Press release – 4 December, 2015Sydney, 5 December 2015 – As Australia prepares today to receive a shipment of its own reprocessed nuclear waste that still contains plutonium, a poll has shown that nearly three quarters of Australians oppose plans to store nuclear waste for other countries.The ReachTEL poll conducted on 26 November, 2015, asked 3,144 people if they supported Australia accepting nuclear waste from overseas. 72.1% of respondents opposed the idea, 9.6% were undecided and 18.3% supported it. The poll had a +/-1.9% margin of error and was commissioned by Greenpeace Australia Pacific.
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull in October said Australia should “look closely”  at storing nuclear waste for other countries and the government has shortlisted six sites for a permanent nuclear waste dump.
Emma Gibson, the head of programs for Greenpeace Australia Pacific, said:
“Most Australians rightly don’t want their country to become a nuclear waste dump for the rest of the world. Nobody has yet has worked out a safe way to manage long-term nuclear waste, which can remain dangerous for hundreds of thousands of years.
“Creating a permanent nuclear waste facility doesn’t just mean digging a hole in the ground and putting the waste there. It takes years of consultations and planning because of the danger involved, as well as community opposition.
“It was only last month that
Finland became the first country in the world
to issue a construction license for a permanent underground nuclear waste repository, which will cost nearly one billion euros just to build. That speaks volumes.”
The BBC Shanghai ship will dock today at Port Kembla, NSW, with its cargo of radioactive nuclear waste that is returning from France.
Earlier this week, Greenpeace revealed the waste, which Australian authorities insist is ‘intermediate-level waste’, was
classified as ‘high-level waste’ by French nuclear authorities
. The French company responsible for reprocessing the waste says it still contains plutonium.
“Australia still doesn’t have a proper plan for its own nuclear waste, so I don’t know how the government plans to deal with the rest of the world’s nuclear waste too,” said Ms Gibson.
The waste will be transported by road to the Lucas Heights nuclear facility for storage on Saturday night.
ENDS
More: Liam Kelly,
+61 407 742 025
.