The Australia Institute team, 8 Nov 16 Yesterday, 350 ordinary citizens handed the SA Government a “stunning and overwhelming rejection” of its plans to build nuclear waste dump in South Australia.

The citizens’ jury’s task was to consider whether South Australia should import high level nuclear waste from other countries and bury it for money. After hearing about the proposal from various experts, more than two thirds of them said no, not “under any circumstances”.

The Australia Institute’s involvement focused on an area that no one else was challenging: the dodgy economic modelling and heroic estimates of how much money the dump would deliver to the state.

Richard Denniss addressed the citizens’ jury last weekend, highlighting a few key points:

• The economic modelling supporting the claims of hundreds of billion dollars in benefits was deeply flawed.
• The project was risky, involving high level waste being stored in above-ground ‘temporary’ storage for over 100 years.
• That parts of the Nuclear Royal Commission’s report had actually been written by nuclear industry lobbyists.

Richard’s appearance was just the latest part of our involvement in the SA nuclear debate. In July, Rod Campbell had addressed an earlier citizens’ jury, leading to the headline in The Australian: Citizens’ jury questions economics of SA nuclear dump.

Our earlier submission on the economics of the dump and headline appearance on Today Tonightmade a big impact, with the Royal Commissioner, Kevin Scarce, saying he would take our submission “apart piece by piece.” We have also had a number of opinion pieces published on the subject.

Commissioner Scarce never did find anything wrong with our submission. But the citizens of South Australia have taken his work apart, piece by flawed piece. The Citizen’s Jury final report outlined concerns about the lack of consent from Traditional Owners, and showed that while 70% opposed the nuclear waste dump, 82% thought the economic case made was weak. Here’s a quote from the jury’s final report:

“It is impossible to provide an informed response to the issue of Economics because the findings in the RCR are based on unsubstantiated assumptions. This has caused the forecast estimates to provide inaccurate, optimistic, unrealistic economic projections.”

The SA Government should now dump its plans for a nuclear waste dump.

The Australia Institute aims to produce research that matters, and this is a case where we can see how lots of hard work over a long period changes minds. The Citizens’ Jury is to be congratulated for delivering a big win for the South Australian taxpayer, Traditional Owners, the environment, and common sense.