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Comment by devilsdata | Hacker News Reader

I don't think it accumulates enough solid waste to worry about. I'm Aussie, and I'm in favour of a proposal I heard a while ago to let other countries export their concentrated nuclear waste to the middle of Australia. Just bury it in one spot, on the oldest, most geologically stable landmass on the planet. It's far from bodies of water, it's far from population centres (excepting Alice Springs).

That said solar panels and batteries are so bloody good now, why even bother building nuclear reactors in much of the world? And geothermal looks promising too, with the new fracking tech they're using. But who knows.

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Mt Isa Mines when done is a good spot, and as a bonus you largely get to avoid issues with indigenous opposition since the area is already suitably dug up.

May need to work on this bad boy, first:

https://www.legislation.qld.gov.au/view/whole/html/inforce/c...

And of course have a chat with the traditional custodians of the land, and see if they're keen.

Reading down through that, there are exceptions built in already for research waste, medical waste, waste from "a nuclear vessel" (ie. submarines), and generic "waste that needs to buried for safety reason".

Would indigenous Australians living near proposed sites object to this plan? Are there areas of Australia with no human population? My impression is that nomadic indigenous groups used a lot of land in Australia even far from permanent settlements.

They're generally not fans of being bulldozed out of the way so a mine can get slapped in wherever Kartiya want to put one.

( eg: Noonkanbah - https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2018/sep/30/the-d... )

They do make agreements and keep them when they are part of the discussion from the outset and consulted for advice.

ie: find a place to make a hole that is both stable and not a significant site.

It doesn't help that more recent good faith agreements have been torpedoed by, say, Rio Tinto not keeping their word going forward.

( in recent follow up news from an epic Rio FUBAR - https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-10-25/juukan-gorge-archaeol... )

I drove through Nevada recently and it made me angry how much flat, high sun, land there is for solar, with no real environmental impact whatsoever (probably improvement for local life from the bit of shade).

Nevada also has the geology and part of a repository built already for nuclear waste. But Las Vegas controls the state and so those empty holes sit unused.

It was Chuck Schumer who torpedoed Yucca mt. Vegas had nothing to do with it.

This is also true of central Australia - dry, cloudless places that are good locations for solar panel arrays are also good places to store spent nuclear waste. There is the issue that solar panel efficiency drops somewhat in hot weather, but yeah there should be way more photovoltaic solar power in the American southwest, including Nevada.

If the numbers worked out the way you imagine, there would have been a gold rush to do it. NV is actually pretty low elevation and dusty and is surprisingly bad for solar even if it seems like it should be great. You know where is great for solar? New Mexico, Central Mexico and the northern part of the Andes range. Those are places at high elevations with low cloud cover and lower latitudes. That's where solar does well. I know it seems like it should just work in the desert...it doesn't however. The critical factors for solar are latitude, altitude and cloud cover.

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