Nuclear Waste Looms As
Challenge in Asia
July 10, 2006 — By Michael Casey, Associated Press
GYEONGJU, South Korea — With royal
tombs and a history dating back 1,000 years to the Shilla Kingdom,
Gyeongju is a cradle of Korean civilization. But it's about to get a tomb
of a different type.
A hillside bunker overlooking the Sea of Japan is to become one of Asia's
first permanent nuclear dump sites, ending South Korea's 19-year quest to
deal with low- and medium-level waste such as contaminated clothing and
old parts from its 20 nuclear power plants.
It's costing the government nearly $320 million in subsidies to the town
of 300,000 for voting to accept the dump, and it doesn't even begin to
address the country's real problem -- 6,500 tons of spent nuclear fuel
with hundreds of thousands of years to live and nowhere to go.
As Asia goes nuclear in a big way to feed its appetite for energy,
environmentalists are warning that the growing stockpiles could either be
stolen by terrorists and used to make a bomb, or end up polluting the
environment.
The nuclear industry says a permanent solution will eventually be found
and that the waste issue will not slow the growth of nuclear power in
Asia. Temporary sites, they said, are safe.
But only the United States and Finland have come up with permanent sites,
and the one at Yucca Mountain in Nevada is years behind schedule and mired
in legal disputes.
One solution is to recycle spent fuel by extracting its plutonium and
combining it with uranium. But the plutonium is weapons-grade and could
fall into terrorist hands, warns the U.S.-based Union of Concerned
Scientists.
Waste-dumping has rallied anti-nuclear forces in Asian democracies that
allow them to function freely.
Taiwan, which has three nuclear plants and is building a fourth, has been
thwarted three times in its search for a waste dump. "The failure to find
a solution to nuclear waste could slow the development of nuclear power in
democratic countries," said Michael Yang, a National Taiwan University
professor who follows the storage issue. "You already had so many
demonstrations over the issue in South Korea, Japan and Taiwan."
Australia, has no nuclear plants but has struggled for 15 years to find a
permanent site for low-level nuclear waste from its medical, industrial
and research facilities.
It settled in 2004 on three potential sites in the Northern Territory,
which is home to Aborigine communities as well as world-famous Ayers Rock,
or Uluru. Authorities expect to choose a final site by 2007 and open it in
2011.
"People are outraged," said Michaela Stubbs of Friends of the Earth
Australia.
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Associated Press writer Stephan Grauwels in Taipei, Taiwan, contributed to
this report.
Source: Associated Press