A Racist determination is not valid. The Elders said something but does not the Government have eminent domain for the benefit of all in the State?

Allocation of a special, race based power is a very slippery slope for when is the next one and where does it end. Anyway such a poor and declining State will have to cut back on transfer payments soon.

350 people out 1.7 million knock a profitable proposal in the head. Aborigines who have probably never seen the area in question don't like the idea, and that is important to the 350 bedwetters. The premier looks sulky, and isn't sure whether or not he will go ahead anyway. Millions of dollars wasted on a thorough investigation indicating that building of the repository could go ahead with safety. It's no wonder SA is the laughing stock of the country.

Well, what did we expect, when most asked were predisposed to answer no! Or implacably opposed, regardless of how good a case could be mounted!? The question was the wrong question and asked at the wrong time!

An education campaign initially on the benefits of nuclear energy ought to have preceded a statewide plebiscite? And asked once the old brow coal burner at Latrobe has been shut down, followed by the inevitable brown and blackouts, courtesy of the state's over-reliance on intermittent wind power!

The education needed to include the fact, that all nuclear energy is not the same but as different as coal fired power and hydro! And that less radioactive than a banana, thorium cannot be made to produce plutonium or a bomb, that molten salt thorium reactor is specifically designed to operate while in a molten state and that any unplanned shut down simply reverses that aspect!

Therefore had the ANTIQUATED reactors at either Chernobyl or Fukushima been based on molten salt and therefore operated at normal atmospheric pressures? They would now today still be pumping power into their resective grids!

Moreover, if designed as molten salt thorium reactors? End the necessity to either import or enrich the fuel!

Further, could have designed those reactors as slow breeder reactors that then could have been safely tasked with burning their present spent fuel and other waste, and in a cycle that continues until every last erg of available energy had been extracted, leaving truly spent waste with a half life of just 300 years!

To be sure, absolutely ignorant aboriginal elders would be opposed to putting the rainbow serpent in harness and asked to work for all humanity, where she could strive and strain to turn harsh reality into a universally abundant one?

End war and want by the simple expediency of feeding all nations, relieve pressure to compete for water and resources, which could be recycled with CLEAN, SAFE CHEAP ENERGY!

And a very helpful Tony Abbott, with an indigenous portfolio, could have been ever so helpful in that very outcome? LOL!
Alan B.

There are currently four proposals to connect SA to coal centres. That is to take wind power surpluses at times and receive coal power at other times. The idea is to both stabilise frequency and help in low wind periods such as heat waves. The alternative of course is for SA to get its own mid sized nuclear plant. Nuclear could perhaps also replace Hazelwood and Liddell coal stations nearer the east coast.

Nuclear power stations are currently mainly of the type using enriched uranium fuel and light water coolant. The spent fuel rods need to cool down for some time and may or may not be reprocessed depending on economics. The type of reprocessing depends on the next use but some material must be discarded. It doesn't all end up in smoke alarms. Whether or not SA gets a nuke it is the logical place for any reprocessing and long term storage of unusable material. Logical since it has Maralinga, uranium mines in the outback and the Royal Commission.

Therefore we could need a high level waste repository just for Australian material. Get that going on a modest scale. Then revisit the question of foreign waste once the hard yards have been done.

Taswegian: No thinking Australian is going to opt for a nuclear industry that is based on uranium, when a far far better alternative beckons' and as it does, allow us to use and consume waste other folk pay us billions to dispose of thoughtfully.

The mistakes of Long Island, Chernobyl and fukushima cannot be repeated here, ever! No if buts or maybes!

That said, the rest of what you argue has much merit and ought to be followed. But with molten salt thorium reactors, doing double duty as safe slow breeder reactors! And underpin an energy led, mother of an economic recovery!

I mean, why would any rational person argue for an energy system that consumes at best, just 5% of its fuel making it at least twice as expensive as coal in the process; and leaving tons and tons of highly toxic waste to be stored forever, when we can have an inherently safe, walk away safe, system and reactors that not only burn 95% of their fuel but burn and burn again the waste other nations would pay us billions to "store"!

A nuclear carbon free industry? YES!

One based exclusively on uranium and light water reactors! You just can't be serious!?

Now if you'd said, Molten salt, SAFE, CLEAN CHEAP thorium and slow breeder reactors in the same sentence? We might have been able to agree?

Instead, you've successfully aliened any possible consideration to a viable nuclear energy industry and inherently safe, walk away safe molten salt reactors, we can use to reduce harm and eat up the world's store of nuclear waste as well as weapons grade plutonium!

You on the other hand, seem to want to make more of it? along with waste that needs to be safely stored for hundreds of thousands of years? Well done!

And instead of you broken record uranium/light water repetition and the antinuclear alienation it is bound to foster? You need to get informed and up to date with your nuclear knowledge!

If you can't or won't help treehugger, you need to get out of the way!
Alan B.

Where to now, for Premier Weatherill's nuclear dream?
By Noel Wauchope, published 8/11/2016

Alan B; You make some thoroughly good points in your post of 1:54:36 today and this prompts me to ask, is there some book that an interested layperson might seek out that would be helpful in informing him/her of the advantages and disadvantages of the different kinds of nuclear reactors and the purposes to which they may be put? It might stretch credulity to breaking point if I stipulated that not only accuracy but also objectivity must be the principle features of the contents but I know of no cosmic equation that declares the impossibility of such a book existing so I am moderately optimistic of a positive outcome.

Meanwhile, might I enquire:

[a] What kind of salt is to be made molten and at what temperature? Salts abound in chemistry, as you probably know.
[b] What isotope of thorium is most suited to the process?
[c] Is sea water a suitable coolant? If so is the salt in sea water a usable by-product?
[d] Just off the top of your head do you know of any process within the overall process or any by-product that might be harmful to the environment, other than the spent fuel rods of course?
[e] Does the reactor salt require replacement after a certain period? If so what use can be made of the spent salt? Will it be radioactive? If so, how is it to be treated?

You seem to have a handle on the subject of nuclear reactors so I trust I find you in more amenable a mood than others of whom enquiries have been made of late.

Thank you for your time.