Antinuclear

Paul Richards While nuclear power in Australia has a somewhat shaky business case, a much stronger argument can be made for the back end of the nuclear fuel cycle: storing nuclear waste’ Heiko Timmers Associate Professor of Physics, UNSW

A case can be made, that’s true.

However, the nuclear industry never talks about the whole nuclear fuel cycle. Furthermore, no one in the nuclear estate has proved they can look after unspent nuclear fuel, and contaminated material for the time needed without an indefinite supply of sovereign wealth.

What you are proposing is that Australia enters the sales channels of waste storage, for the profit of a very limited few in the nuclear estate. An unrealistic proposal, as no other nation has been able to solve this back door nuclear waste issue that even the IAEA admits, there is no economically viable solution for.

Unlike all the other sales channels in this nuclear estate, waste storage in terms of cost is indefinite, and on that basis, the cost is then based on our sovereign wealth. In other words, an indefinite cost to our Australian taxpayer’s.

The key takeaway is;
there is no way that nuclear waste storage as a business is economically viable, as the nuclear war hawks propose, it will be a cost to Australia indefinitely.

However, introducing nuclear waste storage as a sales channel for the nuclear estate changes our Federal Legislation of nuclear non-proliferation and that is the ‘Trojan Horse’ being wheeled out yet again. In yet another amoral attempt at introducing;

• nuclear energy,
• waste, and
• weapons,

despite developed nuclear nations phasing out nuclear fuel as obsolete, because the energy system is unviable economically and environmentally.