Since that article was written (February 2020), additional information has come to light.

 

• Labor backed in the Government’s authority to make the declaration. Tanya Plibersek justified this collaboration by speciously declaring “62 per cent of locals in the Kimba community have voted in favour of the remote storage site, and while I understand further community consolation must be undertaken, Labor sees this as a positive indication of the community’s sentiments.” The earlier article shows just what a farce that “community vote” was.

 

• The CEO of the government’s own nuclear safety agency, ARPANSA stated in relevant evidence (June 2020) to a Senate Inquiry on the NRWMF Amendment Bill 2020, that: “Waste can be safely stored at Lucas Heights for decades to come.” In the last federal budget an extra $60million was allocated for expansion of intermediate-level waste storage at Lucas Heights.

 

• A further two tonnes of intermediate level waste is currently on its way to Australia by specially sealed shipping container. The waste is from the UK. Like an earlier repatriation of intermediate-level waste from France in 2015, the UK waste originated from used fuel rods from the Lucas Heights reactor in Sydney and was a by-product of its having been reprocessed into nuclear fuel for reactors in France and the UK. The intermediate-level waste will go to Lucas Heights before being transported to Kimba.

 

• In making yesterday’s declaration, Pitt increased the size of the Napandee site by a third, from 160 hectares to 211 hectares.

 

It is now clear that a low-level waste dump outside Lucas Heights is unnecessary.  It is, however, a convenient Trojan Horse for getting the more dangerous intermediate-level waste out of Sydney and over to Kimba where it will be stored above ground pending, at some time in the distant future, the selection of a permanent intermediate-level nuclear dump.

 

The fight has really just begun.