IT HAS taken fifty years of waiting, but Australia says it has finally cleaned up the British nuclear test site at Maralinga and that the land is ready to be handed back to its traditional aboriginal owners, the Tjarutja people. The problem is that not everyone believes the government. And the local community is wary of taking responsibility for the site.
Between 1953 and 1957, Britain conducted seven atmospheric bomb tests over Maralinga, about 800 kilometres northwest of Adelaide. Several hundred square kilometres were contaminated with radioactive waste, mainly from bomb tests between 1955 and 1963 using plutonium-239.
Although the British government carried out its own clean-up in 1967, a survey in the 1980s found widespread contamination. The new clean-up started in 1995 with Britain forking out 拢25 million towards the cost.
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Australian science minister Peter McGuaran presented a final technical report to Parliament last week that was supposed to be the last word on the AUS$108 million (拢41 million) project. He said the five-year clean-up operation, the largest of its kind in the world, had been completed to 鈥渁 world-class standard鈥�.
Others disagree. Alan Parkinson, a vocal critic and former head of the technical advisory committee for the project, describes it as an 鈥渁bject failure鈥�. More than 1000 tonnes of debris contaminated with plutonium-239 remain buried on-site just 8 metres below the surface. 鈥淭his debris is in a bare hole in the ground in totally unsuitable geology. If it had been returned to Britain, it would have had to go in a concrete-lined trench.鈥�
But Lindsay Martin of the independent Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency maintains that the clean-up followed the spirit, if not the letter of the national code of practice for dealing with radioactive waste.
鈥淚n the case of Maralinga, there was a significant amount of geologic research undertaken,鈥� he says. In the expert opinion of the committee looking after the site a hole in the ground was suitable. 鈥淭hat鈥檚 not considered a compromise.鈥� Radiation levels at the site are now well below those permitted under international guidelines, he adds.
The government wants the cleaned-up area handed back to the Tjarutja as soon as possible. Their legal adviser, Andrew Collett says that the Tjarutja believe the clean-up proceeded as well as could have been expected. But the community is still wary of taking charge of the land, most of which is fit only for restricted human use. 鈥淭hey are concerned that there may be further finds of contamination and that, as radiological standards change, the rehabilitation measures in place may no longer be considered appropriate.鈥�