David Gillespie (Lyne, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak about the issue of nuclear waste. First of all, it is being reported by people who live in ignorance that it is a big, insoluble problem that the whole nuclear industry has never sorted out. Nothing could be further from the truth. It is not nuclear waste unless it's wasted. It's actually very valuable, energy dense, one-use-only fuel, with at least 98 per cent of this potential energy remaining in the first cycle of spent nuclear fuel that comes out of an electricity-producing pressurised or boiling water reactor.

There are well-established international protocols, which were worked out in the 1960s, and there is huge, deep monitoring of all nuclear waste—in the Western world, at least—by International Atomic Energy Agency protocols and procedures. The waste from Australia's nuclear reactor—and we've had three—is not wasted. It's taken by France and put through their recycling plant. They filter out the reusable uranium and put it in with freshly dug up enriched uranium to power reactors. They use it time and time again. The final leftover products of fission are then transported in dry casks, which are well engineered, totally impervious and built to exacting standards to survive car crashes, truck crashes, train crashes, being dropped from height, being incinerated for an hour or more in hundreds of degrees of heat or being immersed in deep water, with all being safe and secure at the end of it.

Australia also has incredible capability in managing high-level nuclear waste. We produce a lot of molybdenum, which we manage ourselves, and for all the medical isotopes we use we have developed Synroc, or synthetic rock, which is a permanent storage vehicle for intermediate and high-level waste. A factory, an industrial-scale plant, has been built by ANSTO, yet this government keeps it silent. It is world beating. I have heard professors and nuclear facility managers from around the world marvel at the capability that we've developed, yet our government says we don't know what to do with waste. One visitor said he wanted to be an agent for us because he could sell 11 of these plants around the world to other nuclear-producing facilities.

Finally, what happens to nuclear waste when it's finished its cycle through the nuclear plant? It's left to cool inside the plant in deep pools. Then, when it has cooled down and stopped fissioning, it is transported in dry cask storage vessels—cement, ceramic and glass—in a well-established protocol, for recycling or for storage in these dry casks. Eventually, it can be accessed again if people want to use the used fuel as a starter for other reactors—particularly high-temperature gas reactors. These burn the waste and generate hundreds of times more power than non-high-temperature gas reactors, which is what most pressurised water reactors and boiling water reactors are.

The other thing is that there's no radiation coming from nuclear waste unless you crack open an impervious, 150-tonne cement cask that has the spent fuel inside it. It's absolutely safe. There's never been a reported accident in transporting waste in the Western world. The other thing is that radiation is not dangerous unless you have too much of it. Radiation will probably be used to cure some member's prostate cancer, breast cancer, brain cancer or myeloma. It's only when you get too much, and nuclear plants do not emit radiation. Maybe if you hammer to get inside the pressurised water reactor, through steel that's very thick, bury in and jump in there with it, you might get some radiation. But the steam you see coming out of a nuclear reactor is not radioactive. It is just cooling water that runs in a separate circuit to the reactor, which is boiling water. Nuclear fission does not produce electricity itself. It produces heat, which, under pressure, delivers high-temperature steam, which spins a turbine, which in turn spins a generator, just like a coal-fired power station. (Time expired)

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