What does the nuclear lobby want, for South Australia?

Archer dismisses radiation risks as unimportant, and dismisses proponents of renewable energy as a "vocal minority".

Finally, Archer reveals the most important step to be taken:

...for Australia to have a shot at this revolution, the first step must be to amend the ARPANSA and EPBC acts. We must remove the restriction on establishment of nuclear installations and set effective regulations under the expanded auspices of our internationally recognised regulatory body, ARPANSA.

What he means is that Australia must change a federal law, because nuclear power is a protected issue as a 'A Matter of National Environmental Significance' under the National Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 . We must change the regulations of Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency (ARPANSA) . presumably to weaken the restrictions about radiation safety.

All will be achieved as popular support is developed "through outreach and education"

Where to start in examining Oscar Archer's argument?

Well – the sting in the tale of his plan is really exactly what he calls the first step - the overturning or weakening of Federal and State laws. The Federal Act protects against nuclear reprocessing and expanded nuclear industries. ARPANSA sets safety standards for exposure to ionising radiation. South Australian State Law would have to be overturned, too – under the Nuclear Waste Storage Facility (Prohibition) Act 2000
These laws are not frivolous products of tree huggers – and are there for sound health and environmental reasons.

The central premise of Oscar Archer's promotion of this nuclear chain of events is that Australia should go out on a limb – be the first country in the world to import nuclear wastes and to order a mass purchase of PRISM reactors.

Many will comment on the idea of Australia as the world's nuclear waste dump.

Fewer will grasp the significance of Australia making a mass purchase of PRISM nuclear reactors. Now who is going to take that financial risk? He must mean the Australian government, - because for sure no private investor is going to take that on. The USA manufacturers realised that, which is why Westinghouse and Babcock pulled out of making SMRs
The PRISM reactor exists only on paper and its development is decades away from completion. David Biello, in Scientific American comments "Ultimately, however, the core problem may be that such new reactors don't eliminate the nuclear waste that has piled up so much as transmute it. Even with a fleet of such fast reactors, nations would nonetheless require an ultimate home for radioactive waste, one reason that a 2010 M.I.T. report on spent nuclear fuel dismissed such fast reactors."

The PRISM can't melt down in the way that conventional nuclear reactors can. However, its essential use of plutonium entails hazardous transport - vulnerability to terrorism and use as a "dirty" bomb. And - finally the PRISM reactor itself becomes radioactive waste requiring security and burial.

There is another, underlying premise here that needs to be examined. This is the premise that it is OK for Australia and the world to continue to consume energy endlessly.