Newsletter: 2nd Quarter 2007
An alternative view to nuclear energy
After commissioning a review, an inquiry and setting up a steering group, Prime Minister John Howard announced in April this year that he would steer Australia down the path towards using nuclear power for electricity generation. Ultimately Mr Howard spelt out four areas that his government would immediately start working on. 1) An appropriate nuclear energy regulatory regime. 2) Skills and technical training to support expansion of the nuclear industry. 3) Enhanced research and development. 4) Communication strategies for Australian's and stakeholders to understand what needs to be done. Work plans are to be implemented in 2008.
Dr. John R. Coulter, former medical researcher and Democrat Senator for South Australia currently involved with Sustainable Population Australia, has discussed the nuclear power possibilities from two different angles. First the availability of the world's uranium ore and then the energy costs involved in developing nuclear power plants.
According to Dr. Coulter the total global energy demand in 2002 was 435 exajoules, this is expected to increase 57 per cent, to 680 exajoules by 2025. Global energy produced by nuclear reactors in 2002 was 9.2 exajoules. Working with these figures, Dr. Coulter points out that the International Atomic Energy Agency places a 85 year limit to the world's ability to continue to produce power at this rate (9.2 exajoules per year). This determination was made by taking into account the known global stock of uranium ore that is of a high enough grade (uranium content of 0.01 to 0.02 per cent) to produce energy as well as repay the energy used to mine the mineral.
Studies on the life cycle analysis (LCA) of nuclear power are few, mainly because of a lack of data on the decommissioning of nuclear plants (the Uranium Information Centre estimates the average cost of decommissioning to be "$325 million per reactor all-up"). Items that need to be accounted for when producing an LCA include, mining, crushing, extracting uranium, turning it into uranium hexafluoride, enrichening the U isotope, making uranium oxide pellets and fuel rods, building the reactor, treating and storing waste, decommissioning and dismantling the reactor, and safe sequestration of radioactive wastes.
When using a best case scenario for building a nuclear station, Dr. Coulter calculated Australia's current average energy efficiency of the economy and assumed the energy intensity to be similar to other like activities. This calculation comes from a study by Jan WillemStorm van Leeuwen and Philip Smith (www.stormsmith.nl), of which Dr. Coulter bases his paper "Can nuclear power address climate change?"
With this calculation, Dr. Coulter estimates that a 1 GW plant, operating at 75 per cent capacity, would take approximately 3.5 years to pay back the energy input required to construct it. Using the same energy assumptions, but expanding them to associated costs of operating a nuclear reactor, a nuclear station would need to operate for at least ten-years to pay back all energy input costs.
Operating on the best case scenario put forward by the International Panel on Climate Change, that the world works towards a 60 per cent drop in greenhouse gases by 2050 compared to 1990, relying on nuclear as a power source will be both limiting and difficult to achieve in the time parameter. Mr Howard's reports show a 10 year accelerated time frame is required for "nuclear build" in Australia. If Dr. Coulter's analyses of energy costs are accurate it will be another 10 years before nuclear stations start having an impact on greenhouse gas emissions. Not to mention that Dr. Coulter estimates 3778 1GW stations need to be built to replace the current fossil fuel burning power stations.
Source: CSIRO Sustainable Network, July 2006.
