Australia receives UK nuclear waste shipment amid bitter national deposit dispute | Australia news

Two tons of nuclear waste will be shipped from the UK to Australia next year as the national repository debate continues.

The shipment of four 500 kg canisters in a forged steel container called TN-81 is part of a waste swap agreement with the UK.

The intermediate level waste is to be temporarily stored at the Lucas Heights facility in Sydney and then sent to the national radioactive waste disposal facility that the federal government plans to build near Kimba in South Australia.

However, this project is the subject of bitter controversy and will take years. It will take several years to get all regulatory approvals and the government has declined to give a name to start construction.

In 1996, Australia sent spent fuel rods from its Hifar reactor – the predecessor of the existing Opal multi-purpose reactor – to the UK to be recycled into fuel for nuclear power plants. The “radiologically equivalent” waste will be sent to Australia as part of the 2022 waste return project.

The Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency (Arpansa) reported this week that it is working with the UK Nuclear Regulatory Agency “to inspect containers for radioactive waste to be returned to Australia from the Sellafield reprocessing facility”.

“The waste relates to the processing of spent fuel that was sent to the UK from the former Australian research reactor in previous years,” said Arpansa.

The Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organization (Ansto) says it successfully repatriated radioactive waste from France to Australia in 2015 and the TN-81 were successfully used in 180 nuclear shipments around the world.

The federal government says Lucas Heights doesn’t have the space or permits to dump the country’s nuclear waste, which is spread across more than 100 locations. It settled on a site in Napandee near Kimba in South Australia.

This plan was deeply divisive.

A vote by the Australian Electoral Commission found that more than 60% of the people in Kimba District supported the facility, which mainly stores medical waste that is currently stored in separate locations across the country.

Sign up to receive the top stories from Guardian Australia every morning

But the traditional owners, the Barngarla, say many were excluded from this choice because they lived outside of the parish. In a separate ballot, Barngarla voters unanimously rejected the proposal.

Barngarla Determination Aboriginal Corporation Chairman Jason Bilney later welcomed changes to the law that left open the possibility of judicial review.

Federal Resource Secretary Keith Pitt has announced that he will host the site on Napandee. However, before this declaration is made, a consultation process has taken place for all who have a legal claim or interest in the proposal.

Submissions for this consultation will close on Friday.

Pitt will take all comments into account, and if he goes ahead and declares Napandee the site, the federal government plans to acquire the land and begin preparations to build the facility – subject to legal challenges.

Craig Wilkins, chief executive officer of the Conservation Council of SA, said the UK delivery highlighted the general problems of creating a national facility. The facility will primarily store low level waste, but will temporarily store intermediate level waste such as those originating in the UK.

Wilkins says Lucas Heights should store all waste until a permanent facility can be built.

“If this is really our waste and we have a responsibility to take care of it, then we have to do it right,” he said.

“We need a real, long-term national approach to our waste management rather than this ad hoc temporary solution of moving some of the waste to South Africa to be temporarily parked in aboveground sheds while they figure out what to do with it . “The waste in the long term. It makes sense to find the long-term solution first. “

International best practice is to bury the waste in a deep landfill in the safest place in the country, he said. “That job isn’t done and until it’s done the trash should … stay with Lucas Heights.”

The government says waste from more than 100 locations needs to be consolidated in a purpose-built facility and that neither Lucas Heights nor the CSIRO storage location in Woomera was intended for permanent storage.

The industrial department argues that Lucas Heights is “not big enough” because any free space is needed for expansion of research activities and it is only allowed for temporary storage.

The debate over nuclear storage continues, as does the debate over Australia’s proposed acquisition of nuclear submarines and the debate over whether Australia needs nuclear power.