Dr. Conca reports that Australia is thinking about building a deep geologic nuclear repository that would take nuclear waste from the whole world, or at least from those countries that have no viable option for their small amount of nuclear waste. The South Australian Royal Commission, after looking into the Nuclear Fuel Cycle, recommended that the government pursue building facilities to store used nuclear fuel storage and nuclear waste that can be used by other countries. This is a very big deal. And also a very good idea.
The nuclear fuel cycle includes mining the uranium ore needed to make nuclear fuel, enriching the U235-content to sustain a controlled reaction, fabricating the fuel to work in a specific reactor, operating a nuclear power plant to burn the fuel to make electricity, and whatever steps are used to recycle, reuse or dispose of the final waste. All large nuclear generator nations, such as France, the United States, Japan, S. Korea, Russia, the United Kingdom, China and India, have, or are developing, all parts of the cycle. They anticipate sufficient waste over the next century to justify the expense of a deep geologic repository. However, countries having, or planning, less than five reactors, such as Argentina, South Africa and about 40 other countries, will not have sufficient waste generation, or a favorable geologic site, to justify the economic and environmental issues of developing their own repository. If some country, like Australia, with many viable sites for a single deep geologic repository, decided to accept nuclear waste from these small-user countries, it would solve a global problem in a very cost-effective way.
It would also generate significant revenue for that country. And there is not much nuclear waste to begin with, since one ton of nuclear fuel generates the same amount of electricity as 11 million tons of coal. All of the nuclear waste in the world would fit into just one repository....
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