Shadow Minister,

I was not supporting Greens' policy. There are questions that must be properly answered and to the satisfaction of voters before Australia takes the step. For instance, what do we do about our coal reserves and contracts?

As you admit yourself through the Yucca example, the 'solutions' to waste are always just around the corner. It has been that way for a very long time, for generations.

Australian governments have a poor record, allowing the Brits to pollute Australia through testing nuclear weapons and then being allowed to renege on the clean-up. All because a Liberal PM wanted an Oz nuclear bomb and hoped the Brits would hand over bomb secrets if they were allowed to test in Australia. Fat chance and they never did.

As recent but minor example, in NSW contaminated soil was removed from a location and dumped as land fill in another. Not a big deal but it reminded the public that promises and rules are made to be broken.

That sort of stuff just doesn't fill the public with confidence. Especially where a PM (Howard) can go to the US and after being feted by the US State Department, undergo a sudden, miraculous conversion to become George Bush's No1 salesman for nuclear power and for making Australia into a nuclear waste dump.

We need statesmen with an eye for Australia's interests. Obviously they are few and far between. Maybe that is the biggest problem. However, the first written warranty must be that Australia never will become the waste dump for other countries, particularly the US and UK. It is too easy isn't it, Indigenous land rights has ensured a convenient way to get dumps approved, while avoiding it as an issue for all Australians.

Cornflower,

In my previous post, I said that as used in France for decades, the technology exists and can be used safely. In the US and other countries, what is missing is the legislation framework.

This compares starkly to the renewables industry, which not only has strong legislative support and incentives, but even after decades of development, lacks the technology to provide cheap power, or any form of base load to replace coal.

France is the only country in the world that has already meet the Kyoto targets whilst maintaining growth and amongst the lowest electricity prices in Europe.

Notably the "Green" countries are striving to meet their emission targets by buying significant amounts of nuclear generated power from France.

People just don't seem to care that nuclear waste is soon to be worth $30 trillion dollars. Australia should be offering to 'dump' the world's waste so that we can guard this incredible asset!

GenIV reactors are coming, and when they are finally commercialised they'll burn the waste. When this happens, just the nuclear waste we already have sitting around could run the world for 500 years! Finally, after being run through a GenIV reactor there *is* still a tithe of that original waste left over but it only has to be stored for about 300 years and then is safe.

What waste problem? Waste is the solution!

Check my poster about nuclear waste being the solution here.
http://eclipsenow.wordpress.com/nuclear-posters/

(Free to download and print out, and redirects people across to Dr Barry Brook's nuclear blog).

Shadow Minister

Thanks and we can afford to wait for the Gen4 reactors.

I wasn't commenting on the 'Green' solutions, which should continue to be developed but are problematical for a host of reasons. We use some of the solar solutions on a property and it is more suitable for niche applications than a power grid.

Will the proponents of nukes be building waste management into upfront costs for nuclear power or will they dump that cost onto future generations?

(Given that waste will need to be managed for safety and security for around a million years and every time it is re-packaged the volume of waste will grow as containment materials become contaminated)

maaate, you lie. We WILL NOT be storing it for a million years. Go back a few posts to my last post. Nuclear waste is far too valuable to 'store' for a million years. That would be like digging up our best oil only to bury it back in a depleted aquifer! Ridiculous! Rather than a 'cost' to be factored in, have you factored in that nuclear 'waste' is only once-through fuel, and that today's waste alone could run the world for 500 years? That it is accumulatively worth $30 TRILLION DOLLARS!

Didn't know about GenIV reactors that 'eat' waste did you?

The problem with nuclear waste is not that we have too much, is that we don't have enough. We need to build a bunch of Gen3 reactors while they commercialise the proven physics behind Gen4 reactors. By the time the Gen4 reactors are ready, we'll have enough waste to run the world for 1000 years... and who knows what we'll have to power the world by then! So basically I see us mining uranium for the next 30 or so years and then closing the mines while the world burns through centuries of reprocessed 'breeder' fuels.