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Large-scale reactors, which have been deployed in 32 countries around the world, have a typical capacity of 1000 megawatts and generate about 30 tonnes of used fuel a year. This includes high-level radioactive waste that is toxic to humans for tens of thousands of years, as well as weapons-grade plutonium.

Emeritus Professor Ian Lowe of Griffith University’s school of environment and science said it was safe to say an SMR would generate many tonnes of waste per year, and it was likely that waste would be more radioactive than the waste from a large-scale reactor.

“They run on highly enriched uranium and produce a much nastier and a much more intractable set of radioactive waste elements that have to be treated.”

Nuclear waste is hazardous, it’s carcinogenic, and it’s mutagenic; so it can cause cancer, can change genetic structure, and it remains a considerable hazard that requires effective isolation from people in the wider environment for periods of 100,000 years,” said Sweeney.