Kevin Scarce buys expert pro nuclear opinions from Switzerland and Belgium
Swiss and Belgian experts to front nuclear commission as green light looms. by Simon Evans, Financial Review, 31 Mar 16 Experts from Switzerland and Belgium will give South Australia’s nuclear royal commission advice on whether nuclear waste can be safely stored underground in Australia.
Royal commissioner Kevin Scarce has just visited both countries to scrutinise high-level waste disposal sites and their licensing regimes. All three places have similar soil, which means Swiss and Belgian experts should be able to give him detailed information about the danger of storing nuclear waste in the South Australian outback.
Mr Scarce said on Thursday his final report due on May 6 on whether the state should expand from just being a uranium miner and venture into nuclear waste storage was unlikely to differ greatly from his preliminary findings in mid-February.
He rejected suggestions that it was inevitable that South Australia would undertake some form of nuclear expansion……..
Mr Scarce said he had received 170 direct responses in the past few weeks to his tentative findings unveiled on February 15 in which he concluded that a nuclear waste storage facility housing spent nuclear fuel rods and other waste could deliver $5 billion in revenue annually over 30 years.
He said some of those submissions had accused him of exaggerating the economic benefits, but he said he was confident that his economic modelling had been robust and said he had taken a “conservative” approach.
Mr Scarce said he had visited Sweden and Finland earlier in his commission’s work but in the wake of the tentative findings had made a special visit to Belgium and Switzerland because they had similar sedimentary soil structures to South Australia………http://www.afr.com/news/policy/swiss-and-belgian-experts-to-front-nuclear-commission-as-green-light-looms-20160331-gnv15s
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of the week – Disrupting War & Militarism in Oceania. Active solidarity. Radical practice.
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They seem to have a conflict of interest. The Swiss researcher certainly does. Does Belgium even have a plan or are they using the French site which is supposed to be in mud on top of a geothermal site (Bure)? Switzerland doesn’t have a site and no one wants there. They have promoted “self-healing” mud. I presume that this is the sort of thing which made it hard to build the Gotthard tunnel so how would it even stay open long enough to stick the waste in? The Swiss always seem to have money from somewhere that is above and beyond their high incomes. They probably expect to buy their way out of their nuclear waste mess. The Basel Counsel made clear why they sent HEU from the Basel reactor to the US – their nuclear utilities didn’t want it to store, the French (AREVA-CERCA) wouldn’t take it because it was irradiated and had plutonium, the US option was cheap and the cost known. I presume that the cost of keeping it in vaults at the Paul Scherrer Institute is also high. The central government wasn’t as honest regarding getting rid of their old plutonium, which was at the Paul Scherrer Institute. I spent lots of time looking at this because half a century old plutonium can be high pressure according to LANL. But, in a country of bankers and accountants the cost of the vault is probably all they care about. And, why keep it in a nice above ground bunker like they have for regular waste or in a vault for the plutonium when they can send it abroad to be buried on the cheap.
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The story about sediments sound like complete bullshit to me. Switzerland and South Australia have totally different climatic conditions. This is just another example of this shonky Royal Commission’s sins of omission
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