In Australia virtually anything nuclear has been politically regarded until recently as a pariah technology, yet nuclear power has reliably served over 30 countries for over 50 years. Some 430 or more civilian power reactors (with many more under construction and even more planned) safely provide over 15% of the world’s electricity. Australia supplies nearly 40% of their uranium fuel and has the worlds largest economically recoverable reserves.

So why no nuclear power in Australia? Because nuclear power leads to bombs? No! Nuclear bombs preceded peaceful power generation, not the other way round.

The reasons are economic and political. Australia has plentiful low cost coal near its load centres against which nuclear cannot compete - so long as carbon emissions are not costed. The electricity cost is still some 20-50% higher. Coal mining and power generation support major investments and very many thousands of jobs. Industry disruption in the short to medium term is politically and commercially inconceivable.

However with a price on carbon and unknown costs for carbon capture and storage, base load power cost relativities will change. Nuclear power could well become the low emission choice for the future… especially when rising power costs start to bite consumers!

Australia was nuclear ready in the 1980s with the Jervis Bay power station committed and the Australian Atomic Energy Commission (AAEC) among world leaders in technology development. Synroc seemed the way ahead for permanent waste disposal but inferior technologies now have that market. The University of New South Wales had a world class graduate school of nuclear engineering. That too has gone; victim of the politics of the day. Did Australia miss an opportunity? In my view it certainly did.

Nuclear Fuel Cycle

In Australia we mine, mill and export concentrated uranium oxide – ‘yellowcake’ - to a uranium hungry world. We do it very well; new Australian uranium mines are opening to meet burgeoning world demand. Overseas conversion and fuel assembly plants feed power reactors. Cooling and decay of spent fuel in deep ponds is followed by permanent encapsulation and deep burial in engineered repositories some 500m or more underground; effectively the reverse of hard rock mining in which Australians are world leaders!

Reactor Technologies

Early Generation I gas cooled reactors of the 1950s will all soon be closed down – already heritage items! Generation II from the 1960s included the Soviet Chernobyl reactor. The Three Mile Island accident in 1979 and the Chernobyl disaster in 1986 were 30 and 23 years ago respectively. Much has changed since then.

Far more advanced, safer and reliable Generation III light water reactors emerged in the mid ‘90s and now operate throughout the world.

Generation III Plus, with yet better fuel utilisation and higher safety, enter service from 2010 and will likely be the large base load technology of choice for Australia. Capacity factors well over 90% and plant lives over 40 years, maybe 50 or more can be expected.

Generation IV, still under development, are the so called fast reactors (once called fast breeders but no more!) are expected from 2030. They will extract some 50-60 times more energy from the uranium by using both the U235 and the more plentiful U238 unused by earlier generations. There is no risk of uranium running out – it is an extraordinarily abundant fuel and reactors use very little of it.

Large base load reactors of 1,000MW and more will sustain the base load portfolio. But a generation of compact self contained reactors, capable of being deployed regionally with very little additional infrastructure beyond connection to their load, are under development. Some can fit in a standard shipping container. Perhaps these may provide a ‘soft entry’ for nuclear technology in Australia?

Finally long awaited nuclear fusion may yet become the sustainable base load technology of the future.

Nuclear Power for Australia?

The 2006 Uranium Mining Processing and Nuclear Energy Review (UMPNER) showed the earliest nuclear electricity could support the Australian grid would be 10 to 15 years – say around 2020 to 2025 – with permanent high level waste disposal not needed before 2050. By then many deep disposal repositories, now under construction, will be operational.

But first Australia needs a national regulator and a core of trained nuclear scientists, engineers and technologists. To this end it is good to know that early moves are afoot to re-establish an Australian school of nuclear technology, possibly with international ally relationships. Its graduates will find immediate employment worldwide to service the ‘nuclear renaissance’. The challenge is huge; Australia must respond.

Economics of Nuclear Electricity

Nuclear power economics depend on the cost of capital and management of financial risk. Fuel costs are but a small portion of sent out power costs – some 0.5 to 0.7 cents per unit – plus a very small levy of 0.1 to 0.2 cents per unit to fund all waste disposal and final decommissioning 50 or 60 years later. UMPNER showed the sent out cost of nuclear electricity, including capital, to lie between 4 and 6.5 cents per unit. Australian domestic electricity now costs around 12 cents per unit or more to allow for transmission, distribution and profit.

Coal power costs on a comparable basis at present lie between 2.8 and 3.8 cents per unit. However carbon costs will add at least 2 to 3 cents per unit, making nuclear cost competitive while having no carbon or any other emissions, no coal mines and no ash disposal dams. If carbon capture and storage become practical and economic, as I hope they will to preserve a huge Australian industry and help meet targeted emission reductions, then the costs of so called “clean coal” electricity may, and in my opinion will, equal or exceed nuclear power. Remember that nuclear power is a mature technology; carbon capture and storage technologies are not yet. But it is upon these technologies, together with renewables, that Australia’s hopes are pinned to meet its CO₂ obligations.

Nuclear Power Plant Siting

Many sane people, apart from the pragmatic French, harbour fears of nuclear power and exhibit NIMBY responses when plant locations are discussed. And who wants to live near any power plant, regardless of its primary energy source – be it coal, gas or wind?

The land for a 1000MW nuclear station – less than 1 square kilometre - differs little from that for coal. However to the coal station real estate must be added the chimneys to remove and disperse the flue gas and fine particulates; the coal mine and its washeries and conveyors; and the sometimes modestly radioactive surface ash dam of ever increasing area.

Cooling water for nuclear power is slightly higher due to rather lower steam conditions and hence cycle efficiency. But the cooling water source can be once-through sea or estuarine water, evaporative cooling towers with limited make-up water, or dry cooling with radiators – similar to the ubiquitous car engine.

Air pollution is extremely low with no CO₂ or other airborne pollutants. High level nuclear wastes, while very dangerous if not contained, are very small in volume and robustly encapsulated. Disposal systems are extremely well engineered and accidents with waste disposal over 50 years have been negligible. Indeed nuclear power safety records, including Chernobyl, are far better than any other generating technology. In short a nuclear plant can be located anywhere near the grid given adequate cooling water, assured security and plans for a long term future.

Waste Disposal

Nuclear wastes arise in three broad categories – low, intermediate and high. Low and intermediate wastes present no real issues and are disposed of safely at sites worldwide, including at ANSTO’s Lucas Heights for the OPAL research reactor, producer of essential medical isotopes.

Long term encapsulation and deep disposal of HLW is essential as for many other of society’s intractable wastes. Most nuclear nations are well advanced with such facilities. Australia is particularly well placed geologically with vast remote geo-stable regions ideal for deep disposal which, at least for Australia, would not be needed until after 2050.

Nevertheless spent fuel volumes are no more than 2 to 3 cubic metres per annum for a 1,000MW base load nuclear power station if reprocessed; and 10 cubic metres if not (a small ensuite bathroom!) Compare this with disposal to the atmosphere of around 7 million tonnes of carbon dioxide per annum for the most modern 1,000MW coal plant, not to mention many tonnes of moderately radioactive ash.

Engineering of a spent fuel repository is well within the skills of Australian hard rock mining engineers. It is proposed as a commercial opportunity that Australia lease uranium to approved world users, taking it back after 30 years for permanent encapsulation and burial unless reprocessed. Many support this proposal.

Health & Safety

Nuclear power has unwarrantedly gained a reputation for dangerous radiation and resulting deaths. However the truth, measured in the unattractive but illustrative units of “deaths per gigawatt year”, is that nuclear power, including the Chernobyl tragedy, is by a huge margin less dangerous than all fossil fuel, hydro and renewables generation. For anti nuclear power proponents –there are many - this is indeed an inconvenient truth.

Conclusion

This paper touches on but some essentials of nuclear power. Issues such as proliferation management; the creation and education of the scientists and engineers should nuclear power be found to be the ugly duckling; the potential for Australia to take a stronger role in the nuclear fuel cycle and many others await the generations ahead.

The need for low emission base load generating technologies including nuclear power, along with electric vehicle transport and significantly enhanced end use efficiency, is abundantly clear if we intend to meet declared pollution reduction targets. But by the time the passionate debate over the impact of atmospheric carbon is resolved it may be too late for Australia to regain its leadership in technologies that promise so much.

For Australia to continue to ignore nuclear energy will one day be seen as the height of foolishness. Our grandchildren and their children will ask how we could have been so blind.

Martin Thomas AM FTSE HonFIEAust FAIE

A lifetime career in energy consulting, concluding as a Principal of Sinclair Knight Merz. Later he was founding Managing Director of the Cooperative Research Centre for Renewable Energy, ACRE.

Former external roles include Deputy Chairmanship of Australian Inland Energy, non-executive Directorships of the Tyree Group and EnviroMission, Chairmanships of industry association Austenergy; the NSW Electricity Council and the Sydney 2000 Olympic Energy Panel. He is currently Chairman of Dulhunty Power Limited (ASX:DUL), Alecto Energy Plc, the Asia Pacific International College (APIC) and Advisor to the Board of ZBB Energy.

He is a past President of Engineers Australia and of the Australian Institute of Energy and a past Vice-President of the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering. He was awarded the 2008 Peter Nicol Russell Memorial Medal, the highest award of Engineers Australia.

In 2006 Martin Thomas served as a member of the Prime Minister’s Uranium Mining, Processing and Nuclear Energy Review taskforce known as UMPNER.

Reader Responses Please!

We want to hear from YOU. Your opinions on issues, content. Suggest topics and articles, contribute articles etc. Contact us at editor@eng.usyd.edu.au

Disclaimer: The Warren Centre publishes articles relating to new technology and innovation that are often based on information supplied by third parties. While an editorial process is applied, we make no exhaustive investigation into the accuracy of the information, thus no liability will be accepted for its accuracy. Please note that in providing this information, The Warren Centre is not supporting or promoting any technology or company, merely seeking to inform. Interested readers should take their own steps to verify the information prior to relying on it in any way.

Contents

Australian Energy Futures – An Overview
A Nuclear Future for Australia?
Ongoing Conversation For The New Energy Landscape
Solar Perspective – Wizard Power
Welcome to Archie Johnson New Dean of Engineering at Sydney University
2009 Warren Centre Innovation heroes
Alliance Contracting – An interview with Phil Chipman, COO, QWI
 

Click here to go back to The Warren Centre Bulletin Page.

(c) The Warren Centre for Advanced Engineering, 2009