Dump World's Nuclear Waste In Australia, Says Ex-PM Hawke 213
mdsolar writes: "[Former Australian Prime Minister Bob Hawke said] Australia bore a responsibility to assist with the safe disposal of radioactive waste, given the ample space the country possesses. 'If Australia has – as we do – the safest remote locations for storing the world's nuclear waste, we have a responsibility to make those sites available for this purpose,' he said. Hawke based this conclusion on a 25-year-old report made by Ralph Slayter, whom the former prime minister appointed as Australia's first chief scientist back in 1989. According to Slayter's report, some of the remote reaches of the Northern Territory and Western Australia could provide apt dumping grounds for radioactive waste."
Heh. (Score:5, Interesting)
remote doesn't equal secure (Score:5, Interesting)
While having a remote storage location is iseal for minimizing fallout risks, having an area that is sparsely seen y people can have security risks. It may be prone to terrorist type invasions, looking for dirty bomb material. I'm still not sure why a Nevada military type storage facility at Yucca mountain was blocked. - Guess NIMBY applies, even if your nearest neighbor is 200 miles away.
Re:Mutants! (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Commodity of the future (Score:5, Interesting)
This ain't the first kind of waste they've taken on, either. A lot of the plastic people think is getting recycled is getting landfilled in Australia. It's stable for long periods and eventually we'll figure out how to recycle it in a profitable fashion, and they can get paid to sit on it. Win-win.