The Australia Institute is taking aim again at a nuclear waste plan that backers say would produce billions of dollars in revenue for South Australia, this time with a report claiming the plan makes dangerous cost-benefit assumptions.
South Australia Sen. Sean Edwards is proposing a plan in which the state would take in about 13 percent of the world’s nuclear waste, and turn it into billions of dollars of revenue. Australia’s Nuclear Fuel Cycle Royal Commission, in an interim report delivered in December by Jacobs MCM, projected AUS $5 billion in annual state revenue over a 30-year period. A final report is expected in May.
In response, the Canberra-based Australia Institute released its own report Tuesday, stating that the Jacobs MCM assessment exaggerates the proposal, which assumes $257 billion in revenue and $145 billion in costs over the life of the 120-year project. The think tank called the project “risky” and claimed there’s potential for an overall loss.
“Jacobs’ assessment is based on a number of assumptions that overstate the benefits of the proposal and understate its risks,” the report says, adding that it borders on nuclear advocacy rather than realistic findings.
The authors raise concerns with a number of assumptions in the Jacobs assessment, particularly the forecast that 37 countries will send waste to Australia at $1.75 million per ton. That cost estimate is based on budgets for storage in Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States, the report states.
“This assumption that poor countries including Bangladesh, Vietnam, Nigeria and Ghana would be willing and able to pay a higher price for waste storage than the richest countries in the world is not realistic,” the report states. “Still less realistic is Jacobs’ assumption that no other countries would attempt to compete with South Australia and lower the price received for storage. China and Russia are listed as potential competitors, but no consideration (is) made of this impact on price.”
In a similar report issued in December, the institute dismissed Edwards’ plan as an “impossible dream,” claiming that it fails to address 90 percent of the imported waste.
The Nuclear Fuel Cycle Royal Commission did not respond to a request for comment by deadline.
