A survey commissioned by Greenpeace has revealed a strong anti-nuclear sentiment in the Australian population. The survey, conducted by Insight Research Australia in late September and early October 1998, involved telephone interviews with 1043 respondents throughout Australia.

Insight Research Australia said, "The Australian people have been shown to be deeply concerned about nuclear waste and very strongly opposed to Australia becoming a 'dumping ground' for the world's nuclear waste.This level of concern was shown to be consistent across all age groups and all social strata no matter where in Australia people are living."

Question One: Do you think the federal parliament should pass legislation to ban the import of foreign nuclear waste into Australia?
Yes - 85%
No - 9%
Other - 6%

Pangea Resources wants to dump overseas high-level nuclear waste in Western Australia or South Australia. To put the proposal in perspective, Greenpeace says that the 75,000 tonne figure mentioned by Pangea is 233,644 times the amount of spent reactor fuel that has been produced by the Lucas Heights reactor in Sydney over 44 years of operation.

Yet 75,000 tonnes will represent only one fifth of the world's current stockpile of spent fuel. So Pangea is not offering a "global solution to a global problem", as it frequently claims. At best, Pangea is offering one fifth of a solution. In fact, Pangea is offering no solution whatsoever given the manifold problems with its proposal, given that an international dump would facilitate the ongoing generation of high-level nuclear waste and given the haste with which politicians have distanced themselves from Pangea.

(* Pangea disbanded in 2001.)

Question Two: Do you support the federal government's proposal to send all of Australia's nuclear waste to South Australia for disposal?
Yes - 23%
No - 55%
Other - 22%

Significantly, 86% of South Australian respondents answered "no" to question two. Stating the obvious, Insight Research Australia said, "The results suggest that any attempts to establish waste disposal sites will be met with vigorous opposition from the residents of the state concerned."

The strong opposition to a national dump in SA takes on added significance as the plan to build a new reactor in Sydney is heavily dependent on the dumping of waste in South Australia. Moreover, the establishment of a national dump could facilitate Pangea Resources' plans to establish an international dump.

Opposition to the planned dump in South Australia is likely to rise as the government's duplicity becomes more widely known. The dump is being sold as a "national" dump, but the head of radioactive waste management at ANSTO has acknowledged that the "major fraction" of the waste sent to the dump will be from ANSTO. The planned dump is nothing more than a clearing exercise for ANSTO, designed to reduce opposition to the plan to build a new reactor in Sydney.

The government's duplicity regarding higher-level nuclear wastes from nuclear reprocessing will also generate further opposition the more widely it is understood. The government tells South Australians that there are no firm plans to send reprocessing wastes to South Australia, while Sydney-siders are assured that reprocessing wastes will be sent to South Australia, not stored at Lucas Heights.

Question Three: Do you think the federal government should spend as much on alternative renewable technologies as it does on nuclear technology?
Yes - 83%
No - 8%
Other - 9%

Younger people in particular expressed support for renewable, alternative technologies for power generation and medical and scientific applications. According to Greenpeace, funding for renewable energy over the next four years will be $321 million while funding for the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation and for the planned new nuclear reactor will be between $472-686 million.

Question Four: The government admits there is no disposal method for higher level nuclear waste. Do you think Australia should build a new reactor which will produce more of this waste?
Yes - 15%
No - 75%
Other - 10%

Opposition to a new reactor was equally strong in other states as in New South Wales.

The government insists that higher-level wastes will ultimately be disposed of in a deep geological repository. However there are no plans for such a repository, no funding to advance this plan, and no action is foreseen on this issue for the next 50-100 years according to Greenpeace.

Commenting on the survey, Jean McSorley from Greenpeace International said, "The Australian nuclear industry is attempting to create what it terms a 'nuclear renaissance'. Such a misguided renaissance can only happen if either the problem of nuclear waste is ignored or a solution found. A solution to the problems of nuclear waste is highly likely to arise within the near future. The government and industry cannot ignore the problem of nuclear waste, especially as they have no solution for disposing of it in an environmentally acceptable manner.

"The driving forces behind the nuclear renaissance in Australia are organisations and individuals who put short-term gain before the long-term consequences of their actions. These people must be very naive if they think the public will forgive them for the nuclear waste legacy their activities leave behind", McSorley said.

IRATE Andamooka residents heckled Federal Government representatives yesterday over a proposed nuclear waste dump during a heated information session.

"If you believe what the Government tells us you believe in fairies," Andamooka town leader Bob Norton told the gathering of more than 60 residents of the opal-mining district.

Mr Norton, 73, accused the Government of covering up plans to eventually co-locate a store for higher levels of radioactive waste at the dump site.

"The Federal Government has treated us in a completely totalitarian way, there is no democracy attached to this process whatsoever," he said.

Three sites have been short-listed by the Commonwealth for a low-level radioactive waste dump, including one site less than 40km south of Andamooka. Area 52A, known as Evetts Field West, near Woomera, is the preferred location.

The protest yesterday came after community leaders in the state's Far North boycotted a meeting with the Government on Tuesday.

Coober Pedy Mayor Eric Malliotis said: "The Commonwealth will do it with or without us so what's the point of going to a meeting."

Yesterday, Department of Education, Science and Training representative Dr Caroline Perkins tried to reassure the fiery gathering that the proposed dump posed no health threat to locals. "The Government has guaranteed there will be no co-location of intermediate-level waste at the proposed site," she said.

Dr Perkins has led information sessions at Roxby Downs, Port Augusta, Woomera and Broken Hill in the past week.

Andamooka Progress Association chairman Chris Lyons was sceptical of Government assurances that the dump would have no health impact. "At Maralinga during the bomb testing, people were told `don't worry, just don't look at the light' and we all know what happened there," he said. "If it's so harmless why don't the politicians dump it in their own back yard?"

Mr Lyons said a radioactive waste dump would devastate the town's tourism industry.