Clearly, John Howard wanted saturation coverage of the release of the final version of the review into the nuclear industry, by releasing it in the middle of the silly season.
The final report hasn’t changed much from the earlier draft. Nuclear energy is safe compared to other energy sources by any sensible measure, and its environmental impact is small; CO2 emissions are a tiny fraction of fossil fuels, water usage is quite manageable because the plants can use seawater cooling or use dry cooling towers at a relatively low additional cost. Nuclear energy requires a carbon charge to be competitive with coal and gas, but the charge is surprisingly small. An enrichment industry is still highly unlikely in the near future; Australia has no competitive advantage over existing suppliers. The main difference is a sequence of appendices with some interesting general background information.
From a policy viewpoint, I happen to think this document has got things mostly correct. There is, in my view, no good reason to oppose on safety, environmental, or proliferation grounds the establishment of a nuclear industry in Australia if it happens to be the cheapest way to provide emission-free baseload power. And, furthermore, there’s a pretty good chance that it will be just that.
In political terms, I still can’t see this as anything other than a loser for the government. There’s not much that unites the CFMEU and the Australian Greens, but domestic nuclear power certainly does. The scare campaign going into the 2007 election campaign pretty much writes itself. Johnny, however, seems to have publicly nailed his colours to the wall as a vocal advocate for nuclear power in Australia. Anybody got a sensible theory as to he’s still seemingly so committed to the issue, when it’s wedging his own colleagues far worse than it is Labor?
I think he sees it as the GST of 2007. Something of which he can say “it’s unpopular but it’s right”, claim to be taking flak and risks for doing the right thing, etc. And it enables him to say he’s forward looking and has a “plan” for the future (and climate change), while painting his opponents as stuck in the 70s.
I notice that the report makes absolutely no mention of how insurance coverage may be arranged for any nuclear accident that may take place.
The United States government discovered in the 1950s that no private insurer would underwrite coverage of the US civilian nuclear program.
In a submission, State Farm, a major US insurance company explained why:
State Farm isn’t talking about the frequency of serious nuclear accidents. Rather, the Company is talking about the catastrophic nature of just one such an accident. The Company says it has no way of quantifying those costs.
Translate that into the lives of ordinary persons, and for that matter biological processes in general. What State Farm means is that a catastrophic nuclear incident for which “there is a definite possibility� renders life as we know it impossible over an unquantifiable area for an unquantifiable stretch of time.
Insurance companies don’t scare easily. If they believed there was a buck to be made from covering “safe” nuclear programs, they’d be competing for the business.
As a result of the prudence of US insurance companies, the US government was forced to pass the Price Anderson Act, which indemnified the US nuclear industry and which made the US government the effective insurer.
Why hasn’t UMPNER even considered these issues when recommending nuclear power as economic?
If risk coverage is seen as uneconomic by insurance companies, how is it possible to speak of nuclear power generation as economic?
Will Australia need its own version of Price Anderson? Will this involve a sinking fund which requires taxpayer contributions?
Katz, you mischaracterise the Price-Anderson act.
Any claims under $10 billion, beyond the maximum insurance available to individual plants (300 million USD) are covered by the industry. The federal government acts as insurer of last resort beyond that figure. Neither the industry pool, or the government, has paid out a cent in the act’s 43 years of operation.
In any case, limiting insurance liabilities is hardly unique to the nuclear industry – airlines get similar assistance.
As to your broader point, we’ve now got a pretty good handle on a “worst-case” nuclear disaster. Chernobyl, bad as it was, is pifflingly small compared to global warming, or indeed the number of people who die from the air pollution from coal-fired power stations each and every year.
Libertarians might be interested in the emergence of the nuclear industry, alongside the airline industry, as another example of market failure.
To compare the hypothetical costs of the nuclear industry with the actual costs of the coal industry without considering other solutions is to commit the fallacy of the excluded middle.
While greenhouse gases have disastrous effects, still these effects are beyond the reach of the law of damages. However, unless there is indemnification, many effects of nuclear fallout would not be beyond the reach of the law of damages. Yet, the legal effects of indemnification are not discussed in the report. This must have quantifiable affects on the legal rights of Australian residents, which can be translated into figures with the same degree of confidence as one can project the economic costs of global warming.
So RM, you acknowledge that:
1. the report did not consider the insurance aspects of the claim that nuclear power is “economic”.
2. that it is possible, if not probable, that the Australian taxpayer will be required to underwrite some version of a Price Anderson Act.
Wasn’t this an appropriate time for the proponents of nuclear power to come clean on these issues?
Read appendix J.
And the equivalent of Price-Anderson wouldn’t bother me a jot. It’s cost the US government precisely zero dollars in 40 years. It’s like the government promising to the insurer of last resort in the event of a meteorite strike.
You might also be interested in the Wikipedia article on Price-Anderson, which links to so information about how much the subsidy is worth.
But no government as far as I now has ever promised to insure any resident against a meteorite strike. This is mere persiflage.
Here’s the relevant bit from appendix J:
Like they say, always read the small print.
This simply confirms my allegation that the proponents of nuclear power recognise that its operation is a case of market failure.
Does any other power generating technology have such indemnities? They don’t. Therefore, owners and shareholders of those utilities will be cross-subsidising a competing industry.
Will these shareholders be compensated for their loss?
I have to disagree with some of those assertions. For starters, while it may beat coal, nuclear is not emission free when you count the mining, processing and transporting the fuel and waste, as well as the construction and deconstruction of the plant and waste facilities. Solar and wind are not baseload, but geothermal and hydro are, and have almost no emissions other than construction of the power generation plants. Geothermal in particular has minimal other environmental impacts. Both have geographical limitations, but can still play significant roles in conjunction with other form of power generation. The economics or feasibility of these options in a carbon costed context were not given meaningful consideration at all.
This also leads me to suggest that these options, combined with the major efficiency gains which can be still be made (through housing and building design for example) and easy gain expansions in renewables – such as dramatcially expanding solar hot water – can be much more economic than nuclear. (‘clean’ coal is not the panacea some of the state governments (like Qld) are suggesting, but geosequestration may none the less be some help too down the track, although I don’t believe it can feasibly be applied to existing power stations, and we shouldn’t be building more new coal fired stations until/unless this technology is applied)
Whilst the long-term problems of safely storing high level nuclear waste have to be balanced against the major short-term dangers of climate change, it is still wrong to say there are environmental grounds to oppose nuclear power generation.
You also haven’t mentioned the security risks. While there may be less proliferation risk from generating power here compared to it being generated elsewhere (which of course we are also eagerly facilitating through our desire to export more uranium, including to China which has a far from perfect record), there is still clear security dangers in nuclear power plants and waste transportation and facilities. Any large power plant could bne a terrorist taregt I guess, but bombing a nuclear one has way more nasty consequences than just major power outages.
A friend of mine, Dave Kimble, has made the following comments on the Switkowski report on a possible nuclear future for Australia:
“The report assumes Australia will continue to increase its electricity consumption by 3% per year, as it has over the 1990-2005 period. If this growth is maintained until 2050, consumption will have grown 367% to 892 TW.h/year, and if a quarter of that is from nuclear, then the remaining three quarters or 669 TW.h/year must come from fossil fuels plus alternatives (solar and wind).
If fossil fuels are maintained at 2005 levels, 243 Tw.h/year then the alternatives must represent 426 TW.h/year. Thus the fuel mix would be roughly a quarter coal and gas, a quarter nuclear, and half from other sources.
This is not what I would call a nuclear future.
Dave Kimble also finds a significant error in the calculations used to justify nuclear power in the Switkowski report:
“After days of thrashing around, I have finally found an error in their spreadsheet.
http://www.peakoil.org.au/isa.nuclear-calculator.xls The GW.h (electrical) and GW.h (thermal) of energy to decommission the reactors and dispose of the waste are set to the amount for 3 reactors (the base case), not how ever many reactors I ask for. Consequently the GHG Intensity changes as the number of reactors changes, making more reactors look better than fewer reactors. Gotcha.
They use an ore grade of 0.15% in the base case which is sort of equal to the current grade of Australian ores, whereas the average grade of all Australian ore is only 0.045% – obviously they mine the best stuff first. This means far more energy will be needed to mine and process the Uranium, releasing more GHG’s, and reducing the enrgy profit the nuke plants generate.
They reckon the reactor will operate with a load factor of 85% for all the 34 years after the first year which is hopelessly optimistic for a first reactor in my view, given that the world average for financial 2003-4 was 78.1% (singing : the Aussies, the Aussies, the Aussies are best, I wouldn’t give tuppence for all of the rest)
Making these two parameter changes, the GHG Intensity for the base case of 57.8 g(CO2-e) / KW.h goes up to 69.5 and the ERoEI (Energy Return on Energy Invested) goes to 4.65, payback time goes to 7.5 years.
Dave Kimble has written a more comprehensive analysis of the
Switkowski report:
http://www.peakoil.org.au/news/index.php?isa.review.htm
Review of ISA’s nuclear energy balance report
by Dave Kimble
“Australia’s review of the nuclear industry has been published in draft form for feedback. The report takes its energy balance and GHG emissions data from a report it commissioned from ISA at University of Sydney. This article looks at the ISA report.
In June 2006 the Australian Federal Government commissioned a report “Uranium Mining, Processing and Nuclear Energy – Opportunities for Australia ?”. Dr Ziggy Switkowski was chosen to head the Prime Ministerial Taskforce conducting the review. He has a doctorate in nuclear physics, but is better known as the former chairman of Telstra, Australia’s former-monopoly telephone company.
Switkowski was appointed to the board of ANSTO (Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation) in January 2006, so his appointment to this taskforce was seen by some as compromising the report’s independence. In response, Switkowski then resigned from his ANSTO board position. Obviously this strategy can have had no bearing on his pro-nuclear bias. This is a report written by the nuclear industry trying to justify its very existence. If they fail to make a solid case
for nuclear energy now, they will soon be out of a job.
The Taskforce in turn commissioned a report from the Integrated Sustainability Analysis team (ISA) of University of Sydney, entitled “Life-Cycle Energy Balance and Greenhouse Gas Emissions of Nuclear Energy in Australia”. This article looks at some of the information that appears in the ISA report …. “
Senator, I did say that it was *my* opinion; I didn’t go into some of the rather voluminous basis that I have come to this view, but to take your points briefly:
1) The life cycle emissions have been well studied. Read the UMPNER report, which as well as summarising previous studied commissioned a new one of its own. At most, the life cycle emissions are a few percent of those of (unsequestered) gas, let alone coal. They are indeed higher than wind (or geothermal, I think), but lower than solar. I think they have been overly conservative in the commissioned study; for instance, if Australia were to build nuclear plants, by the time they do the world’s (very energy-inefficient and a major component of lifecycle emissions in the study) gas diffusion enrichment plants will have been shut down.
2) I wouldn’t defend this governments wider record on greenhouse for a millisecond, and acknowledge the far superior record of (for instance) the Democrats in treating the problem seriously. I agree with much of what you say on this point, and would argue that we have wasted the best part of a decade in not establishing some kind of carbon charging. However, where I disagree with some people is that for me, reducing power consumption is not an end in itself, it’s a means to reducing carbon emissions. If people prefer to pay for non-emitting sources of power I don’t see why we shouldn’t let them do that instead of imposing energy efficiency on them.
3) As to waste storage, my conclusion is that compared to global warming, nuclear waste storage is at most a local environmental problem of comparatively minor import. You might be interested in looking up the Oklo natural nuclear reactor. Furthermore, consider the effect that Chernobyl has had on the local wildlife.
4) Actually causing significant radiation release from a terrorist attack on a nuclear plant is considerably harder than you might think – containment buildings are very tough (as, for that matter, are waste transport casks). Compare that the the innumerable easier options terrorists have for killing people and I’m not that worried.
Mike, I’ll have a look, and I look forward to a reply from the authors of the study. However, I would note that there have been plenty of other life cycle energy analysis studies, and most of them come back with lower answers. The UK Sustainable Development Commission, who produced a report opposing nuclear power, concluded its life cycle emissions at about 5% of gas.
In any case, such analysis of decommissioning assumes the use of fossil fuels to drive the machinery of decommissioning. It’s pretty unlikely that Australia would have nuclear plants before 2020, which puts decommisssioning back until at least 2060, and more likely somewhere 2080 (life cycle analyses usually budget for a 40 year life cycle, but most of the nuclear plants in the US will probably end up operating 60 years). If we’re still burning fossil fuels and releasing the contents into the atmosphere to operate machinery by then, I’ll eat my hat.
Furthermore, I find your assumption that Australia will take decades to catch up with best practice on capacity factors strange. Are you saying that Australian nuclear plant operators will implement the reactor operation of the 1970s? Surely any agreement to construct a reactor would also involve the importation of expertise to run the thing according to international best practice – and, in this case, international best practice is probably the Yanks.