NUCLEAR WASTE DUMP SITE FOR STH AUSTRALIA
SOUTH AUSTRALIAN OUTBACK FINAL DESTINATION FOR NUCLEAR WASTE
Viability analysis undertaken has determined that a waste disposal facility could generate more than $100 billion income in excess of expenditure (including a $32 billion reserve fund for facility closure and ongoing monitoring) over the 120-year life of the project (or $51 billion discount).
Given the significance of the potential revenue and the extended project time frames, a Commission has found that were such a project to proceed, it must be owned and controlled by the state government, and that the wealth generated should be preserved and equitably shared for current and future generations of South Australians. This presents an opportunity that should be pursued.
Social consent is fundamental to undertaking any new nuclear project. Social consent requires sufficient public support in South Australia to proceed with legislating, planning and implementing a project.
Local community consent is required to host a facility. In the event that this involves regional, remote and Aboriginal communities, consent processes must account for their particular values and concerns.
Political bipartisanship
and stable government policy are also essential. This is particularly important given the long-term operation of facilities and the need for certainty for potential client nations.
A site for Australia’s first nuclear waste dump will not be decided until after the next federal election early this year.
A Nuclear port in Australia is to store High level Nuclear wastes and receive waste ships every 24 to 30 days for decades. The SA Nuclear Royal Commission Final Report recommends a deep sea Nuclear port in Australia to receive an average 3,000 tonnes of high level Spent Nuclear Fuel (SNF) waste per year throughout the first three decades of proposed operations. “In summary, the report recommends: Management, storage and disposal of waste,
Recommendation: Pursue a purpose-built waste storage and disposal facility for used nuclear fuel. …
The Commission’s firm conclusion is that this opportunity should be actively pursued, and as soon as possible.” (Nuclear Commission, Report Delivered, 9 May)
The Nuclear Commission report is based on a desk top nuclear waste consultancy “Radioactive waste storage and disposal facilities in SA” (Feb 2016) by Jacobs MCM, stating baseline requirements for:
• The proposed Nuclear port is to take a total of 138 000 tonnes of high level nuclear waste (equivalent to 1/3 of total global SNF waste) over some 70 years from Project Year 11;
• A “dedicated port facility specifically developed to transfer the canisters from the delivery ship
Meanwhile a debate rages over where the permanent nuclear waste dump be placed, the Federal Government has announced it will offer a $31 million package to the community which takes it on.
Napandee near Kimba and one near Hawker have been shortlisted to permanently hold low-level nuclear waste and temporarily hold intermediate-level waste. However some concerned community members have likened the funding increase to “dangling a carrot” in front of the communities.
The new offer would include a $20 million community development package, $8 million to provide training and up to $3 million over three years for Indigenous skills training and culture heritage protection. The Government had previously promised $10 million.
Government have said consistently through this process that a community that seeks to or wants to house a facility like this deserves to benefit from contributing to our national interest. It is in our national interest that we supply and produce nuclear medicines to all Australians.
“Part of that process is having to handle the waste that’s associated with production and use of nuclear medicines. Just like when a mine is built, or a dam is built, I think it is right and appropriate that the local community benefits.”
Australia may have to stop producing nuclear medicine if it cannot find a central site to dump all of the radioactive rubbish made in the process in the next decade.
Radioactive waste is currently stored in about 100 different sites across Australia, including at universities, hospitals, government departments and the CSIRO.
But Bruce Wilson, the head of resources at the Department of Industry, said space was filling up. A number of those are getting full and many of those sites are not built for long-term disposal of radioactive waste..
The Federal Government has been trying to find a site somewhere in Australia to dump nuclear waste for 30 years, including all the waste produced by the government-owned OPAL reactor at Lucas Heights.
There is about 4,250 cubic metres of radioactive waste in Australia — nearly enough to fill two Olympic-sized swimming pools — and most of it is held at the Australian Nuclear Science Technology Organisation (ANSTO) at Lucas Heights.
“Is it desperately urgent as in does the site [have to be built] right now? Probably not,” Mr Wilson said. But we need to do something in the next 10 years, because we can’t continue to stack this waste up in the shed forever.”
9 Comments
California and Germany could have mostly or completely decarbonized their electricity sectors had their investments in re-newables been diverted instead to new nuclear, a new Environmental Progress report has found. If Nuclear power stations had been built, in addition to those already existing across the world, there would be no argument about emissions and no need for the IPCC whose members would have to get a proper job.
How many of them would be Coal fired stations had it not been for the CO2 scare? It seems to me we are going from the frying pan into the fire. After all these years of scaremongering the IPCC have produced no evidence to prove that carbon dioxide causes global warming. There is certainly no correlation if you look at the long periods of stable temperatures, even some cooling, when carbon emissions were going through the roof. The IPCC, who do no research of their own, was set up to try and prove that the slight rise in world temperatures was due to man’s activities.
The UN won’t discuss the world’s overpopulation and the need for reliable power nor will they make any comment on plastics, and the carbon involved in their manufacture, which are choking our Oceans and waterways and killing marine life.
The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence to be led to safety) by menacing it with a series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary. H L Mencken
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xrRYtRkCKms
The above link is from the website realclimatescience.com where the author Tony Heller has quite openly accusing the climate data in The Nation Climate Assessment Report part 3, as fraudulent.
I ask that those who read this to send it to the ABC the gatekeepers of the swindle.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j46mnIcz330
https://realclimatescience.com/2018/12/fraud-in-the-national-climate-assessment-part-2/
Thanks for the information. Above are the links to 1 and 2. It is truly unbelievable the amount of fraud uncovered which can now be accessed by everyone. They had not allowed for the digital age where their lies and false propaganda are now being exposed.
There is no need to go Nuclear and have the problems with waste, we are doing just fine with fossil fuels.
We can’t claim that we are reducing emissions when we are exporting record amounts of coal to China who are using it in coal fired power stations to produce goods that we are buying because we are no longer competitive…so it is really a double whammy. On this basis our emissions target should include what we are emitting by the above “at a distance”.
If carbon dioxide emissions are driving climate change then we will have to use Nuclear Power. There is no alternative source available that could provide reliable power for the world’s increasing population. Tony Heller has cast doubt on the credibility of these scientists who appear to be cooking the books. Below is an example of what NOAA are up to.
NOAA, whose material is used by the IPCC in advising policy makers, have raised average annual land and sea temperatures in nine of the last fourteen years. Anomalies, the amount of warming or cooling above or below the twentieth century average of 13.90 C, were all altered upwards by as much as 0.12 C (2007), 0.10 C in (2009), 0.09 C (2005), and 0.08 C in 2012, 2010 and 2006.
NOAA gave the following explanation….. “Anomalies may be changed slightly as missing and erroneous data is resolved”.
Temperatures are supposed to be increasing by 0.13 C per decade not by the year. Are you sure of this? I cannot get into the NOAA Climate report because it has been closed due to the stand off between the republicans and the democrats over the border wall.
“I would note if you systematically add, adjust the numbers upwards for more recent temperatures, wouldn’t that, by definition, produce a dataset that proves your global warming theory is correct? And the more you add, the more warming you can find, and you don’t have to actually bother looking at what the thermometer says, you just add whatever number you want.” ……..Ted Cruz