The volumes of rock we are talking about are really quite small compared to the mining of sand, gravel, iron ore, bauxite and coal overburden. Like all rocks coal is mildly radioactive but unlike the others some of the metal content gets vaporised. Fly ash from the coal boilers contains minor isotopes and heavy metals and may be in the cement inches away from you. In contrast the high level waste from a nuclear power plant may only be a few cubic metres per year. It needs to be saved and reprocessed for later generations of reactors.

When that waste is recycled there will be a much smaller amount of material that needs to be buried deeply. I suggest sending it back to Olympic Dam area rather than Muckaty. I find it odd to question whether people 10,000 years from now will be endangered. If it's down a deep mineshaft what the hell are they doing there? 10,000 years from now I'd be more worried about the buildings in Sydney CBD falling on top of people.

The way we are headed coal and gas are going to get expensive, with or without carbon taxes. The idea of a grid powered by wind and solar seems novel but it would be several times as expensive as nuclear. It would also be visually intrusive with frequent reliability issues. The issues with nuclear waste are small scale and manageable; energy poverty isn't.

Jim - for once I find myself in agreement with Taswegian. Go back and look at your article. The volumes you cite are actually tiny; easily accommodated in a remote site and Australia has lots and lots of remote sites. In fact, there are many places that really should be nuclear waste sites, as its difficult to think of what other use they would be to anyone, even native species (plenty of desert out there fellas), or why anyone would want to go there even in 10,000 years. The repository could easily be arranged to so that radiation levels are maximum natural background (certain provinces in India).

If anyone does go there, they will have a lot more problems than radiation from the facility.

You wouldn't expect a Greenie to write a piece in support of nuclear power, would you? Nuclear is the way to go, I reckon. The waste and safety issues have been blown way out of proportion, and as others have said, there are plenty of potential sites around Australia. Ever seen the "Moon Country" between Oodnadatta and Coober Pedy in SA? Absolutely nothing there, hardly a blade of grass to be seen since it's a gibber plain. While solar and wind power are good for some remote locations, I'm surprised that Greenies haven't twigged to the quite large toll of birdlife and bats that wind turbines take. They used to rave on about high power transmission lines, but turbines are OK, it seems. Ever visited Exmouth in WA? One of the windiest places in Au, yet they have a diesel generator converted to run on gas. The gas is TRUCKED in from somewhere hundreds of kms away, with two roadtrains going back and forth to fill up with natural gas.

Jim/Natalie, Please forward your article to the French and share any response with us.

Once again the greens cannot help themselves. They obviously feel the need to exaggerate figures and statistics to give their cause legitimacy.

Olympic dam mine primarily mines copper, of which a small portion of uranium is produced as a side product. It is not surprising then that the tailings per kilo of uranium are about 10 x that of primary uranium producers such as the Ranger mine.

As the primary driver for production at Olympic dam is the copper demand, the additional demand for uranium in Australia is unlikely to change production at Olympic dam at all, let alone to power all 50 reactors. This makes their use of this data deliberately false.

If one uses real figures the low level tailing produced by 50 reactors over 50 years would be about 150 million tonnes or at the average density of rock, about 60 million cubic meters of tailings.

Hazelwood power station (equivalent to one modern reactor) in this 50 year period burns about 650 million tons of coal, producing over 50 million tons of ash and would pump out 20 million tonnes of ash into the air (which contains low levels of radioactivity and heavy metals).

As other coal fired plants are not much better, nuclear power is far more environmentally friendly than coal, even if climate change is not factored in.

I certainly would not buy a used car from these authors.

I don't have time to think through the figures here, so perhaps should not comment. However the contention argued in this paper has surface plausibility. Generation of stashes of highly dangerous wastes does not seem a sensible procedure by any reckoning. However, i don't think waste is the only fatal flaw. Human incompetence is another. NO amount of regulation in the end prevails against the moment of fatigue or the normative establishment of short-cut strategies that can bring on disaster. Think Karen Silkwood. There is also the matter of downwind pollution and the consequent ill health of those who live in the vicinity of a functioning reactor. Reactors have destroyed the ambience of the Loire Valley in France. One can only pray that they do not end up destroying the Valley itself. Why create high potential dangers. Who stands to gain? Follow the money? Stop those who will get rich by building reactors from bribing the decision-makers.