Keep nuke waste away
July 12, 2007 Edition 1
http://www.capetimes.co.za/index.php?fArticleId=3928741
Are Eskom, the South African Nuclear Energy Corporation (Necsa), the Pebble Bed Modular Reactor (PBMR) and the South African Nuclear Industry Association (Sania) trying to sell South Africa as a “deep repository” site for the world’s nuclear waste?
A number of countries were represented at a workshop on “disposing” of radioactive materials in Cape Town this month, at the very time when Necsa stated its plans to drill a deep hole in the Karoo and bury nuclear waste there.
The nations have been looking for somewhere to dump nuclear waste – since there is no way to “dispose” of it. France, Germany and Hungary have been dumping their nuclear waste in Russia’s Siberian desert and contamination from the Mayak nuclear reactor has been similar to Chernobyl.
Russian environmentalists have protested at the port of arrival of the waste and all along railway stations that the waste travelled through.
In the Ukraine, activists protested against global dumping at the Chernobyl site and said that the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) was operating for the interests in the nuclear industry alone.
Industries in the United States imported nuclear waste under the guise of raw materials or depleted uranium.
The Americans chose a deep repository for nuclear waste in Yucca Mountain. But indigenous people were tired of watching their people die of cancers caused by uranium and they fought against dumping of waste on their lands.
Activists also protested along the transport routes the nuclear waste would take in the US.
Canadian MPs said they did not want Canada to be a global nuclear waste dump. There’s no law that governs the dumping of nuclear waste in another nation.
So what are the ethics of South Africans regarding the rest of the world dumping their nuclear waste in our backyard? The US alone has 77 000 tons of it.
In South Africa we know how many shipwrecks spill oil and even uranium in Cape Town. Are South Africans prepared to risk nuclear waste shipwrecks? South Africans are also familiar with the number of road accidents in this country.
If South Africans want to protect their homes and children from poisoning from a deep repository in the heart of this country, they must speak out and demand that the government pass a law forbidding importation of radioactive waste from other nations.
Ingela Richardson
Gonubie
