Introducing: Dr Bill Miller, Technical Director – Radiation Safety and Project Assessments
When he accepted a contract to assist with the recovery and management of radioactive waste following the 2011 accident at the Fukushima Daiichi reactor, in Japan, the last thing Bill Miller expected to find was romance.
And yet, there it was, in the shape of his future wife, Dr Mika Yamada, a Japanese national who was also part of the team providing technical expertise on the project.
“She was the silver lining in the clouds of Fukushima,” he says of their meeting in 2015
Bill Miller Technical Director- Radiation Safety and Project Assessments, Tellus
Mika was also part of what brought Bill to Australia.
Born and bred in the UK, with a PhD from University of Glasgow in isotope geochemistry, Bill had worked in radioactive waste management across Europe, North America and Asia.
Australia entered the picture in 2022 when Bill and Mika both moved here to work on the Australian Government’s proposed National Radioactive Waste Management Facility at Kimba, in remote South Australia.
Bill, who is 59, saw that as an opportunity to round out his career with a major achievement. The Australian Government’s cancellation of the Kimba project last year is what has allowed Tellus to bring Bill Miller on board, adding his skills and knowledge to our rich and varied pool of expertise. For Bill, part of the challenge and attraction was working outside the government sector.
“Tellus is unique in the industry,” he says.
“Normally, projects such as Sandy Ridge or Chandler are managed, or at least promoted by governments. For a private company to be the lead implementer and proponent is quite innovative.”
What Bill has learned through decades of working in radioactive waste management is the complicated, but necessary, intersectionality of issues it involves.
“To be able to build a geological repository and operate one is certainly a technical issue,” he says, “but also a social and political issue.”
“You can’t make headway if you’re not addressing the interdependence between science, economics and the geopolitical situation.”
The nuclear accident at Fukushima Daiichi had no confirmed human casualties, but it taught Bill that our industry cannot do enough to address community and stakeholder concerns over safety.
“The context of our work is a backdrop of both real fear, and manufactured fear, around nuclear issues,” he says.
“The perception of danger can be far greater than any actual hazard.
“The lesson is that we must properly allay peoples’ concerns: through good technical work, and through honest community, stakeholder and government communications.
“We have to go over and above what’s often required to make our case and demonstrate that a facility will be safely managed by Tellus.”
That’s a challenge Bill Miller, and Tellus, are ready to accept with enthusiasm.
