Certainly not in Australia, the driest continent, where people in the outback rely on underground water.
If it was done, you might as well say the water will be contaminated for all time. If solid radioactive waste was buried, the drums could be dug up every 50 years or so to check if they were leaking. Not with water.
And how could you guarantee the water containing uranium would stay in the one spot? Is it possible, even in a stable continent like Australia, for the land to rise a little over a thousand years, or for an earthquake to open up a fault line, in either case allowing the water to pollute other sections of artesian water? Just this week an earthquake hit Sydney and cut the power to 2000 homes.
You might say these scenario are fanciful. Think again.
The Federal Government has just given the green light for the Beverley uranium mine in South Australia. The mine is located between the Flinders Ranges and Lake Frome, more than 500km north of Adelaide, but it will use a controversial method of extraction, called in-situ leaching.
Consider this scenario: 27 tonnes of sulphuric acid will be pumped into the ground to recover each tonne of uranium. This is madness.
When the mine begins in 2000, it will be the first in Australia using this method of extraction.
The Environment Minister and a South Australian, Robert Hill, had already given approval in principle last December, but he had to wait until this week for the results of a crucial hydrogeological assessment: when the waste is sent back underground, would the radioactive water contaminate the surrounding ground water?
Hill says the answer he got from the Australian Geological Survey Organisation was no.
"The advice from [the survey organisation] demonstrates that the Beverley sand aquifer is isolated from the Great Artesian Basin and other surrounding ground water," he says. "The isolation of the aquifer makes it uniquely suited to the in-situ leaching technology to be employed in recovering uranium at Beverley."
Then this brave prediction: "The waste will remain isolated from the biosphere throughout time."
The Democrats are blunt: "the idea is stupid."
The Australian Conservation Foundation condemns the project as unsafe and unacceptable for use in the driest state of the driest continent on Earth. The foundation claims the leaching method has been a disaster in the United States and in Europe.
Hill says the survey organition findings were reinforced by advice from the Netherlands Institute of Applied Geoscience. He also pointed out that the mining company, Heathgate Resources, a subsidiary of the giant Californian nuclear company General Atomics, has signed agreements with four Aboriginal groups which have lodged native title claims over the Beverley area, to provide for royalties over the life of the mine.
Yesterday the Adnyamathanha community of the northern Flinders Ranges said the native-title agreements were signed under duress in August 1998. A statement from the community said Aboriginal people were deliberately marginalised from consultations after they raised their opposition to the project, and feared their concerns would be ignored unless they entered into negotiation with the mining company.
Don't expect to read too much about the Beverley mine. Uranium mining is not an issue greatly concerning voters, the polls suggest. That poses the question, what happened to the passion of the anti-uranium movement?
It seems like a hundred years ago that opposition to yellowcake was the number one priority of the green lobby. Then it was embraced by a broad swathe of the community, and many were prepared to march to show the depth of their feelings.
In 1984, protesters wept as Labor Party delegates filed out of their national conference at the Lakeside hotel after watering down the uranium policy. Since then opposition to uranium mining has fizzled even though both major parties have been pragmatic about the issue.
Under Labor's 13-year rule, Australia had the three-mines policy. It was like being half pregnant; the existing mines could continue operating, to pacify the unions, but no more could be opened, to suit the green lobby.
So the green lobby turned its attention to saving oldgrowth forests. There was never any doubt that ideological opposition to uranium mining and the nuclear industry remained strong in the hearts of many Australians. But times change, and with them, our priorities. Our collective environmental passion changed to other issues and some of it was probably buried under mortgages, and the pressures of having to work longer hours or just to hold a job as Labor and Liberal governments embraced economic rationalism.
For the past week, before the Beverley announcement, the issue of radioactive waste has been making news. A company called Pangea wants to import 75,000 tonnes of spent nuclear fuel or waste from reprocessing to bury in a proposed waste dump in outback Western Australia. It says, correctly, that Australia has the right mix of a uniquely stable geology and a stable democratic political system. The company is prepared to spend $6 billion to set up the project and $450 million a year to run it. That's a lot of money and a lot of jobs.
But the Federal Government will not budge, and has told Pangea several times it will not change its policy on accepting foreign nuclear waste. As Pangea stepped up its media war this weekend, a senior minister was asking what part of "no" Pangea did not understand.
The Government says it will not allow the Beverley go-ahead to be used to pressure it into allowing the international nuclear waste dump .
John Howard held the line when he became involved in the issue yesterday. "Just as we can decide to allow a new uranium mine to open, we can decide whether or not waste is dumped in this coun- try. And we have done that. We have made it absolutely clear that that will not be allowed ... World opinion doesn't matter ... It's the decision of the Australian people that matters and the Australian people through their government have said we won' t be a nuclear waste dump. Full stop."
The pressure on Howard to accept the waste dump is going to continue. The charge of hypocrisy will be laid: the Government exports yellowcake which is processed and used in nuclear reactors, therefore why shouldn't the Government accept back the spent fuel rods for storage?
To me, it's a nonsense argument, but people who hold that view will make it known, loud and clear, over the coming months.
ross.peake@canberratimes.com.au
This article by Ross Peake was published in the Canberra Times issue of Saturday, March 20, 1999, on page C1.