There are two separate issues here: one is a safe-for-thousands-of-years repository for high and medium level nuclear waste, and the other is a reprocessing facility for nuclear reactor fuel rods so that the uranium 235 can be reclaimed for further use, and plutonium can be removed.

The repository would be quite feasible on one of the kratons of very old, very stable rock as far inland from the sea as possible. My limited knowledge of mining leads me to think of a spiral decline with horizontal galleries leading off. The radioactive material, in double wall drums, would be put at the end of the bottom gallery and concreted into place. The next few barrels would be put immediately in front and similarly concreted in. When each gallery is filled, fill the decline to it with concrete and work on the next gallery up. When all galleries are filled, concrete fill the decline up to ground level. Terrorist proof, earthquake proof and groundwater proof!

The recycling centre, on the other hand, creates all sorts of problems of security and leaks. It would need to be near the coast to obtain the amounts of water needed which increases the terrorist risk. The fuel rods would need to be dismantled and then processed to separate the extremely radio-active materials, produced by the decay of U235, from the remaining U235. This is an extremely hazardous process at every step with every mishap toxic.

South Australia could set up a repository as set out above but should not go ahead with a reprocessing facility.

Hi Noel.Wauchope

An excellent article.

To nuclear enthusiasts:

I wonder how much the taxpayers will need to pay for all the extra Australian police and military to provide security for transportation of high level nuclear waste within Australia?

And who pays extra counter-terrorist security costs for high level nuclear waste factories?

These high level waste factories are not simply waste "dumps". They need expensive, active, processes and safeguards to keep the spent rods cool.

@Brian of Buderim

Your concern with reprocessing dangers are well founded. Reprocessing is the root to high proliferation risk (bomb grade) Plutonium 239. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_reprocessing :

"Reprocessing has been politically controversial because of the potential to contribute to nuclear proliferation, the potential vulnerability to nuclear terrorism,..."

Regards

Pete

Brian of B: Don't concrete the stuff in. It's too valuable.

Type IV nuclear power generation will use almost all of the old fuel rods, thus releasing the other 99% of energy from the original uranium.

That includes the transuranics, plutonium and so forth.

After a period in cooling ponds, current reactor fuel rods can be quite easily stored in drums, as at present, until Type IV power plant come on line.

After everything else has been consumed, the resulting tiny volume of material is so stable that it can be disposed of with little consideration for its radiation content beyond the first two or three hundred years.

The best part is that while the world's stockpiles of plutonium, enriched uranium, spent fuel rods and depleted uranium are feeding the Type IV's, there is no need to mine uranium for Type IV's. The new reactors will have literally thousands of years' worth of fuel at the current electrical loads without a single new mine.

Here's hoping that this short article starts the discussion that will bring SA and Australia's nuclear future a few steps closer.

Thanks again, Noel.

Generation 1V nuclear reactors do not exist - their present existence is little more than a gleam in the eye of desperate nuclear lobbyists. The most hyped and most unlikely of these are small modular nuclear reactors- so prohibitive;y expensive that they are not really taken seriously.
All Gen 1V reactors need plutonium and/or enriched uranium - involving all the dangers and security costs of transport
All Gen 1V reactors create fission products so highly toxic and long-lasting that they require the same level and space for disposal as the existing reactors. http://edition.cnn.com/2013/11/07/opinion/lyman-nuclear-pandora/

Gen IV technology was proved in practice 40 years back.

The only things holding it back in the 1970's were the US military, because it wasn't attractive to them and, now, the nay-sayers, such as the paranoid, inappropriately named, generally anonymous and thus unchallengeable "Concerned Scientists" mob which you linked to.

Noel, please do try to present accurate and balanced advice. I don't want to question your ethics or anything like that, but I sure as eggs are eggs don't understand why an energetic, intelligent person would rely on cherry-picked facts from unreliable sources, when there is so much really good stuff available, much of which has been peer reviewed, from sources such as you referenced in the lead article.

Gen iv reactors have proved uniformly to be very expensive white elephants. The reactor at Monju, which closed recently, is a classic example. Cooling highly toxic radiactive material with liquid sodium that explodes on contact with air or water is dangerous indeed.

There are still over 150,00 Japanese people who cannot return to live in their homes after the Fukushima melt-downs. The July 2012 report of the Nuclear Accident Independent Investigation Commission- established by an Act of Japan's national parliament - states that the Fukushima disaster was "a profoundly man-made disaster that could and should have been foreseen and prevented" if not for "a multitude of errors and wilful negligence that left the Fukushima plant unprepared for the events of March 11." The cosy relationship between the Japanese government and the nuclear power companies contributed significantly to the lack of approriate measures to prepare for the tsunami. Given the strong push for deregulation at present, there is no guarantee that regulatory failure may not contribute to future potential catastrophic failure of Australian industry.

In 2012 the respected magazine The Economist investigated the nuclear industry. The cover was titled "Nuclear Power: The dream that failed". There are no long term disposal sites for nuclear waste anywhere in the world. High level waste needs to be stored for millenia. In any calculation of costs, nuclear proponents inevitably omit the prohibitive costs of liability, decommissioning and waste storage.

Nuclear power is closely linked to nuclear weapons proliferation- the majority of nuclear weapons states developed their weapons under cover of a "peaceful" nuclear power industry.

Heavy funding of university positions and research by mining companies does raise serious questions about the validity of the research and advocacy - just as drug company funding raises questions in medical research.

The dream of power "to cheap to meter" has long since eveporated.
Nuclear power is dirty, dangerous, expensive and obsolete. Why poison SA for generations to come?