Watching the Wasters

watching the wasters

dave sweeney, foe australia

In late 1998, a package with no return address landed on the desk of the FoE anti-nuclear campaign in London. Inside was a leaked copy of a newly-produced video promoting Australia as the ideal place for an international high-level radioactive waste dump. and Pangea Resources as the company that could make it happen.

FoE England, Wales and Northern Ireland contacted FoE and other activists in Australia, and the video had its premiere -- not at an invitation-only nuclear industry screening. but before a very interested group of journalists in the press gallery of the national Parliament. The subsequent headlines generated outrage across Australia, and helped to create a popular campaign that earlier this year forced Pangea Resources to formally announce that they were withdrawing from the dump plan after majority partner British Nuclear Fuels Ltd cut financial support to the project.

The news has been widely welcomed by anti-nuclear campaigners, and the Pangea story is a clear example of the power and importance of international solidarity and the FoE network.

However, like radioactive waste, the story refuses to go away, and in February a new group called Arius (the Association for Regional and International Underground Storage) was formed. The new body aims to promote international radioactive waste dumps and its managing director is none other than former Pangea CEO Charles McCombie. The intention of the shadowy nuclear corporations to dump their permanent poisons on others remains the same – and so must our shared concern, vigilance and resistance.