Australia’s top environment groups – Submission to Government Inquiry into Nuclear Power Generation in Australia.
Friends of the Earth Australia
Australian Conservation Foundation
Greenpeace Australia Pacific
The Wilderness Society
Climate Action Network Australia
Nature Conservation Council (NSW)
Environment Victoria
Conservation SA
Queensland Conservation Council
Conservation Council of WA
Environment Centre NT
Solutions for Climate Australia
Arid Lands Environment Centre
Environment Tasmania
Environs Kimberley
Cairns and Far North Environment Centre
Submission to the House Select Committee on Nuclear Energy Inquiry into Nuclear Power Generation in Australia. November 2024 – (23 pages)
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Our groups maintain that federal and state legal prohibitions against the construction of
nuclear power reactors have served Australia well. We strongly support the retention of
these prudent, long-standing protections.
Claims that nuclear reactors could be generating electricity in Australia by 2035‒37 do not
withstand scrutiny. Introducing nuclear power to Australia would necessitate at least 10
years for licensing approvals and project planning, and around 10 years for reactor
construction. Nuclear power reactors could only begin operating around the mid-2040s at
the earliest. Most or all of Australia’s remaining coal power plants will be closed long before
nuclear reactors could begin supplying electricity.
Small modular reactors (SMRs) do not exist. The so-called operating SMRs in Russia and
China were not built using serial factory production methods. They could not even be called
prototype SMRs since there are no plans to mass-produce these reactor types using serial
factory production methods. SMRs are best thought of as Smoke & Mirror Reactors: they do
not exist. A few small reactors are under construction (in China, Russia and Argentina) but
once again serial factory production methods are not being deployed.
Construction timelines for the so-called SMRs in Russia and China were protracted: 9 years
in China and 12 years in Russia. In both countries, planning plus construction took 20 years
or more.
After costs rose to a staggering A$31 billion per gigawatt, US company NuScale abandoned
its flagship SMR project in Idaho last year. This led the Australian Coalition parties to
abandon their SMR-only nuclear policy. Worse was to follow. In mid-2024, French utility EDF
announced that it had suspended development of its Nuward SMR and reoriented the
project “to a design based on proven technological building blocks.” In May 2023, Ultra Safe
Nuclear claimed at an Australian Senate hearing that the company is building SMRs in North
America. In fact, the company has not begun building SMRs anywhere and in October 2024
the company announced that is pursuing a sale process under Chapter 11 of the US
Bankruptcy Code.
Many other SMR projects have failed. The French government abandoned the planned
ASTRID demonstration fast reactor in 2019; Babcock & Wilcox abandoned its Generation
mPower SMR project in the US in 2017; Transatomic Power gave up on its molten salt
reactor R&D in 2018; MidAmerican Energy gave up on its plans for SMRs in Iowa in 2013;
TerraPower abandoned its plan for a prototype fast neutron reactor in China in 2018; and
the US and UK governments abandoned consideration of ‘integral fast reactors’ for
plutonium disposition in 2015 and 2019, respectively.
The SMR sector is littered with failed and abandoned projects, false claims and false dawns
Large reactor construction projects have also suffered catastrophic cost overruns and
delays. In both of Australia’s AUKUS partner countries, early cost estimates were proven to
be wrong by an order of magnitude:
- One project in the US was abandoned in 2017 after A$13.9 billion was wasted on the
failed project, in South Carolina. Another project ‒ the twin-reactor Vogtle project in the
state of Georgia ‒ reached completion at a cost 12 times higher than early estimates, and 6‒
7 years behind schedule. Not a single reactor is currently under construction in the US. Not
one. - In the UK, the Hinkley Point twin-reactor project was meant to be complete in 2017 but
construction didn’t even begin until 2018 and the latest cost estimate is 11.5 times higher
than early estimates. No other reactors are under construction in the UK. The UK National
Audit Office estimates that taxpayer subsidies for the Hinkley Point project could amount to
£30 billion (A$58.4 billion). The Hinkley Point reactors are being built by French utility EDF.
France’s only recent domestic reactor construction project has also been a disaster: the
reactor is still not operating 17 years after construction began and costs increased six-fold to - A$31 billion.
If we were to make the heroic assumption ‒ the absurd assumption ‒ that reactor
construction projects in Australia would fare as well (or as badly) as those in the US and the
UK despite Australia’s lack of experience and expertise, they would be 20+ year projects and
costs would range from A$23.8 ‒ 27.9 billion per gigawatt. Or A$31 billion per gigawatt for
unproven NuScale SMR technology.
The two most significant economic modelling studies of Australia’s energy options are the
Net Zero Australia 2023 analysis and CSIRO’s annual GenCost analyses. Both make extremely
generous assumptions about nuclear costs ‒ indeed both assume costs several times lower
than real-world experience in the UK and the US ‒ yet nuclear power is still found to be
uneconomic in both studies.
Pursuing the nuclear path would be a recipe for increased power bills, increased taxes and
increased greenhouse emissions. And it would pose unnecessary risks of catastrophic
accidents and produce high-level nuclear waste for future generations of Australians to
manage for millennia.
There are currently no operating deep underground repositories for high-level nuclear waste anywhere in the world. The one operating deep underground repository for long- lived intermediate-level nuclear waste − the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in the US state of New Mexico ‒ suffered a chemical explosion in a waste barrel in 2014 due to inept management and inadequate regulation.
Efforts to establish national radioactive waste facilities (repositories and stores) in Australia
for low- and intermediate-level waste have repeatedly failed since the 1990s. Decades of
failure do not inspire confidence that far more complex high-level nuclear waste challenges
from a nuclear power program would be responsibly managed in Australia.
Claims that converting coal power plants to nuclear plants will be straightforward and advantageous rest on untested assumptions rather than real-world success stories. Coal-to-nuclear transitions could potentially reduce nuclear costs by using some existing
infrastructure but nuclear power would still be far more expensive than firmed renewables
(i.e. renewable systems with storage capacity). No coal power plants have been repurposed
as nuclear plants in the US or the UK, so purported synergies and cost savings are
speculative.
There is no social license to introduce nuclear power to Australia. The Coalition’s nuclear
power policy is not supported by state governments in the five states being considered.
There is little or no support from Coalition parties in those states. The nuclear policy is not
supported by the energy industry, including the owners of the sites being targeted for
nuclear reactors. The policy is not supported by scientists. It is not supported by the public ‒
nuclear power recently regained its status as Australian’s least popular energy source ‒ or
by First Nations communities. The Coalition’s nuclear policy does not even enjoy widespread
support within the Coalition: deep rifts are evident.
While nuclear power has been stagnant for more than 20 years, renewable energy is
growing strongly around the world. Last year, nuclear power capacity fell by 1.7 gigawatts
while renewable additions amounted to 507 gigawatts ‒ record growth for the 22nd
consecutive year. This year, the same pattern is repeating: nuclear stagnation and record
renewables growth. Nuclear power accounts for a declining share of global electricity
generation ‒ currently 9.1%, barely half its historic peak ‒ whereas the renewables share
has grown to 30.2%. The International Energy Agency expects turbocharged growth in the
coming years with renewables reaching 46% by 2030. Renewable energy sources currently
generate over three times more electricity than nuclear reactors, and will likely generate
five times more by the end of the decade.
The energy transition is well underway in Australia, with renewables supplying nearly 40%
of the National Electricity Market. Nuclear power has no place in this transition. As
Australia’s leading scientific organisation CSIRO says, nuclear power “does not provide an
economically competitive solution in Australia” and “won’t be able to make a meaningful
contribution to achieving net zero emissions by 2050.”……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………more https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/House/Select_Committee_on_Nuclear_Energy/Nuclearpower/Submissions
The Green List: Peter Garrett on the ‘high-risk’, ‘cruel joke’ of nuclear energy
The Midnight Oil frontman, former politician and environmentalist says the idea that Australia needs a more expensive and riskier technology when it has an abundance of sun, wind and flowing water is ‘a cruel joke’.
Andrew McMillen, The AUSTRALIAN, November 22, 2024.
Andrew McMillen talks with the Midnight Oil frontman, former politician and committed environmentalist Peter Garrett about his passion for Australia to turn away from fossil fuels and towards a cleaner, greener, more sustainable future.
Have you always been “green”, or sustainability-inclined?
If growing up in nature and caring about the natural world means being green, then yes. As a young boy, I spent a lot of time playing in the bush. My parents gave me the great gift of freedom to roam, to explore and to imagine. Those experiences still sustain me. As a scout, I ventured further afield, learning self-sufficiency and independence. As a surfer, I learned to respect the power of the ocean, and marvel at its productivity.
This is an article from The List: 100 Top Energy Players 2024, which is published in full online on November 21.……………………………………………..
What is your view on nuclear energy?
The idea that Australia needs a far more expensive, high-risk, difficult to manage and uninsurable technology when it has an abundance of sun, wind and flowing water is a cruel joke. Despite assertions by vested interests, nuclear can’t happen quickly, efficiently or safely enough to deal with the need to get out of oil, coal and gas and put ourselves on a safe, reliable and affordable energy footing. Given the millions of solar panels on roofs and the now substantial contribution of renewables to providing power, I’d say we’re ready. Still, it’s a desperate race to avoid more climate tipping points. Expanding fossil-fuel production flies in the face of rational thinking. It’s time we called it criminal behaviour, since we can foresee the terrible harm being caused.
……………………………………. If you had a magic wand, what’s one thing you would change about how we, as a nation, approach our allocation of natural resources?
That we adopt the “do no harm” principle in regulation, so any resources allocation – particularly coal, oil and gas exploitation that increases the amount of CO2, or damages the environment – be ruled out. The employment gains of moving away from fossil fuels are tangible. In many cases, markets have already made the call, yet perversely, fossil fuel companies who pay little tax in Australia and are hellbent on continuing with their destructive business model are still allowed to operate. In summary: start by getting rid of fossil fuel subsidies so energy businesses can operate on a level playing field.
What is your greatest hope with regard to Australia’s natural environment?
That we stop treating the environment as an afterthought. I sense and hope for an attitudinal sea change – informed by Indigenous experience, inspired by our holidays, our artists, our farmers, our gardeners – that lifts our gaze to the extraordinary coastline, reefs, rivers and wetlands, verdant rainforests; the whole panoply of environments to which we owe our existence, and decide irrespective of age, political persuasion or station, that protection of nature – whose health is vital to our survival – is no longer a mercenary trade-off, but as inviolable as family, barbecues and footy.
https://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/renewable-energy-economy/the-green-list-peter-garrett-on-the-highrisk-cruel-joke-of-nuclear-energy/news-story/2b4df8d5055ff0ccd5db76b45f3d02fa
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