Pelindaba
Working Group[1]
COPY OF ORAL SUBMISSION PRESENTED TO
ENVIRONMENT AND TOURISM PORTFOLIO COMMITTEE PUBLIC HEARINGS ON NUCLEAR ENERGY
Honourable Chairperson Zitha, honourable members, I sincerely
thank you for this opportunity that you have created to open up the debate on
nuclear energy so that we can bring to your attention today some of the issues
facing the people of this country, and which are being withheld from the
public.
There are many issues which cannot adequately be
addressed in the short time we have today, and possibly a Nuclear Summit that includes the involvement of all affected
communities and representatives acceptable to civil society, could better serve
this purpose. Nevertheless, I will focus on some of those issues that have a
direct bearing on democratic principles
as enshrined in our Constitution that are being side-shafted, and also on the
issue of environmental justice that
will - for years to come -affect our future generations. Some of these amounts
to environmental racism whereby the
most disadvantaged communities often have never been consulted and end up the
most critically affected – especially by the nuclear industry.
I
live next to what I’ve come to consider the heart of the beast, the nuclear
installation at Pelindaba. As a school leaver in the 70s my first job for R235
pm was working in the Environmental
Studies Unit at Pelindaba where my tasks involved having to collect samples in order to check for radioactivity in the surrounding
environment – Crocodile River, Hartbeespoortdam, around Brits, to as far
away as Krugersdorp, Rustenburg, Pretoria and towards Johannesburg. Over the
years Necsa’s environmental study area appears to have narrowed considerably.
Those
years when people in the area whose boreholes,
for example, dried up they found it difficult to raise bank funding because,
they were told, there was a policy for keeping the area underpopulated because of the potential danger from the nuclear
activities at Pelindaba. In recent times, land
claimants that included Necsa’s vast property, have been told the ground is
too radioactively polluted and that they’d better focus their land claim
elsewhere.
During
that time I worked at Necsa called the Atomic Energy Corporation at the time, I
witnessed rows and rows of 44 gallon
drums of so-called “low active waste” – liquid radioactive waste – being
lined up on the banks of the Crocodile
River not far from the their picnic and sports terrain. These drums, and
probably hundreds of thousands of others have since the 60s to this day
systematically been released into the Crocodile River which flows into the Hartbeespoortdam (considered one of the
most toxic internationally) in much the same way as toxic radioactive waste is released into the Atlantic Ocean from Koeberg. These practices have continued
unabated to this day for over 40 years.
There are considerable other sources to the pollution in this river and the
dam, but Necsa appears to have hidden its radioactive contribution behind these
and continue to this day to assert that what they do falls within “internationally
acceptable” levels and practises. But people depend on this water for drinking, crop irrigation, fish and
thus the poison of radioactivity enters the food chain. More often than not it is formerly disadvantaged
communities and the poor of poor who are most affected and have absolutely no
knowledge of the dangerous, deadly consequences to them and their families. But
no-one remains unaffected. These toxins could be flowing into the underground
water aquifers of the entire region, and together with the radioactive and chemical
pollution from the gold mines on the West Rand, the entire “Cradle of
Humankind” World Heritage Site and Hartbeespoortdam is being contaminated and
affected.
During
that time, the 70s, I was involved in a study of milk from cows in the area that had become irradiated from the AEC’s
radioactive sources planted into the ground. The cow milk had been sent into a
major
Also
during this time, the
Over
the years this area has become highly
populated with massive developments and thousands of people daily now
living far too close to a nuclear complex where we now know nuclear bombs were developed, and where
from time to time there were leaks and
spills, accidents and fires,
emissions so dangerous that their 30,000 or so employees were forced to remain indoors for hours. In the last
number of years more and more information passed through our community, and
made known to us from the company’s former workers – all victims of
occupational disease you’ll also be told about later today - indicates a worrying lack of maintenance at the Pelindaba complex. The PWG has been
informed that many who were retired and too old to return to work, are
accepting not only because of the enormous packages they’re being offered, but
because they are so shocked about the lack of maintenance there. They’re
worried we’re sitting on the time-bomb waiting to happen.
I
have begun my own research into the health, safety and environmental issues of
nuclear energy and development which forces me today to stand here – although
not an expert - but very much more aware that the nuclear industry have effectively killed public debate, largely swayed
public opinion through
misinformation, secrecy and
cover-ups, and going to great trouble to discredit environmentally minded groups in the media, disregarding
massive amounts of expert information that is available internationally – all
of which tell a different story.
The
devastating environmental effects of ionizing
radiation, some of the chemicals used in the processes, the resultant nuclear
waste, the potential for contamination along transportation routes, and not to
forget tailings from uranium mining are overwhelming and well-documented.
There
are many reports based on actual
first hand accounts, or from experts and academics or scientists, which we
could make available to this committee. Most involve international communities,
but in SA some of this information
is beginning to surface but is not being given publicity and is certainly not being taken seriously by regulators
or those entrusted with custodianship of our environment or public health and
concerns. We recently managed to find a report written several years ago by a Danie van As from Necsa that states that
much of the
A
meeting earlier this year of the
Pelindaba Working Group was thoroughly disrupted and heckled by a large contingent from the nuclear industry preventing many
issues from being raised. And heckling alongside employees of Necsa, the PBMR
Company and others in the nuclear industry was the chairman of our Public Safety Information Forum - ostensibly
a resident’s forum representing the interests of the community.
The
meeting, held earlier this year, was called after the Pelindaba Working Group
had given up hope for any meaningful results from involvement in the Environmental
Impact Assessment (EIA) processes held for the Nuclear Pebble Fuel
Manufacturing Plant and the two Nuclear Smelter Plants earmarked for Pelindaba.
Bearing in mind that we are ordinary community members and not nuclear scientists, we’ve had
to go to extraordinary lengths to access and understand information in order to
exercise our democratic right to participate in these processes. In the
process, we’ve accessed an enormous amount of information readily available off
the internet and include reports by experts and scientists all of which I could
make available to this committee. Most “experts” in this country have been
co-opted by the nuclear industry and are unwilling to provide a balanced view. I
would like to add, that we’ve consistently raised the issue that the many
disadvantaged communities in the area have never been adequately informed of
these processes, let alone been able to participate in them.
The
nuclear industry’s flippant and often
sarcastic responses in official
documents to genuine concerns that the public raised, have largely been
dismissed, never answered or addressed and leave us with no choice but to
consider these as “greenwashing” processes that have little bearing on the
intention as prescribed by law or our Constitution. Non-nuclear industry
viewpoints or concerns have simply been dismissed. The nuclear industry and the
various authorities involved appear to be more concerned with “the process”
than the content. For example, in the most far-fetched of the responses given
by Necsa on the question of safety, the company stated in an official document
that an aircraft crash into its
facility would be of “no environmental impact” whatsoever. Nobody in their
right minds could believe that to be true.
The
Pelindaba Working Group meeting was held for all community members to discuss the implications of what
seems to be an unstoppable nuclear
programme in this country, and in particular the lack of evacuation plans for anyone beyond 5km
from Pelindaba, non-existence of community health surveillance or monitoring programs (Necsa and the NNR hide behind
a smokescreen methodology to produce
official results they say are internationally acceptable although these follow an
ALARA – As Low As Reasonably Achievable
- principle and not the Precautionary Principle which states that if you
don’t know what the effects are going to be don’t allow it), and also to
discuss the dismal third party
liabilities and insurance policies which fall way short of those
international countries which have considered these issues with knowledge and
insight. Our meeting was thoroughly disrupted and many of these issues could
not even be discussed adequately by the community because of the way in which
the nuclear industry hijacked it.
The nuclear industry has wide-spread access to the media and holds many of its
own meetings. This sort of behaviour is, to say the least, very sinister, smacks of a fascist
approach to transparency and
accountability, and is far removed from the hard-won democratic principles of public participation.
Against
this backdrop, current reports on the lack of decommissioning or clean-up costs in this country (when the
Of
equal concern is that there are a number of international treaties, protocols and agreements to which countries
with a nuclear industry become signatories. While
The public has tried as
best it can to back up EIA submissions
with reports by experts: these say “no
dose of ioninzing radiation is a safe dose”. (Radiologist R M Sievert,
after whom the radiation measure was named, said ‘There is no known tolerance
level for radiation’). We also have research documents stating that even routine emissions from nuclear
installations cause cancer and whole array of other deadly illnesses. We have
reports of how these routine emissions affect the health of people for miles
around these installations, waste sites or uranium mines – possibly as far away
as
There
are extensive lists of nuclear accidents
and disasters reported on the internet, all of which wreck communities and
often kill nuclear workers, but the industry passes these off as “incidents” and makes light of even the
most devastating known nuclear disaster Chernobyl
– still passing it off as media
propaganda.
Over
and above, nowhere in the world has any scientist figured out what to do with radioactive waste which has already
starting piling up in the backyard of several communities including ours and is
only set to get worse if this country’s nuclear program is favoured over renewable alternative energies for
which immense research globally and even in our own country is producing
remarkable results.
Worst
still, there is growing irrefutable documentation that suggests the main
reasons being put forward for a uranium and nuclear renaissance have all been
disproved. These include:
·
The suggestion that it is safe
·
The suggestion that it provides mitigation for climate
change – it does not and reports suggest that its full fuel cycle may even
produce more CO² than even our conventional dirty coal stations;
·
There have only been 2 nuclear disasters and they weren’t so
bad anyway – this is simply not true. The impacts of these disasters were
devastating.
The World
Health Organisation (WHO) has estimated that the total radioactivity from
The
Pelindaba Working Group has received information from a Fauna and Flora
official about fish and bird deaths
that occurred the extreme numbers of in the 90s along the
Time
does not permit to go into any great depth of the overwhelming magnitude of issues, save to mention
but a few more of relevancy. I briefly wish to talk about uranium – the
resource that feeds the nuclear industry. Large portions of this country are
being earmarked for new uranium mines,
one of them being Magaliesburg near
to where I live.
Shortly
before Christmas one of the residents of Magaliesburg
perchance found an obscure notice in the area notifying residents of an EIA
process for uranium prospecting in the area, including his own farm. Like many
Magaliesburg residents, I also applied to register as an “interested and
affected party” because, as this committee heard earlier, uranium mine tailings
get windborn and its deadly radioactive carcinogens are carried many miles
downwind. These get inhaled or ingested via the food chain and can cause
cancers and genetic abnormalities. I live close enough to Magaliesburg and am
concerned.
To
this day, no-one that has applied for involvement in the EIA process has been
registered, let alone received acknowledgement of their applications.
·
Uranium is extremely dangerous to all forms of life. It is
often called “The Silent Slow Genocide”. We are about to witness
much of this country potentially being mined for it.
·
In the NW Province alone, the Province’s 2002 “State of the Environment”
report states that: “There is a growing
body of evidence pointing that both the long- and short-term effects of
radioactive substances present in the environment may be impacting on the
health of the population of the North West Province, particularly in the gold
mining areas. Communities that are not currently supplied with safe, treated
water and which rely on radionuclide-contaminated surface or ground water
resources for their potable water are the most vulnerable to such health risks.”
It goes on to say that “elevated levels of uranium have been
found in the following areas of North West Province:
Ø
Koekemoerspruit, which drains parts of
the Klerksdorp area (near Stilfontein);
Ø
Kroomdraaispruit, near the abandoned New
Machavie Goldmine, before its confluence with the Koekemoerspruit;
Ø
Wonderfonteinspruit below Carltonville
(draining the Far West Rand goldfields); (The radioactive pollution from this
area is now known to have seeped into the water aquifer throughout the World
Heritage Site to as far as Hartbeespoortdam. We can provide this honourable
committee with extensive reports that back this).
Ø
Mooi River after its confluence
with the Wonderfonteinspruit/Mooiriverloop;
Ø
Vaal River, where it flows past the
Klerksdorp mining area (between the Mooi River mouth and Orkney); and Pilanesberg.”
Apart from
Wonderfonteinspruit, little more is known about research, if any, into any of
the other areas.
·
Around
1999 the Council for Nuclear Safety
(CNS) estimated that at least 10,000 mineworkers, or roughly one in 20 mineworkers, have been
exposed to radiation levels that exceeded
safety limits. In 1998, according to CNS estimates, 1 000 employees at
Harmony Gold mine alone were exposed to radiation levels that in some instances
were three times higher than the annual dose limit of 20 mSv a year. At Nigel, workers were exposed to dose levels of up to 130 mSv a year, or
seven times higher than the allowable limit. (Business Report 
Oct. 7, 1999).
·
In February this year during the NNR submission of its annual budget,
its CEO Mr. Magumela stated
that in 2002, 7 931 people had
been exposed to unacceptably high doses, but this number had declined
year by year to 1133, 424, and 8. He
said there had been an improvement over the last five years but failed to
mention this was as a result of a largely stagnant uranium mining industry at
the time.
In conclusion,
1.
I ask for intervention from this portfolio committee because
you are the custodians of NEMA and
therefore the Constitution and
therefore the communities who look
to these laws for their protection;
2.
I ask that this committee consider scrapping in its entirety the second amendment on EIAs in NEMA and
rather call for a full inquiry into
nuclear energy involving all stakeholders including those acceptable to civil
society, possibly in the form of a Nuclear
Summit before any further nuclear and uranium developments are approved;
3.
I ask that this committee also consider a full investigation
into all EIA processes that have been conducted on behalf of the nuclear
industry or uranium mining. These have been termed “fatally flawed” by
participants and should in all probability be scrapped and re-launched so as to
ensure transparency and public participation as originally intended by our law
and Constitution;
4.
I ask this committee to consider a parliamentary office of non-aligned independent environmental
groups (much like the unions have here) because in the face of climate change,
the environment globally has become one of the biggest issues facing this
planet. Developments in this country are being fast-tracked without sufficient
public participation;
5.
I ask you to consider recommendations that do not allow the
DME to hand our mining licences before
environmental laws are in place to protect the health of the people;
6.
I ask that this committee considers the severity of the submissions it will hear today, and try to use its
influence to persuade other organs of
the state, namely Minerals and Energy, and Public Enterprises to also
reconsider this country’s nuclear future; and for Science and Technology not to
waste what may have been spent on training new skills but to use them to find
environmental and energy solutions that are sustainable.
I am here today because I
am a mother of a young child, because I took the trouble to find out more,
because I have learned of the pain and suffering of ordinary people that
accompanies nuclear energy.
I wish to end with a QUOTE
with which I concur and read somewhere: “Human rights in the context of
environment and sustainable development recognize that for human communities to
survive, they must have an adequate and secure standard of living; they must be
protected from harmful substances and unsafe products; they must learn to
conserve and equitably share natural resources. Without these environmental and public health policies in place, human
rights for respect, dignity, equality, non-discrimination and the ability for
the public to participate in decisions that affect their lives cannot be
achieved". I thank you.
Presenter: Dominique Gilbert
Tel Bus: 01
2- 205-1125