On Monday, the South Australian royal commission released its tentative findings, which backed nuclear fuel storage and left the door open to further uranium mining and processing but came down against the use of nuclear power for electricity generation.
The findings said a nuclear storage and disposal facility would be commercially viable and South Australia could store nuclear waste as early as the late 2020s. It suggested the state set up a sovereign wealth fund “to accumulate and equitably share the profits from the storage and disposal of waste”.
The royal commission said uranium processing could not be developed in the next decade as a standalone industry as the market was already oversupplied and uncertain, but fuel leasing, which links uranium processing with its eventual return for disposal, is more likely to be commercially attractive.
