Australasian Science, Page: 30
Wednesday, 28 June 2006
During his recent tour of North America, Australian Prime Minister John Howard called for a "full-blooded debate" about the place of nuclear power in the nation's energy mix. "I have a very open mind on the development of nuclear energy in my own country," he said. Treasurer Peter Costello said that only economic arguments precluded Australia's move to nuclear energy. "If it becomes commercial, we should have it," he said on 23 May.
But in reality the "debate" had already been adjudicated. Three days later the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO) presented Science Minister Julie Bishop with a report that delivered Costello's economic justification for nuclear power. Bishop said the ANSTO report"concluded that the latest types of nuclear power stations would be competitive with newly-built coal-fired power stations in Australia. It also concluded that nuclear power is the safest, most secure way of generating electricity with greater price stability in comparison to gas or coal power generation.
"While Bishop described the report's author, Prof John Gittus, as an "independent consultant", an annex to the report reveals that: "He and Mr Michael Dawsori now run Lloyds of London Insurance Syndicate 1176, the biggest commercial insurer of nuclear power stations and other facilities in the world". On 6 June Howard announced "the establishment of a Prime Ministerial Taskforce to undertake an objective, scientific and comprehensive review into uranium mining, processing and the contribution of nuclear energy in Australia in the longer term". Former nuclear physicist and Telstra CEO Dr Ziggy Switkowski will lead the taskforce, which includes the Head of Nuclear Physics at the Australian National University, Prof George Dracoulis. Switkowski has resigned from the ANSTO Board to avoid allegations of a conflict of interest.
The Taskforce will report by the end of this year. Chief Scientist Dr Jim Peacock will facilitate a peer review of the inquiry's scientific aspects. Peacock has already lobbied the government on the nuclear issue, stating in his Presidential address to the Australian Academy of Science AGM on 4 May that he had approached Howard to discuss "the place of nuclear power in the global effort to reduce carbon dioxide emissions." Much of the economic justification for Australia embracing a nuclear future centres on modern reactor technologies that are safer and more efficient.
"Many of the concerns that people have expressed about nuclear energy would be solved by using thorium instead of uranium to generate energy," says Dr Reza Hashemi-Nezhad of the University of Sydney's School of Physics, who is Australia's only expert on accelerator-driven systems (ADS) that use thorium as fuel. "Apart from the fact that Australia has the world's biggest reserves of thorium, the ADS using thorium does not produce plutonium and can incinerate its own nuclear waste as well as plutonium and other very long-lived radioactive waste, such as that produced by the experimental reactor at Lucas Heights. The nuclear waste produced requires only 500 years of storage time as opposed to hundreds of thousands of years for conventional nuclear reactor waste. In these reactors a meltdown like the Chernobyl disaster is virtually impossible.
"However, the government is not considering an ADS reactor. Gittus' calculations were based on Australia waiting for the costs to come down on Westinghouse's AP1000 nuclear power plant, which can produce 1117-1154 MWe of energy." The cost of generating electricity in Australia from the 'nth copy' of a nuclear power station such as the AP1000, including financial provision for managing the spent fuel, radioactive wastes and ultimate decommissioning, is cheaper than generating it from coal or a CCGT [combined cycle gas turbine] station," Gittus concluded.
"The 'nth copy' has settleddown costs, both capital and operating, unlike the first and other early copies which will have 'first-of-a-kind' costs." For instance, Gittus found that an early copy of the AP1000 would need "a government subsidy of 14.31% of the fifth-of-a-kind cost together with a subsidy of 21.41% of the cost of electricity for the first 12 years of operation" to bring the costs into line with the 'nth copy' scenario.
Therefore, Australia's nuclear future will still be some time off without government support. Such support would need to come from the present Coalition government, as Labor leader Kim Beazley has declared that"there will be no nuclear power in Australia under a Beazley government". But while the debate has been engineered by politicians and nuclear industry advocates, little has been heard of the views of scientists about the role of nuclear power in Australia's energy mix. Dr John Price, an engineer at Monash University's Mechanical Department of Engineering, has worked on the design of coal and nuclear power plants and alternative energy.
"Australia must add 9-10 GW of electricity capacity over the next 10 years to keep pace with demand," he says. "Currently there appears to be no option but to use black and brown coal and gas to generate this extra electricity. Thus the debate should be around whether or not we're happy to commit to so much more carbon dioxide production." Prof Aidan Byrne, Head of Physics at the Australian National University, also believes that "nuclear power could well be part of our energy mix in future, along with wind, solar and other renewables."
All sources of energy have their advantages and disadvantages, and each has to be considered on its merits. "Australia's particular circumstances - with an abundance of sunlight, space, coal and nuclear resources - will decide on this mix. Other countries are not so fortunate so the decisions that other countries make to go nuclear may not need to be replicated in Australia." Prof Peter Johnston, Head of Physics at EMIT and a scientific adviser to Maralinga Tjarutja, who are traditional owners of the former nuclear test site at Maralinga, says: "I think we should be interested in nuclear energy options.
We don't necessarily need a nuclear power program right now but we certainly should have the capability to choose this option in future if and when we want to. Our existing fossil fuel sources may last a long time but we might decide that we need to use coal for things such as liquid fuels instead of burning it for base load energy, especially if oil becomes very expensive in future."Unless we have the capacity to use nuclear power then we may be at a disadvantage. Other countries may be in a position to produce energy by nuclear power much more quickly and cheaply than us. We need the skills and expertise in nuclear science to ensure that we can also do it."
Price concurs:"The nuclear power option would be nice to have. The past 50 years of experience has shown that the safety of nuclear energy and its fuel cycle is very attractive, and modern plants will be even better." The current debate has gained momentum due to increasing support for initiatives that reduce Australia'sgreenhouse gas emissions.
According to Prof Hugh Possingham, a mathematical ecologist at the University of Queensland: "This debate is not about renewables versus nuclear, it is about how quickly we can wean ourselves off energy generation that releases greenhouse gases. The increased level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere from burning fossil fuels has already begun to contribute to the loss of biodiversity through its impact on the climate. It has been estimated that we could lose 10-30% of all species around the globe as a result of climate change. This places climate change among the top three threats to biodiversity along with land clearing and invasive species."
According to Gittus:"The five measures that Australia currently plans to mitigate global warming will, taken together, reduce Australia's greenhouse gas emissions by 38 million tonnes per year. An equal reduction would be provided by substituting 4-5 GWe of nuclear generation for present and planned coal-fired power stations. This would comprise, for example, three or perhaps four APlOOOs."However Ian Lowe, Emeritus Professor at Griffith University and President of the Australian Conservation Foundation, says that "nuclear power is certainly not a cost-effective answer to climate change.
Various forms of renewable energy supply are more attractive without having the environmental, social and political disadvantages of nuclear power. Energy efficiency is a more cost-effective way of reducing carbon dioxide emissions than any supply alternative, and should be pursued vigorously."Dr Joel Fleming, an environmental scientist and Managing Director of Climate Friendly Pty Ltd agrees."Whether Australia should go nuclear is the wrong question," he says.
"The question we need to ask is: what is the best strategy to reduce greenhouse emissions by 80% and avoid dangerous climate change?" Renewable and efficiency technologies are available now. With these, there are companies in Australia right now who have reduced their emissions by 60-100%. So why take the safety risk with nuclear when there are clean energy options available? In the long term, with nuclear we would end up using low grade uranium with roughly the same greenhouse emissions as gasfired power stations." Frank Muller, an Adjunct Professor at the University of NSW Institute for Environmental Studies, says Australia's decisions will have implications for our role in the global nuclear industry.
"This is not really about whether Australia should meet its energy needs through nuclear power," he says. "It's a much bigger debate about whether the world should make a major shift to nuclear power and whether Australia should become a big supplier of nuclear fuel cycle services and a nuclear waste dump for other countries." Muller, who previously headed greenhouse policy in the NSW Cabinet Office and spent the 1990s in Washington advising governments and the United Nations on climate change, says: "The reason we are having this debate now is because it meets the political needs of conservative politicians in Washington and Canberra on the defensive over oil prices, climate change and other issues, not because there has been any real commercial progress in overcoming the proliferation, economic and environmental risks of nuclear energy. If we are serious about tackling climate change now there are many other energy options that we should be debating - options that are cheaper, safer and can be deployed much more quickly.
"Nuclear power requires not only big subsidies, but also big government to deal with its risks - and it is a great irony that is should be embraced by conservative politicians."Lowe is also suspicious of the government's agenda."The nuclear power option makes so little sense for Australia that I suspect 'the debate' is really aimed at softening up the electorate to accept increased exports of uranium. It remains true, as the Ranger inquiry found 30 years ago, that exporting uranium adds to the problems of proliferation of fissile material and production of radioactive waste.
There is no convincing technical or political solution to either of those problems, so exporting uranium inevitably makes the world a dirtier and more dangerous place."
0 comments:
Post a Comment