Lucas Heights is pretty much in the bush.
It is important to note that there are no permanent
residential areas within the 1.6km radius buffer. Between 1.6 and 3km from the ANSTO site, the
population is estimated to be 13,000 and at approximately 5km radius, the population is
estimated at between 30,000-40,000Pretty mixed recent safety record tooIn recent years, the Lucas Heights nuclear campus has been dogged by safety concerns and shutdowns.
In August 2017, for example, a technician working in ‘Building 23’ dropped a vial containing radioactive material. His hands were contaminated through two pairs of gloves, exposing him to an elevated risk of cancer. According to the International Nuclear Event Scale – the global grading system for nuclear incidents – the event was deemed the most serious in the world in 2017.
Within the next ten months, there were three other less-serious incidents, and in October 2018, an independent report was published which found the precinct failed to meet modern nuclear safety standards and had a culture of “make do and mend.”
Then, in June the following year, there was a mechanical failure at ‘Building 23’ that led to a major disruption of domestic supply of Mo-99. Four months later, “we are still experiencing the impact on daily activity in our hospitals and practices of this point failure on the production line,” as Bailey wrote at the time in a special report for the official newsletter of the Australian and New Zealand Society of Nuclear Medicine.
According to the independent report from 2018, a major cause of the ongoing problems at Lucas Heights has been federal government budget restrictions that have hindered longstanding plans to decommission and replace the ageing Building 23. “The lack of a permanent replacement solution … is undermining the possibility of truly effective risk control,” the report found.
