A United States company with international investors is exploring the possibility of siting a waste dump in Australia which could be used to dispose of spent nuclear fuel and weapons material. Pangea Resources Inc. has been in Australia quietly investigating the idea of an international repository for two years when a promotional video, leaked to the Australian news media at the end of 1998, shed light on the project.

The federal and state governments and the nuclear industry might have hoped the video and the Access Economics’ evaluation document identifying Australia as the “world’s best” site for an international nuclear dump might never have received public attention. Or that a more modest long term slowly, slowly approach to dump nuclear waste on Aboriginal land in WA would be more palatable.

The Pangea video was obtained by Friends of the Earth in the UK and released to Australian media in December 1998 by nuclear campaigner Jean McSorley. On 11 March Giz Watson, Greens (WA) MLC, obtained the economic evaluation of Pangea’s proposal, carried out by Access Economics. This was acquired with the permission of Pangea Australia.

As a result it became clear that WA is indeed the proposed nuclear toilet of the world. The Access document clearly identifies WA as being the proposed site. Whilst it is not specific in the site's location, other Pangea documents obtained on the 19th of March by Ms Watson indicate the location to be near Newman in the north of WA.

“The sedimentary formation near Newman in the outback of West Australia has been stable for 500 million years, making it a site which would not require a robust engineered barrier system to keep the waste isolated for hundreds of thousands of years”, according to James Voss, president of the Seattle based Pangea company.

The project is aimed at nuclear waste generated by countries other than the U.S. The projected size of such a repository, however, is similar to that which the U.S. is proposing at Yucca Mountain, Nevada. Its infrastructure development cost is estimated to be $10 billion dollars.

The centerpiece of the proposal is “a geological repository located in a suitable and very simple geology and topography with a robust arid climate whose safety could be predicted with relative ease.” Other criteria include “a country that has an international history of strong support for non-proliferation, which has a stable democratic society, and which is trusted by most nations of the world.” Pangea has identified its preferred location as being in the northwest of Western Australia.

To this end we know that Clough Ltd of Western Australia has carried out a ‘scheduling outline’ for the Pangea proposal. It is as yet unclear what the ‘scheduling outline’ is. Pangea’s chairman Mr Pentz has outlined three components of Pangea’s strategy for establishing a facility in Western Australia: 1.Technical This is "primarily focused on demonstrating safety." 2.Economic While "Pangea will be a risky concept", the corporation aims to "be profitable but not profit driven", "providing adequate rewards for the host country and its people." 3.Political and public acceptance.

The concept envisages a dedicated port and rail link to an inland repository site covering perhaps 5 sq km on the surface and 20 sq km underground (500 metres down). There would be a small fleet of dedicated and purpose-built ships. A map shows the geologically-stable and low-population prospective area to be near Newman, WA.

Pangea’s business plan is based on taking 76,000 metric tons of spent fuel and/or reprocessed high-level waste over some 40 years.

The capital expenditure is estimated at AUD$ 6 billion, with over $100 million per year operating cost, which would add about one percent to the Australian GNP. “This commercial scheme will also provide the repository which can be used to dispose of unwanted nuclear materials from disarmament”, which the company sees as a major spin-off. “It is a global solution to a global problem and it is our fervent wish to make a significant contribution to world security. We do not believe the Pangea concept to be in competition with other alternative solutions, including national solutions”, said Mr Pentz, with apparent reference to Yucca Mountain in USA.

Ralph Stoll, vice president of Pangea’s U.S. operations, said an international repository would be able to handle up to a total of 76,000 metric tons (MT) of spent fuel, although the actual size won’t be determined until a proposed site is studied. Spent fuel would be shipped to the facility at a rate of 3,000 MT p.a. once the repository is fully operational. The receipt rate amounts to only 20% of the spent fuel expected to be generated annually by commercial reactors around the world. It is proposed that the facility would receive spent nuclear waste for about 40 years. It must be questioned whether the dump's life would be extended and its size enlarged once operational.

Those involved with the promotional effort also see the possibility that the repository could be used to dispose of excess plutonium from nuclear weapons - either in spent mixed oxide fuel or in the Synroc based ceramic which was developed by the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation. Synroc is a method of encasing/vitrifying nuclear waste in a ceramic material which is supposed to stop radioactive release. The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has chosen the synroc-like ceramic as the waste form to immobilise its excess weapons plutonium.

So where did the Pangea concept come from?

According to Pangea the concept can be traced to the Synroc Study Group which began its activities in late December 1988. The Synroc Study Group was a vehicle set up by the Australian government to study possibilities for the commercial potential for Synroc in a global context.

This effort was conducted by four leading Australian based resource companies, ANSTO and the Research School of Earth Science and ANU. This work progressed towards a conceptual plan for a reprocessing facility located in Australia with a geological disposal facility to take the resultant immobilised materials and to provide the option of direct spent fuel disposal by bypassing the reprocessing facility.

The Pangea concept has built on some components of the Synroc Study Group and has been modified by others, but the relevance of the Synroc technology to a global solution in partnership with Pangea remains intact. ANSTO’s continued development of Synroc technology is an integral part of an Australian international repository.

ANSTO is not actively engaged in the Pangea concept however, according to David Pentz, the American chairman of Pangea.

In 1992 a public announcement by the then-responsible minister in the federal government in Canberra did not elicit the usual negative response that many other nations have expressed to a proposal for a nuclear disposal facility. In fact its announcement was virtually unnoticed by the media and public. Mr Ringwood, the inventor of Synroc told an anti nuclear campaigner Jean McSorley, in 1992 that the Federal Government and ANSTO had been approached at that time regarding Australia taking plutonium from warheads.

James Voss, a Director of Pangea Australia says Australia suggested the idea of an international dump in 1992, without clarifying whether the suggestion was for a dump in Australia or saying exactly who in Australia made the suggestion.

The Australian newspaper reported that one of Australia’s eminent scientists, Gustav Nossal, (who accepted a consultancy with Pangea to push the project forward), praised the concept as “the only permanent solution”. Nossal is reported as saying it would give Australia a “leadership role in solving the problems of nuclear weapons and waste”.

The proposal has also attracted support from right-wing think-tanks such as the Institute of Public Affairs and a number of right-wing media commentators. Another supporter is Robert Galluci, President Clinton’s ‘special envoy on weapons of mass destruction’. US officials confirmed that the Pangea plan is one of three waste dump proposals being circulated in Washington. The others are to dump nuclear waste on Wake Island (in the Pacific) or in Russia.

“The project would have a profoundly beneficial economic impact. Thousands of jobs would be created”, the Pangea video promises. Mike Nahan, executive director of the Institute of Public Affairs, says nuclear waste storage could generate $25 billion annually on a global scale. Like the prime minister, Nahan appears to have been bitten by the reconciliation bug: “It [the Pangea dump] would probably need to be located on Aborigines’ land which would require their permission and, if given, provide much-needed income and jobs”.

It is also of ominous interest to note that an accident en-route or at such a facility could give the state’s economy quite a boost, too.

An accident involving a release of radioactivity from a container in an urban area could have economic “consequences” in the order of US$2 billion, according to a 1980 study by the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

After around 200,000 years, nuclear waste is no more radioactive than many natural geological formations, the Pangea video says. The video notes that the major risk with geological disposal is waste dissolving in rainwater and migrating. ‘Vast areas of inland Australia are flat, remote, arid and extremely impermeable, and there is very little ground water’, according to Pangea. Hence Western Australia’s “world’s best” billing.

Worldwide, nuclear power plants generate about 14,000 tonnes of spent fuel annually. The current stockpile amounts to some 160,000 tonnes. According to Mary Olsen, from the US Nuclear Information and Resource Service, nuclear power accounts for 95% of the radioactivity generated in the last 50 years from all sources, including nuclear weapons production.

“There is a good degree of consensus worldwide by governments and scientists that geological disposal is the most viable option”, the Pangea video claims. But if there was scientific and political consensus on the wisdom and safety of “geological disposal” (underground dumps), they would be operating successfully overseas and there would be no push to establish an international dump in Australia.

So-called "disposal" in underground dumps is an out-of-sight, out-of-mind con job. The least problematic of a bad bunch of options is engineered, above-ground storage at the point of production/use. On-site storage beats centralised stores or dumps because it avoids the risks associated with transportation. On-site storage also forces producers/users to deal with their own mess, and this encourages the minimisation of waste production.

Above-ground storage is a better option compared to underground dumps because:

• it is easier to monitor above-ground storesthere is a better chance of effective remedial action if problems are discovered
• and a greater number of future management options will be available.

Pangea Resources, and other supporters of the project, have adopted a moralistic tone. Nuclear waste is a “world problem”, they say. This is nonsense, of course, because just three countries -- the US, France and Japan -- account for almost 60% of all nuclear power plants.

For every country with nuclear power plants, there are five without. Another line of argument is that Australia chooses to sell uranium so “we” should accept the waste. But according to a 1998 Newspoll, two-thirds of the Australian population oppose the Jabiluka uranium mine, yet the mine proceeds. In Western Australia where the waste is to be deposited, currently we do not even produce uranium, though at this time the Liberal state government is actively promoting the development of 11 uranium mines. Another attempt to present a compelling argument is that the dump would be a safe resting place for plutonium from dismantled nuclear weapons. There’s no doubt that the world inventory of plutonium, hundreds of tonnes and increasing steadily, represents a major risk. But only a portion of the stockpile is from dismantled weapons. Japan, for example, has amassed a huge stockpile of plutonium, ostensibly for its nuclear power program.

All of the eight nuclear weapons states - the US, UK, France, China, Russia, Israel, India and Pakistan -- intend to maintain, and in some cases, upgrade their arsenals. The dump proposal is not driven by concerns about weapons’ proliferation. It is an attempt by the nuclear power industry to dump its waste problems on isolated and politically vulnerable communities in order to increase its chances of survival.