Minter Ellison consultant wants nuclear waste dumped in Australia
16 March 2012
A sometime consultant for Minter Ellison has made himself popular by offering up Australia as a site for contaminated waste from the destroyed Fukushima nuclear power station, stating that it can't stay in Japan because "it's too crowded".

Andrew Thomson, a former government minister, is an occasional consultant for Minter Ellison. And this week, he called for Australia to accept a few hundred tonnes of radioactive soil from the nuclear power station destroyed in last year's Japanese earthquake. He reckons that the unpopulated desert regions of Western Australia and South Australia are ideal locations to dump the stuff, which, according to Thomson isn't "going to harm anyone". Well, that's one way to ensure they remain unspoilt by development.

Andrew Thomson welcoming in some more nuclear waste

Most of the contaminated dirt is from outside the 20km exclusion "deadzone" around the stricken power plant, and was described by Thomson as only "mildly radioactive". And it's better that it gets dumped in the Aussie desert, because "the last place you want to store it is Japan - it's just too crowded".

Optimistically, Thomson hopes that taking the dangerous waste off Japan's hands will encourage them to keep on pumping money into the Australian resources sector. Thomson said "it's only fair and reasonable if we propose to sell more uranium to Japan in future that we should offer such help now when Japan really needs it". Whether Japan is keen to rush straight back into building nuclear power stations remains to be seen.

*UPDATE* RollOnFriday fact checkers have been informed that we'd mixed-up Andrew Thomson - an occasional consultant at Minter Ellison - with Andrew Thompson, who is head of the firm's Energy and Resources Team. The firm has stated: "we cannot comment on the views expressed by Mr Thomson but they were not made on behalf of this firm." We'd like to apologise for any confusion caused.