Nuclear waste a political problem, not environmental [05may06]

THE worldwide nuclear renaissance is gathering steam. Whereas 10 years ago the environmental lobby was noisy in opposition, today some of the world's highest-profile environmentalists speak very clearly for nuclear power, because they think it represents much less of a problem or threat than global warming.

Doubling the world's nuclear contribution would eliminate at least a quarter of the CO2 emissions from power generation. The fond hopes of the green movement cannot match this.

Nuclear wastes may be a bogey in the public mind, due to irresponsible fearmongering, but in fact they are arguably a distinct positive due to their relatively low quantity and ease of containment, storage and disposal. Other than at the political level, there are no significant problems with safe handling and storage of civil nuclear wastes anywhere in the world.

The resource base for long-term use of nuclear power is excellent. With the new wave of exploration for uranium now getting under way after a long slowdown due to ex-military uranium coming on the market, I would expect known resources to double within a few years.

As custodian of resources needed by the world, Australia has a responsibility to supply them with due care for how they are (or might be) used. In the case of uranium, exports are under both international safeguards arrangements which account for them and their derivatives, and also more stringent bilateral arrangements.

Australia has the option of continuing its present form of uranium exports – the mines selling uranium to the power generating utilities, who then arrange for intermediate processing (notably enrichment). After using the fuel, the waste remains there.

But there is also the possibility of fuel leasing, whereby supplier countries such as Australia lease nuclear fuel to users internationally and then take the spent fuel back. This is rare today but is proposed as an anti-proliferation measure, most recently by the U.S. and Russia. In this case, provisions would need to be made for it upon return – initially storage.

Then there are several options. One is direct geological disposal after 50 years or so (when over 99 per cent of the original radioactivity has disappeared). Another (as currently proposed by the U.S.) is processing it to recover unused uranium, then all the actinides (including plutonium), and leaving fission products which become waste. The actinide assortment then gets burned to yield energy in special reactors (which could be here or overseas).

Of course the legal and the moral position is that each country is responsible for its own wastes (nuclear and other). Here the wastes are made in the power reactors due to the nuclear fission – they are not simply left over from what we export. However, there is no in-principle problem with being responsible for something but arranging on a mutually agreeable basis for others to handle it – we all do that all the time.

In Europe and North America, energy security is a big issue. In contrast to fossil fuels, several years' supplies of uranium or fabricated fuel can be stored safely, unobtrusively and relatively inexpensively if needed. Energy security was a major factor in Finland's decision to build a fifth nuclear reactor, and it comes even more to the fore in 2006 due to gas supply constraints and threats in Europe.

Meanwhile, Australia provides a quarter of the mined uranium for a world increasingly concerned with the clean and reliable production of large amounts of electricity. South Australia plays a notable role in this and there is opportunity for more.


Ian Hore-Lacy is general manager of the Melbourne-based Uranium Information Centre, and director of public communications for the World Nuclear Association in London.