You never hear about the 100 nuclear storages already in Australia | Caleb Bond

There is no better place for nuclear waste than South Australia. But why stop there, writes Caleb Bond.

It turns out nuclear power isn’t so bad after all.

Well – some forms of nuclear power, apparently.

We’re happy to create a nuclear industry in South Australia and fire up submarines with uranium. But we dare not use the powerful, emission free resource – for which Australia is home to a third of the world’s deposits – to keep the lights on at home.

Nuclear power, of course, means nuclear waste. And there is no better place to store it than in SA.

If we’re going to create a nuclear industry, we should go the whole hog. From production, to maintenance to disposal. And yes – we should advocate for lifting the ban on nuclear energy, too.

Preliminary works have already begun on a nuclear waste dump near Kimba, on the Eyre Peninsula.

Despite the objections of NIMBY nongs who bought into baseless, conspiracy theory-level hysteria, and the ecowarriors who peddle said hysteria, the Albanese government is pressing ahead with the project – approved under the Morrison government.

Acting Prime Minister Richard Marles after signing a cooperation agreement to build the AUKUS submarines at the Osborne Naval Shipyard. Picture: Brenton Edwards

Kimba will accommodate the temporary storage of intermediate waste, but not the kind of high-level waste that will be produced by submarines.

Defence Minister Richard Marles has already indicated that decommissioned nuclear reactors from these submarines will be stored on defence land.

SA is home to the largest land-based testing range in the western world – the about 122,000sq km Woomera Prohibited Area.

That includes Maralinga, which has its own history of nuclear involvement, albeit for far more concerning and dangerous purposes.

The first British nuclear bomb test at Maralinga in 1956. Picture: Supplied.

Maralinga nuclear bomb test site. Picture: Max Mackinnon

Premier Peter Malinauskas on Wednesday said a dump site should be chosen in the best interests of national security and not along state lines.

While he is correct the safest place must be chosen, he should be heavily investigating, and then advocating to the federal government, why Woomera fits the bill.

The building of the submarines themselves is meant to deliver a big jobs boon to SA – somewhere in the order of 8000 – and the state would be silly to not try to generate more local jobs in the nuclear industry.

People would be needed to build a dump at Woomera and then others would need to be employed to manage it.

The Lucas Heights nuclear reactor cage in Sydney.

A federal agency designed to manage the Kimba dump is headquartered in Adelaide and is expected to have 80 employees when fully operational.

The fact is that we will create this waste and it is incumbent upon us to dispose of it. It is not dangerous.

Nuclear waste is stored at more than 100 sites across the country, including under hospitals. Yet you never hear a peep about danger.

The Sydney suburb of Lucas Heights has been home to a nuclear reactor since 1958 and people aren’t walking around with two heads.

Our country is one of the most geologically stable places in the world.

There is a worldwide glut of nuclear waste and only a handful of locations that are built to take the high-level stuff.

We would be stupid not to do everything possible to have a piece of that pie

Originally published as You never hear about the 100 nuclear storages already in Australia | Caleb Bond