Yesterday Robert Gottliebsen of Business Spectator spruiked the glories of BHP’s Olympic Dam uranium mine, including BHP’s claim that within 20 years the number of nuclear reactors around the world would nearly double from 439 to 793.
BHP got the 439 right. It’s 793 appears to be rather more mysterious. The number of operational reactors has actually fallen since 2002, when 444 reactors were in operation. There are, according to the nuclear power industry itself, 60 reactors under construction in January. Sounds impressive — if not quite the 300-plus reactors BHP is counting on — but in fact it’s not enough to replace the reactors that will reach the end of their lifespans over the next 15 years.
Many of those 439 reactors currently operating are old, built in the 1970s before Chernobyl and Three Mile Island cruelled the industry’s hopes of a prosperous — perhaps glowing — future. They’ll all need to be decommissioned in the next few years — although of course no one has yet found a way of decommissioning reactors without spending billions of dollars to do so.
All those numbers come from before Fukushima. Here’s a list of what’s happened in responding to the continuing and now fatal events at Fukushima:
- Japan’s Prime Minister Naoto Kan announced Japan was abandoning its plans to expand its nuclear power industry, will make renewables a key part of its energy policy to be developed ”from scratch”. Japan’s previous policy envisaged Japan relying in nuclear power for 50% of its energy needs by 2030;
- The Chinese State council put an embargo on the approval of new reactors;
- Switzerland’s Energy Minister suspended nuclear plant replacement approvals;
- Venezuela called off plans to build a nuclear plant despite a deal with Russia;
- Italy announced a one year pause on plans to re-launch nuclear power;
- the EU agreed to conduct stress tests at all 143 European power plants
- Germany decided to phase out nuclear reactors, with Angela Merkel telling the German Parliament that her goal was “to reach the age of renewable energy as soon as possible.”
- India’s Prime Minister has ordered a safety review of all nuclear power plants there;
- In Brazil, the government agreed to a safety and licensing review for all nuclear plants
- The UK government has commissioned a report on what can be learned from the Fukushima Japanese crisis, to be ready in May.
- In the US, the Indian Point nuclear power plant, located on a fault line near New York City, has been moved to the top of the list of plants being reviewed by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission as part of an urgent safety review in the wake of the Fukushima accident.
Any increase on safety or design regulations for reactors developed in response to Fukushima will of course increase the already enormous cost of new reactors, which typically require government subsidies or loan guarantees to fund the on-average nine year-long construction phase.
Evidently BHP knows something the rest of us don’t about the future of the nuclear power industry.
BHP has probably just done its homework on renewables. They simply don’t scale. Like using
teaspoons to harvest wheat.
All you really need to do is look at a couple of pictures. Consider what
Germany has done between 1998 and 2008 with solar in an age with ubiquitous computing and
communications engineering leverage:
http://www.iea.org/stats/pdf_graphs/DEELEC.pdf
Compared with what France did between about 1977 and 1987 without any of
these assisting technologies:
http://www.iea.org/stats/pdf_graphs/FRELEC.pdf
As soon as the world takes climate change seriously, the answer will be obvious.
Though of course, China can build brand new reactors for $2bn in 4.5 years…
BHP is right. Read the IMF’s report on oil/energy scarcity:
http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/weo/2011/01/index.htm
Energy prices are set to at least triple in real terms over the next 25 years. Taking nuclear off the table is not even an option. Most of the above responses are just government grand-standing to appease the public, but the fundamentals of energy scarcity will ensure not much will change.
@Wilful 2:13 pm
First I don’t think anyone knows how much it really costs China to build those reactors. Same for France, but when their state-owned nuke company Areva buiilds one on a commercial basis for Finland then there is no hiding the real world economics: >$8 billion and counting (and three years behind schedule–so far).
Second, all of us had better hope these first reactors built in China are better quality than all the early large infrastructure that gets built in developing countries. Will we discover that some contractor skimped on the steel rebar or covered up defects during construction (of the like that caused the problems at Areva’s Okiluoto plant discussed above).
Third, even if China builds all its planned plants, by 2030 nuclear will still provide only 5% of electrical power. If it embarks on the next even more ambitious phase, to 2050, guess what? Many of those from the first phase will be reaching their 40th anniversaries. (The industry is trying hard to sell the concept of 60 year operation but operating environ is is harsh on these plants where even small leaks cause trouble and expense. Many plants have been closed after only 20 years.)
Fourth, as Bernard says, there are a whole clutch of ageing plants in the US coming up to their original design life and hoping to get renewal to another 20 years operating license, ie. to 60 years. What chance after Fukushima?
If all the nuclear plants approaching their original design lifespans actually do close over the next 15 years, I’ll eat my hat. Here’s why: Japan. Germany. Australia. All indicate how steering away from nuclear is nothing more than a free kick to coal, oil and gas.
All the other countries mentioned by Keane are no more than pausing to consider the lessons of Fukushima, which is both to be expected and as it should be.
But apart from all that, what BHP and just about everybody except apparently Bernard Keane knows is that Olympic Dam is a copper and gold mine, not just uranium.