Amid heightened global fears about security, Australia's only nuclear reactor has become the subject of serious risk-return analysis.
Deep in the southern shire of Sydney, nestled among the gum trees and quiet suburban streets, Australia's only nuclear reactor looks harmless enough. But when it comes to controversy, the Lucas Heights reactor has seen it all.
Built in 1956, it achieved fission power in 1958 and began operation in 1960. For the past 40 years it has offered Australia a research facility for its scientific community and radioisotopes for its medical community, and has been a never-ending source of frustration and anxiety for its local community. It has seen protesters scale its towers, block its drains and wage campaign after campaign to shut it down. Yet it has survived.
In 1997, the Federal Government announced that it would not be refurbishing the existing reactor but instead would build a new reactor on the same site, with twice the capacity, at an estimated cost of $300 million.
At the time, the Minister for Science, Peter McGauran, characterised the decision as being a matter of life and death. He said thousands of Australians depended on the certain supply of the facility's radiopharmaceuticals for nuclear medicine.
Neither this nor the promise of the creation of 800 jobs in the construction of the reactor was enough to stop the roars of disapproval from the local community, the Democrats, the Greens and the ALP. While some organisations argued that the reactor was old technology and no longer necessary as a diagnostic tool, which is its main function in oncology, others said the real problem was the site of the reactor, in the suburbs of Australia's largest city.
And when the then industry minister, Nick Minchin, announced that Argentinian company INVAP had become the preferred tenderer for the construction of the new reactor, tempers reached boiling point. On August 15, 2000, the Senate decided to establish a committee of inquiry to examine "the need for a new reactor; the tendering process and the contract; health and safety matters and nuclear waste management issues".
Suddenly the local problem had gone national. The Senate committee's majority report concluded that the case for the new reactor had not been established and the potential risks had not been assessed. That was in May 2001.
Then came September 11.
These days the issue is no longer what could happen to the locals, it is what is happening to the science budget, what is happening to medical research, what is happening to the nuclear waste this new, larger reactor will generate and, last and most frightening of all, what could happen to Sydney if the rather exposed construction became a terrorist target.
Controversy rages over three key issues: that the installation is of questionable value; that it is a terrorist target and inadequately protected; and that there is no solution to the problem of nuclear waste. None of these questions is academic, and all are being asked by a range of experts.
First is the issue of whether the new reactor will supply good medicine and good science.
That depends, says Barry Allen, a former chief research scientist at the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation who now works at the St George Cancer Care Centre. He says the reactor will be "a step into the past, and it may well be the last of its kind ever built. The question is really what the taxpayers want. Do they want new therapies, or do they want the reactor to be the centre of all research?"
Allen's point is underscored in this year's Budget. Nuclear research and ANSTO in particular were the clear winners. They received $286 million, which includes $104 million to help build the reactor. McGauran says this is the largest single science project ever funded.
The fuss over the new reactor might have been confined to the environmental, scientific and medical communities had it not been for the events of September 11. When the two commercial airlines slammed into the World Trade Center towers, the issue of security, and especially security surrounding nuclear installations, came into sharp focus. Security experts were quick to warn that security needed to be tightened around all nuclear facilities. Furthermore, it soon emerged that the third plane hijacked on September 11, United Airlines Flight 93, was headed for the Three Mile Island nuclear reactor outside Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, when it crashed in a rural area nearby. American aviation officials declared a no-fly zone within 16 kilometres of all US nuclear facilities.
Ploughing a fully laden commercial jet into a nuclear facility would certainly produce the desired effect. According to US intelligence sources, nuclear medical facilities pose the greatest risk because of their routinely lax security.
Residents in the Lucas Heights area began asking what kind of security was in place around their reactor.
They didn't have to wait long to find out. On December 17, 2001, 51 Greenpeace activists stormed the grounds of the Lucas Heights nuclear research facility in a military-style exercise, taking Australian Protective Service and police officers by complete surprise.
When the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency responded by promising a review of their security measures, Michael McKinley, senior lecturer in international relations and strategy at the Australian National University, with a specialist interest in international terrorism, said: "Nuclear reactors are vulnerable to both accidents and attack. All round the world we are seeing a boost in security measures around what are essentially undefendable targets. The safety and security review proposed by ARPANSA is a farce. To really assess the risks of building a new reactor in Sydney, an independent body should run the review."
The embarrassing security breach came as former Lucas Heights engineer Tony Wood told an ARPANSA forum the facility "didn't have adequate protection for anything".
"Our procedures are so cumbersome, and they'd take so long to implement, they'd be ineffective," Wood said.
Undeterred, John Loy, ARPANSA's chief executive, announced on April 5 that he had given ANSTO a licence to construct a new nuclear reactor. In the five-page summary of why he gave ANSTO the licence, Loy touches on the issue of security, saying: "There has been very close examination of scenarios for attack upon the reactor and measures are to be included in the design to reduce greatly the likelihood of the success of any such attack."
He adds: "Clearly it is very difficult to talk about these issues in the public arena, as to do so would provide a blueprint for such an attack."
Chair of the Sutherland Emergency Management Committee, Genevieve Rankin, is not convinced.
"The threat of a terrorist attack on Lucas Heights is a very real one," she says. Not only because it is a nuclear facility, but because such an attack would also carry great symbolic significance. The information given and the precautions taken are ludicrous in light of the threat potential."
Rankin accuses ARPANSA of slipping around the tough question of security in this way.
"When ARPANSA issued a site licence, they looked at a reference accident in this case, a controlled radiation leak that doesn't involve a core meltdown or sabotage and they asked ANSTO if they would be able to handle that scenario. Not surprisingly, ANSTO passed with flying colours.
"They used the same reference accident example when ANSTO applied for the construction licence. Once again, they passed with flying colours."
However, Rankin believes that Loy did not model the full impact of a commercial jet being flown into the reactor, because "Loy never accepted that was a credible threat. So he gives lip service to saying he took it into account, but the licence to construct the reactor was not given because ANSTO was seen to be able to deal with that eventuality."
The Federal Government appears not to have heard, or not to be listening to, either locals' or experts' concerns. Construction of the new reactor continues, but there is one obstacle yet to be overcome.
Three weeks ago, Greenpeace asked the NSW Federal Court to overturn the construction licence issued by ARPANSA to ANSTO for the new Lucas Heights reactor.
"We believe that ARPANSA failed to take into account `international best practice in relation to radiation protection and nuclear safety' as required by the law, especially in relation to spent nuclear fuel and radioactive waste management," said Greenpeace campaigner Stephen Campbell.
In response, ANSTO claimed "the management, handling, processing and storage of spent nuclear fuel and radioactive waste is not, and was not, a matter required to be taken into account in the making of the decision to issue the facility licence".
The matter is before Federal Court judge Bryan Beaumont.
Whatever the outcome of the proceedings, one thing is clear: the issue of what to do with the spent nuclear fuel produced by the reactor has not been resolved.
McGauran believes France or Argentina will eventually accept the waste for reprocessing. "Both governments are confident they will be able to provide the service for Australia," he says.
Greenpeace's Campbell acknowledges that the French and present Argentinian governments have given those agreements. However, he says "the contract has been given to the French company Cogema, and that company has no authorisation to process our waste. The French Environment Minister has so far refused to give Cogema the licence."
On the question of Argentina picking up the slack, Campbell says: "The current government has not yet ratified the agreement with Australia. And we understand that if they do so, the contract will be challenged in court, because it is specifically mentioned in the Argentinian Constitution that no government can authorise the importation of nuclear waste."
With the new reactor expected to last another 40 years, its annual budget of $160 million will tie vast amounts of money to the one field of research and make nuclear medicine the dominant player in diagnosis and treatment options.
Helen Garnett, the chief executive of ANSTO, says this will be money well spent: "The new reactor will give Australians access to the level of health they have become used to, and it will provide research and training for young people working with new materials in a range of areas."
Not true, says Bill Williams, a Victorian GP and member of the Medical Association for Prevention of War. "The Government runs this scare campaign saying the reactor is a life or death issue for those suffering with cancer. Absolute nonsense. Most cancer is treated through surgery, chemotherapy and deep x-ray therapy, and you don't need a reactor for any of that.
"Nor do you need an Australian reactor to create the isotopes used for diagnosis. Canada currently provides 60 per cent of the world demand for these isotopes, and we could do what the US and Japan do and simply import them at far less [than] the cost of a nuclear reactor."
Garnett responds: "We are so far down the supply chain, we can't be sure we would have a regular supply of these isotopes. And if a plane carrying this material suddenly has an animal as cargo, the isotopes have to be taken off. That's an international requirement."
Back to Williams: "ARPANSA has just given the nod to a $300million and it may blow out to $500 million nuclear facility and they are justifying it on the grounds that an animal may get on a plane carrying technnetium 99 [the most common isotope]. That's absurd."
While many in the medical community are keen to have a secure domestic supply of radioisotopes from Lucas Heights, not all doctors agree. Alan Zimmet, a Victorian cancer specialist, says importation would not pose any real problems. "Many radioisotopes are imported and some hospitals are able to produce their own with nuclear accelerators. I don't believe it will make much difference to patient treatment whether we have a new reactor or not."
Which begs the question: if the reactor cannot be justified as a medical necessity, will never become financially viable and poses a serious threat to the safety of those living within a 10km radius, why have it?
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