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The Forum > Article Comments > Outback SA is a target for both international and national nuclear wastes > Comments

Outback SA is a target for both international and national nuclear wastes : Comments

By David Noonan, published 20/7/2015

The Abbott government is short listing sites in SA for a National Nuclear Store as Premier Weatherill’s Nuclear Royal Commission investigates High Level International Nuclear Waste Storage in Outback SA.

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An excellent article David Noonan

Its only right that South Australians receive the toxic nuclear chemicals that no-one else wants.

I mean these toxic nuclear chemicals are far from the centers of population - except South Australia's.

After all dumping customers (like the US) can always rip-up multi thousand year(?) "we will pay" contracts once these toxic nuclear chemicals are dumped in South Australia.

Australia should finance the dump for $$Billions of Australian taxpayer's money. Then South Australians can watch fly-in fly-out foreign and Lucas Heights experts reap the high pay.
Posted by plantagenet, Monday, 20 July 2015 1:35:19 PM
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"Onthebeach" is entitled to his opinion, but not to his own facts. The US is not unable to finance its waste facilities - the industry levy was collecting $US750M annually and the balance held was $31B when collections were suspended in 2014. The eventual facility might not be constructed at Yucca Mountain due to ongoing political and geological problems, but other options exist. See: http://www.eenews.net/stories/1059999730

Meanwhile, the waste is stored on various sites quite safely in dry storage casks, so overexcited scare-mongering is not needed.

Let's stay calm and wait for the royal commission's report - it will be the best informed report available in the Australian context.
Posted by JohnBennetts, Monday, 20 July 2015 1:43:49 PM
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JohnBennets,

Likewise, you are entitled to your own opinion, but not your own facts.

I referred to Obama and by anyone's measure, his administration has been strapped to provide funds for the storage and management of nuclear waste.

What was meant as you would be perfectly aware, is that the US President is forever between a rock and a hard place, constantly being forced to take funds from pressing essentials, such as health and aged care, only to WASTE it on expensive 'short-term' (sic) storage of nuke waste.

Yucca Mountain, not so settled is it?

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/promises/obameter/promise/474/seek-safe-disposal-of-nuclear-waste-/

Tons easier to ship it across oceans for those dumb-ass Aussies to 'store'.
Posted by onthebeach, Monday, 20 July 2015 2:35:21 PM
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<How George W. Bush left the taxpayer with a crippling nuclear waste debt
These new contracts will only add to that crushing burden.

With hasty stroke of a pen, Bush DOE transferred billions of dollars in radioactive waste liability onto taxpayers

Beyond Nuclear, 27 March 2020, Between November 4, 2008 (the day Barack Obama was elected President) and January 22, 2009 (two days after he took the Oath of Office), the George W. Bush administration’s Department of Energy (DOE) hurriedly signed new irradiated nuclear fuel contracts with utilities proposing 21 new atomic reactors.

This obligates U.S. taxpayers to ultimate financial liability for breach of contract damages if DOE fails to take possession of these estimated 21,000 metric tons of high-level radioactive waste by ten years after the new reactors’ licenses terminate.

DOE signed these contracts despite the fact that it has already cost taxpayers $565 million in damages for past breached contacts involving old radioactive waste at commercial reactors, with $790 million more soon to be transferred from the U.S. Treasury to atomic utilities.

In fact, DOE estimates that by 2020, taxpayers will have paid $12.3 billion in damages to nuclear utilities for waste contract breaches, while the nuclear industry itself estimates the ultimate taxpayer damage awards will top $50 billion. These new contracts will only add to that crushing burden.>
http://nuclear-news.net/2010/03/27/how-george-w-bush-left-the-taxpayer-with-a-crippling-nuclear-waste-debt/

However, the main issue is that after years of the best minds and technology in the world being applied to it, the safe storage of nuclear waste has NOT been resolved to the satisfaction of the American people. There are always the promises of the light over the horizon though.

Send it all to those dumb-ass Aussies? What a great idea! What doesn't work in 'Merica will be quite OK there.
Posted by onthebeach, Monday, 20 July 2015 2:47:41 PM
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OTB:
$31B is a much larger sum than $12.3B. So your concern about funding is misplaced. The money is in the bank - so much, in fact, that they stopped adding to the fund last year.

Panic is not necessary, whether regarding USA's or Australia's nuclear waste storage.

Stay calm. Meanwhile, the waste that is of such concern to some is safely stored in casks, on site, for a small (relatively) cost of hundreds, not billions, of dollars annually. Deferring an 11-digit sum of money by expenditure of an annual 9 digit sum sounds prudent to me. There is certainly no reason for declaration of emergency.

Wait for the royal commission to report. It will address these issues under oath and governed by the laws of evidence, with the best available brains and from all possible points of view. What's not to like about that? It is about time that the air was cleared.
Posted by JohnBennetts, Monday, 20 July 2015 3:08:02 PM
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Well said onthebeach

The nuclear industry are experts at relying on taxpayer money to:

- pay for the building and costly running of waste dumps including round the clock security guards

- paying for the high cost of police, security service and military planning, surveillance and reactions to possible terrorist or legitimate protest action against waste dumps, carriage of nuclear material ships/trucks/trains and nuclear reactors (eg. Lucas Heights)

- underwrite nuclear accident insurance and premiums

- clean up after nuclear accidents, and

- decommissioning nuclear reactors

Inexpensive cost-plans of nuclear reactors versus hydrocarbon power stations conveniently forget the above costs.
__________________________________________________

Hi JohnBennetts

On the legitimacy and likely findings of South Australia's Nuclear Fuel Cycle Royal Commission lets not forget the above costs and the background of the Commission's Chief Kevin Scarce.

An anti-nuclear expert observed

"Nor is it reassuring to read the background nuclear industry links of Scarce and his research team. Kevin Scarce is a shareholder in Rio Tinto Group – the owner and operator of Ranger and Rossing uranium mines in Australia and Namibia.

...Four of the five members of the research team named on the [Nuclear Fuel Cycle Royal Commission] website have known prior or current associations with nuclear industrial entities."

see http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=17489&page=0
Posted by plantagenet, Monday, 20 July 2015 4:48:23 PM
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