“The federal government is trying to persuade regional communities in South Australia to host a national radioactive waste facility - an underground burial repository for lower-level radioactive wastes and an above-ground 'interim' store for long-lived intermediate-level waste.”

And it is to be hoped that the regional sluggards take notice and do it. Jobs have nothing to do with with the storage of nuclear waste; that's just the 'magic word’ backward politicians, lacking in skills of persuasion, still think people will go for. The people, however, know that there will be fewer jobs available in the future, and the only cure for lack of employment is fewer people, and very little immigration.

A piece of patently political propaganda, written by a dimwitted greenie with the typical green antinuclear disposition written into every line. We don't need a waste facility! No ifs, buts or maybes What we need is to ignore an extremely vociferous minority, of know nothing, demented fools.

As always ignore the science or any dissenting view and just spew out the same verbal diarrhoea, with every similar article? Who gives a french flying Frankfurt what they do anywhere else. It's what we do here that matters!

We should solve this problem by burning this waste, ours and theirs. And earn annul billions for providing the service. And using MSR thorium technology. And that's where the promised jobs are!

And if we are allowed/enabled, also burn weapons-grade plutonium, as opposed to as this writer seems to advocate in his many pieces, leaving it in the nuclear IBM's?

If we as we could/should burn this waste in WALK AWAY SAFE MSR technology. we can after we've extracted a thousand year worth of free to us, power from it, reduce the half-life to just 300 years.

And as a far less toxic material eminently suitable for long life space batteries that completely burn up with reentry.

I expect Mr Green and his like-minded, cult member acolytes, to rave on about how deadly Chernobyl was and how unsafe Fukushima was etc-etc. Almost as if that were the only nuclear technology available!

And for them absolutely true, given they know SFA about the latest advances in this area and how to do in perfect safety even in my backyard.

Simply put, these folk don't fear nuclear technology, but the development and prosperity they could bring to an economically challenged nation. Along with a completely resuscitated manufacturing sector.

These folk spout their dribble daily, wax lyrical about the threat of carbon and yet add to it jetting around the world and when offered a free motor vehicle?

Chose, in one notable example, a gas guzzling V8!
Alan B.

Jim green,

If not for the anti-nuclear protest movement, and activists like yourself spreading baseless scaremongering, nuclear power could now be around 10% of current costs. It could have substituted for 69,000–186,000 TWh of coal and gas generation since 1985, thereby avoiding up to 9.5 million deaths and 174 Gt CO2 emissions: https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/10/12/2169/htm

That's an example of the damage you and your ilk have caused.

Some of nuclear power’s advantages are, it:

- is the safest way to generate electricity and always has been since the first power reactor began supplying power to the grid in 1954 (Appendix B, Note VIII)

- is sustainable – nuclear fuel is effectively unlimited

- provides reliable, dispatchable electricity

- provides countries with a high level of energy security – many years of fuel supply can be stored in a small space at low cost so countries are not vulnerable to disruption of fuel supply during periods of trade or military conflicts

- is highly flexible in small modular reactors – consider the flexibility of nuclear powered submarines and ships, as has been demonstrated over the past 60 years; also see Irwin (2017) submission to the Australian Energy Security Board on SMR technologies.

- almost unlimited potential for cost reductions over time, if the impediments to progress are removed.

Other economic benefits and policy implications are presented in Sections 3.5 and 3.6 of the above link.

The likely-root cause of the disruption, and the cost escalations and stalled deployment rate since about 1967 was, and still is, the activities of the anti-nuclear power protest movement (Appendix B, Note IX ).

Having a nuclear waste dump (whatever the economics) is an essential component and precursor for nuclear reactor electricity - produced for the benefit of all Australians.

How do you create a revolution? Well, first an foremost you need a comparatively large cohort of poverty-stricken individuals and have them governed by a disinterested minority obsessed with their own acquisition of wealth and power as In the early USSR?

And avoided in western Europe by the onset of the industrial revolution that lifted almost everyone's standard of living!

We have a way to go yet before those extreme comparisons exist here? But not much?

Technology an automation threaten complete career choices and occupations! Leaving a bewildered minority, wondering where the next meal is coming from etc-etc.

And compounded by an indolent, born to rule, ruling class, totally preoccupied with self-serving self-interest and their personal ambitions! And virtually everywhere you look in any of the established or wannabe parties?

Conversely, the patently disingenuous greens seize on any opportunity to inculcate disaffection for the major parties and their policy paradigms. And sow the seeds of dissent in almost everything they touch.

Albeit, seek only maximised power by doing dirty deals in the dead of night even with the devil. Who they ridicule/oppose in the light of day.

And oppose nuclear power as that may well reverse a downward spiral toward an impoverished nation ripe for a revolution, that will install them in permanent power. Their ultimate if hidden agenda!?

And talk about a sovietized economy and freebies that they know will appeal to their base. The young, idealistic, ignorant and insane!?
Alan B.

People will be standing around not doing much because of nuclear fear mongering. I'd be more alarmed if troublemakers put dead sheep in the city reservoir instead they can have a reign of terror threatening to release a hospital glove from a steel drum.

The reality may be is that the intermediate level site is a dummy run for a future high level site. I understand the canisters of vitrified material held at Lucas Heights will go to the intermediate site. Then there's the prospect of nuclear power for Australia. After reprocessing of light water reactor fuel there will be some leftovers. The SA govt says their 2016 production of uranium created 22 gigawatt years of clean electricity overseas. That's 193 Twh whereas SA itself uses just 16 Twh a year.

Can never happen? We've had 17 years of subsidised renewables in which power sector emissions were supposed to plummet. Instead they increased somewhat. If the SA facility smooths the way for nuclear power in Australia bring it on.