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The Forum > Article Comments > South Australians playing with nuclear waste > Comments

South Australians playing with nuclear waste : Comments

By Haydon Manning, published 25/11/2016

The Liberal opposition is happy to employ rhetoric usually only uttered by the local Greens and anti-nuclear activists in opposing Premier Jay Weatherill's vision.

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There is not even a whiff of leadership from Steve Marshall, who is the most incompetent and pathetic SA Liberal leader in history. He also ignores any enquiries or suggestions from the electorate. Daft and arrogant.
Posted by ttbn, Friday, 25 November 2016 8:45:20 AM
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I don't hold much hope for S.A given the closed minds, refusing to be persuaded by the mounting evidence that supports a recycling nuclear waste industrial option!

And when looked at constructively, the only long term economic rescue option on the table!?

ULTRA CHEAP, CLEAN, SAFE ENERGY is the key to not only S.A's economic revival; but the entire country as well! And if coupled to new deionization desalination?

Able to turn arid desert wasteland into productive farms; and completely transform the Murray FOREVER!

The anti development greens don't seem to get it? Without a nuclear option, we're stuck with coal and exporting it and a few other rocks to the world!

When instead, we could be exporting a flood tide of food to the world and ahead of the curve or new food boom! all while decarbonizing the economy!

Green advocates, take off the blindfolds, wash the wax out of the ears and stop repeating la, la, la long enough to take some essential facts on board!

And if that doesn't suit President put put Putin, or his "charming" activists over here?

All the more reason to grasp SAFE, CLEAN, CHEAP NUCLEAR ENERGY AND RECYCLING, with both hands! EVEN IF IT'S NOT ABSOLUTELY PERFECT! AFTER ALL, THERE'S FAR TOO MUCH TO LOSE! Absorb the facts, then let the case for nuclear energy stand or fall on the quintessential facts!

Rather than an over abundance of illogical, irrational, overstated, emotive, fact free green rethoric!?

Or that offered by robustly rude, inquisitorial, St Petersburg trolls!? One and the same thing possibly?
Alan B.
Posted by Alan B., Friday, 25 November 2016 9:52:41 AM
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I doubt that Japan would pre-commit after the submarine snub. They are pursuing reprocessing and geologic disposal themselves. Taiwan has a small batch that wouldn't recoup the required initial outlay. Meanwhile other things are happening in SA like the $50bn submarine contract and the $500m connector to coal heavy NSW.

I think the most feasible path is for the eastern states to get conventional nuclear reactors and for SA to do reprocessing and higher level burnup. That would eventually require a small disposal facility for domestic requirements that could be expanded for other customers. We're talking about the year 2030.

The bigger coal baseload plants will close in succession starting with Hazelwood in 2017 and Liddell in 2022. They underpin the intermittent generation SA already has and other states now aspire to. The gas alternative gets more expensive year by year. Renewables subsidies are not guaranteed and we may also need a lot more electricity if/when we get millions of electric cars. It's hard to see how we can avoid the need for domestic nuclear and that's the foot in the door for Weatherill.
Posted by Taswegian, Saturday, 26 November 2016 5:43:25 AM
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We're talking about the year 2030? Why? Given we're not talking about an untested technology, but one run 24/7 for five years without incident!

A five year timetable is doable! But only if we start now!

Look, If a new holden was run for five years without so much as a backfire, and only paused for routine maintenance as it traveled ten times around the clock?

Even the horse and cart brigade would have to concede it had been very thoroughly road tested and ultra-reliable! 2040, 2030? Any advances on 2030? How about 2017?

2016 will rank, I believe as the hottest year on record and at a time when not only was our sun in a waning phase but at a historical period of inactivity!

Or at its coolest at the bottom of a normal 11 year cycle!?

Does that tell anyone, we've time to waste?

What happens when our sun goes back to normal and fires back up to its own historical hottest heat!

Because that's exactly what follows a traditional waning (cooling) period!

Start now with thoroughly road test technology and then use it to burn and reburn waste and make medical miracle isotopes! And drought proof Australia! What do we lose? Am I missing something?

All doable with abundant cheap clean walk away safe thorium based energy!

Why even tiny Tassie likely has enough in her own soil and beach sands, to power the place for another thousand years; and thousands more if she starts mining granite deposits!

2030 is just an arbitrary number plucked from the sky, that just kicks this can down the road!

And then like as not, another pompous prevaricating ditherer, will kick even further, while we transition past a point of no return?

Listen, we'd be at that tipping point already, but for the fact our sun is currently in a (the bottom of) waning phase!

We've been thrown a timely lifeline that only moribund fools would reject? WTF? Don't throw it now, wait until 2030, we haven't finished drowning yet!
Alan B.
Posted by Alan B., Saturday, 26 November 2016 8:51:16 AM
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The fantastic sums Weatherill has created ("$257 billion...$445 billion...$260,000 for every single person in' South Australia anybody?) may relate more to $Billions in Federal money to dig a loss-making Waste Dump rather than $Billions a Waste Dump may ever earn.

For example:

- Finland's years old Waste Dump under construction http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onkalo_spent_nuclear_fuel_repository#History is not yet earning anything, and

- conceived since 1987 the US Yucca Mountain waste dump project has not earned a cent yet it has more than the equivalent of AU$12 Billion in US taxpayers money. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yucca_Mountain_nuclear_waste_repository#The_facility.
Posted by plantagenet, Thursday, 1 December 2016 3:08:01 PM
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If there is money in nuclear Waste Dumps can anyone point to an existing waste dump overseas that is making the $$Billion riches the South Australian dump spruikers promise?

Russia and China generate alot of waste and like Australia have large deserts. Are Russian and Chinese desert waste dumps reaping $Billions?

High level radioactive waste frequently needs to be cooled in pools of water that require constant electricity for water circulation - like cooling pools at the Fukushima nuclear complex and Lucas Heights. Any cessation of the electricity supply can lead to disasters like Fukushima.

The long term revenue and profits from Waste Dumps (a type of commodity project) have been notoriously hard to predict and have cost $Billions with no $Billions earned.
Posted by plantagenet, Thursday, 1 December 2016 3:12:33 PM
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