There’s nothing like nuclear to bring out the over-reactors.
In one corner, it’s all mushroom clouds and Blinky the three-eyed fish. In the other, it’s a muscular and misled optimism that flicking the switch on a nuclear power plant would solve Australia’s “trilemma” of reducing emissions while ensuring energy security and making power cheaper.
A new group — the parliamentary friends of nuclear industries — will be co-chaired by Nationals MP David Gillespie and South Australian Labor Senator Alex Gallacher, with independent MP Bob “Let A Thousand Blossoms Bloom” Katter as deputy.
Two in three Coalition MPs want to lift the ban on nuclear energy, and the Nationals want the Clean Energy Finance Corporation to be allowed to invest in nuclear. And there’s a push on in Labor, too. Some want the issue on the table at the national conference later this month, while reports today say gas will be the key for its net-zero emissions policy.
Some fission there.
As latest round of the debate started, the Australian Conservation Foundation immediately took the nuclear option.
“There is nothing clean about the fuel behind the Fukushima and Chernobyl disasters, which produces waste that remains radioactive for tens of thousands of years,” ACF campaigner Dave Sweeney said. What tosh.
While it’s technically true that the fuel would be the same, it’s no longer technologically true. Any plant built in Australia would be a small modular reactor. They’re smaller, safer, cheaper, and faster to build. And they have less of that pesky waste that nobody wants in their backyard.
They say you’re more likely to sway people with emotion than with facts so maybe a little bit of bluff and guff is par for the anti-nuclear course.
Meanwhile the latest pro-nuclear hotheads seem to think it’s as easy as plug in and turn on.
Liberal MP Tim Wilson said: “Only nuclear plus baseload renewables can deliver Australia a sustainable net zero future with cheap, reliable electricity. You aren’t serious about climate change if you oppose nuclear outright.”
The booming solar and wind sector and advances in storage show that’s bunkum. The latest report from the CSIRO and the Australian Energy Market Operator found that by 2030 “adding new variable renewable generation (solar and wind) to as high as a 90% share of the grid will still be cheaper than non-renewable options”.
Renewables sceptics love to proclaim that when the wind doesn’t blow and the sun doesn’t shine, the power goes out. But it doesn’t, or won’t, not with household storage, large-scale batteries and the potential of pumped-hydro and other technologies.
The pro-nuclear lobby also faces another hurdle: the timeline.
The Gen IV International Forum — which Australia joined in 2016 — is looking at six technologies. But the forum says it’ll be a lazy two or three decades before they’ll be deployed. The Australian Nuclear and Science Technology Organisation says small modular reactors could be built in three to five years.
Even in the unlikely case that the federal government decided to take nuclear energy to the next election, and even if the legislation made it through a new parliament, that would be only the start of the awkward conversations about where to put any nuclear plant, how to train a workforce to manage it, and the predictable furore about what to do with the waste.
Australia has had years — decades — of wandering in an energy policy quagmire. This concerted effort to introduce nuclear into the debate has more than a whiff of smokescreen about it. Especially now, as Australia gears up for the Glasgow summit in November and a possible election before that.
Nuclear is not the bogeyman. But it’s not the superhero either.
At best it’s something we should keep in a future mix as the need for climate change action gets ever more urgent. At worst it’s a deliberate red herring being tossed about to further stymie progress on tackling emissions.
And if pushing for nuclear wasn’t politically explosive enough, even the Australian Nuclear Association is among those who say it will be financially viable only with a carbon price. Boom.
Nuclear energy has never been profitable.
The most “profitable” nuclear reactor has a net-present-value of -1.5B AUD. The average value is -7.7B. Propped up by governments, mostly for military purposes. Hardly surprising that the manufacturers are all going out of business.
https://reneweconomy.com.au/nuclear-energy-is-never-profitable-new-study-slams-nuclear-power-business-case-49596/
Keep researching, of course: it’s a neat idea. Maybe thorium is the go, or perhaps the newer fusion ides will get up. Personally, I prefer my nuclear fusion reactor to be at a nice, safe 150M km distance, as it is now…
“a small modular reactor… smaller, safer, cheaper, and faster to build.”
smaller – obviously
safer – if one goes wrong it will make less mess than a bloody big reactor, obviously. But how do things look when you compare one big reactor with the power-generating equivalent number of small modular reactors? Will the small modular reactors be sited in populated areas? Now factor in the security issues with small modular reactors, each of them a magnet for terrorists to steal material, bomb the thing where it is or destroy it by hacking its control system.
cheaper – than a bloody big reactor, obviously. But is it cheaper per unit of electricity generated?
faster to build – see above
There’s also the problem with small modular reactors that there are none commercially currently available.
To have economies of scale, to make it possible to manufacture them centrally in a factory, you need to have around 30-50 on order, which isn’t going to happen.
Wikipedia has a good write up on SMRs
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small_modular_reactor
Other than a few in Russia they don’t actually exist outside of power point presentations.
Chances are we will have a stable fusion reaction for 10 seconds with net energy output – before a SMR is actually ever built as a commercial reactor.
The killer of nuclear power is economics. The problem with small reactors is that they are also small power output. So ok for powering a submarine, or a ship, or something, but a city of $1 million+ people…. nope.
Hi all. Yee-haa at last I get a discussion I can contribute something rather than being a watcher/learner from the sidelines. I’ll out myself as a PhD qualified scientist with a family member who… er… worked in the nuclear.. industry… as it were. I have had a close interest in nuclear power for generation and for bombs, for a long time, and for a while I worked in a company supplying parts for the UK nuclear industry’s PWR reactors.
Here’s one you can take home. Nuclear-generated electricity is one of the most expensive options available. Also the most polluting. Any close reading of the data from the US, UK, or France (or lately Germany) will demonstrate it. It is still the most expensive, even though the industry apologists usually leave out the cost of decommissioning and of supervising the radioactive waste.
Secondly, there is this myth that nuclear power is ‘clean energy’ that doesn’t produce CO2. Sadly this is complete nonsense. The construction of the concrete containment, and the steel reinforcing, the refinement of the fuel and the storage and stripping of the used fuel rods can… get this… require more energy than the plant generates during its lifetime. As of today all that energy is generated from coal, oil or gas and generates CO2. The nuclear plant in this view is little more than a giant battery that converts concrete manufacture into electricity.
The only way nuclear power can be ‘clean’ is via the ‘fast breeder’ process. Beloved of technophiles, like me. Sadly the one country that really pushed this and tried to prove the technology, France, could not get it to work, and provided a series of losses of containment to boot. The UK experiment was ended prematurely on the grounds that not only did it not work, it was not a closed cycle anyway, as huge amounts of (carbon fuelled) energy were required to reprocess plutonium from the used fuel rods.
And all that is without even getting started on the cost and consequences of nuclear accidents. And in case anyone thinks that teeny power plants (used to power submarines, air craft carriers, etc) are the answer, remember that thousands of them would be needed to power a small town.
Bye for now,
—Ian—
Nicely put – concise, lucid and easy for even a politician to understand.
Thank you.
Thanks Ian. I had read all those arguments in other publications and am yet to see any attempts at rebuttal. The concrete aspect is significant, apparently concrete production is responsible for a large percentage of the worlds current CO2 emissions. Yours is just one more expert voice adding to it.
Politically, one will never be built. There is nowhere in Australia that will accept it. If they were ready to go, now, and didn’t take forever to build, we would still take 20 years to get around the political problem of finding where to build one.
Dog’s Breakfast – trolls do not deserve rebuttals. Check out the arithmetic behind the assertions and you will quickly find that his assertions do not stack up. And yes, cement production is due for decarbonisation too.
Lucas Heights anyone? Most dont even know it exists. The concrete manufacturing CO2 is akin to the environmental cost of manufacturing electric cars which nobody cares about.
I have no fear of having nuclear reactors in Australia. The debates, enquiries, feasibility studies and impact statements will take only slightly less than the half life of thorium, possibly longer if you factor in negative lobbying from the gas industry and ALP conferences.
Is there actually a working, proven, thorium based reactor commercially available, that we can use with the same confidence as a Danish built Wind power generator?
Not on this planet.
Since Fukushima this discussion is irrelevant. And the Chinese (bless them) don’t vote but do have H bombs, so they shouldn’t count in the argument at all. As regards costs, generation of electricity is the world’s biggest industry, and the more we’ve got the more we want, so it will always cost an arm and a leg. As we now know for certain that we have already burnt far too much fossil fuel it is obviously imperative that the sooner we get to zero C (and stop just talking about it) the better, whatever it takes. It’s an emergency with worsening global disasters happening all around us. It’s not just the possums, possums. It’s everything. Or don’t you want a cleaner, healthier, more beautiful and treasure-filled world? Of course you do. So demand it. Buy only green power, stop buying all that crap you’re going to throw away, vote green (why not) and for pity’s sake leave the gas in the ground, with the coal, and soon the oil. And nuclear power in Australia will not happen this century, if ever. It’s a red herring, a diversion. Good grief!
drastic, It might help your position (but not the planet) to know that nuclear power is not CO2 free at all. I put a long post explaining that, elsewhere in the article – pls feel free to track it down if you like.