John Quiggan demolishes the case for Small Modular Nuclear Reactors in South Australia
JOHN QUIGGIN John Quiggin is Professor of Economics at the University of Queensland.
John Quiggan’s Submission to the #NuclearCommissionSAust addressed Question 3.2 of the Issues Papers:
“Are there commercial reactor technologies (or emerging technologies which may be commercially available in the next two decades) than can be installed and connected to the NEM?”
Extract “….Business SA wants Australia to adopt the PRISM reactor, a so-called Generation IV design. Unfortunately, “design” is the operative word here: PRISM is, literally, still on the drawing
(Tell them they’re dreaming • Inside Story http://insidestory.org.au/tell-them-theyre-dreaming 3 of 4 26/06/2015)
It does not exist even in prototype form. The US Department of Energy, along with designers GE and Hitachi, looked at the idea of building such a prototype at the Department’s Savannah River plant a few years ago, but the project has gone nowhere.
Much the same is true of another popular piece of nuclear vaporware, the “small modular reactor.” All but one of the American firms hoping to produce a prototype have abandoned or scaled back their efforts. The remaining candidate, NuScale, is hoping to have its first US plant operational by 2024, with commercial-scale production some time in the 2030s.
And, of course, there’s no guarantee that the new designs will work in economic terms, or that the problems of waste disposal and proliferation can be resolved. Even assuming this optimistic projection is met, small modular reactors aren’t going to be a viable option for Australia any time soon.
Unfortunately, that didn’t stop the Bureau of Resources and Energy Economics from asserting, in its 2012 Australian Energy Technology Assessment, that “SMR technology could potentially be commercially available in the next five to ten years” and presenting it as a low-cost option for 2020. This absurdly optimistic claim was abandoned in the 2013 update, which drastically increased the estimated costs and dropped the claim that the technology would be feasible in 2020.
There is still a chance for nuclear power to contribute to decarbonisation of the global economy in China and other countries with an existing program or the state power to force through a crash program. But these conditions don’t exist in Australia, and there is no serious prospect that they will do so in time to play a substantial role in decarbonisation. Anyone who pretends nuclear power is a serious option for Australia under current conditions is dreaming or, worse still, deliberately diverting attention from the real issues. ……….” http://nuclearrc.sa.gov.au/app/uploads/2015/09/John-Quiggin-29-06-2015.pdf
Woomera the suitable site for a nuclear waste dump – Senator Rex Patrick
Woomera must be considered fWor radioactive waste facility, Senator Rex Patrick says https://www.adelaidenow.com.au/business/sa-business-journal/woomera-must-be-considered-for-radioactive-waste-facility-senator-rex-patrick-says/news-story/3b8171ca619079bc36b1b35c19861cf9?fbclid=IwAR0FQ-25ObeztDdNn5d9xLWOpJuDHJkaEBAIIT9r6sSpj52tRW_uTaCCLhc Erin Jones, Regional Editor, The Advertiser, November 28, 2018 Renewed calls have been made for Woomera to be considered as the site for the national nuclear waste repository to end the divide in two South Australian country towns.
Centre Alliance Senator Rex Patrick said the 122,000sq km Woomera Prohibited Area should be revisited after a freedom of information document showed the reasons why it was rejected were “shallow”.
His calls come as Kimba and Hawker remain in limbo as to whether they will be chosen to host the low-level waste facility, with community ballots delayed until early next year.
“We have a divided community in both Hawker and Kimba and there is a site that may well be very suitable but has been dismissed on very shallow grounds,” Senator Patrick said
“We need to revisit the defence site properly.”
Renewed calls have been made for Woomera to be considered as the site for the national nuclear waste repository to end the divide in two South Australian country towns.
Centre Alliance Senator Rex Patrick said the 122,000sq km Woomera Prohibited Area should be revisited after a freedom of information document showed the reasons why it was rejected were “shallow”.
His calls come as Kimba and Hawker remain in limbo as to whether they will be chosen to host the low-level waste facility, with community ballots delayed until early next year.
“We have a divided community in both Hawker and Kimba and there is a site that may well be very suitable but has been dismissed on very shallow grounds,” Senator Patrick said.
“We need to revisit the defence site properly.”
Woomera was one of four defence sites in SA to be identified by the Federal Government that met suitability criteria for the repository.
The Defence Department, in 2016, said it did not support the facility at Woomera as it was “incompatible” with its weapons testing range and missile launch site.
However, a 2002 Education, Training and Science Department report found the site would be a preferred location, in part because both low and intermediate-level radioactive waste had been stored there since 1994-95 without incident. This includes the CSIRO storing 10,000 drums of waste at the site.
Resources Minister Matt Canavan told The Advertiser the site was unsuitable due to defence operations. He said waste at the site must be moved outside of the controlled defence area.
Woomera was identified by the Howard Government as the potential repository site in 1998, but was shelved following backlash from the Rann Government.
From tears to cheers: three years since South Australia’s nuclear Royal Commission was announced.
8 Feb 18 Three years ago today SA Premier Jay Weatherill announced a Royal Commission into the nuclear industry and a major community campaign against plans for an international high level radioactive waste dump began.
The No Dump Alliance (NDA) has today released a book about this campaign. To view the book, click here. ‘Standing Strong’ covers the key issues championed by Aboriginal and civil society groups opposed to the plan including the lack of Traditional Owner consent, dubious economics, the risks to people and the environment and the impact on future generations.
The book shows how South Australians hit the streets, organised community meetings, got involved online, signed postcards, attended information sessions, door-knocked MP’s and breathed a sigh of relief in June 2017 when the Premier conceded that the plan was “dead” and that his government would not pursue the plan.
“This book documents how our community said no to the threat of radioactive waste,” said Yankunytjatjara woman and NDA spokesperson Karina Lester. We know nuclear is not the answer for our lands and people, we have always said no. It is important that all politicians get the clear message that nuclear waste and nuclear risk is not wanted in SA.”
Today’s launch and anniversary comes amid escalating efforts to oppose Canberra’s plan to store and dump federal radioactive waste in regional SA.
The NDA has joined with communities in both the Flinders Ranges and Eyre Peninsula in welcoming recent comments from Premier Weatherill against future nuclear waste plans. The Premier has said that the government will consider legal action against the federal government to stop the attempt to impose a national nuclear waste dump in SA. The NDA also welcomes the successful move by NXT Senator Rex Patrick, with Labor and Greens support, to establish a Senate Inquiry into the planned national nuclear waste dump.
“Over the past three years a risky plan to import global radioactive waste was clearly defeated”, said nuclear campaigner and NDA spokesperson Dave Sweeney. “This was an important and comprehensive community victory.”
“Today the challenge is to convince Canberra to start treating radioactive waste responsibly and the SA community respectfully because SA is simply too good to waste.”
‘Standing Strong’ is dedicated to the life and work of Yami Lester – Yankunytjatjara Elder and Land Rights activist who sadly passed away in July 2017.
The No Dump Alliance will continue its work on nuclear issues in South Australia.
Weird award for crummy Nuclear Fuel Chain Royal Commission agency
Dumped nuclear consultation wins international kudos The abandoned community engagement program for South Australia’s doomed nuclear repository has won a brace of international awards in an ironic footnote to the waste dump debate. In Daily, Tom Richardson @tomrichardson. 27 Oct 17 ” …. Nuclear Fuel Cycle Royal Commission Consultation and Response Agency launched in the middle of 2016 was tasked with visiting communities to “explain the Royal Commission’s report and gather important feedback”, with sessions featuring interactive displays, models, videos and fact sheets, “as well as having members of the Response Agency team on hand to answer questions and take community responses”.
A separate specific indigenous engagement program was also undertaken.
The Response Agency was quietly wound up earlier this year, with the Opposition subsequently criticising its budget expenditure
Freedom of Information documents released to the Opposition in August and handed to the Advertiser showed the agency’s budget blew out by $400,000 to $7.6 million, with a $182,580 catering bill coming in for particular criticism.
The agency also spent $185,477 for media monitoring, $1.04 million for photography, audio-visual and production, $152,373 for local accommodation, $256,771 for international and domestic travel, and $1.08 million on contractors.
Shadow Treasurer Rob Lucas said at the time that “taxpayers should be concerned about how their money was spent chasing the Weatherill Government’s nuclear thought bubble’’.
But in a bittersweet finale for the disbanded response agency, it scooped some significant gongs at last week’s International Association for Public Participation 2017 Core Values Awards.
…….The nuclear response agency’s Aboriginal Engagement Program was named “Project of the Year” and also won the awards’ “Indigenous” category, while the broader Community Engagement Program picked up a high commendation in the “Planning” category…….
Ironically, a lack of indigenous support became a major stumbling block for Jay Weatherill’s nuclear vision, with the Premier forced to concede a power of veto to Aboriginal communities before walking away from the plan altogether earlier this year.
Weatherill told InDaily in a statement: “This was the largest consultation program in our state’s history, and I’m pleased the work that went into this project has been recognised with this award.”
But opponents of the waste dump plan were less impressed, with Greens MLC Mark Parnell calling the consultation “a one-sided, biased process that tried valiantly, but ultimately failed to convince South Australians of the merits of an international nuclear waste dump”.
“It does not deserve an award,” he told InDaily. https://indaily.com.au/news/2017/10/27/dumped-nuclear-consultation-wins-international-kudos/
Mark Parnell on the final report of the Joint Committee on Findings of the Nuclear Fuel Cycle Royal Commission
What we saw with the royal commission is that they had a number of paid consultants—paid by you and I, the taxpayers—and they engaged these consultants who had clear, ongoing connections with the nuclear industry, often as lobbyists for the industry.
It became apparent very early on that the state was off on a frolic of its own. It was embarking on this major investigation about having a nuclear waste dump in South Australia when everyone knew that the bulk of the laws that regulate these things are at the commonwealth level.
Nuclear Fuel Cycle Royal Commission – Parliamentary Committee Report, Legislative Council, October 18th, 2017 http://www.markparnell.org.au/speech_prn.php?speech=1532
The final report of the Joint Committee on Findings of the Nuclear Fuel Cycle Royal Commission was tabled in the South Australian Parliament on October 17 2017. A copy of the report can be found here.
As a Member of the Parliamentary Committee, Mark spoke to the Report on October 18, and outlined his findings and recommendations in the Greens’ Minority Report.
The Hon. M.C. PARNELL: The notion that South Australia could become fabulously wealthy if only we would agree to take the world’s high-level nuclear waste was ill-conceived from the very beginning. The committee heard evidence about previous attempts to establish nuclear waste dumps in other parts of the world and in Australia. Those attempts have mostly failed because the fundamentals just do not stack up. The liability lasts forever, the technology is unproven and risky, the economics are flawed and the public do not want it under any circumstances, according to the South Australian citizens’ jury. So, this current proposal for South Australia has predictably and properly gone the way of its predecessors and it has been comprehensively dumped.
Whilst the Greens welcome the inevitable abandonment of this project, it has come at a significant cost to the community. Millions of dollars of public funds have been wasted pursuing this folly, and the community is rightly angry that other worthwhile projects and other investigations have suffered through this unnecessary distraction from the real issues that are facing South Australia.
The committee only had one recommendation that received majority support. That is the recommendation that no further public money be spent on a nuclear waste dump in South Australia. Continue reading
No more money for investigating nuclear waste importing – South Australian Parliamentary Committee report
No more cash for nuclear vision as parties conspire 
against waste dump. In Daily, Tom Richardson , 18 Oct 17 A parliamentary inquiry into Jay Weatherill’s doomed nuclear waste repository has told the State Government not to spend another cent of public money on the plan, with MPs from both major parties conspiring to drive the last nail into the project’s political coffin.The final report of a committee established to review the findings of former Governor Kevin Scarce’s Nuclear Royal Commission, tabled in parliament yesterday, makes only one recommendation: “That the South Australian Government should not commit any further public funds to pursuing the proposal to establish a repository for the storage of nuclear waste in SA.”
The recommendation was endorsed by Liberal, Greens and Labor members of the committee – surprisingly, including even outspoken nuclear advocate and Labor whip Tom Kenyon………
Earlier this year, InDaily revealed Weatherill’s declaration that the project would not be revisited by his Government.
But the work of the committee has continued, with the inquiry hearing “concerns from witnesses that if market conditions changed, for example through competition or changes in technology, the state may be left with a facility which, from an economic and financial perspective, is a break-even proposition at best”.
“Further, while no direct losses would be incurred, there could be significant costs attached to losing other, potentially higher value, investment opportunities,” the report stated.
“Further still, the minimum pre-commitment, or baseline viability, does not mitigate risk of writing-off pre-commitment expenditure estimated at roundly $600 million if the facility did not proceed.”
The committee noted “the possibility of a customer country unilaterally deciding not to send waste to SA despite contractual agreements to do so which, depending on the timing of the risk impact, could leave the facility significantly under-funded”.
Greens committee member Mark Parnell, a consistent opponent of the repository plan, said today “the project was ill-conceived from the outset”.
“The whole exercise has been a colossal waste of millions of dollars of taxpayers’ money, but it’s now good the process has finished and we can move on to talking about more realistic projects that will create employment and opportunity for South Australians,” he said.
Calling the inquiry’s recommendation the “second-last nail in the coffin”, Parnell insisted the Government must now reinstate Section 13 of the Nuclear Waste Storage Facility (Prohibition) Act of 2000, which was repealed last year.
The law prevented the Government from consulting on the merits of a nuclear waste storage facility, holding that “no public money may be appropriated, expended or advanced to any person for the purpose of encouraging or financing any activity associated with the construction or operation of a nuclear waste storage facility” in SA.
Parnell has his own legislation before parliament to re-establish the original act, saying “we need to fix the legislation to make sure no future government comes back with a project like this, without coming to parliament first”……..https://indaily.com.au/news/politics/2017/10/18/no-cash-nuclear-vision-parties-conspire-waste-dump/
South Australian govt’s pro nuclear propaganda campaign was expensive
Agency formed to push nuclear waste dump to SA spent $7.6 million http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/news/south-australia/agency-formed-to-push-nuclear-waste-dump-to-sa-spent-76-million/news-story/34c2ed1ade9a24c8d195ecf32f45709d 20 Aug 17, Miles Kemp,
THE taxpayer has been handed a “catering” bill that is the equivalent of 45,000 cups of coffee, for a talkfest on nuclear energy. The catering bill for the so-called “Nuclear Fuel Cycle Royal Commission Consultation and Response Agency” was $182,580.
South Australian Premier Jay Weatherill declares the nuclear waste importing plan “dead”
There’s no foreseeable opportunity for this”: Jay declares nuke dump “dead” INDaily, Tom Richardson @tomrichardson, 7 June 17,
Premier Jay Weatherill has officially walked away from one of the major policy hallmarks of his term in Government, pronouncing the nuclear waste dump “dead” and vowing he will not revisit it if he wins another term in office.
The position appears a significant rhetorical shift from his stance last November, when he pledged to keep the debate alive ahead of a future referendum on the issue of nuclear waste storage, after his own Royal Commission found establishing a local industry could net a “$100 billion income in excess of expenditure”.
At the time, his position was seen by critics both inside the Labor Party and more broadly as a refusal to abandon the nuclear dream.
But asked about the future of the nuclear dump at a public forum in Victor Harbor this week, Weatherill declared the project “dead”.
“Yeah it is,” he reaffirmed to InDaily today……..
After the Victor Harbor forum, Conservation SA chief executive Craig Wilkins said the rhetorical shift should be enshrined in Labor policy, calling on Weatherill to “bury the nuke dump plan for good”.
South Australian Liberal Party to launch advertising campaign against Nuclear Royal Commission plan to import nuclear wastes
Off The Record: Orchestra now in baton race to replace young gun, The Advertiser April 1, 2017 “…….Hitting voters with ion fist OUR atomic adventure might be dead and buried, but a series of targeted nuclear strikes are about to be launched by the Liberals.
Having last November torpedoed Premier Jay Weatherill’s half-hearted push for an international nuclear waste dump, the Libs will now attack him for secret plans to put the dump in various sites across the state, Off the Record has learned.
A localised digital and leaflet campaign will accuse Mr Weatherill and his high-level waste dump of risking the destruction of agricultural industry and the environment through toxic nuclear leaks.
The advertising blitz will expand closer to next March’s election.
Regional areas likely to host a dump will be the focus, along with women worried about their children’s futures and those once known as “doctors’ wives” – affluent inner-city Liberal types concerned about the environment and social issues.
Of course, as no site was earmarked by the nuclear royal commission in its final report last May, the Liberals have fertile ground to declare any community could be at risk from the nuclear ogre…… http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/news/opinion/off-the-record-orchestra-now-in-baton-race-to-replace-young-gun/news-story/22c63df9efeb84f31fe3adf21ca65aa9
On nuclear waste dumping: America’s Dept of Energy more truthful than South Australia’s Nuclear Royal Commission
Derek Abbott No High Level International Nuclear Waste Dump in South Australia, 4 Feb 17, Here’s the American DOE report on repositories. Notice it’s much more truthful than our Royal Commission report. For starters it:
(a) compares the disadvantages of different types of rock for a repository and there are many openly listed, and
(b) it openly mentions the tens of $billions needed in repackaging costs for the fuel. Our Royal Commission totally side stepped these points. https://www.energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2014/04/f15/DOE%20DispOptions%20R1%20Volume1%20Apr15.pdf
South Australian Liberal leader stresses that the Royal Commission nuclear waste plan economically risky
“ there was nothing in the analysis that we did post the royal commission report being tabled down that gave us any form of comfort that there wasn’t huge economic risk associated with this proposal.”
Marshall: Nothing’s off the table – except nuclear, INDaily, Adelaide Monday January 16, 2017
Liberal leader Steven Marshall says he has an open mind on policy solutions, today declaring South Australia “can’t afford to take one single solitary thing off the table” – only minutes after launching a strident defence of his unilateral move to take nuclear waste storage off the table.
In an interview on ABC Adelaide, Marshall was asked about the Liberals’ policy agenda, with little more 
than a year before he leads the party to another state election……
The Liberals were put in the spotlight last week when former senator Sean Edwards mused about a push by business supporters to see him installed into state parliament, and possibly to replace Marshall as leader. Edwards refused to rule out either scenario, repeating earlier disenchantment over his party’s decision to withdraw support for a broad discussion over a proposed nuclear waste dump…….
Marshall said of the party room’s decision to withdraw support for further nuclear debate: “A lot of people are out there saying it’s a political decision by Steven Marshall and the Liberal Party; nothing could be further from the truth.”
“We welcomed the royal commission in the first place, in fact we were the only party that was talking about the nuclear opportunity for South Australia before the last election,” he said.
“But there was nothing in the analysis that we did post the royal commission report being tabled down that gave us any form of comfort that there wasn’t huge economic risk associated with this proposal.”…… http://indaily.com.au/news/politics/2017/01/16/marshall-nothings-off-the-table-except-nuclear/
Derek Abbott explodes the Royal Commission proposal for a nuclear waste dump
Derek Abbott No High Level International Nuclear Waste Dump in South Australia, 15 Jan 17
So talk of Ben-Hur proportions that a dump will stimulate expansion of the nuclear industry, allowing power for countries in poverty, meeting power needs for growing populations, and that it fills a moral obligation is invalidated by the fact the dump can’t even keep pace with such visions.
So if we peel away all this hollow rhetoric the only real justification for the dump is to make a fast buck, and the ‘noble’ talk of how the dump will save the world is trumped-up sales hype.
And as we know, the goal of making a profit is highly questionable given considerable economic risks and uncertainties involved.https://www.facebook.com/groups/1314655315214929/
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. Continue reading
Sisters of St Joseph make a powerful case against radioactive trash dumping
Why would any reasonable society actually WANT to expose themselves to danger and the
greatest known risk to human kind and for a completely incomprehensible time of at least
100,000 years till the danger of contamination of earth, waters and human beings subsides!!!
For money? For jobs?
What substitute is money and jobs for some at the cost of clean air, uncontaminated water,
uncontaminated land for food growing, a safe environment to bring up children, a healthy
environment to bring up children, a clean environment for every generation?
What extraordinary motivation is driving those who want to risk all this to involve South
Australia our homeland further into the contamination from which there will be no return?
Josephite SA Reconciliation Circle
Royal Commission into the Nuclear Fuel Cycle
SUBMISSION TO ISSUES PAPER 4 “…Regarding the storage of high level (or nuclear long lived) waste, the Royal Commission must
• accept and
• make perfectly clear to the citizens of South Australia
that there are simply NO World’s Best practice for the storage of high level (or nuclear long
lived) waste.
The material is simply too dangerous, will live on dangerously for an outrageous 200,000
years (CCSA 2015) – and despite the fervent hopes ofthe nuclear industryIlobby- there are
no technological solutions to its safe storage – now or likely to be in the foreseeable future
and quite possibly never.
Unfortunately there is no safeguard in the assurances of those who claim that the situation is
safe and weapons proliferation won’t happen ‘because we say it won’t ‘.
As long term South Australian citizens our members are well placed to know that –
in the Ernul Maralinga nuclear explosions and the later even more damaging so called ‘minor
trials’ which contained plutonium there were ready assurances given by those whose vested
interests were served by the nuclear explosions going ahead. (as quoted in 1.8. above)
The effects of the Emu and Maralinga fallouts affected many South Australians particularly
those living in the remote Far West and North West of our state and in the areas around
Coober Pedy. Many were Aboriginal and their life style of ground cooking and other factors
placed them in an extremely vulnerable position. This experience – personal in most cases
and to their families in others – is what galvanised the Senior Women Elders of Coober Pedy,
known as the Kupa Piti Kungka Tjuta (KPKT) to lead what became the national successful
campaign of 1998-2004 against the Federal Government’s imposition of a national radioactive
dump on their land.
All of us were living when the Government used the country for the bomb…Some were living at
Twelve Mile, just out ofCoober Pedy… Whitefellas and all got sick. When we wereyoung, no
women got breast cancer or any other kind ofcancer. Cancer was unheard of with me either and
no asthma. We were people without sickness.
The Government thought they knew what they were doing then. Now again they are coming
along and telling us poor blackfellas, ‘Oh, there’s nothing that’s going to happen, nothing is going
to killyou.’And that will still happen like that bomb over there. KPKTApril 1998 Continue reading
Mystery of South Australian Labor tying the State’s prosperity to a nuclear waste toilet
Nuclear Poker: The Premier declares his hand, but who will win?, Adelaide Review, John Spoehr, NOVEMBER 24, 2016 You Don’t generally establish a Royal Commission on a major economic question unless you have an answer in mind. Tom Playford initiated a Royal Commission into the Electricity Industry in South Australia to bring the industry under greater public control. He was fed up with the privately run Adelaide Electric Supply Company (AESC) and was open to radical change. By the mid-1940s, most states had nationalised their electricity industries…..
It is against the weight of this history that the Premier and the State Government push. They also push against great disappointment – disappointment that the state’s prosperity should, in any way, be tied to becoming a nuclear waste dump. Surely we can do better than that, many South Australians are saying. More than 3000 protestors on Parliament House steps made it clear that a dump was not an option.
What frustrates many about the latest twist in the nuclear waste dump debate is the apparent abuse of process when the State Government didn’t get the result it wanted. It has created an expectation that the Citizens’ Jury would guide the decision. When the Jury came out against the dump, the Premier had a plan B – put it to a referendum.
The election of Donald Trump sharpened views about the political cost of not listening to the Citizens’ Jury. While the Premier was prepared to take the risk and face accusations of having a tin ear, Opposition Leader Steven Marshall made a captain’s call to oppose the dump on economic grounds. While the Premier alienated many in his traditional support base by being the architect of the impossible, he won new friends on the other side of politics by daring to do what they would not have done themselves. Whether this translates into Labor votes from disgruntled Liberal voters at the March 2018 State election is difficult to know.
Having criticised the Opposition Leader for abandoning bi-partisan support, the Premier has few cards left to play in his game of nuclear poker. There has been talk of trying to lock in a customer nation to demonstrate that there is real demand for the dump, but customers will remain cautious, preferring not to declare their hand. Steven Marshall has laid his cards on the table and so too has the Premier. Their parties are divided on the stance they have both taken. …..
Just why the development of a nuclear industry in South Australia should be so attractive to some is a fascinating question. Those who support a waste dump generally also support the enrichment of uranium and nuclear power generation. Some also see merit in South Australia manufacturing nuclear-powered submarines. I doubt that the pursuit of a dump will satisfy the ambitions of the nuclear lobby. https://adelaidereview.com.au/opinion/politics/nuclear-poker-premier-declares-hand-will-win/
Antinuclear 