Nuclear contamination feared

2008-09-03 14:10

Cape Town - Representatives from Namaqualand communities living near the Vaalputs national nuclear waste facility in the Northern Cape told Parliament's minerals and energy portfolio committee on Tuesday they feared their water supply was being radioactively contaminated.

"We appeal urgently to Parliament to test the water in our area. There is one community at Kamassies who complain that their water has already been contaminated," community leader Tony Coetzee told MPs.

Speaking through an interpreter, he said people in the Vaalputs area depended on borehole water, and were scared they might consume contaminated water, "if we have not done so already".

But the Nuclear Energy Corporation of SA (Necsa), which manages Vaalputs, rejected these allegations later on Tuesday, saying the region's groundwater had not been contaminated by radioactive waste from its facility.

The committee was holding public hearings on the National Radioactive Waste Management Agency Bill, which aims, among other things, to have such an agency take over the management of Vaalputs.

Low and medium-level nuclear waste

The facility, located about 100km south-east of Springbok, is licensed by the National Nuclear Regulator (NNR) to handle low and medium-level nuclear waste, which is stored in concrete-encased steel drums, stacked within a clay-lined pit.

Necsa senior manager Alan Carolissen, who is responsible for Vaalputs, said in an email sent to Sapa this was not the first time claims the facility was contaminating groundwater had been made.

"This is a recurring allegation which is unsubstantiated and false. Vaalputs has a comprehensive, NNR-licensed environmental monitoring programme, which, [among other things], includes the sampling and testing of borehole water on and off the Vaalputs site.

"The borehole water results are reported to the NNR [and] members of the local communities, and are also made available to the surrounding municipalities including the Kamiesberg Municipality in which Kamassies is situated.

"All results to date have shown that there are no traces of man-made radioactivity in the groundwater."

Carolissen said what had been noted in borehole samples were "traces of enhanced levels of naturally occurring radioactive elements derived from the uranium rich granites" that underlay Namaqualand.

'Say no to nuclear waste dumping'

"The water from such boreholes has been investigated in the past by various competent authorities," he said.

Coetzee, who comes from Komaggas, said the bill should be "thrown out of the window". If enacted, it would make it easier to "argue for an extension of the [Vaalputs facility] and opening it for the disposal of nuclear waste from international sources".

He pleaded for it to be rejected.

"We the inhabitants of Namaqualand say emphatically no to the dumping of nuclear waste in our area... and we plead with you to reject this bill and to rather look at forms of renewable energy instead," he said.

Carolissen said he wanted to reassure the Vaalputs community and members of the public that transparent and accountable management of the Vaalputs site had ensured all operational activities complied with regulatory authorisations and international standards.

"I encourage all stakeholders to attend the highly successful Vaalputs community forum meetings, or to contact me directly," he said.

National nuclear energy policy states South Africa will neither import nor export radioactive nuclear waste. This does not apply to used reactor fuel, which is not defined as waste, but as recyclable.

Committee chairperson Nqaba Ngcobo said members needed to decide whether they were favour of a department-controlled "entity" to manage nuclear waste, or an agency, as proposed by the bill.

"This is a question that we as a committee need to brainstorm," he said.

Vaalputs was first used to store nuclear waste in November, 1986.

- SAPA