Comment Re:I would think not. (Score 1) 213
Anyway, I think Australia would really benefit from this concept.
No, we don't really. Existing Uranium mining operations recently allowed a 2 million litre spill of radioactive concentrated sulphuric acid to spill into a world heritage national park. Extensive radionuclide handling in an area that is also a large food bowl for the world would not really be a good idea. Infrastructure operations of that kind are an accident waiting to happen. Any enrichment occurring on our soil would also make us a target and increase the already large intelligence apparatus that operates here.
They need to get it approved just once (scale won't influence the rate of NIMBYism, those opposed to the repository would oppose it at any scale),
Well I oppose it and uranium mining because the incompetence of the mining industry getting yellowcake and having industrial accidents where they just say "sowwy" and continue on mining as if nothing happened continues. Given that why should I expect any more than that. They already conduct acid leach mining here which is illegal in the US and Russia - but no worries, just do it in Australia because they're ignorant pie eaters that wouldn't care anyway. Fuck that, I care, we were forced to mine yellow cake and now the world wants to send it back because Dixie Lee Ray was full of shit.
My concern is that Australia is the driest continent in the world and the water table our farmers use would be put at extreme risk from such a proposal so there are plenty of sensible reasons to object to this proposal. *ANY* accident would expose all Australians to radioisotope analogues. Sea transport of the many thousands of tons of this material would also introduce the risk of shipping accidents and security hazzards in transit. So calling it NIMBYism is just a way of making excuses for not knowing all the issues and I'm fairly certain you are reasonable enough to recognise there are more than just the issues I've mentioned here.
they'll get a HUGE amount of income for little work,
Our other markets dwarf this, we just don't need it.
and they'll pretty much have nuclear power suppliers held hostage thereafter, as none are going to want to go back to having to try to get local permission to build a repository after their public has been told that it wouldn't happen.
So why on earth would you let it come into my realm. If it does, I will lobby harder than ever to put staggeringly unfair prices on accessing these facilities. Besides why would the countries give up their fuel reserves to Australia when they can use them, themselves? Hawke is just playing a role put to him by S er co so that they get a return on the rail line infrastructure they built through the dead heart. Waste arrives in Adelaide or Darwin, travels by rail to where ever the waste goes.
Aboriginals have final say about what is done with their land, but a "intervention" a few years ago change their legal title on the land so the government can now *tell* them they are getting a spent fuel repository. So plenty of profit for everyone else except the Australian tax payer - so no thanks.
And they'll have a tremendous resource for any sort of future isotope or fuel refining that might prove economically viable. I mean, imagine that... picture having all of the world's spent fuel, and then having a technical solution or geopolitical situation that makes it cheaper to get fuel from the waste than to mine new uranium. You're suddenly the near-exclusive nuclear fuel supplier to the entire world. Or supplier of medical isotopes, or isotopes for goods irradiation, or whatever else the future may demand.
Well, so what? We already are a near-exclusive nuclear fuel supplier to the entire world (I think South Africa is another) and we maintain on small 10 megawatt reactor for doing those other things so there is no real benefit.
America would do far better for handling this properly because you have Granite mountains that have been geologically stable. Why wouldn't America just build the facility that Yucca tries to be so that she can still have access to her fuel reserves.
Right now it looks as though Australians, many of whom objected to uranium mining in the first place because they feared the things that have now eventuated are now being asked to take this material back in a highly toxic form to maintain the rest of the world voracious energy consumption.
It's just a bad idea, but one that corporate interests are using mouth pieces like Hawke for so it looks like a fait accompli has gone through due process.