South Australians are facing a big decision
In May 2016 a state Royal Commission into the nuclear fuel cycle
recommended that South Australia open its doors and accept the world's most
dangerous industrial waste. It wants South Australia to develop a nuclear port and
keep high-level international nuclear waste above and below ground at
multiple sites across the state, and it is prepared to spend hundreds of
millions of taxpayer dollars to get the project up and running
The proposal is for South Australia to become the final destination for much of
the world's most dangerous and long-lived nuclear waste
This is material that needs to be isolated from people and the planet from
communities and country for more than a hundred thousand years
The proposal includes the construction of a hundred-million-dollar deep water port
to transfer high and intermediate level nuclear waste containers
from ship to shore
They want to import a hundred and thirty-eight thousand tons of high-level
nuclear waste into South Australia over a 70 year period. That's 200 to 250 tons of
high-level waste every month
The planned nuclear port would take a further six hundred shipping containers
per year of intermediate level nuclear waste. At the project's peak around 70,000
tons of high-level waste would be stored above ground
The final plan is for large volumes of high and intermediate level nuclear
waste to be buried in multiple underground sites across South Australia.
Buried - but not dead - this waste would be a threat to South Australia forever.
The scale of the proposal has been described as by far the largest
operation in existence and even the company employed by the Royal Commission
to model the plan has warned that this isn't a risk-free process. There is a
very significant risk. The nuclear Royal Commission has already cost South
Australian taxpayers over 9 million dollars.
The South Australian government is currently spending another million
dollars on consultation and promotion, but this is the tip of the iceberg
when it comes to the drain on the public purse.
The plan itself is estimated to cost 145 billion dollars
It's based on South Australian taxpayers spending between 300 and 600 million
dollars up front before any contracts with overseas companies assigned or any
site located. The International Atomic Energy Agency has noted that "no country
has a geological repository for spent fuel storage or disposal
neither have most countries decided on a final destination for spent fuel."
But there is a long list of expensive failed attempts around the world
New plans are still years away from completion and many face strong
community opposition.
Community consent to such a risky and permanent plan is absolutely essential
but not at all guaranteed.
People need to know about the plan and to have the ability to
say no to the proposal
Nothing about nuclear waste is easy. Australia's own 20 year search for
national low and intermediate level nuclear waste dump has seen every proposal
target Aboriginal communities, and all have failed or are failing.
Australia has not responsibly solved its own radioactive waste problem
so it makes no sense to open the door to a much more severe global problem.
South Australia means a lot to a lot of people and there is a lot at stake.
Decisions we make today will affect all future South Australians.
We are the crossroads. South Australia could either become a global dump zone or
the clean energy and advanced manufacturing capital of Australia.
The jobs of the future will be in these growth industries, not the decaying
industries of the past. People who say South Australia's best hope is to take
the world's worst waste have got it badly wrong.
Social consent is critical for any nuclear project to proceed and the
fundamental questions for South Australians are, "do we consent,
and can we consent on behalf of all future generations?"
The Greens believe that no amount of bad economic news for South Australia could
ever make importing nuclear waste a good idea.
South Australia is simply too good to waste. Our future is renewable.
Not radioactive.