Daniel Wills analysis: High-level nuclear waste dump a breathtaking vision for our state

IT took 12 months, but the state finally has a vision which will genuinely have people gasping. The prospect of a high-level nuclear waste dump in South Australia is truly breathtaking.

• MONEY: Nuclear dump would tip $445b into SA economy
• POWER: Nuclear power not commercially viable in SA — for now
• GUIDE: A step-by-step look at what the nuclear industry would mean for SA

IT took 12 months, but the state finally has a vision which will genuinely have people gasping.

The prospect of a high-level nuclear waste dump in South Australia that takes radioactive spent fuel from around the world, and generates state revenues of $5 billion per year, is truly breathtaking.

Today’s highly anticipated interim report from the Nuclear Fuel Cycle Royal Commission will trigger a new round of hyperventilation from green and environmental groups who are ideologically opposed to an industry linked to atomic weapons and glowing waste. It will have others swooning at the prospect of radical reform which could deliver the biggest increase in state wealth ever witnessed.

The numbers here are utterly staggering. Former Governor Kevin Scarce predicts SA could amass a state wealth fund of $445 billion over the 70-year life of a dump. Should the state instead plough that revenue into the annual Budget, it could effectively eradicate all other state taxes.

If new infrastructure is more to your taste, the nuclear cash could instead build two new Royal Adelaide Hospitals and two extra Adelaide Ovals every single year for at least three decades.

We’re talking Scrooge McDuck levels of cash which the state would be swimming in.

But, as with all the other silver bullets SA has enthusiastically loaded in recent years, action on the ground is a long way off. The best estimate for a dump even opening is toward the end of the 2020s.

And the prospect of an enrichment industry or nuclear power generation is more distant still.

Immense obstacles still stand in the way, primarily political.

A site north of Hawker, where a nuclear waste dump has been proposed. Picture: Dylan Coker

The will be no serious opposition in State Parliament to legal changes needed for an expansion of the state’s involvement in the nuclear fuel cycle. The Liberals are in lock step with Labor.

The big issue would be a growing divide between Premier Jay Weatherill and his federal colleagues.

Senior federal Labor MPs Tanya Plibersek and Anthony Albanese face challenges from the Greens in their inner-city seats. Fremantle is another Labor-held seat which could fall to the far Left.

For this reason, it seems likely federal Labor would seek to stand in the way of an SA dump in a bid to save prospective future leaders from being swept from office, and Senate seats lost.

The Coalition is a long-time supporter of the nuclear industry and currently looking to establish a low-level dump, it will be cheering on SA’s late-stage conversion and offering full backing.

An often fiery Senate crossbench, which will feature SA independent Nick Xenophon and possible several of his new party colleagues, could then be key deciders on the state’s nuclear future.

As Mr Weatherill heads toward a state election in just over two years’ time, he needs to convince voters the State Government has a plan for change to dig it out of desperate times.

This was the entire ambition of his self-described “bold agenda” at the opening of State Parliament last year. Polls indicate he has since struggled to convince a voting public repeatedly let down by big promises which revealed themselves as mirages that he truly has the goods.

The nuclear industry will not deliver any material change in the state by March 2018. No dump will be operating, nor rivers of gold flowing through the door. However, the issue will dominate opinion pages and letters to the editor, as well as debate in the nation’s parliaments.

It will not rescue the economy in the next two years, as Holden shuts and the unemployment rate heads toward 10 per cent. However, Mr Weatherill will be hoping today’s report and the debate to follow convinces voters he has the mindset needed to survive in uncertain and difficult times.