTO has presented the argument that there's no more room for