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Dump World's Nuclear Waste In Australia, Says Ex-PM Hawke
mdsolar writes: "[Former Australian Prime Minister Bob Hawke said] Australia bore a responsibility to assist with the safe disposal of radioactive waste, given the ample space the country possesses. 'If Australia has – as we do – the safest remote locations for storing the world's nuclear waste, we have a responsibility to make those sites available for this purpose,' he said. Hawke based this conclusion on a 25-year-old report made by Ralph Slayter, whom the former prime minister appointed as Australia's first chief scientist back in 1989. According to Slayter's report, some of the remote reaches of the Northern Territory and Western Australia could provide apt dumping grounds for radioactive waste."
Radioactive waste + the majority of the world's most dangerous species = ... ? Godzilla? Hundred metre diameter spiders? Snakes the size of the great wall of China?
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Australia already has ten-foot-long giant spiders, venomous snakes, and giant mosquitoes. It's what the writers for Warhammer 40k based Catachan (a death world) off of. I don't even want to think about what exposing these things to radiation might do.
Australia sees that the 'waste' is actually >95% fertile material, i.e. fissionable FUEL.
"Yes, yes, we will take all of your...waste...all your energy are belong to us!"
I don't think I want to leave the world's nuclear problem On The Beach...
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
I agree with him. Those areas he mentioned are north of bumfuck egypt and have absolutely no value whatsoever.
Even if you were to build a bigass tower for collected solar power the distances are so great the transmission losses, even with stepping down the amps/increasing volts wouldnt be worth doing.
With the global warming melting Antarctica I will expect the interior of Austraila to become a breadbasket...
Like it was several hundred thousand years ago.
And spawn a bunch of giant mutant kangaroos? DON'T THINK SO!
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
... and pray for good weather.
Worse, another Mad Max movie!
While having a remote storage location is iseal for minimizing fallout risks, having an area that is sparsely seen y people can have security risks. It may be prone to terrorist type invasions, looking for dirty bomb material. I'm still not sure why a Nevada military type storage facility at Yucca mountain was blocked. - Guess NIMBY applies, even if your nearest neighbor is 200 miles away.
..........FULL STOP.
We should put all nuclear waste on flight mh370. That way it will vanish and cease to be a problem...
The problem is getting it safely to central Australia in the first place. Lots of disasters can happen en route. The same resistance is found in the USA. People near railroads and interstates that will transport waste to American deserts are nervous.
"Love heals scars love left." -- Henry Rollins
I thought that was the explanation for all the crazy animals, half of which can kill you.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
There is some evidence of geological stability there: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N...
We're already 15 years late for establishing the dump on the Moon. And then: kaboom! Off it goes out of orbit, taking the waste with it.
I wonder what they think about this, I'm guessing they were not even asked.
He's doing it for the lulz, to tweak the particularly strident greentards that infect Australia.
That said, if Australia went full-bore into PRISM and LFTR development (by, perhaps, providing some funding but mostly just expediting red tape and silencing greenies/NIMBYs) they could very well build a 11- or 12-figure industry around it instead of leaving it to China or India.
It is an appropriate move in the same direction Australia took when they elected officials that put American conservatives to shame to become the Mordor of the world.
They like sacrifice there: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B...
Like OZ1999? I can't wait for the movie.
There has been too much violence. Too much pain. But I have an honorable compromise. Just walk away. Give me your nukes, the isotopes, the radioactive wastes, and the whole compound, and I'll spare your lives. Just walk away and we'll give you a safe passageway in the wastelands. Just walk away and there will be an end to the horror.
I await your answer. You have a full day to decide.
If you were me, you'd be good lookin'. - six string samurai
This is a smart move on Australia's part - they can let the world dump all the nuclear waste in their vast desert, and then when it's financially viable they can start reprocessing it for their own fuel (or to sell back to the people who dumped it). They also have a ton of coastline or open land where a special port or airport could be built to bring deliveries directly to the remote area, rather than passing it through normal channels - so NIMBY complaints shouldn't be a big issue.
It costs something to feed prisoners. Maybe transporting them to Australia and leaving them there would save some money. Oh, wait...
Why is this idea better than simply dumping everything in the ocean floor where's there's no water flow and where the clay will absord the radiation?
Elok
The Marianas is a subduction zone; other than the obvious Godzilla jokes, why not encase radioactive waste in ceramic disks and send it back into the interior of the planet to be recycled over the next few hundred million years?
Obama showed a great wisdom in closing Yucca mountain. Because we have nowhere safe to store the waste, there is no pressure to build those horrific things. Sometimes you have to sacrifice some to win in the long run. If AU becomes a safe place to dump waste, then that will encourage Republicans to enslave us with even more dirty power.
Use space and send it to the sun. The entire earth could be radioactive and enter the sun with little to no effect. Sending off a rocket loaded with nuclear waste to the sun every year or so would certainly be safer.
And before you start saying "well, the rocket could explode" - you use a safe rocket design - payload on top and design to minimize. You could even launch from aircraft or do other means to get it into space where it is then attached to the doomed delivery vehicle.
Reason we don't? No one thought of it when everyone was signing the agreements not to do weapons stuff in space.
Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain't goin' away. - Elvis Presley (source: imdb.com)
What? http://www.imdb.com/title/tt00...
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
All radioactive waste is stored in Australia, commanded by John Koenig. But after a huge explosion, Australia is hurled into space on it's own, and the inhabitants of the country are forced to survive by their wits and with their Eagle spacecraft.
Starring Martin Landau and Barbara Bain.
Produced by Gerry Anderson.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
... Australia is one of the many white countries that is being used as dumping ground for all the THIRD WORLDERS who can't make their own countries work...
Apparently, white people make 'superior' countries, and these 'white supremacist' THIRD WORLDERS think they will 'have better lives' if they live among white people... How 'racist' of them... Oh, wait...
Australia is already home to some of the strangest and most dangerous animals. Cane toads, poisonous snakes and spiders, drop bears, to name a few. We don't need any radioactivity speeding up the mutation process.
Have gnu, will travel.
I don't think it means what you appear to be implying it means. But then, you're a politician, so you can't be too clear on the meaning of mere words, now can you?
The word? "Responsibility."
What he's really saying is: "please send me all the fuel material that you can. Once reactor tech improves to the point that this material is again viable fuel I'll be sitting on a gold mine."
Do you want Mad Max? Because THAT'S how you get Mad Max.
The rest of the world seems to be going to hell, overpopulation and pollution. If it's Australia's responsibility is to 'help the world' because they can, well that same argument could one day be used to let in a few hundred million people who will eventually be displaced from overcrowding/environmental(sealevel) disasters.
I'd give a kidney to be able to immigrate to Australia, I would advice not spoiling it, close(tourists only) and secure your borders and try riding out the mess overpopulation will create in the rest of the world.
---
Australians themselves 'believe' their nation cannot support a population such as the united states; this might be their saving grace(fighting to slow immigration); but with proper water management(storage; based on their seemingly 7 year drought/flood cycle) it could easily support as many people as Texas/Florida per square mile.
At least this my opinion from traveling some 16000km of it in a van.
Good gods, Australia would be overrun with deadly monsters. ...
oh wait
As long as it's "far away", it's safe. Right? And you got put in charge of seeing to my safety how, exactly?
I thought that was the explanation for all the crazy animals, half of which can kill you.
Now now, be nice to the Australians...
The problem is the waste would have to be transported to Australia. Like boats have never sunk and planes have never crashed before into the ocean.
Any chance we can get them to take some of our toxic politicians instead? Stick them some place really isolated in the outback where they just annoy each other. It would be a far greater service to the world than taking nuclear waste.
Cheers,
Dave
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither safety nor liberty.
Ben
Yes, in your back yard is good, if it is far away.
When we can start shipping? Denver, CO, USA
As an American I can honestly say that the countries that use that type of energy, have their own responsibility to contain and store the wast from it, in their own country.
Nuclear power makes an interesting science experiment, but it was foolish to use that as a power source for the long term. It is NOT clean energy, as it produces a waste that cannot be cleaned and last for thousands of years, and must be stored safely for that amount of time, and all the claims to that ability, are hot air.
In the long term, we would all be better off using fosel fuels, and poluting the environment in the process, because nature and modern science do have the ability to clean it, and society would be highly motivated to do so, just as China and India are starting to.
Here's how one should deal with it according to the "science" known as "economics":
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Summers_memo
.
Those nervous people clearly don't know just how well engineered and resilient nuclear waste transport flasks are.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1mHtOW-OBO4
"The Great Victoria Desert boasts a large diversity in animals, housing over 100 different reptilian species, one being the rare great desert skink. Due to the diversity of regions in the Australian Outback, the Great Victoria Desert animals have evolved in isolation, allowing more variation in the reptilian species. Up to nine different gecko species can be found in overlapping regions, indicative of the diversity in the region."
It already makes a great place for reptlies without bothering anyone.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pangea_Resources
The idea is good in theory. Deep geologic repositories (DGRs) are the currently accepted best practice for the disposal of spent nuclear fuel in most places, and several countries are moving ahead with underground facilities (Finland, Sweden, Germany, South Korea, and Japan all have active repository programs). Australia is tectonically stable, relatively isolated, and has a shit-ton of room for the stuff. Technologies have been developed that make transporting spent fuel pretty damn safe; accidents in transport aren't likely the biggest hurdle any more.
The problem was all politics. How do you put a price on the risks associated with such a repository. Morally, is it right to accept the responsibility for someone else's problem, at any price? Why should Australia subject itself to a risk, however small, that it doesn't have to. The project was picked up by nuclear nonproliferation groups, environmental activists, NIMBYs, and the media. The resulting bad press sunk the project when the biggest partner, BNFL, pulled out.
It's a difficult enough task getting the citizens of a nuclear power-using country to agree that they have to deal with their waste; convincing the average citizen that they should take on the risk of someone else's radioactive waste? That dog ain't gonna EVER hunt...
Full disclosure: I am actively involved in deep geological repository design and engineering for several clients around the world. Hence the posting A/C.
That is all.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
As our limited experiences with radiation has shown, you don't get:
* monsters
* superpowers
* aliens
You just get dead, mostly. Then after that, not much.
Australia is planning to build an atom bomb...
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Other people created this problem, they should fix it. Oz should not have to suck up the worlds nuclear waste just because it's an easy way for the rest of the world to get rid of an issue that they knew about before building power stations.
There was an unknown error in the submission.
Remote doesn't equal secure?? Well remoteness certainly adds security. Many high security installations are in remote locations and not by accident. Why do you think that Groom Lake/Area 51 is where it is? It's not for the lovely views, that's for sure.
So, they probably don't see snakes often except on TV watching Crocodile Dundee: :-)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D...
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
Actually it isn't. Look up what free neutrons do when they hit stuff. Most of the volume of nuclear waste is assorted containers, machinery etc that has been in close proximity to the really active stuff and is merely slightly dangerous garbage. That's why you need a lot of space to store it, and conventional garbage dump procedures require too much human proximity to be able to store such slightly active stuff. That stuff effectively requires a high-tech robotic garbage dump with the sort of barriers to groundwater contamination we already see around large crude oil storage tanks - not a huge deal for most of the volume.
For better or worse only a small proportion is very active, and some (not all) can be reprocessed by one of two methods in use (which actually generates a larger volume of low level waste - it's a fuel recycling thing and not waste reduction), maybe melted in some sort of future liquid metal reactor to save the vast effort of reprocessing, or stored sensibly with something like Synroc (or slightly less sensibly with vitrification which has leaching problems when exposed to water).
To give Bob Hawke credit, he actually did put some money towards research into nuclear waste management and Synroc was developed almost to completion on his watch. In the decades since then it's managed to scrape together just enough to be completed, which showed in hindsight that we could have had it by 2000 with far less than a million in cash put towards it. It's now in use in a few places around the world and is chemically stable. It should be the nuclear fanboy's dream and has the benefit of being real, but since they like to pretend nuclear waste doesn't exist they have never heard of it.
You should have posted such a thing under the topic about the decline of education standards in the USA.
... although it undoubtedly would be a good move. Good for Australia, although a better move would not involve transporting the stuff halfway across the planet.
This is one ex-politician speaking - and speaking more sense than he ever did while in office.
It's a myth that we don't know what to do about nuclear waste - we know exactly what to do with it - cast it in ceramics, drill a deep hole into old, stable rock, place it in the hole, and seal it. Oh, after reprocessing and using fast breeder reactors to reuse most of it. All we have to do is just do it - but it is too easy to raise pseudo-environmental and NIMBY anger to prevent it actually happening.
Prediction for end of Universe #42: Fencepost error in Quantum_bogosort.cpp
In order to take something from earth orbit and get it to the sun, you have to take it from earth's speed of 30 km/sec and slow it down to zero. Only when will it fall into the sun. If you leave any of that orbital speed on that object, then it will miss the sun, swing around it like a comet, and head back to where it came from. You could perhaps use a fly-by of Venus and/or Mercury to help you with that, but it's still a near-impossible thing to do. This is what is meant here by de-orbit.
Prediction for end of Universe #42: Fencepost error in Quantum_bogosort.cpp
Mind you, it was able to drop most of it by running into the top of the earth's atmosphere. The space shuttle orbits within the outer reaches of earth's atmosphere - the sun's atmosphere is a very long way away.
Prediction for end of Universe #42: Fencepost error in Quantum_bogosort.cpp
That just means that it is in an elliptical orbit, out near its apogee. That orbit will pull it closer, speeding it up, until it reaches its perigee, which will throw it back out to its apogee. Around and around we go, unless the perigee is within the atmosphere.
Prediction for end of Universe #42: Fencepost error in Quantum_bogosort.cpp
send it back to nature
Not Australia, you want 3 headed kangaroos?
How about Russia, soon no one will live there...
If you pay me tons of money, I'd be willing to be given your valuable resources. Nuclear waste has all kinds of useful isotopes, including concentrated fissile material. Many medically important isotopes are produced from nuclear waste. Once we can economically process the waste, it will be a goldmine.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
While it could take at least another 25 years just to give it a go, it's the only option on the table now for high level nuclear waste (long term storage). Something that is really needed. That's a long time, and views tend to change given enough time.
There's a reason the waste isn't being sent to the Sun, rocket(s) can malfunction (not counting the cost). Personally I hope this works out and Australia commits to a nuclear dump.
The main reason Australia is a good place to put nuclear waste is that its in the middle of a huge, stable tectonic plate. We very rarely have earthquakes of noticeable magnitude and no volcanoes. Its dry and so flooding isn't really a problem either. We don't get hurricanes or tornadoes inland, and almost no-one lives in the centre of the country. You could concrete an area and just stack the stuff up behind a fence and it would be pretty safe. Obviously some better quality facilities would need to be used, but its really the perfect spot for storage.
I would love to see our already hugely unpopular government propose this. Seems like a real vote-winner.
Bob Hawke needs to learn to shut his Yellow Cake hole.
It costs $10 million a year for the Maine Yankee plant to store its waste.
10,000,000 x 159,000 (U233 half life) = $1,590 billion dollars
10,000,000 x 4.468 billion years (U238 half life) = $44,680 trillion dollars
Not including inflation and not including the cost of reprocessing every 20 years.
Not including the cost of guarding hundreds and hundreds of tons of Uranium and Plutonium from terrorists
So STFU Bob, the rest of Australia would like to have a future for our children that doesn't involve the cost of other countries stupid decisions to use our Uranium.
Let's be serious. You probably won't get Godzilla, but you might get other strange animals, such as a mammal that lays eggs, has a beaver tail, and a duck bill. . . uhh. . . strike that. . . already exists.
McFly777
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"What do people mean when they say the computer went down on them?" -Marilyn Pittman