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Underground > Switchboard >

Maralinga clean-up?

The Return Of Rothkoid

08:50 / 08.04.02

Fuck-up, more like.

Given that Rosa's posts have touched on this a little, I found this article on the clean-up of Maralinga test-site to be frightening. Contaminated topsoil being blown away, standards of practice being ignored... terrifying. And, of course, out-of-sight, out-of-mind seems to be the line taken by the governments involved...

Not much else to say - must have a think - anyone else able to contribute? Or, to throw it wider, can anyone post about what the "best practice" procedures and levels should be, and how cleanups have gone elsewhere? Is there really such a thing as "cleaning" these sites?

11:48 / 08.04.02

Thanks for posting this, Rothkoid. Can't contribute anything by way of reply to your questions, but Maralinga's a *very* sore point for South Australians - as is the outrageous proposal by the Federal Coalition to dump nuclear waste in SA. I've seen little in the press here about this at present. As you'd expect, the focus is on Woomera. Phillip Adams, for example, has written weekly articles on the back page of the Weekend Australian Review , damning the Federal Govt's 'concentration camp' at Woomera and the way protests there have been met with such brutality. He's also using the paper in his coordination of Australians for Just Refugee Programs . Anyone wanting to show support by writing or donating money can contact him by email at:

philadams@ozemail.com.au

13:02 / 10.04.02

At the Pimba Roadhouse (just down the road from the Woomera 2002 Border Camp) I had a conversation with an old woman named Vonny who, while dubious about refugee politics, was very supportive of the protests against the proposed dump. She told me a group of anti-dump activists from the nearby town of Anamooka (probably remembering that wrong) would be coming on the Saturday to show support for the camp. I don't know if they made it, or the breakouts on Friday scared them off.

Anyway, anecdote aside you might want to look at the irati-wanti site - irati wanti, meaning 'the poison, leave it', is a campaign by a coalition of senior indigenous women to stop a nuclear waste dump being built on their lands - at www.iratiwanti.org

Also worth a look is the new interactive map of Australian nuclear sites at www.futurewa.org/map/

I'm sorry but I can't do the links in html or whatever without the little buttons at the bottom of the screen. Also, you would do more good (imho) sending donations to the Asylum Seeker Resouce Centre than whatever Phillip Adams has going.

Disco is My Class War

06:48 / 11.04.02

I don't know much about cleaning up. The problem is, there's nowhere to put the iradiated soil; if the Aust. government is already about to build a nuclear wste dump near Maralinga (and they've chosen a site, it's all about to go ahead, basically), where would they put the clean-up from Maralinga? In the dump?

But I think the absence of proper cleanup strategies is just the point with nuclear cycle stuff -- there is no appropriate cleanup procedure, so the best thing to do is leave it in the ground... irati wanti.