There’s a gaping hole in Dutton’s nuclear plan. He says it’s Albanese’s problem to solve

When Opposition Leader Peter Dutton proposed nuclear energy reactors on almost every mainland state last year, he reignited divisive public debate. It’s a debate Indigenous Australians are likely to be at the heart of.

It is little acknowledged that Australia’s nuclear story is largely an Indigenous one. It starts in the 1950s, when radioactive fallout from bomb tests silently settled over Aboriginal communities that were not adequately protected by the government of the day. It encompasses the very beginning of the nuclear cycle: the mining of uranium, to its end – the storage of nuclear waste.

The intergenerational fear of radioactive contamination and distrust of government is fuelling community opposition, particularly among some traditional landowners, to a potential nuclear energy industry here in Australia. And it’s why every proposal for a national nuclear waste repository across the country has, so far, failed.

The nuclear waste problem is unavoidably tied to nuclear energy reactors, a cornerstone of Dutton’s energy policy for 2025. Nuclear waste will also be a major challenge for future governments as they inherit radioactive waste from AUKUS submarines.

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Emu Field, 1950s

Karina Lester speaks from her brightly lit office in central Adelaide. She comes from Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara lands at a homeland called Walatina. “The country is quite stunning, actually. There’s lots of woodland area, so mulga acacias growing there, but there’s beautiful sand dunes through that country and where my late father Yami was born is a creek called Walkinytjanu Creek, which is a beautiful spot as well.”

Lester is describing a special part of the South Australian outback, a 12-hour drive north of Adelaide, where her father, Yami Lester, worked for pastoralists. But on October 15, 1953, Yami, who was only a young boy at the time, playing in the dunes noticed something above.

Front page coverage of the first Emu Field test in 1953. Credit: The Age archives

“That morning was when they felt the ground shake, and the black mist roll. And one thing many of my old people had spoken about was the fact that this black mist rolled silently, so it came with no wind or no, you know, picking up sticks and leaves and grasses. And it didn’t come with a noise like dust storms do. It travelled silently. And it was that that was the real fear. They knew how country operated and worked. But this one was very different.”

What Yami and his family peered up at were the remnants of a giant mushroom cloud from a nuclear weapons test in Emu Field, about a six hour-drive south-west of Walatina.

“Nana recalls a very strong stench to it like a really oily toxic smell and that oil had fallen over the plants, you know, over the trees. Within hours, oranges withered. So, nana mob were digging holes in the sand dunes and trying to bury the children and hide them and protect them.”

Operation Totem was the first of two major nuclear weapons tests conducted by the British in Emu Field, signed off by the Menzies government. It was the 1950s, the beginning of the Cold War. Britain was developing its nuclear capabilities and the Australian outback was the perfect location with its vast remoteness.

Emu Field was the location of just two of 12 major weapons trials across Australia, and hundreds of minor trials until the 1960s. Some nuclear bombs had a kiloton yield as large as that of Hiroshima.

“Within hours of that toxic fallout, people became really sick … There was panic because that oily sort of black mist rolling put people into panic. And then, of course, people’s eyes became really sore and red and pussy. Nana had skin rashes on her shins, people became really sick, like a lot of the elderly.”

Decades later, in 1985, the McClelland Royal Commission into British Nuclear Tests in Australia concluded that: “Inadequate resources were allocated to guaranteeing the safety of Aboriginal people.” Commissioners concluded the one native patrol officer on duty had an impossible task of locating and warning Aboriginal people scattered over more than 100,000 square kilometres.

“It was tough as it was there, being in 1953, working on a pastoral property, let alone trying to understand what government of the day was going to do,” says Lester. “And then, all of a sudden, experience what happened, without any control or knowledge or understanding.”

Aboriginal people were not the only victims. Aircrews flew through radioactive clouds and scientists walked around sites with minimal protective clothing, sometimes none at all.

“With Dad’s eyesight, it was a gradual process,” Lester says. “By three, four years after ’53 he was completely blinded, then, by those nuclear tests. So there was a lot of fear, there was a lot of sickness. And there weren’t a lot of answers of what the hell happened in 1953.”

Yami Lester became an activist on behalf of his people.Credit: Jesse Boylan

Yami dedicated his life to Aboriginal activism. His case was pivotal to the McClelland royal commission, although the commission could not link radiation to health issues, including establishing the cause of Yami’s blindness. Yami died, aged 75, in 2017.

“It was something that I always miss,” Lester says. “That he’d never really seen me grow up, he saw me in a different way of growing up with his disability, of course.”

The government commissioned a study in the 1990s into the link between Australia’s nuclear testing, including that at Emu Field, and the number of cancer cases among mostly military personnel. It didn’t establish a direct link between cancer cases and radiation exposure, but the study did find the mortality and cancer rate were higher than that of the general population.

In Woomera, 600 kilometres downwind of the tests, is a grave where 23 stillborn babies delivered in the years following the tests are buried, according to a class action case against the British Ministry of Defence.

“And there’s not really a lot of data around the health of people. If you look back in clinic records, perhaps at Yalata, or even Oak Valley, there was a period of time that there was a high spike for thyroid cancers. And people have passed now.”

Britain agreed to contribute £20 million towards a $100 million clean-up of Maralinga, the largest and most used site, and modest clean-up efforts were undertaken at the other sites. The Australian government paid $13.5 million to the Indigenous people of Maralinga as compensation for contamination of the land.

A spokesperson from the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency (ARPANSA) told this masthead that, “Emu Field, Walatina and Maralinga have been returned to traditional owners following extensive radiation monitoring and assessment. The risks posed by the residual contamination at Emu Field was considered in the mid-1990s and found to be negligible.”

The government nuclear safety watchdog says it conducts regular safety checks and is committed to building trust with Maralinga Tjarutja peoples to feel confident to live on and engage with their land. But Lester says that trust may take a while to build. “There’s a whole lot of data missing around the safety of our environment and our traditional lands [in Emu Field]. And so, you know, we need to look at the path of where Totem 1 had fallen over, which is Walatina, and how safe is it there? You know: what’s in the dust, what’s in the soil? What’s in our waters? How safe are our trees?

“Because we still go digging for witchetty grubs, and we go eating the animals like goannas and perenties, and turkeys, and, you know, we still practise those things because that’s part of our Anangu culture. So it’s the unknown, that is the fear for us.”

Royal commissioner James McClelland (right) at a campsite at Wallatinna station where elder Kanytji (centre) viewed the fallout cloud of the Totem 1 test at Emu field in 1953.Credit: Charlton

When Dutton announced plans for a nuclear reactor on nearly every mainland state, Lester felt fearful again. It came on top of bipartisan support for the AUKUS deal, which locks Australia into storing high-level nuclear waste. “What’s going to happen when you have agreements like the AUKUS agreement?” Lester says. “You know, it’s a real fear for us ... the waste of, you know, the UK and the US coming to potentially South Australia, or anywhere in Australia.”

Lester has, like her father, dedicated her adult life to activism. In 2023 , she represented the Australian wing of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, at the United Nations in New York. She says she will be at the forefront of community opposition. “Our government of the day has a level of responsibility. It is negligent of them to be sticking waste out in community that they think is out of sight, out of mind. Like the industry has completely outdone itself, like yes, it does all these amazing things. But you haven’t worked out your waste solution.

“And the solution that you put on the table constantly to First Nations peoples is stick it in your traditional lands. No, we say ‘no’ to nuclear waste, full stop.”

Dutton’s nuclear vision

When Dutton unveiled his nuclear plans in June, Nationals leader, David Littleproud congratulated him on committing to the “long-held view” of the Nationals party that nuclear power was a source of reliable energy and a way of reducing emissions.

Last month, the Coalition revealed its costings. Opposition climate change and energy spokesman Ted O’Brien claimed the Coalition’s energy plan would cost about $331 billion by 2050, 44 per cent less than Labor’s plan.

Peter Dutton announces the Coalition’s nuclear plan with Liberal MPs Angus Taylor and Sussan Ley.Credit: Rhett Wyman

This is rejected by the government and scientists, with CSIRO’s research showing that nuclear power is still about 50 per cent more expensive than renewables, and would take at least 15 years to develop, years longer than Dutton’s projections.

And the nuclear waste question that had dominated AUKUS-related news in the months prior cropped up again. The intractable problem with nuclear energy is its byproduct, radioactive waste, specifically spent nuclear fuel, which contains high-level radioactive waste that is toxic to humans for tens of thousands of years.

The Albanese government has committed to disposing of nuclear waste from AUKUS submarines, assuring the public that process won’t begin until the 2050s, when the reactor from the first of the boats will be due to be decommissioned.

Dutton leans on this in his nuclear energy proposal, suggesting it can safely piggyback on the AUKUS commitment. “The prime minister signed up to the nuclear submarines and therefore sent a very clear message to Australians that there are no safety concerns about the latest technology in relation to nuclear,” he says. “The government signed up to disposing waste, including end-of-life reactors, under the AUKUS agreement.”

If Dutton’s projections are correct, he’ll have his first nuclear plant up and running by 2037, with all the others completed by 2050. So his first nuclear plant will be producing high-level waste from 2037. That’s several tonnes a year being produced for 13 years before high-level waste from nuclear-powered submarines will need storage. (The government will, however, have to safely dispose of low-level waste from maintenance of submarines after it acquires them in the 2030s. It says it will store all low-level waste – that’s mostly cleaning materials, filters, resins and disposable clothing – on Defence sites in Australia.)

Ted O’Brien told this masthead that the Coalition plans to “temporarily store spent fuel on site of power plants, consistent with standard practice around the world, before being transported to a permanent waste repository, where spent fuel from AUKUS nuclear submarines will also be stored”. Although an election is due this year and theoretically the Coalition could find itself in power, he said responsibility for locating a permanent site would lie with the Albanese government. “We stand ready to co-operate constructively,” he said.

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Finland is one of the few countries in the world preparing to open deep underground storage sites, while the rest of the world tends to store its waste above ground, on site, and in large containers.

The newest nuclear reactor on Olkiluoto, Finland.

That’s what Australia does. It stores some of its low and intermediate-level nuclear waste at Lucas Heights, the Sydney suburb home to the country’s only nuclear reactor. Now a radioactive medicine factory, it produces products such as the dye injected into patients for scans to monitor cancers.

Australia has accumulated about 5000 cubic metres of intermediate radioactive waste, about two Olympic-sized swimming pools, and five more pools’ worth of low-level waste.

And while commercial companies such as Tellus Holdings are now accepting low-level hazardous waste in deep geological repositories with the consent of local Aboriginal people, the federal government has failed to secure a centralised national waste repository of its own.

“The Commonwealth government has been struggling for 20 years to find a site for permanent storage of low-level waste,” says Ian Lowe, emeritus professor at the School of Environmental Science at Griffith University in Queensland. He has dedicated his life to studying energy supply and sustainability, and has written books on nuclear technology and its role in the energy mix.

Lowe says that the nuclear energy reactors Dutton wants built will produce high-level nuclear waste, requiring disposal in deep geological layers, several hundred metres underground.

Even transporting low-level waste to a centralised repository is not without some risk. “It is fair to say, though, there have been very few accidents that I know of, involving contamination of local areas by accidents with transport of radioactive waste. I don’t know of any accidents where the transport of waste has been compromised by an accident leading to local contamination.“

And there is a distinction between nuclear fallout from bomb tests and nuclear waste here, too. Nuclear waste, stored hundreds of metres underground and managed safely, poses much less risk of contamination than the very immediate fallout from nuclear weapons tests like at Emu Field, or even in the worst-case scenario, a nuclear reactor blowing up.

Proponents of a nuclear industry argue the benefits outweigh the negatives. Those benefits include: life-saving cancer treatment from nuclear medicine and reliable, emissions-free energy for Australia’s energy grid. Newer technology, namely small modular reactors (included in Dutton’s policy proposal), promises safer, smaller and more efficient production, but doesn’t yet exist.

But it’s Lester and regional communities who are likely to find themselves at the centre of the debate, out in the far-flung regional towns, living in and with deep connections to the kinds of places governments have previously favoured as locations for waste disposal sites.

“We have a powerful relationship with the ground and with the land and with the environment and with the animals. That’s the bottom line. And that’s why Anangu often speak strongly about protection of that country, and no to nuclear waste, whether it’s medical waste, whether it’s waste from power. We say no to any nuclear waste because of the risk that it gives to our country, that gives us what we need, as First Nations peoples across our country,” Lester says.

Karina Lester and her daughter say no to nuclear waste.Credit: Jesse Boylan

“The Indigenous community is permanently scarred by the experience of the bomb tests in rural South Australia and the harm that came to some people as a result of those. And every proposal by the Commonwealth government for a low-level waste storage has been resisted by the local Indigenous community,” says Lowe.

“So if we began to set up a site to manage intermediate level waste and high-level waste in the long term, there will have to be very delicate and sensitive negotiations with Indigenous communities to get their permission for an activity like that on their land.”

The Kimba decision

There have been numerous attempts at establishing a national nuclear waste repository in Australia since the late 1990s. The most recent failed nuclear waste depository was in Kimba, a five-hour drive north-west of Adelaide and with a population of just over 1000.

The Kimba proposal became a bureaucratic nightmare, spanning eight years and rife with community divisiveness.

In 2020, a site was chosen just west of Kimba, called Napandee. The then resources minister, Matt Canavan, promised the facility would create 45 new jobs and would give the community a fund of $31 million.

The Kimba story is a microcosm of the nuclear debate raging today; those who advocated for the waste repository argued along the familiar lines of economic opportunity and long-term community survival.

It’s what local business owner Megan Lienert reminded the Senate committee panel into the site selection process in 2018.

“I realise that we are vulnerable. Kimba has changed a lot over the past 30 years, decreasing in size and population with currently well over 40 houses publicly for sale. Farms are getting bigger using less employees and small businesses are finding it tougher.

“The realisation by more of the community that Kimba cannot continue to rely on just agriculture in the low rainfall area for its long-term survival is strong motivation to explore every opportunity,” Lienert told the panel.

The site of Napandee was chosen, following a community ballot result of more than 60 per cent in favour. The only catch was that, of the more than 700 locals who voted, none were traditional owners of the land, the Barngarla people.

Traditonal owners oppose the Kimba dump site.Credit: AAP

The Barngarla people fell outside the local council area and were therefore exempt from voting. In a short video posted online at the time, Barngarla elders expressed their concerns about the site selection process, about the generations to come and being treated like the “flora and fauna” of the country.

Canavan acknowledged opposition among the Barngarla people and said: “We will work with traditional owners to protect culture and heritage, and to maximise economic opportunities and outcomes for local Aboriginal communities near the future facility.”

The Barngarla Determination Aboriginal Corporation then mounted a legal challenge to the federal government’s plan.

Nick Llewellyn-Jones, a principal at Norman Waterhouse law firm in Adelaide, led the Barngarlas’ case to victory in the Federal Court last year. “I think our clients felt there was a very strong desire to push it through no matter what,” he says.

Justice Natalie Charlesworth found there had been apprehended bias in the decision-making process under Canavan’s successor then-Nationals minister Keith Pitt.

Llewellyn-Jones says exclusion from the ballot was just one of the claims the court considered. It also considered the federal government’s attempt to remove the Barngarlas’ right to judicial review.

“There was a very strong desire to push it through no matter what, and whether that was, how they structured the ballot, whether that was starting construction work before the court case was resolved, whether that was trying to pass legislation to remove any court challenge to it.

“This was part of a broader mentality about pushing this project through come hell or high water, and, in fact, it was that mentality which actually, largely led to the court result in a way because that was what led to [the] apprehension of bias finding.”

In 2023, the Albanese Labor government announced it would not appeal against the Federal Court’s decision.

Opponents of the Muckaty Station nuclear waste dump.Credit: Eddie JIm

Challenges ahead

Australia’s almost 40-year-history of failed nuclear waste development proposals is less than encouraging for the Coalition’s hopes of a nuclear energy future.

There have been decades of development proposals for a centralised, national nuclear waste repository in states and territories across the country, including Woomera in South Australia in 2004, Muckaty Station in the Northern Territory in 2014, Flinders Ranges in South Australia in 2019, and most recently Kimba. Not one proposal has succeeded.

Many have been met by Aboriginal opposition, and involved concerning tactics by successive governments to rush developments, entice vulnerable communities with large funds, override state laws or, in the case of Kimba, attempt to legislate a site directly without judicial review.

In the early 2000s, Julie Bishop, then federal science minister, said Northern Territory proposal sites were “some distance from any form of civilisation”. Years before that, her predecessor Brendan Nelson said: “Why on earth can’t people in the middle of nowhere have low-level and intermediate level waste?”

The failed Kimba project highlights the overwhelming challenge for governments after nearly a decade spanning three ministers, of site assessment and selection, landowner and community consultation and consent, Senate committee hearings and inquiries, legal challenges at state and local levels and countless regulatory hurdles.

And that’s just for a waste repository, at the end of the nuclear fuel cycle, let alone the infrastructure planning needed for a nuclear energy reactor itself.

Dutton says he wants this year’s election to be “a referendum on energy”.

Lawyer Llewelleyn-Jones says the key will be to take legitimate interests into account.

“I think people are going to be very pro nuclear, and people are going to be very anti-nuclear and people are going to be in the middle of it. The difficulty in a debate like this isn’t necessarily working out who’s right. The difficulty in a debate like this is creating a structure where people’s rights don’t get sacrificed by one side or the other,” he says.

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