MAPW supports the construction of a new Intermediate Level Solid Waste Storage Facility at Lucas Heights.
MAPW strongly recommends:
• an open and independent review of nuclear waste production and disposal in Australia, and
• progressing a shift to cyclotron rather that reactor-based production of isotopes for nuclear medicine as rapidly as feasible.
Arguments that radioactive waste should all be at one site overlook the ongoing need for hospitals to store clinical waste. After nuclear medicine is used in a patient, the vast majority of the residual material and radioactively-contaminated equipment is stored on site while the radioactivity decays away. Within a few days, it has lost so much radioactivity that the material can go to a normal rubbish tip. There will always need to be multiple waste storage locations at sites which utilise radiopharmaceuticals.
Clean cyclotron production of Tc99m has recently been approved and is being implemented in
Canada. This should rapidly become the future of isotope production
Medical Association for the Prevention of War (MAPW) 30 July21, Submission to the Public Works Committee regarding Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation Intermediate Level Solid Waste Storage Facility Lucas Heights, NSW.
SUMMARY
MAPW supports the construction of a new Intermediate Level Solid Waste Storage Facility at Lucas Heights. As noted in the ANSTO submission, there will be minimal expected impact on the community and ANSTO has excellent existing security.
This contrasts with the massive distress and community division in regional and remote communities that has been created by a succession of nuclear waste storage proposals.
This facility will be useful over a much greater timeframe if ANSTO's rapidly expanding production of isotopes for nuclear medicine is reined in. This very heavily subsided export business has only a small minority of the radiopharmaceuticals produced being utilised in the care of Australians. There is no evidence whatsoever of more than minimal cost recovery. The burgeoning amounts of ILW produced will be a liability for Australians or many generations.
More reliable, safer, cheaper and much cleaner cyclotron production of technetium99m (Tc99m) has been shown to work and is being implemented in Canada. Japan, the USA, the UK and several European countries are all looking to implement cyclotron.
The proposed new ILW facility provides an opportunity to identify and implement world's best practice ILW disposal options and update and reset nuclear medicine production tocleaner, cheaper and more reliable methods.
MAPW strongly recommends:
• an open and independent review of nuclear waste production and disposal in
Australia, and
• progressing a shift to cyclotron rather that reactor-based production of isotopes for nuclear medicine as rapidly as feasible.
Individual criteria will now be addressed.
Continue reading "Submission: Medical Association for the Prevention of War (MAPW) supports a new Intermediate Level Solid Waste Storage Facility at Lucas Heights."
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