Hawke tells world: Dump your nuclear waste in the Aussie outback (for cash)

Rambuchan

The Funky President
Joined
Feb 10, 2005
Messages
13,560
Location
London, England
See what you make of this >>
Herald Sun said:
HAWKE'S CASH FOR-FOR-WASTE IDEA
Gerard McManus
28sep05


AUSTRALIA could earn hundreds of millions of dollars a year if it followed Bob Hawke's suggestion that it become the world's nuclear waste dump, according to experts.

But political and environment groups moved quickly to block any prospect of an Australian nuclear waste repository.......

Read on: http://www.heraldsun.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5478,16744916%5E662,00.html
It seems not everyone down under is in support. But there is BIG support elsewhere.
BBC News said:
AUSTRALIA REBUFFS NUCLEAR DUMP IDEA
World: Asia-Pacific
Tuesday, December 8, 1998 Published at 18:03 GMT


Australia should consider a plan to become the world's nuclear dumping ground, a top adviser to US President Bill Clinton has said.

Special envoy Robert Gallucci says Australia's geography and political stability make it one of the few places on the globe suited for such a sensitive gatekeeping job.

But a spokeswoman for Australia's Industry and Resources Minister said Australia had no plans to become an international nuclear waste dump.

"Government policy is not to accept waste from other countries and there is no intention to change that," the spokeswoman said, speaking on the condition of anonymity.

"Enormous benefits for the world"

In an interview with The Australian newspaper, Mr Galluci, an adviser on weapons of mass destruction, said the country was ideally placed to help the world solve the problem of where to store nuclear waste from bombs dismantled at the end of the Cold War.

"If Australia could appreciate the concept and decide it was in the national interest there would be enormous benefits for the world," Mr Gallucci told.

His comments are being tied to an American company called Pangea, which has been quietly promoting the idea of a nuclear waste dump in Australia for the past two years. Pangea's plans became public last week when a promotional film about Australia's qualities as a dump was leaked to environmental groups.

White House briefed


The video describes how billions of dollars could be spent building ports, railways and roads for the nuclear burial ground. Pangea says only Australia and Argentina have the stable geography and democratic politics to accommodate such a site. Mr Gallucci said the White House had been briefed on the proposal.

"I don't think the US government is officially aware, but there have been informal discussions about an approach to the Australian Government at various levels," he added.

Mr Gallucci said the plan would be a ''tremendous contribution to international security".

"I can't help but think that the economics would be very favorable for a commercial arrangement that involved addressing the needs of so many countries who do not have the geology for the long term storage of spent nuclear fuel or radioactive waste," he added.

'It's not our problem'

The opposition Labour Party leader, Kim Beazley, said it was up to countries which develop nuclear power to deal with the waste themselves.

The scheme also drew immediate protests from environmentalists.

Larry O'Loughin of the Australian Conservation Foundation said: "The government of Australia has only been around for 99 years.

"It is a very optimistic outlook to say Australia's going to have a stable political outlook for 200,000 years. That's just farcical."

Read on: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/230221.stm
As an interesting side note:
BBC News said:
ANGER AT AUSTRALIAN NUCLEAR CARGO
Tuesday, 28 October, 2003, 12:03 GMT

Australia has dispatched its first shipment of used nuclear fuel to Europe in two years despite furious protests.

Five lorries crossed suburban Sydney in the dead of night to deliver 344 spent nuclear fuel rods to a French container ship, the Fret Moselle.

Once loaded, the ship then quickly left port before dawn, bound for France where the rods will be reprocessed.

Activists from the environmental group Greenpeace circled the ship in dinghies to condemn the shipment, saying it was fraught with danger.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/3219631.stm
 
Green enviromentalist pointed out

If Australia sells the World Urianum it has a obligation to store the waste
 
Dumping is not a healthy philosophy. What are humans going to do with their waste in the long term?
 
Sound like a smart idea to make money. Heck, there is already something built in Nevada, so send it all to the US if the Aussies don't want it.
 
FriendlyFire said:
Green enviromentalist pointed out

If Australia sells the World Urianum it has a obligation to store the waste

True, and never forget the Golden Rule, as pointed out by nonconformist, "He who has the gold, makes the rules." The ones with the money make the rule that the Aussies will glow in the dark.

But I have an idea that is cruel in its intentions. If Iran wants nuclear technology sooooo much, why don't we just dump all our old fuel rods in the centers of all of their cities. All they have to do is put those on a rocket and launch it and they have a dirty bomb.
 
stormbind said:
Dumping is not a healthy philosophy. What are humans going to do with their waste in the long term?
Don't worry, we got thousands of years to figure it out.
 
Doesn't Russia already handle nuclear waste for cash?

Anyway, storing nuclear waste underground in thinly populated cratonic areas* isn't particularly risky or environment unfriendly - the intense opposition from environmental groups is not particularly rational. They should complain about Chinese coal mine and plants instead, or hydroelectric dams annihilation whole ecosystems.


* Not coincidentally, Australia has alot of thinly populated cratonic areas. Such areas are also in plentiful supply in Canada, Sweden, Finland, and Russia, and no doubt also other places I can't be bothered to think of right now.
 
Canada, eh? Interesting....

Anyway, I'd be tempted to say launch it into space, but the risk of the rocket disintegrating, exploding, or otherwise failing before reaching space is unpleasant.
 
@ SN: There's a friend of mine who argues vehemently that there are already all kinds of nuclear devices in space. He gets laughed down everytime. Recently he sent me these links in defence. I must say I haven't bothered reading them too much.

>>>

"This is not conclusive but does err towards the fact weapons are most
certainly going to be there if not already."

http://www.tompaine.com/articles/20050615/the_folly_of_space_weapons.php

Although no firm proof there is this web site

http://www.thealliancefordemocracy.org/html/eng/1885-AA.shtml
 
Rambuchan said:
@ SN: There's a friend of mine who argues vehemently that there are already all kinds of nuclear devices in space. He gets laughed down everytime. Recently he sent me these links in defence. I must say I haven't bothered reading them too much.

There's a lot of talk that both the United States and the Soviet Union, or one of the two, violated the space treaty and placed nuclear warheads in orbit around the Earth. This is the premise of the film Space Cowboy, and is, I think, taken as slight, though unlikely, possibility by many.

The reasoning behind putting nuclear weapons into space is to achieve a sure second-strike capacity; that is, we can't really quickly take down enemy satellites, but we -can- take out enemy bombers, silos, and SSBNs in a first strike. The high quality of American SSBNs meant that we didn't really have a problem with having an assured second strike capability; the Soviets had much crappier SSBNs up until the very end of the Cold War, and concievably they could have wanted a more assured capability. So, yes, there was a small amount of impetus that might have led the Soviets to secretly put nukes in space. Its plausible, but I haven't seen any evidence.

As for Space Weapons being developed now, my understanding is that they are either space lasers or they are gravity weapons; e.g. a satellite that shoots bolts of tungston at targets on Earth, what the Pentagon terms "Rods from God". Insofar as I know they are not nuclear.
 
Presumably, having radioactive materials buried underground does somewhat reduce the real estate value.
 
@ SN: That's interesting. BTW - I had always understood that the US nuclear capabilities were lacking far behind Russia's for quite some time. Hence the massive warhead buying binges the States went on.

@ Storm: What real estate value? It's Abo land remember. :rolleyes:
 
SN said:
we can't really quickly take down enemy satellites

Rambuchan said:
@ SN: There's a friend of mine who argues vehemently that there are already all kinds of nuclear devices in space. He gets laughed down everytime. Recently he sent me these links in defence. I must say I haven't bothered reading them too much.

I was reading the British defense projects and they include warrior-like satellites that destroy enemy satellites.
 
SeleucusNicator said:
As for Space Weapons being developed now, my understanding is that they are either space lasers or they are gravity weapons; e.g. a satellite that shoots bolts of tungston at targets on Earth, what the Pentagon terms "Rods from God". Insofar as I know they are not nuclear.

Correct. They are just massive (7000kg I think) tubes of tungsten. Their impact velocity and kinetic energy is frightening. No need for explosives
 
Top Bottom