A clean and green way to fuel the nation

This article was published in The Australian 18 December 2009

Critics point to a long list of unresolved concerns with nuclear power and do so with sufficient zeal to unsettle people who are trying to reach an informed conclusion about its place in Australia's energy future.

Here are answers to the most important concerns.

> Management of toxic radioactive waste. Spent fuel is usually kept onsite until the end of the reactor life, typically 60 years. A reactor providing electricity for one million people produces a volume of radioactive waste roughly the size of a family car a year. This is judged to be a small amount. Eventually spent fuel is transported to a national repository, a well-engineered deep hole in the ground, probably in central Australia. We would need a single repository by about 2070 when there will be many in place globally and a best-in-class design could be built. Still critics are correct in noting that no such repository is in place, though several will open in the next decade.