Mark Disendorf: Last month the South Australian Nuclear Fuel Cycle Royal Commission recommended that the state government develop a business venture to store a large fraction of the world’s high- and intermediate-level nuclear power station wastes in South Australia. It proposes to do this by first building an interim above-ground store, to be followed by permanent underground repository. But the commission’s recommendation is based on several debatable assumptions, including: an economic analysis that purports to show huge profits with negligible commercial risk; the notion that social consent could be gained by “careful, considered and detailed technical work”; the argument that Australia, as a net exporter of energy, has an ethical responsibility to help other countries lower their carbon emissions by means of nuclear power. I have analysed critically these and other assumptions of the royal commission in a scholarly paper published in the international journal Energy Research and Social Science.
The Conversation 28th June 2016 read more »