Antinuclear

NUCLEAR POWER STATIONS ARE NOT APPROPRIATE FOR AUSTRALIA – AND NEVER WILL BE

Climate Council, 15 Mar 24

The prospect of nuclear power in Australia has been a topic of public debate since the 1950s. While Australia has never had a nuclear power station, we do have 33% of the world’s uranium deposits and we are the world’s third largest producer of it. Periodically, as with the changing of the seasons, various individuals appear in the media singing the virtues of nuclear energy – claiming it is the only option for clean and reliable electricity in Australia.

In fact, over one third of Australia’s electricity is already powered by renewables, and new initiatives like the Capacity Investment Scheme are set to push us towards 82% renewable energy by the end of this decade. While the move to clean energy is still not happening fast enough, it is underway and starting to speed up. We do not need distractions like nuclear to derail our progress now, so let’s set the record straight.

Why doesn’t nuclear power make sense for Australia?

1. Nuclear power stations can’t be built anywhere in Australia.

They are banned in every state, and in every territory. Such bans were introduced because of community concerns about the health and environmental risks. Many parliamentary inquiries at a federal and state level – see this Victorian Inquiry, this Federal Inquiry, and this South Australian Inquiry for instance – have been held into nuclear energy, and all have concluded that it makes no sense in Australia.

2. Nuclear power stations are expensive and take too long to build.

Australia’s independent science information agency, CSIRO, has found that solar and wind are by far the cheapest ways of producing electricity(even when factoring in storage). In contrast, the cost of building and operating nuclear in Australia remains prohibitively high.
Analysis conducted by the nuclear industry itself shows nuclear power stations take an average of 9.4 years to build – compared to 1–3 years for a major wind or solar project. Australia needs to replace its ageing coal-fired power stations as quickly as possible to rapidly reduce emissions this decade. As shown in the Australian Energy Market Operator’s Integrated System Plan, by far the cheapest and quickest way to do this is to ramp up renewable energy paired with storage like pumped hydro, and batteries.

3. Nuclear power poses significant community, environmental, health and economic risks.

Radiation from major nuclear disasters, such as Chernobyl in 1986 and Fukushima in 2011, have impacted hundreds of thousands of people and contaminated vast areas that take decades to clean up. Even when a nuclear power station operates as intended, it creates a long-term and prohibitively expensive legacy of site remediation, fuel processing and radioactive waste storage.

4. Nuclear power is not renewable, and it is not safe.

Uranium is a finite resource just like coal, oil and gas. It needs to be mined and, just like mining coal, oil and gas, this carries serious safety concerns, including contaminating the environment with radioactive dust, radon gas, water-borne toxins, and increased levels of background radiation. On the other hand, energy generated from the sun and wind releases no pollutants into the air and is overwhelmingly considered to be safe. 

There you have it: nuclear power is expensive, illegal, dangerous and decades away from powering our homes and businesses. It makes no sense. On the other hand, energy from the sun and wind is cheap, abundant, safe and available now. So, let’s get on with building more renewable energy!

What is a nuclear power station?…………………………………………………

Unlike coal and gas, no greenhouse gas pollution is created in the operation of the nuclear reactor. However, all other steps involved in producing nuclear power – from mining, to construction, decommissioning and waste management – result in greenhouse gas pollution.………………………….

Case Study 1: Hinkley Nuclear Power Station, United Kingdom………………………

Case Study 2: NuScale Power, United States of America……………………………..

Meeting the climate challenge means taking bold and decisive action this decade with the technologies that are ready to go in Australia today. The significant limitations nuclear energy faces means that there is no real prospect of it playing a role in reducing Australia’s emissions.

March 18, 2024 Posted by Christina Macpherson | AUSTRALIA - NATIONAL, politics | Leave a comment

Dutton’s blast of radioactive rhetoric on nuclear power leaves facts in the dust

Graham Readfearn, Guardian, 14 Mar 24

Coalition’s claim of cheap power and quickly built reactors is at odds with real world experience of other countries.

We may not yet be entering a nuclear age in Australia, but we would all be best advised to handle the rhetoric around the issue as carefully as we would radioactive waste.

This week opposition leader Peter Dutton said an annual CSIRO report that had included estimates of costs for small modular reactors – which are not yet available commercially – was “discredited” because it “doesn’t take into account some of the transmission costs, the costs around subsidies for the renewables”.

Dutton is referring to a report known as GenCost, which calculates the cost of generating electricity from different technologies when fuel, labour and capital are included. This metric is known as the levelised cost of electricity.

Despite Dutton’s claim, the most recent GenCost report does include the cost of integrating renewables such as solar and wind into the electricity grid. That is, it includes the cost of building new transmission lines and energy storage such as batteries.

The most recent GenCost report estimates a theoretical small modular reactor built in 2030 would cost $382 to $636 per megawatt hour. It says this is much more expensive than solar and wind, which it puts at between $91 and $130 per MWh even once integration costs are included.

The calculations in GenCost don’t include subsidies for any generating technologies – including renewables or future SMRs.

The cost estimates for SMRs are challenging because no commercial plant has been built. But the closest a project has got to existing – the Carbon-Free Power Project in Utah – was cancelled late last year primarily because the cost of the power would have been too high. And that project was given more than $2bn from the US Department of Energy.

Mycle Schneider is an independent nuclear expert and coordinator of the annual World Nuclear Industry Status report that tracks nuclear power development around the globe. He points to research from US financial group Lazard that says in the US, the costs of unsubsidised solar and wind including firming costs, such as batteries, range from US$45 to $141 per MWh compared to new-build nuclear at US$180 per MWh.

Ramping up the nuclear rhetoric

On Tuesday, Dutton said he would soon reveal six potential sites for nuclear reactors around Australia – likely to be close to, current or retiring coal-fired power stations.

Shadow energy minister Ted O’Brien claimed this week Australia could have nuclear power “up and running” within a decade.

“Nuclear ‘up and running within a decade’ does not fit with the experience we have seen elsewhere,” said Prof MV Ramana, a nuclear expert at the University of British Columbia and a contributor to the nuclear industry status reports.

Ramana points to Finland that has operated reactors since the 1970s, where parliament voted in 2002 to add a fifth reactor to the country’s fleet. Work started in 2005 but the reactor didn’t connect until 2022 “almost exactly 20 years after the parliamentary vote,” he said.

“We can see similar long periods of time between decisions to build reactors and when they start operating, again in countries that already have nuclear plants, in countries like the United States and the United Kingdom.”

Dutton and O’Brien have both said there are 30 economies around the world using nuclear and “50 more” that want to.

But Schneider says there are actually 32 countries with nuclear reactors, “but the top five generators produced 72% of the nuclear electricity in the world.”

“Over the past 30 years, only four countries started nuclear programs (Romania, Iran, Belarus, UAE) and three phased out their programs (Kazakhstan, Lithuania, Germany). There are reactors under construction in three more newcomer countries (Bangladesh, Egypt, Turkiye). Most other ‘plans’ are vague.”

The UAE – a model case study?

On Sky News, O’Brien pointed to the United Arab Emirates as a country that had commissioned South Korea’s Kepco to build four reactors of the size that could be considered for Australia in less than a decade.

In fact, each of the 1.4GW UAE plants was expected to be delivered in five years, but took eight, according to the industry status report. And it took 12 years from the announcement of the plan in 2008, to the first unit coming online in 2020.

The problem with using the UAE as a case study is that it is not a democracy, but an autocracy.

“The UAE is not a good model for Australia,” Ramana said………………………………………..

Reactor reactions

Experts have told the Guardian that even if Australia were to remove its federal and state bans on nuclear energy, it would be unlikely to see reactors generating power until the 2040s – at which point most, if not all, of Australia’s coal-fired power will have been turned off years earlier. One nuclear advocate questioned whether Australia could actually find a company to build reactors.

This week one political journalist said on Sky that “Canada is about to put in small modular reactors” and had selected a site in Ontario.

While Ontario Public Generation does plan to build a fleet of four small modular reactors, the company doesn’t yet have a licence to construct them.

If it does go ahead, OPG has said it doesn’t expect the first-of-its-kind unit – each about one-tenth the size of Australia’s biggest coal-fired power plant – to be working commercially until the end of 2029.

Expertise needed to make giant leap

O’Brien and Dutton have rejected the notion that Australia would be “starting from scratch” on nuclear, citing the existence of the tiny reactor at Lucas Heights near Sydney, the country’s existing reserves of uranium and the agreement to buy nuclear-powered submarines in the future.

Glenne Drover, the secretary of the Victorian branch of the Australian Institute of Energy and a broad supporter of nuclear power, said it was “quite a step up” from the 20MW Lucas Heights research reactor “to 1,000MW+ and to build, own and operate a pressure reactor”………………………more https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/mar/14/peter-dutton-nuclear-power-comments-csiro-small-modular-reactors

March 14, 2024 Posted by Christina Macpherson | AUSTRALIA - NATIONAL, politics | Leave a comment

Nuclear slow and expensive, renewables fast and cheap: Bowen slaps down Coalition “fantasy”

Giles Parkinson, Mar 7, 2024,  https://reneweconomy.com.au/nuclear-slow-and-expensive-renewables-fast-and-cheap-bowen-slaps-down-coalition-fantasy/—

Federal climate and energy minister Chris Bowen has again slammed the federal Coalition’s “nuclear fantasy”, describing it as a deliberate distraction and the latest “desperate effort” to keep the culture war over energy and climate alive.

“(They say) renewable energy is all too hard, we’ll just have to go nuclear,” Bowen said in comments at the Smart Energy Council conference in Sydney, adding that the technology is “utterly uneconomic.”

Bowen was asked why the government would not support a lifting of the ban against nuclear power and allow – as the Coalition and others suggest – to let the “market decide.” He pointed to the fact that it would take a decade to develop a regulatory regime, and three states also had their own bans in place.

“They say ‘lift the ban’ and the market will sort it,” Bowen said.

“Well, the market hasn’t sorted it out anywhere else in the world, there is not a market in the world where nuclear isn’t subsidised substantially by government. So this idea that we lift the ban and all these foreign investors are going to suddenly come to help Australia’s nuclear sector is just fantasy.”

Bowen said three states would also have to lift their bans, and only then could a regulatory process be put in place which he said would require at least 10 years, before deciding on location, environmental approvals and the question of subsidies.

“It would be a massive distraction,” Bowen said. “And it would send the signal somehow to the market that Australia and the Australian Government are interested in nuclear, when we’re not because it uneconomic, utterly uneconomic.

Coalition leader Peter Dutton and energy spokesman Ted O’Brien had favoured small modular reactors, and dismissed large “Soviet era” reactors, but appear to have now changed their mind and flipped back towards large scale nuclear after the only prospective SMR in the western world was cancelled because of soaring costs.

Bowen says the push to nuclear is simply an extension of the culture war over climate and energy issues.

“We know the sorts of arguments they run. It’s a desperate effort to keep the culture war alive. Renewable energy is all too hard. We’ll just have to go nuclear.”

Federal Labor has adopted a target to reach 82 per cent renewables by 2030, and most energy experts suggest all remaining coal fired power stations would be closed by around 2035.

Nuclear is seen as impossible to deliver in Australia before 2040, notwithstanding its costs, and energy experts question how an essentially “baseload” energy supply can be jammed into what will by then be a grid dominated by wind and solar, and particularly rooftop solar, which will require storage and flexible capacity.

The federal government’s Capacity Investment Scheme is likely to seek 10 GW of new wind and solar capacity in a series of auctions in 2024, and likely a similar amount in 2025, along with at least 3 GW of long durations storage in each of the next three years.

Bowen said a formal announcement is expected soon. He said the result of the first CIS auction, for 600 MW of long duration storage (defined as a minimum four hours) had elicited a very good response and the results would be announced in coming months.

March 7, 2024 Posted by Christina Macpherson | AUSTRALIA - NATIONAL, politics | Leave a comment