Sydney

Australia should become an international repository for nuclear waste, according to a former prime minister. The idea has outraged environmentalists, but some scientists are giving it cautious consideration.

Robert (Bob) Hawke, prime minister from 1983 to 1991, made his suggestion to a gathering of graduates in Sydney on 26 September. Australia has an obligation, he says, as one of the world's largest uranium suppliers, to be part of the solution for disposing nuclear waste. “We would be doing a good turn, environmentally, for the world,” he told Nature.

Overseas nuclear-power users would pay to ship their waste to Australian shores, where it would then be transported to sites within the vast, sparsely populated regions of Western Australia or the Northern Territory. Hawke claims that the arrangement would be worth billions to Australia's economy. “It would be an enormous source of income that we could use to address our own environmental problems,” he says.

“It's not a far-fetched idea,” says nuclear physicist Aidan Byrne, who heads the department of physics at the Australian National University in Canberra. Australia's geological and political stability makes it an attractive site for waste disposal, he says.

Environmentalists disagree. “It's fanciful,” says Ben Pearson, an energy campaigner for Greenpeace in Australia, who argues that it would be too dangerous to transport large amounts of nuclear waste around the world. “Ships sink; accidents happen,” he says.

Hawke plans to rally further discussion on the topic. “I want to get a sensible debate going,” he says. “I would like the Australian scientific community to put resources into confirming the safest sites.”

The proposal will struggle to get political support; the federal and state governments cannot even agree on where to store the nation's own small amount of low-level nuclear waste. And several states have legislation that bans the import of nuclear waste.

But Byrne thinks attitudes may be shifting. “If Hawke had suggested this a year or so ago, it would have been seen as ridiculous. But the nuclear debate has come a long way.” He adds, “if Australia is to be part of the nuclear cycle as a supplier, then we need to be thinking about waste disposal as well”.