Call it a renaissance or just a revival, but nuclear electricity generation is undergoing expansion in some countries and intensified research as nations seek to restrict carbon output and diversify their sources of power.
Australia is no exception although return on cost of construction as well as objections about radioactivity have long pushed possible investment in nuclear energy into the future.
There are also more possibilities than there used to be. Mini reactors may be one way to go, supplying specific locations. The renewable energy industry is striving to scale up operations with bigger wind turbines and solar thermal plants, but some in the nuclear industry are moving in the opposite direction.
Then there are so-called “Generation IV” reactors, now under research for possible future development. The Generation IV project covers several technologies that now lie more in the realm of theory, such as gas-cooled fast reactors, and others that would be helium-cooled instead of the present water cooling.
While some old plants have been decommissioned, there is a boom in new nuclear projects, particularly in the developing world.
Nuclear energy in Australia may find an opening as the Labor government quietly moves to a new climate change response. Prime Minister Julia Gillard this week foreshadowed cuts and delays in government funding for large-scale solar power plants and carbon capture and storage research.
Gillard reasserted the Labor government’s faith in a carbon price and a trading market in place of direct public funding for technology. But after this moment of policy clarity can consideration of nuclear energy be far away?
Nuclear energy continues to be a divisive issue for Labor yet despite continued concerns about waste disposal, it has gained support among some environmentalists and many long-standing opponents as an effective way to reduce global carbon emissions and combat climate change.
Most of the nuclear plants now working and being constructed overseas are big, capable of producing from 700 megawatts to 1700MW. Finland has several plants already and is expanding its complex at Olkiluoto from two to three plants.
But much of the research and development attention is also being focused on small-scale units that the industry hopes will be cheaper to build and more flexible to operate, drastically changing the economics of the industry.
According to former Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation chairman Ziggy Switkowski, there has been a big escalation of interest in small reactors of about 100MW capacity for application in remote areas and small towns. He says small reactors are expected on the market within five years.
These reactors will be the size of two shipping containers and can be built underground. They will be gas-cooled, so they will not require large amounts of water and they can be expanded.
A range of small land-based demonstration nuclear reactors will soon be trialled in the US.
French group DCNS, which has been a supplier of nuclear submarines to the French Navy, this week unveiled a small offshore nuclear plant called Flexblue.
Flexblue is a cylindrical unit 100m long and 12 to 15m in diameter, which houses a small nuclear power reactor as well as steam generators, turbines and a generator to produce from 50MW to 250MW of electricity.
The vision is for the reactors to be installed on the seabed under 60m to 100m of water, several kilometres from a centre of demand such as a city, industrial base or remote community, served via underwater cables.
The nuclear industry is hopeful that small nuclear plants could be the game-changer that will give nuclear a niche in a rapidly evolving electricity market being transformed to accommodate much greater use of renewable technologies such as wind and solar.
Switkowski says the addition of nuclear would be complementary to renewables such as wind and solar.
Australia is expected to double its electricity generating capacity from 50 gigawatts to 100GW between now and 2050, he says.
“I think that by 2050 we will still have 50 gigawatts supplied by existing fossil fuels and the extra 50 gigawatts will all come from next generation technologies, wind, solar, nuclear and possibly geothermal,” Switkowski says.
“Nuclear will provide the base load power and gas will supply the peaking demand and balance the intermittent supply from renewables will come from gas.”
Nuclear still has a long way to go before it will be accepted as a clean source of electricity alongside its renewable competitors.
Nuclear power was excluded from use as a climate change mitigation technology under the Kyoto Protocol’s Clean Development Mechanism up to 2012.
One option up for discussion is that nuclear facilities shall not be eligible under the next period of the CDM; another recognises that developed countries are “to refrain” from counting nuclear development among mitigation measures in the next period and beyond; a third would allow nuclear facilities “that commenced operation on or after January 1 2008” as eligible under the CDM.
In Australia, even if a nuclear reactor could be operational before 2020 it would not be able to make any contribution to meeting the federal government’s goal of 20 per cent renewable energy by 2020 because it is from an ore.
While the benefits of nuclear energy in terms of carbon emissions may be demonstrated, a true environmental cost-benefit analysis is difficult because of the uncertainty inherent in the long term storage and disposal of waste.
An analysis of the issue by the US Energy Information Administration says whether nuclear plants present a net positive environmental gain compared to fossil fuels depends on the values that are placed on the waste.
Nuclear power provides an environmental benefit by almost entirely eliminating airborne wastes and particulates generated during power generation. This is offset by the relatively small volumes of radioactive wastes that are produced that must be managed prior to ultimate disposal.
The big advantage of nuclear power is that it makes no contribution to global warming through the emission of carbon dioxide.
Research shows that carbon emissions from nuclear compare favourably with other power generation technologies, even when considered on a life cycle accounting basis, in which all carbon emissions from construction of the plant, mining of uranium ore and transportation are included.
A World Nuclear Association Energy Analysis paper calculates that over their full life cycle, nuclear power plants are closely comparable with renewables such as wind, solar and hydro.
Switkowski has argued Australia should plan for its first nuclear reactor by 2020, aiming for a fleet size of 50 large reactors by 2050.
He says it would solve our greenhouse gas challenge in the electricity sector completely, provide for energy security and independence and create a modern high-technology industry.
It would also establish an energy platform that could charge electric cars and produce hydrogen fuel dependably and cleanly as will be required late this century, he says.
“While people may be split over whether or not they support nuclear energy, most support having a national conversation about the issue,” he says.
“Maybe 2011 could be the year.”
But nuclear energy is still strongly rejected by many people in Australia. “A lot of people assume that the reason why the nuclear energy industry has never got off the ground fully here is community opposition based on health and security concerns but actually that is just part of the reason,” says the Greens’ nuclear spokesperson Scott Ludlam.
“In reality, the other reason is economics nuclear power plants are incredibly expensive to build, impossible to insure privately and when it comes to decommissioning, costs blow out hugely again,” he says.
Nuclear energy has already emerged as a potentially divisive issue for Labor with Gillard forced to stare down a damaging split over the issue late last year. Resources Minister Martin Ferguson has given his support to Labor members who want the issue debated at the party’s annual conference this year.
Switkowski has said Australia stands alone among the world’s top economies in excluding consideration of nuclear power in our long-term energy and climate change strategy.
He says with the exception of Italy, which can buy nuclear electricity from France, no economy of Australia’s size or larger is without nuclear power.
Writing in The Australian this week, Liberal federal member for Kooyong, Josh Frydenberg says: “As a leading source of uranium, Australia has a competitive advantage; as a clean form of energy, nuclear power is better for the environment; and as the only advanced economy not embracing it as the answer, it is time we caught up.”
But for all the talk of a resurgence investment in nuclear remains patchy. At a panel discussion on nuclear energy at the world future energy conference in Abu Dhabi this month, Gianluca Marini, director of Italian power company CESI, emphasised that almost all investments were taking place in the developing world.
While 80 per cent of installed nuclear capacity was located in the EU, Japan and the US, 75 per cent of the reactors under construction were in the Far East and the Russian Federation.
China has 12 reactors up and running. Another 27 are under consideration and 24 are due to start operation in the next three years. The Chinese are hoping to achieve 70 generators by 2020.
NASA climate scientist James Hansen has warned the US’s economic standing “is going to become second class this century if we do not move smartly toward a clean energy future”. He says: “Nowhere is the lame middle-of-the-road go-slow compromise approach clearer than in the case of nuclear power.”
According to Vaclav Bartuska, the Czech Republic’s ambassador-at-large for energy, nuclear energy is not experiencing a “renaissance” but a “resuscitation” after 30 years of being in a coma.
As outlined by Australian academic Tony Owen, a past president of the international association for energy economics, nuclear plants have a “front-loaded” cost structure; they are expensive to build but relatively inexpensive to operate.
Nuclear power plant technology has evolved as distinct design generations: the first generation of prototypes between 1950 and 1970; the second generation of current operating plants between 1970 and 2000; and a third generation of improvements from 2000 on.
A multilateral grouping has been formed to develop fourth generation advanced and new reactor systems, which are expected to become available from as early as 2015.
The Generation IV consortium was established 10 years ago, and includes Argentina, Brazil, China, Japan, South Korea, Russia, Britain and the US.
The Generation IV project has selected six nuclear energy systems for further development involving a variety of reactor, energy conversion and fuel cycle technologies.
The six research areas are:
- A gas-cooled fast reactor featuring a fast neutron spectrum, helium-cooled reactor and closed fuel cycle.
- A very high-temperature reactor that is helium-cooled.
- A super critical water-cooled reactor that is a high-temperature, high-pressure water-cooled reactor that operates above the thermodynamic critical point of water.
- A sodium-cooled fast reactor that features a fast-spectrum, sodium-cooled reactor and closed fuel cycle.
- A lead-fuelled fast reactor that includes a closed fuel cycle.
- And a molten salt reactor that produces fission power in circulating molten salt.
According to the world nuclear association, most of the six systems employ a closed fuel cycle to maximise the resource base and minimise high-level wastes to be sent to a repository. Only one is cooled by light water.
Two of the remaining reactors are helium-cooled and the others have lead-bismuth, sodium or fluoride salt coolant, making it possible to operate at low pressure, with a safety advantage.
The sizes range from 150- 1500MW output with the lead-cooled one available as a 50-150MW electrical so-called “battery” with a long-core life (15-20 years without refuelling).
Nuclear retains a big advantage over coal even if low-grade uranium ore is used. The Forsmark nuclear power plant in Sweden has an audited carbon emissions ratio of 3.10 grams per kilowatt-hour (g/kWh). British Energy’s Torness 1250 MWe power station in Britain has claimed carbon emissions of 5.05 g/kWh.
On an energy life cycle analysis — in which all energy inputs for creating the station were calculated as being from coal — the UK Sustainable Development Commission report in 2006 gave a figure of 16 g/kWh for nuclear, compared with 891 g/kWh for coal and 356 g/kWh for gas.
These figures underscore the argument for nuclear as part of the climate change solution.
