Illawarra unions have made it clear their members will work to unload the shipment of Australian nuclear waste coming home from France, but will not handle any other nations’ shipments that governments may decide to accept.
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The cargo ship BBC Shanghai is due to arrive in Port Kembla on Saturday morning with about 10 tonnes of waste which had been reprocessed in France.
The dock workers union, the Maritime Union of Australia, said its members would unload the shipment of reprocessed waste without incident.
But MUA southern NSW branch secretary Garry Keane said that was because it was Australia’s waste, and they would not accept waste shipments from another country.
“Our members do not support the nuclear industry,” he said. “There is no totally safe way to transport or store waste which remains a danger and threatens communities for thousands of years.
“Understandably no one else wants our nuclear waste - that is why it is coming back to Lucas Heights and we want to send a clear message that we don’t accept anyone else’s nuclear waste.”
South Coast Labor Council secretary Arthur Rorris said the precautions being taken showed the risks.
“I don’t remember this level of police operation being required for the last imported shipment of solar panels,” he said. “The fact that we have this operation tells us that this is very dangerous, and we now have it confirmed that we have plutonium in the waste.”
The Australian Conservation Foundation, among the strongest opponents of the nuclear industry in Australia, said it did not want the shipment stopped, as ANSTO’s Lucas Heights facility was the best place for it to end up.
“We reluctantly accept that we have a responsibility to accept our own waste,” the ACF’s Dave Sweeney said.
“But we comprehensively draw the line against any sniff of international waste.”
Greenpeace, the MUA, SCLS and other anti-nuclear groups will protest at Port Kembla harbour when the shipment arrives.
ANSTO says the shipment is “intermediate-level” waste in accordance with international standards but Greenpeace said the French classification system, which names the shipment as “high-level” waste, is more appropriate.
The Federal Government is spending $30 million to repatriate the waste.
A major police operation is planned for the weekend, with an exclusion zone around the harbour from 5am to 3pm Saturday, and police guarding the shipment as it is trucked through Wollongong to Lucas Heights, likely early on Sunday.
