Why Not Put The Nukes At Roxby

Locating Australia's nuclear industry at Roxby Downs makes a of lot of sense. Why?

1. Olympic Dam has 40% of world uranium supplies.
2. A nuclear enrichment industry would make money while maintaining control.
3. The Australian Nuclear Science & Technology Organisation says Australia needs around 6,000 MWs of nuclear power capacity to ensure viability
4. Woomera has been named as a good location for both a nuclear power station and a national nuclear waste repository
5. Locating the industry at Roxby Downs would lower insurance costs because environmental damage to major population centres would be eliminated in case of major mishap

And Engage In Enrichment

BHP owns the Olympic Dam mine. Olympic Dam's previous owner, WMC Resources, held extensive talks with French nuclear fuel giant Areva on developing uranium enrichment facilities at Olympic Dam to engage in value adding. WMC's chief executive, Andrew Michelmore, said at the time that Australia has a unique opportunity to develop a downstream uranium industry. Michelmore even suggested Australia might take back radioactive spent rods and bury them. There are huge chunks of the value chain to be exploited here safely and profitably.

If Australia were to mine, enrich, burn and bury nuclear energy in the South Australian Outback, it could close the nuclear cycle in a safe, stable, smart, responsible environment. What's not to like about multiplying the value of underlying uranium through enrichment and then adding profits through electricity generation, reprocessing and low-cost waste storage? If Australia aspires to be a Smart Country as outlined in publications like Backing Australia's Ability, this makes sense.

By engaging in value-added processing of uranium, Australia can garner huge amount of additional wealth in the uranium/nuclear industry, moving itself toward John Howard's goal of being an "energy superpower"

Source: Uranium Mining, Processing and Nuclear Energy – Opportunities for Australia? Office of Prime Minister and Cabinet, 2006

Already the pieces are falling into place. BHP is planning a huge desalination plant for the Upper Spencer Gulf to service Olympic Dam's expansion. The miner could then just produce more water to service the needs of nuclear plants that could power desalination, eliminating civil society's greenhouse gas concerns about desalination. And given that new generations of nuclear plants require less water for cooling, this is making them increasingly suitable for isolated inland locations like Roxby Downs/Woomera. Seawater could be used for cooling, or even harvested salt from desalinated brine.

Water requirements for enrichment are falling

In Queensland, the Millmerran and Kogan Creek coal-fired power stations used low-water consumption cooling systems. Furthermore, the US Department of Energy is funding research into salt cooling of nuclear power plants. This would provide BHP an opportunity to reprocess brine from a large-scale nuclear-powered desalination plant at Whyalla for use in cooling nuclear plants at Roxby Downs, further closing the nuclear/water loop. With Australia's electricity needs forecast to rise significantly in coming years, and the nation increasingly short of water -- having an energy industry that either creates its own water through desalination or uses less to start with is a very attractive proposition.

With a large nuclear enrichment and power generation complex located alongside BHP's mining operations at Olympic Dam, huge economies of scale could be reaped in building larger water pipes from Whyalla to carry all the water needed for both mining and energy production. Leftover water could be injected into the Great Artesian Basin, where ambient water temperatures are already elevated due to geothermal processes. Such an infrastructure investment makes even more sense given that another mining company, Oxiana, will be developing a huge mine just to the northwest of Olympic Dam. It will need water and power as well.

As ‘ground zero,’ few places beat Roxby Downs. It's anything but a beauty spot. It’s in the middle of nowhere. There’s one sealed road to it. It lies outside traditional commercial flight paths. It’s adjacent to the Woomera Prohibited Area. To attack a nuclear power installation at Roxby Downs, terrorists would have to trek through the Outback and then penetrate the Woomera Prohibited Area. Given recent headlines that potential terrorists were planning to use stolen Australian military rockets to attack nuclear installations in Australia's cities -- like Lucas Heights -- this is not a insignificant advantage.

Should nuclear power prove itself safe at Roxby Downs, a subsequent generation of nuclear plants could be built near Australia's cities around 2070. But as long as the new generation of nuclear power plants is untried and untested, and the nuclear industry has atrophied skills, it would be imprudent to put any nuclear plants anywhere near where they can hurt people until they regain their spurs.

Given that BHP is mining uranium at Olympic Dam, it should have little hesitation playing host to downstream industries. There's abundant worldwide precedent. In France and Japan, enrichment facilities have commonly been adjacent to nuclear power plants.

List of possible nuclear plant sites from 1997 leaked Cabinet report. Putting Australia's nuclear power industry in the Outback would eliminate the need to put them near coasts and cities	A newer list of possible nuclear sites from the Australia Institute in which most would be located near cities
Source: Sydney Morning Herald	Source: Australia Institute

Closing the nuclear cycle eliminates the need to ship nuclear materials over an increasing crowded global transport system vulnerable to pirates and terrorists. Locating the entire nuclear industry at Roxby Downs would eliminate this as an industry problem.

Nuclear materials road train, France	Road transport, spent fuel, Japan	Nuclear materials on the high seas
	So Why Not Keep It All At Roxby Downs And Save The Trouble?
Spent nuclear fuel on a UK train		Spent nuclear fuel transport cask
Photos: World Nuclear Transport Institute

By containing the nuclear industry all in one place, it would eliminate the need for transporting potentially dangerous nuclear materials around the world. Everything could take place within a confined, controlled area. Operating a nuclear dump in Outback Australia could earn the country billions of dollars, particularly since the isolated, easy-to-secure Port Bonython could be used to bring in spent nuclear materials from elsewhere in the world for transit across empty Outback roads up to Roxby Downs for burial.

There's a lot of space	where nuclear waste can be kept	under watchful eyes	in safe surroundings
There's a lot of space in Outback South Australia waste could be kept under watchful eyes in safe surroundings AWAY from Australia's cities

Happily, there's no shortage of entrepreneurs keen to get involved in the nuclear waste dump business, including former Western Mining head Hugh Morgan , who used to run Olympic Dam and therefore knows all about the geology out there. It's not too much of a stretch to think he may know of good places around Roxby Downs, which already has been canvassed in the past as a potential nuclear dump site.

Locating Australia's nuclear industry at Olympic Dam protects and serves the interests of society at large. It also dovetails nicely with current government policies. For instance, when the Howard government sought to quarantine Australia from the previous most dangerous threat to Australia -- boat people from Asia -- he took no chances. He quarantined them at Woomera. This begs the question: which is more dangerous, refugees or nuclear power?

Should the worst happen -- something like a nuclear accident or successful nuclear attack -- Australia can walk away from Olympic Dam. When Chernobyl melted down, radioactivity was carried by the winds more than 1,000 kilometers to Norway and the Balkans, but these were temporary impacts lasting only a short time. Therefore, even a catastrophe of Chernobyl proportions would mean that radioactivity would have to travel a very long way in Australia before reaching largely populated areas. Looking at it from the scale of Europe, the cities of Sydney, Cairns and Melbourne would be about as far away from the disaster zone as Greece, northern Sweden and Budapest -- all of which are still habitable.

Naturally, however, the localised effects would be much more severe. Below is an scaled overlay of the Chernobyl disaster zone placed over Roxby Downs.

Fallout from a Chernobyle-scale nuclear accident would spare Coober Pedy and Leigh Creek. The immediate disaster zone around the plant (dark red) would occur mostly over the Woomera Prohibited Area and Roxby Downs.

As the graphic shows, most of the immediate and medium-range fallout from such an accident would impact only largely uninhabited areas of the Outback, with immediate impacts most severe only in and around Roxby Downs, which is as it should be in order to concentrate minds in the industry on safety.

In Australia's case, the Outback can provide a safety cushion. It should also lower insurance costs. In the United States, the private sector has refused to insure nuclear power plants. This has led to the public sector being forced to shoulder the risks under such schemes as the Price-Anderson Nuclear Industries Indemnity Act. If no private insurers can be found fiscal prudence requires such a high-risk industry be placed where it poses the smallest risk to government solvency.

According to ANSTO, Australia needs at least around 6,000 megawatts of nuclear for a viable nuclear industry. The Switkowski report hinted at something more than 25,000 megawatts by 2050. Add to this the huge amount of solar and geothermal energy in the region, and Australia could be producing surplus power for its own needs in short order and with low greenhouse gas emissions.

ABC TV reported that a company called Nuclear Fuel Australia was believed to be studying the feasibility of a $2.5 billion plant that could be operational by 2015, with possible sites including Caboolture near Brisbane and Redcliffe, near Port Pirie in South Australia.

Answer: nuclear plant. Source: Uranium Mining, Processing and Nuclear Energy -- Opportunities for Australia?Office of Prime Minister and Cabinet, 2006