Experts from different sectors weigh in on the future of nuclear energy in Australia.
The scientist: Barry Brook
Yes. Nuclear power uses atomic fission (splitting heavy atoms like uranium and plutonium) to generate vast amounts of heat energy.
This can be converted to electricity, or used to synthesise liquid fuels to replace oil. As an energy source, it is more than a million times more concentrated than chemical fuels like coal.
Today, nuclear power provides about 15 per cent of the world’s electricity, but some countries get far more.
France, for instance, sources 80 per cent of its electricity from nuclear fission, and South Korea gets 45 per cent.
The US has more than 100 nuclear plants, supplying 20 per cent of its needs.
Nuclear energy produces no carbon dioxide emissions when operating. Indeed, if all the world’s nuclear power stations were replaced by brown-coal power, an additional 3.5 billion tonnes of CO2 would enter the atmosphere each year.
Of course, nuclear electricity, like any other activity in the modern world, has some ”carbon footprint”, because we use fossil fuels to generate a large fraction of our electricity and to power our vehicles, industrial equipment, steel smelters, concrete factories and so on. But in a future world powered largely by nuclear energy, its footprint would be reduced to virtually zero.
Nuclear energy also has the great advantages of cheap, abundant fuel and incredibly reliable operation. It is not dependent on the fickleness of natural energy flows (such as wind and solar) and so does not require expensive energy storage.
This energy source is a proven economic way to replace coal. This is why rapidly developing countries such as China are pursuing nuclear energy so vigorously.
Currently, 25 new nuclear power plants are under construction in China, and the target there is for 112 gigawatts online by 2020.
This is the equivalent of four times Australia’s average electricity generation, all built in 10 years and without a price on carbon.
A type of nuclear technology nowbeing commercialised in India, Russia and China, called ”fast reactors”, can be used to repeatedly recycle its fuel and consume old nuclear waste. Because of the incredible efficiency of this next-generation technology, we have already mined enough uranium to power the global economy for more than 500 years. This is truly a sustainable energy option.
Nuclear power offers our best chance – indeed, probably the only realistic hope – of curing our addiction to fossil fuels and eliminating carbon emissions, in time, on budget, and at sufficient scale.
Professor Barry Brook is director of climate science at the University of Adelaide’s Environment Institute and coauthor of “Why vs Why: Nuclear Power” (PanteraPress,2010).
The scientist: Ann Henderson-Sellers
Cold, northern hemisphere countries may resort to nuclear power to try to achieve energy security and moderate climate change but Australia neither needs it nor wants it.
In the 1990s, I toured Australia seeking input to the federal government’s Research Reactor Review.
Only one town was prepared to welcome a nuclear research reactor and, to my knowledge, no one has volunteered a home for our nuclear waste.
That we don’t need nuclear power is obvious: the ”land of the cloudless skies” has cleaner, abundant energy available. The recent report Beyond Zero Emissions demonstrates baseload clean energy can be supplied by renewable sources within 10 years at an affordable cost – about $8 a household a week.
Global warming is real and demands immediate government action. Australia witnessed 15 consecutive days above 35 degrees in Adelaide in 2008, seven days more than the previous heatwave record; Black Saturday last year set a new Melbourne temperature record of 46.4 degrees, more than 3 degrees hotter than any previous February record; and the seven hottest August days ever recorded at Windorah in western Queensland all occurred last year.
But the climate change warnings of urgency and certainty continue to be prey to media confusion and the responses of governments are mired in post-Kyoto language of targets and timetables.Of them, any proffered explanations of the international failure to act effectively, including the understandable self-interest of industrialising nations, the sluggishness of democratic processes and the mass media’s failure to communicate constructive climate solutions are among the most frustrating.
Zero Carbon Australia 2020, an initiative of Beyond Zero Emissions, explodes the myth that we need nuclear power to replace fossil fuels. Smoothing power output across the grid using geographically dispersed production and ensuring back-up power from molten salt storage at solar thermal power plants easily delivers baseload electricity.
The Beyond Zero Emissions report shows nuclear power, due to its technical and safety requirements, would be the slowest alternative, taking at least 15 years: a decade longer than true low-emission energy. It is unnecessary, even vexatious, to add a nuclear dimension to Australia’s global warming policy block.
Professor Ann Henderson-Sellers is an ARC professorial fellow at Macquarie University and the immediate past director of the UN World Climate Research Program in Switzerland.
The campaigner: Stephen Campbell
Nuclear power has no future in Australia. This is commonsense for the environment and the economy.
Let’s start with finance. In November last year economists at Citigroup issued a critique called, “New nuclear – the economics say no”. The report said ”three of the risks faced by developers – construction, power price, and operational – are so large and variable that individually they could each bring even the largest utility companyto its knees”.
They concluded it was unlikely any private company would take on the risks.
Cold hard cash probably explains why only two plants were under construction in Europe at the end of last year.
Both were delayed by years and over budget. In the case of Olkiluoto Island in Finland, four years into construction, it had already been delayed by three years.
Costs had doubled.
Finland’s Radiation and Nuclear Safety Authority found the reactor’s concrete base to be too porous and prone to corrosion.
Safety fears have always been at the core of the nuclear issue. Only this month, tens of thousands of people in Germany and France protested against the most radioactive shipment of nuclear waste in history, amounting to the equivalent of 11 Chernobyl disasters.
After half a century of nuclear power, no country has come close to developing a method to safely isolate waste – it remains deadly for hundreds of thousands of years.
Faced with overwhelming evidence against nuclear power, vested interests have seized on the climate crisis as a last-gasp attempt to put it back on the agenda. But doing so would squander the resources necessary to implement meaningful climate change solutions.
Even if it were desirable, starting a nuclear industry in Australia would take a decade or more and billions upon billions of taxpayer dollars.
Australia’s geography and climate gives us an almost unparalleled opportunity to be a world leader in proven and safe renewable technologies like solar, wind and wave.
Unfortunately, other countries are leaving us behind.
China will make enough wind turbines every six weeks to replace Australia’s entire wind-power supply.
Let’s leave the nuclear debate in the past where it belongs. Now is the time to urgently invest in clean and safe renewable energy.
Stephen Campbell is head of campaigns at Greenpeace Australia Pacific.
The miner: Michael Angwin
Most advanced countries and many developing ones would say: not only should nuclear energy power our future, it most certainly will.
An Australian answer would likely be more equivocal.
Nuclear energy is a permanent, indispensable and growing feature of the global economy. Of the top 20 economies, Australia is the only one not using nuclear energy or considering it.
Nuclear energy generates 15 per cent of the world’s electricity. In some countries, such as France, the proportion is three-quarters, and in many it is as much as 40-50 per cent.
In 31 countries, 441 nuclear reactors energise people’s lives without causing air pollution and with minimal carbon dioxide or other greenhouse gas emissions.
These attributes are a given for the countries using nuclear. They are clearly evident to the governments of at least another 15 countries which have notified the International Atomic Energy Agency they are actively considering nuclear energy.
Australian energy planners are aware of nuclear’s attributes.
Yet, as a nation,we remain content only to be a major supplier of fuel for other countries’ nuclear programs.
Except for curious cases like Queensland and NSW, which have significant amounts of uranium but deny it to countries around the world keen to use it.
Australia needs to continue its efforts to improve technology for more cleanly producing electricity fromcoal and gas. We need to continue to build our renewable energy portfolio. Yet doing only those things is not a prudent energy or economic bet.
As a matter of prudent economic management, Australian governments should take steps to enable nuclear energy to be introduced, should this prove to be in the national interest.
Given nuclear energy’s efficiency and cost effectiveness, and future increases in the cost of fossil fuels, not doing so potentially puts Australia at a considerable future economic disadvantage.
A Productivity Commission inquiry should identify the required actions and map the pathway to a potential nuclear future.
A new nuclear energy commission should set a framework for nuclear skills development and plan a rigorous regulatory framework.
The commission would identify sites for reactors and a waste repository and conduct the necessary consultation. It would help assess commercial nuclear energy proposals. Australia would also seek assistance of the International Atomic Energy Agency.
Acknowledging that nuclear energy is an option will help build politicaland community consensus around the need to consider it. Only then will we be able to give an informed response to the question.
Michael Angwin is chief executive of the Australian Uranium Association.
