So much Labor hope is riding on an empty vessel
Labor’s leaders have put staying in government first. But it’s a bit pointless when they cannot even persuade their own supporters why they are taking the positions they are.
AFR Laura Tingle, Columnist 18 Apr 23
On one side of the discussion there was a disparate collection of people expressing concerns about a profound policy shift which has a multitude of troubling – and unanswered – questions attached to it.
On the other, a cabinet full of ministers who before September 15, 2021, when it was announced by Scott Morrison, had never remotely considered that Australia buying nuclear-powered submarines from the Americans was obviously the strategic……………………………. (Subscribers only) https://www.afr.com/politics/federal/so-much-labor-hope-is-riding-on-an-empty-vessel-20230814-p5dw8a
Coalition’s campaign for nuclear energy implausible, experts say
SMH. By Mike Foley, August 21, 2023
Former chief scientist Alan Finkel says it would take decades to develop a local nuclear energy industry, as he and other experts reject the Coalition’s push to switch focus from renewables to nuclear energy as implausible since Australia needs urgent replacement for its ageing coal-fired power plants.
Opposition Leader Peter Dutton wants Australia to deploy emerging nuclear power technology, while Nationals leader David Littleproud has criticised what he calls the government’s “reckless race to renewables” and asked for the government’s clean energy target to be paused and reconsidered.
The Albanese government has pledged to more than double the amount of power the electricity grid sources from renewables to 82 per cent by 2030, to help achieve its target of cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 43 per cent by the same deadline.
Federal parliament banned nuclear power in 1998 and the moratorium has remained in place with bipartisan support, but Dutton is calling for the deployment of small modular reactors to reduce emissions from the electricity sector, instead of renewables that require a vast array of new power lines to link wind and solar farms to the cities.
Finkel said it was highly unlikely that Australia could open a nuclear power plant before the early 2040s, pointing out the autocratic United Arab Emirates took more than 15 years to complete its first nuclear plan using established technology………………………………………………..
Responding to assertions that small modular reactors, which are smaller than traditional nuclear plants, may be quicker and cheaper to build, Finkel said: “The reality is, it’s not being done in Europe and America.
“There’s no operating small modular reactor in Canada, America or the UK, or any country in Europe.”
Finkel noted that private company Nuscale is aiming to commission 12 small modular reactors starting from 2029, but he said it would probably take at least a decade to follow suit in Australia.
“I just can’t see anything less than 10 years from the time that the [Australian] government saw Nuscale start operating in America,” he said.
……………………………Energy analyst Dylan McConnell said deploying a small modular reactor at an old coal plant would not be the “plug-and-play” operation some optimists have suggested.
“You would have to decommission the existing coal plant and then build a new nuclear plant,” he said.
Alison Reeve, a climate and energy expert at the Grattan Institute, said investors could not start to investigate a nuclear project in Australia until the moratorium was lifted by federal parliament, and it would probably take years after that for states to pass their own laws and for a regulatory framework to be developed.
“This is not as simple as just removing the moratorium and then everything will be fine,” Reeve said. https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/coalition-s-campaign-for-nuclear-energy-implausible-experts-say-20230821-p5dy2a.html
Fukushima: wastewater from ruined nuclear plant to be released from Thursday, Japan says
Release plans approved by UN nuclear authority have caused outcry in China and concern for the reputation of Japan’s seafood
Guardian Justin McCurry in Tokyo 22 Aug 23
Japan is to begin releasing wastewater from the wrecked Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant from Thursday, in defiance of opposition from fishing communities, China and some scientists.
The prime minister, Fumio Kishida, has said that disposing of more than 1m tonnes of water being stored at the site is an essential part of the long and complex process to decommission the plant.
But the plan, announced by Kishida on Tuesday, has caused controversy because the water contains tritium, a radioactive substance that can’t be removed by the facility’s water filtration technology.
The decision comes weeks after the UN’s nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), approved the discharge, saying that the radiological impact on people and the environment would be “negligible”.
South Korea and China banned seafood imports from some areas of Japan after Fukushima Daiichi suffered a triple meltdown in the March 2011 triple disaster along the country’s north-east coast.
The South Korean government recently dropped its objections to the discharge, but opposition parties and many South Koreans are concerned about the impact the discharge will have on food safety. China remains strongly opposed, while Hong Kong, an important market for Japanese seafood exports, has also threatened restrictions.
Some experts point out that nuclear plants around the world use a similar process to dispose of wastewater containing low-level concentrations of tritium and other radionuclides.
“Tritium has been released [by nuclear power plants] for decades with no evidential detrimental environmental or health effects,” said Tony Hooker, a nuclear expert from the University of Adelaide.
Greenpeace, however, has described the filtration process as flawed, and warned that an “immense” quantity of radioactive material will be dispersed into the sea over the coming decades.
The government and the plant’s operator, Tokyo Electric Power (Tepco), also face opposition from local fishers, who say pumping water into the Pacific Ocean will destroy their industry.
In a meeting on Monday with Masanobu Sakamoto, the head of the National Federation of Fisheries Cooperative Associations, Kishida attempted to reassure fishing communities that the discharge was safe………………………………… https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/aug/22/fukushima-wastewater-from-ruined-nuclear-plant-to-be-released-from-thursday-japan-says
Much hype, enthusiasm, tax-payers’ largesse, for Britain’s “new nuclear”. (What could possibly go wrong?)
There would be up to £20 billion in subsidies, if needed, to get between five and eight SMRs up and running by early next decade, and about £160 million in grants to keep R&D ticking over into AMRs and nuclear fuels.
Britain fires starter’s gun on race to nuclear
In the second instalment of the Nuclear Option series, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s government is suddenly ready to shower billions of pounds on getting modular nuclear reactors up and running by the early 2030s.
Australian Financial Review Hans van Leeuwen, Europe correspondentAug 22, 2023 – London
The British government is ready to trowel more than £20 billion ($38 billion) of taxpayers’ money into turbocharging the country’s nuclear industry, as the daunting task of decarbonising the UK’s energy sector looms ever larger.
With offshore wind and solar unlikely to ensure Britain has uninterrupted baseload power, the official goal is to get 24 gigawatts of nuclear energy onstream by 2050 – up to a quarter of British power demand, up from 15 per cent now.
But hefty new gigawatt-scale nuclear power stations are struggling to get off the ground, so the government’s hopes are increasingly pinned on an early lift-off for small modular reactors (SMRs)
…………… …. Tom Greatrex, chief executive of Britain’s Nuclear Industry Association. says that although successive Downing Street administrations have all understood Britain’s flagging nuclear industry needs fresh legs, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s government is now gripped with urgency. And it has clocked the key catalysing role of taxpayers and public policy.
“The lesson from anywhere in the world where nuclear power has been deployed is that unless the state is actively involved in encouraging it to happen, it doesn’t happen,” Greatrex says.
“It is public policy that has driven it, basically because the infrastructure is so big and capital-intensive.”
The government recently unfurled a £170 million investment into hurrying up work on the embryonic but enormous Sizewell C, a 3.2-gigawatt nuclear reactor to be built by the mid-2030s. This came on top of £700 million in earlier subsidies.
But the real action must of necessity be elsewhere. Construction of the next big new nuclear reactor, the 3.2-gigawatt Hinkley Point C plant in Somerset, has been subject to seemingly endless delays and cost blowouts. And of the five creaky old mega-reactors now operating, all but one will be shut in the next five years.
So, the focus is squarely on SMRs, which in theory can be rolled out more cheaply and snappily; and also on advanced modular reactors (AMRs), which use exotic new tech or methods that are still either largely on the drawing board or even just a glint in some scientist’s eye.
A week before the Sizewell announcement, the government confirmed it would set up a new agency, revelling in the Tory-boilerplate name of Great British Nuclear, to gee up the industry.
There would be up to £20 billion in subsidies, if needed, to get between five and eight SMRs up and running by early next decade, and about £160 million in grants to keep R&D ticking over into AMRs and nuclear fuels.
“I look forward to seeing the world-class designs submitted from all around the world through the competitive selection process, as the UK takes its place front and centre in the global race to unleash a new generation of nuclear technology,” energy minister Andrew Bowie trumpeted.
Leaders of the pack
At the front of the SMR pack is Rolls-Royce, leading a consortium that has already received £210 million in government grants. It has beefed up its SMR workforce to about 600 people.
……………………………………………. GE Hitachi is Rolls-Royce’s main rival. Media reports say it already has a BWRX-300 under construction and regulatory review in Canada, a.nd its model is under consideration in the US. The company claims to be the only contender with a realistic shot of getting an SMR operational by 2030.
The two are very likely to feature on Great British Nuclear’s short-list, which will be compiled by the end of the year. Other contenders could include Nuscale and Westinghouse.
The lucky winners will get access to the government’s subsidy scheme, which could be worth £20 billion if that’s what it takes.
It’s unclear exactly what form this largesse will assume. It could use the “regulated asset base” model, where investors are given a guaranteed minimum return, funded by a levy on consumer energy bills.
Another model might involve “strike prices”: a guaranteed price per unit, to smooth out the risks and uncertainty involved in committing so much capital upfront.
Whatever the capital cost, it won’t be as much as required for a mega-reactor: perhaps £2 billion to get an SMR up and running, as opposed to the £20 billion-plus for Sizewell C, thanks to the SMR’s modular, factory-based construction method. The catch, of course, is that you get just 50 to 500 megawatts of energy, rather than 3.2 gigawatts.
“It’s the economics of volume versus the economics of scale,” Greatrex says.
The initial batch of SMRs will almost certainly be built on the site of decommissioned larger reactors: communities there are socialised to nuclear; there are good grid connections; and the geography favours PWRs. This could help overcome a raft of potential political, planning or permit obstacles.
Dark horses
While the SMRs bolt towards an early-2030s target, the government hopes to back other horses in slower time. The AMRs might use technologies that ultimately prove more efficient, such as MoltexFlex’s molten-salt reactor. Or they might have different applications, such as local start-up U-Battery………………………….
U-Battery ‘s key backer, Urenco, ultimately couldn’t pull in investors, and in March handed the intellectual property to the government-backed National Nuclear Laboratory.
Other AMRs have higher-profile investors: TerraPower has Bill Gates; NewCleo has Italy’s Agnelli family. Most are working across multiple markets. X-Energy, for example, is using US funding to build a pilot of its gas-cooled pebble-bed reactor in Texas, which it says would allow it to roll out quickly in Britain…………………
The government has fired the starter’s gun, and the race in Britain is on. There’s bipartisan political support and investor interest, so Greatrex’s only anxiety is that Westminster might become distracted.
“It’s about maintaining momentum and focus. When something is at the top of the agenda it gets that attention and focus,” he says. “But if that focus is lost, that drive and commitment is lost? Then things could go back to taking a very long time.” https://www.afr.com/companies/energy/britain-fires-starter-s-gun-on-race-to-nuclear-20230726-p5dr9r
EDF Warns of French Nuclear Output Cuts in Weekend Heat Wave
Bloomberg, By Francois De Beaupuy, August 22, 2023
Electricite de France SA will probably have to reduce nuclear output over the coming weekend as a heat wave affecting a large part of the country warms rivers used for cooling some of its reactors.
Due to the high temperatures forecast on Rhone river, production restrictions are likely to affect production at its Tricastin power plant — where two of its four 900-megawatt reactors are already………….(Subscribers only) more https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-08-21/edf-warns-of-french-nuclear-output-cuts-in-weekend-heat-wave#xj4y7vzkg
Exposure to Low-Dose Ionizing Radiation Linked to Solid Cancer Mortality
Elana Gotkine Aug 21, 2023 https://www.applevalleynewsnow.com/news/health/exposure-to-low-dose-ionizing-radiation-linked-to-solid-cancer-mortality/article_6ed70b06-3ba4-549e-828c-e2892b462550.html
(HealthDay News) — Protracted exposure to low-dose ionizing radiation is associated with an increased risk for solid cancer mortality, according to a study published online Aug. 16 in The BMJ.
David B. Richardson, Ph.D., from the University of California in Irvine, and colleagues examined the effect of protracted low-dose exposure to ionizing radiation on the risk for cancer in a multinational cohort study involving workers in the nuclear industry in France, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Participants included 309,932 workers with individual monitoring data for external exposure to ionizing radiation, with follow-up of 10.7 million person-years.
The researchers identified 103,553 deaths, including 28,089 due to solid cancers. There was a 52 percent increase in the estimated rate of mortality due to solid cancer with cumulative dose per Gy, which lagged by 10 years. The estimate of association was approximately doubled on restriction of the analysis to the low cumulative dose range (0 to 100 mGy) and with restricting the analysis to workers hired in more recent years, when estimates of occupational external radiation were more accurate. The estimated magnitude of the association was modestly affected by exclusion of deaths from lung cancer and pleural cancer, indirectly indicating that the association was not substantially confounded by smoking or asbestos exposure.
“The study provides evidence in support of a linear association between protracted low-dose external exposure to ionizing radiation and solid cancer mortality,” the authors write.
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