Power switch: it's time to put our uranium to work

Canberra Times
Monday 15/9/2008 Page: 15

The Australian Government should heed the call to informed realism made recently at a conference of the Australian Industry Group in Canberra. Here, Don Argus, chairman of BHP Billiton, exhorted delegates to "start talking seriously about using the country's vast uranium resources for domestic use" and " to engage in a debate about nuclear energy". Without nuclear energy Australia would face a century of environmental, economic and geopolitical disadvantage and would miss out on the optimal technology for electricity, water and hydrogen production.

Argus is not the first head of a major Australian coal mining company to signal an interest in the promotion of nuclear fission as apposed to chemical combustion for Australia's baseload energy supply. Last month, the head of Macarthur Coal, Nicole Hollows, strongly endorsed the establishment of a domestic nuclear energy industry. She hoped Australia's first nuclear stations would be built and commissioned over the next decade.

At the present time on planet Earth about 27 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide is pumped into the atmosphere per annum. Were it not for nuclear energy this figure would be closer to 30 billion tonnes. The ever increasing contribution of this greenhouse gas from the developing economies - especially the giants China and India - is driven by their enormous coal-based demand for energy and their population increase, This will ensure energy resources consumed over the next two decades will be greater than those consumed over the past 100 years.

If Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and his climate change adviser Professor Ross Garnaut really want to demonstrate to the United Nations that Australia is a world leader in greenhouse gas abatement, they have one clear responsibility. They need to commend and endorse nuclear energy technology as the pivotal component of an Australian energy policy. Without such a commitment even the modest Garnaut target of a 10 per cent reduction by 2020 will be difficult to achieve.

Today the new paradigm in clean energy technology is nuclear energy. Already Australian uranium supplied to 11 nuclear-powered trading partners provides them with low-cost energy security and is destined to avert some 15 billion tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions over the next 20 years. All but one of the countries that attended the recent G8 summit in Japan - some of theta as observers - already have, or are in the course of planning, a major domestic nuclear energy industry. Remarkably, and sadly, the sole exception is Australia.

The real climate change challenge for Australia is to embrace an energy policy that has the full endorsement of expert scientists and engineers and provides clean baseload energy security for the nation at the lowest possible cost. When such criteria are satisfied, the secondary task of implementing an emissions trading scheme or a carbon tax is simplified both in terms of econometrics and the introductory timeline. The task then becomes focused not on political spin, as at present, but on national interest.

In February 2008, despite growing global and Australian approval for nuclear energy, Climate Minister Penny Wong reasserted the Australian Labor Party's opposition to it and promised to press for the greater use of "alternative energy resources". She stated, "We don't need to go down the path of nuclear energy. What we do need to ensure is that we look at renewables, and the Government has a 20 per cent renewable energy target by 2020 to drive investment in the renewable energy sector.

We will also be investing in carbon capture and storage so there is a clean coal future for Australia." The Australian Government could well learn from Australia's uranium trading partners as it shapes its energy and climate change policies. Wong should endorse the energy technologies that provide real energy security and offer the largest emission reductions at the lowest cost and not the other way around.

Her aspiration for "renewables" and "clean coal" clearly does not fit the template. Indeed they are highly questionable propositions on both technical and economic criteria. The introduction of nuclear energy and a nuclear industry into Australia is a matter of great urgency. From the point of view of global warming, it would be desirable to have our first five nuclear energy stations operating by 2020 and to have at least 25 GWe nuclear plants by 2050.

Without such a provision there will be little hope of meeting our stated emission reduction targets. Adopting such an energy policy would transform the token political gesture of ratifying the Kyoto Protocol to the practical and ethical high ground of a real contribution to the global climate change problem. It would undoubtedly be highly commended by the UN at next year's Copenhagen climate conference.

Leslie Kemeny is the Australian foundation member of the International nuclear energy Academy. He is a visiting Professorial Research Fellow and an internationally acknowledged consulting nuclear scientist and engineer.