The South Australia Royal Commission into the nuclear fuel cycle will give its interim report at the Adelaide Town Hall at 6pm next Monday 15 February.
It is likely the Commission will recommend that the South Australian Premier's plan to import international high-level radioactive waste proceed, despite obvious risks and clear dangers.
At the same time, federal plans for a national dump — likely to be located at a remote site in South Australia, NSW, Queensland or the Northern Territory — continue, with comments due on 11 March 2016.
It would be a mistake for anyone living outside of South Australia to think that the premier's plan is just a South Australian problem. Transport and containment risks are hugely significant. State boundaries are no guarantees of safety.
Professor John Veevers of Macquarie University notes the 'tonnes of enormously dangerous radioactive waste in the northern hemisphere, 20,000km from its destined dump in Australia … must remain intact for at least 10,000 years.
'These magnitudes — of tonnage, lethality, distance of transport and time — entail great inherent risk.'
In 1998 when the federal government identified the central northern area of South Australia to be site for a proposed national radioactive waste dump, it was not only South Australians who were concerned.
In 2003 the mayors of Sutherland, Bathurst, Blue Mountains, Broken Hill, Dubbo, Griffith, Lithgow, Orange, Wagga Wagga, Auburn, Bankstown, Blacktown, Fairfield, Holroyd, Liverpool, Parramatta and Penrith — communities along potential transport routes — opposed 'any increase in nuclear waste production until a satisfactory resolution occurs to the waste repository question'.
The NSW parliamentary inquiry into radioactive waste found 'there is no doubt that the transportation of radioactive waste increases the risk of accident or incident — including some form of terrorist intervention'.
The Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation itself acknowledges there are one to two 'incidents' every year involving the transportation of radioactive materials to and from its Lucas Heights reactor plant.
In a post Fukushima world, the dangers of radioactivity seem self-evident. However it seems that the ever-active pro nuclear lobby continues to do all possible to deny or conceal the following simple facts:
Radioactive waste gives off energy that is dangerous to humans, animals and plants. It can cause cancer, which may only grow many years after exposure. If such waste gets into the soil, air or underground water then it can get into our bodies, so even communities not living near the waste dump can be affected.
It