A song of praise for Synroc – Roger Smart’s Submission to #NuclearCommissionSAust

Roger Smart’s Submission to South Australia Nuclear Fuel Chain Royal Commission.

– a very short submission on the subject of nuclear wastes. It canned be summed up as a Song Of Praise for the Synroc Technology for storing nuclear wastes.

EXTRACT: “The safest and cheapest option available for disposal of high level nuclear waste”

Nuclear Waste Management (NWM) — an Adelaide based Company founded in 1985……..

In 1991 NWM signed a Heads of Agreement with Mayak Production Enterprise, owned by the Russian Ministry of Power and Energy and Greenlawn Association of the Russian Federation to commence a study for the construction of a SYNROC plant. The Russians selected SYNROC as their preferred waste form for the treatment and disposal of their high level waste. They also commenced geological studies to find sites for the disposal of SYNROC in deep drill holes.

………. it proved impossible to find the political/financial and corporate leadership to secure the funding. The reasons were many but during the 80’s and 90’s, the nuclear industry was on the defensive and investment, other that in programs already in place, was greatly reduced. Consequently, NWM ceased operation in 1998

……. A detailed brochure and other material on SYNROC and NWM have been provided to the Executive of the Royal Commission”

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Nuclear accident much worse than reported , April 28, 1993 The nuclear accident at the Tomsk-7 reprocessing plant in Siberia on April 6 was much bigger than first reported, and now may seriously impede expansion of the nuclear fuel cycle in Australia.

Spokesperson John Hallam for the antinuclear groups Friends of the Earth and Movement Against Uranium Mining said, “Proposals to build a replacement research reactor in Sydney and a nuclear waste repository in the NT based on Synroc technology would be compromised by a public realisation that both projects depend on the same sort of technology for waste handling that failed so badly at Tomsk”.

Hallam said that information from Russian green groups indicated that the accident was not a 3 on the international nuclear event scale, as earlier claimed, but at least a 5. Chernobyl was a 6…..www.greenleft.org.au/node/4227