SA - Nuclear Future

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Wayno
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SA - Nuclear Future

#1 Post by Wayno » Mon Feb 23, 2015 9:23 am

Visionary to some, obvious to others, a shocking prospect to the remainder. I was amazed to read the majority of SA people want some sort of nuclear future here.

Bring it on I say. Full lifecycle. Maybe even carve off a small parcel of land for waste storage, not part of 'South Australia' anymore. That way there's no waste storage here. It's in that other area called the 'Central Territory'. Perception matters.

From The Advertiser:
A $20 BILLION blueprint to create a South Australian nuclear industry that turns around the state’s fortunes by employing tens of thousands of people has been developed by a panel of experts.

The draft plan says the project would make the state a “world centre” for nuclear energy by offering storage for radioactive waste, enriching our uranium and building nuclear reactors, creating a new industry.

SA Nuclear Energy Systems Pty Ltd, chaired by Bruce Hundertmark, comprises a range of nuclear experts and hopes to work with the US Department of Energy and other major international entities in its quest to make the plan a reality.

The group, which has an office in Wayville, hopes to make a submission to the Royal Commission into a nuclear industry. The State Government is set to announce the terms of reference this week, while the Federal Government is considering nuclear power as part of its Energy White Paper. Representatives of both levels of Government have had meetings with Mr Hundertmark.

Mr Hundertmark, a businessman, consultant, and developer of high technology companies who worked as an engineer in the nuclear industry, said manufacturing in SA is collapsing and the economy is in strife, so a major new industry was needed.

“The problem with SA is nothing is happening here,” he said, adding that the group was not in it for any profit. The motive here is to try to save SA from what appears to be a nasty future.”

Decades ago, Mr Hundertmark was a director of News International, the UK arm of News Corporation, The Advertiser’s parent company.

Other board members include top climate scientist Tom Wigley from the University of Adelaide, who says that opposition to nuclear power threatens humanity’s ability to avoid dangerous climate change; Richard Cherry, a former executive officer of the US nuclear industry and consultant to the industry; Eric Dunlop who is on Barack Obama’s committee for biofuels; Ian Kowalick, former head the Department of Premier and Cabinet, and Stephen Lincoln, a Professor of Chemistry at the University of Adelaide.

Under their proposal:

A RADIOACTIVE waste storage facility at Maralinga would cost about $3 billion and would bring in more than $1 billion a year and provide 4000 jobs and 20,000 indirect jobs. The Federal Government is currently looking for a place to store waste.

A PROCESSING plant to enrich uranium mined in SA would be set up on industrial land at Whyalla at a cost of about $7 billion.

SMALL modular reactors to be set up on the Eyre Peninsula would cost about $6 billion and bring in billions through generating electricity.

Other investments in infrastructure would add to the cost.

The Federal Government is open to discussing the nuclear issue. Industry Minister Ian Macfarlane said yesterday it was “sensible” for SA to look at all options for developing its uranium resources.

Business SA is in favour of a uranium enrichment and radioactive waste storage trial in the state. A recent survey found eight in 10 South Australians wanted a debate on the costs and benefits of a nuclear industry. An SA Chamber of Mines and Energy survey put support for nuclear power at about 50 per cent, with a third opposed.

Mr Hundertmark said it was not simple to “overcome the anti-nuclear feeling” but that modern nuclear technology was far safer than older reactors, such as Fukushima in Japan, which melted down after being hit by a tsunami wave.

“Modern reactors shut themselves down automatically as soon as there’s a threat,” he said.

“(And) we don’t have tsunami waves rolling into SA because we’re not close to a junction of tectonic plates.”

Prof Lincoln, who is a nuclear power expert, said the industry would need to be overseen by a strong independent authority and would also be subject to inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency.

He said climate change was already affecting Australia and that nuclear power would drastically reduce our emissions.

“One rational approach is to say let’s switch increasingly to energy sources that do not generate carbon dioxide,” he said.

“So we have solar power and wind farms. They’re great but they can’t supply the amount of electricity you need … you have to have baseload power and that’s where nuclear power comes in,” he said.

Kevin Scarce, who is in favour of a debate on nuclear and is heading up the Royal Commission, has said he was sick of hearing politicians say they’re not opposed to nuclear power then doing nothing about it.

Foreign Affairs Minister Julie Bishop and Prime Minister Tony Abbott have sparked discussions recently by saying it is a discussion worth having.

Mr Macfarlane said they welcomed the Royal Commission and that if nuclear power was on the cards it had to be safe, commercial, and have bipartisan political support and community acceptance.

“SA is home to some of Australia’s most significant uranium reserves, so it’s sensible to look at all issues relating to the full development of the resource,” he said.
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Re: SA - Nuclear Future

#2 Post by monotonehell » Mon Feb 23, 2015 9:46 am

White elephant? Isn't the current economic think that the entire nuclear supply chain (ore to electrons) is not profitable, and is only possible through government support? Australian mines make money by externalising the rest of the chain to other countries.
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Re: SA - Nuclear Future

#3 Post by Wayno » Mon Feb 23, 2015 1:51 pm

I hear you mono. I too am no expert in nuclear industry financials (believe it or not).

The cynic in me says the real agenda is to get acceptance for a waste dump over the line. Everything else will take forever...
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Re: SA - Nuclear Future

#4 Post by Goodsy » Mon Feb 23, 2015 5:09 pm

100% support it if it's economically feasible

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Re: SA - Nuclear Future

#5 Post by claybro » Wed Feb 25, 2015 6:18 pm

SA is home to some of Australia’s most significant uranium reserves, so it’s sensible to look at all issues relating to the full development of the resource,” he said[/quote]
Some of Australias most significant....
Um...try some of the WORLDS most significant uranium reserves. heaven forbid SA should have bragging rights to anything!

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Re: SA - Nuclear Future

#6 Post by Wayno » Fri Mar 13, 2015 4:12 pm

http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/NP-Au ... 03157.html

Senator Edwards
Australian senator shares nuclear vision

12 March 2015

State senator Sean Edwards is advocating for nuclear energy to become part of South Australia's energy mix, importing and recycling used nuclear fuel to generate energy and revenue for the state.

Edwards announced his plans to provide a submission to the recently announced Royal Commission on South Australia's role in the nuclear fuel cycle, calling for it to investigate the potential of leveraging the unused uranium and plutonium left in fuel that has already fuelled nuclear power plants elsewhere. A world-wide inventory of 240,000 tonnes of used nuclear fuel could underpin a strategy giving the state a "transformative economic advantage", he said.

"South Australia has the opportunity to develop a nuclear energy industry, to take custody of spent nuclear fuel and to progressively recycle it," Edwards said, adding: "Not only would we be paid handsomely by international partners to do this, we'd have the opportunity generate plentiful, clean, baseload power for South Australian businesses and citizens."

South Australians pay the highest taxes in the country, but according to the senator, such a scheme could potentially earn enough revenue to replace the entire AUD 4.4 billion ($3.4 billion) per year state tax bill as well as generating enough power to supply the whole of the state. In an interview with ABC News Radio, Edwards said that his proposal could produce power for South Australians "at little or no cost".

Edwards said that South Australia's geological and political stability made it an ideal location for a new nuclear power plant, estimating the cost at AUD 5-7 billion ($4-5 billion), which he said would be funded through the involvement of overseas partners. "We could have a first-mover advantage here - it's a really terrific opportunity for us to get ahead of the curve in world terms," he said on air.

Australia has no nuclear power capacity, and Edwards' proposal is entirely separate from an ongoing federal initiative to site a national radioactive waste management facility to manage waste arising from Australian medical, research and industrial processes.

Instead, the proposal would most likely mean using the uranium and plutonium in fuel rods that have already been used in power reactors overseas to fuel a fast neutron reactor, which would also burn long-lived actinides too, leaving only relatively short-lived fission products.

According to Australian climate specialist and decarbonisation campaigner Ben Heard, the imported fuel would be stored in dry casks prior to reprocessing using a high-temperature electrometallurgical process, rather than the hydrometallurgical Purex method currently used in the handful of reprocessing plants around the world. Unlike Purex, the electrometallurgical process - often referred to as pyroprocessing - does not result in the isolation of plutonium and would therefore also be attractive from a non-proliferation point of view.

Several types of fast reactor that might be employed in such a scheme are in development, including GE-Hitachi's PRISM, under consideration for deployment in the UK, the France's Astrid reactor, and Russia's SVBR. GE-Hitachi envisages the development of recycling centres integrating electrometallurgical processing with Prism reactors with a feedstock of used fuel from light water reactors.

South Australian state premier Jay Weatherill announced the Royal Commission into the state's future role in the nuclear fuel cycle last month. The in-depth investigation is also public enquiry. South Australia itself is home to the Olympic Dam uranium, copper and gold mine, which produced 6% of world uranium output in 2013, and the South Australian public appear to be generally supportive of nuclear power.

Australia produces some 10% of the world's uranium but does not generate nuclear energy, and the question of whether nuclear should play a part of the coal-rich nation's energy mix is an ongoing one. In 2006 the UMPNER study (Uranium Mining, Processing and Nuclear Energy Review) concluded that any long-term energy strategy for Australia should include nuclear power alongside coal, gas and renewable energy, and that commercial opportunities existed in uranium mining, processing and enrichment, and in developing storage solutions for long-lived radioactive waste.
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Re: SA - Nuclear Future

#7 Post by rev » Fri Mar 13, 2015 9:41 pm

Of course it's part of a push to get a nuclear dump approved in SA.
It's too bad that Rann made the site chosen by the feds a protected park :wink:

That one politician, a fed I believe, whom I've never heard of, has suddenly popped up promoting free electricity and no state taxes for South Australians if we go ahead with a nuclear industry.
Want to guess which part of a nuclear industry will be built first?


We wont get free electricity, and they certainly wont abolish state taxes. Sadly South Australian's, or at least those voting on Adelaide Now, are falling for it hook line and sinker. In what parallel universe do people in this state live in exactly?

His reasoning is that South Australia will reap billions of dollars from a nuclear industry.
If people paid close attention to what he is saying, they'd realize he is full of shit and simply trying to trick people into supporting a nuclear dump.
He talks about free electricity and no state taxes, but then he goes on to say that others will PAY SOUTH AUSTRALIA to take their nuclear waste.
Just how much are the tipping fees for a nuclear waste dump? :lol:


By advocating nuclear power, he is also promoting a waste dump. If we go nuclear, we will need a site to store the radioactive waste.

Question is, whose filling his pockets? What does he stand to gain by promoting this and succeeding?


If it sounds too good to be true....

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Re: SA - Nuclear Future

#8 Post by Llessur2002 » Thu Mar 19, 2015 4:41 pm

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-03-19/n ... atenews_sa
Nuclear Fuel Cycle Royal Commission makes formal start in SA

Public hearings in remote Aboriginal communities are expected to be part of a royal commission in South Australia into nuclear energy issues.

Governor Hieu Van Le has signed off to mark the official start of the Nuclear Fuel Cycle Royal Commission, which is expected to make its recommendations to the SA Government by May next year.

It will examine a range of issues including whether the state should have a nuclear power station or nuclear waste dump.

Former state governor Kevin Scarce will head the inquiry.

The Government changed two terms of reference from its initial draft, to let Mr Scarce consider environmental issues of past nuclear experiences and likely economic flow-on effects to other industries if SA advances its nuclear involvement.

Premier Jay Weatherill said Mr Scarce intended staging a very open and inclusive investigation.

"That would involve visits to various areas of the state, of course it will involve Aboriginal communities and other land owners that might be situated near the mining or the other potential areas for further involvement in the nuclear fuel cycle," he said.

"We have a specific mandate to consult with Aboriginal communities and there are great sensitivities here [as] we've had the use and abuse of the lands of the Maralinga Tjarutja people by the British when they tested their atomic weapons.

"Of course on the other side, I've heard of Aboriginal communities that are interested in taking advantage of the economic opportunities that might be presented by these things."
Premier points to overseas nuclear demands
Qinshan nuclear power plant, Hangzhou in south-east China Photo: China's nuclear power demands are in the SA Premier's mind. (AFP)

Mr Weatherill said it might not prove practical for South Australia to turn to nuclear power generation "but it might be a very different position in India or China".

"Certainly we can support them by supplying them with uranium to be used in these particular plants," he said.

"We don't, for instance, refine any of our uranium so it goes out in a relatively unprocessed form so that's the first question - whether we should be more deeply involved in the refinement.

"Secondly there is the question of the power but, as I already said, I think it's probably unlikely, but I think the thing that does seem to be a possibility is the idea of taking back waste that is associated with certainly the use of our uranium but possibly even as a use of other uranium."

The Premier said the royal commission could consider waste dump issues with a view to economic benefits but mindful of public safety.

"We need to first decide whether it's a thing we want to do, whether it's practical to do that and whether it's safe to do it but there's no doubt that we've seen some very substantial economic benefits that have been mooted about that possibility," he said.

Mr Weatherill noted federal Labor's ongoing opposition to nuclear power in Australia but countered: "We're conducting a discussion, we're not announcing a policy position.

"These are positions on which the party's position evolves.

"Whether we will be seeking to change the party's position and what the party would say about that in the future are all matters for another day."

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Re: SA - Nuclear Future

#9 Post by Vee » Fri Nov 13, 2015 12:36 pm

What are the odds?

Six sites have been listed by the Federal Government for a potential nuclear waste dump, 3 in South Australia.
The AFR has already stated that SA is the frontrunner.

The Federal Government is facing brewing community discontent about some of the sites that have been shortlisted to host Australia's first permanent nuclear waste dump.
The Government released the shortlist of six sites nominated to store low and intermediate level nuclear waste. It wants to finalise a single location by the end of next year.

The sites have been volunteered by landholders who stand to recoup four times the value of their land.
The government is also offering a $10 million sweetener to the local community near the site that is eventually chosen, to spend on infrastructure and other projects.

Three proposed sites are located in South Australia - Cortlinye, Pinkawillinie, and Barndioota – while the other options are at Hale in the Northern Territory, Sallys Flat in New South Wales and Oman Ama in Queensland.
First, "low level" nuclear waste, then "high-level" waste to follow?
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has also fuelled the debate, remaining sceptical about building nuclear power plants but foreshadowing Australia could play a role in the storage of waste.

"There is a huge amount of nuclear waste in Australia already, including from hospitals and from the Lucas Heights reactor, and we've got to find safer places to store it," Mr Turnbull said last month.

He also floated the idea of setting up a high-level waste storage facility.

Friends of the Earth national nuclear campaigner Jim Green said nuclear waste dumps posed serious risks to the environment and the health of those living nearby.
Most of Australia's existing nuclear waste is kept at Lucas Heights in NSW and another facility at Woomera in South Australia.

Dr Green said there was no reason to move it.
"There's no obvious reason to be moving that vast bulk of radioactive waste and, in particular, Lucas Heights has the facilities, the storage capacity, the expertise and it simply does not make any sense to be moving the waste out of Lucas Heights," he said.

The Government is under pressure to come up with a national nuclear waste dump, with 25 tonnes of uranium on its way back from France after being processed.

Spent fuel was sent to France in four shipments in the 1990s and early 2000s.
When the shipment of waste from France arrives it will be temporarily kept at the nuclear facility in Lucas Heights in southern Sydney.
ABC News:
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-11-13/g ... ge/6937244

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Re: SA - Nuclear Future

#10 Post by [Shuz] » Fri Nov 13, 2015 1:31 pm

Why is this even still being debated? It's a matter of where and when, not if.
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Re: SA - Nuclear Future

#11 Post by monotonehell » Mon Nov 16, 2015 9:41 am

[Shuz] wrote:Why is this even still being debated? It's a matter of where and when, not if.
It's being debated because people don't agree with your assessment.
Exit on the right in the direction of travel.

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Re: SA - Nuclear Future

#12 Post by Vee » Mon Nov 16, 2015 4:26 pm

Proposed Flinders Ranges nuclear site identified as pastoral property belonging to former Liberal senator Grant Chapman
A former South Australian senator and Liberal Party president who jointly owns one of several proposed sites for a nuclear dump in the state said he would be willing to allow high-level waste to be stored on the property in the future.

Grant Chapman owns the long-term lease to Wallerberdina, a station near Barndioota in the Flinders Ranges about 40 kilometres north-west of Hawker, which is currently used to graze cattle.

It is one of six sites across the nation, including three in SA, being considered by the Federal Government to store low- and intermediate-level nuclear waste.

Mr Chapman said if approved, a proposed nuclear storage facility would eventually occupy 100 hectares in the northern section of the 25,000-hectare property. He said he nominated the site several months ago.
Anger at lack of consultation.
Artist Regina McKenzie, who lives on neighbouring Yappala Station, which shares a boundary with Wallerberdina, said she and her family were angry and frustrated they had not been consulted.

Ms McKenzie said she had heard rumours Wallerberdina was being considered but was shocked when that was confirmed by the Federal Government. She said Aboriginal people have suffered greatly as a result of the Maralinga nuclear tests and she feared history would repeat itself.

"The water here that we use, the aquifers that are under the earth, what if they get contaminated by some leakages or something?"

"I don't care how safe they say it is. If it's so safe, why don't they take it back and put it in their own back yards. If it's so safe, have it in Canberra there where all the pollies sit."
Ms McKenzie said the area was culturally significant to the Adnyamathanha people.
ABC News:
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-11-16/p ... on/6944636

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Re: SA - Nuclear Future

#13 Post by Ho Really » Tue Nov 17, 2015 6:03 pm

Low- and intermediate-level nuclear waste is not the same as Maralinga. Waste has to be buried deep underground somewhere suitable, preferably into solid rock far from aquifers and where it is geologically sound. If underneath Parliament House in Canberra was suitable they would have done it, but let's be serious and practical about this. No one is going to bury anything under any buildings or your home! Sheesh!

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Re: SA - Nuclear Future

#14 Post by thecityguy » Tue Nov 17, 2015 6:11 pm

People should be jumping at this opportunity! Just what this state needs. Can't wait to hear the dumb arguments against this tho! I read a comment the other day of someone suggesting that nuclear waste stored in whoop whoop will somehow effect her health, and the amazing produce from the barrosa valley


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Re: SA - Nuclear Future

#15 Post by rev » Wed Nov 18, 2015 9:14 am

thecityguy wrote:People should be jumping at this opportunity! Just what this state needs. Can't wait to hear the dumb arguments against this tho! I read a comment the other day of someone suggesting that nuclear waste stored in whoop whoop will somehow effect her health, and the amazing produce from the barrosa valley


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It is a great opportunity. IF the entire cycle is included in building up this industry and it's not just a nuclear waste dump.
And I mean including nuclear power.
We have a large chunk of the world's uranium sitting in our outback.

A nuclear waste dump would be deep underground.
If you think that it's therefore safe think again.

There's things to consider seriously, such as underground water aquifers.

Do you know towns like Coober Pedy actually get their water from such underground fresh water supplies? The water is cleaner then the shut that's pumped through taps in Adelaide.

Even If an underground water source Isn't being used by anyone, why should it be put at risk of being made radioactive?

Fresh water is not In abundance on this planet.
It is an extremely important and vital resource not only for our species survival but for the entire planet and it's ecosystems.


I'm not a greeny and I'm all for a complete nuclear industry from the mining to the waste storage.
But it should be done properly or not at all.

These decisions have implications for generations to come..hundreds of years after we've all kicked the bucket.

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