Arguments in favour of nuclear waste storage in South Australia should not be so easily dismissed. There are valid economic and moral arguments made in the Royal Commission's interim report, writes Mike Steketee.

It may be the ultimate NIMBY proposal: Australia taking the world's nuclear waste, or at least a good chunk of it, and burying it deep in the South Australian outback.

Surely you would have to be out of your mind, as a government or a voter, to volunteer for such a project?

Would you feel better if we were paid for it? How about $5 billion a year over 30 years and $2 billion a year for the following 40 years? They are the figures mentioned in the "tentative findings" issued this week by South Australia's Nuclear Fuel Cycle Royal Commission headed by former governor Kevin Scarce.

Many would respond that no amount of money would be worth it. But as well as the economic case outlined in the report, there is a moral argument, which goes like this. We have the world's largest known uranium resources and are the world's third largest producer (after Kazakhstan and Canada) of uranium for nuclear reactors (but hopefully not for nuclear weapons, although the strict safeguards on which we insist are no guarantee).

The waste from nuclear fuel from our uranium, together with that from other producers, is piling up around the world in temporary storages. Some of it is very long-lived and very dangerous.

If reprocessed, it can be turned into nuclear weapons. A less complex option is to use radioactive material to make a dirty bomb. In the age of terrorism, that is a real concern.

So far not a single country has built a permanent facility to safely dispose of the waste, although two - Sweden and Finland - have ones underway. Australia has some of the most stable geological formations in the world in outback South Australia, Western Australia and the Northern Territory.

That is, the earth has not moved in these regions for millions of years. They are arid and flat, meaning there also has been no groundwater movement. And they are very sparsely populated.

You can argue that countries that opt for nuclear power should bear the responsibility for dealing with the consequences, including waste. Like earthquake-prone Japan? Or Pakistan, where terrorists run riot? The nuclear waste lying around in temporary facilities is a threat to the world, including Australia.

The Royal Commission will issue a final report in May and is seeking public comment on its tentative findings in the meantime. Not surprisingly, they have provoked a strong response, with Mark Diesendorf of the University of NSW describing them as "extraordinary" and a "heroic fantasy".

But the report does not deserve to be dismissed so readily. Nor does the South Australian Labor Premier, Jay Weatherill, who set up the commission, although insisting he has an open mind on the subject.

One of the tentative findings is that it would not be commercially viable to build a nuclear power plant in South Australia in the foreseeable future. However the commission says its use should not be precluded in all future circumstances - for example, if a national requirement for net zero carbon emissions by 2050 could not be met from renewable sources.

Another finding is that uranium processing, including enrichment, would not be viable in South Australia in the next decade, given a global over-supply and low prices. The exception would be if we adopted fuel leasing, under which Australia would supply processed uranium while agreeing to take back the spent fuel to ensure it is not turned into nuclear weapons.

George W Bush's administration advanced the idea of leasing and it is endorsed by the International Atomic Energy Agency as an anti-proliferation measure. The Obama administration reportedly has held preliminary talks with several countries, including Mongolia, Japan and the United Arab Emirates about leasing arrangements.

The commission's third main tentative finding is that the storage and disposal of nuclear waste could deliver substantial economic benefits to South Australia. It says a permanent storage facility could be in operation by the late 2020s.

Of course we are not talking about any old garbage. The report says it takes 500 years for the most radioactive elements of high level waste in the form of used nuclear fuel to decay and total isolation from the environment is needed for hundreds of thousands of years. Even low level waste requires containment and isolation from the environment for up to a few hundred years before it reaches the levels of naturally occurring background radiation.

The commission believes storage and disposal of high and intermediate level waste in a South Australian location are likely to be technically feasible, though detailed investigations would be required. It argues that the state has "a unique combination of attributes which offer a safe, long-term capability for the disposal of used fuel", including geology, very low levels of seismic activity, an arid environment and a stable political, social and economic structure.

Given the quantities of used fuel held by countries that are yet to find a solution for disposal, the report says the market should be big enough for a South Australian repository. It cites a "conservative baseline price" for permanent disposal of $1.75 million per tonne of high level waste and $40,000 per cubic metre of intermediate level waste.

The commission argues that a project taking 138,000 tonnes of used fuel and 390,000 cubic metres of intermediate waste would be highly profitable, with a possible 5 per cent or $16.8 billion boost to gross state product by 2030 and an extra 9,600 jobs created directly and indirectly. It suggests a state wealth fund that spreads the benefit to future generations of South Australians could reach about $445 billion over more than 70 years.

An above-ground temporary storage facility covering an area of between 2.5 and 4 square kilometres would be needed to house metal or concrete casks containing spent fuel and intermediate waste. Permanent disposal would be in a series of tunnels that would house specially designed canisters containing used fuel and intermediate level waste. There would be multiple geological and engineering barriers to prevent outside contamination.

The enormous hurdles that would need to be overcome to turn what is technically feasible into reality are obvious. Weatherill says there would have to be bipartisan political agreement at both state and federal levels.

Broad public support and specific agreement with Indigenous communities and other landholders would be necessary. Successive federal governments already have spent years trying without success to find a site for the permanent disposal of low and intermediate level waste from research reactors and medical facilities.

On the other hand, international experience suggests that it is not mission impossible. Sweden and Finland are both developing facilities for permanent long-term disposal. According to a submission to the commission, there actually was competition between two locations for the Swedish facility, with the losing bidder receiving a larger payment upfront on the basis that the winner would reap the long-term benefits. In Finland a community volunteered to host the project on the condition that the developer moved its headquarters there.

When it comes to moral arguments, there is another option: we could stop exporting uranium and with it the problems of waste disposal. The likelihood of that happening is even less than reaching agreement to take responsibility for some of the problems to which we have contributed.

We may want to stop the world but we can't get off.

Mike Steketee is a freelance journalist. He was formerly a columnist and national affairs editor for The Australian.