Justin Tutty, Darwin
Since the Country Liberal Party's federal MP David Tollner first proposed plans to dump nuclear waste in the NT, fierce opposition has grown.
The Radioactive Waste Management Bill 2005 identified three sites (none of which are in Tollner's electorate): Harts Range and Mt Everard, both near Alice Springs, and Fishers Ridge near Katherine. Locals in Alice were quick to mobilise, staging public meetings and protests, and forming an action group that continues to build and reflect the widespread public opposition to the nuclear waste dump.
Locals from Katherine, the NT's third-biggest town, also formed an action group, which has warned that seasonal inundation of Fishers Ridge should warrant its immediate disqualification. These warnings were brought home when Katherine flooded in April; the margins of Fishers Ridge went under water, rendering the site totally inaccessible. At the time, the federal government refused to rule out Fishers Ridge as a potential dump site.
But it now appears to be looking to Muckaty Station, north of Tennant Creek, as a potential alternative. The trouble is that the Tennant district is prone to the most intense earthquake activity in the NT.
Tennant Creek's first documented quake was recorded at magnitude 5.4 on the Richter scale on January 8, 1987. Aftershocks continued throughout that year, and one year later, on January 22, there were three large quakes with magnitudes 6.3, 6.5 and 6.7, which were followed by many smaller aftershocks.
The three main events were felt in Darwin, while the largest was felt as far as Cairns and in high rise buildings in Perth and Adelaide. The quakes left large, long ground ruptures and a 35-kilometre fault.
A seismic station was subsequently established, and hundreds of events have been recorded since. Activity in the area continues at a high level to this day. More than a dozen tremors were recorded last year, including a magnitude 4.4 quake felt up to 100km from its epicentre.
When the Commonwealth decided to dump its unwanted nuclear waste on some of the country's most vulnerable communities, it threw technical, environmental and scientific criteria out the window, along with its promises. During the 2004 federal election, then federal environment minister Ian Campbell gave voters an "absolute, categorical assurance" that there would be no nuclear dump in the NT. During the 2005 NT election, CLP senator Nigel Scullion boldly pledged: "Not on my watch."
Now, the same politicians are promising communities, faced with housing the nation's nuclear waste, that legislation would protect them from ever having to take international nuclear waste.
Perhaps the politicians making these promises haven't been speaking to their PM. While John Howard was in Washington in the second week of May, his acting PM Mark Vaile was talking up the prospect of Australia "leasing" vast reserves of uranium. Nuclear leasing would allow the sale of uranium to countries that have not signed the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) on condition that they use the uranium for power plants and return spent nuclear fuel to the country of origin.
The "total product stewardship" scheme promoted by the federal government is really a means of bypassing international obligations under the NNPT, to allow nuclear trade with non-signatories such as India. It would allow Australia to lease a shipment of uranium to India, strictly for "peaceful" nuclear power reactors. The next shipment wouldn't be provided until India returned the full complement of waste, thus ensuring that no materials, such as uranium or plutonium, could be diverted to weapons.
Apart from the dangers associated with the mining of uranium, critics warn that, even if strictly enforced, nuclear trade with India for power generation would simply free up other sources of uranium for weapons' production. Local communities in the NT are also concerned about the very real prospect of their immediate environment becoming a dumping ground for the global nuclear industry.
From Green Left Weekly, May 24, 2006.
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