Taiwan rejects claim that it would help South Australia to set up a nuclear waste dump
One of the major criticisms of the SA nuclear proposal by the SA Liberals and green groups has been the risk of spending state taxpayer money up front with no certainty of future revenue.
Opposition treasury spokesman Rob Lucas said Mr Hamilton-Smith “stands condemned for misleading everyone” about Taiwan’s views
Taiwanese energy firm rejects Martin Hamilton-Smith’s claim it would help set up SA nuclear waste dump Daniel Wills, State political editor, The Advertiser 14 Dec 2016
TAIWAN’S state-owned energy company has bluntly rejected Investment and Trade Minister Martin Hamilton-Smith’s claim the country would consider paying to help set up a nuclear waste dump in SA, saying in a letter that it “hereby declares this is a false information”.
Just days after Premier Jay Weatherill’s citizens’ jury last month overwhelmingly dumped on plans for nuclear storage in SA, amid concerns about trust, Mr Hamilton-Smith insisted he had met with Taiwanese officials who expressed a “clear message” of interest in investment.
“There’s clearly a demand and our neighbours may be in a position to put hundreds of millions, if not billions, into infrastructure and then paying to dump waste on an ongoing basis,” he said.
However, correspondence from state-owned power company Taipower and the country’s Atomic Energy Council to government party MP Su Chih-Feng rejects Mr Hamilton-Smith’s claim.
While they note there was a meeting with Mr Hamilton-Smith on November 10, Taipower says his spin of the events in Adelaide three days later was “a false information”.
The translation from Mandarin to English was done by a Taiwanese NGO and provided to The Advertiser by antinuclear activists Friends of the Earth Australia. It states Taipower was interested in using a dump which had been established, but not paying to help set one up.
“A foreign solution is one of the options for Taipower. However, foreign solution is also sensitive case in terms of international relationships,” the letter states.
“Therefore, foreign solutions should carefully consider both domestic and foreign regulations.
“Foreign solutions is a sensitive case with a lot of uncertainties.
“Taipower will consider to be a ‘customer’ after the country has developed a disposal facility.”
Taiwan’s Atomic Energy Council also said Mr Hamilton-Smith’s claim was “a false information”.
“We also notice that the Citizen Jury in Australia deny the proposal,” it states. “Without the understanding and support from Australian … nuclear waste storage cannot be developed.”
One of the major criticisms of the SA nuclear proposal by the SA Liberals and green groups has been the risk of spending state taxpayer money up front with no certainty of future revenue.
Nuclear Fuel Cycle Royal Commissioner Kevin Scarce found in his report that countries may be willing to provide a cash precommitment to SA to fund the building of enabling infrastructure.
Mr Hamilton-Smith said Friends of the Earth were “distributing information which talks down the market for storage of low-medium or high level waste”, as studied by the Royal Commission.
“Until that debate is put back on track with bipartisan support, there will be no progress,” he said. “It’s clear however from the informal discussions in November that I and other senior officers of the State Government had that there is interest and potential to work together to better secure the world’s nuclear waste. Storage and investment were both informally discussed but no official position was sought or offered. To get to that stage, we would have to continue the discussion on the Royal Commission’s work and determine a position of our own.”
Opposition treasury spokesman Rob Lucas said Mr Hamilton-Smith “stands condemned for misleading everyone” about Taiwan’s views, if the translations were accurate.
Friends of the Earth Australia nuclear campaigner Jim Green said Mr Weatherill should now “have the good sense to swallow his pride and to dump the dump proposal”.
Originally published as Major Marty’s nuke waste claim bombs
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