Two days after the September 30, 1999, accident at the Tokaimura nuclear plant in Japan, the Sydney Morning Herald ran an article titled, "It couldn't happen here - could it?"

Readers were reassured by a spokesperson from the government's puppet regulatory agency, the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency, that an accident like the one which took place at Tokaimura could not occur at the Lucas Heights nuclear reactor plant in Sydney.

ARPANSA's logic was simple enough: the Tokaimura accident occurred during the manufacture of fuel rods for nuclear reactors, whereas the Lucas Heights plant operated by the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO) does not manufacture fuel rods, but imports them ready-made to load into the reactor.

However, in broad terms, a similar accident to that which took place at Tokaimura could occur in the Lucas Heights nuclear research reactor - an uncontrolled, self-sustained uranium fission reaction spewing out a lethal cocktail of alpha, beta, gamma and neutron radiation along with other uranium fission products. In fact the Japanese accident took place during the manufacture of fuel rods for a research reactor; it matters little that the fuel rods were for a research reactor of different design and purpose to the Lucas Heights reactor.

The amount of uranium used to fuel the Lucas Heights reactor at any one time is roughly equivalent to the amount involved in the September 30 accident at Tokaimura, although in the case of a reactor accident at Lucas Heights, containment structures would hopefully provide a more solid shield than the building in which uranium fuel was being produced at Tokaimura.

It is instructive to compare the latest accident at Tokaimura with accidents which took place at Lucas Heights in February. Those accidents included a spent fuel rod falling out of its container, exposing three employees to radiation, and two accidents involving abnormally large releases of radioactive isotopes from the isotope processing plant at Lucas Heights.

In Japan, it was an hour before JCO, the company which operates the Tokaimura nuclear plant, told government officials about the accident. More than two hours had passed before neighbouring residents were first informed. The governor of the district in which the Tokaimura nuclear plant is located complained that the Japanese Science and Technology Agency did not offer a single instruction or word of advice following the accident. He said everything, including evacuation orders, were left to local officials with no nuclear expertise.

On October 2, the Japanese government claimed that radiation levels had returned to normal in the vicinity of the Tokaimura nuclear plant, but tests conducted the following day by Greenpeace revealed radiation levels five times above normal.

In Sydney, ANSTO informed two regulatory bodies about the February accidents. Two non-existent regulatory bodies, that is - one had been abolished, the other had not yet been created. But ANSTO failed to tell the local council, local schools and the NSW Health Department about the accidents.

ANSTO management would not even provide full details about the accidents to ANSTO employees. In fact the information only became public when it was leaked to the local press by a concerned ANSTO employee, who said, "... these incidents have been covered up by ANSTO as they are desperate to get the planned new reactor approved. These incidents I'm sure would not go down well with the environmental impact statement being considered at the moment."

In May, the President of the Australian Nuclear Association, Clarence Hardy, said, "I think that ANSTO is like all government organisations. It is the culture of secrecy that is unfortunate in all government organisations. ... I would hope that in the future there will be a more open situation. I welcome the suggestion that there should be a charter between the local people an ANSTO to get a better relationship."

In fact local residents have been lobbying for years for a community right-to-know charter. ANSTO and the federal government have stone-walled. This year, residents have repeatedly asked the environment minister, Robert Hill, to establish a right-to-know charter as local residents and ANSTO have agreed that further negotiation will not resolve the impasse. Hill has refused to involve himself to date.

Much concern has been expressed in Japan about the hands-off approach adopted by government regulators of the nuclear industry. Documents obtained by the Japanese media reveal that JCO told the government it would put in place a contingency plan to prepare for a critical accident. No plan was prepared and no checks were carried out by government officials.

In this hands-off regulatory climate, it is no wonder that JCO illegally revised a government safety manual, and that risks were further increased when employees were directed to cut even more corners to save money and time. (Pro-nuclear propagandists have trotted out the usual furphy that the Tokaimura accident was a result of "human error". This is outrageous. Two JCO employees are likely to die - simply for obeying orders.)

Adding a farcical element to the tragedy, three days after the accident, the Japanese government's Science and Technology Agency raided the offices of JCO on suspicion of "using methods and a manual not approved by the government and illegally processing uranium."

In Australia, regulation of the nuclear industry has always been a sick joke. The government recently created the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency (ARPANSA). The executive director of ANSTO was one of three people on the selection panel to advise the government on applicants for the position of chief executive of ARPANSA. When asked to justify this outrage by local residents, an ANSTO spin doctor, John Mulcair, could only say, "There are two views about that. There's my view and then there's the official ANSTO view."

The director, and five other staff, of the so-called regulatory branch of ARPANSA are former ANSTO employees. I recently asked the chief executive of ARPANSA, John Loy, to comment on the potential for conflicts of interest arising from the revolving door which has always linked ANSTO to its regulators. His response was all heat but no light: "It would be foolish to preclude former ANSTO employees from ARPANSA operations relating to ANSTO. The implication that there is a conflict of interest is one that I utterly reject. Staff of ARPANSA are highly professional and subscribe to values that are stated in ARPANSA's corporate plan."

The question of insurance claims has arisen since the September 30 Japanese accident. According to a report in the October 4 Sydney Morning Herald, nuclear power plant operators and companies that handle their fuel are required to have compensation insurance, but "few believe that the $14.5 million fixed limit will be anywhere near adequate to cope with the number and scale of claims flowing from the September 30 accident." Decades of political and legal battles are certain to follow.

In Australia, ANSTO estimates that, in any one year, the likelihood of a "worst case" accident involving the new reactor planned for Lucas Heights would be one in a million and that the maximum risk to an individual of developing a fatal cancer would be one in 6 billion per year. "Armed with those sporting odds", says Michael Priceman from the Sutherland Shire Environment Centre, "the Insurance Council of Australia still refuses to insure the public."

Last year an ANSTO scientist told me that ANSTO "couldn't organise a booze-up in a brewery". Yet it is ANSTO that operates a nuclear reactor in the suburbs of Australia's most populous city.

The federal Coalition government refuses to redress the current situation. Nor will the NSW Labor government. According to university lecturer and Sutherland Shire Councillor Genevieve Rankin, "The state Labor government has refused to act on its constitutional responsibilities to the citizens of NSW in the areas of emergency planning, heath and safety, and urban planning at Lucas Heights."