Sheep Trick

Angering environmentalists, Aboriginals, and regional government officials alike, the Australian government has announced that it will build a controversial nuclear waste dump at a sheep station in South Australia. Located near the desert town of Woomera, the dump will house low-level radioactive waste from medical, university, industrial, and research facilities around the country. In what was meant to be a conciliatory gesture, the federal government simultaneously announced that it would not consider South Australia for an even more controversial above-ground storage facility for medium-level nuclear waste. But that was cold comfort to opponents of the low-level dump, who want the waste to be stored near where it is created rather than transported to central repositories. "If the government believes there is no risk of contamination, why is it going to such an effort to transport the waste from a Sydney suburb to the middle of the desert?" asked Kerry Nettle, an Australian Greens senator.