All that energy wasted on a greenwash' for the nuclear industry

Sydney Morning Herald
Wednesday 22/11/2006, Page: 17
Dr Mark Diesendorf

THE draft report on uranium mining processing and nuclear energy is an exercise in "greenwash" for a dirty and dangerous industry. It skates over the serious risks of proliferation of nuclear weapons, nuclear terrorism and nuclear waste management, misrepresents the carbon dioxide emissions from the nuclear fuel chain, and presents a highly selective and excessively optimistic choice of numbers for the cost of nuclear electricity.

The single positive outcome of the report is the recognition that carbon pricing - either in the form of a carbon tax or an emissions scheme is essential for reducing Australia's greenhouse gas emissions. However, a more realistic assessment of nuclear economics would recognise that the carbon price range envisaged in the report - $15 to $40 per tonne of carbon dioxide emitted - is far too low to make nuclear power competitive with dirty (conventional) coal-fired power stations.

Indeed, the report recognises this implicitly where it admits: "If investor perceptions of risk were greater [than for other base-load technologies], higher carbon prices or other policies [that is, subsidies] would be required to stimulate investment in nuclear power." The report's very low estimates of carbon prices, required to make nuclear power economically viable, are achieved by a magician's trick. The report shows the cost estimates depend critically upon interest rates and that, at the high interest rates prevailing in a competitive market, nuclear electricity is likely to cost about 10 cents a kilowatt-hour.

However, in the comparison with the costs of competing technologies, the report selects much lower interest rates for nuclear power, in effect halving the cost of nuclear electricity. These carefully selected results are then reproduced in the executive summary, without any explanation that low interest rates were assumed, without justification.

As spelled out clearly in the unbiased Ranger uranium environmental inquiry, published a generation ago, nuclear power inadvertently contributes to the spread of nuclear weapons and hence the risk of nuclear war. Since then, the risk has become much worse. India, Pakistan and North Korea have all used civil nuclear technology to develop nuclear weapons.

Furthermore, the fragile barrier to nuclear proliferation - the nuclear nonproliferation treaty - is being actively undermined by the United States and Australia. The US is selling uranium to India and Australia is permitting sales to Taiwan. Neither country has signed the treaty. These sales are part of a US strategy to build a nuclear wall around China. The obvious response by China will be to expand its own nuclear weapons arsenal.

However, China's uranium reserves are too small to do this and fuel its nuclear power stations as well. Don't worry, Australia has come to the rescue with its uranium sales to China. This will free Chinese uranium for more nuclear weapons. A future confrontation over Taiwan could be hot indeed.

The report's conclusions on proliferation are breathtaking in their complacency: "Increased involvement [in the nuclear industry] would not change the risks" and "Australia's uranium supply policies reinforce the international non-proliferation regime". This goes beyond greenwash to repainting black as white.

It gets even better. The report dismisses nuclear terrorism with "nor would Australia's [electricity] grid become more vulnerable to terrorist attack". What about an attack on a nuclear power station, high-level nuclear waste in a cooling pond, or highly radioactive nuclear materials being transported? Even if they didn't hijack a jumbo jet, a small paramilitary group with suicidal tendencies could make a ground attack to take over the control room of a nuclear power station and initiate a core meltdown, creating hundreds of thousands of casualties.

The idea of adding value to uranium mining by introducing uranium enrichment is appealing to the authors of the report. However, there is a global over-capacity for uranium enrichment at present and the US is building a new plant. With no market, there would be no value-adding.

It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the Federal Government's push for nuclear power, assisted by the Switkowski report, is a means of distracting attention from its failure to implement strong policies in response to greenhouse gases.

As shown in the report A Clean Energy Future for Australia, commissioned by the Clean Energy Australia Group, carbon dioxide emissions from the electricity industry could be cut by 80 per cent by 2040 using a mix of efficient energy use, bioenergy, natural gas and wind power.

The barriers are neither technological nor economic, but rather the political power of the big greenhouse gas emitters.

Dr Mark Diesendorf is with the Institute of Environmental Studies at the University of NSW.