WEBVTT 00:00:08.659 --> 00:00:11.720 Welcome to Nuclear Matters, a podcast exploring 00:00:11.720 --> 00:00:13.599 the use of nuclear technologies in Australia. 00:00:14.339 --> 00:00:17.660 I'm your host, Liz Williams. I'm a nuclear physicist 00:00:17.660 --> 00:00:19.940 and lead of the nuclear systems discipline in 00:00:19.940 --> 00:00:21.800 the Australian National University School of 00:00:21.800 --> 00:00:27.920 Engineering. To begin our first episode, I want 00:00:27.920 --> 00:00:29.699 to acknowledge that the topic we're exploring 00:00:29.699 --> 00:00:33.700 can be contentious. With that in mind, I'll take 00:00:33.700 --> 00:00:36.880 some time to set the scene. My aim here is to 00:00:36.880 --> 00:00:38.840 create a space where diverse perspectives about 00:00:38.840 --> 00:00:41.219 nuclear technology and their uses in an Australian 00:00:41.219 --> 00:00:44.820 context can be shared openly. My views will, 00:00:44.920 --> 00:00:47.299 of course, shape the questions I ask, but so 00:00:47.299 --> 00:00:49.299 will my lived experience as a woman working in 00:00:49.299 --> 00:00:51.799 nuclear science and engineering. I've had many 00:00:51.799 --> 00:00:54.079 conversations over the years about nuclear technologies 00:00:54.079 --> 00:00:56.939 and heard about people's fears, as well as their 00:00:56.939 --> 00:00:59.179 hopes and dreams, about the role these technologies 00:00:59.179 --> 00:01:02.759 might play in our future. As for my own view 00:01:02.759 --> 00:01:05.280 on nuclear matters, my perspective on whether, 00:01:05.299 --> 00:01:07.780 when, and how to use and manage nuclear technologies 00:01:07.780 --> 00:01:11.120 is complicated and is ultimately shaped by the 00:01:11.120 --> 00:01:15.459 context and use case in question. With that in 00:01:15.459 --> 00:01:17.819 mind, I've invited Dr. Jessica Urwin to help 00:01:17.819 --> 00:01:20.739 us explore Australia's nuclear history. Jessica 00:01:20.739 --> 00:01:22.739 is a lecturer in environmental history at the 00:01:22.739 --> 00:01:25.260 University of Tasmania and recently completed 00:01:25.260 --> 00:01:28.239 her PhD focusing on nuclear colonialism in Australia 00:01:28.239 --> 00:01:31.879 here at the ANU. Her research reveals the long 00:01:31.879 --> 00:01:33.700 history of Australia's engagement with nuclear 00:01:33.700 --> 00:01:36.480 technologies and materials and its impacts on 00:01:36.480 --> 00:01:39.420 Aboriginal communities in South Australia. This 00:01:39.420 --> 00:01:41.700 history continues to shape discussions and decisions 00:01:41.700 --> 00:01:44.000 about the use of nuclear technologies and the 00:01:44.000 --> 00:01:46.079 ways we manage their byproducts in this country 00:01:46.079 --> 00:01:58.500 today. Thank you for joining me and thank you 00:01:58.500 --> 00:02:01.079 for coming to share the work that you've been 00:02:01.079 --> 00:02:03.060 doing with us. No, thank you. I'm very excited 00:02:03.060 --> 00:02:06.040 to be here. Let's start with the term nuclear 00:02:06.040 --> 00:02:08.379 colonialism. Can you tell us what that means? 00:02:09.000 --> 00:02:12.599 Yeah, so nuclear colonialism more generally has 00:02:12.599 --> 00:02:17.180 quite a standard definition. It comes from the 00:02:17.180 --> 00:02:20.960 North American or largely North American idea 00:02:20.960 --> 00:02:24.300 of environmental justice, which was a movement 00:02:24.300 --> 00:02:28.039 in the 1980s from mostly people of colour who 00:02:28.039 --> 00:02:32.340 were protesting the siting and polluting of their 00:02:32.340 --> 00:02:36.159 neighbourhoods, etc. So the standard definition 00:02:36.159 --> 00:02:38.520 of nuclear colonialism is, and I've got a quote 00:02:38.520 --> 00:02:41.259 here, a system of domination through which governments 00:02:41.259 --> 00:02:43.580 and corporations disproportionately target and 00:02:43.580 --> 00:02:45.439 devastate Indigenous peoples and their lands 00:02:45.439 --> 00:02:48.360 to maintain the nuclear production process. And 00:02:48.360 --> 00:02:50.599 so with that, it is quite North American centric. 00:02:50.699 --> 00:02:53.919 So a lot of what I've tried to do with my work 00:02:53.919 --> 00:02:55.520 is think about what does nuclear colonialism 00:02:55.520 --> 00:02:58.560 look like in Australia, which has a very deep 00:02:58.560 --> 00:03:02.360 and enmeshed settler colonial history and what 00:03:02.360 --> 00:03:05.439 that might mean. So for me, I think of nuclear 00:03:05.439 --> 00:03:08.680 colonialism as a multi -directional process. 00:03:09.120 --> 00:03:14.199 It's a process in which colonial forces, colonial 00:03:14.199 --> 00:03:19.139 mechanisms, the kind of mesh of settler -clonial 00:03:19.139 --> 00:03:21.860 society have intersected with nuclear processes, 00:03:22.219 --> 00:03:24.939 whether that be prospecting for radium in the 00:03:24.939 --> 00:03:27.780 early decades of the 20th century, uranium mining, 00:03:27.919 --> 00:03:30.199 nuclear weapons testing, waste dumping, current 00:03:30.199 --> 00:03:34.620 debates over nuclear power, etc. But also the 00:03:34.620 --> 00:03:39.560 way that it has been forced to adapt by communities 00:03:39.560 --> 00:03:43.840 who protest. or resist colonialism in their everyday 00:03:43.840 --> 00:03:46.639 lives. So that's really how I see it. It's quite 00:03:46.639 --> 00:03:48.280 a long -winded way of answering that question, 00:03:48.419 --> 00:03:50.960 but I think it has a simple definition, but there 00:03:50.960 --> 00:03:53.159 are much more expansive ways to think about how 00:03:53.159 --> 00:03:55.599 nuclear colonialism shows up in the everyday 00:03:55.599 --> 00:03:59.120 and how it has historically as well. I'm wondering 00:03:59.120 --> 00:04:02.219 what this system traces back to in Australia. 00:04:02.379 --> 00:04:04.680 Like, is there a beginning? Can we label a beginning 00:04:04.680 --> 00:04:07.800 to this whole process? Yeah, the beginning is 00:04:07.800 --> 00:04:11.319 a funny one because a lot of scholars We'll look 00:04:11.319 --> 00:04:13.580 at nuclear colonialism and see it as relating 00:04:13.580 --> 00:04:15.979 to what many refer to as nuclear imperialism 00:04:15.979 --> 00:04:19.420 was this new era of empire that started with 00:04:19.420 --> 00:04:21.540 the dropping of the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. 00:04:21.660 --> 00:04:23.379 And there was this idea that with the beginning 00:04:23.379 --> 00:04:27.180 of the nuclear age in 1945, we entered this new 00:04:27.180 --> 00:04:31.120 period of history dominated by militarization 00:04:31.120 --> 00:04:35.709 and nuclear technologies. My slight issue with 00:04:35.709 --> 00:04:38.129 this idea of this being the beginning of nuclear 00:04:38.129 --> 00:04:41.709 colonialism or nuclear imperialism is it leaves 00:04:41.709 --> 00:04:44.949 behind a lot of what came before that, which 00:04:44.949 --> 00:04:47.750 is the very fabric of nuclear colonialism, really. 00:04:48.290 --> 00:04:50.730 So for me, I've tried to trace nuclear colonialism 00:04:50.730 --> 00:04:54.970 as back as far as we can. For me, that's the 00:04:54.970 --> 00:04:57.410 introduction of radioactive minerals in Australia 00:04:57.410 --> 00:05:00.569 as an idea. The Curies, when they're looking 00:05:00.569 --> 00:05:04.509 for radioactive materials to do their experiments 00:05:04.509 --> 00:05:07.509 in the late 1800s, early 1900s, kick -started 00:05:07.509 --> 00:05:09.709 a really big push to find radium in Australia. 00:05:10.370 --> 00:05:13.610 And while at that point we didn't have the notion 00:05:13.610 --> 00:05:16.490 of nuclear physics or nuclear weapons and the 00:05:16.490 --> 00:05:20.649 nuclear age was 45 years away, it's the beginning 00:05:20.649 --> 00:05:24.810 of this idea of radioactivity as a marvel of 00:05:24.810 --> 00:05:27.910 science. ends up becoming really fundamental 00:05:27.910 --> 00:05:31.329 to how it is considered in the 1940s, 50s, 60s 00:05:31.329 --> 00:05:34.569 and onwards. So I tried to trace it right back, 00:05:34.569 --> 00:05:39.149 but scholars are all disagreeing about this, 00:05:39.209 --> 00:05:42.589 whether it's 1945, whether it has to be to do 00:05:42.589 --> 00:05:44.689 with nuclear weapons or whether it can also be 00:05:44.689 --> 00:05:48.980 traced back to... minerals that on their own 00:05:48.980 --> 00:05:51.439 might not be considered nuclear materials, but 00:05:51.439 --> 00:05:54.980 are fundamental to the nuclear fuel cycle. So 00:05:54.980 --> 00:05:57.199 radium, for instance, you look at the naturally 00:05:57.199 --> 00:05:59.740 occurring isotopes of uranium and it's part of 00:05:59.740 --> 00:06:02.399 the decay chains, right? So when you're finding 00:06:02.399 --> 00:06:05.220 radium, you're also finding uranium. So what 00:06:05.220 --> 00:06:09.279 was radium used for? Why was it such a sought 00:06:09.279 --> 00:06:12.920 after thing? So radium's an interesting one in 00:06:12.920 --> 00:06:16.120 that eventually it would be used for medicine. 00:06:16.220 --> 00:06:19.939 So a lot of early discoveries of radium were 00:06:19.939 --> 00:06:22.540 being used for experimentation to figure out 00:06:22.540 --> 00:06:25.839 how one might cure cancer or treat cancer. A 00:06:25.839 --> 00:06:28.699 lot of dermatological ailments were being treated 00:06:28.699 --> 00:06:31.759 with radium. Radium therapies such as, you know, 00:06:31.779 --> 00:06:33.740 you'd go to a radium spring and soak yourself 00:06:33.740 --> 00:06:36.839 in these radium infused waters and it would bring 00:06:36.839 --> 00:06:41.699 you health. And so early on, it really was a 00:06:41.699 --> 00:06:44.519 bit of a wonder mineral, really, that people, 00:06:44.699 --> 00:06:47.500 scientists were speculating that it had all sorts 00:06:47.500 --> 00:06:50.220 of applications. But it was also at a period 00:06:50.220 --> 00:06:53.819 when people were searching for things that would 00:06:53.819 --> 00:06:55.959 make them a lot of money, that would be the new 00:06:55.959 --> 00:07:00.420 marvel of science. And radium, early on, it was 00:07:00.420 --> 00:07:03.079 clear that radium emitted energy and there was 00:07:03.079 --> 00:07:05.360 a sense that it could be used for power potentially, 00:07:05.360 --> 00:07:08.220 but also that it had... the potential to become 00:07:08.220 --> 00:07:11.800 an explosive. That really didn't materialize 00:07:11.800 --> 00:07:16.000 into a real desire until the world wars, when 00:07:16.000 --> 00:07:17.920 there was a sense that we might be able to create 00:07:17.920 --> 00:07:21.060 a new bomb with these minerals. Very early on, 00:07:21.079 --> 00:07:24.120 it was very much a case of this can help us in 00:07:24.120 --> 00:07:27.480 hospitals, it can help us in clinics. And because 00:07:27.480 --> 00:07:31.420 there were so many question marks around what 00:07:31.420 --> 00:07:33.720 radium could actually do, scientists were desperate 00:07:33.720 --> 00:07:37.529 to get their hands on this. seemingly special 00:07:37.529 --> 00:07:39.269 metal that they might be able to figure out what 00:07:39.269 --> 00:07:41.050 they could do with it. But at the time, in the 00:07:41.050 --> 00:07:43.610 first decade of the 20th century, there was only 00:07:43.610 --> 00:07:48.810 one known source of radium. And so in somewhere 00:07:48.810 --> 00:07:51.050 like Australia, where we have so many minerals 00:07:51.050 --> 00:07:54.009 and we had made so much money off minerals, even 00:07:54.009 --> 00:07:56.310 by the first decade of the 20th century, there 00:07:56.310 --> 00:07:57.750 was a sense that, well, if there's going to be 00:07:57.750 --> 00:07:59.850 radium anywhere, there's probably going to be 00:07:59.850 --> 00:08:01.829 radium in Australia. So there were a lot of people 00:08:01.829 --> 00:08:03.610 keen to find it because it would lie in their 00:08:03.610 --> 00:08:06.050 pockets. They'd be able to export it. to the 00:08:06.050 --> 00:08:09.350 Curies and others who would then use it for medical 00:08:09.350 --> 00:08:12.550 therapies. The other thing it was used for, and 00:08:12.550 --> 00:08:15.709 people might know this story, but it's glow -in 00:08:15.709 --> 00:08:17.509 -the -dark properties were used for watch faces 00:08:17.509 --> 00:08:20.230 and clocks. So that's how you end up with the 00:08:20.230 --> 00:08:22.129 story of the radium girls of the United States 00:08:22.129 --> 00:08:25.649 who were painting clock dials and watch faces 00:08:25.649 --> 00:08:28.949 and licking the paintbrushes and ending up getting 00:08:28.949 --> 00:08:33.759 very, very, very sick. So this idea that Australia 00:08:33.759 --> 00:08:38.220 would have this because we had everything, this 00:08:38.220 --> 00:08:41.259 was prompting an interest in prospecting for 00:08:41.259 --> 00:08:44.799 this. I'm interested in your work. You look at 00:08:44.799 --> 00:08:47.440 how Aboriginal communities were both involved 00:08:47.440 --> 00:08:49.559 in but also impacted by that work. So can you 00:08:49.559 --> 00:08:52.720 tell us a bit of that story? The story of radium 00:08:52.720 --> 00:08:55.419 in Australia really is that it was discovered 00:08:55.419 --> 00:08:58.759 in Australia by prospectors in the early 20th 00:08:58.759 --> 00:09:01.669 century, so in 1906. a man called Arthur Smith 00:09:01.669 --> 00:09:04.629 was scrabbling around for some tin and he came 00:09:04.629 --> 00:09:07.110 across an ore that he didn't recognise. And so 00:09:07.110 --> 00:09:10.809 at this time, most state governments, because 00:09:10.809 --> 00:09:12.529 at this time we had federated, so we were no 00:09:12.529 --> 00:09:14.789 longer under colonial governments, but previously 00:09:14.789 --> 00:09:16.590 colonial governments and then state governments 00:09:16.590 --> 00:09:19.289 had incentivised finding new minerals. So if 00:09:19.289 --> 00:09:21.289 anyone found new minerals that ended up being 00:09:21.289 --> 00:09:23.250 of any worth to the Crown, they would receive 00:09:23.250 --> 00:09:25.990 really significant royalties. So if you saw a 00:09:25.990 --> 00:09:28.129 mineral you didn't know, you sent a sample to 00:09:28.129 --> 00:09:33.360 the State Department. geology. So he sent off 00:09:33.360 --> 00:09:36.340 this sample and even the geological department 00:09:36.340 --> 00:09:38.200 of the government didn't know what it was. So 00:09:38.200 --> 00:09:40.740 they sent it to Douglas Mawson, who at the time 00:09:40.740 --> 00:09:43.279 was lecturer of petrology and geology at the 00:09:43.279 --> 00:09:46.179 University of Adelaide. And he was purportedly 00:09:46.179 --> 00:09:49.659 good friends with Marie Curie, who had told him 00:09:49.659 --> 00:09:53.039 that he needed to be looking for yellow and green 00:09:53.039 --> 00:09:55.519 in these minerals and that he may have found 00:09:56.330 --> 00:09:59.029 what would be radium, you know, the child of 00:09:59.029 --> 00:10:01.149 the wonder mineral uranium, as she kind of put 00:10:01.149 --> 00:10:06.110 it. So this then led to a big rush of people 00:10:06.110 --> 00:10:08.889 because at that time you could just buy a miner's 00:10:08.889 --> 00:10:11.590 right. So for a very small fee, you'd buy a miner's 00:10:11.590 --> 00:10:13.309 right, which gave you right to mine a little 00:10:13.309 --> 00:10:15.929 patch of land. And people would just buy up the 00:10:15.929 --> 00:10:18.049 land around where the mineral had been found 00:10:18.049 --> 00:10:22.149 in the hope that their patch struck gold or radium, 00:10:22.169 --> 00:10:26.639 so to speak. And so Douglas Mawson and a bunch 00:10:26.639 --> 00:10:28.820 of other people headed into the Flinders Ranges 00:10:28.820 --> 00:10:32.980 to look for this mineral. Unfortunately, mining 00:10:32.980 --> 00:10:35.259 then as it is now is really backbreaking work. 00:10:35.340 --> 00:10:38.100 The Flinders Ranges are incredibly hard to access. 00:10:38.970 --> 00:10:40.690 And so there were a lot of stations around the 00:10:40.690 --> 00:10:43.409 Flinders Ranges who had for a long time been 00:10:43.409 --> 00:10:45.250 distributing rations to Aboriginal communities. 00:10:45.549 --> 00:10:47.289 A lot of Aboriginal communities lived on the 00:10:47.289 --> 00:10:49.250 fringes of these stations because it was a source 00:10:49.250 --> 00:10:51.830 of food, it was a source of employment, and it 00:10:51.830 --> 00:10:54.350 was a place that they could gather on their country 00:10:54.350 --> 00:10:56.950 after their country had been taken and there 00:10:56.950 --> 00:10:59.009 had been lots of European incursion into their 00:10:59.009 --> 00:11:01.809 country. So there was a particular camel depot 00:11:01.809 --> 00:11:04.029 in the Flinders Ranges where Aboriginal people 00:11:04.029 --> 00:11:06.350 found employment as cameleers. Yeah. And they 00:11:06.350 --> 00:11:08.789 would go out with the prospectors. They would 00:11:08.789 --> 00:11:11.070 work the camels. They would handle the camels. 00:11:11.429 --> 00:11:14.789 And in the case of Douglas Mawson, his company 00:11:14.789 --> 00:11:17.309 actually hired a number of people to handle camels, 00:11:17.309 --> 00:11:21.029 one of whom, I believe, would have been an Adnaman 00:11:21.029 --> 00:11:23.870 Yaman, who they referred to as Claypan George. 00:11:24.250 --> 00:11:26.789 But his role was to look after the camels and 00:11:26.789 --> 00:11:30.779 help. put ore into the baskets on the camels 00:11:30.779 --> 00:11:32.580 so the camels would carry all of the ore out 00:11:32.580 --> 00:11:35.679 of the flinders. So in this way, they were involved 00:11:35.679 --> 00:11:40.360 in the labour of radium extraction, but this 00:11:40.360 --> 00:11:42.240 extraction was happening on their country at 00:11:42.240 --> 00:11:47.360 the same time. And so the other thing that is 00:11:47.360 --> 00:11:49.240 included in the story of nuclear colonialism 00:11:49.240 --> 00:11:51.419 at its earliest stages, I suppose, is the way 00:11:51.419 --> 00:11:53.399 in which Aboriginal knowledge of mineralisation 00:11:53.399 --> 00:11:57.820 was used by prospectors. A lot of prospectors 00:11:57.950 --> 00:12:00.370 credited their understanding of certain minerals 00:12:00.370 --> 00:12:02.950 as being important to the Aboriginal people they 00:12:02.950 --> 00:12:06.049 spoke with or hired who knew that there were 00:12:06.049 --> 00:12:07.750 minerals in this area because they traded them 00:12:07.750 --> 00:12:11.429 themselves or they extracted them for themselves, 00:12:11.710 --> 00:12:14.929 ochre, for example. So there are many ways the 00:12:14.929 --> 00:12:17.909 story is intertwined, but largely by virtue of 00:12:17.909 --> 00:12:21.769 occurring on lands where mining was essentially 00:12:21.769 --> 00:12:25.549 opening up new lands to settlers who hadn't yet. 00:12:26.179 --> 00:12:29.559 ventured as far. But because there was this promise 00:12:29.559 --> 00:12:33.080 of mineral wealth in these seemingly untouched 00:12:33.080 --> 00:12:36.279 by settlers reaches of the country, they end 00:12:36.279 --> 00:12:39.679 up going out with prospectors, employing Aboriginal 00:12:39.679 --> 00:12:42.620 people to help them find ore, extract the ore, 00:12:42.799 --> 00:12:46.039 and then they export that back to the cities. 00:12:46.320 --> 00:12:50.559 Right. Okay. So in some sense, they are benefiting 00:12:50.559 --> 00:12:52.919 because they are being employed to do this kind 00:12:52.919 --> 00:12:56.940 of work in some sense their their knowledge about 00:12:56.940 --> 00:13:01.600 their country the mineral wealth etc is being 00:13:01.600 --> 00:13:04.120 exploited on some level by these prospectors 00:13:04.120 --> 00:13:06.679 who are using that knowledge to line their own 00:13:06.679 --> 00:13:10.279 pockets do you have a sense of how the communities 00:13:10.279 --> 00:13:14.779 now view that kind of activity Not particularly. 00:13:15.000 --> 00:13:17.139 It should be said that around the Flinders Ranges 00:13:17.139 --> 00:13:18.639 at the time that this would have been happening, 00:13:18.679 --> 00:13:20.940 there were a number of communities that now are 00:13:20.940 --> 00:13:23.620 contemporarily referred to as the Adenomania. 00:13:23.639 --> 00:13:26.940 So they were much further afield. But what was 00:13:26.940 --> 00:13:28.600 happening in this period at the same time is 00:13:28.600 --> 00:13:31.820 concurrent with mining. The colonisation of Australia 00:13:31.820 --> 00:13:36.220 had led to stations and missions and other settler 00:13:36.220 --> 00:13:40.769 kind of hubs, I suppose. encouraging Aboriginal 00:13:40.769 --> 00:13:44.490 people to gather around them. It made the management 00:13:44.490 --> 00:13:46.370 of Aboriginal people much easier for colonial 00:13:46.370 --> 00:13:49.009 authorities. It meant that land was freed up 00:13:49.009 --> 00:13:52.009 for settlers and prospectors and pastoralists 00:13:52.009 --> 00:13:55.009 in particular. So while a lot of these people 00:13:55.009 --> 00:13:58.429 may have found some kind of employment on stations, 00:13:58.669 --> 00:14:01.669 they were actively paid far less than European 00:14:01.669 --> 00:14:06.509 prospectors and they were reimbursed small increments 00:14:06.509 --> 00:14:09.659 essentially. because they were living on the 00:14:09.659 --> 00:14:13.519 fringes of settlements that were occurring on 00:14:13.519 --> 00:14:15.539 their own country. So it meant they still had 00:14:15.539 --> 00:14:18.480 access to country by virtue of working on this 00:14:18.480 --> 00:14:22.100 land, but it was essentially a payoff that in 00:14:22.100 --> 00:14:24.580 order to maintain access to country, access to, 00:14:24.720 --> 00:14:28.480 I should also say resources, because stock was 00:14:28.480 --> 00:14:31.240 massively impacting traditional food sources. 00:14:31.419 --> 00:14:35.899 As I'm sure people will know, there are no native 00:14:35.899 --> 00:14:38.779 animals in Australia that have hooves. So to 00:14:38.779 --> 00:14:41.639 bring hoofed animals to Australia had a massive 00:14:41.639 --> 00:14:44.320 impact on traditional food and water sources. 00:14:44.480 --> 00:14:47.659 Water holes became contaminated by stock. And 00:14:47.659 --> 00:14:49.980 so a lot of food that Aboriginal people would 00:14:49.980 --> 00:14:54.879 have relied on was being taken out of their traditional 00:14:54.879 --> 00:14:57.759 food cycle because of stock and incursion by 00:14:57.759 --> 00:15:00.519 settlers. So it meant that rations became a way 00:15:00.519 --> 00:15:03.149 of not only... feeding communities who were otherwise 00:15:03.149 --> 00:15:05.850 not able to access a lot of the traditional food 00:15:05.850 --> 00:15:08.769 sources they would have done. But it was a way 00:15:08.769 --> 00:15:11.269 of encouraging people to gather in spaces where 00:15:11.269 --> 00:15:14.029 they could be controlled by authorities. So this 00:15:14.029 --> 00:15:16.250 is one way I've been looking at how colonialism 00:15:16.250 --> 00:15:19.029 and nuclear processes intersect, because while 00:15:19.029 --> 00:15:23.090 they seem very separate, mining is facilitated 00:15:23.090 --> 00:15:26.860 by these systems that are. pre -existing because 00:15:26.860 --> 00:15:29.480 of settler colonialism but we'll later see as 00:15:29.480 --> 00:15:32.460 well that the nuclear testing was able to work 00:15:32.460 --> 00:15:36.000 in the same kind of way yeah through existing 00:15:36.000 --> 00:15:41.120 colonial mechanisms such as pastoralism stations 00:15:41.120 --> 00:15:45.240 missions in particular yeah well that maybe we 00:15:45.240 --> 00:15:48.269 should go to that story um Because that's actually 00:15:48.269 --> 00:15:50.509 where I usually start this conversation with 00:15:50.509 --> 00:15:53.870 my students about the British weapons tests at 00:15:53.870 --> 00:15:58.070 Maralinga and Emu Field. And so can you tell 00:15:58.070 --> 00:16:01.049 us about how do these patterns that we're starting 00:16:01.049 --> 00:16:03.990 to already see in these radium prospecting kind 00:16:03.990 --> 00:16:06.250 of era where you're seeing massive changes, I 00:16:06.250 --> 00:16:08.549 would imagine, to the Flinders Ranges in the 00:16:08.549 --> 00:16:11.309 country there. Like, how do we see those same 00:16:11.309 --> 00:16:15.129 patterns in the early days of leading up to the 00:16:15.129 --> 00:16:19.470 weapons tests? Yeah, so the way I kind of think 00:16:19.470 --> 00:16:21.149 about this and some of the people who worked 00:16:21.149 --> 00:16:23.450 on the Royal Commission to the nuclear tests 00:16:23.450 --> 00:16:26.309 have thought about this is that really in order 00:16:26.309 --> 00:16:29.710 to pave the way for the nuclear testing, authorities 00:16:29.710 --> 00:16:33.789 capitalised on missions, stations and superstitions. 00:16:34.389 --> 00:16:38.009 So in the central deserts where the inland testing 00:16:38.009 --> 00:16:42.620 sites were selected, there was a big Aboriginal 00:16:42.620 --> 00:16:45.200 reserve through the middle of the deserts. And 00:16:45.200 --> 00:16:47.980 there were lots of debates over whether it was 00:16:47.980 --> 00:16:52.039 morally right to put a nuclear testing site right 00:16:52.039 --> 00:16:53.679 through the middle of an Aboriginal reserve. 00:16:54.000 --> 00:16:56.100 But there were a lot of authorities at the time 00:16:56.100 --> 00:16:58.500 who were trying to encourage Aboriginal people 00:16:58.500 --> 00:17:02.720 to assimilate into Australian society. So what's 00:17:02.720 --> 00:17:04.480 important to the story of nuclear testing in 00:17:04.480 --> 00:17:07.559 the centre of Australia really is that it's at 00:17:07.559 --> 00:17:10.519 a turning point. Aboriginal welfare policies 00:17:10.519 --> 00:17:13.279 in Australia, where we're moving from protectionism 00:17:13.279 --> 00:17:15.519 or segregation, where Aboriginal communities 00:17:15.519 --> 00:17:17.940 are being kept on reserves, they're being separated 00:17:17.940 --> 00:17:22.000 out from the settler society to avoid what authorities 00:17:22.000 --> 00:17:24.480 understood as corruption, but really was just 00:17:24.480 --> 00:17:27.619 to separate Aboriginal people out, to a process 00:17:27.619 --> 00:17:29.720 of assimilation where they want to move people 00:17:29.720 --> 00:17:33.059 off their lands, into communities, onto settlements, 00:17:33.200 --> 00:17:35.680 into what they see as meaningful work. And this 00:17:35.680 --> 00:17:37.900 was seen as a really important part of the post 00:17:37.900 --> 00:17:40.970 -war modernisation of Australia. It was this 00:17:40.970 --> 00:17:42.910 idea of moving Aboriginal people into the Australian 00:17:42.910 --> 00:17:46.210 way of life. So it was felt that actually closing 00:17:46.210 --> 00:17:47.910 the Aboriginal reserve in the middle of the central 00:17:47.910 --> 00:17:49.910 deserts and allowing nuclear testing to happen 00:17:49.910 --> 00:17:52.829 there would allow Australia to move into this 00:17:52.829 --> 00:17:55.210 modern era in two ways. One, by assimilating 00:17:55.210 --> 00:17:58.430 Aboriginal people and two, by testing weapons 00:17:58.430 --> 00:18:00.309 and being involved in the development of nuclear 00:18:00.309 --> 00:18:03.769 weapons for the British Commonwealth. So the 00:18:03.769 --> 00:18:07.490 way it ends up working really is that this desert 00:18:07.490 --> 00:18:12.049 landscape was very much inhabited, but a lot 00:18:12.049 --> 00:18:15.029 of authorities understood it as this arid, seemingly 00:18:15.029 --> 00:18:18.710 uninhabitable place, this notion that no one 00:18:18.710 --> 00:18:20.690 could possibly live in the desert because it's 00:18:20.690 --> 00:18:24.490 really, really sandy and it's dry and there's 00:18:24.490 --> 00:18:27.369 nothing there. But for those of you who might 00:18:27.369 --> 00:18:29.569 be listening who don't have a sense of what the 00:18:29.569 --> 00:18:31.369 Australian Central Deserts look like, it is an 00:18:31.369 --> 00:18:34.250 incredibly vibrant ecosystem of lots of plants 00:18:34.250 --> 00:18:37.130 and grasses and animal species. So it was very 00:18:37.130 --> 00:18:42.329 much inhabited. But colonisation hadn't done 00:18:42.329 --> 00:18:44.730 a particularly good job with desert spaces because 00:18:44.730 --> 00:18:47.009 they felt like they weren't particularly usable. 00:18:48.029 --> 00:18:50.670 But nuclear weapons testing provided utility 00:18:50.670 --> 00:18:53.150 to spaces that had previously been considered 00:18:53.150 --> 00:18:55.890 completely unable to be utilised. We can bomb 00:18:55.890 --> 00:18:58.970 these places and now they have worth to the system, 00:18:59.130 --> 00:19:01.690 which is really sad. But you see this across 00:19:01.690 --> 00:19:03.970 the world. You see this in the United States 00:19:03.970 --> 00:19:07.089 and other places where testing has taken place 00:19:07.089 --> 00:19:10.869 in the desert. And so in order to make sure that 00:19:10.869 --> 00:19:13.190 people were not in the area when the testing 00:19:13.190 --> 00:19:16.960 occurred, authorities... capitalized on missions 00:19:16.960 --> 00:19:20.960 that were stationed around the edges of the central 00:19:20.960 --> 00:19:23.440 desert. They encouraged mission staff to bring 00:19:23.440 --> 00:19:26.180 as many people to the missions as possible, discourage 00:19:26.180 --> 00:19:29.930 movement in and across the central deserts. So 00:19:29.930 --> 00:19:33.150 that's missions. Stations was the second one. 00:19:33.190 --> 00:19:36.150 So the distribution of rations, again, even 40, 00:19:36.309 --> 00:19:40.369 50 years after the early radium prospecting period, 00:19:40.450 --> 00:19:42.769 using rations to encourage people to stay on 00:19:42.769 --> 00:19:46.009 stations or even withholding rations to prevent 00:19:46.009 --> 00:19:49.529 people from moving around. So that was very common. 00:19:49.690 --> 00:19:52.269 And then thirdly, superstitions, which is probably 00:19:52.269 --> 00:19:56.180 one of the sadder. are methods that was used 00:19:56.180 --> 00:19:58.920 but it is there's lots of evidence to suggest 00:19:58.920 --> 00:20:02.940 that missions as well as stations and or and 00:20:02.940 --> 00:20:06.359 people in control of Aboriginal movement through 00:20:06.359 --> 00:20:09.099 the central desert's welfare officers as or native 00:20:09.099 --> 00:20:12.880 patrol officers as they were called then They 00:20:12.880 --> 00:20:16.259 would dismantle totemic sites. They would dismantle 00:20:16.259 --> 00:20:19.140 sacred sites. They would actually enlist young 00:20:19.140 --> 00:20:21.839 Aboriginal people to show them where sacred sites 00:20:21.839 --> 00:20:24.259 might be so they could dismantle them to try 00:20:24.259 --> 00:20:26.779 and essentially remove any reason people might 00:20:26.779 --> 00:20:30.180 go into these spaces. Right. Yeah, so missions 00:20:30.180 --> 00:20:33.220 actively discouraged. A lot of missions actively 00:20:33.220 --> 00:20:35.319 discouraged Aboriginal people practicing their 00:20:35.319 --> 00:20:37.440 culture. Some of them didn't. There were some 00:20:37.440 --> 00:20:40.380 that actively encouraged it, but many discouraged 00:20:40.380 --> 00:20:42.640 it because there was a sense that Aboriginal 00:20:42.640 --> 00:20:46.980 people needed to be trained to go and work as 00:20:46.980 --> 00:20:50.519 domestic workers or stock workers, and that would 00:20:50.519 --> 00:20:53.660 contribute to the modern nation state. There's 00:20:53.660 --> 00:20:56.339 an implication of only these various tasks are 00:20:56.339 --> 00:20:59.740 valuable and you can contribute to those without 00:20:59.740 --> 00:21:03.200 an acknowledgement of any other potential worth 00:21:03.200 --> 00:21:06.980 or perspectives or values that might be driving 00:21:06.980 --> 00:21:09.660 why people do what they do. For sure. And a complete 00:21:09.660 --> 00:21:12.440 lack of acknowledgement. I don't think it's a 00:21:12.440 --> 00:21:14.059 lack of understanding. I do think there was an 00:21:14.059 --> 00:21:16.140 understanding of how Aboriginal people were using 00:21:16.140 --> 00:21:19.380 country to a certain extent in the 1950s, but 00:21:19.380 --> 00:21:22.440 it was a devaluing of that use of country. So 00:21:22.440 --> 00:21:26.680 we do end up with stories of Aboriginal people 00:21:26.680 --> 00:21:29.019 who ended up in the testing sites during the 00:21:29.019 --> 00:21:32.529 tests. We know that happened. And that was because 00:21:32.529 --> 00:21:34.609 authorities hadn't accounted for the fact that 00:21:34.609 --> 00:21:37.109 what Aboriginal people were doing was, you know, 00:21:37.150 --> 00:21:38.970 they weren't living this kind of nomadic lifestyle 00:21:38.970 --> 00:21:41.450 that white authorities assumed they were, just 00:21:41.450 --> 00:21:43.470 kind of wandering around, not knowing where they're 00:21:43.470 --> 00:21:46.269 going. They used waterholes, they used country 00:21:46.269 --> 00:21:48.670 to move in very particular ways in particular 00:21:48.670 --> 00:21:53.150 seasons. And so there were multiple cases of 00:21:53.150 --> 00:21:56.250 family units, entire groups of people travelling 00:21:56.250 --> 00:21:58.890 using waterholes through the central deserts 00:21:58.890 --> 00:22:00.990 from one mission to another, as they would have 00:22:00.990 --> 00:22:04.029 done every year for the decade previous, not 00:22:04.029 --> 00:22:07.990 knowing that this is now a 100 ,000 square kilometre 00:22:07.990 --> 00:22:12.609 military exclusion zone. And so this then leads 00:22:12.609 --> 00:22:17.880 to a lot of... within communities because of 00:22:17.880 --> 00:22:20.160 the way this information was withheld. So people 00:22:20.160 --> 00:22:22.380 had very little understanding of what was happening. 00:22:23.200 --> 00:22:27.859 There were attempts to prevent people from entering 00:22:27.859 --> 00:22:30.160 the central deserts by suggesting that there 00:22:30.160 --> 00:22:34.519 was poison there, mamu or bad spirits. And so 00:22:34.519 --> 00:22:37.380 once again, this use of superstition to try and 00:22:37.380 --> 00:22:42.339 prevent movement. And I suppose my... point in 00:22:42.339 --> 00:22:45.059 explaining these stories that seem to be not 00:22:45.059 --> 00:22:47.539 so related to the nuclear is to demonstrate how 00:22:47.539 --> 00:22:49.579 these colonial mechanisms that were in place 00:22:49.579 --> 00:22:52.099 well before the nuclear testing but also persisted 00:22:52.099 --> 00:22:55.819 after were fundamental to facilitating them going 00:22:55.819 --> 00:22:59.000 ahead in the central desert at this time. Yeah 00:22:59.000 --> 00:23:03.539 it also seems correct me if I'm wrong but it 00:23:03.539 --> 00:23:06.859 seems like there there was not that clear discussion 00:23:06.859 --> 00:23:09.599 of like this is what we're planning to do with 00:23:09.599 --> 00:23:12.220 this land that we've decided to put aside for 00:23:12.220 --> 00:23:15.079 this purpose. It is going to be very dangerous 00:23:15.079 --> 00:23:18.539 to be in this area while we do these things. 00:23:18.660 --> 00:23:21.900 It sounds like that discussion wasn't there. 00:23:21.980 --> 00:23:24.099 It sounds like they use these other methods to 00:23:24.099 --> 00:23:28.160 sort of try and shift how people use that land. 00:23:28.299 --> 00:23:31.299 Am I interpreting what you're saying? Yeah, there 00:23:31.299 --> 00:23:35.180 was absolutely no attempt to sit people down 00:23:35.180 --> 00:23:37.539 and say, this is what's happening. I think there 00:23:37.539 --> 00:23:40.299 were some attempts. There is historical evidence 00:23:40.299 --> 00:23:42.880 to suggest that the native patrol officer who 00:23:42.880 --> 00:23:45.640 was enlisted to look after this 100 ,000 square 00:23:45.640 --> 00:23:47.259 kilometre, and bear in mind, he would have had 00:23:47.259 --> 00:23:51.259 a single Land Rover to do that. Aboriginal people 00:23:51.259 --> 00:23:54.720 do tell stories of him drawing missiles or weapons 00:23:54.720 --> 00:23:58.059 on pieces of paper and trying to explain this 00:23:58.059 --> 00:24:01.259 to communities. But for some of these communities, 00:24:01.460 --> 00:24:05.849 this is a very early stage of... colonialism 00:24:05.849 --> 00:24:08.309 for them. Their communities had previously not 00:24:08.309 --> 00:24:12.450 necessarily been impacted by the waves of colonialism 00:24:12.450 --> 00:24:15.349 that had come through the East Coast, for example, 00:24:15.569 --> 00:24:19.089 a hundred years prior. It means that there are 00:24:19.089 --> 00:24:22.380 also simultaneous traumas that are happening 00:24:22.380 --> 00:24:24.460 at the same time and the nuclear weapons test 00:24:24.460 --> 00:24:27.099 happened but also huge measles outbreaks occur 00:24:27.099 --> 00:24:30.599 because a lot of white scientists and other personnel 00:24:30.599 --> 00:24:32.380 coming into the central deserts leads brings 00:24:32.380 --> 00:24:34.740 more disease to people who wouldn't have otherwise 00:24:34.740 --> 00:24:37.779 been exposed to those diseases and so there becomes 00:24:37.779 --> 00:24:40.200 a lot of conflation in people's memories as to 00:24:40.200 --> 00:24:42.640 what happened in this period and there are people 00:24:42.640 --> 00:24:46.140 who talk about being in town near Coober Pedy 00:24:46.140 --> 00:24:48.200 and hearing for the first time about the weapons 00:24:48.200 --> 00:24:49.839 test because there is an announcement on the 00:24:49.839 --> 00:24:51.819 radio to say that there is going to be a bomb 00:24:51.819 --> 00:24:54.880 test and they need to stay out of the area. And 00:24:54.880 --> 00:24:57.539 this would have largely been due to the secrecy 00:24:57.539 --> 00:24:59.440 with which the nuclear tests were conducted. 00:24:59.519 --> 00:25:01.019 And there would have been very little information 00:25:01.019 --> 00:25:05.119 for a lot of people. And so it was assumed that 00:25:05.119 --> 00:25:07.779 mission stations and others on the periphery 00:25:07.779 --> 00:25:11.609 would do their part in trying to prevent people 00:25:11.609 --> 00:25:14.569 from traveling. They did some aerial patrols, 00:25:14.569 --> 00:25:18.109 but again, such a huge area of the desert. And 00:25:18.109 --> 00:25:19.970 for people who know this landscape incredibly 00:25:19.970 --> 00:25:23.269 intimately, not particularly hard to hide from 00:25:23.269 --> 00:25:27.970 a plane. And so, yeah, there was absolutely no 00:25:27.970 --> 00:25:33.190 attempt to sit everyone down or really brief 00:25:33.190 --> 00:25:36.750 everyone as to what would be happening. And partly 00:25:36.750 --> 00:25:40.730 this is that prior to the nuclear testing, A 00:25:40.730 --> 00:25:43.049 large swathe of this land had also been set aside 00:25:43.049 --> 00:25:46.769 for ballistic missiles testing. And it was felt 00:25:46.769 --> 00:25:50.009 that the probability of a missile dropping out 00:25:50.009 --> 00:25:53.369 of the sky was so low that it didn't really warrant 00:25:53.369 --> 00:25:58.390 people being warned that these might be unsafe. 00:25:58.769 --> 00:26:01.740 But obviously, once you add... the element of 00:26:01.740 --> 00:26:04.359 a nuclear weapon the dangers are far greater 00:26:04.359 --> 00:26:07.200 than a single ballistic missile this is an era 00:26:07.200 --> 00:26:10.000 where you know nuclear weapons as a thing are 00:26:10.000 --> 00:26:13.480 relatively new right so what kind of awareness 00:26:13.480 --> 00:26:16.460 would there have been not just in these communities 00:26:16.460 --> 00:26:18.599 but like you know before the first tests were 00:26:18.599 --> 00:26:21.019 done like what was the awareness on the ground 00:26:21.019 --> 00:26:24.220 of what it meant to test these weapons in this 00:26:24.220 --> 00:26:27.099 area that's a really good question and i think 00:26:27.799 --> 00:26:30.140 It's always good keeping in mind when you're 00:26:30.140 --> 00:26:32.720 talking about nuclear testing that they are ultimately 00:26:32.720 --> 00:26:35.200 experiments. They're scientific experiments and 00:26:35.200 --> 00:26:36.619 often people don't know what's going to happen. 00:26:36.640 --> 00:26:39.319 That's the point of doing a scientific experiment 00:26:39.319 --> 00:26:42.599 is to see what might happen. We know that in 00:26:42.599 --> 00:26:45.759 certain cases the meteorological conditions were 00:26:45.759 --> 00:26:50.619 not great for dropping weapons and there were 00:26:50.619 --> 00:26:54.400 cases of Geiger counters picking up fallout incredibly 00:26:54.400 --> 00:26:59.309 far away from the testing site. But I don't think 00:26:59.309 --> 00:27:03.309 there was a huge sense of what would happen. 00:27:03.349 --> 00:27:06.369 In fact, at this time, a lot of nuclear tests, 00:27:06.569 --> 00:27:10.190 the main fear was that they would fail and therefore 00:27:10.190 --> 00:27:13.369 make whichever global power was conducting them 00:27:13.369 --> 00:27:16.009 look weak by virtue of having led to kind of 00:27:16.009 --> 00:27:21.089 a fizzled weapon. So the other thing that was 00:27:21.089 --> 00:27:23.950 occurring at the same time as... physical detonation 00:27:23.950 --> 00:27:26.309 of nuclear weapons was a series of minor tests. 00:27:26.490 --> 00:27:28.470 And they refer to them as the minor tests, but 00:27:28.470 --> 00:27:31.210 there were hundreds of them. And these themselves 00:27:31.210 --> 00:27:33.710 were experiments to see what would happen if 00:27:33.710 --> 00:27:36.329 an accident occurred with a weapon. So we're 00:27:36.329 --> 00:27:39.509 talking about setting fire to plutonium, dropping 00:27:39.509 --> 00:27:43.049 plutonium from a great height, exploding plutonium, 00:27:43.109 --> 00:27:45.029 anything you could think of that might accidentally 00:27:45.029 --> 00:27:47.549 happen to a weapon was essentially done to... 00:27:48.519 --> 00:27:51.220 these nuclear materials to see what might happen, 00:27:51.259 --> 00:27:53.000 say if a plane crashed with a nuclear weapon 00:27:53.000 --> 00:27:55.140 on it or someone set fire to a facility with 00:27:55.140 --> 00:27:57.759 a nuclear weapon in it. And these are the tests 00:27:57.759 --> 00:28:00.079 that really spread a huge amount of contamination 00:28:00.079 --> 00:28:03.039 throughout the deserts. And these were not the 00:28:03.039 --> 00:28:07.420 nine inland big tests that happened. And so I 00:28:07.420 --> 00:28:11.400 get the sense there wasn't a huge amount of understanding 00:28:11.400 --> 00:28:12.980 of what would happen. There was a hope these 00:28:12.980 --> 00:28:15.019 would be big explosions. There was a hope that 00:28:15.019 --> 00:28:17.569 these would demonstrate that Britain had developed 00:28:17.569 --> 00:28:20.750 the technology to build a nuclear weapon successfully 00:28:20.750 --> 00:28:24.289 and detonate it properly. But there was very 00:28:24.289 --> 00:28:30.410 little broader discussion among the broader population 00:28:30.410 --> 00:28:32.369 about what this would mean for the Central Desert 00:28:32.369 --> 00:28:34.769 region, largely because the assumption was that 00:28:34.769 --> 00:28:38.109 these weren't lands that necessarily needed to 00:28:38.109 --> 00:28:41.309 be inhabited. And we can talk about this a little 00:28:41.309 --> 00:28:43.809 bit later if you wanted, but the cleanup efforts 00:28:43.809 --> 00:28:46.680 that... really demonstrates the extent to which 00:28:46.680 --> 00:28:49.539 there was a little bit of umming and ahhing over 00:28:49.539 --> 00:28:51.900 whether these lands really needed to be inhabited 00:28:51.900 --> 00:28:55.859 in future anyway. Nine major tests. In land. 00:28:56.119 --> 00:28:58.940 There were several off the coast of Western Australia 00:28:58.940 --> 00:29:02.680 as well. And those were designed to determine 00:29:02.680 --> 00:29:05.519 what would happen if there was a submarine attack. 00:29:05.900 --> 00:29:08.660 So they wanted them to be underwater. Well, underwater, 00:29:08.940 --> 00:29:11.420 I say in scare quotes. No one can see me, but 00:29:11.420 --> 00:29:14.259 I'm doing scare quotes. Essentially, they wanted 00:29:14.259 --> 00:29:18.940 a water -based testing site so that, say, a nuclear 00:29:18.940 --> 00:29:21.920 submarine or a submarine armed with nuclear weapon 00:29:21.920 --> 00:29:24.539 was to come into a harbour in the United Kingdom 00:29:24.539 --> 00:29:27.740 and to explode. They would be able to tell what 00:29:27.740 --> 00:29:30.140 some of the effects of that would be. So those 00:29:30.140 --> 00:29:31.839 were the first tests and those were established 00:29:31.839 --> 00:29:35.099 over, those were done at the Montebello Islands 00:29:35.099 --> 00:29:38.920 of the West. coast of Western Australia, and 00:29:38.920 --> 00:29:41.420 then nine major inland tests at Emu Field in 00:29:41.420 --> 00:29:46.460 Maralinga. Okay. All right. And so what was the 00:29:46.460 --> 00:29:50.259 arrangement between the UK and Australian governments 00:29:50.259 --> 00:29:55.559 for this particular initiative? This is an interesting 00:29:55.559 --> 00:30:00.759 question. A lot of people tell this story as, 00:30:00.819 --> 00:30:03.660 you know, the British came to Australia and asked 00:30:04.220 --> 00:30:06.539 Then Prime Minister Robert Menzies, if he would 00:30:06.539 --> 00:30:10.200 be happy to host some tests, whether he was happy 00:30:10.200 --> 00:30:12.059 to host some tests. And because he was described 00:30:12.059 --> 00:30:15.319 as a sycophantic anglophile, he said yes. And, 00:30:15.339 --> 00:30:17.279 you know, people describe him as British to his 00:30:17.279 --> 00:30:21.160 bootstraps. And he immediately said yes and didn't 00:30:21.160 --> 00:30:23.579 consult cabinet. And that was the arrangement, 00:30:23.599 --> 00:30:28.240 really, that Australia would have a few. scientific 00:30:28.240 --> 00:30:31.839 experts who were involved in order to gain some 00:30:31.839 --> 00:30:34.420 scientific information for Australia more generally, 00:30:34.519 --> 00:30:37.420 and that Australian personnel would also be involved. 00:30:37.759 --> 00:30:42.599 It is more complicated than that, in that earlier 00:30:42.599 --> 00:30:46.579 in the 1940s, Australia had been involved in 00:30:46.579 --> 00:30:49.859 lots of conversations with the UK and other dominions 00:30:49.859 --> 00:30:52.480 of the British Empire and Commonwealth about 00:30:52.480 --> 00:30:56.299 being involved in Commonwealth defence. And it 00:30:56.299 --> 00:30:58.240 was very clear after the Second World War with 00:30:58.240 --> 00:31:01.619 Germany's use of the V2 rocket that ballistic 00:31:01.619 --> 00:31:06.859 missiles was the future of warfare. And so the 00:31:06.859 --> 00:31:10.200 idea was that Britain desperately needed to develop 00:31:10.200 --> 00:31:12.740 and wanted to develop ballistic missiles. But 00:31:12.740 --> 00:31:15.619 there was also an umming and ahhing about whether 00:31:15.619 --> 00:31:17.500 those missiles would one day be armed with a 00:31:17.500 --> 00:31:21.160 nuclear warhead. So Britain actually asked Australia 00:31:21.160 --> 00:31:24.559 if Britain and Australia came to an arrangement. 00:31:26.250 --> 00:31:29.509 that Australia would give up some land to test 00:31:29.509 --> 00:31:31.970 ballistic missiles because the UK needed a huge 00:31:31.970 --> 00:31:34.190 stretch of land to be able to test those missiles. 00:31:34.490 --> 00:31:36.950 So before they said yes to Maralinga and Emu 00:31:36.950 --> 00:31:39.730 Field, there was the sense that Australia would 00:31:39.730 --> 00:31:41.950 be heavily involved in testing British ballistic 00:31:41.950 --> 00:31:44.970 missiles, which from the evidence that I've read 00:31:44.970 --> 00:31:47.569 and a lot of the archival material, especially 00:31:47.569 --> 00:31:51.500 from the UK. It is clear that nuclear was on 00:31:51.500 --> 00:31:54.079 the agenda at the same time as that. It was not 00:31:54.079 --> 00:31:56.819 as clearly talked about because of security implications 00:31:56.819 --> 00:32:00.359 and the desire to keep a few cards close to the 00:32:00.359 --> 00:32:02.640 empire's chest. But there was very much a sense 00:32:02.640 --> 00:32:04.920 that if Australia was going to be involved in 00:32:04.920 --> 00:32:07.079 imperial and Commonwealth defence, that would 00:32:07.079 --> 00:32:10.240 eventually involve being involved in nuclear 00:32:10.240 --> 00:32:14.119 testing in some capacity. I see. Though Australia 00:32:14.119 --> 00:32:16.869 doesn't end up... gaining nuclear weapons from 00:32:16.869 --> 00:32:19.250 this arrangement there didn't ever seem to be 00:32:19.250 --> 00:32:22.210 too much I think the British were very clear 00:32:22.210 --> 00:32:24.089 early on that it would not lead to Australia 00:32:24.089 --> 00:32:26.450 having their own nuclear posture. But there was 00:32:26.450 --> 00:32:28.690 a hope that scientists could be involved and 00:32:28.690 --> 00:32:30.789 therefore Australia would gain important scientific 00:32:30.789 --> 00:32:33.250 knowledge to apply to, say, civilian nuclear 00:32:33.250 --> 00:32:36.390 energy needs. Yeah. Well, I mean, some people 00:32:36.390 --> 00:32:38.250 over on campus were involved in some of those, 00:32:38.289 --> 00:32:40.049 like they were there for the tests and doing 00:32:40.049 --> 00:32:41.829 all kinds of measurements from what I understand. 00:32:42.210 --> 00:32:44.690 Yeah, that's right. So Ernest Titterton, who 00:32:44.690 --> 00:32:48.970 was hired by the ANU in 1952, just after it was 00:32:48.970 --> 00:32:52.119 opened. Mark Oliphant was the foundation head 00:32:52.119 --> 00:32:54.460 of physics here at the ANU. And for those who 00:32:54.460 --> 00:32:56.779 know Mark Oliphant, he worked on the Manhattan 00:32:56.779 --> 00:32:59.500 Project. And he actually was Ernest Ticheton's 00:32:59.500 --> 00:33:02.619 supervisor at the University of Birmingham. And 00:33:02.619 --> 00:33:05.900 he hired Ticheton. Brought him over from the 00:33:05.900 --> 00:33:08.180 UK. Titterton had been at Los Alamos. He'd worked 00:33:08.180 --> 00:33:10.240 on the Manhattan Project and had also been in 00:33:10.240 --> 00:33:13.119 the UK working on tube alloys. So he was very 00:33:13.119 --> 00:33:17.160 much in the anglosphoric nuclear kind of network 00:33:17.160 --> 00:33:21.160 that was being built in the 1950s. Came to ANU 00:33:21.160 --> 00:33:25.019 and he was actually asked by Robert Menzies personally 00:33:25.019 --> 00:33:27.640 if he would be involved in the nuclear testing. 00:33:27.740 --> 00:33:29.880 Now, it's very clear that he was. specifically 00:33:29.880 --> 00:33:32.720 asked for by the British government. And later 00:33:32.720 --> 00:33:34.720 it was suggested that it was maybe because he 00:33:34.720 --> 00:33:38.140 was a very, very, very recent migrant to Australia 00:33:38.140 --> 00:33:43.180 and was British. But he also had experience that 00:33:43.180 --> 00:33:45.180 almost no one at this time would have had in 00:33:45.180 --> 00:33:48.480 that he'd worked on both US and the UK's nuclear 00:33:48.480 --> 00:33:52.500 programs by 1952. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. That would 00:33:52.500 --> 00:33:56.079 be a small club. Yeah. Very small club. Maybe 00:33:56.079 --> 00:33:59.019 we can go to the cleanup now. So this is moving 00:33:59.019 --> 00:34:02.400 forward, right, in time. Around when were discussions 00:34:02.400 --> 00:34:06.259 around the cleanup after these tests occurred? 00:34:06.519 --> 00:34:09.820 When did these start happening and how did those 00:34:09.820 --> 00:34:14.880 discussions go? So to kind of put this in historical 00:34:14.880 --> 00:34:19.239 context, Major nuclear weapons tests were in 00:34:19.239 --> 00:34:21.579 the 1950s, but these minor tests I was talking 00:34:21.579 --> 00:34:24.619 about occurred well into the 60s. So the nuclear 00:34:24.619 --> 00:34:29.059 testing sites didn't end up being decommissioned 00:34:29.059 --> 00:34:32.039 really until the middle of the 1960s when those 00:34:32.039 --> 00:34:34.059 minor tests were concluded. So by this time, 00:34:34.099 --> 00:34:36.099 you know, we've got nuclear testing in the Pacific. 00:34:36.280 --> 00:34:38.760 Australians are very involved in protesting French 00:34:38.760 --> 00:34:42.579 nuclear testing in 1966, for example. And Australia 00:34:42.579 --> 00:34:45.920 has only just ceased allowing the British to 00:34:45.920 --> 00:34:50.579 test. minor experiments in Australia. And I should 00:34:50.579 --> 00:34:53.199 say, ceased allowing them. I believe the British 00:34:53.199 --> 00:34:55.199 just decided they were done with their experiments 00:34:55.199 --> 00:34:58.699 rather than being booted out. So it's after this 00:34:58.699 --> 00:35:00.900 that there is a cleanup effort. There's a cleanup 00:35:00.900 --> 00:35:05.800 effort in the late 1960s. But it becomes quite 00:35:05.800 --> 00:35:09.139 clear in the 1970s that maybe those cleanup efforts 00:35:09.139 --> 00:35:12.340 hadn't been particularly rigorous when over 20 00:35:12.340 --> 00:35:16.710 kilos of plutonium is found at the site. Hanging 00:35:16.710 --> 00:35:19.469 out? Yeah, lying around in the sand. And so it 00:35:19.469 --> 00:35:21.329 turns out what this cleanup effort had really 00:35:21.329 --> 00:35:24.090 entailed was essentially digging shallow trenches, 00:35:24.150 --> 00:35:26.289 pushing everything that they'd experimented with 00:35:26.289 --> 00:35:29.409 into these trenches and covering it up. So I've 00:35:29.409 --> 00:35:31.809 seen quite haunting pictures of the experiments. 00:35:31.889 --> 00:35:33.969 And what we're talking about is what happens 00:35:33.969 --> 00:35:36.070 when you bomb a jeep or what happens when you, 00:35:36.250 --> 00:35:39.309 you know, you're at this time, there was this 00:35:39.309 --> 00:35:42.309 sense that maybe nuclear weapons would be deployed 00:35:42.309 --> 00:35:47.010 in. warfare. So they had dummies who were wearing 00:35:47.010 --> 00:35:49.429 military uniforms. They wanted to see what nuclear 00:35:49.429 --> 00:35:51.829 weapons would do to a military uniform or to 00:35:51.829 --> 00:35:54.849 a helicopter or to a plane. And so they had all 00:35:54.849 --> 00:35:56.829 of these things out in the desert. They bombed 00:35:56.829 --> 00:35:58.489 them and then they kind of scraped them into 00:35:58.489 --> 00:36:00.869 these big trenches. In fact, some of them that 00:36:00.869 --> 00:36:03.230 were used for these tests end up being redeployed 00:36:03.230 --> 00:36:06.630 during the Korean War and other wars after the 00:36:06.630 --> 00:36:09.070 nuclear testing is concluded. And a lot of these 00:36:09.070 --> 00:36:12.269 planes end up in these graveyards and actually 00:36:13.039 --> 00:36:16.699 are used as salvage. So people salvage parts 00:36:16.699 --> 00:36:21.019 from them. So the cleanup efforts were quite 00:36:21.019 --> 00:36:27.639 poor. And there were also some efforts from some 00:36:27.639 --> 00:36:30.079 of the missions nearby. They were given permission 00:36:30.079 --> 00:36:32.699 to go into Maralinga and salvage items that might 00:36:32.699 --> 00:36:35.099 be useful for the missions. And I've been told 00:36:35.099 --> 00:36:37.880 by people that Across properties all over South 00:36:37.880 --> 00:36:39.860 Australia, there were random bits and bobs from 00:36:39.860 --> 00:36:41.840 Maralinga because people would just go onto the 00:36:41.840 --> 00:36:44.719 site and take things. So sheds, you know, drums, 00:36:44.840 --> 00:36:47.420 all sorts of things that might be of use. Was 00:36:47.420 --> 00:36:51.780 there any process by which they checked the safety 00:36:51.780 --> 00:36:55.579 of this? No, and it wasn't until there was a 00:36:55.579 --> 00:36:57.960 royal commission into the nuclear test that it 00:36:57.960 --> 00:37:00.440 was decided that a far more rigorous scientific... 00:37:02.030 --> 00:37:04.550 inquiry into the testing sites and their rehabilitation 00:37:04.550 --> 00:37:07.070 needed to be done. And that wasn't until the 00:37:07.070 --> 00:37:10.070 late 1980s and was not concluded until the 1990s. 00:37:10.070 --> 00:37:13.210 So these sites that were used in the 1950s are 00:37:13.210 --> 00:37:15.530 only really getting to a point where they can 00:37:15.530 --> 00:37:17.989 be properly addressed in terms of whether they 00:37:17.989 --> 00:37:20.869 are habitable, whether they are safe to go onto 00:37:20.869 --> 00:37:25.210 these lands by the late 20th century. So we're 00:37:25.210 --> 00:37:28.059 talking 40 years. And this is the backdrop with 00:37:28.059 --> 00:37:31.639 the discussions around nuclear waste as something 00:37:31.639 --> 00:37:33.719 that they would like to store, for instance, 00:37:33.800 --> 00:37:36.980 in South Australia have happened more recently. 00:37:36.980 --> 00:37:39.179 Is that right? The issue you're always going 00:37:39.179 --> 00:37:41.119 to have with nuclear waste, especially in Australia, 00:37:41.139 --> 00:37:45.679 is that even if we have a national repository, 00:37:46.099 --> 00:37:48.039 it's going to have to be in someone's state. 00:37:48.159 --> 00:37:50.380 And no one ever wants that nuclear waste to be 00:37:50.380 --> 00:37:52.639 in their state. So the thing with the former 00:37:52.639 --> 00:37:55.670 Maralinga lands and what is now the... Woomera 00:37:55.670 --> 00:37:57.969 kind of prohibited areas, a defence facility, 00:37:58.210 --> 00:38:01.530 is because it's a defence facility, it's federally 00:38:01.530 --> 00:38:05.650 governed. So it's technically in South Australia, 00:38:05.690 --> 00:38:07.909 but it's federal land. So you could establish 00:38:07.909 --> 00:38:09.630 a national waste repository there and it would 00:38:09.630 --> 00:38:11.449 be under the auspices of the federal government. 00:38:12.090 --> 00:38:14.730 So there have been conversations about whether 00:38:14.730 --> 00:38:17.769 Woomera was where they should store nuclear waste, 00:38:17.789 --> 00:38:20.130 considering there's already some waste there 00:38:20.130 --> 00:38:25.860 buried. But we've never really gotten right to 00:38:25.860 --> 00:38:27.900 the end of a national waste repository conversation. 00:38:28.059 --> 00:38:31.679 It's always been torpedoed at some point. But 00:38:31.679 --> 00:38:34.500 there was an issue in the 1990s where in 1998, 00:38:34.719 --> 00:38:36.860 John Howard's government was keen to establish 00:38:36.860 --> 00:38:40.019 a national waste repository. And one of the sites 00:38:40.019 --> 00:38:42.420 they thought could be Woomera. So they did actually 00:38:42.420 --> 00:38:45.199 transport a lot of waste out there. But in the 00:38:45.199 --> 00:38:49.599 process, they had a leak. And during a routine 00:38:49.599 --> 00:38:52.679 inspection, they found leaked material. And that 00:38:52.679 --> 00:38:55.460 led to obviously quite a lot of concern over 00:38:55.460 --> 00:38:57.960 how this waste was being handled, how it was 00:38:57.960 --> 00:39:00.340 being transported, what it would mean for that 00:39:00.340 --> 00:39:03.639 waste to end up back on lands that have already 00:39:03.639 --> 00:39:06.579 been subjected to so many different nuclear processes 00:39:06.579 --> 00:39:18.840 over time. So it's always been a bit murky. I'm 00:39:18.840 --> 00:39:23.980 wondering if there's a discussion to be had about 00:39:23.980 --> 00:39:28.340 trust and nuclear technologies, given the pieces 00:39:28.340 --> 00:39:31.199 of the history that you've just shared. And particularly 00:39:31.199 --> 00:39:34.739 with regards to Aboriginal communities who may 00:39:34.739 --> 00:39:38.980 have been impacted by these activities. You know, 00:39:38.980 --> 00:39:41.800 how do we how do we start to think about that? 00:39:41.920 --> 00:39:43.739 How do we start to think about what that means 00:39:43.739 --> 00:39:46.909 for how we need to really consider? whether when 00:39:46.909 --> 00:39:49.190 and how to use these technologies. Yeah, I think 00:39:49.190 --> 00:39:51.269 the conversation of trust and anxiety around 00:39:51.269 --> 00:39:54.329 nuclear is really important. I think this is 00:39:54.329 --> 00:39:56.230 a good starting point, understanding the history 00:39:56.230 --> 00:40:01.489 of why people feel this way. In 1998, the reason 00:40:01.489 --> 00:40:03.590 why they wanted a national waste repository in 00:40:03.590 --> 00:40:05.710 some regards and what the government reports 00:40:05.710 --> 00:40:08.030 into that demonstrated was that there's a significant 00:40:08.030 --> 00:40:11.230 public anxiety around radioactivity and what 00:40:11.230 --> 00:40:14.969 that means. The invisibility of radioactivity, 00:40:15.110 --> 00:40:18.250 the seeming insidiousness of radioactivity and 00:40:18.250 --> 00:40:20.869 the fact that at so many points in our history 00:40:20.869 --> 00:40:24.980 and the inherent nature of... early development 00:40:24.980 --> 00:40:27.239 of nuclear technologies, both for military and 00:40:27.239 --> 00:40:29.039 civilian purposes, meant that there was so much 00:40:29.039 --> 00:40:31.780 secrecy around it. People feel like they're not 00:40:31.780 --> 00:40:33.920 getting the whole story. And then you have these 00:40:33.920 --> 00:40:37.840 things come to light, such as the fact that Maralinga 00:40:37.840 --> 00:40:39.960 and Emu Field were clearly not cleaned up adequately, 00:40:40.420 --> 00:40:45.059 that it was unsafe for them to be inhabited, 00:40:45.199 --> 00:40:48.900 or there had been seemingly some kind of underhanded 00:40:48.900 --> 00:40:53.970 or secret way certain facilities had been come 00:40:53.970 --> 00:40:57.409 to exist etc it means that there's this inherent 00:40:57.409 --> 00:41:01.030 distrust around a lot of these issues and governments 00:41:01.030 --> 00:41:02.869 have been encouraged in the past to think about 00:41:02.869 --> 00:41:05.090 the fact that while they might think that public 00:41:05.090 --> 00:41:08.050 anxiety is misplaced in that you know radioactivity 00:41:08.050 --> 00:41:11.070 is not unsafe or we can handle it in safe ways 00:41:11.070 --> 00:41:15.389 or you know you require nuclear medicine for 00:41:15.389 --> 00:41:18.719 cancer treatment I think what these reports were 00:41:18.719 --> 00:41:20.519 really encouraging the government to bear in 00:41:20.519 --> 00:41:22.860 mind and others to bear in mind is irrespective 00:41:22.860 --> 00:41:25.099 of all of those things, there is a public anxiety 00:41:25.099 --> 00:41:27.780 that needs to be addressed. And telling people 00:41:27.780 --> 00:41:30.940 they're uneducated or ignorant doesn't tend to 00:41:30.940 --> 00:41:34.260 help in that regard. And I think with communities 00:41:34.260 --> 00:41:37.079 in particular, what a lot of these communities 00:41:37.079 --> 00:41:39.260 are demonstrating and what a lot of cases of 00:41:39.260 --> 00:41:42.340 environmental injustice or nuclear colonialism 00:41:42.340 --> 00:41:45.789 demonstrate is the same communities are... targeted 00:41:45.789 --> 00:41:48.730 time and time again. And it might be because 00:41:48.730 --> 00:41:52.550 they live in a desert environment and their environment 00:41:52.550 --> 00:41:55.550 is considered pollutable. There's a phenomenal 00:41:55.550 --> 00:41:58.010 scholar in the United States who refers to it 00:41:58.010 --> 00:42:00.250 as wastelanding, the way we wasteland certain 00:42:00.250 --> 00:42:03.929 environments. But for these communities, it's 00:42:03.929 --> 00:42:06.769 their country. It is their culture, their tradition. 00:42:06.929 --> 00:42:10.349 Everything is tied up in the environment that 00:42:10.349 --> 00:42:14.570 they live within. And these phenomenal old women, 00:42:14.650 --> 00:42:16.650 the Coober Pedy, Kungka Tjuta, or the Coober Pedy 00:42:16.650 --> 00:42:18.630 senior women, when the way stump was being established, 00:42:18.929 --> 00:42:21.449 they actually said, nevermind our country is 00:42:21.449 --> 00:42:23.949 the desert, it's where we live. And they had 00:42:23.949 --> 00:42:26.250 this notion that they understand the desert landscape 00:42:26.250 --> 00:42:28.849 in a way that others don't and that they need 00:42:28.849 --> 00:42:32.849 to preserve that. So I think there is a big conversation 00:42:32.849 --> 00:42:37.829 to be had around trust and distrust. Also, the 00:42:37.829 --> 00:42:39.849 value of having a conversation with someone, 00:42:40.110 --> 00:42:43.989 seeking consent, having a conversation that details 00:42:43.989 --> 00:42:46.750 exactly what is going to happen going through 00:42:46.750 --> 00:42:50.010 due process. With the nuclear waste dumps that 00:42:50.010 --> 00:42:54.929 have been posited in Australia, almost all of 00:42:54.929 --> 00:43:00.150 them have been unsuccessful, not necessarily 00:43:00.150 --> 00:43:02.809 because of any particular action from a particular 00:43:02.809 --> 00:43:06.690 person, but because often the process by which 00:43:06.690 --> 00:43:10.980 they were put up turned out to be not. legislatively 00:43:10.980 --> 00:43:15.179 sound so a corner's been cut somewhere or someone's 00:43:15.179 --> 00:43:17.059 just tried to go the easy way around and then 00:43:17.059 --> 00:43:19.440 it you know someone decides they want to take 00:43:19.440 --> 00:43:21.159 it to the high court and the high court then 00:43:21.159 --> 00:43:24.659 rules yeah okay actually there has been some 00:43:24.659 --> 00:43:29.000 breaching of protocol here or breaching of legislation 00:43:29.000 --> 00:43:32.039 in order to get it to this point and often it's 00:43:32.039 --> 00:43:34.500 because conversations aren't being had or particular 00:43:34.500 --> 00:43:38.030 people aren't being consulted yeah I want to 00:43:38.030 --> 00:43:40.590 go back to the perspectives of the desert and 00:43:40.590 --> 00:43:43.329 its worth. And I think one of the things that 00:43:43.329 --> 00:43:45.369 I'm getting from the stories that you're telling 00:43:45.369 --> 00:43:50.550 is that there is almost a value judgment that 00:43:50.550 --> 00:43:54.389 is made from a particular perspective that perhaps 00:43:54.389 --> 00:43:58.349 we could begin to unpack in a different way. 00:43:58.510 --> 00:44:00.769 Like, how do you begin to have conversations 00:44:00.769 --> 00:44:05.110 where you can start from a place of understanding 00:44:05.110 --> 00:44:09.480 how... you know, various communities value a 00:44:09.480 --> 00:44:12.519 particular environment in this case. How do you 00:44:12.519 --> 00:44:15.179 start from a place where those kinds of things 00:44:15.179 --> 00:44:17.940 can be kind of an integral part of the discussion 00:44:17.940 --> 00:44:22.360 and can be understood by all parties? Yeah, I 00:44:22.360 --> 00:44:25.699 think that's a really great but tricky question. 00:44:25.780 --> 00:44:27.739 And I think if it was easy to answer, hopefully 00:44:27.739 --> 00:44:30.599 we would have done better by now. I think having 00:44:30.599 --> 00:44:34.679 conversations with people who... live on these 00:44:34.679 --> 00:44:36.699 lands, whose country this is in particular, if 00:44:36.699 --> 00:44:38.500 we're talking about First Nations communities 00:44:38.500 --> 00:44:42.179 globally, is really important. So something that 00:44:42.179 --> 00:44:46.780 a lot of communities who are around the site 00:44:46.780 --> 00:44:50.539 that had been earmarked for the national waste 00:44:50.539 --> 00:44:55.159 repository that got shut down in the early 2000s, 00:44:55.179 --> 00:45:01.180 they were very, very conscious of the groundwater 00:45:01.180 --> 00:45:04.059 underneath the desert. So they were very concerned 00:45:04.059 --> 00:45:07.940 that a nuclear waste repository may impact the 00:45:07.940 --> 00:45:12.079 Great Artesian Basin. And yeah, if contaminants 00:45:12.079 --> 00:45:13.639 got into the Great Artesian Basin, that would 00:45:13.639 --> 00:45:19.219 be phenomenally devastating. And I think what 00:45:19.219 --> 00:45:22.000 the community was encouraging was this notion 00:45:22.000 --> 00:45:24.659 that it's not just what you see on the surface. 00:45:24.719 --> 00:45:27.019 It's not just this desert landscape. But these 00:45:27.019 --> 00:45:29.119 plants, these animals, they all feed off this 00:45:29.119 --> 00:45:32.139 groundwater that in itself is inherently interconnected. 00:45:32.260 --> 00:45:34.639 And that's what you see when you see these heavily 00:45:34.639 --> 00:45:37.019 polluted areas where the interconnections between 00:45:37.019 --> 00:45:41.820 certain animals, plants, and then humans has 00:45:41.820 --> 00:45:45.639 not necessarily been understood at a base level. 00:45:46.599 --> 00:45:49.260 But I think what is interesting is that from 00:45:49.260 --> 00:45:51.219 a lot of the communities I've worked with or 00:45:51.219 --> 00:45:54.719 I've spoken to or written about in my own work. 00:45:55.920 --> 00:45:59.019 And this long timescale and the intergenerational 00:45:59.019 --> 00:46:01.820 impact of this, not necessarily from a contamination 00:46:01.820 --> 00:46:03.699 point of view, but from a cultural point of view 00:46:03.699 --> 00:46:06.000 as well, and the passing on of culture is always 00:46:06.000 --> 00:46:08.579 front of mind and perhaps has been less front 00:46:08.579 --> 00:46:11.239 of mind for those who are coming at it from a 00:46:11.239 --> 00:46:12.760 different perspective where it's like, well, 00:46:12.840 --> 00:46:15.320 we can do this thing right now. We can test right 00:46:15.320 --> 00:46:17.219 now. And then that means within a few months, 00:46:17.260 --> 00:46:19.940 we've figured out. whether we can successfully 00:46:19.940 --> 00:46:21.900 make a bomb or we're going to establish this 00:46:21.900 --> 00:46:24.679 national waste repository that we'll be able 00:46:24.679 --> 00:46:27.119 to store waste for the next hundred years. And 00:46:27.119 --> 00:46:29.880 these are much smaller timescales than perhaps 00:46:29.880 --> 00:46:32.500 some communities are thinking in. And so there 00:46:32.500 --> 00:46:35.440 needs to be more of a conversation in terms of 00:46:35.440 --> 00:46:37.199 if there are communities who are hosting these 00:46:37.199 --> 00:46:41.039 particular things, such as a waste storage facility, 00:46:41.300 --> 00:46:44.300 the full implications of what that might mean. 00:46:44.360 --> 00:46:46.039 And I think that's what communities are demanding. 00:46:46.760 --> 00:46:50.619 We understand that this thing, you're saying 00:46:50.619 --> 00:46:53.880 100 years. We know it's not 100 years. We know 00:46:53.880 --> 00:46:57.500 it's 250 ,000 or whatever it might be, depending 00:46:57.500 --> 00:47:00.320 on the level of waste that might be stored there. 00:47:00.539 --> 00:47:03.539 And there's a need for people to think in timescales. 00:47:03.559 --> 00:47:06.380 We really, really struggle to conceptualise, 00:47:06.380 --> 00:47:09.440 but a lot of Indigenous communities, as we know 00:47:09.440 --> 00:47:12.260 from thinking about Indigenous approaches to 00:47:12.260 --> 00:47:16.090 history, there's a very different... approach 00:47:16.090 --> 00:47:20.010 to linear time and the way that current things 00:47:20.010 --> 00:47:23.630 impact future generations, especially considering, 00:47:23.730 --> 00:47:26.809 I think this goes back to the issue of trust 00:47:26.809 --> 00:47:32.210 and people being unsure. It's hard to put people 00:47:32.210 --> 00:47:34.929 at ease when we can't point to really successful 00:47:34.929 --> 00:47:40.449 examples of say, a permanent waste store. We 00:47:40.449 --> 00:47:42.389 know that it's been very difficult all over the 00:47:42.389 --> 00:47:45.090 world to find a solution to these issues. So 00:47:45.090 --> 00:47:47.210 when people are suggesting that we have this 00:47:47.210 --> 00:47:49.789 solution, but they know that they're kind of 00:47:49.789 --> 00:47:51.829 being spun a bit of a story because no one's 00:47:51.829 --> 00:47:54.210 been able to do it. And if, you know, these... 00:47:54.210 --> 00:47:56.389 I think it's like Finland. Yeah, Finland. And 00:47:56.389 --> 00:47:57.949 they're kind of in this stage of being like, 00:47:57.989 --> 00:47:59.510 we think we might have, we might have figured 00:47:59.510 --> 00:48:01.130 it out. And these are countries that have nuclear 00:48:01.130 --> 00:48:05.889 power. So have a lot more need to find... solutions 00:48:05.889 --> 00:48:09.489 to high level waste. And we are here struggling 00:48:09.489 --> 00:48:12.269 to find a solution to low level waste that we 00:48:12.269 --> 00:48:15.150 use for life -saving medicines that we need. 00:48:15.369 --> 00:48:18.409 And so you can see how some communities then 00:48:18.409 --> 00:48:21.750 are concerned about the narratives they're being 00:48:21.750 --> 00:48:26.170 told because they look at the situation and they 00:48:26.170 --> 00:48:28.530 think, well, We haven't been able to do this 00:48:28.530 --> 00:48:30.909 in the past. We haven't seemingly been able to 00:48:30.909 --> 00:48:33.030 come up with a solution that we know will work, 00:48:33.050 --> 00:48:35.190 but also no one has because we actually haven't 00:48:35.190 --> 00:48:37.250 lived with this technology for long enough to 00:48:37.250 --> 00:48:40.349 know that, you know, in 100 years will this concrete 00:48:40.349 --> 00:48:43.750 mausoleum work or in 200 years will this kind 00:48:43.750 --> 00:48:47.349 of buried sin rock still be. contained in the 00:48:47.349 --> 00:48:49.570 ground. And so I think there is just that concern 00:48:49.570 --> 00:48:52.469 and it comes back to timelines and the seeming 00:48:52.469 --> 00:48:55.289 unwieldiness of nuclear materials and how long 00:48:55.289 --> 00:48:57.849 they last. With that, do you want to tell people 00:48:57.849 --> 00:49:00.849 about your book that's coming out? Sure. So my 00:49:00.849 --> 00:49:04.449 book is called Contaminated Country, Nuclear 00:49:04.449 --> 00:49:07.190 Colonialism and Aboriginal Resistance in Australia. 00:49:07.289 --> 00:49:09.750 And it's coming out with Washington University 00:49:09.750 --> 00:49:13.710 Press in June. So very soon, which is great. 00:49:14.900 --> 00:49:17.860 Or in the past, depending on when this comes 00:49:17.860 --> 00:49:21.159 out or you're listening to it. It will be available 00:49:21.159 --> 00:49:23.699 as an e -book as well as a hard copy. The hard 00:49:23.699 --> 00:49:26.820 copy will be accessible, but I know that U .S. 00:49:26.820 --> 00:49:28.760 presses aren't the easiest to get hold of. So 00:49:28.760 --> 00:49:31.039 there'll be an e -book and really it is this 00:49:31.039 --> 00:49:33.639 history of nuclear colonialism. And really what 00:49:33.639 --> 00:49:37.739 I wanted to do with it, especially with a U .S. 00:49:37.760 --> 00:49:39.880 audience in mind, given it's a U .S. press, is 00:49:39.880 --> 00:49:42.679 to expand the North American geography beyond 00:49:42.679 --> 00:49:45.659 North America. I had multiple people in the US 00:49:45.659 --> 00:49:47.400 tell me, oh, I've never even thought about Australia, 00:49:47.639 --> 00:49:50.079 let alone the fact that Australia has a super 00:49:50.079 --> 00:49:52.719 unique history. We are one of, I say one of because 00:49:52.719 --> 00:49:54.219 I'm trying to be very careful with my language, 00:49:54.280 --> 00:49:57.519 but one of the only countries in the world that 00:49:57.519 --> 00:49:59.519 has willingly given up their sovereign territory 00:49:59.519 --> 00:50:02.659 to test someone else's nuclear weapons. Like 00:50:02.659 --> 00:50:04.880 you think about the gravity of that, right? It's 00:50:04.880 --> 00:50:08.320 not that... You know, Britain said, we are testing 00:50:08.320 --> 00:50:10.099 nuclear weapons here in Eurodominion, therefore 00:50:10.099 --> 00:50:12.340 it happens. But the Australian government was 00:50:12.340 --> 00:50:14.699 actively involved in this process. And part of 00:50:14.699 --> 00:50:18.000 what I've tried to do is think through shifting 00:50:18.000 --> 00:50:21.920 the narrative a little bit away from assuming 00:50:21.920 --> 00:50:26.940 that Australia was this naive country that just 00:50:26.940 --> 00:50:29.630 went along with a lot of... what other people 00:50:29.630 --> 00:50:32.230 wanted, but actually at the same time had their 00:50:32.230 --> 00:50:35.050 own ambitions, wanted to develop their own scientific 00:50:35.050 --> 00:50:37.630 capability, their own military capability, and 00:50:37.630 --> 00:50:39.730 cut their teeth in the Pacific in particular. 00:50:40.550 --> 00:50:42.869 And that there's this really interesting history 00:50:42.869 --> 00:50:45.250 to be told that is intimately entwined with the 00:50:45.250 --> 00:50:51.150 US's history of nuclear development, as well 00:50:51.150 --> 00:50:55.230 as the UK's. As an Australian historian, I think 00:50:55.230 --> 00:50:57.309 Australia is very relevant, but I think it's 00:50:57.309 --> 00:50:59.210 a really interesting case study to put into the 00:50:59.210 --> 00:51:02.409 global history of nuclear development because 00:51:02.409 --> 00:51:04.530 we don't have power. We've never had weapons 00:51:04.530 --> 00:51:08.590 yet. We have an incredibly, incredibly rich nuclear 00:51:08.590 --> 00:51:11.210 history and we're entangled in everyone else's 00:51:11.210 --> 00:51:13.840 nuclear history. We export. Huge amount of uranium. 00:51:14.099 --> 00:51:17.159 And we're heavily involved in the fueling of 00:51:17.159 --> 00:51:19.219 other people's reactors, other people's weapons. 00:51:19.380 --> 00:51:22.099 We know that Australian mines were set up specifically 00:51:22.099 --> 00:51:26.480 to fuel US weapons and UK weapons programs in 00:51:26.480 --> 00:51:30.860 the 1950s. And I think there can be more done. 00:51:31.469 --> 00:51:33.230 there. And as we know, the conversation about 00:51:33.230 --> 00:51:35.510 nuclear doesn't seem to be going away. No, no, 00:51:35.570 --> 00:51:38.369 we're in the middle of another one, right? Exactly. 00:51:38.489 --> 00:51:41.690 So it's a good time to be, you know, releasing 00:51:41.690 --> 00:51:43.969 the book so we can learn this history and understand 00:51:43.969 --> 00:51:45.909 that and kind of take it into these conversations 00:51:45.909 --> 00:51:47.650 that we are having about nuclear technologies 00:51:47.650 --> 00:51:50.050 now. 100%, because I think what is important 00:51:50.050 --> 00:51:52.869 about history really is thinking through these 00:51:52.869 --> 00:51:54.530 histories is integral for thinking about how 00:51:54.530 --> 00:51:57.309 we go forward. And we think about nuclear future 00:51:57.309 --> 00:51:59.949 because inevitably Australia will have a nuclear 00:51:59.949 --> 00:52:03.269 future we will continue to use medicines we even 00:52:03.269 --> 00:52:06.150 if we don't realize that we have nuclear technologies 00:52:06.150 --> 00:52:09.630 every day and therefore we have to dispose of 00:52:09.630 --> 00:52:12.309 waste we have to think about the implications 00:52:12.309 --> 00:52:15.230 of a lot of this so even though we don't have 00:52:15.230 --> 00:52:17.420 nuclear power Even though we don't have nuclear 00:52:17.420 --> 00:52:20.280 weapons, we have a nuclear footprint that we 00:52:20.280 --> 00:52:22.719 need to think about moving into the future, especially 00:52:22.719 --> 00:52:25.199 if that's going to be expanded or we want to 00:52:25.199 --> 00:52:28.639 think about the way that we're involved in the 00:52:28.639 --> 00:52:31.260 programs of other countries or with AUKUS or 00:52:31.260 --> 00:52:33.960 with all sorts of different things. We are in 00:52:33.960 --> 00:52:35.400 a position where we need to think about the past 00:52:35.400 --> 00:52:39.039 in order to think about how we might move forward 00:52:39.039 --> 00:52:51.789 into the nuclear future. Nuclear Matters is a 00:52:51.789 --> 00:52:53.489 production of the Australian National University 00:52:53.489 --> 00:52:56.510 College of Systems and Society. We acknowledge 00:52:56.510 --> 00:52:58.369 the traditional owners of the lands on which 00:52:58.369 --> 00:53:00.369 this podcast is being recorded on or listened 00:53:00.369 --> 00:53:03.030 to and pay our respects to their elders and all 00:53:03.030 --> 00:53:06.130 First Nations people. If you liked what you heard 00:53:06.130 --> 00:53:08.349 today, please share this episode with friends, 00:53:08.469 --> 00:53:11.230 family and colleagues. If you want to send us 00:53:11.230 --> 00:53:13.570 some feedback on an episode, please email us 00:53:13.570 --> 00:53:18.519 at nuclearmatterspodcast at anu.edu.au. Keep 00:53:18.519 --> 00:53:20.760 in mind that this podcast is intended for information 00:53:20.760 --> 00:53:23.860 and education only. The views and opinions expressed 00:53:23.860 --> 00:53:26.099 in each episode are those of the individual speakers 00:53:26.099 --> 00:53:28.840 and do not represent the official policy or position 00:53:28.840 --> 00:53:30.900 of the Australian National University College 00:53:30.900 --> 00:53:33.659 of Systems and Society or the university as a 00:53:33.659 --> 00:53:33.800 whole.