New push for high-level international nuclear waste dump in South Australia
EXCLUSIVE: Prominent South Australians have launched a fresh push to progress a proposed $257 billion international nuclear waste repository in the state.
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FORMER Port Adelaide Football Club chief Brian Cunningham and Economic Development Board chairman Raymond Spencer are among prominent South Australians launching a fresh push to progress a proposed $257 billion international nuclear waste repository.
In a new open letter to state MPs, 42 influential people demand the State Government commits to completing first-stage investigations of the proposed high-level repository.
The group, which also includes Adelaide Football Club chairman Rob Chapman and renowned brewer Tim Cooper, urges modest expenditure to investigate the proposal’s viability.
This would include assessing whether other countries were willing to participate and contribute financially, analysing potential competitors and developing a clear exit strategy.
The Nuclear Fuel Cycle Royal Commission’s report, released in May last year, estimated a repository could generate $257 billion in long-term revenue.
“There is unlikely to be any other proposition that can create the industrial and social transformation of the state and generate as much wealth for the state’s citizens as that identified in the royal commission report,” the open letter says.
“The economic evidence presented to date is overwhelmingly in favour of further investigations.
“ ... The modest expenditure to accomplish these outcomes (finish first-stage study), a fraction of the sum invested to date, would yield essential information on which to base a larger decision.”
Many of the signatories were behind a similar open letter in December last year, which demanded political leaders not block study of the proposed repository, which would involve a purpose-built waste storage and disposal facility for international used nuclear fuel.
Mr Cunningham, also a former Port Adelaide captain and state Trade and Economic Development Department chief, and Mr Spencer both were not involved in the previous letter.
In a rebuff to Opposition Leader Steven Marshall, several of the influential group are Liberal backers frustrated by his abandonment last November of bipartisan support for the nuclear royal commission proposal.
Opposition Treasury spokesman Rob Lucas has questioned the repository’s $257 billion revenue forecast and warned taxpayers might have to spend more than $600 million and still decide not to proceed with the dump.