Public concern no justification for tighter uranium mining regulation

The Ranger Uranium mine, at the door to Kakadu National Park, about 230kms from Darwin.

If a tree is felled in the forest, does it matter whether it falls for a uranium mine or another type of mine?

While the tree may disagree, Australia’s Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 — or the EPBC Act — considers there is a difference.

The EPBC Act protects ‘Matters of National Environmental Significance’ like nationally listed

threatened species, migratory species and world heritage properties — plus ‘nuclear actions’, which includes uranium mining.

Proposed mines likely to have a significant impact on a Matter of National Environmental Significance require environmental assessment under the EPBC Act and approval from the Environment Minister.

What does this mean for our tree? If it’s being cleared to allow development as a uranium mine, our tree is a Matter of National Environmental Significance — yet for any other type of mine (or a solar farm or any other use), the fate of the same tree can be left to the state or territory government.

The uranium industry has long argued that the Act discriminates against uranium, and asked me — a former environmental regulator, now independent consultant — to objectively review whether that’s justified. Spoiler alert — I concluded that it isn’t.

Most potential uranium mining impacts are shared by all forms of mining — including, for example, clearing of vegetation, extraction of groundwater, changes to land topography, traffic generation and social and heritage impacts.

Of course, these impacts are completely unrelated to the commodity being mined.

Only two risks from uranium mining distinguish it from other mined commodities — nuclear proliferation and radiation — and neither of which justify EPBC Act regulation.

Many international agreements and a raft of legislation cover nuclear proliferation, notably the Nuclear Non — Proliferation (Safeguards) Act 1987.

The inclusion of uranium mining as a nuclear action in the EPBC Act was not intended, and is not needed, to address these international obligations.

Radiation risks require management in mining other commodities aside from uranium such as mineral sands.

Radiation is also one of the most heavily regulated aspects of the mining industry, with national guidance based on best international practice and systematic regulation by state and territory governments.

The system works. The Australian National Radiation Dose Register confirms that uranium mine workers receive radiation doses well within the regulatory limits — with the average additional dose above background levels about half of that for professional pilots.

There is little evidence that assessment of uranium mining projects under the EPBC Act adds enough benefit on top of all this to justify its onerous compliance cost.

It has been 20 years since the Howard Government enacted the EPBC Act, and its second 10-year review is due next year.

This review is the perfect opportunity for safe, common sense reform which streamlines

environmental approvals without compromising environmental protection.

There is a strong case for uranium mining to be removed from the Act’s nuclear action trigger.

If it is too politically difficult to remove uranium mining and milling from the nuclear action definition, there is still scope to improve the Act’s application.

It could be amended so that the trigger only applies if the radiological aspects of a proposed action are likely to have a significant impact on the environment.

And the federal environmental review should be limited by legislation to radiological assessment only, not a whole of environment assessment. If removing the discrimination is impossible, this would at least reduce its impact while ensuring the Act focuses on impacts that are actually related to the commodity being mined.

We should also amend the Act so that projects that have no relationship with the nuclear fuel cycle are not categorised as a ‘nuclear action’.

It’s extraordinary that non-uranium mines — including a mineral sands mine, and even a copper mine — have also triggered the nuclear actions definition, even though this would not appear to be the intent of the Act.

Historic high levels of public concern about uranium mining may be put forward as a reason to continue its regulation under the EPBC Act.

However, public concern is not a good reason in itself for imposing regulation. If it was, we would have banned flares in the early 1970s and the decade (and Abba music video clips) would have been far less memorable.

Regulating based on public concern could mean that we regulate relatively low-risk activities while high-risk activities get less attention than they should. That is not in the public interest.

Regulations should be applied consistently. Yet the EPBC Act does not do this for uranium mining.

The changes proposed in my report will not lessen environmental protection, but will reduce costs and delays to industry.

This will allow the Australian Government to focus on developing and promoting best practice, a more appropriate and valuable role than costly duplication of state and territory regulatory processes.

— Lachlan Wilkinson is a principal consultant for JBS & G Australia Pty Ltd and the author of a policy paper for the Minerals Council of Australia on the EPBC nuclear action trigger.