Little Forest Burial Ground - an information paper

Burial in the ground is widely accepted by national and international authorities as a safe and practical way to dispose of solid radioactive waste. Between 1960 and 1968 the Australian Atomic Energy Commission (AAEC) used an area at Little Forest near Lucas Heights for the disposal of waste with low concentrations of radioactivity that originated predominantly from its Research Establishment (RE) some 2 km to the southeast. In the mid-fifties, when the AAEC was considerring the need for a burial ground, other countries were using earth trenches to dispose of low level solid and liquid radiactive waste. Since the AAEC was then only just formulating the levels of liquid waste suitable for discharge to the Woronora RIver, it intially considered using the burial ground also for liquid waste disposal. The main purpose for the burial ground was as a disposal site for laboratory trash that could not categorically be classed as non-radioactive. The limit on the annual dumping rate was to be 0.4 GBq (10mCi). This rate should be compared with the deposition on the burial ground of 1.5MBq (0.04mCi) per year of strontium-90 alone as atmospheric fallout from nuclear weapons testing. Disposal of radioactive waste by burial is safe, provided that the return [called here exposure routes) of the radioactivity to food for human consumption, water, inhaled air or the external radiation environment is at a rate well within the limits recommended by international bodies as acceptable for members of the general public. This safety is achieved by careful selection of burial groundsites. (author)